Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in ChrisLS' LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
10:07 am	Personal responsibility - you, not us In the last couple of weeks, I've been getting very frustrated with a pattern I've seen of what I can only call deceptive or inept behavior on the part of businesses who then disavow all responsibility or the ability to correct or indemnify the situation. For example - I bought a plane ticket to Las Vegas for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Grand Tournament there. I was specifically looking for non-stop flights that met my time criteria: ie leaving after work, with a return flight that gives me enough time to get to the airport after the tournament. I found an itinerary with US Airways that met all of these conditions and I bought it. OK, great. Well, two weeks ago I get an email notifying me that my schedule has changed. Now my outbound flight leaves before I get off work and the return flight leaves before the tournament is over. Well, crap. I call them up to see what kinds of alternate arrangements I can make. The first thing they throw at me is that I'll have to pay a $100 change fee. They quickly back off of that after I remind them THEY were the ones who changed my flight without permission. I basically concede the outbound flight, since I don't really mind taking a half day off of work to do this and it will make my trip more pleasant. But I need that return flight fixed badly. First they tell me they can get me a one stop flight (which adds three hours to the trip) that still leaves before the tournament is over. Once I tell them that won't work, they offer me a flight the next day. That won't work either, since I need to be at work Monday and I don't want to pay for another night at the hotel. They then start stonewalling, saying that's all they can do for me, though they can give me a refund for my flight. So let me get this straight - I go into an agreement that puts all kinds of restrictions on me changing my mind and altering the agreement. I then make other decisions that cost me money and time based upon that agreement. The other party then decides to change the agreement and won't compensate me or make me whole for the damage they have caused me. In other words, they change the agreement, and I bear the responsibility. I finally managed to work out a flight that comes into SFO at 11:35 pm which leaves me responsible for my own transportation back to San Jose. This costs me and my family time and money which I would not have had to pay as a part of the original agreement, but which we will have to bear anyway. Another instance was with AT&T. I wanted to upgrade to the iPhone and put it into my corporation's account. The rep told me there would be no problem at all, though I'd have to make a $250 deposit because of the corporation's lack of credit history. I jump through all their hoops, and afterwards I'm told that I can't upgrade until November unless I want to pay them another $200 for not being eligible due to my existing contract. OK, I could have lived with that except for the part of where their first rep specifically told me there wasn't any restriction on upgrading! In the meantime, I purchased MobileMe service from Apple, which is now virtually useless until I can upgrade. Not only will AT&T not compensate me for the damage their mistake did, but they also can't put things back the way they were without holding my deposit and charging me a change fee! Again, we made a mistake, you bear the responsibility. Finally, I had a bad experience on eBay, and I'm working with PayPal to resolve it. Unfortunately, they screwed up my funding instructions and used my bank account instead of my credit card, and if I lose their dispute claim, then I have no other recourse (like credit card buyer protection). I'm betting if that's the way it plays out, I'll again be on the hook for bearing the responsibility for someone else's mistake. This just isn't cool. Current Mood: aggravated (Comment on this)
Monday, July 28th, 2008
12:51 pm	Thinking of going Mac... Long ago, in a time when dinosaurs still roamed the earth (OK, I'm talking Detroit made land yachts, but whatever) I was introduced to my first personal computer. It had the amazing, newfangled name of the IBM Personal Computer. At first, I was kind of like "So what am I going to do with that?" Then my dad put the first game made for that computer into the 5.25" floppy drive, Adventure. And it's pretty much been downhill from there. Although as time has progressed and I have learned there are many other things that one can do with a computer, gaming has always been near and dear to my heart. I knew that I loved to play computer games so much that I decided when I went to college I had better get a Mac (a cool little LC III) since I'd be much to likely to play games on a DOS machine. Well, that didn't go so well, and I ended up playing online games not too different from Adventure which were like crack to me. I came close to failing out of school, and actually joined the Army National Guard to get some discipline into me. This was very closely related to computer games. Well, when I got back, and I realized I could actually control myself, I decided that having a few good computer games wasn't such a bad thing, and I went back to Microsoft OSes, which at that point was Windows 95. And I played games on my computer among other things. And so it has been since. Well, I am starting to find myself less and less enamored with games - stuff that would once hold my rapt attention for 14 hours at a stretch now gets tedious (or at least tiring) after a few hours. I also have all kinds of other things that I either need to do or would like to do. I find that I use my computer more for word processing, spreadsheets, and various online activities. And I also find that I am getting to despise Vista more and more with each passing day. Ironically, it was gaming that probably tipped me over the edge. I have had time on my hands, and I felt like playing some of my 3-7 year old games that I really enjoyed but haven't had on my system in a while. Well, a lot of these games either would not run at all on Vista, or were so buggy and unstable that it just wasn't worth it. The worst part was the consistency - stuff would work perfectly one day, and then the next it would tell me there was some kind of copyright violation. This started to extend to DVDs which we'd play connected to the TV. Laura has also had a bunch of problems with running Vista, which we had to upgrade to with the new motherboard we installed. Add to this a bunch of their security "features" like not giving administrators many administrator rights, and I've pretty much had it with Microsoft. I'd been thinking of replacing my laptop for a while anyway, and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to