patrick.net

Randy H,

Btw, just b/c you get their consent to bill at a higher rate you may still have to reinforce the sale. As in they send you the check but it's at the old rate. No big. Just get them on the phone and "re-sell" them a little and it's usually no problem. They just want to see if you're sleeping and could maybe slide it past you. They all try it.

DinOR,

Thanks. I don't think it sounds corny at all. I use a lot of those techniques already, but there is a specific situation that always causes me trouble and those rules fail:

When negotiating with a huge, global, corporate. Specifically, one of the types in which procurement is purposefully compartmentalized from departments, yet empowered to veto deals sponsored by even the highest level VPs. In this case I find myself dealing with someone who is not an advocate for the same thing as my real client, but instead more of an agent for the "board & shareholders" (or so he can claim). I've managed to learn by experience how to work with this type of a setup and still protect my interests. That said, I've never been able to get these guys to accept any type of inflation indexing. (In fact, their standard boiler asks for down-side protection, but not up-side reciprocity. They want the right to lower rates if there's deflation -- as there was in software & services over the past 7 years -- AND they want protection from increases. The best I've ever gotten is getting the entire thing taken out.)

DinOR,

btw, the particular corp I'm dealing with right now prides themselves on having hired many of their Procurement -- oh I'm sorry, I mean Supply Chain Management -- Directors away from Wal-mart and the auto industry. In other words, the world exists as them, customers and suppliers. And suppliers are fungible and exist primarily to be further fungibilized.

Besides, if we can post 401 comments on the “Duh” thread, we can talk about anything, can’t we?

And 2600+ comments on the "Huh?" thread.

We have talked about toilets,
but have not discussed
sinks and faucets yet.

Sink?

Do you guys prefer stainless or porcelain?

Faucets?

Need pull-out spray.

And the faucet has to be high enough like a swan’s neck.

I agree.

How about shower heads? Any preference? I like high-flow shower heads with a hose.

I did see the return of Pepto-Bismal pink for bathroom sinks in a flyer in the NY Times.

I like round or rectangular bathroom sinks. A bowl-shaped glass sink looks nice.

Should homes have urinals installed? I have seen that only once in an open house.

Porcelain seems easier to keep clean w/out as much maintenance, but other than that I think I prefer stainless.

What I don't like are the double sinks with one side extremely small and shallow. Both sides should be large.

Porcelain seems easier to keep clean w/out as much maintenance, but other than that I think I prefer stainless.

Seamless Corian countertop and sink is a good idea too. Watch out for that hot pot on the countertop. Oops, it is burnt!

Shower heads on a hose, not fixed. Water-conservation heads should only be used if they increase pressure to compensate. (Drippy water is very annoying.) The head should also be at a reasonable height (7'?) for us normal-sized people. (I've been in houses with the showerhead at chest height. Well, maybe neck height, but it was still pretty bad.) I'd only go for a urinal if I had a cleaning service; it's one more thing to clean and take up space.

Water-conservation heads should only be used if they increase pressure to compensate.

I hate water-conservation heads. I would have to take a much longer shower and waste even more water.

I like double/multiple shower heads.

Urinal saves time (at least 10 seconds per use for men) if you pee just 10 times a day you can save 10 hours of time a year!

I have never known a water conserving toilet or showerhead that did not waste water because the flow was too low.

Exactly. I have to flush three times just to get the job done. I need commercial-grade toilets!

To conserve water, we should recycle water instead.

I spend at least twice as much time trying to wash the shampoo out of my hair using a low flow shower head.

I bet people shave their heads out of frustration with their low-flow shower heads.

Re: tipping point, and whether/when the BA will finally crumble

I think there's a quite large number of people in the BA who are just able to hang on because things have been so good for so long.
In the last couple of months, I've learned that a surprising percentage of my friends and acquaintances in the Bay Area are actually FBs, even though they appear to be well off today.

Adjusting ARMs are hurting quite a few, some are paying for day-to-day expenses with HELOC credit cards right now (and these guys are very surprised that their ever-expanding credit took them this far), others are in way over their head in terms of the size of their monthly mortgage payments.

For the last few years, there was always a way to postpone the inevitable, and so the number of people in these kinds of situations is probably much much higher than normal.
At some point in time, the music will stop, though, and it'll happen at approximately the same time for everybody.

