...Continued

Oh yeah, I remembered something else after I left for work.

Since I could only afford an inexpensive house, probably one that is not what I envision myself living in for more than 5 or so years, I didn't think that I could get the money out of it that I put into it when I decided to sell.

I mean, when you think about it, an extra couple thousand for closing costs to buy it, and then the same when you sell it. I don't anticipate the Lansing housing market (the only market I can afford) to improve much in the next few years. So, the house I would likely buy would appreciate enough for me to make any money off of it, and I would be spending more per month. Not my idea of preventing "waste".

On a slightly different note, I actually like the idea of living in a complex like the apartment complex I'm in right now. With so many people buying property and buying tons of land, all of our cities are turning into these endless road / building conglomerates. My dream world is a city that has hundreds of housing complexes (like condos or townhouses) inner-mixed with grocery stores and other retail outlets - easily bike-able or even walk-able. I think that the design of US cities is the most inefficient way to design for transportation. I mean, who the hell wants to live in a suburb anyways?? You have to drive your ass to all of the fun stuff (baseball games, football games, the COOL bars, work, etc. It sure would be nice to walk to Tiger stadium. Amazingly enough, the condos in downtown Detroit (which far outweigh my apartment in looks and class) are nearly in my price range! They are even easily within walking distance of the Hockeytown restaurant, Comerica Stadium, Ford Field, and even Greek town!

---- Its called Re-Urbanization. Buy into it now or enjoy high gas prices on your 20 minute + drive to work ---

Quickie Response

In regards to Linda's response to one of my previous posts about buying a house vs. renting:

I think owning property is a great investment, but after a lot of thought and investigating, I found that it wouldn't be financially beneficial for me to buy a house at this point in my life. If I got a loan for a $125,000 house, I would have no down payment which would result is a $125,000 loan. Plus, with no down payment I would have mortgage insurance for a few thousand, plus my monthly payment would be in the $800 - $1,000 range. To top that off, I'd have to pay taxes, probably resulting in an additional $2,000 - $3,000. As a result, my monthly payments would be high enough to make saving money a challenge. Any upgrades / maintanence costs could potentially make putting money into investments or away for retirement nearly impossible.

My Dad and I have considered pretty much all options. For now, renting is the best option for me. In these times, with so many people purchasing property when they can not afford it, it is difficult not to jump on the bandwagon - but when I don't have the cards... I gotta fold.

I guess I'll stick with my $500 / month plus utilities and be happy investing the remainder in Mutual Funds and C.O.D.s to keep the money out of my pockets. :)

Hah

Funny... and plausible.

Inner Struggle

Lately I've been dealing with a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings. None of this is related to relationships in any way though, that stuff is all good. Instead, I'm having trouble dealing with the fact that I can afford things that I never have been able to afford ever before.

Recently I have purchased a docking station for my laptop (so I can use my old Keyboard and hook my laptop up to a widescreen LCD), a Tivo, frames and photographs to decorate my walls, a network card for my Tivo so I can connect it wirelessly, dishes which cost more than my docking station, and several other smaller purchases. All in all I have spent enough to basically max out my credit card 2 months running. Sad. Anyways, now that I have the few things that I had been putting off purchasing while I lived with Linda, I still find myself craving more. I talked with my Dad about this while I was home.

Basically, what my issue is is that I always preach simplicity and that I hate consumerism. The fact that America uses so many resources compared to the rest of the world sickens me. To be perfectly honest, I think that how third world nations cope with their lack of material needs is something the rest of the "developed" world needs to be more considerate of in our day to day lives. That being said, I am going to try my hardest to keep myself from venturing down that "typical" American path. I'm not going to buy a newer car until mine dies. Now, when I say "dies", I really do mean DIES. I want to drive it until the costs to maintain it and keep it in reliable working order exceed the costs of a monthly payment on a new used car. Then, when I do buy a used car, I'm buying one strickly for mileage. Screw the fools of this world that buy their car as an "investment" or better yet, the ones that think it is a status symbol. Thats such bullshit -- your car is simply a tool that helps you get from point A to point B in a timely fashion. Right now I am thinking that a newer deisel VW will be my car of choice. They get between 40 and 50 miles per gallon (no matter if driven in the city or on the highway). The beauty of a deisel is its simplicity. No spark plugs, peaks RPMs at between 2,000 and 3,000 compared to 6,000 to 8,000 in a typical 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder engine, and the engine fires off of the compression of the fuel instead of the ignition - awesome. Plus, the cost to refine deisel is inexpensive and the technology has been around forever whereas hybrids and other fuel efficient alternatives are still being perfected.