get a Macbook Air. It's perfect for carrying in my bike's panniers, it's got all the features I need, and it will even get backed up with our new Time Capsule we've been using for networking and Laura's backups. Throw in the seamless compatibility with the iPhone I want to get, plus the business and organizational applications of MobileMe, plus the availability of OpenOffice.org and it's pretty hard to argue in favor of Windows. Which leaves us with gaming. That would be the only reason I'd stick with Windows at this point, and we're getting an Xbox 360. OK, so maybe we're supporting Microsoft there, but it beats the hell out of Vista. If I want to play a game, almost everything available for the PC is on the Xbox. Plus, most of the casual types of games I find myself preferring are perfect for the Xbox. Problem solved. Maybe now I'll start learning more about Linux - I can nuke one of my old computers and turn it into a Linux box... Current Mood: energetic (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008
10:36 am	Now that's a big monitor... Recently Laura and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. Ironically, though we both were talking about it beforehand and wondering what we should do, we both forgot. Laura, of course, is wrapping up her Ph.D, and I didn't have anything close to that good an excuse. Well, this brought a kind of confluence of events together, which led to this: When we got married, we decided that the 19" TV that my stepfather had bought for me when I was in college, and I had been using since before we met, just didn't cut it any more. At the time, we were both interested in HDTV, but neither of us are early adopters - the cost just couldn't be justified. So we both agreed that we'd get a decent TV that wasn't cutting edge or anything and replace it when HDTVs got more affordable. Well, eight years later we finally decided that the time was right for us to upgrade. So we went down to Costco and got a Philips 42' LCD TV. It's about the same screen height as our old TV, but much wider, and is a full 1080p screen. Much like our old TV when we got it, the new one isn't top of the line, it's just a good TV for a good price. This did bring up another conundrum that we discussed while researching the purchase. The 2008 Olympics are coming up, and we'd love to watch them. The problem is that we no longer have cable. However, this year much of the Olympics will be available online, either live streaming for the minor sports or archived video after televising for the majors. Well, we don't have cable and I'm not sure if we want to bother with an antenna, so how do we watch this stuff online? We could huddle around the computer monitor, or now that we have a nice big digital TV, we could just use that as a monitor! So we took my computer out of the office and hooked it up to the TV via HDMI cable. Somewhat ironically, my computer does come with Windows Media Center, but I had to take out the TV card to make room for the upgraded video card, whose huge fan occupies the space that should belong to the slot above it. So we can't use the TV as a DVR under the current configuration. Not that we're getting any live TV anyway. We've already used it to watch DVDs (which look good, though you can sometimes detect the digital upscaling) as well as streamed Netflix, which also look quite good considering it is streamed content. At some point in the future we're going to break down and get either a Blu-Ray drive or a Blu-Ray player (more likely the latter) to take advantage of our spiffy new TV. But we also decided on something else. I haven't owned a game console since the NES back in high school (and technically that was my parents'). Oddly enough, my mom and stepfather had gotten an Xbox 360 with their new TV last year or so, and we'd been using it to play Carcassone. They use it to play Tiger Woods Golf as well, and I'd played Lego Star Wars II while I'd visited them. When we left their place this after visiting for the 4th of July, they made the comment that with us considering having kids, we'd need a game system soon, and we should get an Xbox 360 so we can play games together. Well, this idea germinated, and particularly with Fallout 3 being released in October, we decided to go ahead and jump in. We bought an Xbox 360 with two games on eBay for $235 with shipping and another $100 worth of accessories. We've gotten almost all of the accessories already, but we're still waiting on the box itself, which should be here late this week or early next. So in all, another rash of consumerism on our parts, but given how much we usually buy, I think this is OK. Heck, otherwise we wouldn't have done it! Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
10:46 am	I knew him when... I opened up the Mercury News today and happened to see a bit in the celebrity gossip/news section that made me stop and look again. It seems that Christopher Gorham has left the show Ugly Betty. I have heard of the show, but had no idea that Gorham was on the show - you see, Chris was in my year at UCLA Theater, Film, and Television. He was a good acquaintance of mine - we hung out a bit, studied together, that kind of thing. I knew he'd made a few indy movies and had some bit parts on TV, but I had no idea that he was starting to appear in major series and is apparently becoming a bit of a heart-throb. So of the whole group of actors that I knew at UCLA, I only know for sure that Chris and Cress Williams, who has been a regular guest on such shows as Grey's Anatomy, are actually seriously working in the industry as actors. I'll need to check around a bit, though. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
8:01 am	Variations on the theme of responsibility One thing that has really ticked me off recently is the number of places that I've seen members of our society essentially shuffling responsibility off on other people, or suggesting that people should surrender responsibility to the government because they can't be trusted to do it on their own. One particularly irritating bit that I heard was on KQED's Forum last week, when a caller suggested that because the mortgage industry had gotten us into this current financial mess the government should nationalize the mortgage industry and offer low interest loans to anyone who needed them for their primary residence. The two economic experts on the show, who had been painting a pretty gloomy picture of the industries practices, promptly told him he was totally off track with this idea - that made me happy. But this idea that some people have that the solution to any problem can be solved through government intervention still bothered me. Another issue that has been bugging me for ages is the issue of firearms ownership, particularly handgun controls. An example of this was one letter published