patrick.net

Peter P,

We found that here too! Just when you actually needed it, the damn A/C went south on you! Most won't be repaired until after it's over.

You can go ahead and laugh, but break-ins/vandalism and "vacation" homes DO go hand in hand. In a gated community you might get some kind of response but in La Pine, OR (for example) the sheriff won't even come out and fill out a report. He'll put his feet back on the desk and think to himself "dumb ass Portlanders". (Even though we're not from Portland) in small town OR if you're not from "there" you must be a Portlander!

astrid,

I had thought about the "exterior" being more a less a pavillion? Just a roof and some half walls w/a "dirty kitchen". In the P.I dirty kitchen usually implies a place where chickens are plucked and pigs are gutted (hence the term). I don't mean to sound like a security freak but think about it. With 40% of the homes sold in 05 being vac./2nd/specuvestor homes how many will be abandoned? In eastern Oregon they actually have had cases of "squatters" moving in! Typically small time criminals and vagrants but MAN do they make a mess of the place!

Electric fans seem to be effective cooling until the temperature hits about 90 in humid heat and 95 in dry heat. I actually prefer it to air conditioning since it cools me just the right amount. When I was young and in Shanghai, we didn't even have electric fans until about 20 years ago, and AC units only started becoming available in the mid 90s. Before that, everyone just sweated the summer out with fans and wet towels...obesed people can't survive in that environment.

DinOR,

I do believe you. Vacation home break in is no joking matter, and it's another thing that makes owning a vacation home impractical for most people (who only have a week or two of paid vacation time anyways). And just wait until the economies in these towns become depressed when the housing bubble goes away!

When I was young and in Shanghai, we didn’t even have electric fans until about 20 years ago, and AC units only started becoming available in the mid 90s.

But now the AC industry in China is huge.

I was thinking of a used trailer or some sort of small cabin kit for the fake home. Install a kitchen (old electric everything, so they don't screw up the gas lines and blow things up) and a laundry unit, and some cheap platform beds. No HVAC at all. No insulation. Single pane windows. The place should be as unwelcoming for squatters as possible.

Yeah, everybody in Shanghai has a unit now. Everywhere I walk I get the drip drip of AC units splattering on me. The rate of modernization there is incredible and then people act like they lived with these things their entire lives. Keeping any of my cousins from a shower everyday or AC or cell phone or soap opera of their choice is like torture to them.

astrid,

Oh absolutely! Especially here in OR where so much relies on tourism. In fact, I hear they're complaining already.

I actually like those little "cabin in a box" kits. Some are designed to be assembled in a weekend with 3 friends and a case of beer. I wouldn't count on putting too much of anything of value in a vac. home anyway. When we were kids it was pretty common to have a cooler substitute for a fridge anyway.

With the threat of rolling blackouts, isn't it prudent to install backup generators?

Peter P,

You mean like they had back in, what was it? 2000?

You mean like they had back in, what was it? 2000?

Something like that. The market is heating up here though. It is not outrageous to say that it is 1999 all over again in at least some segments.

I had thought that much of the brown-outs in CA were due to market manipulation from the power "traders" like Enron etc? There never really was a supply or a logistic problem or was there?

There never really was a supply or a logistic problem or was there?

People just do not like new power plants. I thought it is best to have 30% extra capacity beyond peak usage. Obviously, there is a supply problem.

Or, perhaps there is a pricing problem.

Conor,

That is a HUGE increase! CA's pop. hasn't grown THAT much in 5 years has it? Not from the data I've seen. How do we explain this over the top demand?

... providing further evidence that the once-booming housing sector is slowing.

Maybe it's just me. But I am SICK of this half sentence that gets added in EVERY news report. Can't they use different words ? I mean apart from replacing "once-booming" with "previously red hot".

It feels like yesterday, when I was feeling like reading day before yesterday's news.

DinOR,

I'm just guessing, but all those new houses in HOT Central Valley and SoCal's high desert can't be helping. The McMansion trend may be a contributing factor.

