There’s always something to howl about.

Month: May 2010 (page 1 of 3)

A Month With the iPad

I got the iPad – 64gig 3G enabled – about a month ago. Unfortunately – or fortunately given how busy I’ve been – I haven’t had enough time to truly explore the possibilities.

Here’s my set-up. My MacBook laptop has been retired to serve as my home computer. I got an iMac (1 TB, 4 gigs of RAM) two weeks ago to serve as my desktop computer. And I have the iPad for the in-between use. The iPad serves as a light-weight mobile computing device.

Why this set-up? First, I needed to get something that could support Windows since all of the major bankruptcy software runs on Windows. (This software is maddeningly bad and looks like it hasn’t been updated in functionality since 2002.)

My MacBook had only 2 gig of ram, which would not adequately support a virtual machine. So I’m running Fusion’s VMWare on the iMac, which is awesome. With Mac’s Spaces, I can put Windows XP into a different window, and press Command-1 or Command-2 to move from Mac OS to Windows XP.

Second, the MacBook is actually not a very light computer, and not a very durable piece of hardware. The less I have to move it around, the less opportunity for it breaking or falling out of my bag.

The iPad is, of course, very light as a mobile computing device, and, in its case, seemingly durable, though I haven’t put it through a rigorous test. I’ve dropped it twice, and no scratches or defects have emerged.

Since typing on the virtual iPad keyboard is fine for limited tasks, but not fine for writing a document, I got Apple’s smallest, lightest bluetooth keyboard. The pairing works quite well. I’m typing this post on the iPad at the same speed I’d work on a post if I were at a laptop or desktop computer.

What is the iPad really good at?

Reading and presenting documents and other information. With Apple’s MobileMe ($99/year) system, I’m able to sync all of my documents on all three devices. Read more

“If wind and solar power were practical, entrepreneurs would invest in it. There would be no need for government to take money from taxpayers and give it to people pushing green products.”

John Stossel on the phractured physics of “green” energy:

Maybe the electric car is the next big thing?

“Electric cars are the next big thing, and they always will be.”

There have been impressive headlines about electric cars from my brilliant colleagues in the media. The Washington Post said, “Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they’re within reach of the average family.”

That was in 1915.

In 1959, The New York Times said, “Electric is the car of the tomorrow.”

In 1979, The Washington Post said, “GM has an electric car breakthrough in batteries, now makes them commercially practical.”

I’m still waiting.

“The problem is very simple,” Bryce said. “It’s not political will. It’s simple physics. Gasoline has 80 times the energy density of the best lithium ion batteries. There’s no conspiracy here of big oil or big auto. It’s a conspiracy of physics.”

Yes, Stossel is pop-science. You can only go so far with him. But this may be the only article you will see that explains why so many of the highly-touted environmentaloid “solutions” are pipe-dreams, based in wishful thinking and a math education that foundered on the shoals of Algebra. Read the whole thing.

Carolyn Capalbo – a REALTOR needs our help

I have been buried in 18 hour days lately. My frist inclination towards anything that comes my way has been. “I’m buried. Leave me alone.” or “I will get back to you on it.” But this story tugged at me a little. Enough for me to take action.

See, back in the day here on BHB, Brian Brady put up a post about Ashley Dupree, the person who made headlines with Elliot Spitzer, the then governor of New York. It was more of a lark than anything, seeing how much irrelevant traffic could be generated from a post and from Greg’s being in good graces with Google. Brian’s post proved the power of serch marketing pretty handily.

It is wild to see how this story would affect the life of a fellow REALTOR.

Carolyn Capalbo is a fellow REALTOR in Northern Virginia who shares her name with Ashley Dupree’s mom. Can you see where this is going? Online Reputation Management Trainwreck. Let me have her tell it to you in her own words. You can see at the bottom of the post that she is asking for anyone to help her regain her credibility in Google. Every time someone Google’s her name right now in relation to a real estate deal, they get stories about Ashley Dupree…and pictures. Nice.

RealEsetateWebmasters started an Online Reputation Management contest to draw awareness to the issue. I have had my head down working on code and did not see it until an email crossed my desk. I am far more interested in simply doing a good deed for this fellow traveler than worrying about the contest. (Morgan did throw in some huge prizes to get it going – nice work!). I decided to throw in a prize or two of my own for anyone showing up on the top three pages of Google.

so the goal is REALTORS UP – SMUT DOWN. Pretty straighfordward (grin).

I did put together a Carolyn Capalbo post on EricOnSearch. It is sitting right now at #11…I will be working on that. 😉

So now I am seeing more than a few bloggers start to post entries Read more

Ubiquitous Bloodhound finally makes his break

All of us, proprietors of this kennel included, have known that Odysseus was destined for the big time. Well, he finally got his break! Look for our pal anywhere a gorgeous face is needed.

It's midnight. Do you know where your Bloodhound is?

