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This subprime mortgage meltdown is affecting everything*, including credit card loans, auto loans, and even student loans. Any type of loan basically is getting tightened because there is lack of liquidity in market. I heard on NPR that government backed student loans are not really affected, but who knows what will happen. The government has to borrow, too, from SOMEWHERE. Guess where. *duh*

Apparently this problem is most pervasive for students attending for-profit schools. (But aren’t all schools for-profit? They just don’t do dividend distribution.) Regardless, those of us who have benefitted from receiving student loans and have attended college have a civic responsibility to help. How? Simple. Just pay back your student loans if your cash is rotting away in savings or checking. If you make over $40k, your interest payment deduction benefit doesn’t even exist. So why not get rid of your debt AND help some other kid who needs a college education?

My two cents.

*Note: Situation’s so bad that even the entire city of Vallejo, CA is going bankrupt. Civil servants like fire and policemen are not coming to work b/c they think they might not get paid. Two thoughts arise out of this

• If a cop or fireman tells you that he’s doing the job because of passion, ask him if he’s willing to work for free
• I wonder if you can buy a city government. What wouldn’t I give to be King Kong..

It’s a fact. If you produce in society, you get punished.

1. Rules and Regulations

Let me take business as example because i feel most in touch with this world. You start a business. The first thing that the gov’t does is stick its hand out asking for fees and taxes. Example? California tax franchise board (i.e. IRS) asks you to pay $800 whether or not you make a dime in your business. If the your business does well and starts hiring employees, you get smacked in the face with payroll taxes, medicare taxes, social security taxes, liability insurance requirements, etc etc.

Yes I do concede that businesses are part of society and they need to pay their share of the social costs. But this is ridiculous.

Small businesses make up a BIG chunk of the US economy, meaning a big chunk of the US labor force is hired by small businesses. Why would you tax the golden goose that lays the egg? The more you tax the goose, the smaller the egg. Maybe even, kill it. Sure you might have a good feast for one nigh, but I guarantee you that goose is dead and not coming back.

First time I incorporated and tried to do things more “legit” was when I had a consulting business and a vending business. You can’t possibly imagine how much of your time is spent on doing stupid shit that makes you no money, like adhering to government’s rules and regulations. You can ask any entrepreneur why they started their business. Very simple, to CREATE WEALTH, not to pay taxes and fill out insanely dumb + repetitive forms.

Of course, you can outsource all of this to other companies or hire someone to do it. But that requires MONEY. If you’re starting a business, how much money can you devote to this mindless part of the business that produces no income?

2. Taxes

Producers of society are TAXED at every turn. Uncle Sam has his hand out on EVERYTHING we do. Making income? Taxed. Hiring employees? Taxed. Investing? Taxed. Borrowed money but can’t pay it back? YOu might even get TAXED on that b/c IRS interprets that as income in certain cases.

Taxes are important. Police and fire men, for example, are vital to society. If I am getting mugged or my house is on fire, I (like anyone else) would not doubt even for a second that my taxes are justified. Other public infrastructure that would be hard to manage under free market economy (like roads and civic structures) are good examples of GOOD use of our tax money. But of course, the gov’t has no incentive of being efficient. If you don’t spend your budget, you will not get more, next year. Thus the bludgeoning taxation.

Tax is getting out of hand. For example, when I started working a job out of college, I worked at a small startup software company getting paid $50k/yr. NOt a whole lot of money but when you’ve had no money for most of your life, it’s quite a bit. So how much did I really make?

• Federal + state income tax at 35% => $17k
• Medicare + social security tax at 7.5% (15% split b/w me and employer) = $3,750
• Sales tax on anything I buy @ 8% => $4k

That’s almost HALF of what I earned on taxes. In another words, I work for the IRS from Jan to June before anything comes to my pocket. (Yes, assumption on the sales tax was that I’d spend everything. Of course! I was 22. I did spend everything. Especially when paying for other family member’s health care costs).

People who are for “social re-distribution of wealth” (i.e. thru taxation) are retards. What they don’t understand is, taxation hurts middle class more than anyone else. Just look at the numbers above.

Taxes are even worse for entrepreneurs. There’s even MORE tax that you have to take into consideration before you add a dime to your pocket. Licenses, permits, registrations, legal structures, accounting, etc etc.

Politicians are always talking about making the economy stronger. Please. Nothing but lip service. Want to help the economy? How about getting rid of all these stupid regulations and taxes that not only burden small businesses, but even prevent new ones from forming.