Some time back I took a mental accounting of how much of stuff would keep working in an outage. (Between laptop computers and UPSen for the server, net connection, replayTV, etc., the only real danger would have been to the fridge. (Cook on the grill, etc.) No AC, but the house still stays reasonably cool.

On underground homes: I think many people think that they'd be claustrophic underground, without windows, etc. Personally, I love the idea. Light bars and fiber optics should be able to channel daylight into the rooms to create a proper ambience, and proper decorating (plants, mirrors, etc) can create the felling of spaciousness without using windows.

My goal would be to have the above-ground nicely landscaped (park, English garden, etc) with an entrance that was almost just a doorway. Ideally, get David Copperfield to design an entrance that looks like a doorway to nowhere, but when you walk through it the right direction, you go downstairs.

Some time back I took a mental accounting of how much of stuff would keep working in an outage. (Between laptop computers and UPSen for the server, net connection, replayTV, etc., the only real danger would have been to the fridge. (Cook on the grill, etc.) No AC, but the house still stays reasonably cool.

Get a 25 kW generator and everything will still work. :)

You will still have to "UPS" your computers though, as the generator takes 60 seconds to kick in.

To BA or Not to BA,

How about this one?

"In yet ANOTHER sign of a cooling housing market"

That seems to be Bloomberg's Suzie Assad's favorite. I used to work for this dickhead sales manager (oh, I suppose that was redundant) that ALWAYS used the phrase; "Having said that". Or "That said" and it was completely maddening! We used to joke around the water cooler and create entire meaningless paragraphs around his limited vocabulary! Even today, the guys that worked there know exactly who you're mocking when you do that. Conversation going a little slow? Just toss in a few "that said" or "having said that's" and you're bound to get things livened up in no time!

I think once we start producing cost effective, long lasting fuel cells, most things we value can continue to work without plug in electricity.

I like underground homes and inward looking urban homes a lot. They give their owners a lot of control over their environment and achieve the feel they want. Besides you look at most suburban subdivision homes and townhouses, 80% or more of the windows have blinds down or window treatments.

English style gardens are hard to keep though. A combination of desert plants and Mediterrean climate plants (esp. Australia and South Africa) will give better results in the West.

requiem,

So true. If I were a lot younger living underground would drive me batty. Once you've seen the world (and are pretty sure you've seen enough) it seems like so much less of a sacrifice. Besides, I've heard that they are near silent! No neighbors dog yapping, sirens, boom boxes etc. I'm sure I couldn't afford David Copperfield but I understand there are in ground homes that we drive past all the time and never even notice.

MA,

If you had used that phrase I sure didn't notice. What I'm talking about is an extreme situation. Maniacal. The guy whipped it out before you could even finish answering the question he JUST asked you! It was more like tourette's syndrone (or something like that?) Uncontrollable and inappropriate outbursts!

Mostly I think it was he laziness and unwillingness to communicate genuinely with people. The guy was a total mooch. When we figured out we were getting the axe anyway we just totally drug our feet until we knew we'd be fired (collecting a meager salary) just to hear this guy have one of his foaming at the mouth "that said" fits! I hear he got fired not long after. Prick.

-he
+his

MA,

I do hear ya' believe me. What I was thinking is that my "lair" would be at an undisclosed location just outside Las Vegas. So sun would be in abundance.

Mediterranean plants would be good; I remember how much Italy resembled the Central Valley when I was there.

I'm not sure how far down you need to go for proper insulation; the larger caves I've been in (Moaning Cave, California Caverns) maintain a year-round temperature of around 50-60°F. Of course, they're also deep enough to be unaffected by earthquakes, or so say the guides.

Maybe a big ole fiber optic cable running to the surface? You could have the sun provide light during the day and then supplement with other lights at night.

Las Vegas in the summer would be miserable though. You really can't be outside during day light hours.

requiem,

I think you'd only have to go down 5 or 6 feet. Most underground homes seem to be quite near the surface. I guess earthquake could be a problem in places with high water tables or loose soil...

