patrick.net

I have never heard of even a single White, Black or Asian small business that has paid all the taxes due.

This is why I would fail as a small business owner.

Reagan, is my 2nd choice. His library is a very nice place to visit if you are in Simi Valley area.

That was a very interesting part of contemporary history to live through.

Yes. Precisely, 1989 was the year of flux.

Here's a question to throw out. Why did the bad guys during the Reagan era fear the United States to the point of compliance even though he had a very limited use of the military, yet both Bush's actually used the fullest extent of our conventional arsenal, and it seems like our enemies are only emboldened.

should i start looking for a new job?

Don't they need to print a lot of NODs? :)

"should i start looking for a new job"

Not at all! You have ALL the tools you need right there in front of you!

(You DO have access after hours, DON'T you?)

Why did the bad guys during the Reagan era fear the United States to the point of compliance even though he had a very limited use of the military, yet both Bush’s actually used the fullest extent of our conventional arsenal, and it seems like our enemies are only emboldened.

Do you believe in astrology?

Need Affordable Housing,

Please visit www.mortgageimplode.com and start networking.... ASAP!

Peter, I'm agnostic, I don't really believe in much. But on the otherside, I don't automaticaly disbelieve either.

GC said: At least microsofties are reasonably compensated.

I was at msft when they made the bold decision to start paying essentially industry scale. The brain drain was getting so bad circa 1999 (and the stock had gotten so bloated) that they could no longer pay 30% below the market rate.

That said, it was a pretty good place to work.

Lake Tahoe Renter,

You're aware I was kidding, right? :)

LILLL,

I don't know what I find more incredible, flippers using something more complex than a mitre box OR... that there are still nimrods out and about trying to "make a killing" this late in the game?

Peter, I’m agnostic, I don’t really believe in much. But on the otherside, I don’t automaticaly disbelieve either.

I am not very religious either. But I tend to think that we are all connected by some universal consciousness.

That's my basic belief. I had constructed an intelligent design model for myself way before it became hip.

That’s my basic belief. I had constructed an intelligent design model for myself way before it became hip.

The case for intelligent design is very strong, at least intuitively.

Gilbert, an area near Phoenix has listings that are 25% less than they were a year or two ago. I've been tracking 4 bedroom homes there out of concern for a friend who I had hoped would sell. His house at one time was worth $300K, now similar homes have listings only asking $225K.

I’ve been always amused by the notion that the destinies of the people born on the same day are somehow ruled by the same astronomical objects.

The influences are similar. But the outcome can be quite different.

I also could not figure out how come kids being born at the same moment in Tokyo and Honolulu would have different horoscopes (taking in consideration differnet timezones).

The will have drastically different house positions, which are related to the local solar time.

I also don’t understand how one object of the Kuiper belt (Pluto) is more significant than a much larger one (Eris).

It is all symbolic. Why are tarot cards more significant than credit cards, even though you can buy stuff with the later? :)

I'd normally dismiss it, but everyone who is seriously into astrology correctly guesses that I'm a Leo.

I’d normally dismiss it, but everyone who is seriously into astrology correctly guesses that I’m a Leo.

I am not so easy to guess. I am a Sagittarius but I have Taurus rising, so they see this conservative person who loves food. I do have a risk-taking side but that is hidden from view.

LILLL,

Yeah, not as satisfying as it *should* have been. Perhaps you should have goaded him into holding out for his wishing price:

"You're not giving it away like that, are you? Hrrrmphh!!
You know the market always takes off in the summer, right?
Don't let them "insult" you like that --you're the "owner", you tell THEM what the price is!"

One will be born on Thursday and the other one on Wednesday, yet the local solar time will be exactly the same

The analysis will be the same. The universe does not care so much about political interpretation of time.

Peter P Says:
Randy, what did you run on Vista 64?

SP

That's about it. Then I ran PartitionMagic to recover my hosed dual-boot config.

Seriously, I just need the add'l memory. I have a few 64 bit apps, but I'd just like to use that extra GB of RAM I paid for.

Astrology plays on the same ground as a conventional science, that’s why it’s so easy to demonstrate its shortcomings by using conventional scientific analysis (or common sense) - not applicable to religion.

I don't see it as a science. I see it as a tool of self-understanding.

Seriously, I just need the add’l memory. I have a few 64 bit apps, but I’d just like to use that extra GB of RAM I paid for.

Why do you need 4GB if you do not run Vista?

Would you consider using virtual memory on a dedicated RAM disk?

I use more than 3GB of memory regularly. It swaps. And swaps. And swaps. And swaps.

Did I mention it swaps?

With 4GB of memory I won't have to swap as much.

I use a ramdisk for my neural net software too, but I shouldn't have to, if Windows memory management worked properly. Regardless, I still can't address beyond 3GB because of the OS.

My disks are hyper fast anyway. All tuned for maximum system drive throughput. But swapping still is way too slow.

I use a ramdisk for my neural net software too, but I shouldn’t have to, if Windows memory management worked properly. Regardless, I still can’t address beyond 3GB because of the OS.

Which NN package do you use? I was interested in that stuff for a while.

The commuting paradox reflects the notion that many people, who are supposedly rational (according to classical economic theory, at least), commute even though it makes them miserable. They are not, in the final
accounting, adequately compensated.