today in the Mercury News, in which a Lt. Col. Paul Smith states: The Supreme Court's broadened interpretation of the Second Amendment has wrecked reasonable gun controls. Handguns in particular should be strictly monitored as to ownership qualification, registration and traceability. Guns are far more dangerous and less effective for self-protection, in my opinion, than pepper spray or a kid's baseball bat. In decades of experience with handguns, I've learned that the persons most endangered by handguns are their owners and carriers. Self-inflicted wounds by their own side arms exceed the sum of all other weapons injuries suffered by naval officers outside active combat. The chilling fact is that accidents like those are greatly exceeded by (1) handgun-facilitated suicides and by (2) wounds and fatalities to family members and other innocents. This court decision is a blunder with huge and tragic probable consequences in its foreclosure of reasonable state and federal gun regulation. It is worse than if we declared that auto registration and driver licensing were not required. OK, first off naval officers receive next to zero training or practice with sidearms. So you have unfamiliar people handling lethal objects - somehow not surprising that they would occasionally hurt themselves. Next, is the commonly trotted out firearm death statistics - here is a bit from the Violence Policy Center: In 2004 alone, 29,569 Americans died by gunfire: 16,750 in firearm suicides, 11,935 in firearm homicides, 649 in unintentional shootings, and 235 in firearm deaths of unknown intent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. So let me get this straight - over half of firearms deaths in the US are suicides, where someone makes a deliberate choice to end their life. Last time I checked, the right to end one's own life on one's own terms was a big deal to many civil libertarians. So kill yourself however you want, just don't use a gun. Um... OK. I'd note that having a near total ban on guns hasn't slowed down Japan's suicide rate. But in the end, the same basic fact remains - if someone wants to end their own life, who are we as a society to tell them how to do it or prevent them from doing so? I am not saying that family members or loved ones shouldn't intervene with a despondent person, but saying that guns are used in suicides so they are bad is a red herring, IMO. He wraps it up talking about how it would be worse to stop registration and licensing of vehicles - well according to Drive and Stay Alive, in 2004 US traffic deaths were 42,636, or over 44% higher than firearms deaths in the same year. If you take out suicides, that skyrockets to over 232% higher. If we're doing so badly with traffic deaths, how much worse would it get with no licensing requirements? But somehow those firearms related deaths justify passing responsibility for the protection of one's own home and person to the police or private security firms, while we can still trust everyone with the ability to drive around in SUVs at 80+ miles an hour while talking on cell phones. Perhaps "common sense" vehicle regulation could include governors on cars that prevent you from going over 55 mph, cell phone interference devices, and breathalyzers that won't let you start the car until you prove you haven't had anything to drink. The final bit of my rant then gets to Richard Cohen's blaming Reagan for the current energy crisis. Essentially he says that because Reagan didn't continue the government intervention and browbeating that Carter tried so unsuccessfully to tame the energy beast, Reagan is to blame for what is going on now. If only Reagan hadn't been optimistic and trusted in the free market, gas would still be affordable! I don't really follow his logic, other than a wishful thinking of his own that if the government had intervened with conservation measures then all of our energy needs would be met. The real irony was that this "beat the Reagan strawman" piece was right next to a much more thoughtful piece by Mikkal E. Herberg which points out that most governments of the world, including China, India, and most of the Middle East, are heavily subsidizing energy prices as a means to avoid political unrest in their countries. This throws the demand portion of the market off substantially, meaning that since their own consumers are shielded from the high price of fuel, the citizens of those nations continue to use fuel at a feverish pace. This results in lower supplies for the free market, with the expected consequences, including reduced use by consumers. So in other words, where people have to take responsibility for their own energy usage, the free market works. Where government has taken responsibility for the costs of energy usage, it interferes with the free market and throws things out of balance. So in summary, I think it is terribly ironic that to address problems that I see stemming from a willingness of people to surrender responsibility to the government many people feel the solution is to surrender more responsibility to the government. Current Mood: cynical (Comment on this)
Monday, June 30th, 2008
10:40 pm	Anticipating housing needs and tactical home buying I've been thinking a lot about real estate recently between our investments and the possibility of having kids. While I know our lifestyle will dramatically change when we have a child, I am a little concerned that our current housing arrangement will not support that change well. Laura and I are both very computer dependent, and my child unfriendly hobby is taking up a ton of room in the house. With about 1000 square feet of living space, this means we'd need to change our lifestyle even more to fit a child into the condo. So I'm trying to come up with what is going to be important to us for our living arrangements. Here are some of the criteria I've come up with. 1) We need a place where we can truly settle down. I've lived a very nomadic lifestyle, and I'm tired of it, and Laura doesn't want it either. We want to move into a home in which we could stay throughout our lives. 2) This means we need enough room for our planned family, which is between two and three kids. We also need a child friendly living space. 3) We need an office. This is pretty much non-negotiable, given how much we use our computers and how we will be tracking our investments. 4) We want to be close to light rail in San Jose. OK, the current system is the least efficient commuter rail in the country, but we've appreciated being able to get to the airport easily as well as being able to get into downtown fairly painlessly. Plus, if the system is going to be improved, it will probably be on areas with existing right of way. With the economy starting to adapt to more expensive energy (and no sign of that general trend reversing), people are going to choose to live closer to work and public transit. We want to be a part of that. 5) I WANT enough room for my hobby. I can stick it into the garage if necessary, but I want that space. 