Not worth reading

Several new NNNNs

2010-11-29T12:58:00.001-08:00

I'm slow on making this known.

NNNN 10/5

2010-10-05T09:13:00.000-07:00

RSS this, mofo! No, really. This blog is RSSable.

NNNN 9/16

2010-09-18T13:24:00.000-07:00

NNNN or NNNNN updated.

Disinflation

2010-09-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

So.I started the previous blog subject under the impression that the real-estate apocalypse was just around the corner... that the very low interest rates we observed last fall were only the result of government intervention in the market, and as soon as the government stopped intervening, rates would increase.I clearly was off the mark. Interest rates are lower than they have ever been.So, I've

NNNNN 9/15

2010-09-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

New nar^5.

Interest rates: still low, but CR was still right

2010-05-20T19:21:00.001-07:00

CR predicted that the spread between the yield on the treasury's 10-year bonds and mortgage interest rates would widen by about 0.3% after the Fed ended its MBS purchasing program, and yes, the spread has widened. This is not because mortgage interest rates have started climbing, as I assumed they would. Apparently there were a lot of us out there pointing to the end of the Fed MBS purchase

REOs up 45% YoY

2010-05-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

There are three stages to foreclosure:1) Notice of default. (NOD) The bank says "hey, you, you quit paying us three months ago!"2) Notice of Trustee Sale. (NTS) The bank says "hey, you, you quit paying us nine months ago, we're going to have to take back your house"Banks have been chugging along filing NODs and NTSs, but have stopped short of actually taking possession of houses. Instead, they

It's over!

2010-04-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

The government's $8K price support for houses is over. If houses did not go under contract by today, then their buyers will not qualify for the $8K tax credit. Didn't attract a buyer before the deadline passed? It's not entirely due to the fact that you overpriced your house. Orange county hasn't had very many buyers -- why? Overpricing, I suppose. I guess it is your fault. Too bad that the

Consequences

2010-04-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

The government has worked to keep house prices high. New entrants to the housing market are paying inflated prices; and they are defaulting at inflated rates.IrvineRealtor has a great post today, which includes this graph.Government insured loans for first-time home buyers (FHA loans) from 2008 -- from AFTER the bubble had begun to burst -- are performing as bad as the toxic loans made in the

Forclosure Moratoria Muerte

2010-04-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

Loan owners have been squatting in the houses they cannot afford for the past year. The HAMP program and various threats from the govt that the banks should "do more" to keep loan owners in their houses has produced a backlog in the foreclosure process.Instead of being evicted for not paying their mortgages, loan owners have been squatting rent free living in a house they could not otherwise

Creepy!

2010-04-15T14:35:00.001-07:00

This listing features the POV of the escaped convict as he approaches the unsuspecting baby sitter inside...Fortunately, it doesn't show us the interior. Who would want to see that?

How'd he get that price?

2010-04-10T15:48:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder where some house prices come from, like, how did they dream up that number?XXX Hardwick Pl Asking $449,900, $155/sqft.Purchased 2003 for $335K. First mortgage, $286K, with 20% down.Then in 2007, the owner took out a $150K HELOC.( $286K + $150K ) * 1.06 realtor's fees = $443K.So they're asking $450K.The owner to you, the buyer: "Look, I already spent $150K of the money I was going to

Government Price Support Ending

2010-04-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

The Fed's $1.25 Trillion MBS purchase program unceremoniously ended last week, and already, interest rates have risen. So far, their rise has been the modest 0.3% that CalculatedRisk has been predicting for a long time, but that doesn't mean they might not rise further; we'll have to wait and see.Less than a month from now, at the end of April, the home buyer's tax credit will expire. On May 1st

CR Links for the day

2010-03-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Two good posts from CalculatedRisk this morning.First: The Fed's Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) purchase program is now 99.84% complete. Only $2 Billion (only!) remain to be spent on MBS of the original $1.25 Trillion that was printed for their purchase.Remember, the reason this program exists is to drop the interest rate on mortgages. Low interest rates mean borrowers can bid higher prices

a lost resource

2010-03-06T05:57:00.000-08:00

A few months back, I mentioned a Realtor whose blog I had been following. I decided that I didn't want to link directly to that Realtor's blog so that, in case they were watching their incoming traffic, they wouldn't see the link from my web page and know that I -- a bear! -- was relying on their blog postings to get a sense of the market. Instead, I listed a few search terms that google would

What a winter!

