Under the floor… Another floor!
Home improvement, what a fun, fun, fun, time consuming activity. Okay, its not too fun sometimes and it takes a lot of time. Anyway I ripped up the old flooring. And I use the term ripped because the wood was so brittle and wet it basically broke apart when I pulled it up. Took a good 2+ hours too. Part of the problem was there were screws holding it down that can't be removed with a screwdriver and are very very rusty but its gone. I was surprised though at how wet it is, and I found another floor underneath! I can't believe that, it was pretty funny. Made me really think though about how much additional work this is. But it must be done. Pictures of new floor to remove included below...
The asbestos removal company is also done, but I'm not too happy with my subfloor, lots of suspected water damage (that is probably pretty old..):
Pulling my money out of Citibank
I've decided I will soon pull my money out of Citibank. I'm not pulling it out because I'm afraid of losing it when the bank goes under or is bought up to make a mega-bank. I'm doing it because I really despise their practices as a bank. They've received billions from the government because they were mismanaged and were greedy. They were more interested in making acquisitions of other banks than they are at restructuring themselves or anyone unlucky enough to have a mortgage with them. They also charged me $50 to keep my GM stock with them, which is a new fee, when my $1200 investment years ago is now worth $90. They want to charge me $50 to move it to another loan broker or $25 to sell my stock. That is the reason I'm planning on leaving Citibank, I'm being a consumer and I'm upset with the way the bank is handling their affairs. We should all do the same if we dislike the policies of our banking institutions instead of waiting for the Federal Government to step in and "save us".
Oh crap.
So I know that my kitchen floors contain asbestos, I'm calling to get those removed professionally. But what is really troublesome is that after tearing up my bathroom, I've found a lot of mold and some dry rot in some bad places. I've decided to stop and call in the experts on this problem too. I'm just watching my bank accounts get some use 
. I really wonder though, should I have left some cover on it to keep it somewhat contained? I covered the door with a plastic sheet, not taped off completely (dark, stale air causes mold to grow). Some air can get through where the toilet is supposed to be.. I'm definitely not sleeping here tonight. I wonder if there is something I can put on it to kill the surface mold. I've read bleach will work, but I don't know how to use that on floors (the articles i'm reading seem to only think mold grows on hard non-porous surfaces.
Pictures:
Credit Card Processing Company Loses Your Info, Blames Hackers
Looks like another Credit Card Processing company has lost customer information including names, credit card numbers, security codes, etc. Linkage. And again, its the fault of hackers that your information was lost. But what I want to know is, why don't they have better security for this type of information? Or maybe they shouldn't store it for long long periods of time on a computer (paper in a safe maybe?) so that would prevent a hacker or deranged employee from letting this information out? I always wonder.
Quick update
I just realized a lot of my uploaded images are missing, I'll try to fix that... soon..
Lots of spam
I have over 1100 comments to go through, most look like spam. Will it ever stop?
Also, my zune died yesterday, it made me sad. But now its running again, but I imagine it'll break soon though. My reasoning is that I turned it on with half a charge and held it up to my ear. What I heard was the Zune crying which meant the hard drive was probably spinning and doing nothing which could degrade its quality. But hey, I got it for 95 bucks at woot.com so I shouldn't complain.... too much.
Campaigns – Costs
Barack Obama has raised nearly 600 million dollars: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cid=N00009638
John McCain has raised nearly 360 million dollars: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00006424
In Comparison George W Bush took in about 367 million in 2004: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php?cycle=2004
and 192 million in 2000: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.php?cycle=2000
One of the criticisms of the Bush run for the White House was how much money he had, which we haven't heard about Barack Obama. Why? And why does it cost so much to run a campaign these days? The only thing I can praise John McCain for is for keeping the money under control. Now thats money raised, but Barack has spent about 470 million of his contributions thus far and will probably spend a bit more for his TV show tonight. I just find it all a little odd.
Just as a note, I'm not voting for either Obama or McCain, I just don't agree with their platforms 100% so I can't vote for them. So I'm not trying to bash what Obama has done for the sake of bashing Obama. This is all just statement of fact. I wonder how much under their new tax plans this can be taxed...
Big wallstreet bailout
And what I want to know is.. why are the 'big-wigs' meeting behind closed doors when the taxpayers footing the bill are very upset about the whole mess and would like to see some transparency and release of facts about this?
The Electronic Voting Experiment
I just had a small epiphany for a decent experiment with Electronic voting. The idea is simple:
- Write a backend database using open source software to store voting records.
- Write the frontend web interface with login, vote, live results pages.
- Issue two forms of unique identifiers (think SSN, drivers license) to millions of people worldwide.
- Make a day for people to come online and vote on a fake ballot to test the system.
- Allow people to venture in and try to 'hack' this imaginary system to change votes or skew voting results.
- Take the knowledge learned in Step 5 and re-examine the architecture to fix any patches.
- Rinse, Repeat.
Its so simple. Making this a community driven project with Open Source Software will make it free and also more open to public scrutiny. After it is all over, it'll be a good thing to promote worldwide for any democratic nation to use as their voting system. Or at least test in the real-world until the system is stable. Sure beats the other proposed, closed, voting systems that were so prone to problems!
Thoughts? I'll try to create something in "my spare time" for this. It does sound really interesting to me and I'm sure a lot of others would be interested as well.
