56.2 billion. However, it looks like Elon Musk鈥檚 Tesla may have just made the co-founder of Oracle 鈥榩oorer鈥? 1 billion stake in Tesla. The crash in Tesla鈥檚 stock has made his value dwindle by almost half a billion. The report also mentions that Ellison has been a big backer not of Tesla but also of Musk. In October 2018, Ellison was quoted as saying, 鈥淚鈥檓 very close friends with Elon Musk, and I鈥檓 a big investor in Tesla.鈥?Ellison said. Not just that as on Musk he had this to say, 鈥淭his guys is landing rockets. He鈥檚 landing rockets on robot drone wraps in the ocean. And you鈥檙e saying he doesn鈥檛 know what he鈥檚 doing. Well, who else is landing rockets? You ever land a rocket on a robot drone? Clearly though the stock market troubles of Tesla have had an impact on Ellison鈥檚 overall stake in the electric car maker. Musk, meanwhile, doesn鈥檛 seem to be impressed by the world鈥檚 richest man Jeff Bezos鈥?ambitious plans of creating space colonies 鈥?called the O鈥橬eill structures 鈥?as he was asked about them on Twitter. A user asked Musk, 鈥淲hat are your thoughts on O鈥橬eill structures @jeffbezos talked about.鈥?Musk minced no word and replied, 鈥淢akes no sense. In order to grow the colony, you鈥檇 have to transport vast amounts of mass from planets/moons/asteroids. Would be like trying to build the USA in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!
Really any scent would be a huge improvement versus the exhaust fumes that my old 914 spewed out its tail pipes. So the search spanned the entire US, until I found one 278 miles away in San Antonio TX. It was a 1999, and had the desirable color combination of Arctic Silver with the famous Boxster Red interior. It was exactly the color I wanted. I flew down to pick it up and drive it home. Does this sound familiar? I loved that car, eventually more than the 930 and the 951. It was perfect. We settled in for a long period of three-car Porsche ownership. One fall we decided to go to Ruidoso NM to visit my in-laws and I wanted to drive a Porsche up in the mountains. The area around Ruidoso had a lot of challenging roads to discover. You can probably guess the obvious, the Boxster accompanied us on the journey.
So we loaded it up and headed out. Stopped for gas in Brownwood TX to fill up the ginormous gas tank of the Excursion. Even though the gas tank was HUGE it got terrible gas mileage on the trip, we had to fill up twice in 600 miles. Anyway, I filled the gas tank while my wife and kids went into get some snacks and hit the restroom. I thought she said she鈥檇 pay for the gas -- she thought I said I鈥檇 pay for the gas. End result, nobody paid. We piled back in Tiny (yes, we actually nicknamed the Excursion Tiny), and headed towards Ruidoso, my wife at the wheel. We got pulled over by the local sheriff before we鈥檇 even left town. At this point we had no clue why were being pulled over, maybe the local police had never seen a Porsche on a trailer before.
The officer asked if we had stopped at the gas station recently and we replied that we had. He asked if we had paid for the gas, and based on our reaction, he knew we weren鈥檛 crooks, just careless. He escorted us back. We felt like the whole town turned out to see our return to the gas station; the giant green Ford Excursion pulling the damn silver sports car. 鈥淐an you believe they tried to skip outta town without paying? I parked the car at the edge of the gas station and under the watchful eye of the local sheriff, took the walk of shame to the cashier. Everybody stared -- I found my shoes to be particularly interesting. I paid, we left town, our experience no doubt front-page news of the local paper. Since that time, every time we stop in Brownwood, we double-check to make sure we pay for the damn gas. The trip itself was fun, I did get to take the car on some great roads. But there was another thrill in store for me: the New Mexico Trinity Site was open while we were there.