2010-02-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

I've been really really busy this winter. Holy cow. Two posts since December.As my readers already know, I am not a real estate professional. I'm not a Realtor. I'm not a lawyer involved in closing. I'm not an appraiser. So when my real job makes demands, there's not always time to research properties. IrvineRenter, on the other hand, is researching properties as part of his job. (Of

Analogy

2010-01-20T06:44:00.001-08:00

From Dinosaur Comics

Foreclosure news

2010-01-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

N.C. Foreclosure filings up 17% in 2009HT: www.patric.net

Chase the market down

2009-12-20T06:57:00.000-08:00

XXX Sylvan Way $139/sqft. Asking $359,000.Sellers: don't miss out on the fantastic interest rates before the Fed stops its $1.3 Trillion MBS purchase program. CalculatedRisk says the program is 85% complete and is on track to finish by April 2010 as scheduled. At that point, expect mortgage interest rates to jump 0.35 to 0.5% over night. (The Fed seems to think rates will jump by 1% overnight

Three years old.

2009-12-13T19:13:00.000-08:00

This is as good a market as any seller will find for the next decade. The fed has lowered interest rates to 4.5%. The fed is even giving buyers an extra $8K (which means only that buyers can bid an extra $8K for the same house).If you're trying to sell your house now, and you haven't sold yet, you need to lower your sales price as quickly as possible to unload your property now while the

Now and Then

2009-12-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

Chapel Hill houses increased in price dramatically in the last decade. These price increases coincided with a housing bubble in the rest of the country.So the question that potential buyers have to ask themselves is this: were Chapel Hill's price increases due to the bubble or due to a change in the desirability of Chapel Hill?Houses were affordable in Chapel Hill ten years ago. One house near

Negative Equity

2009-11-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

I haven't come across very many houses in Chapel Hill where the owners owe more than the asking. Generally, this is a good thing for the owners and for the town, but the bear in me who wants to see a return to normal home pricing would prefer to see foreclosures and strategic-defaults which would flush out all the bad debt in the system quickly. Instead, it looks like housing will be a drain on

Not really a short sale

2009-11-20T19:47:00.000-08:00

XXX Cheswick Ct $187 /sqft. Asking $239,900.Today's property has a pink kitchen. Maybe that's why they feel it is worth so much.It's also a "short sale," according to the listing.It's asking $239,000 after having been purchased in 2007 for $250K.Today's seller does not understand the term "short sale." A short sale is when the BANK looses money. If the seller looses some or all of their down

CR links for the day

2009-11-20T08:01:00.001-08:00

I love CalculatedRisk. If you're reading my blog, and you're not reading CR, I'd recommend doing so. Because CR posts so much content so frequently, keeping up with his blog is a full time job. So the service I'll offer is to link to relevant CR stories.It's only 8 am on the west coast, but already CR has had two terrific posts.1) North Carolina unemployment is now at 11%. It is very near

Meadowmont

2009-11-16T19:35:00.000-08:00

I haven't picked on Meadowmont for a long time, but only because it seems too easy.There is one realtor in Chapel Hill whom I like. I won't link to his blog, because I don't want him to know I read it -- and judging by my recent harsh words for realtors in the area, I don't want to stigmatize him*. What he does is post regular updates for recent transactions, broken down by neighborhood, and

Chapel Hill Realtors love the housing credit

2009-11-08T07:14:00.001-08:00

Marie Scheuring wants you to know that this is great news:Congress has passed a bill to extend the original Dec 1, 2009 deadline to include buyers who are under contract by April 30th and closed no later than end of June 2010. This is great news for first time buyers who just couldn't get it together or find the right home by now.Jody Bakst is really excited about the extension: The significant

