Mortgage crisis vis a vis Fannie/Freddy Debunked
November 2nd, 2011
Via Krugman, this great comment from Rortyomb on
Bloomberg’s Awful Comment; What Can We Say For Certain Regarding the GSEs?
And then this:
Archive
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Slow progress
August 19th, 2011
Yikes–everything is a new version, and each has significant differences from the former version. So what used to work doesn’t now, and you’ve got to figure out just what it is that needs doing.
Time to go to dinner.
New Server Drive
August 18th, 2011
Sheesh! Been down two days , almost three, to install a new hard drive in the server. This involves installing the new hard drive, installing new server software, and restoring former data and connections.
Wanted to try going to Ubuntu server, but that install hung up at the first install screen. (later found someone who said he has waited 7 hours before ubuntu would respond at that point). So decided to go with CentOS 6 — had been running CentOS 4, but that didn’t support PHP 5, which I needed to upgrade my WordPress installation. Turned out I’d bittorrented down the wrong Centos file, and had to go back and get the right .iso file. After burning the DVD (Oh, had to put a DVD drive into the server rather than CD), the install went fine…after a couple of hangups, and unclear install screens, but that’s par for the course with RedHat (CentOS is public distribution of RedHat Enterprise).
About 4 hours to get internet going—went to bed after that one.
Spent all day on mail, only to discover a stupid firewall error. Oh, well.
Still have to get a few web sites working; same config file, but each of four web sites have completely different problems!
I don’t need to do the Times Crossword, so long as these things come along.
Dream Job
August 11th, 2011
I’d love to be the guy who makes up the names on Colbert’s contributors crawl.
House to Hide In
July 23rd, 2011
A wise man once said to me, Never get a home that doesn’t have any places you can hide; that was very wise advice.
What it means is, Be sure there are private places. Places you can get away from whatever else is going on in your home.
I love the house we have now. It is not huge, about 1300 square feet. But it has separate areas. The dining room and living room are “open plan”, but separated by an entry way. The kitchen is its own wing. Two ‘bedrooms’–one is a guest bedroom, the other our den (or ‘viewing room’ as our grandson called it–it’s where we have our TV) are seaparted by a hallway from the rest of tehe house. The master bedroom is in a separate wing. The toilet is separated from the rest of the bathroom.
Wha I like best is that, if I’ve been watching the TV — the news, usually — I can walk out into the livingroom, and be in a completely differnt space. We like to leave some classical music playing there, something soft and quiet, and to leave the cacaphony of the TV for this place of simpleness is a joy beyond measure; I am refreshed.
Pets
July 9th, 2011
Let us now speak of pets.
Proposition #1: pets are furry. Sure, someone will speak of his ‘pet snake’ or ‘pet tarantula spider, but who ever wants to ‘pet’ a snake, or a tarantula (hairy though it may be: we said furry, not hairy). Dogs, cats, guinea pigs, monkeys, somet8imes girbles…these things are pettable. by which we mean, mostly, cuddly, cuddleable. something you can allow onto the couch while wataching TV, or at least scratch behind the ear while seated at the table of the lord of the manor (tossit a boane). You could not bring your Jila monster to the lord of the manor’s table; just not allowed.
Back to pets: most are dogs or (sniff) cats. I like cats; it’s just that though they may like me, I don’t necessarily want them to exhibit their affection: like, kneading my chest when I’m trying to sleep, or plopping themselves on top of my head while I’m in bed. Also, people think that cats are less trouble than a dog: not true. Unless you let the cat roam around the neighborhood (unlawful where I live) where it will kill innumerable birs (fledglings, mostly) [a study in Wisconsin found that the average house cat, left to roam ouside during the day (and they always want to come inside where it's cozy at night) kills some ninety birds per summer.] You have to empty the cat’s litter box–and who has the time or stomach to that as often as is needed?
It could be said that dogs tie you down, you can’t go wandering if you’ve got a dog (unless you’ve got a wandering-type dog, and you’ve got a camper or similar trailer). Well yeah, that’s true. Our little shiTsu’s needed constant attention. That’s what kennels are for. Also, relatives.
So all things considered, that leads us to
Proposition #2: They musn’t get out of line.
