I's singin' dem ol' cap'tal gains blues agin, mama!

Long ago, I was working for a company called NCR that had been in business for more than 100 years. Then, for some reason, AT&T decided that there was something that NCR had that AT&T needed. So they bought NCR.

For a while I worked for "NCR, An AT&T Company." After some time they thought that that wasn't a good enough name so they changed it to "AT&T Global Information Solutions" (or "AT&T GIS" for short).

AT&T had developed a product (called Tuxedo) that was a competitor of a product that NCR had come up with (called TOP END). Once AT&T owned NCR they didn't need two products that did similar things. (I won't bore you with what they did, mostly because I really don't know.) So AT&T sold their Tuxedo product and kept NCR's TOP END. (I don't know if it was because TOP END was seen as the better product or what.)

AT&T sold Tuxedo to a company called BEA Systems.

While all this was going on, I was in a department of NCR that was about to be shut down. When my department ceased to be I had to find a new spot in the company to work in. I happened to end up in the TOP END department.

Somewhere along the line AT&T spun NCR back off to be an independent company.

After a few years working in the TOP END department they started having morale boosting activities for us. We had a winery touring day and a bowling afternoon and other fun outings. I didn't know that morale was needing boosting. I had lost contact with the rumor mill. It turned out that there were rumors that NCR was considering unloading its TOP END product.

Finally, in June 1998 we got called into a meeting where we were told we were indeed being sold to another company. It happened to be BEA Systems. It was effective that day. Now Tuxedo and TOP END were products of the same company again.

Lucky for us it was just before the company's Employee Stock Purchase Plan enrollment opportunity. I took them up on their offer of discounted BEA stock. In December I became a stock holder in BEA Systems.

Just after that BEA laid us all off. Like AT&T before them they didn't need two products that did similar things. I guess they bought the competition to get its good parts to add to their product and to shut down the competition.

Just after this the stock market's irrational exuberance kicked in. The price of BEA stock benefited from the exuberance and I decided to sell a tiny bit of my stock. That was just before the bubble burst. With that I recouped my initial investment many times over. Oh, the capital gains!

Then the bubble burst. At least I had made a profit. So what if the rest was not worth a lot.

Well, earlier this year Oracle decided that they wanted to buy BEA. BEA said they weren't for sale and Oracle came back with a higher offer and BEA, with pressure from a big share holder, Carl Icahn, agreed to be bought.

I thought that I was going to become a stock holder in a competitor of my own Teradata Corporation (Teradata and Oracle make database systems). Friday's mail brought me an envelop from the company that manages my BEA stock. It had a big check in it. It turns out that the sale was a cash deal, not a stock deal. The price they paid again was many times more than I had paid (though a mere fraction of what it was in the exuberant days).

So I have unexpected money in my hands. I have no idea what to do with it. Well, other than send a big chunk to the tax man.

Maybe you can help me decide. There's a poll over there on the right. Please, no ballot box stuffing and no hanging chad.