Housing Boom -or- Bust?

is a graph that puts the current housing boom into a historical perspective.

That is a LONG way to fall.

I said before that the crazy lending practices such as interest only loans and the like are going to cause some serious issues with home values in the not too distant future. The signs of it happening have already started. The last new housing report showed that new purchases fell something like 6%. That is a large drop. The ramifications of such a drop are that building companies now have a large surplus of houses, which means they won't be building new ones until they can move the old ones, which means layoff's in the previously booming construction industry, which leads to people not being able to make their interest-only payments on their houses, which begets forclosures, which then starts to drop the housing values because they are over priced and require an interest-only loan for most to afford. As that happens the fed cranks up interest rates to hold off inflation which cranks up the adjustable rate on those interest only loans pricing more people out of their affordable range thus causing more forclosers. BOOM, crash.

It'll happen, the only questions are when, how fast, and how bad. It'll be ugly regardless. So hold onto that equity in your house so you can absorb the fall. And if at all possible lock that adjustable rate mortgage into a fixed rate as soon as humanely possible.

Exciting times!

Duh!

Can we say 'jumping to conclusions'? After the obsession of the media of John Mark Karr we now have what wasn't much of a surprise come out: here.

10 years after the girl's murder this guy comes forward and gets a ton of media attention and it all turns out to be a load of crap. So I guess the media can go back to speculating on if it was her mother or dad or cousin or dog or cat or whatever. Oh what I would give to get back to a straight-talking media where the anchor's don't think of themselves as TV stars. Jackasses.

How Cool Would It Be...

...to have some sort of units of measurement named after you? As in: such and so is 7 Kautzes. Awesome! Now what needs to be measured that doesn't have a name yet...hmmm....

Snakes on a Plane!!!!11!!1!111!!!

Saw it. Love it. Much more entertaining than you'd think.

Fan Trailor

All your snakes are belong to us!

Yay!!!

Update

Oy!

Thought I'd post a quick update since I sorta fell off the face of the earth for a bit.

1) The boat works! Took it out last weekend while camping at Lake Anna. I thought it broke down again that Friday but it turns out that a $40 part was all it needed and it worked great the rest of the weekend. Even got a few waves up over the bow to soak people. :)

2) I picked up a second somewhat largish long-term contract so between that and the work I'm doing for my previous job (TADOnline) I should be good to go. Kautz Consulting is back, bitches! That, however, is what has kept me so busy.

3) My house has become the revolving door of roommates. The same weekend Luke moved out Leslie moved in and took over Luke's room totally unexpected. For rent, I'm making her deal with the cat fluids. Ick.

4) Today is the day I've been waiting for: Mother Fucking SNAKES on a Mother Fucking PLANE! I'm so hyped! But first, time to go fly some R/C planes around and see if we can have any more mid-air collisions. Yay!

Boat Update

To recap, the gears in the drivetrain of my boat exploded on July 3rd. I took it into the shop on July 5th. I told them I need it back by Aug 10th for a camping trip on Laka Anna on the 11th. Two weeks after dropping it off they called me with the damage assessment. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the drive shaft was suspect as well.

So, after bothering the crap out of them this week they finally completed the work yesterday (August 10th)...down to the wire. I spent 9 hours in the car yesterday driving down to pick it up, taking it to Lake Anna, then driving home. The repairs cost $2115. I guess no mechanical problems for 5 years is a pretty good run.

So I have my boat back and all is good! I fixed the anchor light last night for some night boating and I have a backup solution for my on-going radio issues.

Good times this weekend!

A Funny Thing Happened...

...when I tried to make a phone call today. I received a busy signal. Why is that funny? I couldn't figure out what it was at first. Luckily, my phone was there to tell me it was busy. It occurs to me that I haven't received a busy signal in literally years. Usually it goes to voicemail now.

Anyone else notice that the busy signal has more or less gone the way of the dodo?

Political Views

I've said before that I moved pretty far to the left in response to what has happened since the BS impeachment attempt of Clinton, the election in 2000, and the BS war in Iraq. I wasn't always this far to the left and, in fact, I still linger towards some traditional conservative view points. By traditional conservative I am not talking about the conversatives that hijacked the Republican party in the 90's. I believe in stronger state governments, for example.

Anyway, this is a short post that describes what I think happened to a lot of people, myself included, that shaped our views and pushed us further left than we were before.