I think we will be surprised what comes to the surface.

Somebody mentioned in previous thread -- should I use the in front of previous? -- that he saw major houses pumping gold stocks. I wonder if it is time to get out Au shares. Any thoughts?

Au moved up 8 bucks (1%) today. But the shares didn't go up as much, percentage wise (0.75%). Usually the movement in the shares is a 2-3 multiple of movement in the metal itself.

Nobody has talked about Bernanke today. Very strange.

I wonder if it is time to get out Au shares. Any thoughts?

Dumb money is not in yet.

NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE

GC:

By 'previous', do you refer to an unspecified thread prior to this one, or to the thread immediately before this? (I.e. the word has two meanings that are very similar, and choice of article depends on the desired meaning.)

If you are referring to an unspecified prior thread, 'a' is appropriate. If you are referring to a specific thread, in this case defined as the one immediately prior to the current, then 'the' is proper.

Dumb money is in when Time features Au on its cover as the hot new thing.

Oh, and which of you guys is responsible for this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_property_bubble

Requiem, thank you. The use of articles in front of previous and next is always fuzzy to me.

Well, I have a slightly different reason for getting out of Au. There is a possibility, as I said over and over again, that Sir B. will keep raising rates and bust Au for the short to intermediate term. In the long run, Au wins. But again, I've already suffered one trauma from the Au crash in 2004. Another one might prove to be terminal.

N.F.,

Indeed today's raise has been priced in. But the market wasn't and still isn't sure whether B. will raise rates again. I said last time that his congressional testimony did mention the threat of inflation several times. So today's FED comment validated this impression (well, someone else pointed that out to me).

B. seems to like to play games with people.

Peter P, how do you know this?

I do not see shows like "Shinny Yellow Metal" or "Flip That Gold Coin" yet.

Try this for fun: www humanforsale com

When pricing yourself at humanforsale, please do not lie about your size. OK? I know which size I am referring to.

-I know
+You know

Thank you.

I do not see shows like “Shinny Yellow Metal” or “Flip That Gold Coin” yet.

Listen to more AM radio. Dumb money is going in. You can hear the gold-investment-expert right before the bigfoot sightings guy.

You can hear the gold-investment-expert right before the bigfoot sightings guy.

But I have not heard statements like "gold always goes up in value" or "last opportunity to buy this 1oz gold coin for only $1000".

If I were Bernanke I'd keep an 8-ball on my desk an consult it for answers to the stupider questions.

"Are you going to stop raising rates?"
"I'd like to direct that to our honorary committee member here... Outlook not so good, he says."

s/an/and/

...and there go my English skills.

vi user.

You say that like an you're an emacs user.

I like vi. Saves me having to use my nose to type those ctrl-alt-meta-hyper-shift combinations.

Requiem,

I am mistaken. I do not know how to use emacs. I never learned emacs. It is too fancy for my taste. I like simple things because I am a simple man.

My only code editor is vi. VI is the first editor I learned to use and I've stuck to it all my life (which is not very short). Occasionally I use MSFT VS, when I had to write fucking GUI code. But my preference is always VI. When people see me firing up vi to edit code or paper (TEX), they are always surprised.

Well damn, there goes my chance to revive one of the older wars.

I've been drinking this Odwalla shit from the cafeteria. I think I am getting sick of it, although it's supposed to be good for me, especially since I rarely eat vegie when I cook. What is your favorite flavor of Odwalla?

Requiem,

We are on the same side.

BTW, is that M's Requiem?

I like Parisienne life. Life in US is too harsh, too rushed, too unpleasant. In Paris, right now, I can sit in the cafe, actually the weather should start to be nice, so I sit outside, sipping wine, watching people coming back (woops, slipping away) from work, checking out cute girls, eating healthy snacks and fruits, relaxing, debating philosophie and contemplating meaning of life, planning suicide, blah, blah, blah.

Yep, is Wolfgang's.

I rotate Odwallas. I go through the tangerine, grapefruit, and orange juice jugs for the fridge, and use the single-serving containers of "wellness" when I think I might be getting sick. The smoothies are also ok, but I avoid the green, purple, or protein flavors.

The protein flavor of smoothie is really disgusting. I tried once. It tasted like medicine.