6) With all of this, we need a place we can afford. So given all of those conditions, we've identified a couple of properties on the market now that are promising. The size range we're looking at is about 1500-1900 square feet 4 bedroom houses. We also like the area south of 85 in San Jose in the Blossom Valley area near where we currently live. It isn't as nice as Almaden Valley or Evergreen, but it is closer to transit and more affordable. House prices in this area have been hit by foreclosures and the threat of foreclosures - there are lots of short sales on the market as well as REOs. And this brings me to timing. The prices in this area have already dropped substantially, but they are still out of whack with median incomes - the median household income in San Jose is something like $72K, while in order to buy a median house with $120K down in San Jose would still cost you about $50K a year - that's more than double what the traditional 1/3 of annual income limit would allow. While California sales volume has been increasing, year over year volume stats in our area are still falling, and there is a case to be made that the worst of the foreclosures hasn't hit our area yet. But if we can afford a house that meets our needs, and we're planning on being there for 20+ years, how much difference does it really make? We're buying a commodity after all - we can't think of this as an investment. Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. All in all, it is increasingly unlikely we'll be able to swing purchasing a house this year, but from what I'm hearing and thinking, it won't make too much of a difference in the long run. Current Mood: contemplative (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, June 27th, 2008
11:49 pm	My thoughts on the Heller decision and individual rights As pretty much everyone is aware now, the Supreme Court found that there is an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment. I personally don't find this surprising in the least, since no where in the Constitution does the phrase "the people" (as in "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed") refer to the states or the government. Listening to NPR and reading various stories about the decision, such as the Mercury News editorial against the decision, I am hearing a lot of well worn sophistical formulas about blood in the streets and common people becoming Rambos. But all in all, I found two common threads in these negative views about the decision. The first one is a basic distrust of the American people. The individuals whom I hear bemoaning the violence that this decision will surely spread apparently feel that their friends, neighbors, and coworkers can't be trusted with something as dangerous as a firearm. This attitude seems to say that any one of us, if we just got upset enough, would resort to lethal force to settle a dispute. I find this to be a sad commentary on our society that we have become so detached and distrustful of each other that we now attribute the worst of human nature to virtually everyone around us. Why do we trust these same people to choose our nation's leaders? Can we trust these people with cars? More people are killed by automobiles in the US than by firearms. This attitude is particularly evident in our political class, who seem to have the attitude that they know what is best for us, and we just need to do what they tell us to do. I find it arrogant in the extreme. The second point I see is a feeling of surrendered responsibility. You can't expect people to be responsible with firearms, so just don't let them have them. If you are in danger, don't personally take responsibility for your safety, call the police. I've seen this same attitude in the young employees who worked for me in the mall and in the children whom I have taught in middle school. It isn't their fault they didn't study - their parents made them go skiing that weekend. It wasn't their fault they couldn't open the store on time for the busiest shopping day of the year - it was the yams that their Mom made them, to which they knew they were allergic and ate anyway. I can't blame them for cheating - it would ruin their entire lives if I held them responsible. The worst part is that parents have defended their children in these cases, getting angry not with the child for behaving irresponsibly or dishonestly, but instead at the school for not preventing these problems in the first place or "allowing" it to go on. Our society is simply unwilling to take responsibility for themselves! (BTW, all of those excuses are ones I've personally listed to) This is the same idea that I see being promoted by politicians everywhere - you don't have to suffer the consequences of your actions, the government will take care of you! Give your responsibilities to the government since you don't want them - can you really be trusted with making the right choice anyway? And by taking away a vital tool for someone to take responsibility for their own protection, it encourages people to shift responsibility for their safety away from themselves and onto others. I deplore both of these attitudes, and feel that if we simply trusted people to do the right thing and held them responsible for their actions when they didn't, our entire society would be more stable, prosperous, and peaceful. That, I believe, is a core belief upon which our nation was founded. Current Mood: contemplative (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 26th, 2008
6:29 am	What it is to be a conservative in this country I don't regularly quote other people in my blog, but Glenn Beck wrote a great piece on CNN on what it is to be a conservative. One of the things he decries is how the GOP has drifted away from true conservative values - of course I'm not really sure who the last truly conservative president was - maybe Eisenhower. Excerpt of Glenn Beck's article Obama no, McCain maybe: A conservative believes that our inalienable rights do not include housing, healthcare or Hummers. A conservative believes that our inalienable rights DO include the pursuit of happiness. That means it is guaranteed to no one. A conservative believes that those who pursue happiness and find it have a right to not be penalized for that success. A conservative believes that there are no protections against the hardship and heartache of failure. We believe that the right to fail is just as important as the chance to succeed and that those who do fail learn essential lessons that will help them the next time around. A conservative believes in personal responsibility and accepts the consequences for his or her words and actions. A conservative believes that real compassion can't