I agree that partisanship will be with us for the foreseeable future and while that is a sad thing we need to adapt to it. Peeps like Liberman providing politcal coverage to the GOP crap need to be challenged and made to defend their views via contested primaries. It is a fundemental excercise in democracy and one that hasn't been taken advantage of enough. Do you realize the incumbency rate of federal Senators is over 90%? The only time a senate seat changes basically boils down to when the incumbent senator retires or dies. They aren't being challenged and are not being held accountable to the voting public. Joe Liberman's reaction to his primary challenge by Lamont is a good witness to this. He was totally offended that someone would dare - DARE - challenge him. What an ass.

Opps, went off on a rant there. Sorry about that. Anyway, what shaped your views politically?

Mel Gibson

I used to like the guy, then he went nuts. Totally off his rocker.

In any case, can we stop with the play-by-play in the news about his DUI? I mean, seriously. I think there are probably more important things that could be taking up the airwaves.

30 Days

Ok, I know I'm full of glowing reviews but I believe I explained that already.

So, here is another one for you.

'30 Days' is a TV Show by the guy that made the movie 'Supersize This' in which he spent 30 days eating nothing but McDonald's food to show what happens to the human body on such a diet. It wasn't pretty. In the TV series it follows someone places in a situation outside of their normal experience. It is a social experiment and it is awesome. For example, one of the more remarkable ones was when they took an all-american god-fearing Oklahoma quarterback and stuck him with a single Gay man in the heart of San Fransico. It is an incrediable way to see how these different cultures clash and how they learn from each other.

We are now in the second season of '30 Days' and the premier was taking a Minuteman (the viglanties patrolling the border) and stick him with an illegal immigrant family in LA. I just finished watching it. In a nutshell, wow! It was a seven member family living in a house with less than 500 sq ft. Three of the kids were illegal and two were born in the US, making them citizens. The middle child was college bound. Most of the political fighting happened between the college-bound girl and the minuteman. Sharp girl..sharp dude too. The show did a GREAT job of representing both sides and showing why the problem is so complicated. I highly recommend anyone that wants to know more about the entire issue to try to catch one of the repeats.

Next weeks episode involves a guy whose job was shipped to India. It looks like they send the guy to India to do his job there. Looks pretty interesting.

Love these social experiements. :)

"Isn't it Ironic"

Now this is a real example of irony.

'Good, Bad, I'm the one with the gun'

Some of you know that I have a HUGE fan of the Evil Dead series. I have all of them, collector's version as well. I even have the action figure. I've been a fan of Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell before they were super famous (Sam Rami is the Spider Man director).

'Army of Darkness' was released in theaters a while back. That movie was actually a continutation of the Evil Dead series. It was Evil Dead 3. People have been dogging Rami and Campbell for years to make a new one and they have always turned it down.

I was poking around Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and looked up Sam Rami. Low and behold, he is the producer of an Evil Dead remake. He wants a new director and new cast to do a remake like what was done with Dawn of the Dead, etc. Evil Dead was one of the best horror movies of all time and influenced the genre quite a bit. It is fantastic to hear that it will be remade, can't wait!

However, they will be casting a new Ash since it is a remake. Oh the horror! Just won't be the same.

So I did some more poking around and I finally found what I was looking for...Evil Dead 4, bitches! There will be a new one in the series with Campbell playing Ash again. It might be called Army of Darkness 2, which would suck, but I guess it makes since because it would be a bit confusing to have The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 4 out at the same time. Who cares though, the import thing is that Ash is coming back, baby!

Oh oh oh! And a Bubba Ho-tep 2 is on the slate as well.

Anyway, here is the link with all the goods.

Some good movies are on the horizon.

Funky Movies

Ok, so from some comments in another thread I thought I'd post this.

Two movies, if you want somewhat unique experiences this year, you should see are:

A Scanner Darkly
Lady in the Water

A Scanner Darkly is like watching an acid trip, and it is meant to be that way. Apparently they filmed the movie and then went back over it and sorta cartoonized the entire thing. It is REALLY hard to describe. It does have some of the best conversations since Pulp Fiction in it though, particularly the one about the 18-speed bike. Pure gold. Here are a couple of choice paragraphs from a review that I think do a better job of summing it up that I do:

"A Scanner Darkly changes everything. Even though Phillip K. Dick wrote it, Richard adapted the screenplay perfectly. I found that the film ran like a combination of Tarantinoesque chronology(Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) and a Nolanesque confusion(Memento)."

