CNN.com - Bennett under fire for remarks on blacks, crime - Sep 30, 2005 I believe it's conservatives who are saying that liberals are racist these days? Well, this clearly shows what an accepting, wonderfully tolerant group conservatives really are. This is the kind of person that they breed, clearly. Someone who won't appologize for saying that all black babies, if aborted, would reduce crime. That sounds just like Hitler's eugenics programs. Thanks Bill, for letting us know what your conservative GOP really stands for: racism and intollerance. See, conservatives cannot exist in a free society, because they DON'T BELIEVE IN FREEDOM. They believe in some perverse evangelical homogonized dystopia. It's getting clearer by the day.

So, I'm well on my way to buying an apartment, provided no one throws boiling coffee at the other party at the closing

That said, I feel like there are some things that I wish someone had told me before I got into the process. The things I learned, (in no particular order) are these:

1. Never listen to your real estate agent. Just understand that it's always in his or her best interest for you to buy quickly. That applies to sellers too. They want you to sell as soon as possible. The good thing is that they don't really care about price too much -- only as it relates to extending the buying process (in that if you low-ball and negotiation ensues, it could take a longer time than if you just offered at the asking price). I wouldn't say that they were particularly helpful or reliable in the beginning.

2. Listen to your real estate agent when you've had a bid accepted and you're ready to buy. They become your advocate for getting the process over and done with as quickly as possible at that point. Generally, that can be in your interest if you want to close quickly. Plus, they know and understand everything that needs to happen and they'll tell you what you need to do.

3. Get a lawyer that your friends recommend. This is someone that you need to trust. If you don't have any friends who've used a lawyer, look around on chat boards for advice. This is someone who is worth what you pay them.

4. Do a long period of researching prices before you go out and look for real. The best thing you can do is understand what it costs to live in the areas you're interested in. If you don't know what the baseline is, you could easily end up paying 450K for 600 sq. ft. in a bad neighborhood. Your agent doesn't care. In fact, they're there saying things like, "You can't really beat this location," and, "This neighborhood is going nowhere but up." Once you find out what things actually cost, you'll be able to go to look at apartments and not feel lost.

5. The google maps - craigslist mashup is your friend. Bear in mind, this isn't the be all end all of prices or location, but it's a good place to start to understanding where prices are in a neighborhood. It's better than anything you'd ever get from an agent.

6. Look at the neighborhood/real estate blogs if there are any. Curbed really helped me find places to get information about the neighborhoods I was looking in -- about future development plans, about crime, about culture, about prices, and everything really. It's all opinionyfactish, but it's something more than your opinion.

7. Look for value that is greater than your own. I was torn between two places but ultimately was able to establish that one of them had a much higher intrinsic value than the other (given the prices).

8. Be a real estate dork and make decision matricies and cost analyses. Not quantifying everything as objectively as possible will only make your decision harder (if you have to make one). First, you must know exactly what you can afford. This isn't just the price of the place, but the taxes, communal charges, closing fees, lawyers fees, home owners insurance, title fees, and anything else that crops up. If you don't know that stuff as clearly as possible, you may end up under water. Second, you must document what it is that's important in a piece of real estate: size, location, fees, cost, fixtures, layout, closet space, floors, walls, appliances, neighbors, neighborhood, utility costs, etc. Then, if you're comparing apartments, you must compare and weight these features in terms of importance. Trust me, for 5 minutes of work, it will make any tough decision SO EASY.
    I had to choose between two places, one small in a really nice neighborhood, and one large in sleepier neighborhood. My gut was to go with the smaller, less nice place in a subjectively better neighborhood. But, after I made a real analysis of the attributes of the apartments, it ended up appearing incredibly stupid to take the one in the "better" neighborhood: the value wasn't there. About 60% of my freinds were saying "location, location, location." The other 40% said, "value, value, value." I think if I had told the 60% about the cost differential of the apartments, that they would have said, "value, value, value." Which leads me to . . .

9. Always get the advice of people you trust . . . bring them with you to look at apartments if they'll come. I found it extremely helpful to have people come and look at the apartments with me. They helped me understand what was valuable about the places that I saw that I hadn't noticed, or what was terrible about the apartments that I missed entirely. A second set of eyes that isn't invested in your project (except because they don't want you to make a bad decision) is someone you need to have around.

All in all, the process of finding an apartment wasn't so terrible. It was ultimately pretty okay (or at least right now it is). The important thing to remember is that there is a procedure to doing this sort of thing (lawyers and brokers do it every day) and you'll be helping yourself a great deal if you understand what that procedure is. You'll be able to sleep easier.

PHEW!

Technology Licensing - HyperSonic Sound

this is an incredible idea: truly directional sound without interference. I wish I could think of things like this.

Blogwise - Blog directory

This is kind of helpful to see, but for whatever reason, it's not particularly helpful. I'd really like to be able to find more valuable blogs, but for whatever reason, I don't exactly know where to go. Sadly, this doesn't really help much. What I want to see is information blogs but using a search engine isn't going to give me what I want . . . I guess I want to start with popularity and work backwards from their. Is that possible?

So it's been about two weeks since I last wrote. Since then Terry died, the pope died, and I've had an excellent vacation in sunny Las Vegas/California. I can honestly say that I'm quite glad that these things have finally come to rest. That doesn't mean that I'm glad they're dead, but I got tired of hearing about people argue about the quality of life and musing on the possibilities surrounding this woman. It was boring and self-rightious. So glad it's over.

