Month: November 2011

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This may not bode well…

The first Snow of the season…

It’s probably going to be great for the ski resort operators but for me it means cold, snow shoveling and more cold.

Yes I know it’s pretty. It’s always pretty after the storm has passed and the sun is out.

The Land of the Mouse is pretty but it’s an unbelievable amount of work to keep Mouseland clean, safe , & ready to receive guests.

I use that analogy because there will no doubt be a ton of “Guests” up here over the weekend to play in the white stuff.  More often than you’d imagine,  these people think we clear our driveways just so they’ll have a place to park.

A buddy and I have often said that we should wait till Summer, then just park randomly at a someones house in Orange County and go jump in their pool. We know we’d be arrested before our swimsuits were completely wet, so we don’t do it. However, a lot of these people are about as rude when they come to the mountains.

The reason I say this doesn’t bode well is not so much because of the snow players, but because it’s unusual for us to have snow this early in the year. More often we see snow after Thanksgiving usually in Mid December.

The early arrival of this cold storm and the more frequent rain in general make me think that we’re in for a longer Winter than we’ve had in a while.

Guess I better get out the mukluks & sweaters….

Stay warm & dry.

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It’s a good day!

Aside from the pain in the ass nature of losing data on my server. One of my major worries was that I was also going to lose a ton of original photos.

In general I don’t ever erase or overwrite an SD card from my camera. Instead I treat the card like film negatives and just store them away.

But… And this is a BIG but, I didn’t always do that. It wasn’t until almost a year after the house fire (Where I lost everything) that I realized SD cards where actually pretty cheap and that I should just store them like negatives. During that period, I took a lot of photos and some of those were published, others made up part of my portfolio.

With the data crash I was pretty sure that I’d lost a ton of the pictures in that category.

This morning, I plugged in a portable hard drive and started browsing the data it contained. There was a folder labeled “Pictures”. Innocuous, unassuming…. AND it was a full backup of the my photo library!

There was singing and dancing over my morning coffee.

Another folder was called “Creative Writing” it contained all the writing I’d done through March 2011. So I’m a happy camper today. Yes there was some information that was lost but it appears that two of the areas I was really bummed out about… I had backed up.

I even found scans of receipts, and paystub information covering the last 4 years.

I guess sometimes being a compulsive asshole is a good thing!

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Another WTF?

I just saw a report about a couple that was needing to renegotiate their home mortgage.

They’re falling behind on their payments.

They’re New Yorkers and their house payment is about 3K a month. I know NY is expensive and I’ve heard of much higher payments on the left coast.

So while the house payment is higher than I’d be comfortable paying I don’t think it’s out of line for an average American Family these days.

If both people are working and they’re not extravagant about their expenditures, then this is a snap shot of “Normal Americans” these days.

The other way these folks are average is that the Husband has been layed off and hasn’t been able to find another job.

So they attended an event by invitation sponsored by the Federal Government that connects Americans in trouble with the banks and seeks to facilitate loan renegotiation under an Obama program.

They were denied a renegotiation.

Why?

Because the wife made too much money!

So let’s recap, Wife Employed, Husband unemployed, behind on bills, behind on mortgage.

The couple wants to honor their debts, & keep their house but they’re NOT eligible to take advantage of a Government sponsored program that would allow them to simply renegotiate their mortgage…

BECAUSE THEY MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY?


WTF?


Isn’t it enough that they’re in serious trouble?

I so totally don’t get it. The banks and the government would rather see a decent hard working couple who’s having a rough patch get foreclosed on, have their credit destroyed, and end up homeless than to take action….

Who does this serve? It sure as hell isn’t “We The People“

This is what Occupy Wall Street should be bitching about!