patrick.net

I guess there's a Plumpjack’s Inn as well.

@Jon: Yeah, I know what you're sayin' about the whole online dating thing. It ain't exactly a truthful environment (but then, is that any different from regular dating?). My favorite is all the ladies who list their body type as "Athletic and Toned". Apparently you can be 20 lbs. overweight, but still be athletic and toned. One told me, "I go to the gym at least three times per week," as if you can claim athleticism based solely on trying.

My personal experience was that I got a lot of attention when I first joined, but a disproportionate number of girls were suggesting very nice restaurants that I wouldn't normally consider first date settings. On a hunch, I set my Salary to "No Answer". Boy, did that drop the hits quick. So be warned, folks, there's gold(diggers) in them thar hills!

I guess money talks. But that's why we're all on this blog anyway, right? :)

skibum Says:

> Don’t forget that Newsom’s family owns “Plumpjack’s”…

The Newsom family has just “worked” at Plumpjack, other than a small minority interest none of the Newsom’s have ever owned much of the Plumpjack empire.

Plumpjack was started by Billioneer Gordon Getty (who named the company after an opera he wrote) and he picked Gavin to pretend run things along with his son Billy while he paid professionals to actually run things.

Getty picked Newsom pretended to run things to thank his Dad who stepped up in the 70’s and risked his life doing a ransom drop in Italy to get Getty’s nephew back from kidnappers and since his son Billy did so much blow he was rarely in any condition to even pretend to run things.

After Newsom pretended to run things at Plumpjack for a while Willie Brown and the Burton machine did some surveys that found out that women and gays overwhelmingly thought that Newsom was cute (and would vote for him) so they put him in to politics while they continue to professionals to actually run things.

While Gavin never did any more than “pretend to run things” I’ve heard from the people at Plumpjack that his Mom (who was on the Plumpjack payroll when she died) and his sister (who’s mother in law is a RW and has her face plastered all over town http://www.streetsofsanfrancisco.com/ )
actually worked hard for the company…

Doug H Says:

> No…..no….no. If you pay off your debts early, your
> credit score will go down because you are not living
> up to your end of the agreement and not allow the
> creditor the projected profit…..FACT.
> They do look at all the other BS; but I found out about
> this little factor when I got pissed at my mortgage
> company and wrote a check to pay off my loan……
> score went down just over 20 pts.

You don’t need any debt to have a very high (top 1% credit score). I’m sure it is a fact that Doug’s score dropped when he paid off his loan, but the drop probably had more to do with the “change” in the credit profile than the lack of debt. I’ve been friends with a guy since undergrad (when he helped me get through statistics) who works at Fair Isaac he has told me a few things (even though he is not supposed to ever talk about the back end of the model that he works on with the other math guys). Stable people have high scores (like people who slowly pay off loans or people who never get loans). You never want to close an account unless it is an open line of credit more than three times your annual income. The model will give you bonus points for having a Macy’s card for 10 years, but will take a way points based on the $5K limit of the Macy’s card since it represents $5K potential debt that can get you in trouble. It is not until the limits get huge (around 3x your income) that the “potential debt” subtracts more than the “open account in good standing for years” adds…

> When I was in business, I was a CC company’s worst
> nightmare. Free card w/benefits and would charge
> about $20k/month……and then pay in full each month
> so I would not pay interest.

If you were charging $20K a month the credit card company was probably making about $5K a year in merchant fees… Not exactly the “worst nightmare” say compared to the guy who charges $20K a month for five months then gets the debt wiped out in BK…

Former,

Since I took CC as well as used them, my contract was for 1.38% plus 27 cents/transaction.....so do the math and you'll have their top line profit from my activity. Then subtract the money cost from the balance to get the bottom line cost/profit.

Oh, your extreme example would be the WORST nightmare; but my point is my, or anyone else, who uses CC as free money is something they abhor. Minimum payments @ 22% is being a good little CC customer.

ajh said:
Hopefully all 50.

shouldn't that be 7??? Here's a gratuitous article on ongoing declining affordability and perth and darwin rapidly playing out...

ahh, canberra, mainframe dinosaur, things are getting clearer now... (i'm actually in a very similar boat)

if you really want to use a spreadsheet, microsoft map is integrated into excel, i believe. going onto the web, perhaps use either google or M$ mappoint, which bloated cashcow do you want to support?

DS said:
going onto the web, perhaps use either google or M$ mappoint, which bloated cashcow do you want to support?