As for the pope. Again, probably someone who I would have liked personally, but completely disagreed with in so many ways. He seemed nice enough, but I can't say that I had an easy time reconcilling that "nice enough" with his beliefs. Again, not to say that I'm glad that he's gone, but at least he's no longer dealing with a extremely difficult life . . . sound familiar?

Republicans Respond to Evangelicals on Schiavo

Although I find this to be sickening (the way our federal gov't has intervened), I am thrilled to see the Republicans bending over backwards to appease their base. It's this kind of grotesque abuse of power in the name of the religious zealots that will hopefully continue until mid-term elections. With any luck, the Republican majority will be scuttled by their complete and obvious beholdenness to evangelicals, big business with agendas that run counter to the interests of the people, and to right wing idealist psychopaths that think that the way to safety is through the minefield of perpetual war.

Small Merchants Adopt 'Weird' PR Campaign

This is one of those things that makes me think that people have had their heads in the ground for years. It's obvious that big box retailers destroy local businesses. It's not their aim, but it is what they do. They're out to make a profit. I think it's a travesty that they don't acknowledge the impact that they have . . . which is basically rotting out the core of every mid-sized city in America so that we can all have low-priced crap made in 3rd world countries at a low low price. The sad thing is that that low-low price is necessary because stores like that destroyed the manufacturing jobs that allowed people to afford the more expensive goods. Shopping at big box stores is very much a "pay a little now, pay a lot latter" equation.

Florida School Testing South Beach Diet

"[we want to] igure out whether school cafeterias are capable of serving more nutritious food, whether kids will eat it and whether their health will improve."

Why not find out if their education is improved as a result of better nourishment. I would suspect it would be, but this would definitely be the test to find out.

SANYO -SolarArk-

This is an amazing solar generation power facility in Japan. However, what's sad is that it generates only enough electricity to power 200 homes for a year. But -- now that I think about it -- woudn't it be possible to create this at a very small level for every home? A micro power generation facility for each home? If this very large thing can power 200 homes, wouldn't something smaller (1/200th the size, perhaps) power one home?

North Korea Says It Has Nuclear Weapons

Our foriegn policy attempts to control North Korea's nuclear ambitions have been about as effective as my attempts to prevent my cat from trying to sleep on my face every morning. Wouldn't it have been more effective to not create the circumstances under which one might be motivated to create nuclear weapons? That said, perhaps this is part of some larger strategy -- you don't go out of your way to call three nations assholes without having some larger plan, do you? Of course, it is The Bush Admin we're talking about here -- very secretive, very duplicitous, so it will be interesting to see in their view of history if this is what was intended. One thing is for certain, though, one nation that didn't have Nukes who would like to use them against the US now does -- and wasn't in any way prevented from doing so, and was virtually encouraged to do so.

The current administration's view of diplomacy is about as effective as my department's ability to communicate with other departments in this company -- abrasive and irritating, if anything at all.

Mechanical Confections

This artwork is pretty neato. I don't know that I would pay for it, but it certainly inspires me to want to create a Rube Goldberg machine (for those of you know in the know, those are the sophisticated mousetrap-like machines that often use golf balls, bells, and funnels). Gina Kamentsky has been creating these sculptures incorporating found metal objects and has set up this site. In any case, it's always nice to be inspired about something -- which is something that I find to be completely lacking in much of my day-to-day. Although I sure do love roller coaster tycoon 3 -- which, if you turn your head sideways far enough, seems roughly similar to Gina Kamentsky's art.

Ward Churchill (Colo. Professor) Issues Defiant Speech

This is the guy who referred to the victims in the World Trade Center (those who actually had jobs working for the companies and not the Fire Fighters, Janitors, etc) as little Eichmanns. It's a silly thing to say. He'e entitled to his opinion, but what's so curious to me about this situation is that he's the Head of the Ethnic Studies Dept. at U fo Colorado at Boulder, so it seems like he'd have more than enough wisdom to not make such a statement in such an unhelpful way, and also that he appears to be very closely tied with Native Americans. Do Native Americans share his views? I wonder.

URBANintelligence

I got to guest post on another blog. Of course, they have no audience and neither do I, so it begs that age old question: if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it actually make a sound. The answer to this is no. No one gives a shit and I'm okay with that.

I've got a message for all you business motherfuckers who put the word "Thanks" at the end of an email that reads:

I hope that your head gets crushed in a vise while you work on this meaningless project for me because I personally find satisfaction in crushing your ambitions and life between my thumb and index finger. I'll be very disappointed if this request doesn't ruin your night and weekend.

Thanks,
Carol

Or even more frustrating:

I haven't even remotely considered what impact this will have on anything that your working on (even though I already know what you are working on), or your mental wellbeing, but could you take an hour or two out of your day to come over and blow me.

Let me know your thoughts.
Thanks,
Greg

Please stop saying thank you. Because every time you do, I curse your soul.

Universal's Second Chance to Make Video Pay

Another atrociously idiotic move by a record company: let's start charging for our built in free distribution system and penalize companies for promoting our artists for us. Sounds like a plan, the sooner I don't have to listen to another U2 or $.50 song, the better. And this may have the unintended effect of making other artists who actually like having their work heard by people actually get heard by people.

In a twisted way, I'm actually quite glad that the major record companies are imploding -- it means that many artists who previously found it difficult to break through will be found. With record companies gone, it may open up the promotional avenues such as MTV and radio stations to local and other previously unknown artists (because there is no culture jam of shitty over hyped and promoted artists).

Potentially the downside is that the quality of recordsing will go down (the actual productiojn value, that is), but it seems unlikely given that clearly where there is a will, there is a way. Here's to hoping the fat cats get crushed under their own fat guts.