It's officially a cold weather day for me. That means school is cancelled for students and most the staff, but because I am considered an administrator, I have to come in. The temperature outside is actually -1, but the feels like temperature is -9. The threshold in Michigan that most superintendents hold to is -20 F. Once the windchill dips the temps into that range, they are pretty much obligated to close school.
In fact, many schools made the call after 7PM last night in preparation for the temperatures they were calling for today. Obviously, in reality they probably could have held off, but with wind gusts expected to be pretty strong today, it's not out of the realm of possibility we could dip below that -20 degree mark. According to the forecast, by about 9AM this morning we should be hitting the -25 F mark, so we will see.
Speaking of cold... The crypto markets are pretty blah right now am I right? Just when it looked like we were heading back over $100K BTC, we have fallen back below that $90K mark. It's pretty frustrating, but all we can do is just hold on and wait. I'm still looking for a point where I can maybe make some moves and take some gains, but right now those chances are few and far between. Even HIVE has fallen back below that $.10 mark.
It's funny, because there has a been a lot of hopeful news coming out of the governments and things like that concerning crypto, but for whatever reason, the price just keeps getting repressed. It's hard not to buy into the idea that the whole thing is being manipulated at the highest level now. Meanwhile, the FUD machine seems to be churning away as strong as ever. I would have expected by now we might see some kind of relief on that front, but nope, it's still a mess of sensationalized content. Meanwhile, the end result seems to be the same and while we can't stop the FUD machine, the average holder seems to still believe everything they shovel out at us.
On the flip side, traditional investments are doing quite well. My regular portfolio is holding strong, and more importantly, precious metals are still on a tear. Like an insane tear. I looked at the spot price of silver this morning and I noticed it is sitting just below $100 USD per ounce. I told my wife the other day if it gets up to $150 or higher, I might have to start thinking about selling some of my pieces that I don't care as much about.
It's not like I own that much, but every little bit helps. It's hard to believe just two years ago I was buying ounces of silver for around $30. Now here we are, I'm thinking about selling when this was originally intended to be a very long term hold for me.
Things are pretty slow on the Splinterlands side of things. I was thinking about taking part in some tournaments the other day. Those anytime tournaments are kind of interesting. I was specifically looking at the ones that are gold foil card only since I seem to do pretty well in brawls in that niche. Unfortunately, it turns out most of the tournaments have a requirement for a certain deck power. In many cases my deck power was a good one million points too low. Which is crazy given the fact that I have been playing the game since the beginning and I have a decent stack of cards. I don't understand what they are expecting.
Meanwhile, I am not sitting at number 102 on the Validator node leaderboard. If you get a chance and you haven't voted for me yet, please do so here or in peakd. As much as I complain about the game, I am still invested in it and I would like for it to do well. As you can see, I have zero missed blocks, so I think that is a good sign too! I'd love to at least get back into the top 100.
That's really all I have for this week. We are kind of in the mid winter slog right now and as I said, things are just so cold all around. If you are in the southern US, stay safe with the massive storm that is heading your way. I saw reports of up to an inch of ice in some cases. That's no joke and absolutely nuts. It will take a long time to recover from the damage that may bring.
Or Check out my Grilling and Smoking Community on HIVE
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 
