Music Monday: Wasted Days and Wasted Nights – iMac OS update
Posted By RichC on January 13, 2020
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There are safer ways to use a ladder
Posted By RichC on January 12, 2020
Being young, and someone who looked to be vying to be listed in this year’s Darwin Award, had me telling this worker, on a questionable set ladder, that he may not be 
as invincible to injury as he thinks? (he said to me, “oh, I’ve done this before”)
We noticed a bit of water seeping between the new gutters on our house and the aluminum facia trim, so I called Gutter Shutter who has been excellent in responding to me when it came to servicing the minor repair we needed on our new gutters (for the cost, they should). Their service guy stopped out this week to add a strip of additional drip edge … but set up his ladder a bit precariously. Having had a few “ladder accidents” in our family (father-in-law, brother-in-law and my wife, but thankfully not Taylor), I’m a bit more sensitive to ladder accidents that look like they are waiting to happen.
Thankfully all was well, but still think there was a better way to stabilize this than a couple rocks under two for the legs? Safety First, please.
Are a few big tech companies getting a bit pricey?
Posted By RichC on January 11, 2020
Forgive me for being a bit redundant in worrying (again) about the hot tech stocks like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Tesla (TSLA) and Netflix (NFLX) among others as the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirts with 29,000 in mid-January 2020 (even a broken clock is right twice a day! ― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach). I’ve been wondering just how long these must have stocks can continue to rise faster than their earning?
Apple in particular has changed in recent years – from a somewhat reasonably priced money making machine, to what some consider a bit overpriced. Time to diversify? Of course, I worried when it was half the price it is today … then AAPL went on to rise another 86% in one year (2019).
If I still held the individual AAPL stock, I don’t think I could ride it much longer … in fact, I’m concerned that if investors decide it is time to cash in a bit as the $1.4 Trillion dollar company is being held in thousands of ETFs and Mutual Funds. A little selling to lead to more and even drag the market itself down. It could be the next melt down trigger, even if the underlying economy and stock market is sound. There might not be any fundamental reason, just a “run for the exits” where investors want to hold onto the 2019 gains in tech before the next guy sells his shares?
Some dogs just need a little more loving #video
Posted By RichC on January 10, 2020
This pet video of a dog in Turkey getting his back rubbed by a car wash is pretty impressive. I guess the human touch isn’t all that important to him?
Loved those Volkswagen conversions like the Brubaker Box #TBT
Posted By RichC on January 9, 2020
It’s fun to remember all the cool looking Volkswagen conversion back in my youth. I loved the dune buggies and sports car models (that looked fast, but were VW Bug slow). Here’s one that I never saw in person, but back in the 1970s … when “vans were cool” … this would have been great. I still like it today!
Back in the 1970s, converting Volkswagen bugs into other things was a pretty popular pastime. I suppose it was the relative simplicity of their chassis design, and easily removable bodies that made them easy targets. One of the most amazing VW bug conversions I’ve ever seen has got to be the Brubaker Box.
Curtis Brubaker would convert VW Beetles into a sort of a low minivan. Like a Bug, it’s still got a rear-mounted engine, and all of the mechanicals are basically the same, though they raised the pedals, and moved the dash controls and radio over to left side of the driver. Of course, that was only feasible because the only way in or out of the Brubaker Box was the sliding door on the passenger side. In addition to the two seats up front, the Brubaker Box featured a sort of section lounge area in the back, much like larger vans of the era.
That’s just great #sarcasm – Our near perfect VirginMobile wireless phone plan is now BoostMobile
Posted By RichC on January 8, 2020
Just when you have the perfect wireless plan (and pricing structure) figured out … someone throws a wrench (spanner) in the works. Thanks Richard Branson. #sarcasm
Our Virgin Mobile iPhones (we have iPhone7s and iPhone7plus) … are being transferred to Boost Mobile. Ugh, that doesn’t sound promising?
Who knew Evil Knievel owned a KIA SUV? #video
Posted By RichC on January 7, 2020
Music Monday: A lesson from Warren Zevon, the “Excitable Boy”
Posted By RichC on January 6, 2020
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Low inflation. Will it continue? It depends on who you ask.
Posted By RichC on January 5, 2020
An interesting take on “inflation” and how different generations perceive the possibility of it accelerating in the next decade or so … and perhaps the effect it can or will have on our lives. For example, in the graph below, pick your birth year and note the color bars to determine how many years of 0 to 6% inflation per year. Interesting.
For millennials in Generation “Z” and “X,” hardly remembers inflation or is concerned just how painful high inflation can be. They can’t relate to double-digit home loans or borrowing for cars at credit card rates. The boomers often recall the pain and difficulty in planning one year to another with inflation running nearly 10% each year in the 1970s and 80s.
Some of use who grew up with this as a “normal concern,” anxiously look at the economy through the skewed lenses of inflation … even when there hasn’t been any for years (or very much). Instead of watching the Federal Reserve flit back and forth with rates in the very low digits as it has for a couple decades, 
the late Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker jacked rates up to nearly 20% and kept them high for a long period of time in order to stop inflation. I remember thinking, “Hm, if I could save enough to buy a few 30 year Treasuries yielding 10%, I could live off that interest.”
But it did not continue and as a result we now have a generation that has never truly felt the impact of inflation. As a Washington Post article commented last month, Volcker “not only broke inflation’s back but seemed to cripple it forever.”
Today’s workforce barely remembers Volcker’s titanic showdown with rising prices. Fewer than a quarter of today’s working-age Americans were over age 18 at the time — and they’re all baby boomers.
“There’s a generation of both people and economic analysts who never experienced the monster that Volcker slayed,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who served as chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden.
Overall, 6 in 10 working-age Americans haven’t even seen inflation above 4 percent. A quarter of them haven’t even seen a sustained stretch above 3 percent.
Archive: We had a great family Christmas 2019 on New Years Day
Posted By RichC on January 4, 2020
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Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.