perils of working remote

it took me until nearly lunch to realize today was a holiday for my company.

Every time I stare at rate center worksheets (don't ask) I realize all the places in the world I know absolutely nothing about (including that they exist at all).

Brazil has 407 Rate Centers (meaning dialing codes). China has 5.

I think the Cook Islands are the current leader for Rate Centers per capita: 1 per 2500

I was quoted in an article about AD Stenger (an Austin mid-century builder). The article is here (reg may be required) and my modern Austin site has some more background info.

In a fit of empire building, I am now overload of all support (for the time being, in additional to marketing and product stuff).

So thankful, Strongbad shows the way.

rumblin' in the hood.




If you don't mind your lip, Blue will set you straight.

The danger of the one-man electro/funk/soul performance is that it is a short step over the line to exposing your pre-teen fantasies of being the lost love-child of diane ross and prince in highly-sequined outfits and karaoke-style.

Snax (at least for last night) had me wondering if my prior Jamie Lidell show was a mirage. The brilliance of Lidell was in how between his captivating stage presence and the sometimes chaotic jam breakdowns made you feel that this moment was to be never found again. More than a few times, subsequent shows by a band seemed like a hollow counterfeit of my first experience. So here I was wondering if the almost joy and aplomb Lidell took in mistakes and technical breakdowns was all staged or simply a one-time event?

Within minutes of Lidell taking the stage all that washed away.

Snax fully redeemed himself for me when he joined Lidell on stage for the final 20 minutes or so banging away on the MS-20.

I'll see Lidell anytime he is near, but I'd really love to see him with a packed house. As if you need more proof that DC is a lame town, there was about 100-150 people (capacity of 300 or so) last night.

slate has a pretty good take down of Lewis & Clark today. if you go to highschool in the northwest you get a pretty large dose of L&C growing up. I had half a year dedicated to it. nominally, it was rolled into the state history class but given there isn't much else to go over in the american version of washington state history, it is pretty much the L&C show. of course there was Oregon Trail as the Apple IIe in grade school. even then we were being corrupted with video games.

Lewis and Clark aficionados delight today in the unspoiled scenery along the trail. The reason the trail remains scenic and unspoiled is that it was so useless.

Picture of the shelf in my office.

Full List (not all pictured).

Single Malts:
GlenRothes 1984
GlenRothes 1991 (2)
Balvenie Doublewood (3)
Bowmore 12
Highland Park 15
Bruichladdich 15 (2)
Oban
Laphroaig Cask Strength
Glenmorangie 12 Port Wood Finish
Glen Garioch 15

Whiskey:
Russell's Reserve
Jefferson's Reserve

Gin:
Tanqueray Ten

Rum:
1 Barrell (from Belize)

Wine:
Estancia Zin

.....

Have I mentioned that I've never been more productive at any job before?

Champale

for mcorwine:


more Champale ads here.

This is what happens when our developers miss deadlines:


So this is actually cast off the original movie mold. It is pretty impressive in detail up close. Very much pre-dental work for Harrison (and he certainly needed it).

Within this Daniel Gross post (sourced from WSJ) about how Italians are resistant to time saving household products come these fun stats:

80% of Italians iron all their own laundry.

31% of Italians have dishwashers.

2% use cleaning wipes.

1% have dryers.

The result:

[Italian women] spend, on average, 21 hours a week on household chores other than cooking -- compared with just four hours for Americans, according to Procter & Gamble Co. research. Italians wash kitchen and bathroom floors at least four times a week, Americans just once. Italians typically iron nearly all their wash, even socks and sheets. And they buy more cleaning supplies than women elsewhere do.

Fly by update.

Last week on Tuesday (Mar 7th) got a call that our place in Austin had a broken pipe. Apparently it had been leaking for a few weeks and the Studio room carpet was very wet. So I took a flight to Austin that evening semi-freaked out that my gear was damaged.

Nothing major damaged. Some manuals, some records, but the gear is safe and sound. Had to tear it all down and move to the kitchen so they could work on the floor and walls. Currently, doing everything I can to keep FEMA away.

Wednesday/Thursday: More dealing with the house and worked from cafes with Bug. Got in some bball and a few friends as well.

Friday: Flew to Houston from Austin for work to interview a UI consulting firm that we didn’t really want to use but one of our VC guys ‘encouraged’ us to check out. Solid enough though bland in look and feel (from the Microsoft school of design). Would be more compelled to use them if they were local to us.

Some mild travel rants can be inserted here, though the only thing interesting was while trying to get a rental car (an hour long ordeal) a woman came in who was irate because she was rented a car with stolen plates and was pulled over with her kids on the way to a funeral and SWAT’ed by the police. Dollar rental cars are off the list for awhile.

