musings about life and what I'm up to
I’ve finally gotten around to uploading some photos from this summer.
There are a few new albums that I’ve posted, including photos from Michigan, Tahoe and our Idaho road trip.
You can see the photos here:
A collection of photos from the Nichols Arboretum
Some Dylan photos from a hike around Tahoe Donner
And finally, an album of pics from our road trip to Idaho
enjoy!
I’ve lived in my apartment for 4 1/2 years now and recently, things have started to get a little more crowded (filed under girlfriend, cross-referenced with dog). Actually, there are many apartments in my building with a larger occupancy than mine (including the upstairs neighbors – 2 adults & 2 kids) so it’s not all that bad – at all.
But, being Americans, it’s in our nature to covet more.
I decided to just see what our options are, and to contact my real estate agent who helped me with my current place and I was really shocked by the change in the landscape.
Now, I know all about what’s been going on in the world for the last year, so it’s not that this comes out of the blue. What I didn’t appreciate was how much it changed the whole dynamics of home buying. See, when I bought my apartment, I was able to do so with a very sketchy loan scenario in many ways:
In many ways I played it much safer than what was being offered – I took the 7 year ARM, I bought a cheaper place, and importantly, I’ve always made larger payments than called for, refusing to pay only the interest portion of my loan.
So while I figured things would have tightened up in the past couple of years, I underestimated by just how much.
Talking to my real estate agent (and followed up by my mortgage broker) the scenario today is much more straightforward: put 20% down. Anything less requires mortgage insurance.
Wow. That’s a lot of up-front payment, especially here in San Francisco.
I was expecting the disappearance of the interest-only loans. I was expecting tighter standards of credit worthiness. I was expecting more realistic alignment of loan amount to income. Each of these I was prepared for.
What I wasn’t expecting was a big hunk of cash being needed.
I see where this makes sense: this puts a LOT more risk into the hands of the borrowers. If my apartment were worth 500,000 (it’s not), that would mean that when I bought, I would have had to put out 25,000 as a down payment. If I default on my loan and walk, I’m out 25000. With 20% down, that number changes to 100,000 – something I’d be a lot less likely to walk away from (and if I did, I’d feel a much worse sting). Also, if the bank were forced to sell that property at a loss, there’s a much smaller risk that they’d lose significant value – since they’d be able to sell it at 80% of its value without losing a cent (since I would have already lost the first 20% of value).
This makes total sense from an industry that’s reeling from too much risk exposure. But it’s really tough for folks like me who hadn’t really thought about the need to save up a 20% down payment. It also really hurts sellers (or potential sellers) who won’t benefit from the same number of potential buyers. No wonder we’re just not seeing that many for sales these days.
So, a little furniture rearranging, maybe a little paint here and there, and my apartment should be good for a little while longer.
I have previously written about scams originating from Nigeria, and how I’m amazed that these have enough of a success rate to prove to be profitable.
In that post, I also pointed to a This American Life podcast in which a few people who take it upon themselves to fight back were interviewed. I thought, as usual, that the interview was excellent and I was a little in awe at these people who spent so much of their own effort to throw the scammers off and waste their time.
Lo and behold, in some random browsing a few months ago I stumbled on this page from a former co-worker Ben. Ben is a pretty funny guy and this is right in line with his sense of humor. I absolutely love these. Way to go Ben.
You really need to click through a few of these to fully appreciate the effort that Ben has gone into. It’s well worth the time to read through these. It will be one of the funnier things you do this week, I guarantee.
This past weekend I finished up a rather tedious project of digitizing the few DVDs that I own. The reason for this project was to clear up more space in the apartment and to make the films more convenient to watch.
By this point I think most people have done this with their CD collections, importing them into – well, let’s face it – into iTunes. Does anyone really use any other media organizer? (OK… I admit, Songbird is pretty awesome, but if you’re syncing an ipod iTunes still feels like the way to go.)
So while most of us have converted to digital music, there are still lots of DVDs hanging around. This is in part because of the film industry’s successful attempts to block DVD copying software but it’s also admittedly because most people don’t really desire the same convenience from their films as from their music.
The allure for me was realized recently on a domestic flight with no programmed entertainment – no movie on a 5 hour flight?! Sure, I had my iPod with me and I listened to podcasts and music, but as long as I had my laptop with me, I might as well watch a movie on the bigger screen. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any DVDs with me and even if I did, the DVD drive spinning would chew up the battery.
I used a few programs on my Mac to record the DVDs into a reasonably-sized file that sits on my disc. It was a pretty simple process really (once the right software was installed – including VLC media player, Handbrake copying software and MetaX data tagger).
All of my DVDs (and really, we’re only talking about maybe 30 or so) are now in a cardboard box where I can place them next to my CDs and forget about them. The files on the other hand can be managed through iTunes and synced with my AppleTV so I can watch them on my TV, on my laptop or even on my iPhone (Though I don’t see that happening any time soon).
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about using metrics and data as a means of measuring and motivating the effort to get in shape.
One morning as I was grabbing a coffee from the local Peet’s I saw they had a nutritional l information card available, listing out the caloric, fat, and other nutritional information about their offerings. I think this is great.
Now I’m pretty sure that they are required to provide this by law but I was still impressed that it was available right there on the counter and the information is provided in a very clear, easy to digest (pun slightly intended) fashion.
I usually only stop in for a coffee in the morning, so I’m not too concerned about the nutritional information there (I get a half decaf so I’m not worried about the caffeine either). What I am interested in is the foods that they provide. Peet’s is my go-to place when I’m out of milk, etc., and have to grab breakfast in the morning before heading in to work. I’ve often wondered: am I better off with the bran muffin, the blueberry muffin, the currant scone, or should I skip this and have more protein like option of an egg on a muffin over at the Lee’s Deli.
According to the guide (which for obvious reasons doesn’t provide insight into Lee’s food), the scone gets me 480 calories (as does the blueberry muffin) while the whole wheat honey bran muffin gets only 390 calories. So there’s not a whole heck of a lot of difference (and all fall within a reasonable number of calories for me, if that’s all I’m having for breakfast). Now fat on the other hand clearly points to the bran muffin, coming in at less than 1/2 the fat of the other options.
What’s really interesting to me though is the disparity between the lowfat options and the ‘regular.’ Many of the “low fat” options have nearly as many calories and in many instances, more fat than some of the ‘regular’ items like that bran muffin.
It just shows that it takes time and effort to figure all of this out – and in the long run it’s probably worth taking the extra moments to think about what we’re eating.
Dylan enjoying a morning walk at India Basin in San Francisco
