Parsad

Hi Folks, Watermelon Webworks has finished their installation for mobile users. You should now have much better functionality on your phones. Enjoy! Cheers!

Hi Gio, Sorry to hear that! But even if you were dumped...remember the fun you had and move on to the person who is actually the one for you...she may be waiting in Toronto! ;D I will refund one of your tickets and Alan's friend can buy it from me at the door. Hi Alan, Email me your friends name and email address, and he can pay me at the door. Thanks! Unfortunately folks, we are sold out, so the only way to get tickets is if there are cancellations. Please email me at cornerofberkshireandfairfax@gmail.com to put your name on the cancellation list. Cheers!

Alex Bossert organizes the annual Yellow BRK'ers Party. Here the details for 2014: The 2014 Yellow BRKers will be held Friday May 2nd at the same place and time as previous years at the Omaha DoubleTree from 4pm -7pm. Please RSVP by clicking on this link and going to the 'Register' tab: http://yellowbrkers.com/ Cheers!

I think Francis' cost was the equivalent of 25 cents a share or something. Cheers!

Last year, there was one shuttle the day before the AGM from around 1:00pm to 3:00pm, that took people to Sporting Life and William Ashley's. Shuttles also ran from Roy Thomson Hall after the Fairfax AGM to those two stores last year. I believe those will be running regardless again this year. That's why I'm doing this poll...to see what the demand would be like on Monday and Tuesday. So far, demand seems tepid at best on those two days. Cheers!

Sorry folks, I got this at 2pm and was busy. Unfortunately did not see it till now. If you live in LA, you still may be able to register and attend: http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=cf6c7138-7911-478b-9434-e7b30ab16e5e&c=c0d44190-7d6d-11e3-b79e-d4ae528eaf6c&ch=c139ba20-7d6d-11e3-b7e7-d4ae528eaf6c Cheers!

He's actually buying $6M of convertible preferred stock with the warrants attached. The stock probably jumped because he gave them the cash they needed to survive, but it's probably not likely he would be able to sell a substantial amount of stock without the price moving down. If things go well over time, he will have made a nice deal. If a company needs cash, you can make such sweetheart deals. Look at Buffett's or Fairfax's deals with distressed companies in 2008 and 2009. We are working on one ourselves at the moment, but obviously much smaller. Cash is king! Cheers!

And we just started taking bitcoins here too! We wanted to be the first value message board that accepts bitcoins, and then eventually be laughed at as bitcoins go the way of trading stamps. Cheers!

Hi Folks, Somehow the database was corrupted last night, and Watermelon Webworks restored the database from an earlier restore point. Everything after 6pm was lost until early this morning. There may be other ancillary issues as well, such as things look a bit out of kilter and need to be adjusted, or files/photos might be missing. Please report all issues you are having here, except for username/password issues. If you have username/password issues, please contact me at cornerofberkshireandfairfax@gmail.com. Thanks very much and I apologize for the outage! Sanjeev

Here in Vancouver, we are running on nearly 60+ straight hours of falling snow. My driveway has two massive piles of cleared snow from the driveway and sidewalk...four feet high each and about ten feet across! I was enjoying talking to our various partners on the East Coast over the last three months about how cold it is there and how much snow they have received. Not enjoying it now! I have not seen this much consistent snow, in such a short period of time in Vancouver, since I was a little boy in the 70's. Global Shwarming! Cheers!

Vancouver fell into a deep chill on the weekend. We've had 48 hours of non-stop snow right now, so the atmosphere in the city was pretty great for the final. Cheers!

I'm looking forward to this one. A great investor and a great person! Cheers!

No, I think that is perfectly fine Palantir. There are no restrictions on what you can talk about here or elsewhere. Cheers!

I'm running a couple of polls to assist Fairfax in figuring out what type of demand there is for buses running shareholders to various Fairfax subsidiaries. Please make any comments about the past bus trips, how you felt about them, and/or how they could be improved. Also, in response to this post, list any Fairfax subsidiaries/businesses you would like to see, but might not be on the schedule. Naturally remember that they would have to be relatively close to the downtown core. Cheers!

No, all of the excess funds from ticket sales go straight to the CCFC. So after the food, room, prizes, audio/video, etc are paid, every other dollar goes to them. I would prefer to keep it that way. People always have the OPTION of supporting the site through the donation tab. I would rather leave it as an "option", and not as a "tax" on the ticket sales. Cheers!

Great stuff Gary...much appreciated! Cheers!