True confession: I was hiding in the bushes at a webinar (name withheld to protect the perps) and discovered PhotoFunia while waiting for the inevitable “buy today! Special deal just for our attendees! Super special deal if you get your broker to bring more lambs agents  to the slaughter!”  Well anyway, I found PhotoFunia at this webinar.  It is free and it is fun. There really was a pony in there!  I hope you enjoy.

Like bugs trapped in amber, take a close look at Rotarian Socialist cockroaches and the pusillanimous pissants who make them possible.

This is from today’s Arizona Republic:

Businesses that send employees door to door through Phoenix neighborhoods have jumped into the discussion over whether the city should require peddlers to be licensed before ringing doorbells.

Phoenix is the only major city in the Valley that does not require some sort of business license for door-to-door solicitors. In the past year, council members have been getting complaints about bad behavior by people who sell door to door.

On Tuesday, about 25 residents and business representatives gathered at the Phoenix Public Library’s main branch for the first of seven public hearings the city will hold on the issue.

Of course we need a new law. Why should fully-grown adults be expected to confront and respond to “bad behavior” without Big Brother to scare away the bad guys and Big Mother to kiss their boo-boos?

But wait. There’s more.

About half of those attending represented areas that are fed up with solicitors. The rest represented businesses that had a range of opinions on regulation.

This is a fact: Business “regulations” are written by and for the businesses putatively being “regulated.” They put the Rotarian in Rotarian Socialism. Hide and watch:

“We are in favor of regulation and monitoring of door-to-door solicitors,” said Magnolia Lee, who described herself as business consultant who represents a small group called Sales, Solicitation and Distribution United.

“There needs to be some sort of standard for professional and courteous conduct,” she said.

What’s the standard? Me-and-mine, not thee-and-thine. The “regulations” will advantage Lee’s clients by disadvantaging their competitors. This is the objective sought by all “regulation.”

But we’re not done yet:

Marc Scher, government relations director for the Phoenix Association of Realtors, said his group favors licensing people who ring doorbells to sell products but wants any new law to exempt real estate sales people seeking listings.

“Realtors have been going and knocking on doors and introducing themselves to their neighbors,” he said. “There has to be a differentiation between selling a product and a relationship.”

This would the the anti-dog-eat-dog rule, straight out of Atlas Shrugged. Steal the other guy’s dinner, but keep your mitts off mine! Makes you proud to be a Realtor, Read more

Using Captcha to Capture Idiotic Real Estate Agents

A CAPTCHA is a challenge-response test most often placed within web forms to determine whether the user is human. The purpose of CAPTCHA is to block form submissions by spambots, which are automated scripts that post spam content everywhere they can.

Somebody’s Got to Stop the Stupid

Okay, a bit of a rant.  But I’ll bet you’ll want to jump on the proverbial bandwagon once I’m exhausted, spent and fallen down in subluxed joy after finishing this. The outlet for my frustration came courtesy of a Facebook comment by Mary McKnight. “Thanks, Mary.”

If there’s one theme that Bloodhound blog has perpetuated, promulgated and promoted, it’s excellence. A close second would probably be splendor. Tom Johnson perhaps put his arms around what I’m about to rant a little over tonight, and he did it with this post about a famous Greek historical event.  The Spartans were professional soldiers. They studied their craft. They studied their history. They studied their enemy. They sought fellowship with one another, coupled by a sense of duty to excellence and splendor.

Oh, how I would that my compatriots in the profession of real estate were to embrace the Spartan ethos. And if not, at least an ethos. My encounters of late with real estate agents have left me thinking they lack not only a distinctive character, not only fundamental values, but simply a lack of any character, training or professionalism whatsoever.  In short, I’ve had my fill recently with agents who have no common sense, no commitment to excellence, no knowledge commensurate with their duties, no bleeping right to be called a professional real estate agent, and certainly no right to practice the longstanding legal requirements of agency.

I’ve had agents not call me back.  Then, then don’t call me back.   They tell me to sign contracts that they know have errors in them.  They provide inaccurate information to me about contracts they represent. They cant’ find documents. They can’t find the time to do what needs to be done. They can’t find their own assholes, honest. What they can Read more

Capitalist going green: Why the hate during my quest to go paperless?

If you’re an artist or a tree hunger, you may want to read this post and re-tweet or repost this on your left wing blog while you’re probably still living in your parent’s basement trying to help save earth worms and maggots!  Hey artists of the world, after reading you may feel like you should be on the right, instead of the left (wink).  Does anyone every feel like when someone gives you literature or a brochure on products or even a simple appointment reminder slip from the doctor that you try everything in your power to be polite and kindly say, “No thank you, I can save that reminder in my phone” or even ask a sales rep to email you that brochure?

