Investors chill

I'm not an economist. Hell, I can barely balance my own checkbook. One thing that I do know is that the world isn't going to end. As I said in a previous post, let the free market sort out the winners and losers. Let the companies with poor buisness practices self destruct and be gone forever, but don't saddle us* with the burden of saving their asses.

Yesterday the "Bailout Plan" failed to pass a vote in the House. Thank . Investors did panic yesterday on the news, but it looks like they have regained their composure and have figured out that all this settling out might not be such a bad thing after all. The Dow has so far recovered 4/7ths of the losses from yesterday. That's huge! Good for Wall St. for not digging their heads into the sand and continuing the freakout.

Oh, and if you have some cash on hand... Now's the time to buy stocks. Actually, you might have missed your opportunity by about 8 hours!

*Us - All income tax paying citizens of the United States

Goodbye Capitalism!

This "bailout" of the mortgage industry is another nail in the coffin for Capitalism in the United States and gives Socialism a big boost! Where does the money come from for this bailout? Well, it's coming from you and me. Oh, but the big G (Government) is going to pay us back you say? Yeah, OK. Um, the Federal Debt (BTW, fittingly, the national debt clock website (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock) was down when I just checked it - must have melted under the new 1.4 Trillion dollars added from bailouts) stood at this writing at $9,795,500,413,374 (http://zfacts.com/p/461.html). Yeah, you're right. What's another $1,400,000,000,000. To me, that's a lot of zeros.

Consumers made poor choices when they secured loans for their homes. If this is you, I'm sorry, but it's a choice that YOU made. Mortgage companies made poor choices when they wrote loans to people who in the long run had absolutely no business getting those loans. That's their choice and the consequences should not be bailout but should be bankruptcy.

Happy Birthday!!!!

You know who... ;)

'Bout Time

One of those things that just makes you say damn, why'd it take so long. He should have been executed by now. Back in March, 2005 Brian Nichols escaped from custody while on trial for rape. During the escape he killed a judge, a court reporter, a deputy and a federal agent who was off duty performing renovations on his house. There's not much doubt about his guilt. Let's get it over with.

3000

I just noticed that this blog, which admittedly is quite boring compared to the others I read ever day (see the sidebar), hit 3000 visits last week. Thanks to whomever from Texas came from Sandra's blog and later wandered over to Marko's.

Thanks to everyone else who reads this. I average a measly 8 hits per day or so but enjoy occasionally posting thoughts and rants. Thanks for your time.

The Omnivore's Hundred

This looked like fun. I first saw this at Atomic Nerds but it has origins at Very Good Taste.

(I'm adding links to Wikipedia slowly, so this is still being edited)

Here are the rules:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here linking to your results.
The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese Fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (muscadine and scuppernong)
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

9.11

http://www.daybydaycartoon.com

Morning funny

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McCain bumper sticker

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Want to keep up with Gustav?

Go here: http://gustavbloggers.com/ . First hand accounts of the storm from NOLA.

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Tagged!

I was tagged by Jen for 6 things you may not know about me. Hmmmm, here goes.

1) I don't have much of a memory of my childhood.
Not sure what's up with this, but I just don't have a lot of memories from when I was a kid or a teenager. Every once in a while something will pop into my head, but overall, I have a hard time remembering things that most people have an easy time remembering. Friends and family sometimes ask me, "You remember...." and I just have to shake my head and say no.

2) I'm a Historian (by education).
I love history so finally figured out that I just needed to get a degree in something I really love instead of struggling with something that I really couldn't be happy with. I started in college studying Engineering, changed to business, thought about advertising before finally setting my sights on getting my history degree. I didn't really want to teach after graduating and was already in a pretty good job in the tech sector so I work with computers and networks now.

I loved studying history and am very happy that's what I followed through with. I've gained an ability to look at most any concept critically, trying to consider every approach without making assumptions.

The period in history that I'm most interested in has to be the exploration and settlement of the American Southwest. I'm not sure what drives that interest, but if my wildest dreams were realized, I'd probably be in New Mexico teaching, studying and exploring. While visiting Hollister a couple of weeks ago, we had dinner in San Juan Bautista and I was able to wander around the mission for a little while. I loved seeing the mission church, thinking of all the feet that had worn down the floor tiles, all the events that the timbers have seen. It's an amazing site that just awes me.

