Stories's Log |
This log represents the Life and Times of the Las Vegas Dude. |
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10/10/2008 04:14:37 jim My favorite sayings | Fri |||||||||||||||||||
When the US sneezes, the whole world catches colds. Live today as if its your last. Plan tommorrow as if you're going to live forever. No matter how much reason you offer a person with faith, they don't get it. Make the most amount of money in the least amount of time. When your occupation, vocation, and vacation are the same, you're set for life I take that back. If your happy in your head, you're set for life. The eleventh commandment 'Thou Shall Not Get Caught' Do unto others (before they do unto you). Eat, Drink and be Merry (for tommorrow everything might suck). The best formula for wealth is to be born wealthy, which wasn't my option. Success is dictated by being born wealthy, being attractive, having a good voice or being just plain lucky. Intelligence doesn't seem to have much to do with it. Being a doctor or lawyer is a great idea, if you can afford working 8 years through college. I'd sue everyone who has ripped me off, if lawyer's didn't rip me off. I wonder what the chairman of Lehman Brothers did to make a half a billion dollars a year. The company went under. Path of least resistance is the reason for how the rock rolled down the hill into the road. The dent in my truck was its purpose. |
10/07/2008 07:34:36 jim Fields of Wexford and Ross | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
10/05/2008 20:56:44 jim Pittsburgh People | Sun |||||||||||||||||||
10/04/2008 22:10:26 jim Pennsylvania Fireworks - 250th Centiniel | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
10/04/2008 20:07:44 jim Pittsburgh Fireworks | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
10/04/2008 12:31:13 jim I love hackers | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
Ever since I've owned a website, I've had to deal with hackers. I LIKE THEM. They make me extra money. Here's how the hackers help me. I block certain IP address, so the ones that hit my sites have to have IP changers. It looks like multiple IP addresses are viewing my web pages. I get paid for each unique IP address that views a page on my site, with an ad on it.. Here's how they hurt me. They don't really. At least not much. LVDarling's database was up to 1.2 gig. I rolled it back. This database in only 10 meg, so, I usually restore a backup when I get too many Users. |
10/04/2008 06:35:11 jim Home foreclosures - My point of view | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
In the quarter ending September 2008 : In the United States overall, home foreclosure filings were .5%. In Nevada, home foreclosure filings were 1.4% (that's the highest in the nation). During the first nine months of last year, of all the troubled home loans, only 1% of the lenders rewrote their customers' home loans. To me, that means an ARM loan is more apt to go into foreclosure, than it is to be rewritten. ( msnbc.msn.com ) I'm thinking a bad loan is: An ARM that lets a poorly qualified homeowner over-refinance his home for say $1,000 a month, then in 3 years goes up to $1,350 a month. ( MasonryConstruction.com ). The lure for a getting an ARM was easy money (more money than a borrower could ever have saved). I would be one of those ARM loan borrowers, BTW. - On my first refi, I realized paying off a mortgage was a mistake. My utilities, homeowners insurance and property taxes ran $500 a month. So I refinanced for a $600 mortgage payment. I got $80,000 cash for that. Easy money, right? - On my second refi, my thinking back then was: I needed the money. I wasn't working, and I was getting low on cash. Lenders were bombarding my phone and email with incredible offers and I said, "what-the-heck, if I'm going to lose my home anyway, why not have a last fling with it". I got $60,000 for that. - On both occasions, I was allowed borrow more money than I knew my house was worth. I wasn't working, but still, I was allowed to refinance my home. Lastly, I couldn't sell my house for the amount of money that my house was appraised for. The mortgage companies were speculating that Las Vegas homes would continue to inflate in value. I guess they were wrong. - I would think my house today should be worth $140,000, and not the $260,000 it appraised for two years ago. - I would have had to struggle for 10 years to save the kind of cash these companies were throwing at me. The bad loans were written based on inflated appraisels, and bad lending policies. I'm not alone and I think there is only two solutions. And it stinks for the lenders. The ways out are: 1) Let the bad loans be foreclosed on and let the homes be resold for their real value 2) Buy back the mortgages, with an assumable loan that has a substantially reduced interest rate. I think the government is going for the first option, which will cream the borrowers credit ratings, while bailing out the lending companies. For me, I'd rather keep my home. I don't think buying the house next door for $75,000, then going into foreclosure on my house (with its $200,000 loan) is cool idea at all. But ya know, if I were to go with the flow, that's what I should do. I'll wait to see what offers float to the top. |