be found in any government program. A conservative believes that each of us has a duty to take care of our neighbors. It was private individuals, companies and congregations that sent water, blankets and supplies to New Orleans far before the government ever set foot there. A conservative believes that family is the cornerstone of our society and that people have a right to manage their family any way they see fit, so long as it's not criminal. We are far more attuned to our family's needs than some faceless, soulless government program. A conservative believes that people have a right to worship the God of their understanding. We also believe that people do not have the right to jam their version of God (or no God) down anybody else's throat. A conservative believes that people go to the movies to be entertained and to church to be preached to, not the other way around. A conservative believes that debt creates unhealthy relationships. Everyone, from the government on down, should live within their means and strive for financial independence. A conservative believes that a child's education is the responsibility of the parents, not the government. A conservative believes that every human being has a right to life, from conception to death. A conservative believes in the smallest government you can get without anarchy. We know our history: The larger a government gets, the harder it will fall. I'm not sure about life starting at conception - but apart from that I'm pretty much on board with everything he says. Current Mood: chipper (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
6:08 am	Media still loves Obama While I know there has been a lot of discussion about how real "media bias" is, I think most agree that the media really just cares about stuff that sells papers or ads, or gets hits on their site. But I did have to bring up a glaring disparity that shows (in part) how much the media loves Obama. This has been an issue since earlier in the primaries, with SNL having a sketch where debate moderators threw nasty questions at Hillary while asking questions like "Would you like a pillow?" to Obama. Well, CNN's infatuation with Obama seemed pretty evident on their Political Ticker at the time of this post. Out of 20 stories, 12 were focused primarily on Obama or actions taken by outside players related to Obama, 5 were jointly focused on Obama and McCain, and 2 were about McCain exclusively. A few that stood out for me were a story about the governor of Iowa asking McCain to stay away from his state during the flooding emergency, and two separate editorials that seemed to defend Obama's decision to abandon his pledge to use public financing. Personally, I think this is because the media just likes the story of Obama for president better than the McCain story - it has more "sizzle". But it is the kind of thing that can open them up to charges of partisan favoritism. By contrast, Fox News' Blog Spot, which is much less active than CNN's (CNN had all 20 entries from the 20th, while Fox's went back to June 3rd) had 7 of 20 stories primarily on Obama, and 8 primarily on McCain, including one somewhat confused and unflattering story about how McCain was acting politically on a trip to Canada that he billed as "non-political". Please note, I am not defending Fox in any way shape or form, it was just for comparison purposes. Current Mood: curious (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
8:40 am	Farewell, Dorothy I just heard that Laura's grandmother passed away around 8 am this morning. Sadly, her son was unable to get home in time to see her before she went. We'll be heading up to see her family this afternoon. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
7:31 am	Kids and house One mid-term goal that Laura and I are considering is having children. We have always wanted to have kids, but the biggest obstacle has been Laura finishing her Ph.D. While other students have had kids while they were in grad school, it would have put such a large burden on us (particularly with my mixed employment record) that it wasn't an option. However, with me finally landing in a job that is stable and satisfying and Laura finishing her Ph.D, there is no longer any reason to wait. We're thinking about getting started after Laura is officially done with her degree. Part of this then goes into thinking about the future of our family. While the condo in which we currently live is wonderful and perfect for the two of us, our lifestyle would not be well supported in this space by adding a child. The key lies in how we use our second bedroom. Laura and I are very reliant upon our computers. They provide a means of entertainment, communication, information, and work space. Additionally, I enjoy a child unfriendly hobby that involves sharp objects, choking hazards, and somewhat dangerous chemicals (superglue). This means we really need to keep an area segregated from the rest of the house for our computer and hobby area. So in the very short term, we could make due by keeping a crib in our own bedroom, but in pretty short order we're going to need to have a separate room for our child. We also want to have more kids (at least two), which means we'll probably need an additional room. Which brings us to the current housing market. Oh, my Lord, this is such a great buying environment. Of course, that means it is also a miserable selling environment, and most of our equity is tied up in our condo. Now, with our investments and Laura's new job, we're going to be easily capable of paying a higher mortgage, but we need to get a down payment. In this environment, we'll have to have 20% down. Of course, that also means we probably only need between $95-$110K (yeah, only - just think about what it would have been two years ago). There are plenty of fixer-uppers in our area that fit our criteria and are in the $450-$550K area. In fact, when you get into the mid $500s, there aren't many fixer-uppers, just nice move-in quality homes. But we'll need to come up with some kind of creative financing in order to make this happen. We have some resources - we'll have a lot of equity in our investments, and we have family who may be willing to help out. So one of the things I'm keeping an eye out for is how we will manage this goal, and hopefully we'll be able to get into a home in which we will stay for the next 20+ years. Current Mood: hopeful (Comment on this)