"If you enjoy a good "mind-bender" of a film that doesn't stop resonating in your head until days after you have seen it, then A Scanner Darkly is for you. If you go to the theater simply for spoon-fed entertainment, see this film anyway and hopefully you will wake up and have an original thought some time soon."

Click on the Watch the Trailer link here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/


The second movie, Lady in the Water, is M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You need to go in expecting the right sort of thing to enjoy this movie. Basically, as he explains it, it started as a bedtime story he used to tell his kids that just got longer and scarier until he decided to turn it into a movie. The movie itself has a lot of the components of a good bedtime story. Scary evil things, mystical good things, and the hero having to find companions to save the princess. The setting is in the back of a hotel. The entire movie takes place there. How cool is that?

There are a couple of parts that will scare the crap out of you. Shyamalan really builds tension well and he did it in a few places in this one as well. There is no twist like 6th Sense and Unbreakable had, instead it is just a bunch of smaller twists like Unbreakable and Signs was. All in all it was a very enjoyable movie. Good times.

Of Airplanes, Boxers and Pirates

I want to start this post with the description of a dream I had last night. For those of you who don't know, I am into remote control electric airplanes. And, I have a cat named Misfit who is kinda small and is missing a tail. Ok, with those two facts in mind, here is the dream.

In a nutshell, went to some sort of summer camp where we had to make R/C
Planes. So I put this plane together like they wanted but something
happened and the body broke on it. So I decided to use Misfit (yes, my
cat) as the body of the plane. I strapped the wings and such on to him
and took him out to the field, which was surrounded with trees and dark
out for some reason. Anyway, Misfit was fine during the wing attachment
process but once I set him down on the field he ran off. So I had to
chase him around a house that was on the field until I finally caught up
to him. :)

That's it. Thought you might find it amusing.

As for Boxers and Pirates...I saw the new Pirates movie. I enjoyed it, good flick. It ends very well and sets up the next one great. Plus, make sure you stay until after the credits for a little scene at the end wrapping up a loose end. Just like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock I believe the tag line on the Pirates III is going to be The Search for Jack.

As for Boxers...Rocky Balboa baby! This Christmas! Can't wait!

Oh...and a Transformers movie next year...yes, those Transformers.

Rock.

The Desperate SIlence of the Hysteric

What does this mean? Any thoughts? Discuss. :)

Why The A-Team Still Rocks

Big guy to Mr. T: "Whoa, you're a big one."
Mr. T to Big Guy: "Listen fool! I'm also a mean one!"
*THWACK* -Sound of Big guy's ass getting throw into a parked car

Dude to Murdoc: "You're nuts!"
Murdoc to dude: "No, I'm condements. I've been promoted!"

Love it!

Boat Adventures

So on the first outing this year about halfway through a faint tapping sound started to be heard while we were hauling ass between a cove I like to swim in and a sand bar we mess around on. It was faint and I wasn't even sure I heard it at first. I kept pushing on anyway.

Once we got to the sandbar I poked around and found that the sound only appears in forward gear. When in neutral in reverse the engine purred like I am used to. 'Crap' thought I, 'it is a gear issue.' We putzed around for a bit longer then headed back to dock to get gas and see if someone was on duty who could check it out for me.

No one on duty. We filled up and on a whim I lifted the engine out of the water to check out the prop. Sure enough, one of the tips had bent back at a 90 degree angle. 'Ah ha!' I thought, 'Probably hit a board or a turtle or something on the way to the sandbar that bent the prop. THAT must be causing the sound.' So out we went and spent the rest of the day without incident, just a thumping noise caused by the prop.

On the next outing a few weeks later I bent the prop back and stuck the boat in the water. The battery was dead as a door nail. When I had put the boat in after the last outing I assumed I was going to be back the next week. However, it took three weeks before I could get anyone to go out (what is up with that?) and the battery was drained by then. We were able to get a jump from someone but the engine wasn't timmed all the way down when we pulled the jump cables off. I didn't think much of it at the time because the motor would generate power, right? Wrong. Apparently the engine doesn't generate enough power to trim itself, it pulls from the battery. With the battery dead I couldn't trim the engine down which means I couldn't get the boat on plane which means I couldn't go faster than 10 mph. We putzed around the lake for about 3 hours before there was enough power in the battery to trim the engine down to get on plane. After that, good times. Just had to leave the thing running the entire time.

