Diary

I should just hang in there securely, with large holding in Timberline at 1 1/4. It hadn't fell much due to the slump I figured. And I was correct until Wednesday Carter announced stronger inflation fighting and sent Wall Street high (including Timberline to 1 3/8) but then it fell to 1 1/8; I suppose due to heavy sales of people getting money out for strong stocks. So I guess I learned another $125 worth.

So Thursday I sold in fear that this rage would continue. It didn't but I put the money into Commodore at 16 7/8 along with some of my own cash. It went to 18 3/4 but then back to 17 1/2 at the end of the day. I did this maneuver early in the day.

Today Friday I read a shareholder letter from Marine Nut which sounded extremely positive, so early today I bought 700 more of that at 1 3/8. I have 700 original shares at .75 cents. I wanted to sell NUPEC but decided to hold it as it is only worth $700 total now and I want to keep at least 1000 shares to remain informed of developments in their business. I was correct that brokers only

call people who own stock to determine if they want more when it begins to run.

So my position now is this: I have 1000 shares of Timberline bought at 2 3/8 and 2000 of Nupec at .70. Total cost is 3775. The value of this now is about 1/2. These are long term holding though. And will be worth their cost next spring probably and within 2 years will have a good value. And I have 200 Commodore at 16 7/8 And I have 1400 Marine Nutr at .75 and 1 3/8. So I am more well diversified now and evenly so. I learned lots from my experience in the market and only here report a few of them. I must admit being diversified feels good.

My only loss is from the sale of Timberline. I lost $2375; 1/2 of $2000 of that I can take a tax credit against, as I'm in a high bracket. The other $375 will have to be a carryover.

The only other finance now considered are the TI options. UAL + Resors Int'l are past their prime. TI will announce new computer first 1/2 next year.

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Apr 9, 1979 - Over the last two weeks many changes have occurred to alter my life fundamentally. I have realized that money and I do not mix on an emotional basis. The only way I can handle money is purely as a tool. My interests must be on the practice of it; not the gain for personal use. One of the best realizations has been that my personal income will probably always cover my needs... It always has and if I go to Harvard business school then it probably always will. As I remarked a few pages back, I have made a budget for myself which I will try to stick with in the future. No extravagance for me, but life must continue to be fun. I doubt I will ever buy another expensive car because it just isn't worth it. I have enjoyed the Corvette but as I will probably go to business school where I will not need a car, I plan to sell the Vette this spring. I will probably need the money for my second year at school. I simply would not enjoy another expensive car after the first 3 months or so. The Corvette of course had such a

strong fun image that it was good to have for a year in ABQ and then to have in Southern Cal. After returning to New Mexico I did consider selling it but the transaction loss would not have been worth it. I think it will be a fun car for this coming spring and I've enjoyed it this past winter in rainy, mellow Seattle.

I think it will be best to put "image" money into things which do not depreciate liek furniture, art, real estate; certainly not mechanical things. I will probably not buy foreign cars either due to expensive repair costs and heavy import duties. American cars are find and now GM has consumer protection plan.

I was accepted to Harvard B School last week. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. It is almost a spiritual experience. I concentrated efforts in college on advanced study and all my good grades, strong activities and emotional stress has paid off. The HBS application is a summary of all my work since high school. It is, to me, a very meaningful document. It relieves me

from thought of the last three years (which are written up in two books) of my six years after high school. My grades were good enough and taught me about life to some extent: the limits of my energy etc. I am very pleased that I was accepted. It seems the natural growth pattern for some. I told Bill Gates and of course he tried to persuade me against it, telling me how exciting work at MicroSoft is, and we discussed what I can do for MicroSoft. If I stay (I hold), I will not spend more than 10% of my time programming. That is unacceptable to Bill so I don't think I can stay. The only thing I am willing to work on is COBOL and, personally, it would gross me out to work on reimplementing it for the 16-bit micros. It is important that Mike Orr be brought up to speed on 8-bit COBOL so that the work I've done can continue, but I question how much value I bring to 16-bit COBOL. I don't know any of the sofware except Wallman's disk IO and the COBOL IO interfaces. Of course I can market it but that is easily learned by Mike, who can easily understand