Everybody gets $6.5K to buy a house

2009-11-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

Who benefits from the extension of the homebuyers tax credit?1) Current home owners2) Realtors3) BanksWhy?1) Current home owners: The new extension to this tax credit allows anyone*, not just first time home buyers, to receive a tax credit. That means that people who are currently selling can expect their buyers to bid $6,500 more than they would otherwise be able to. The market will rest on an

Residual Delusion

2009-11-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

There are some attractive properties below $150/sqft within the Chapel Hill school district. Today's property is not one of them.XXX Oxford Road $225/sqft. Asking $289K.Purchased new in 1992 for $139K. 03/16/1992 DEED OF TRUST [No image found] 11/23/1993 DEED OF TRUST North american mortgage company -- $127,500 03/10/1998 DEED OF TRUST Capital savings company -- refinanced for $132,000

$300 Billion

2009-10-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

The Federal Reserve's summerlong initiative to keep mortgage interest rates low was a stunning success. By buying mortgage backed securities at incredibly high volumes, it simulated high demand. High demand kept the interest rates on those securities low. That meant people buying this summer were able to finance at historically unprecidented interest rates in the range of 4.5 to 5.0%.Low

Charlotte: 12% Unemployment

2009-10-21T08:10:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on the Post about the effect Wachovia's demise has had on Charlotte.I'm also enjoying the Vanity Fair article on the Wall Street meltdown back in September 2008. On Wachovia:Meanwhile, Jon Pruzan, the Morgan Stanley banker who had been assigned to review Wachovia’s $122 billion mortgage portfolio—to crack the tape—finally had some answers. A team of Morgan bankers in New York

Walk to Foster's

2009-10-14T19:11:00.000-07:00

XXX E Columbia Place $215/sqft, Asking $409,000One of my favorite restaurants in Chapel Hill is Foster's Market. Today's property is only a short walk from there. That's fortunate for today's owners because they'll be able to continue walking to Foster's for a long time. This house will not sell at this price.I suppose it's fortunate for them that they didn't completely tap the housing ATM.Feb

Interest rates

2009-10-12T20:03:00.000-07:00

Having looked at the property records for several dozen houses now, I've gotten a general sense (not data) for average financing in Chapel Hill. The most common feature is 10% down. This is usually accomplished by a 80% first mortgage and a 10% second mortgage. Fairly often, I'll see an additional HELOC on top.When you require 10% down, there are more people who can bid price X than if you

900% Return on Investment

2009-09-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

XXX Brookgreen Drive $199/sqft. Asking $513,000Invest $25K in a 10% downpayment on a $250K house. Wait 10 years. Sell that house for $500K. You make $225K off $25KBut before you say "that sounds too good to be true," just wait until I tell you that you don't even have to sell the house to start seeing a return on your investment!Here's the timeline for todays home-debtors:01/29/1999 Purchased

Pipeline

2009-09-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

The foreclosure process is going to help purge our system of excess debt. It will be very expensive for banks, and traumatic for home-debtors. But it will return housing costs to those which can be sustained.Home buyers between 2001 and 2007 started extending themselves more and more so that they could purchase a home. Real estate appreciates endlessly, of course, and so you make money by

Harrington Bank

2009-09-26T21:07:00.000-07:00

Calculated risk just posted a link to a website that has calculated the troubled-asset ratio for all banks in the US.I've seen a couple familiar banks show up again and again in the HELOC records for Chapel Hill properties. Harrington Bank, which is headquartered in Chapel Hill, is one of those banks.What's Harrington Bank's troubled-asset ratio? 24. That means the value of its assets tied up

August home sales from TMLS

2009-09-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

From the Triangle MLS website:August registered 123 sales. There were 144 sales in July 2009. Of course, it's expected that August sales drop relative to July sales. In 2004-2007, August sales fell by 8% relative to July. However, this year August fell by a much larger 14% relative to July.The triangle MLS reports that cumulative sales are down 25% compared to last year. From the numbers