Warning Labels be Damned
July 8th, 2011
For two days I went looking for some five-gallon pails, with covers, to use on my lanai (okay, my patio). I wanted some plain, white ones. Such as drywall mud would come in, but without the left-over drywall mud.
Lowes carries some of the right size, but they are of an ugly silver-gray, with a huge Lowes logo on two sides. Home Depot carries some, but they are a bright-red color, and also logoed. Same thing with Ace hardware–lotsa advertising.
Finallhy foiund Wal-Mart carries plain, white ones. Store #1 has the buckets, but no tops. Same story with store #2, just the buckets, no tops. Both stores have slots on the slelves for the tops, but no stock. Store number 3 has–Three tops! (but no buckets). So I buy the three tops from store #3, and then zip over to Store #2 and buy three buckets.
I get them home, am ready to put them on my lanai…and see tthe huge stuck-on label: Warning! Children may fall into bucket. Do not leave open bucket around small children! this in three languages, Spanich French and Hebrew.
I try to peel the labels from the pails, but what’s this? The ahesive is super-strong, the label tears, and I’m left with a bunch of torn label on my beautiful bucket. And, when I finally do get the paper label removed, what’s left is a slurge of sticky-stuff on the side of the pail, certain to pick up any flying smut…dust, dirt, bugs…that chances nearby.
I’m 70 years old, have never had children, and don’t allow children near my house. Gimme a break!
The Trip to the Stockyard Inn
July 8th, 2011
The trip by auto from Des Plaines, Ill., to the Chicago stockyards on the South Side of Chicago involved crossing the Proviso railroad yards, an enormous complex about halfway along the trip.
The Proviso Yards were maintained by the Chicago and Northwestern, and the Union Pacific lines. To cross, you had to drive over a barely 2-lane, wooden-trestle cantilever bridge; you could reach out and touch the oncoming cars. The bridge, which creaked and groaned, swayed from side to side, especially in a heavy breeze.
That bridge scared me to death. I have always been afraid of heights, and that bridge just reinforced my fears. It was very tall and very long, about a mile long, and scary its whole length. “Deep hole!” I would cry, cringing and finally crawling down from the carseat to the floor, so that I didn’t have to look.
Morton’s
July 6th, 2011
When I was a boy in grrammar school, our class went on a trip to the stockyards of Chicago. We were led through the feed lot, and up some stairs to a kind of viewing balcony over the slaughter floor. There, we could see the cattle enter from the chute outside, get knocked in the head by a sledgehammer (we could see the hammer rise and fall, but not the impact on the steer’s head), the dazed animal, with a chain wrapped around its feet, was swung onto a overhead conveyor. Still, at times, struggling, the animal’s throat was slit and almost as fast its belly was split open from anus to neck.As the conveyor moved on, the steer’s intestines were pulled from its body, the head severed and put on a separate conveyor, the skin was removed, and the body went further on in the butchering process.
One night soone thereafter, my father drove us all down Mannheim Road and over a wooden trestle bridge across the largest railroad yards in America, and finally to the Chicago stockyards. In the center of the stockyards was Morton’s Stockyard Inn. The meat was really fresh. I liked mine medium-rare; the experience of seeing the kill floor had made no impression me at all, except for some queeziness while viewing the slaughter.
Now I am a vegetarian, have been for forty years. My boss a while back, on a business trip, thought it would be great sport to take me to Morton’s Steak House–a chain, now, derived from that original Stockyard Inn. *It ws just like old times.
Strobe on the Road
May 21st, 2011
This I got from “the men who stare at goats” by Jon Ronson:
back in the fifties, pilots would suddenl lose control of their craft; they suddenly were disoriented and became ill. Psychiatrist Dr. Bucha found that the rotor, flashing above the cockpit and causing the sun to blink on and off, was producing a strobelike effect. Called the Bucha effect, amygdala. Helicopter problem solved with tinted windows, visor on helmet, etc.
When you are driving along a road in late fall to early spring, when the sun is low in the sky morning or evening, you get the same effect, and you are well advised to look away, keep your eyes moving, and not get hypnotized by the flassing sun as you pass roadside trees.
Bucha effect; watch out.