I have an idea - perhaps you could suggest a nice little communist venture that provides the kind of features that these 'bloated cashcows' do at no cost to ajh.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

SP

Doug H

I went to B School with a guy in CC finance. According to him the CC debt issuers lose significantly on customers who pay in full each cycle. The transactional fees mostly go to the big network companies -- ironically they are being scrutinized right now for antitrust & collusion. Visa or MC will take a very sizable per txn cut leaving the lenders (which are banks and such) only the interest, late fees and add-ons to make any profit on. This is also the reason why most such lenders will keep jacking your credit limit if you pay in full, as they know that statistically a certain number of "monthly payers" will eventually get stuck for a few months in the case of some hardship. At that point, they can recover a lot of lost interest in just a couple of months, due to the huge balance.

I have an idea - perhaps you could suggest a nice little communist venture that provides the kind of features that these ‘bloated cashcows’ do at no cost to ajh.

SP

perhaps it wouldn’t matter in my ideal socia1ist co-operative utopia (not the repressive totalitarian command capitalist regimes of the 2nd world), because there wouldn’t be a housing affordability crisis and home ownership issue to whinge about in the first place… altho the soviets had quite a few technical firsts in their time, not bad coming from a largely pre-industrial agrarian society… remember who put sputnik up and the first animal in space… and excellent architectural software products like ArchiCAD have come out of places like hungary...

but i suppose you could choose google ‘don’t be evil’ — except when being paid to filter content by the chinese — or M$ for the flow-on to the bill and melinda gates foundation…

other than that, the poster’s comment was gratuitous, and exposits an extreme position that I’ve certainly never taken… aka the ’straw man’ argument in rhetorical philosophy…

DS

@FAB,
A minor points about Plumpjacks. You always like to make your statements with such apparent authority:

The Newsom family has just “worked” at Plumpjack, other than a small minority interest none of the Newsom’s have ever owned much of the Plumpjack empire.

How do you explain this from their website:

http://www.plumpjack.com/history.html

Closer to home, San Francisco composer and philanthropist, Gordon Getty, wrote an opera he called "Plump Jack." The fun-loving and irreverent spirit of PlumpJack clearly excited the sensibilities of Gordon's close friend and business associate, Gavin Newsom.

PlumpJack was founded by Gavin Newsom, whose personality is revealed in response to an expression of concern upon his first appointment to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in 1997. '

Do you just make shit up as you go along?

I wrote:

> The Newsom family has just “worked” at
> Plumpjack, other than a small minority interest
> none of the Newsom’s have ever owned much
> of the Plumpjack empire.

Then skibum Says:

> How do you explain this from their website:
> http://www.plumpjack.com/history.html

The web site is “correct” that Newsom "founded" Plumpjack (since Gordon Getty has always called him a "founder"). The Newsom's campaign web site was also “correct” when it said he was "raised by a "single mother" (since his Mom never re-married, but unlike most kids raised by “single mothers” he grew up surrounded by Millionaires (too many to list), Billionaires (the Getty’s), Celebrities (including his Uncle Ed Asner) and Politicians (including his cousin Nancy Pelosi).

Gavin is a nice guy, but his family does not "own" Plumpjack (when he was running for Mayor the campaign finance disclosure forms showed how little he owned). If you want to find out how much effort he put in to "founding" the company talk to the real estate owners that leased the space or the early staff that worked there...

P.S. The Chronicle reported a while back that Gordon Getty personally owned 96 percent of the Plumpjack winery and 96 percent of the partnership that runs the (kid friendly according to SF Woman) Plumpjack Squaw Valley Inn

http://www.sfist.com/archives/2006/09/07/gavins_back.php

"The intriguingly-spelled Brittanie Mountz, who played women's lacrosse for Sonoma State. "

Brittanie Mountz is definitely no BMW 7 series.

hee hee - i'm only halfway there...

On another OT note, last night for about an hour and a half two enormous black helicopters flew in very tight circles over a couple of blocks on the eastern side of Pacific Heights.

some sort of black op... probably escorting alien spacecraft... or giving elvis the sightseeing tour he requested...

SFWoman Says:
On another OT note, last night for about an hour and a half two enormous black helicopters flew in very tight circles over a couple of blocks on the eastern side of Pacific Heights. ... Why would helicopters fly in tight circles like that for such a long time?

Aah, that was probably just heli-Ben. So that is how they get people to buy Pacific Heights condos for 2.5M, I guess. :-)

SP

Speaking of self promoting "His & Her" real estate "teams" I just heard a golden one.