It is kind of embarrassing though, I have always considered myself to be a pretty simple guy. I don't want to have an extravagant house, car, or basically anything that will draw much attention to me. If I'm not enough to make people take notice, then obviously I need to work harder at being impressive (not in a cocky way, but more in a self-improvement kind of way). I really think it is kind of sad when people put a ton of money into thing they don't need -- like cars. A car is the worst investment a person can make. So many people buy new cars and it is definitely a status thing. People want to be seen as wealthy, or appear to have enough money to have a new car, even if they don't. For instance, I was in Midland this past weekend and drove past a small house on a busy road. The house was no more than 1,200 sq. ft. and wasn't in that great of shape, but there was a Lincoln Zephyr in the driveway. One second while I pull up the base price of a Lincoln Zephyr for your knowledge... $28,000. Ok, honestly not as high as I expected, but still pretty expensive for a base price. So anyways, some guy drives around in this car thinking he is hot shit, but a lot of people probably just laugh at him because he bought that car, drove it off the lot, and just lost about $5,000 on its value. Dumbass.

Now, leasing... good idea if you always need a new car (i.e. maybe a Realtor, or an Executive), but for the most of us, leasing is a very bad idea. The monthly payments might be reasonable, and maybe its easy to get the car, without the need to take out a loan, but after a couple years, when you are done leasing, you have no car and the monthly payments you just made result in nothing back in your pockets. Plus, if you go over the mileage, you get raped on any extra. Deal or no deal? NO DEAL!

Anyways, I'm veering off topic a bit. In my political science course last year, we discussed whether some people are "better" then others. At first most of the students were pretty appauled by the entire idea, but after a lot of discussion, I can to the realization that in a lot of cases, some people are better than others. Now, the real question comes in with regards to politics and social issues. Should these "better" people be given a greater pull in voting and influencing? Honestly, I think they should. I admit that I'm not the smartest, or best and pretty much anything. Nor do I have the time to keep up with politics as well as I should; therefore, I think that the people that have extensive knowledge of the world should be given extensive priviledges with influential issues. This brings me to my final point - I believe that the US should look to educational institutions for assistance with the most pressing and difficult issues. Universities have extensive knowledge available and the government takes a lot of it for granted. If these knowledge pools were interacted with in a more direct fashion, a lot of the issues related to socioeconomic and world problems could be tackled with a much better understanding.

Thats all for now. I'm tired of typing. Hope it wasn't too boring. Any thoughts?

MSU Parking

Related to the purchase of new parking enforcement vehicles...

I admit, it is pretty silly for MSU to buy vehicles after 5 years - trucks nonetheless. Honestly, a $30,000 vehicle which gets poor gas mileage, has limited passenger capacity, simply for toting around a student to write tickets. I would think they could do that with a Dodge Neon (for half the cost). To be even more cost-effective, why didn't they consider getting a deisel car? The mechanics at MSU are very familiar with deisels since most of the engines in their lawn-care equipment are deisel powered. Plus, the deisel engine is nearly perfect for the driving "at low speeds all the time" that Rice describes - plus they burn significantly less fuel at idle then a gasoline engine.

But, what it all comes down to is money. MSU can afford it. Why? Because so many students continue to drive to class. As much as students don't want to admit it, they are lazy. I was lazy when I was in school, and I'm sure that in less than 1 year, things have not changed. Until students realize that walking 20 minutes to class, taking a bus, or, god forbid, riding their bike and being "economical", MSU can continue to throw their money around. Leave it to the image savvy MSU student to drive instead of ride a bike.