Got a new stereo and speakers installed in the Benz in Austin from car audio geeks at X-treme Sound. Huge difference; though could still use a sub.

Saturday/Sunday: Drove the Benz from Austin to Washington DC.

New slogan for America: “Jesus Saves. Republicans Spend.”

Monday: Busy day at work. Final interview and decision on a PR firm. Interviewed and hired Design firm as well for corporate image and new website. Very happy on both. Would love find and hire a top flight creative director or UI person fulltime on site, but that has been slow going so far.

Had a very nice (pre)birthday dinner at Belga with the girl. Worked on catching up on kisses.

Tuesday: Flew to San Jose. More bad travel karma. Greatly productive “off-site” with CEO, CTO, and Product Guy installing next year of roadmap on the product side.

Co-workers took me out for my birthday - likely a pretense for a meal we were going to have anyhow - to a AP Stubs where we proceeded to have a great meal including three different types of high grade steak (mmm, Black and Blue steak – jetgirl23 and auditorium would have been heaven) and ridiculously good wine including a desert wine round or three which may have nearly doubled our bill alone.

Wednesday: Walked the VON tradeshow. Yawn. One very productive meeting with a prospective lead generation partner. Worked via the free wireless.

Hit up a few vendor parties and leached free beer and snacks which eliminated the need for dinner and slightly offset the damage from dinner the night before.

Yesterday: repeat of Wednesday. Overall a good show, though not for show itself, but we did get quite a bit moved forwards on various fronts while here.

Watched a few hours of the NCAA tourney including Gonzaga pulling out a win (Xavier may be the best 14 seed in a while) and Washington putting away Utah State.

Today: Currently on the plane flying back to DC via Chicago. Does Meryl Streep own a chunk of United Airlines? The only movies they have shown on my flights are hers. Gag me.

Superbowl XL MVP:



Bill Leavy crew's stat line: +21 Pittsburgh

Starting Monday I have a new job. I'll be the Director of Online Marketing for a Biz VoIP provider -- Aptela.

I am excited about this place. I spent a few hours there today and you could just tell they have the right philosophy; from their love of open source to how they communicated with each other.

They are a semi-startup. The company has been around long enough to have a solid base of customers and experience. Unlike most VoIP providers out there, they own their technology (the technology is in the hosted PBX aspect not the termination or carrying of the calls). The upper staff have all been through the wars before and recently the company closed its first round of funding with the vast majority being set aside marketing and sales.

I am going to be their first proper internal marketing person and that was a concern of mine, especially coming from my last job. But now I don't think it is going to be an issue at all. We already talked about the additional resources we are going to bring in and it is clear their expectations are in line with mine. Still, there is tons of work to do so I'll be busy for some time.

OBEY STARBUCKS




via the Wooster Collective

From Zachary: "This Starbucks is in Boulder, Colorado is across the street from the University of Colorado. It was unmasked a week ago by Pope Bathos, and remains so. Apparently the staff of Starbucks is ignorant of the transformation. Or maybe they've decided they like the change."

the city burns (burnt orange) tonight

luckily, i don't need to go to bed anytime soon.

I'd like to at least throw out a counter perspective on the real estate market. Of course, if you are sitting in one of the hot markets, it may or may not be of much comfort.

Despite a widespread sense that real estate has never been more expensive, families in the vast majority of the country can still buy a house for a smaller share of their income than they could have a generation ago......

Nationwide, a family earning the median income - the exact middle of all incomes - would have to spend 22 percent of its pretax pay this year on mortgage payments to buy the median-priced house.

The share has increased since 1998, when it hit a low of 17 percent before house prices began rising sharply in many places. Although the overall level has reached its highest point since 1989, it remains well below the levels of the early 1980's, when it topped 30 percent.

Basically three factors are at work: higher incomes, lower interest rates (most of us don't remember when interest rates in the teens were a fact of life, it reached 20% in the late 70s for brief period), and lower lending cost plus availability of loans that don't require 20% down.

Interest plays a huge factor. For example, you took out a $100k loan today at 6% fixed. Over 30 years, the interest maintenance would total $115k or 115% of your the cost of your home. If the interest is double, the maintenance cost go up to $270k. 15% and you have $355k in interest payments on a $100k loan. This demonstrates why ARM loans can dramatically affect people's ability to carry the cost of a loan.

Buyers can only spend so much each month, the question is whether it goes to the bank or the property owner (property taxes also factor in here). 20 years ago much more of it went to the bank, now it goes to the property owner (and taxes).

Let's take the 10 year cost of buying (since many only own homes for about 7-10 years before moving).
We are going to ignore insurance, taxes, and other misc cost for the time being.

Let's say you only could spend $2000 per month on the loan plus interest, what would the relative numbers look like?