3) I can fix most anything.
Maybe not a nuclear reactor, but I'd give it a shot! :)
This started pretty early for me, taking stuff apart just to be able to put it back together. I think the only thing I haven't been able to get back together was an old SLR camera that belonged to my father. I've rebuilt several different engines, from Fords to Chryslers. I've fixed lawnmowers, washing machines, computers, most kitchen appliances, and much more. I have done a lot of repair and remodeling work to our house myself. I'd just rather do it myself than have to pay someone else.

4) I am fascinated by tornadoes.
I don't know, they're just kind of cool. Fascinated and terrified all at the same time when they're close. Awesome power.

5) I was a competitive swimmer from the age of 5 until I turned 18.
I had the potential to swim competitively into college, but lacked the maturity and drive that it took to push myself. I got started swimming at a young age because we had a very nice community pool in the neighborhood where I grew up. From a young age until I turned 16 and started working, I spent every summer day at the pool and in the water. I always did well in DASL summer league swimming, excelling in backstroke. When I was in high school, I only got to swim a couple of years since we didn't have a team every year.

If I had the discipline, I would have tried out for Dynamo swimming, a club in N. Atlanta. They were competitive and had great coaches.

6) I like to cook
Call it survival or whatever, but I love to cook. I really don't get into fancy stuff, but I love home cooking and comfort type food. I especially like to grill (well, what man doesn't) and will try anything from steak to seafood, chicken, pork and vegetables. I want to grill a pizza one day.

Now I'll tag Dan and how about Sandra. Have fun.

Olympics

Just finished watching Phelps get his 7th gold in amazing fashion. It didn't look like he was going to get it, but he out-touched the silver medalist by 1/100th of a second! He's an amazing swimmer.

Saga of the house

Sitting here in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport waiting for my connecting flight to San Jose and I find myself with a little bit of time to finally put together a blog post. Yeah, I have been extremely busy this week helping my group finalize networking for our new dorms. Now it is time for a little R&R in California! My good friend Christie Beetz arranged for me to come out and judge for her clubs this weekend. Last year I was fortunate to come out and judge for the same two clubs, and what an experience that was!!

Anyway, I promised a post with pictures of the house. I'll get to that next time and regale you with another story of the continuing adventures of owning a repo house. This time, I want to tell you about what the idiot former owner did to the trees in the yard.

According to my neighbor (as well as all the IRS notices and industry mailings we still get to our address) the previous owner had a business grading and installing drainage for developments. Naturally he owned heavy equipment that he would use in his job. From what I gather, he also enjoyed himself by bringing a backhoe/loader to the house and driving around aimlessly moving dirt. The neighbor (who has been here for a few years longer than me) passed on the story of how he liked to hop on the equipment supplied with a stock of wine miniatures and red plastic cups. His delight was to push dirt around while drinking himself into a stupor, draining bottle after bottle of wine into the little red cups. This wouldn't be much of a problem if the yard didn't have a bunch of trees! Suffice it to say that in his stupors, he'd have problems avoiding the trees that darted here and there throughout the yard. Many still show the scars of his handiwork to this day. Some are beyond help and have died or are dying as we speak. One has developed a nice little rotten spot near the base and has rotted out almost all the way through. This specimen will have to come down later this year since it has developed a crack on the opposite side of the rot that expands and contracts when the wind blows. As our 11 year old said, it looks like the tree is breathing when the wind blows!

One of the other nice side effects of having a drunk as the previous owner is that the dogs periodically find little wine bottles under layers of leaves or half buried in the yard. They'll dig up the bottles and proudly bring them to us when we're out on the deck. Everett has a special love for these bottles and will run around the back yard with the neck in his mouth looking like quite the lush. Of course, you really need to know Everett to understand how absolutely hilarious this is!

Just another amusing chapter in the story of our home. In case you're not familiar, I bought the house back in 2001 out of foreclosure after the previous owner mortgaged the property to the hilt and built his "dream home". After his "dream home" was complete, he and his family picked up and just abandoned our fine home. It's a shame, really, since the house has such great "bones". It's a fine home in a beautiful style (even if it was built in 1979). We think we'll keep it.

Posts

I've got some rolling around in my head, but just haven't gotten the chance to get them in writing. Look for:

1) Still have to get pictures of the house repairs
2) Let me tell you a story about my trees
3) Health/Weight update
4) I have a trip to Hollister, CA this weekend, I know it'll be blog-fodder-ific!

Busy

Our University has built the first on campus housing in it's history and we're busy getting the networking all in place for students to start moving in on the 14th. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks just like this week has. I'll get some content published soon!