Condos

2009-09-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

June 2007 "The Downtown Economic Development Initiative, a collaboration between the town and Ram Development Co., will bring about 140 condos to downtown. For about $7.25 million, plus the value of the 2-acre site that now houses a municipal parking lot, the town will receive about 160 underground parking spaces to rent to the public."June 2008 "'Developers are very optimistic risk takers,'

Not yet Case Schiller

2009-09-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

From the sales price data I've extracted so far, here's the median appreciation you would have gotten from your house if you bought in various years and sold in 2007.1992 -- 2.3441993 -- 2.0691994 -- 1.9771995 -- 1.7741996 -- 1.7311997 -- 1.6731998 -- 1.6121999 -- 1.5372000 -- 1.5502001 -- 1.4112002 -- 1.4232003 -- 1.2782004 -- 1.2462005 -- 1.1542006 -- 1.0792007 -- 1.000I'm looking at house

Anemic Sales

2009-09-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Sales volume is way down.June sales in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 were more than twice what they are were this past June. 2008 was a weak year. 2009 is dramatically weaker than 2008.Volume will not return until prices drop....About the data:A good friend and regular commentator in the CHBB forums, Kral, spent an evening with me and created a fantastic set of python scripts to crawl the Orange

Free Money is Addictive

2009-08-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

XXX Homestead Road $162/sqft. Asking $364,900.This home was foreclosured upon in July. I wouldn't call it a bargain at its price. This is however what its previous owner paid for it when she bought it in 2002. When it was bought in 1997, it sold for $130K. It nearly tripled in price in 5 years. (Just because Case-Shiller marks 2000 as it's reference "100" point doesn't mean the bubble

Prime real estate

2009-08-26T19:11:00.000-07:00

What part of Chapel Hill would you think the most expensive? Location seems the most important factor, and proximity to the University being pretty much the only metric of location quality. That leaves the area south of Cameron to the west of the University, and of course, Franklin street, in that old-growth stretch past the East End before it starts steeply down hill.8XX E Franklin Street $175

Triangle MLS reporting

2009-08-22T12:51:00.001-07:00

How does the Triangle Business Journal cover the July sales figures posted by the Triangle MLS?"MLS: Triangle home sales heat up in July"Across the triangle, more houses sold in June than in July CORRECTION July than in June, so the story title makes you think that real estate is HOT. They don't mention that sales are always higher in July than they are in June. Nor do they mention that sales

Orange county is bucking the trend

2009-08-21T11:57:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post currently is leading with a story that July home sales are up 5% YOY (and 7% from June). Nationally, prices have been falling. As prices drop, demand increases. This is a natural response; it doesn't mean we're necessarily at the bottom when volume increases a bit, especially when volume up until now has been at historic lows. It just means that we're closer to the bottom

Valley Park Condos

2009-08-16T19:10:00.000-07:00

XXX Valley Park Drive. $284/sqft. Asking $185,000.I spent a summer living in the Valley Park Apartments years ago. I shared that tiny two bedroom apartment with a friend of mine. It was cramped, the kitchen was tiny. My friend had TiVo, which made up for a lot. That, and my portion of the rent was only $300/month.Recently, the apartments were converted into condos. The kitchens were

Foreclosures on google maps

2009-08-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

CalculatedRisk pointed out that google maps nowdisplays foreclosure data. The data that google is displaying comes from various points in the foreclosure process. NODs, NTSs, & REOs all show up on this map. So I had to take a look: what's in the pipeline for Chapel Hill?Here is a map for the 27514 zipcode.There are hardly any on the map. I'm surprised.Compare that with 10 miles away in

I'm going to post more news links

2009-08-12T09:08:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try and increase the links-to-news content, which means, I'm not always going to post when I have a house that I want to point out.Sometimes, it'll just be a link to an article.Like this one:"The vacancy rate in the Triangle’s apartment market hit a five-year high of 10.4 percent in July, according to a report released Thursday by Real Data Apartment Market Research.That’s up from