Then again, when there are so many cars on the road, any MSU student can admit to unsafe walking / biking conditions. I'm not sure if its worth the risk of crossing the streets with so many cars - I might just rather get a parking ticket. If you can't smell the sarcasm, you shouldn't be in college.

Mikey Likey

Notice anything different with my version of Firefox then yours?? Yea, mine looks like a Mac Safari browser. I guess that means my Firefox is cooler than yours. Sorry.

A little something..

You Are 30% Weird

Not enough to scare other people... But sometimes you scare yourself.

How Weird Are You?

Want to Laugh?? Read on....

Have you ever spoken and wished that you could immediately take the words back or that you could crawl into a hole? Here are some priceless quotes:......

*I walked into a hair salon with my husband and three kids in tow and asked loudly, "How much do you charge for a shampoo and a blow job?" I turned around and walked back out and never went back. My husband didn't say a word. He knew better*.

*I was at the golf store comparing different kinds of golf balls. I was unhappy with the women's type I had been using. After browsing for several minutes, I was approached by one of the good- looking gentlemen who works at the store. He asked if he could help me. Without thinking, I looked at him and said, "I think I like playing with men's balls."

*My sister and I were at the mall and passed by a store that sold a variety of candy and nuts. As we were looking at the display case, the boy behind the counter asked if we needed any help. I replied, "No, I'm just looking at your nuts." My sister started to laugh hysterically, the boy grin! ned, and I turned beet-red and walked away. To this day, my sister has never let me forget.

*Have you ever asked your child a question too many times? My three-year-old son had a lot of problems with potty training and I was on him constantly. One day we stopped at Taco Bell for a quick lunch in between errands. It was very busy, with a fu! ll dining room. While enjoying my taco, I smelled something funny, so of course I checked my seven-month-old daughter, and she was clean. Then I realized that Danny had not asked to go potty in a while, so I asked him if he needed to go, and he said, "No." I kept thinking, "Oh Lord, that child has had an accident, and I don't have any clothes with me." Then I said, "Dan!, are you SURE you didn't have an accident?" "No," he replied. I just KNEW that he must have had an accident, because the smell was getting worse. Soooooo, I asked one more time, "Danny, did you have an accident?" This time he jumped up, yanked down his pants, bent over and spread his cheeks and yelled. "SEE MOM, IT'S JUST FARTS!!" While 30 people nearly choked to death on their tacos laughing, he calmly pulled up his pants and sat down. An old couple made me feel better by thanking me for the best laugh they'd ever had!

*This had most of the state of Michigan laughing for 2 days and a very embarrassed female news anchor who will, in the future, likely think before she speaks. What happens when you predict snow but don't get any? A true story. We had a female news anchor who the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked: "So Bob, where's that 8 inches you promised me last night?" Not only did HE have to leave the set, but half the crew did too!

While on a flight from New York, the Stewardess was busy passing out peanuts and cokes to everyone. There were about sixteen flights lined up waiting to get clearance to take off. Then the other Stewardess got a message from the Pilot that the tower said the wind had changed 180 degrees and they were first in line to take off, and to have everyone buckle up. Without thinking she just announced "Please buckle up, grab your drinks and hold your nuts, we're taking off", No one saw her for the rest of the flight to Houston, and all the other Stewardesses were laughing all the way and half of the passengers.

Too Much

Honestly... is it just me or is extreme makeover home edition WAY TOO corny and ridiculous????


I mean, it is a good concept, but they are far too fake.

Whoa

So, my senior year I worked with a company called Allband Communication Cooperative to put together a website for them (which has since been butchered). Either way though, it was an interesting project. Allband is basically a non-profit telephone, cable, and high speed internet co-op that is located east of Gaylord. Where it is being built there currently is no phone service and cell phone reception is far from adequate. Needless to say, there are plenty of government funds which help areas like this get descent service. That is where Allband comes in. They are building the first Fiber-to-the-Home network which will provide telephone, cable, and gigabyte ethernet service. Plus, they will provide all of these services for under $100/month! Ridiculous? Yes... but check out the help the USDA gave them!!!!!



[For any MSU Telecom grads - notice Professor Choura and Muth in the photo]