The couple that owns our local mini mart are the nicest people. They moved up to OR from Sacramento several years ago and they're well liked and respected here. Because they were new to the area they bought a double wide on it's own lot just a few blocks from their store. After a while they asked the same realtor (TM) that got a comm. for selling them their house if they could buy the vacant lot next door so their kids could have some place to play.

Long story short, he/she not only do not sell her the lot but they buy the house next door, sub-divide the lot, slap up a McMansion and do a cosmetic flip on the aging adjoining house! Oh yeah!

Now, not only does she not get the lot for her kids to play there is a McAlbatross "shoe-horned" where there was a vacant lot and their "flip" would be better off being burned to the ground. (Built 1905) and occupied for years by elderly man and badly neglected. With friends like this, who can afford enemies! Oh, btw you can't so much as push your shopping cart without seeing this couples mugs plastered all over it! How do these people live with themselves? Forget it. I want out. The whole "process" sucks.

Obviously this nice couple's needs did not fit well with the designs/needs/wants/desires of Mr. & Mrs. Realt-whore/s! Evidently serving clients needs are not a very high priority for most realt-whores and as shown in this particular incident (you wind up giving them ideas and then having to compete against them!)

I guess if the realt-whores had went to the effort to get the lot sub-divided for them there wouldn't have been all that much of a commission in it for them and how would they have sold them YET ANOTHER house when they'd have ample room for addition/expansion? (The way these pukes look at it they'd be screwing themselves TWICE by not looking after their own interests!)

I don't want to start the week off on the wrong foot but every time I see a husband/wife "team" all I see is the potential to get gang raped.

SFWoman Says:

> On another OT note, last night for about an
> hour and a half two enormous black helicopters
> flew in very tight circles over a couple of blocks
> on the eastern side of Pacific Heights.

Last night (about 6:00 pm) there were three small (not black) choppers flying around the GG Bridge as I drove home from Sears Point...

RE: black helicopters

My instinctive guess would be that they were using thermal imaging to find umm... greenhouses. The more likely case is Cheney visiting someone on the DL.

Schwarzenegger pushes emission markets

http://tinyurl.com/ur4el

Now this is an environmental movement I can accept. See, the free market can find a solution to the environmental problem. Perhaps Schwarzenegger is not that bad. (Although I was not having nice thoughts about him when I ate foie gras yesterday.)

fyi: Just updated the akr thread with an, uh... appropriate graphic.

How about this guy:

http://www.webcubic.com/realtors/warren/

Yes, I want a realtor who likes to jump hurdles while in a suit and on the cellphone.

RE: black helicopters

Cash drop from Ben?

@skibum, thanks man, you can't "un-see" things ;)

you can’t “un-see” things

Try a hypnotist. Find one that is NOT also a realtor or you may be hypnotized into something regrettable. ;)

@skibum,

Which one is the dude?

@skibum

Ugh.

Ugh is right.

Personally, I don't care how unattractive the Realtor is, as long as they don't try to outright swindle/defraud me. I'd take a honest Realtor who looks like Helen Thomas any day over a dishonest one who looks like Carmen Elektra.

That said, this is my idea of an ideal agent:

That said, this is my idea of an ideal agent

Huh?

Please hide the thread graphics. I am going to need therapy.

Can we please replace the thread graphics with Harm's image above? Christ!

Please hide the thread graphics. I am going to need therapy.

:lol: Sorry, Peter P. If you squint then quickly scroll down to comments, it's not so bad.

My gods, I come back to check the thread and there's this abomination staring me in the face. It may not be as bad as goatse, but please please make the bad man go away.

Ok, ok, I removed the offending graphic above and replaced it with HARM's dream agent. For those who still care to see it, but don't want it on the front-page:

I still think s/he/it's SOOOOOO pretty!

HARM Says:

I still think s/he/it’s SOOOOOO pretty!

Dude, You're a sick, sick man!

Ok, ok, I removed the offending graphic and replaced it with HARM’s dream agent.

Still... having... difficulty... breathing.....

Come the day I actually buy a house, maybe I'll use the abomination graphic to conceptualize the owners that I'm negotiating with. Demonizing the opposition is useful in any conflict.

Having that James-Bond-Babe as my buyers agent would be useful; any offer from her is going to sound very enticing.

I guess that explains SP's original question; charismatic negotiators have an extra edge. Perhaps after months of polishing POS properties into "cozy gem in the rough" listings, realtors have an inflated sense of their own attractiveness.

One of my friends put in an offer of the asking price for a SFR house on the Peninsula that came on the market on Friday.

And immediately he was outbid by 5%. Ouch. It's still 2005 in some neighborhoods on the Penn.

@eburbed,
What price range and what neighborhood?