Priced to comps

2009-08-01T20:01:00.001-07:00

XXX Pebble Springs Road, $155 /sqft, Asking $399,900Todays property costs 50% more than it did ten years ago. In fact, it did all of its appreciation between 1999 and 2005 when its current owners bought the place. If it sells for its asking price of $399, then since 2005 when it was purchased for $362, this house has merely been keeping up with a 2% inflation. Today's asking price is

Rental Parity II

2009-07-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

XXX Presque Isle Lane $153/sqft. Asking $250,000Yesterday I promised to show an example of rental parity that's already arrived in Chapel Hill. According to IriveRenters criteria, someone looking to either rent or buy this house should buy it. It's a little cheaper to buy than to rent. If it is cheaper to buy than to rent, then rational market participants should snatch up this property.

Rental Parity

2009-07-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

XXX Worth $175/sqft. Asking $978,000.IrvineRenter was one of the first people to publicly announce in 2007 that the housing market was in a bubble. That's when he started his blog, at least. His basis for this conclusion was that it was cheaper to rent than to own. Properties in Irvine had inflated to a point that the monthly mortgage payments were more than the properties could fetch as

Foreclosure in the works

2009-07-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

XXX Tinkerbell Road $151/sqft. $389,000.I'm going to predict that today's property will end up in foreclosure. The "owners" owe $368,037 on this property which they purchased a year and a half ago for $296,500. To avoid a shortsale/foreclosure situation, the owners have to get at least $143/sqft.In their neighborhood, two houses just sold:6/30/2009 -- 421 Tinkerbell Road. $119/sqft. $222,350

As good as sold

2009-07-06T23:03:00.001-07:00

XXX Canterbury Lane $296/sqft. Asking $999,000.Todays owners have been in their house since 1991.In 1991, they bought the house. The county's stamp-tax records are incomplete. They took out a $55K 15-year mortgage with WachoviaIn January 1999, they refinanced with the State Employees Credit Union (SECU) for $75K.By December 1999, they were ready for a little more of that delicious MEW, so

Tally: 1 for 5

2009-07-03T23:20:00.001-07:00

I've now looked at the debt history for 5 houses, and it's only been the first one that I looked at that showed evidence of mortgage abuse.XXX Westbury Drive $119/sqft. Asking $400,000Today's property was purchased in 1992 by its current owners for $235K. At the time it was $70/sqft. It looks like they put 65K down and had a mortgage of ~$175. In 1999, they refinanced to a ~$185K. In 2004,

Instructions for Finding House Debt History

2009-07-02T00:12:00.000-07:00

Say I'm interested in looking at the debt history for 123 Hoosuredaddie St in Chapel Hill. Maybe I'm interested in purchasing this house and want to learn what it sold for recently, or maybe I'm curious if it's owners were serial refinancers.I have to go to two websites:1) I go to the Address Inquiry page on the Orange County property records website.. There I search for "Hoosuredaddie St" in

Count your chickens

2009-07-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

XXX Perry Creek Drive $142/sqft. Asking $460,000(This property is not listed for sale on realtor.com. One source tells me it's for sale, but another says it's no longer on the market.)5/28/2002 -- Bought for $350,000 -- $280,000 ARM Mortgage and a $70,000 downpayment.9/26/2003 -- Refinanced for $289,0001/6/2004 -- Took out a second mortgage for $26,6002/2/2007 -- Opened a HELOC for $99,4005/

Ghost Town

2009-06-30T01:29:00.001-07:00

113 Atterbury Street $237 / sqft. $799,900Orange County records show that every single house on this street is owned by an investor or the builder. The other houses aren't listed for sale, however.For some reason, I can't find this address on any map. Buyers aren't biting; 309 days on the market. Maybe they can't find it either.