10/02/2008 04:04:01 jim What should the price of a home be?.. | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
Shouldn't the price of a home be about twice the family's income. I always thought that was a good rule of thumb. At least that way, the family has the option of paying it off. But when a family can borrow 10 times their income to buy a house, that seems crazy, doesn't it. So, how did that ever happen ? The loan people lost their minds...that's how. I think all of us who refinanced know why we did it. We took advantage of the insane loan companies. For once in our lives, we could have money to play with. Me, I took five years off. My neighors reinvested their refi money into their houses. I think thats great. What I should do, is buy all of their houses (after they default) for 1/4 of their loan's value, then default on my house's mortgage. One of my neighbor's refi'd his house. It was valued at $250,000. He bought cars, fixed up his property, bought a new $15,000 air conditioner, then defaulted on his loan. A guy from San Francisco picked up the house for $75,000. Now think about this... If my neighbor could have defaulted on his loan, and could have bought his house back for $75,000, he could have afforded the mortgage payments. Wouldn't he be crazy if he didn't. But, unfortunately, he didn't have that option. He had to go into foreclosure, and then someone else had to buy it. |
09/30/2008 02:32:54 chez2199 .Not having followed much of the news | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
This is spot on and exactly what I think, but no, we will bail out the mortgage company's so they can give a bunch more loans to people who can't afford them and we will be right back in this mess again. They would be better off doing nothing and letting it all flush out, In my opinion bailing out the mortgage company's is the worst of 3 options. - Best option help the people and there foreclosures' - 2nd best option do nothing and let it all flush out. Most of those people knew they were getting in over there heads and deserve what they get. - 3rd and the worst option: bailout the mortgage company's who knew exactly what they were doing but didn't care cause all they saw was the short term gains in stocks and bonus in there wallet. |
09/30/2008 02:32:54 jim (Reply)Not having followed much of the news | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
And just taking a wild assed guess...I'd have to think this country's major downfall right now is defaulted mortgages. All of those ARM's are maturing to a whopping big house payment. When I look around Vegas and Pittsburgh, I see foreclosed homes everywhere. They are wasted resources. Why can't the government bailout the homeowners that fell for those questionable loans ? Wouldn't that trickle upward ? FHA loans used to be the best deal around. I say, populate these empty houses with people. Make home ownership affordable. Offer consumers a way out. A buy out of bad loans could save the banks. |
09/27/2008 21:33:04 jim Baltimore, when crabs are out of season | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 21:15:52 jim Baltimore Maryland - 2008/09/27 | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:57:56 jim Washington,DC-CapitolHill | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:37:14 jim Washington,DC-Monument | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:16:30 jim Washington DC | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:16:08 jim Washington,DC-Jefferson Memorial | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:10:14 jim Washington Monument - 2008/09/27 | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:10:14 jim (Reply)Washington,DC-Washington Monument | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 17:00:40 jim Washington,DC-CapitolHill | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 14:01:30 jim Virginia - Colors of the fall | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 13:56:42 jim Allegheny,PA- | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 13:30:22 jim Washington DC - 2008/09/27 | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/27/2008 13:26:42 jim Appalacians,PA-To DC | Sat |||||||||||||||||||
09/25/2008 01:52:12 jim Disasterous events | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