Anyway, back to the main plot line. After the jump I reversed out of dock. Once the bow came around I put it into forward again. Thump thump thump. 'Shit, it wasn't the prop' the voice in my head said. Knowing now at this point it was a gear issue that I couldn't do anything about it presently we just went about our way.

July 4th was the following weekend. There wasn't enough time to get it into the shop and take it down to the river, so I gambled that I could get through the July 4th weekend without anything bad happening. Afterall, it hadn't gotten any louder, had it?

To shorten this story up a bit I got down to the river on Saturday. I took the boat out everyday the next three days for several hours each day (usually 5+). During the trip on Monday on the way back the thumping turned into a knocking that got louder and started to vibrate the boat some. 'Uh oh, I better get my ass back to port before...' WHACK! *engine whining* 'Shit!' Throttle back, the full boat looking at me, so I say: 'That is the sound of an engine dieing'.

True enough, putting the boat in forward made this aweful clanking noise. Reverse didn't make any weird noises but the prop didn't engage either. We were stuck.

So we flagged down a passing boat and they were kind enough to tow us over to the nearest marina. The plan was to call someone to pick us up so I could then bring my trailer out and pull the boat out of the water. Well, this marina didn't have a ramp. The only one that did that was nearby was a private yacht club and those people are evil. So I called a tow boat service that costs a cheap $175/hour (yes, an HOUR) to come out and tow me across the river to a dock on an island on the other side for the low low price of $255. The plan was for me to meet the guy over there to pick it up.

Well, I get over there and just as the guy comes around the point and under the bridge near the dock this HUGE storm comes in. Lightning and heavy winds. He is out there in his tow boat with my boat on a string about 20 ft behind him. He points his boat up wind and just maintains position trying to keep the two boats from being blown into something. I'm standing on the dock about 150 ft away soaked to the bone watching this spectacle and hoping I don't get whacked by the lightning striking all over the place. Luckily, the storm passes after about 20 minutes and he is able to bring the boat over. I walk it to the trailer and off I go.

So now the thing is at a shop down by the river. It's going to take them up to two weeks before they can look at it. Hopefully I just stripped or broke one of the gears in the transaxel-like thing in the lower unit and it can be replaced easily. If he has to replace the entire unit the part itself costs upwards of $3000. That would be bad, but he doesn't think that is the case.

I've been lucky in that I have had the boat for about 5 years and never had a mechinical issue, always electrical ones. Electical ones are a pain in the ass to find but usually very easy and cheap to fix. The reverse is normally true for mechinical issues.

So to summarize my last three weeks:

1) The fuel pump in my truck crapped out and had to be repaired.
2) The company I work for axed the tech division and me along with it
3) The lower unit in my boat blew up

Good times.

Guess That Quote

What movie did this one come from:

"Purple lightning, that can't be good"

Seats Available this Holiday

Taking the boat out this weekend if I can get some people to go with me. It will be down at Shoansy instead of Lake Anna (Lake Anna is way too much of a zoo on the holidays). Shoansy opens up into the big part of the bay which is fricken huge. Good times. Anyway, the kicker is that is about 3 hours from DC (1 hour from Richmond). We have pleanty of room for spending the night (for free!) or you can drive back late in the evening. As far as what day goes, I don't care...whenever people can go. Send me an email or comment here if you are interested on going and we can coordinate.

And here is this for your reading enjoyment, my two faithful readers:


>>The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued a warning about a new
>>virulent strain of Sexually Transmitted Disease. The disease is contracted
>>through dangerous and high-risk behavior. The disease is called Gonorrhea
>>Lectim and pronounced "gonna re-elect him." Many victims contracted it in
>>2004, after having been screwed for the past four years...
>>
>>Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include antisocial
>>personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones,
>>extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information,
>>pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for
>>own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial
>>smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards
>>evangelical
>>theocracy, and categorical all-or-nothing behavior.
>>
>>Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this destructive disease
>>originated only a few years ago from a bush found in Texas....

Best Quote Ever

'People feel connected to him in much the same way the feel connected to a proctologist, only without the upside potential'

Whoever figures out who that quote is about gets a prize!