Their home, meanwhile, which was originally valued at $585,000, had depreciated severely in three scant years. It was now essentially worthless at $270,000. Attorney Wajahat Ali This is the dramatic and sad kind of situation […]
Category: Living
The Bicycle Thieves
We rent half a garage to protect our bicycles, two of which someone stole sometime between Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning (Feb. 17th and 19th). The thieves got access to the garage and hacked through two Kryptonite HardWire cables. The thieves nearly cut through the Kryptonite Evolution Mini U-Lock protecting a third bike, presumably the prize of the three.
Pepsi Throwback
Why is sugar soda only available for a limited time when high fructose corn syrup is so much worse? (Taken and uploaded with Google Nexus One).
Google stands Alone Before China
It’s all about profit, and I understand where the silence is coming from, but they are missing the long-term picture. [Chinese leaders’] end game is to extract as much technology out of American companies as […]
Gene Munster tells a Good Story, But is it Believable?
IApple’s mobile phone business would go the same way as the Mac did in the 1980s and 1990s.
Conan O’Brien Should Out-Fox NBC
NBC’s reasoning for bringing back Jay Leno to late-night TV is baffling. I now understand why TV programming is rife with dumb-ass decisions: The people making them.
Here’s the basic story: Last year, Conan O’Brien replaced Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show as planned. But then NBC gave Leno his own show at 10 p.m., preempting Conan by 95 minutes, five nights a week. NBC figured Leno could carry the timeslot, saving boatloads of money otherwise spent on producing dramatic programming. Whoops, Leno couldn’t deliver the ratings, and NBC affiliates complained they were losing local news viewers at 11 p.m. The solution isn’t rocket science: Can Leno.
Our Yaris
We begin the year with a new auto, purchased a few weeks ago—2010 Toyota Yaris. The cutie car replaces our 1992 Toyota Corolla, which was totaled in a Black Friday weekend 2009 accident.
The family looked at several options, including the Honda Fit. Hertz rented us another Yaris, which charmed us all with its snub nose, compact size, and tight turning radius. We couldn’t resist.
'Walk Away from Your Mortgage'
Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said […]
Stuck in Newark Airport
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQeG1kaddsw] I agree 100 percent. “Maybe there is hope for our ever-increasingly isolated and anti-social (no, Facebook is making us less social) society after all”, nmook.
Shouldn't Healthcare Reform Reward Accountability?
Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plan is a series of compromises that don’t go far enough, but certainly promise improvements. As I write, a vote in the US House of Representatives looms close, and there is much uncertainty that a healthcare reform bill can pass—or should.
A recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece called so-called Obamacare “The worst bill ever.”
Former Microsofties, Can I Tell Your Story?
One of my blogging goals is to shift the focus away from dry technology to people, whether they be innovators or consumers. Focus should be the people and the stories they tell. That’s what Oddly Together is really about. Today’s unexpected Microsoft layoffs—800 employees—is good opportunity to tell stories.
Recession and the Recovery Problem
I sit outside the auto repair shop waiting for the brake light switch on my aging Toyota Corolla to be fixed. I type on the Nokia N97 smartphonne, on which I also have been reading news. I had blogged that the N97 would get a second chance. The iPhone 3GS is on ice, so to speak. But my N97 experience is topic for another post.
My interest here is the news I was reading in the New York Times about an analyst report suggesting that the economy is starting to recover. It’s not. But first, the Times asserts: “A measure of supplier deliveries, rising stock prices, an increase in consumer expectations, a jump in building permits and the ‘interest rate spread’ bolstered the index in August.”