Burbed's Theorem: People love things that make them miserable.

Slavery is freedom.

Here's an article from MSN's "Real Estate" Section:
"5 lousy excuses for not buying a home"
"Hard-core renters can come up with all kinds of reasons to avoid real-estate purchases. Here are some of the usual stories -- and why they just don't wash."

http://realestate.msn.com/selling/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=4706111&GT1=9323

I should email the 47 (points) arguments that Patrick publishes on this site to the author. :)

I have twin sister who was born at the same time as I and has nothing in common with me. I blame gender, genetic variations and upbringing

Well, the influences should be similar. What commonalities were you looking for?

Slavery is freedom.

Only because debt is wealth.

@DP,

Hilarious!! Thanks for that (unintended) comedy piece! I've filed that one right next to the infamous NYTimes Fear of Committing? REIC psych-ops piece.

What exactly is a "hard-core renter" anyway?
(Please keep your responses full of vulgarity and obscenity --er, meant to say 'free' of those things... ;-) )

"Im sorry we cant offer the rental to you
we have another offer, can you go higher?"

Hum! How come I dont see that around in Santa Clara or any place.
The stat is 50/50% rental vs owner as with many other cities.
There seems to be plenty of more multiple bids on homes
but none for rentals. What gives!

Five absolutely bad reasons for buying a home should be the title.

The latest numbers from RealtyTrac, which records foreclosures across the U.S., show 837 homes are in some stage of foreclosure in Tracy.

Those include 467 cases in which people have missed payments or received notices of default, 103 that are up for auction and 267 now owned by banks.
http://tracypress.com/content/view/8848/2/

This is how Fortress BA will fall (some day). City by city, advancing from the burbs (or hinterlands, as the case may be). Town by town, mano a mano (one foreclosure at a time). A monthly commuter pass on ACE from Tracy to SJ is only $225 (yes, sleep your commute away).

Peter P really is just trying to stir things up with his posts.

Huh? That was an honest opinion. Usability is very important and I think MSFT has done a lot in that area.

GC,

Does Word 2007 do a better job of rendering to HTML? I'm having a nightmarish time trying to cut and paste Word docs into Wordpress.

DP,

Is that photo at the top the author?

The layout of that article is like a sex sells ad.

Striking, upscale looking woman thinks its great to buy. You should to.

Looks like the same tactic used to sell cars, cigs, and beer.

"Sorry if that was confusing, “Y!” refers to yahoo. All my friends there use Y! or just Y as short form, so I got into the habit."

Sorry. I figured, but I wanted to throw in a (lame) Boolean joke.

I use a ramdisk for my neural net software too, but I shouldn’t have to, if Windows memory management worked properly. Regardless, I still can’t address beyond 3GB because of the OS.

If you used a Real Operating System(*), you wouldn't have this problem.

*-Any flavor of Unix, OS/400, or VMS.

I actually think that the job prospect of the entire Bay Area will be relatively strong, and I am more and more leaning towards the soft landing scenario for very select pockets in entire America.

I work in a very niche industry that serves the government, so the outlook is quite secured, particularly, and my wife works in finance for a major tech company. We feel generally secure about our jobs not because of the general job market, but because we are both very frugal, have almost 0 debt, and enough savings. We live way below our means and our hobbies cost almost nothing. Even in a 1929 situation, we can both take 50% pay cut while still managing to put aside some savings.

Aside from headhunter feedback, we also browse on alumni job database from time to time. There seem to be more job postings for people with 10+ years of experience than for entry level positions. This is exactly the same situation a world over in Asia. I was told repetitively by my friends in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan that the job market cannot be better (probably the best in the last couple decades) for experienced managers, while entry level jobs seem to have evaporated. The placement rate for China's college grads has been hovering around 50-65% for the last 4 years. Put this in perspective, that is a country producing only 4-5M college grads a year, while its economy has been growing at double-digit for the last 20 years. Where do all the jobs go?

So I have a theory for this. Globalization, along with advances in information technology is making LOTS of entry-level jobs obsolete. When I grew up in Hong Kong, one of the main entry-level positions was typist. The ad usually listed how fast a person should type a minute (usually 50-60 words), nowadays, this entire category of typist job is just gone. I also recall in my high school history class that prior to the Nazi Germany, industrialization made the whole job category of roofer obsolete, and these ex-roofers accounted for a significant part of the unemployed crowd who eventually sent Hitler to where he was.

Another example is London. In the 1929 depression, the least hit country, apart from Japan for some odd reasons, was UK. London was in the midst of electronics innovation so after a brief dip in realty price, London was the first metropolitan to recover in real estate. I have a feeling that New York and Bay Area will somehow replicate London's story. London in fact thrived as the northern coal mining towns sunk real deep in the 1930s as unemployment rate went above 40%.

Yep, what I am saying is, select pockets in New York and Bay Area are special, because no matter how bad the whole economy becomes, there are still people with money. In a polarized society like ours, moneyed households tend to huddle together in certain enclaves. Maybe I am over-estimating the wealth of our people, but I think there will enough smart Americans out there who not only won't be affected much by the downturn but thrive on such an upcoming bargain opportunity.