How about not taxing businesses that have less than $250k in net revenue. That’ll help quite a bit.

Not sure if I am supposed to be confused or mad. I got a parking ticket for “Obedience to Posted Signs”.

Here’s the zoom in:

If i violate the posted signs, I get a ticket. If I obey it, i get a ticket.

I am confused.

Look at this!

I bet all, if not most, of their trafffic is from developers whose app server happens to be down (and thus no “http://localhost/”) and firefox or IE redirects to “localhost.com”. What a great domain name. Wish I’d bought it.

Ok this is a repost cuz of stinkin’ DreamHost.

If you have an auto-generated iframe from a javascript, and this iframe has dynamic data, FireFox (but not IE) wll cache your data. Even if you have

<META HTTP-EQUIV=“Cache-Control” CONTENT=“no-cache”>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=“Pragma” CONTENT=“no-cache”>

After days of pulling out my hair (or what little I have left), i found out the only way around this is by calling this in your JavaScript:

iframe.src = iframe.src;

This basically forces the browsers to reload. Not the most efficient solution but it works. Also, I haven’t tested to see if I could remove this with FireFox 3 coming out but no matter. The rest of the world is gonna take 1-2 years to download FF3 anyway.

PS: Hairloss is not due to masturbation. Thank god for that.

If you are using the DHTML JS Calendar and is trying to disable the previous days, by doing so


function dateRange(date) {
var now = new Date();
return (date.getTime() <= now.getTime() )
}

Calendar.setup({
inputField  : “calendar”,
ifFormat    : “%m/%d/%Y %H:%M %p”,
dateStatusFunc : dateRange,
showsTime   : true,
timeFormat  : “12″
});

you’ll notice that, you can’t CHOOSE any of the future dates.

The solution is from here, but i’ll repost. Edit your downloaded version of “calendar.js” and change as follows

(line 578)
Calendar.cellClick = function(el, ev) {

…
(line 592)
cal.date.setDateOnly(el.caldate);
date = cal.date;
if (date) {
Calendar.removeClass(cal.currentDateEl, “selected”);
Calendar.addClass(el, “selected”);
closing = (cal.currentDateEl == el);

if (!closing) {
cal.currentDateEl = el;
}
}

Read this bogus junk they call “news”

PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., has ranked the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas according to the risk that home prices will decline further during the next two years.

The highest risk is in areas where home price growth was the greatest during the housing boom. The lowest risk of prices declining further is in areas where affordability has increased.

PMI identifies the following areas as having a less than 1 percent risk of home prices declining further (read the whole list of metro areas ranked on the risk index):

* Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis, Wis.
* Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor, Ohio
* Austin-Round Rock, Texas
* Denver-Aurora, Colo.
* Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, N.C.-S.C.
* Kansas City,Mo.-Kan.
* Columbus, Ohio
* Cincinnati-Middletown, Ohio-Ky.-Ind.
* Indianapolis-Carmel, Ind.
* San Antonio, Texas
* Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas
* Pittsburgh, Pa.
* Dallas-Plano-Irving, Texas
* Fort Worth-Arlington, Texas

For the full report of all the Metro Areas go to http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=63356&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1171100&highlight

Ok, i personally been to some of these areas and I do agree that it’s dirt cheap in these places. But have you been to these places? These places are the LAST to receive benefits of economic expansion and the FIRST to lose them during down turn.

Optimism is good, as long as you’re not the greater fool.

People keep asking me what I used to build RedMol.com so here it is.

Basic plumbing:

• CodeIgniter MVC with FreakAuth authentication library
• TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor that transforms standard <textarea> into a nice one like you see when you write a wordpress blog post.
• AddThis and Plaxo widget for viral marketing
• If you have some API that’s for developers or widget codes, Syntax highlighter to make things pretty
• Google Map API to put things on map (duh)
• Zillow API and WalkScore if you’re doing real estate related website
• For web 2.0 effects, Scriptaculous, SWFUpload, Open Flash Chart, and standard ajax stuff.

But the most important tool is used is…. MY BRAIN! I participate quite frequently in CodeIgniter forums. My profile here.

Answers to questions I get

YES - I am open for consulting.

NO - I will not debug your stuff.

YES - I will date your sister. If she’s hot. Or your mom. Ok who am i kidding. I will take anything.

I don’t know if Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal is necessarily a good cafe song, but I’m here and they’re playing this song. WTF. Now I feel like putting my tea down and start dancing like this:

I guess people aren’t hurting THAT bad here. Damn, still kinda pricey even for shit areas.