What a view

2009-06-28T23:02:00.001-07:00

For $273/sqft, this house offers you the opportunity to bathe in front of your neighbors

Stress

2009-06-28T21:52:00.000-07:00

When the bubble burst in San Diego, the city that first saw the end of the bubble, it was greatly effected by foreclosures at the bottom end of the market; the subprime implosion. As subprime mortgages were pulled from the offerings, volume disappeared. Prices had risen to a point that, without subprime mortgages, there were no buyers. So prices had to drop to return to a point where the

How it will burst

2009-06-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

130 F-9 Estes DriveI don't have enough data to definitively prove that the appreciation seen in Chapel Hill during the bubble years was driven by the exotic loans and the subsequent self-reinforcing euphoria over home ownership (and in particular, mortgage equity withdrawl -- MEW). What I have is this: a simple argument that appreciation is due to changes in the desirability of an area (and not

Was Chapel Hill's appreciation justified?

2009-06-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

106 Baskerville Circle in Durham CountyAcknowledging that housing prices have increased over the last ten years, I have to counter the second of the two arguments home owners like to use to justify current prices:Our area is better, so the appreciation is justified.I have a funny story.So, when I first started thinking about the housing bubble and how it related to Chapel Hill, I ran a quick

Prices rose

2009-06-23T23:08:00.000-07:00

102 Windhover Place.There are two common defensive tactics that current home owners will take when trying to defend the idea that current housing prices are here to stay.1) Our area didn't see appreciation the way other areas did (e.g. California).and2) Our area is better than other areas, so any appreciation made sense.In this post, I'll address tactic #1.Did prices rise in Chapel Hill?

Meadowmont, 18 months of supply

2009-06-22T23:41:00.000-07:00

207 Oval Park PlaceThe rule of thumb, according to the Seatltle Bubble Blog, is that 6 months of supply is a balanced market. Fewer than 6 months of supply is a sellers market, more than 6 months of supply is a buyers market.Meadowmont has seen 2 properties close in the last 31 days. There are 36 active listings. There are 2 continent listings, and 5 pendings. Discounting the contingent and

Southern Village: 170% appreciation.

2009-06-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

203 Edgewater Circle. Asking: $206 / sqft. Price: $634,900.I'm starting a new theme to my sporadic posts on this blog.I have been in awe of the incredible reporting on the housing bubble in Irvine California from the Irvine Housing Blog as well as from the Seattle Bubble Blog, the Real C'Ville Blog and the Housing Bubble Blog. The new theme will describe properties in Chapel Hill, North

Recast

2009-05-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

The foreclosure crisis is not nearly done. It's just beginning. The key is that "exotic financing" will lead to monthly-payment increases for homeowners EVEN IF interest rates remain at these historically low levels. These exotic loans "recast" to regular old amortizing loans ~3 or 5 years after the original loan date. We will see record default levels this fall.Don't trust me, trust

Repeat after me: Saudi Arabia is moderate

2009-05-10T12:49:00.000-07:00

Just keep saying it and it will be true.Ignore anything that suggests otherwise.

Shaky Grounds

2009-04-26T15:56:00.001-07:00

From an editorial by Frank Rich in the TimesFive years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war....That sums up the

Bailout

2009-03-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, I went to my sock drawer to find out that I was completely out of socks. The drawer was empty, much to my surprise, since over the past three weeks it has averaged half full. No one could have seen this coming.The problem seems to be that all of my current sock assets are tied up in the dirty laundry pile. It's strange to be in this situation where I have plenty of socks, but I'm

It's a miracle!

2009-03-08T17:31:00.001-07:00

Pastor deflects a gunshot with a bible. Nothing short of a miracle. Fucking atheists need more proof in God than that?Oh. That's not fair, right? "The man died, have some respect."So what would the headline have been if the shooter's gun had jammed after the first shot instead of after the fourth? When a plane crashes and the carefully trained flight attendants get everyone out without

D'oh

2009-02-27T10:08:00.001-08:00

Southpaw!?