Its been a long life of disasterous things happening For me, I grew up in a shack with an outhouse. I enjoyed those times, but the news was full of Hippies , Flower Children , LSD , Vietnam War , Racial Wars and the Kent State shootings . Then it went on to Food Shortages , Stagflation , Oil Spills and Gas shortages . Then there was the horrible Aids and the Ebola viruses. In Vegas, the Mgm Grand Fire killed 100 people. There was the Gulf War . The '.com' bubble broke. In this decade, there was the fear of Y2K which ended up doing nothing, and the Twin Towers which ended up changing a lot of things. I'd guess Wall Street going bonkers isn't that interesting. I have camping gear with me. If everything crashes, we're going camping! YEA! |
09/25/2008 01:23:26 jim About my new job | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
Well, I just can't talk about. All I can say is, we deal with the stock market, and as you probably know already, the stock world is crashing to its knees. Work aside, I'm getting that same strange feeling that I had after I saw those planes crash into the twin towers. I just know everything is going to change. We haven't caught much of the news lately. We've been too busy checking out our new environment to be that bored. Sometimes, I think ignorance is bliss. Maybe I'd rather not know that the one-way trail we all are walking down ends at a cliff. I'd assume that somehow, all of the credit so lavishly acquired and abruptly defaulted upon, will be forgiven. I should have borrowed the maximums. I didn't though. I would think the the sound of Lehman Brothers crashing is the sound made by money going into the pockets of the middle class, all cashing in on their home equity loans, then heading off to bankruptcy court. I just wonder how houses got over inflated in value in the first place. If someone told me my $80,000 home was worth $1,000,000 wouldn't I be crazy not to borrow against its equity, then default on the loan? For those that did, my hats off to ya floating around the waters in your yatchs. For all of us others that have pride in ownership I say, "should of, could have, but didn't". |
09/23/2008 02:17:04 SAE Bark... Wheres Jimmys new BLOG entries? | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
We hounds like reading new information... |
09/18/2008 02:42:41 chez2199 .We move into our apartment this Saturday | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
We had those same winds, 60% of the louisville area was out of power.
I'm on my 7th day with no power. Hurricane IKE can kiss my ass! |
09/18/2008 02:18:41 SAE .My internet is so slow that... | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
And I have 20Mbps Internet.... So there. All because I am the heart and soul of a tiny little, passed away hound. It is so fast, I can eat a pound of corn a minute... |
09/18/2008 02:18:41 jim (Reply)My internet is so slow that... | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
- my internet mail is slower than real mail - a sneak peek at a TV episode on http://www.tnt.tv takes an hour - http://www.LVDude.com takes a minute to load - If I watch a video on http://www.YouTube.com , all I get three pictures If the pop-ups are mostly all I get, why can't google be a pop-up. Sorry if I haven't posted much lately. Lately, I get all of my email on my IPhone. It all works out though. There's been so much to be done here that I've hardly had time for internet. |
09/16/2008 07:40:57 jim Power Outages all over the Pittsburgh area. | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
We had 70 mph winds Sunday. Power lines and trees went down everywhere. Schools were closed on Monday. People were being told to boil their water in some areas. The best story I've heard so far about it: A coworker attended his brother-in-law's wedding that day. Twelve of them were in a basement watching a football game in their Tuxedos. When the power went out, it went completely black. I couldn't imagine that. In all my travels, in all my experiences, I've never watched a football game with a bunch of other guys. It sounded GREAT! |
09/14/2008 20:09:59 Jim We are riding the snake | Sun |||||||||||||||||||
Its a train and its going 60 mph.. Our track ends after 40 million miles, where our ride takes us off the side of a mountain in the clouds. We know it ends, but we don't care. On our ride, we can look out the window at all of the beautiful things. We can't become a part of them because our train won't stop. But we can love all that we see. And it is beautiful. |
09/11/2008 21:28:53 SanDiego Pittsburgh - Downtown | Thu |||||||||||||||||||
09/09/2008 20:41:46 jim North Hills Park - 1 mile away | Tue |||||||||||||||||||
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