Twitter

I posted the link to Twitter a couple of days ago. Twitter is pretty cool if you get into the whole social networking side of the inter-tubez. I'm probably not going to share my deepest, darkest secrets, but it still is neat to post little blurbs about what is going on. But if no one follows, then what's the fun? So, I have this little add-on for Firefox that signals that someone I'm following posts a Twitter update. I hadn't gotten an update all day and usually a couple come through from EricVon (one of the three Regular Guys). I checked out my Twitter page and all the people I was following and all my followers (what, a couple) were gone. I've had to go back in and add those that I was following.

In other words, if you're using Twitter, check out your settings and make sure your following and followers weren't cleared out.

Interesting - Happy Flu

From Tam

Lazy, hazy days of summer?

Actually, a lot has been going on! For one, the past few weeks, I've been working to finish a pretty major repair to the house that Andrew, Neil and I did. Due to a couple of factors, one of my exterior walls pretty much had rotted to nothing. July 4th I decided to do some excavation and see if the damage was more extensive than just siding. Um, yeah, just a little bit! We ended up having to demolish about a four foot wide by 10 foot high section of exterior wall down to the interior sheetrock. We had to replace structure from bottom to top. Luckily the sill plate was still intact on the foundation and the floor joists had not completely rotted away. We were able to sister 2x10's to the existing joists without having to jack up the structure. That was a pretty big "whew" moment there! Next we had to replace the actual sill and sub-floor construction along about a 5 foot section, allowing us to replace three wall studs to a height of about 10 feet. We actually got the insulation and sheathing on in one complete day! All that was left for me to do by myself was to install the siding and replace the trim, caulk and paint. I finished painting the wall and just have the trim to left to paint.

What caused this? You know how they say that water is your house's biggest enemy? Well, they're right. First, the flashing was installed incorrectly on the foyer addition. The flashing along the roof-wall join ended about 2 inches above the gutter. This caused water that flowed down this area to seep between the roof eaves on the front of the house and the foyer wall. Secondly, the idiot who lived in the house before me neglected the shit out of the house. According to my neighbor, he can't remember the previous owner ever cleaning the gutters! I guess you never know what you're going to get when you buy a foreclosure!

I have pictures of the process that I'll post as soon as I get them off the camera.

Also! Take a look at the link underneath my picture over there -> . Occasionally I'll update what I'm doing on Twitter. I think it's a pretty cool little application! Why don't you try it out?

slacker

I've been quite the blogging slacker for the past week. Work has been keeping me way busy and I've been playing with my iPhone on the little bit of downtime that I've had. I should have a bit more of a post together tomorrow.

iPhone 3G so far...

I am thrilled! Before I get into what I really like, let me get the bad out of the way really quickly. I only have a couple of gripes about the iPhone 3G, the keyboard and the battery life. Neither are deal breakers by any stretch of the imagination, more inconvenient if anything. The keys are a little close together for us with larger digits!! With more use, I'm getting more and more used to where I need to tap to get each letter. Like I said, not really a big deal. Battery life is inconvenient, but again not a deal breaker. I'll be getting a car charger though, just in case. With heavy data use, especially on the 3G network, the battery tends to drain pretty fast. I think I could pretty easily make it through the day without having to charge the phone, especially after some of the new has worn off it! *G*

Starting off, the iPhone is a phone. Yeah, it does a bunch of other really cool stuff, but if the phone doesn't work, what's the use? Well, the phone works and works well. Reception is as good as I ever got with my Nokia and better than I ever got with the Motorola V3xx.

I love the UI. The Apple UI runs circles around everything else. I find the OS works and works well. No crashes and hardly any slow-downs. The home screen is easy to understand and use, a qwerty keyboard is a breeze to use, and multi-touch rocks! I have used most of the applications and downloaded a few free apps from the App Store and am pleased with how well they work. Maps uses the GPS and WiFi to show a Google map with your location. Use Google to search for anything and pins will drop to show you where to find whatever you're looking for. Tap a pin and you can get directions. Drive and you see your progress on the map. So far, we don't have turn by turn spoken directions, but Tom-Tom is reportedly working on an App already. I have Email set up to work with my Exchange account at work and it's awesome! My favorite App so far has to be Remote. As long as my laptop and my iPhone 3G are on the same wifi network, I can control my iTunes on my laptop from the iPhone. Sounds trivial? I thought so at first as well, but if I combine this with an Airport Extreme, I can broadcast my iTunes to any stereo or other wifi device in the house, controling it all with my iPhone. The possibilities are awesome!

This is a really concise review, but I hope it conveys how truly happy I am with the purchase.