2009-01-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Open Hostility II

2009-01-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

The Onion continuesSpider Eggs Hatch In Bush's Brain

Open Hostility

2009-01-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

The Onion has continued in its post-election cathartic Bush suffering articles yesterday with this gem:"Single-engine Cessna crashes into BushCAMP DAVID, MD—The Federal Aviation Administration said engine failure was to blame for a pilot losing control of a four-seater Cessna aircraft that crashed head-on into President Bush Thursday. According to the FAA report, the nose of the Cessna 350

WaMu got it right

2008-12-28T10:56:00.000-08:00

“We hope to do to this industry what Wal-Mart did to theirs, Starbucks did to theirs, Costco did to theirs and Lowe’s-Home Depot did to their industry. And I think if we’ve done our job, five years from now you’re not going to call us a bank.”— Kerry K. Killinger, chief executive of Washington Mutual, 2003From today's Times

Kennedy sent us to the moon.

2008-11-14T17:27:00.001-08:00

Where does Bush send us?

short and sweet

2008-10-09T00:36:00.001-07:00

"I don't particularly want to see my tax dollars going to bail out the fools who overpaid for houses while simultaneously crowding me out of the market."-- Irvine Renter on McCain's new "lets buy up bad mortgages" plan

Bailout Cost?

2008-09-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Paulson went around to the weekend morning talk shows in Washington.When asked about the expense of buying bad mortgages from the reckless lenders, Paulson cautioned that the $1 Trillion expense that the treasury is putting up won't necessarily loose all that money. What they will get with that money are "illiquid assets" that will eentually be liquified.Oh. So how much will the these mortgages

Let the games begin

2008-09-16T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm moderately miffed that in the wake of a speculative bubble in housing prices, one which I avoided taking part in by selling a house (before a move) and then renting in my new city, that the government has stepped in to bolster Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with my (taxpayer) money. What kind of punishment is it to the people who were smart enough to avoid a bubble that they should pay higher

Testing RSS

2008-09-08T11:02:00.001-07:00

I'm years behind the times. Stromk just showed me how to use RSS and now I have to test it.

Gonzales: I forgot how to tie my shoes

2008-09-02T09:23:00.001-07:00

When Gonzales testified before Congress a year ago concerning the firing of 8 prosecutors, he avoided all of their questions with Ronald Reagan like dodges: "I don't recall." Instead of owning up to the decisions he made, he refused to acknowledge that he'd made them... or at least, that's what continued acts of forgetfulness look like to me.But there was always the possibility that Gonzales was

Russia: the most fucked up country in the world

2008-08-31T21:15:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine anything like this ever happening in the United States.From the post:"A leading opposition figure in Russia's volatile Ingushetia province was shot and killed Sunday after being detained by police... Magomed Yevloyev, a businessman and the owner of a Web site that angered Kremlin-backed local leaders with its coverage of official corruption and police abuse, suffered a gunshot

Gold Stars

2008-08-16T23:59:00.001-07:00

I have been playing a lot of Rock Band with Pants lately. Well, for the past 6 months. 10 months. Something like that.We'd stopped playing for a few months and then picked it back up again recently when our downstairs barkeep had Guitar Hero running in the bar, and then later that week, invited us over to his place where a bunch of people got together to play Rock Band. I'd lost a fair amount

Another great Hitchens article

2008-07-21T18:07:00.001-07:00

On Slate

new stamp

2008-05-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

Virtual destructor

2008-05-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

My fan base quickly pointed out that in the example code I sent through valgrind the other day, that class Derived didn't allocate any dynamic memory, and that not calling its destructor would not have been expected to leak memory. All of the comments I got suggested that if I had allocated some block of dynamic memory, either with a stl vector or a raw C-style array inside the constructor, and

I wish I could quit you

2008-05-17T15:03:00.000-07:00

I got stuck in emacs while using cygwin. C-x C-c did nothing. So I tried M-x to type out a bunch of possible "exit" commands.I tried:quitexitleaveThese are not meaningful ways to end emacs.How do you quit?M-x save-buffers-kill-emacsThank you google. If not for you, I might still be trapped in emacs hell.

valgrind non-virtual dstor leak bug

2008-05-15T13:23:00.001-07:00

I ran valgrind on the following code which, you'll see, leaks the data stored in the derived class.Valgrind does not seem to notice the leak. I'm not so happy about that./// test.cc#include class Base {public: virtual void blah() = 0; ~Base() { std::cout << "Base dstor" << std::endl; }private: int data_;};class Derived : public Base{public: virtual void blah() {} ~Derived() { std::cout << "

Swedish Meatballs

2008-05-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

"The steer grazes on grass during the day and enjoys the occasional swede as a treat."