Coastal California is actually very plant friendly, but growing roses, lilies, and rhododenren is always quite a bit of work, even in ideal weather.

MA,

There have been MANY occasions where my wife and I would get in the car Saturday morning and drive UNTIL we DID see the sun! I am not kidding. By Feb. I'm depressed, Mar. indifferent to my surroundings, Apr. going through the motions, May, crawling out of my skin! I've had it.

How about all the weekdays we have in May and June (and sometimes July) that are just fine, and then have overcast and drizzle on FRI/SAT/SUN just to have Monday be rated a "10" by the local news?

DinOR,

Be happy that you can escape to the rain shadows, eastern Oregon is practically a desert! On the east coast, you can drive for a day in any direction and still be stuck in the same (HOT and mosquito filled) weather system.

That said, I'm not moving to LV. Having said that, it is a dry heat.

With my apologies to newsfreak and other past and current Nevadans, Nevada sucks as a state. It's all desert, and not interesting desert like in AZ but blackish/grey desert. Some of the higher altitude spots (like above 6000 ft) are okay, but LV is hot and dry and flood prone.

Data centers.

Yeah right. There are very few reasons to have data centers physically here. Many large corps are moving their data centers to other locations.

This just in...

Lazy Journalist Housing Cliches Forecast to Rise as Once Red-Hot Market Slows

July 27 (Bloomberg) --

In yet another sign of a cooling housing market, lazy hack journalists have consistently failed to come up with better cliches than "in yet another sign of a cooling housing market" or "providing further evidence that the once-booming housing sector is slowing". That said, according to John Karevoll of DataQuick, "Indicators of market distress are still largely absent." He later added, "Having said that, this is still the 17th strongest year on record for sales."

My LV perspective:

Last year, around this time, I decided to drive there for a conference (that I normally fly to). It was evening as I came out of the mountains to the desert floor, and the freeway cut straight as an arrow through vast emptiness before me. (There was a large amount of traffic, all averaging around 90mph.) With nightfall came the storm. To the front, thunderheads formed a pillar of darkness from earth to sky, lit only by the lightning playing about its edges. Traffic slowed to a cautious 80 as the remaining light failed and the road markings masked by torrential rain. The only way out was forward, following the line of red taillights into the black.

The next morning the skies had cleared as the flashlight of god bathed the city in hard radiation, melting asphalt and charring skin. I stayed inside.

Oh, it was also humid.

Data centers.

You may be onto something here. My company just added a huge data center in NCAL and is in the process of closing distributed data centers in other states and moving the equipment here.

I know of at least 3 major data center consolidations moving into california, not out of. Of course they maintain hot backup sites somewhere in the Midwest or Great Plains. But it seems that privacy, intellectual property, and legal complications have brought a lot of offshored data centers back to the states. And skills shortages have brought a lot of those back to Cali.

it's got up to 35 C = 95 F in london lately...

the last few years in england have been unseasonably hot in summer, so there seems to be a trend.

still hard to know if it's greenhouse gas inspired or just natural climactic cycles... i don't mind it getting a little hotter, and there's nothing you can do about it if it's just cyclical, but it would be a bummer if it turned out it was at least partly caused by greenhouse gases and clearfelling etc, and that maybe it pushed the climate into a particularly nasty positive feedback loop where it was over 100 F every day...

Why wouldn't a company data center be located in the US? Maybe not in CA but certainly in the US or in Canada. Running a datacenter is not labor intensive, and US probably has many advantages over cheaper countries...though reliable electricity may no longer be one of them.

Because, like South Korea taking over the animation business, India has taken over the call centre business.
India has a large population of technically savvy people, and India stil teaches English as a second language. With some training (UK accents for UK-based companies, American accents for US-based ones) its still cheaper to bounce calls via satellite to Mumbai, and have them answered there (by people who make a fraction of what US/UK/EU citizens make), than it is to have the call-centres based in their 'home' countries.