With 6% interest you could support a loan of $335k, at 12% interest that drops to a $195k loan. You'd still pay $2k a month either way.

Basically, the lower interest rates that have occurred since the early 90's and into this decade have resulted in a massive transfer of wealth to property owners who had property before the normalization started to set in. Overall, this has to be viewed as a good thing, even though most of it went to people over 40. Many of those people took that wealth and spent it, which has driven the consumer segment of the marketplace for the past half decade. I am not sure by how much, but it was also a factor in increased wages (demand drives business, business requires workers, etc). Overall, the money instead of going to service interest debt (relative to the principle) and into consumers and companies hands, the broader marketplace if you will. Much of it went to entertainment and lifestyle items and have, in part, help finance the tech boom and the consumer goods revolution which including lower prices and an explosion in choices. Of course, there is a case to be made that consumers went a little to far in their support and should have stocked a bit more of that windfall away into saving.

In high-profile places like New York and Los Angeles, home to many of the people who study and write about real estate, families buying their first home often must spend more than half of their income on mortgage payments, far more than they once did. But the places that have become less affordable over the last generation account for only a quarter of the country's population.

All that above is well and good and provides a good contrast. However, a few questions pop into mind, the first of being is it really fair to compare it to 20 years ago. 20 years ago we were in the mist of the run up to the savings and loan collapse. Add in a huge budget deficit which restricted availability of private financing (and unlike today there was huge capital inflow from overseas markets), and you have a less than great time to be in the market for a home. However, I don't know if the early 80's were much better or worse than say 1955-1970, so we'll take it face value for now.

The better question is "where is a neutral balance point?" and then go from there. Is there a neutral balance point for that matter? The feds are trying to figure this out with short term interest rates. Where roughly is the point where interest rates become a drag on the economy verse where they encourage too much speculative lending/borrowing. They think it is around 4-5% but no one really knows. For a home buyer, is 30% a neutral number? I'd say that is a reasonable number and to go above that requires good cause and a willingness to take on a bit more risk (to go below, allows more money to be spent on other goods and services). Clearly the market has accepted higher ratios in some places. It does appear 50% is the upper boundary though. Where the pendulum swings back to in those markets is anyone's guess. A big factor in the hot markets to where prices will go is wage growth and interest rates. Given that people in the hottest of ares are stretched to the limits as a percentage of income, income is going to have to rise or borrowing cost fall if housing prices are to rise.

Overall, this perspective, numbers and article, give some weight to the argument that while the hotter markets should see some slow down and even perhaps a pull back in prices, the broader market remains reasonable and less likely to see a collapse in prices. The problem as the quote able illustrates is the biggest risk also happens to be in the markets which set the tone of the conversation nationwide. Markets are not always rational, especially when people are involved.

For runehog, goosehammer, r9, and others:

The British magazine Broadcast reports that the Sky One channel has commissioned eight new episodes of the series. Executive producer Damien Timmer says they will deal "with themes such as paranoia, conspiracy and identity crisis." The episodes will be partly written by Bill Gallagher, a creator of the BBC series "Conviction," an edgy police drama about vigilante behavior in society.

Sadly, the new "Prisoner" will not be set in the Welsh village of Portmeirion, a strange, planned community with eclectic Mediterranean architecture. Known simply as "The Village" in the original series, Portmeirion attracts thousands of "Prisoner" fans a year who tour the grounds with the help of a new guidebook.

From the WSJ:

In 57 of 379 metro areas nationwide, homes were so expensive in the third quarter that a family earning the median income couldn't afford the median-priced home based on traditional lending standards, according to Moody's Economy.com. Sixteen markets have joined the ranks of unaffordable areas over the past year, according to the analysis.

here is a couple of sound bits I don't think I've passed along:

jack was lost

gs

say what you will about texas, but deep fried turkey deli sliced is top notch.

blue backs me on this 100% and you can't argue with a connoisseur like her.

Apparently, "you fucking suck" translates to "attendant" or "agent" for SBC/Yahoo DSL's voice activated support menu system. Good to know for future use since saying "attendant" or "agent" doesn't work.

note to college boy at table next to me:

WWJD.

I am pretty sure he wouldn't feign interest in religion to get down your pants.

Dumb survey of the day:

Survey: Workers waste more time than employers expect, costing companies $759 billion a year.

That is in effect saying workers waste 8% of our GDP.

At least this article try to put some positive spin in there with the little bit about
'Wasting' time can be good for business.

How about some numbers to back that up: since the advent of the internet, productivity at the workplace has increased 30%.

Since 2000 alone, productivity has increased 17% while wages are up less than 3%. Given the employees don't seem to be sharing in the fruits of their productivity increase, I say they deserve a bit of slacking.