The Associated Press reports that 99 year old billionaire J. R. Simplot died of natural causes after a life shunning cigarettes and alcohol. Although much of his $3.2 billion estimated net worth came from a deal he struck with McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) to supply potatoes for its french fries, he also made some money in semiconductors -- providing $1 million in capital for a 40% stake in Micron Technologies (NYSE: MU).

That Micron stake connects me -- however distantly -- to Simplot. That's because on June 22, 2006, Micron acquired Lexar Media, a maker of flash memory chips, for $850 million. I was an advisory board member of Lexar and received cash for my stake. Micron, which generates most of its revenues from Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) chips, thought that Lexar's flash memory would help boost its margins by expanding Micron's then-developing memory card business. Unfortunately, Micron's stock has lost 22% of its value since the deal.

But Micron was not the biggest part of Simplot's fortune. He left home in 1923 with $20 worth of gold coins from his mother and traded up. His businesses, still family owned, manufacture agriculture, horticulture and turf fertilizers; animal feed and seeds; food products such as fruits, potatoes and other vegetables; and industrial chemicals and irrigation products. He all but invented the first commercially viable frozen french fries in the world.

SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) has made its name in the consumer electronics arena mostly through flash memory products (like that card inside your digital camera). It is also the second-largest maker of digital media players, behind only Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and its ubiquitous iPod.

But, as talk of a 2008 U.S. consumer spending slowdown make the rounds in the media (with some betting against it until later this year), SanDisk CEO Eli Harari believes his computer memory company will mostly be insulated from any slowdown effects in the U.S. He has a great reason too -- for years, SanDisk has ensured that it grows international sales to diversify itself against a slowdown in any particular market.

Gee, what a novel idea. Harari recently said, "Two-thirds of our revenue in the third quarter came from overseas and this is not by accident . . . we are absolutely driving market share outside of the United States. If there is to be a recession, we are very well positioned."

As long as international and U.S. consumer see a need to feed themselves more digital storage (phones, cameras, computers, you name it), SanDisk will be there to supply the demand and provide more product for less price over time. Unfortunately, SNDK investors aren't recognizing this, as the company's shares are trading at two-year lows on fears of an oversupply in the flash memory market, combined with fears of consumers curbing their digital memory purchases. Hey, everyone -- stop using all those gadgets and prove the market right, okay? Yeah, right.

Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) is recently up $9.14 to $109.64.

• Morgan Keegan says: "Trends still very strong; raising fiscal 2009E EPS to $2.98."
  
• RIMM is expected to report EPS after the close tonight.
  
• RIMM total option volume is heavy on 191,243 contracts trading. RIMM October option implied volatility of 49 is below a level of 87 from last night prior to EPS. RIMM average option implied volatility over the last 26-weeks is 44 according to Track Data.

SanDisk (NASDAQ: SNDK) a supplier of flash data storage card products, is recently down $0.76 to $52.43.

• SNDK is expected to report EPS on 10/18.
  
• Smith Barney-SBSH has a $71 price target on SNDK. SBSH said on 10/4 "contract pricing a negative, new products a partial offset."
  
• SNDK October option implied volatility is at 64, November is at 52, above its 26-week average of 44 according to Track Data, suggesting larger near term price risks.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Constantly on the lookout for those things that subtly show potential, my keen eye has spied a possible giant upcoming in the kingdom of the minerals. Enter the humble player tellurium, a mineral byproduct of copper production. This relatively unknown mineral currently is not mined in any commercial sense. It's primarily derived through a recovery process applied to the sludge from copper refining. What is the interest in tellurium and why should you care about it? Well, here's what the State Geologist of Arizona has revealed to me.

According to Jack Lifton at Resource Investor, this fall Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) and Samsung "will introduce flash memory replacements ... that can be used, erased, and used again indefinitely, but, rather than being crystalline silicon technology based, are made from tellurium based glasses composed of germanium, antimony, and tellurium." What could this possibly mean to a sharp-minded investor? It means that there quite possibly resides an untapped multi-mega fortune in copper refining sludge. In 2000, tellurium marketed for just under $4.00 a pound. Last year, the mineral had reached $96 and is currently around $100 a pound.

Additionally, First Solar Inc., (NASDAQ: FSLR) of Phoenix, which went public last fall, is using cadmium tellurium in the production of photovoltaic cells. Its public statement regarding the use of the material is as follows: "Cadmium tellurium ... has the potential to deliver competitive conversion efficiencies with approximately 1% of the semiconductor material used by traditional crystalline silicon solar modules." That's one percent of the current weight and one percent of the current volume. Imagine the solar conversion capacity currently available reduced in size by 10%. Yeah baby, now that's potential!

Some stick-in-the-mud people may still want to turn their noses up at the realities of solar conversion and its future. That's fine with me. I'll just watch someone else get rich while I'm sitting in the sunshine.