Month: December 2008

Good housing crisis article.

via Flyertalk: A housing crusade that went awry

Today, administration officials say it is fair to ask whether Bush’s ownership push backfired. Paulson said the administration, like others before it, “over-incented housing.”

Keith B. Hennessey, Bush’s current chief economics adviser, put it this way: “I would not say too much emphasis on expanding homeownership. I would say not enough early focus on easy lending practices.”

Also, another good site to look at is the Doctor Housing Bubble/ blog.

Discovery of the day.

McDonalds’ Bacon Ranch Salad, which I’m occasionally eaten over the last couple of years, is just as good without dressing – the bacon and cheese basically work as dressing.

In fact, the amount of bacon and cheese on it may be a bit much without being masked by dressing, but it’s easy to pick around them when they get to be a bit much.

For the record.

I do not now, and I have never owned an iPod or Zune.

I’ve owned three MP3 players:
* the first was a POS $200+ hard disk based one I bought 4-5 years ago, of which the less is said the better.
* The favorite of my current pair is an off-brand (Truly, maybe?) player-in-a-memory stick which cost under $20. It takes an AAA battery and just plays MP3s in file name order without any fuss or bother.
* My less favored, but more frequently-used one, is a little Creative has (~$90 for 4gb a bit over a year ago, cheaper now)… it has a 2.5″ screen for video, FM radio and a rechargeable battery which are big pluses… but it is much more trouble to put music onto or to play anything in a desired order. It’s also got a non-replaceable battery, which pisses me off.

I keep hoping that battery life on my PDA/phones will improve to the point where it will not be necessary to have a separate MP3 player. Sadly, I see little improvement there, and my present phone (a new HTC Touch Pro) is something of a step backwards for music player use as they went from a semi-proprietary small headset plug to an entirely proprietary USB+sound+etc plug.

(Lest the basic reference not make sense)