Quick 5 minute Housing Update
RealtyTrac is rather lame. A lot of the information is out of date or just not correct. A lot of problems with some property that have no data and no additional information. It looks like a lot of things disappear quickly.
REOs are hard to buy occasionally, especially if the bank is greedy (which they are) and doesn't know what they're doing (which they don't). I bid on a property, rather low ($100k less than the bank got it for) but it needed some serious work before it would be considered move-in ready. A very similar house sold a few houses down for 20k more than I offered for this property a few months ago and it didn't really need any work at all! Its also been on the market for 60+ days!
Housing Update
I'm still in the process of getting a house, so I thought I'd provide some insight into how I see the market since I'm in the thick of it. I'd like to start by saying that what the news says is false, with a little bit of truth. It is true that the housing prices have dropped a lot, which is mainly due to the amount of foreclosed homes on the market. But homes in the low range (<400k) are selling like mad, especially in Ventura County (California). So the market is still moving, except house prices have dropped. In my mind it is a good thing that the price of homes has dropped, as it allows more people to move into homes they can afford. The market the past couple of years has been insane with homes in the 500k+ range, even for small homes. Thats a half-million dollar home. How can someone who makes even 100k a year afford that type of home? Well you finance it at a low rate, with nothing down, which will adjust at some point to a higher rate. Thats why the market crashed, the high price of homes that was out of proportion to incomes in California, it couldn't go on forever. Now we're here.
There are a few problems that we've encountered while looking for a home. One is that there are now a lot of sharks in the market. We've seen people out looking for an investment property since houses are much cheaper now. When we submit an offer there are usually multiple offers, some of them cash offers. It makes it hard for us to get something within our price range and it just plain sucks. But these people have been doing this even in the higher-priced market, so its expected. Another problem we've hit is pre-approvals. I have preapproval from americorp financing, but apparently that isn't enough. We're bidding on foreclosed homes, owned by banks. So what do they want us to do? Get pre-approved through them! On the outside they want preapproval so they can ensure the property will close escrow, so if your financing goes through you have them to finance through. But I have another theory. The big one I've had trouble with is Countrywide, the leader in foreclosed homes. So much so that they have their own marketplace set up to sell their newly acquired assets. Plus they want you to get approval through them... so you might end up getting a loan from them... so they keep the property under their title (or lien, or whatever) and let you rent. If you're lucky and you pay off your loan, they get income from the interest on the loan. If you don't, they repocess the property, still getting something from the interest and resell to another chum. Sounds like a profitable business. But thats just a theory. More updates when they happen.
Home hunting
I'm probably an idiot. I had a good offer in on a house and then pulled out before I entered escrow for a stupid reason. The builder of the homes in the area back in 1960 left rebar out of the slabs, I pulled out for just that reason. There was no signs or indications inside the home that the slab had trouble and it was on 1/3rd an acre! Thats why I'm hitting myself over the head, as it didn't have indications of a problem and I had thoughts of fixing that somewhere down the line. And now its off the market, but hopefully it'll come back on the market, and the Realtor and bank will deal with me again. I haven't been able to find anything of interest outside of that home, except homes in the Valley that have many bedrooms, but have about 3 families living in each one of them. I'm going to have to wait for more foreclosures (which will be a ways away!). But hopefully something will prop up.
I should update this more.
Tesla Roadster
I've been following this Tesla Roadster ever since I first heard of it about a year or two ago. The thing has me really excited about the future and our independence from oil. I really wish they'd make it cheaper for the common man though, the price tag is pretty hefty (~$100,000). Makes me wonder how a small team from California can create such a technologically advanced car that should be what we're driving in the year 2008!
Jay Leno has a video of it here.
California is Retarded (again)
So much money has come into California in this past decade, the economy is in the to 5 out of the world! But we've actually been without a decent budget and in a deficit for a long, long time. But now we're in a recession because of the housing issues, which are insane over here, so we're cutting programs. So one of the things cut was Education. The money that was cut was for Music and Physical Education programs. Even though Music programs have been proven to be beneficial to developing a young mind. But what really gets me is that they cut P.E. from the curriculum. I hated PE, but at least it moved my ass. And now that they've cut PE, they're complaining that the children are becoming obese. So wait.. You cut Physical Education, which gets kids moving, then you complain that children are becoming obese? You caused the problem, you can't blame videogames, candy, sodas, and television (Well you can, but not entirely) for these problems YOU DID IT CALIFORNIA.
Los Angeles is proposing an plan for homeowners when they make a sale of their homes to aide their coffers. When you sell a home, you will have to get the sidewalk in front inspected. If it is in disrepair, it will need to be fixed before you sell your home. It will need to be fixed, by the seller, at his/her expense. Sounds great. The problem is that... The sidewalk belongs to the City. Its usually also broken due to trees... Trees planted by the City... SO, the city of Los Angeles wants homeowners to pay to fix the city-owned sidewalks that the city has potentially destroyed, at the expense of the homeowners. If you like that idea, hey you'll like this one. If you move, you pay to fix the sidewalk, you pay to repave the street in front of your house, and fix your neighbors house across the way to make it more livable. Sounds great! Bah, who the hell wants to live in LA anyway... (If you can't find a contractor, you can contract with the city to fix it, so it'll be started immediately and finished in 3 years, then you can move!)