6:59 am	Laura's grandmother One thing that we found out yesterday is that it looks like Laura's paternal grandmother is on her deathbed. She was discovered incoherent in her room at her assisted living facility, and when she was brought to the hospital she had an asymmetric heartbeat, renal failure, and a blood sugar level over 1000. In accordance with her wishes stated in her living will, she is being kept comfortable, but no extraordinary measures are being taken. Her son, Laura's dad, is flying back from Washington today, and we're hoping she lasts that long. Laura will probably be heading over to see her and be with her dad tonight as well. If she does pass, this will be the first of Laura's grandparents to die. I lost both of my maternal grandparents when I was in my teens, and my stepfathers' parents a few years ago, but both of my paternal grandparents are still alive. Current Mood: melancholy (Comment on this)
6:17 am	Summer time, and the living's easy... Or something along those lines. I managed to survive my first year of teaching middle school, and I didn't even TRY to kill one of them! I'm a little concerned about my overall performance - the good kids (academically speaking) really enjoyed my classes, but the other kids were not as thrilled, and we ended up losing a lot of students. I actually was informed that several of the families who chose to leave cited me as one of the reasons, though my boss assured me it had more to do with them wanting to find a scapegoat and having a very one-sided view that they got from their kids. It does make me want to spend more time over the summer working on my curriculum to make sure it is as interesting as possible. I need to wait another week or so until the corporate office checks all of the materials and then I can sign them out again to use over the summer. So that is one big goal for the summer. Goal #2 is getting Laura through her Ph.D. She is filing for completion of her thesis today, which means by the end of the summer she needs to defend. She's obviously stressed - the class she has taught at Foothill has been taking a lot of time and energy. So my job is to help her out by taking care of annoying little things around the house like meals, clean up, and laundry. I'm also supposed to keep her focused and make sure she gets enough breaks. So that's a pretty cool thing to do. Goal #3 is finding properties to make money with! The Indianapolis property is hitting some funding snags, but I'm hoping we can close on it next week. We're also looking at closing on three duplexes in Cleveland in a week or so, with more properties after that. We've got a good system going, where I can roll down payments from one deal to the next legally. This enables me to put down 20% and avoid PMI while getting money out at the back end to put into the next deal. Good stuff. We're hoping to achieve over $2000/mo in positive cash flow by the end of the summer, and that is looking very doable right now. Another goal Laura and I both have is getting more exercise. We've been getting some walks in after breakfast, which has been nice. My final goal is getting in some more gaming! I have signed up for the Las Vegas Lord of the Rings Grand Tournament, which is a Games Workshop official tournament. It's pricey, since I needed to get transport and hotel plus the cost of the tournament, which was $150, but it should be a fantastic experience. Me and another LOTR player from the area are going to be going together and rooming, so all in all it should be a great gaming and community experience. Now I just need to get more painting done. I'm also running some events over the next couple of months and playing in a couple of gaming groups. So that's another big part of my summer. All in all, we've got a lot of stuff on our plates. There are some other goals we're thinking about down the road - for example maybe buying a house and renting out our condo, and possibly even having a child! So that's our long term stuff. Hope you're interested. *8) Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
6:45 am	Philosophical conundrum I am definitely a proponent of a free market system with a minimum of government intervention, which these days makes me a member of a distinct minority. One of the key elements of my beliefs is that when people are free to trade or not to trade based upon what they personally value, everyone wins. As soon as there is interference from outside determining what is fair and what is not (as long as no one is being hurt or cheated), this system breaks down. So from a philosophical view, I completely support Proposition 98. I know that there are other kinds of seizures than simply eminent domain, and that proposition addresses those things. It basically says that whenever an economic benefit is removed from a property owner, they must be fairly compensated, and it cannot be taken for the benefit of other private parties (such as politically well connected developers). I think it is a complete injustice to demand that owners give up their rights because the majority feels that what the owner is doing "isn't fair" or doesn't benefit the majority or some favorite group. But here is the other problem - from a practical standpoint, many of the things our society claims to value... Well, they don't actually VALUE them. For example, environmental regulation. The way this is generally achieved in this country is to tell owners what they can and cannot do with their property, and subject just about any project to environmental review to decide whether or not it should occur. If our society truly VALUED such things, then society would PAY for them instead of simply taking property right away from owners. In many cases, this is occurring, which I think is great! Land trusts and other conservation measures that involved the purchase of land and setting it aside are great, and play perfectly into my views of private property. Unfortunately, much more of environmental protection, zoning laws, and rent protection comes about not as a fair and open trade, but as taking away from one side to give to the other. Why is it fair to hold a landowner to an agreement that was supposed to have been for one year to the same conditions 15 years later? The owner is essentially subsidizing the lifestyle of their tenant, and they can't even sell the property for its real value because that value is tied to the use of the property. But since our society doesn't REALLY value what it says it values, if this proposition passes there is going to be a huge shakeup in the legal landscape, and it will be extremely expensive all around. We may very well lose the benefits we have derived from this taking and never get them back, since the political will to actually pay for these benefits just isn't there. This is all probably a moot point anyway. There is apparently a massive campaign against Prop 98, with all of the political influence groups coming out and resisting the removal of their power to choose winners and losers. But it still makes me think. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