Infant waterboarding

2008-04-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

To ghastly to believe.http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/04/18/ng.polygamy.crime.cnn

snowboarding

2008-04-09T18:28:00.001-07:00

Pants and I finished our third day of snowboarding at this resort an hour outside of the city. They had this deal for newbs: $100, 3 lift tickets, 3 rentals, 3 lessons. I had a blast, and so did Pants, who before our first day had never been skiing, snowboarding or even sledding. It was her first time on a snowy hill. She liked it so much, we're talking about getting a season ticket next year

Welfare Dad

2008-04-04T10:08:00.001-07:00

You know this guy is just going to go out and make the same mistakes the next time 'round. Those suckling at Uncle Sam's teat tend to think they never have to assume responsibility for their mistakes.

Bush: "I broke the law, I dare you to impeach me"

2008-02-06T12:21:00.000-08:00

"Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees. It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on [Abd al-Rahim al-]Nashiri."-- CIA director Michael Hayden, yesterday.Waterboarding is torture. Torture is banned under international treaty. Bush violated international

Twelve McCain Supporters

2008-02-06T00:35:00.001-08:00

In all of West Virginia, only twelve people voted for John McCain. Twelve. I bet they know each other.Of course, that's still 1% of the West Virginia vote, because only a little more than a thousand people in west virginia voted. The rest must think they live in Russia where there's no such thing as democracy.

Awesome

2008-02-02T14:28:00.000-08:00

Hologram

Racist

2008-01-22T10:24:00.001-08:00

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole; that's what we'd do."-- Mike Huckabee, while in South Carolina.

Unamerican

2008-01-21T14:46:00.001-08:00

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do — is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we

Flu

2007-12-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

I've come down with a nasty case of the flu which has incapacitated me since Monday night. I've been staying home mostly so I don't infect everyone else in the lab -- but if I went in to lab, I'd get nothing done there either.The most-likely suspect for having infected me is, of course, Pants. She came home with something from work, and ended up staying home one day. She was slightly feverish,

Hardware watchpoint in GDB

2007-11-12T11:21:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the synatax for setting a hardware watchpoint in GDB is impossible to find in google. Or rather, there are misleading instructions on how to set the watchpoint. The instructions you'll find say "watch for when variable x gets changed by writing 'watch x'". But this never solves a memory corruption bug. At least for me.This post is for my own purposes. I never want to waste

Mukasey

2007-11-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

The president of the Uninted States continues to violate the constitution he swore to uphold in torturing prisoners. He has asked congress to replace his former torture-enabler, the embattled Gonzales, with a new puppet, Robert Mukasey. When Mukasey went before the Senate, he would not say that waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding is torture. Mukasey has publicly expressed his willingness

Religion is evil

2007-09-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

A catholic bishop makes up a story about how condoms give you AIDS. Does he have any proof for his claim? No. Of course not. But that's the thing. Religious authority has never been constrainted by the burden of proof, so people are used to just listening to whatever lunatic ideas they have.This bishop has blood on his hands.

not surprised

2007-09-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

The Post declares Putin's move a surprise. I disagree. He's always behaved like a dictator. Now he's just assuming the mantle.

Dead air

2007-08-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

As we drove from North Dakota into Montana on Wednesday evening, the sun was setting and I was getting tired. We'd been driving since 9 that morning (central time) and it was almost 8 (mountain time). I scanned through the chanels on the truck's radio and stopped on a classic rock station which was finishing off some song I didn't recognize from the early 80's I figured. It went to a comercial