patrick.net

Bay Area Homeowner,

Northwest is nice. If the job opportunities are just as good, I'd take Seattle any time. Too bad that apart from MSFT, Amazon, some wireless things and Starbucks (which doesn't employ that many people at HQ), there are almost no jobs.

You would assume that it should have evolved into a little Silicon Valley by now, but no, the amount of startup activities going on there is laughable.

"I almost wanted to document exactly on which date which pack became “on sale” and which pack “fell out of pending”."

It might be worthwhile to make some small effort at doing this, IMO.
Maybe do shotgun approach...jot down random pendings w/out paying much attention to details. Then parse the data at some point in the future when time allows.

Economist online is only around 59? (perhaps more, not more than 89 I am sure). I don't get paper any more, it is more convenient to read online anyway. Even when I was getting it in paper, I don't remember ever paying more than 100. There's always those 75% off deals for magazines.

SJ_Jim,

yeah, I am thinking of taking one random week and documenting what happened in that particular week. When the time comes, one more data point for the reporters...

"Forbes has now turned into a Fox TV of business mag, just a bunch of brainwash stuff. I seek comfort in the consistenly conservative yet wise Economist, which has made impartial calls on multiple issues."

"Brainwash stuff" is everywhere (i.e. "all the news that's fit to print" haha).
I like FOX because their personalities are up front with their beliefs, so you know what you're getting; it is then up to you to apply your filters. At the same time, their actual news updates are just that...news. Hey, everyone knows it's owned by conservative person so of course it trickles down...same deal exists with CNN. Mostly I like Brit Hume (classy) & Neil Cavuto (chummy). But I really can't stand when they over-expose a story...days & days of 24/7 coverage...which they tend to do with stories that touch on moral issues.
Overall, though, there are some relatively colorful personalities & I think it is a pretty good entertainews station.

Gotta love internet anonymity...I can actually admit to watching fox news and then choose not to read any rxns.

SJ_Jim,

watching Fox news is perfectly ok if you turn off your brain and say, let me be entertained. Nothing wrong with that. In a sense, Fox is better than Forbes, which pretended to be impartial and deep, but instead feed you with nothing but cool-aid. If I want cool-aid, I know where to get it, thank you very much. At least Fox doesn't pretend that its average readers are making six figures and business elites of the society.

Forbes has gotten really thin lately. That magazine used to be as thick as a phone book prior to the dotcom bust. Went downhill from there.

"Forbes has gotten really thin lately. That magazine used to be as thick as a phone book prior to the dotcom bust. Went downhill from there."

So, you're saying Forbes was *slightly* more diversified than Red Herring...!

You can look at parts of the Economist online. Or at the library or benevolent employer's, I suppose ; )

Have you seen 'Outfoxed'? Well worth a look. Rupert Murdoch (News Ltd) is an Aussie who inherited one smallish regional paper, and now owns 175 newspapers worldwide, many American TV and radio stations, all of Fox operations, Harper Collins and a few sundry other things. Because of his large influential media holdings, politicians more or less answer to him in fear. Some commentators say he really makes or breaks govts. He became an American citizen in order to buy the TV and radio stations, and suddenly became more republican than republicans. Owns many significant newspapers in Oz, UK and US.

it's interesting how the accumulation of capital allows a shrewd operator to accumulate even more capital. note that another aussie, frank lowy, 'owns' or is chairman of all the westfield shopping malls, many of them in CA... went from owning one delicatessen in sydney to a $42 bn empire...

just look at the wikipedia entries for 'rupert murdoch' and 'frank lowy'...

I still do not understand how the value of a house can go up by 75K after you do an upgrade with new appliances that cost 15K. You redo the bathroom with 10K in hardware and 5K in labor but the value of the house is now 75K more. Thats ridiculous. The value of the house just went up 15K. Can someone explain this logic to me. : )

slightly dead thread, but when the housing market was booming, it was hard to disentangle the value added by renos from the boom effect, so people started saying it was the renos that did it. there is possibly a slight psychological effect to selling a nice renovated house to someone over an unrenovated one, particularly when people aren't handy or don't know the cost of a reno, or can't be bothered attempting it themselves. now that the market is turning in Oz, the bureau of stats is finding that much less is being spent on renos, because speculators doing a 'quick fix' for resale aren't sure they are going to get their money back as the market cools...