And I thought it was just me...

You know, I consider myself a pretty smart guy, in some ways.

People who know me usually want me on their team whenever we play Trivial Pursuit, for example. I can usually knock out the Sunday newspaper Jumble puzzle in a few minutes. And... although it sometimes takes me a while... I WILL work the Sunday Level 5 Sudoku puzzle just about every time (I sometimes make a careless mistake, and just don't want to start all over again).

But I have some sort of mental block in reading directions of how to set up mechanical gadgets, like a feature-rich cell phone. Or even putting together an artificial Christmas tree (I've been known to utter some very un-Christmas-like verbiage when things haven't "go my way" in past years. We finally resorted to purchasing one of those trees with the lights already strung on them, that you just hook up the tree parts and plug all the plugs in, and I've been a happy camper ever since).

Let's go back to that feature-rich cell phone example. Turns out I'm not the only one having difficulty there.

According to a survey by mobile phone company MFormation, more than 60% of mobile phone users in the U.S. and the U.K. think setting up a new handset is as challenging as moving bank accounts.

85% of users say they are frustrated by learning functions of the new phones, and many spend more than an hour to set up phones even when the manuals say it takes only 15 minutes. (I can REALLY relate to that part).

The study also said some users simply give up certain functions like sending pictures and emails via phones when they could not be set up easily.

Maybe we should just go back to "talking" and "listening" over the phone, and keep things simple.

Anyway, the market didn't exactly make things simple for us to figure out what it wanted to do today. It ended down, but it could have been a lot worse.

For the Dow, that 8,000 area seems to be the "magic number" for the base bottom, at least for the time being. It got tested again today, but the index recovered a bit to form a Hammer-like candlestick at the end of the day.

The Nasdaq's support level seems to be around 1,450. The chart shows a Doji / Spinning Top off that area today.

I've found a nice Baffle Play for my Members this evening. This stock sold for $30 back in mid-2005, and is now less than a buck. But it almost doubled today, and this could be the start of a nice move for this tremendously oversold stock.