COBFF is one of my favorite boards, but honestly this thread has been very disappointing. not because many people are satisfy with what we have (I get that, if it isn't broke don't fix it) there is nothing wrong with that. it isn't broke don't fix it, i get it (I have to repeat this more than once so i don't offend anyone) its the attitude/response of the post i think part of it is due to my original post that wasn't very clear (i am trying to see if there are any improvements to the "TOOL" that people wanted that would ENHANCE the discussion), my bad. Well, I think you may have hit the nail on the head Hyten. The original post was the equivalent of me inviting you all to dinner at my place, but you decide that the food isn't quite up to par and ask who wants to go eat somewhere else. The point of dinner was the camaraderie, networking, conversation and sharing of ideas...not the food or if the wine was ok. The approach of "how can we improve the food and wine here" would have been the way to go. Incidentally, Berkshire's website and Leucadia's website are the model of inefficiency, yet it has zero effect on the actual utility of their site...why? Because it's about the content. I would also say that EDGAR and SEDAR could be improved immensely, yet they still work fine. Functionality is only useful if the content remains useful. Cheers!

We've got an excellent lineup of speakers for our dinner before Prem arrives with his crew! - Mark Ram, former President & CEO of Northbridge Financial and current director for The Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of Canada - Robert Robotti, founder of Robotti & Company and former Vice-President at Gabelli & Company - Craig Graham, Chairman & CEO of Rainmaker Entertainment - Andrew Berger & David Polonitza, AB Value Management LLC Cheers!

Hi Norm, The CCFC is actually providing a couple of volunteers this year, and I will be talking to George to see if we can get a couple of students from Ivey as well. Cheers

Wow! I didn't see this thread until our director Andrew Cooke alerted me to it! Thanks very much! I'm very grateful that you love the board and appreciate it! Before everyone starts donating, my comments weren't meant to stifle innovation on the board, but only to say that we get around to changes slowly and as needed. Maintaining a great community, with wonderful dialogue and ideas, is the most important thing to me. Any ancillary improvements are secondary! Cheers and thanks!

Cry me a river. It's like asking for Spark Notes for the 10-K. Tough shit. Read the whole damn thread. LOL! Love it! Couldn't agree more. If you are going to put 10-20% of your money into something, then shouldn't you know every single argument to be made...whether it is rational, silly, nonsensical, implausible or completely off kilter? The SHLD thread is so long and repetitive, because the damn history of the company is long and repetitive. They've gone through the same mistakes over and over. Thus, you are watching what happened at the company in real time, with real confusion or understanding by those investing in it, considering investing in it, or avoiding it all together. There's a lot to be learned from that psychology! Cheers!

Hi Matjone, Are you referring to PM's or general posts? With PM's, you have a choice to save any sent PM's, so you can see all of your old private messages. Is that what you meant? Cheers!

Hi Hyten, No, it wasn't your post that upset me. It's the curt post that I responded to that made me angry. It was curt, ungrateful and of poor taste. If it was so easy to make a good investor forum, why don't we have more around then? Why is that this one has grown while most have perished? It's easy to bash something successful, but hard to replicate. Cheers!

It is broke. What is broken, exactly? Do you realize that if members had their way, they would have kicked you out a long time ago, but after a few experiences in the past with kicking people out, I've chosen to give people a chance on here. Rather than complaining, you should be grateful you've been given an opportunity here to express yourself, even though many don't want to hear what you have to say! You guys whine so much about a forum that is virtually free, operates with an inclusive culture, has monitored posts, zero spam, and has existed in one form or another for about 12 years this Thursday. Yes, we are slow in making changes, and progress has been gradual...and that is because things aren't broke by any means! We've grown 50-100% every year for the last five years, and added new and exciting members who have added to the dialogue while retaining most of the old-timers. How many message boards are out there that have actually improved and retained members? Value Investors...no! Fool.com...no! Yahoo message boards...yeah right! Stockhouse...nope! Tell me how many message boards have a thread like our BAC thread? Or discussions on call options that are as detailed and informative as Ericopoly's? Or track individual stocks and information about each of them like on our "Investment Ideas" thread? Or how many have a growing conference around them in Toronto? Even Mohnish Pabrai is now telling people this is one of his favorite sites? But yet it's apparently broken! By the way, good luck on starting a new board. Unless you want to spend a couple of hours a day looking after it, monitoring posts, dealing with member requests and posting on there as well, it is not going to be easy. This board was developed out of passion, not out of necessity, but has become a necessary tool for many when investing and networking. That happened because of the culture here and great members...not so easily replicated...especially when one guy would give up sleep for years to look after it with no pay. And to those that continue to show support for the board and aren't bitching, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! Paul will be inserting a mobile add-on that should give some mobile functionality in the next couple of weeks. The "search" feature is something we'll have to work on and tweak over time. Cheers!

I thought most of you guys were more observant! ;D Cheers!