4:29 pm	Hooray for Laura! I may be jumping the gun here, but I have to boast for Laura! She got word today that she is being offered a position as a physics teacher at Notre Dame High School, the oldest all-girls high school in the state! She's been really nervous about her upcoming graduation and need for a job, and the other job interviews she has had haven't been nearly as good fits for her as Notre Dame was. She really loved the community and culture she saw there - to quote her, "I want to hang out with these people next year!" I am super excited for her - it's just about a perfect fit for her. Plus, she'll be making more money than me! Hopefully the benefits are better than mine, too, but that's not hard. Current Mood: ecstatic (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
6:49 am	Where is the value added? I'm a huge fan of the free market, but I have a serious problem with this story: Hedge Fund Manager Paid $3.7 Billion". John Paulson runs a hedge fund company that is now worth $20 billion, and had gained 410% based upon his massive bets against subprime mortgages. OK, fair enough; he made (after this pay) $16 billion for his investors. Why should he receive almost a quarter of that profit in pay? It would be a completely different story if he was personally taking the risk and had that much of his own money in the fund, but this was his salary, NOT capital gains. That's almost another 100% gain on initial investment that he was paid! This is an example, in my mind, of some of the problems with the financial services industry in our country. Rather than simply existing to profit from making the movement of money in the economy efficient, many financial services companies now exist to profit from speculation and to suck as much of the cream off of the top of these transactions. They exist to collect fees and serve as gatekeepers instead of facilitators. And I have a problem with that - essentially they are using fraud (in a non-legal sense) be hiding their fees and compensation in extraordinarily complex agreements and contracts, and force (again in a non-legal sense) because their actions, by their very nature, strongly impact the markets around them. Another case in point - the move of most mortgage companies and banks away from selling mortgages for their own accounts and instead turning mortgages into a fee generating business through securitization and the transfer of the risk they generate to other investors who often don't truly understand what they are buying. You can bet your butt that we would not be in this subprime mortgage situation if banks were holding the mortgages the issued. Of course, it would then be more expensive to borrow money and we wouldn't have had such a huge run-up in housing prices - but would that really have been so bad? Current Mood: cynical (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
9:37 pm	Well, here's hoping for stagflation... As many of you may know, I am not particularly bullish on the US economy at the moment. Heck, I don't think much of anyone is, what with the credit squeeze, slowing economic growth, a sharp decrease in jobs over the last three months, and the two leading Democratic candidates for president both promoting greater protectionism in the form of rolling back parts of NAFTA. But the real kicker, IMO, is the continued focus of the Fed on avoiding a recession and keeping the credit markets solvent. Bernake and Co. are really stuck between a rock and a hard place. The effect of the subprime meltdown and associated fallout is a credit crunch unlike anything since the massive margin calls of 1929. Where Wall Street had once learned that debt is a very dangerous tool, the fat years of the 80s and 90s had led to relaxing standards and now most of these investment banks are leveraged 20 times or so. This has been enabled through an increasingly complex financial system, which at this point is so convoluted not even the designers really understand it. Debt and future earnings have been packaged, securitized, folded, spindled, and mutilated to the points where few people really know what they're buying. The effect of this is that Wall Street is now so interdependent that the Fed simply can't allow one of the bigger players to fall, because if they do the whole house of cards comes down. Bernake of all of them understands the consequences of this - he made a study of the Fed's reaction to the crash of 1929 and how it contributed to the Great Depression by allowing banks to fail. This led to a complete loss of confidence in the banking system, bank runs, and hoarding, all of which spelled deflation, which is much, MUCH worse than inflation. Unfortunately, the only real thing the Fed can do is inflate. It can't do too much on its own - it needs people to borrow money in order to make it happen. Thus, the interest rate cuts we've seen over the last six months, and more than likely will continue to see. Unfortunately, with cheaper money comes higher prices, a weaker dollar, and eventually inflation. They can't afford to be very cautious about inflation when any tightening of credit can blow down this whole heap of risk that Wall Street has amassed. So we're stuck, right? Well, on a macro level, yes. But personally, there are things we can do to profit on it. The real irony is that this is a great time to be a debtor. If inflation starts hitting 4% or 5%, the real cost of borrowing is ridiculously low. Investments in foreign currencies and commodities are other great places to be where the dropping dollar raises the price of those goods. So with Laura and I sitting on almost $400K of housing debt, I am OK with a little inflation. To boot, we just made a major investment in gold, which I believe will be continuing the strong performance its had over the last couple of years, the brief speculation driven plunge we saw recently not withstanding (ironically, the 10% correction gold experienced was driven by the exact same problem that made this whole mess - investment banks and hedge funds buying gold on massive leverage and getting margin calls when it took a small downtick). So in a sick way I'm hoping for some good old fashioned stagflation to come around. I'm prepared for it. Current Mood: determined (Comment on this)
Monday, March 24th, 2008
9:33 pm	Planned improvements to the condo Well, since today was the first day of Spring Break, we took a little time to check out options regarding housing upgrades. The positive thing is that there are quite a few things we can do that will involve time but not a huge amount of money. One thing that we have already ordered which was suggested by my brother-in-law, was some extending shelves for our pantry. Currently the pantry is 24" deep and about 13" wide. This means we really only end up using about the front foot or so because you just can't reach that much deeper into it. We were wondering how we would rig some kind of extend-o shelf to the existing cabinet because we didn't want to completely redo it. Then, lo and behold, I actually received a bit of spam that I welcomed. Costco sent their weekly ad out, and it included Slide-a-Shelf, which is a retrofit onto existing shelves that allows you to get full use from them! We were both very happy and put in an order for six, which we're hoping to see in a week or so. That makes the pantry MUCH more usable for us and attractive to future buyers. We've pretty much figured that our next priority would be redoing the kitchen counters. There's two reasons for this. 1) Our cruddy tile counter, while perfectly functional, looks cruddy. A nice looking laminate would definitely improve the look of the place and set us apart from other condos in the complex, and is also reasonably affordable at around $800 including a new sink and faucet. The laminate counter is also really easy to install, so we wouldn't have to pay someone else to do it. 2) We have this funny not-quite-a-breakfast-bar thing on our counter that separates the dining area from the kitchen. It includes a backsplash and about a 15" second level shelf. It's separate from the counter, so it's not usable as additional workspace. It's too high and narrow to eat on. It just collects stuff and blocks the room off. So we figure we can just remove the darn thing, extend the counter out another foot or so and make it into a breakfast bar/additional workspace, which will also make the kitchen feel bigger. Our next task after that is probably to put in a bamboo floor. Laura likes the natural woods better than the laminates, and it does look really nice. With spending about $1200 on the kitchen, which is a similar cost to our remodel of the guest bathroom, we're saving a lot of money compared to the expected $5-6K of the rear bathroom remodel. So with that money not being spent there, we can instead spend it on nicer floors. The biggest challenge there is that we'd pretty much have to move everything out of the way when we installed the floor, which means that's a BIG project. We'd also have to figure out how we'd want to install the floor - our initial thought would be for a floating floor, but we do have a fireplace that we'd have to take into consideration, which can be a problem with a floating floor. Anyway, we're thinking about starting the kitchen sometime in the not-so-distant future, and the floor around next Christmas. Current Mood: Ambitious (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
9:14 pm	Spring Break - and thoughts of remodeling Well, Spring Break is finally upon me, and not a moment too soon. I'm coming down with some kind of creeping crud, and I've got a bunch of work to catch up on, or should I say get ahead of. Report cards are all complete and mailed out (and let me tell you, some of my students are going to be in for a RUDE surprise - of course it's only surprising because they haven't been paying attention). I'm planning on going NOWHERE this week, just relaxing around the house and planning for next term. But one thing that I do want to consider and would like advice on is our options/prioritization of remodeling our condo. You've all seen our plans for the master bath, which is definitely one of the options. At this point our primary concern is making our place more attractive for resale, with a secondary concern being that we want to enjoy living in it in the meantime. So here are some of our options we're considering. I don't know if we can do many more than one or at most two of these things. 1) Master bath remodel with removing a closet from the bedroom, adding a door, and opening up the whole bathroom area, making it a true master bath and not a weird hallway and standing coffin to shower and eliminate waste inside of. Guesstimated cost: $5K and a ton of our own labor. 2) Replace kitchen counter tops. Our existing cabinetry is nice, but the counter tops are cream ceramic tile with dark brown grout and scream early 80s design. We can definitely remove the existing stuff ourselves and depending upon the complexity maybe even install our own counters, but it's more likely that we'd have professionals install the new counter tops. Guesstimated cost: Between $2K-$5K and some of our own labor. 3) Installing a laminate flooring. We're going to need to replace the carpets at the very least once we are ready to sell, so perhaps it would be easier to simply get it out of the way sooner rather than later with a more durable option. Hardwood type floors seem to be a big selling point, and they do make maintenance and cleaning easier. Guesstimated cost: $1500-$2500 and a ton of our own labor. So I'm wondering what people think would be the best way to use our time and money given our above priorities. Having a fully usable master bath would be REALLY nice, but one real estate agent (who is selling an almost identical unit above ours) said that giving up the closet space to do it would probably reduce the value and make it harder to sell (though there is a ton of storage space in the condo). Since our priority is on future sale instead of just having a really nice space, then perhaps that's not a good option. We'd certainly enjoy having a nicer counter top, but we've done fine with the one we have. And while I'd love to stop worrying about our cheap contractor grade carpet getting dirty, is it really worth it to go through all of the pain of rearranging stuff (and possibly even getting storage space) to put in a new floor? Anyway, I'd love to have other folks inputs on this area. Thanks in advance! Current Mood: curious (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
7:52 am	Why can't the Democrats nominate someone like him? I am really impressed with the Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. I was listening to a story about the Real ID Act on All Things Considered, and Gov. Schweitzer spelled out the situation beautifully. Essentially, the Real ID act asks states to commit years in advance to a standard for drivers licences and ID cards that has not yet been determined. This standard does not take into account the fact that the beginning of the legitimate ID chain is a birth certificate that is one of the most easily forged documents out there. If a state does not agree to this unspecified standard, then Homeland Security will bar all of the holders of that state's ID cards from boarding planes in MAY, long before these standards are set, much less implemented. So the governor has, in his words, told the Federal government to "go to hell". He points out there is nowhere in the Constitution that gives Homeland Security the right to tell states how to run their government and that the entire Montana Legislature voted, UNANIMOUSLY, to bar the executive from complying with the Real ID Act. This is, in my opinion, of a political executive taking a principled stand against government idiocy. Perhaps he simply doesn't want to go anywhere near Washington, DC... Current Mood: amused (3 Comments |Comment on this)