My story is simple.  I am a capitalist who is trying to go paperless.  Why would I need paper when I have a tablet pc and also receive email?  You see what I have been finding is that people in general take offense to the fact that I kindly decline their literature or appointment reminder slip.  Simply put, my life is organized all virtually.  As a matter of fact, I recently purchased a professional scanner the “Xerox documate 152”.  I simply scan all the closing papers to my hard drive and carbonite automatically backups up my hard drive daily.  I’m way more efficient and organized which allows me to close more deals and wow customer and enjoy my life more at the same time.

I do send out snail mail for marketing purposes yes, however, the real question I am trying to pry out of you right is do you see yourself going paperless (or near paperless) anytime soon?  If yes, describe how you think people will react towards if you kindly decline literature, ect, ect and as that is all be emailed to your email address for receive.

So Simple Even a Realtor Can Do It? – Fishing In Wells

“So simple even a Realtor can do it.”

Our old friend Russell Shaw wrote a post recently in which he made use of that quote. It comes from the well known Gary Keller book, Millionaire Real Estate Agent. Though I’ve not read it, that quote alone got it on my to-do list, if only to see what other nuggets might be lurking within.

I understand the sentiment. Even if we assume the expertise and knowledge it takes to produce results for buyers and sellers, without the ability to get yourself in front of folks who have the option of tellin’ you to stick it, all your skills will go unused. The best fisherman in the world won’t catch fish #1 casting his line down a well. He tends to prefer plyin’ his talents where the fish are likely to congregate. Go figure.

We humans tend to pull the wool over our own eyes. Having a plausible, even credible sounding reason for consistent abject failure is key to maintaining our perfect record of failing for very solid reasons. You know, we may fail, but it’s never due to anything we’ve done or failed to do, right? Right.

Beginning last week I began knockin’ down dominoes launching my company’s new infrastructure/marketing/return to San Diego. I ‘left’ SD almost seven years ago, as income property there was for those who either didn’t know what they were doing, were unaware of outa town options, had simply given up — or all of the above. My assessment back then, and until recently, was that it was akin to fishing in a well — it might be relaxing, but you were still gonna be eatin’ beans for dinner.

One of the dominoes knocked down this Monday was reintroducing myself to the local Board of Realtors (gulp) and the MLS. I was pleasantly surprised to learn they’ve followed Phoenix’s lead and become Mac friendly. Also, don’t know when this started, but one must now click a fob to access the MLS now. I joined again cuz I needed other fishermen to know where my fish can be found. Read more

What caused the housing crisis? Perverse government incentives.

Form an academic paper by George Mason University Economics Professor Russell Roberts:

Beginning in the mid-1990s, home prices in many American cities began a decade-long climb that proved to be an irresistible opportunity for investors. Along the way, a lot of people made a great deal of money. But by the end of the first decade of the twenty- first century, too many of these investments turned out to be much riskier than many people had thought. Homeowners lost their houses, financial institutions imploded, and the entire financial system was in turmoil.

How did this happen? Whose fault was it? Some blame capitalism for being inherently unstable. Some blame Wall Street for its greed, hubris, and stupidity. But greed, hubris, and stupidity are always with us. What changed in recent years that created such a destructive set of decisions that culminated in the collapse of the housing market and the financial system?

In this paper, I argue that public-policy decisions have perverted the incentives that naturally create stability in financial markets and the market for housing. Over the last three decades, government policy has coddled creditors, reducing the risk they face from financing bad investments. Not surprisingly, this encouraged risky investments financed by borrowed money. The increasing use of debt mixed with housing policy, monetary policy, and tax policy crippled the housing market and the financial sector. Wall Street is not blameless in this debacle. It lobbied for the policy decisions that created the mess.

In the United States we like to believe we are a capitalist society based on individual responsibility. But we are what we do. Not what we say we are. Not what we wish to be. But what we do. And what we do in the United States is make it easy to gamble with other people’s money—particularly borrowed money—by making sure that almost everybody who makes bad loans gets his money back anyway. The financial crisis of 2008 was a natural result of these perverse incentives. We must return to the natural incentives of profit and loss if we want to prevent future crises.

Is This Normal? (What Seattle Real Estate Agents Earn)

We’ve spent plenty of time trying to figure out what’s fair to pay Redfin agents. As part of that exercise, we analyzed the gross commissions for all Seattle-area (King County, to be precise) agents who closed at least one transaction over the past year (May 12, 2009 to May 11, 2010). The data surprised us, so much so that we thought we’d ask this community if we’re making any obvious mistakes.

We sorted the agents by gross commission, assigning percentiles to each. When we didn’t know the commission on a deal, we assumed it was high: 3% for each side.

Agents at the 50th percentile of pay earned $29,820 in gross commissions. Agents at the 75th percentile earned $75,018. You don’t hit $100K in commissions until the 82nd percentile. Then we graphed the data, showing the gross commissions on the vertical axis, and the percentile of the agent earning those gross commissions on the horizontal axis. The result was a hockey stick:

But then we reasoned that a lot of part-timers are closing one or two deals on the side while working another job; so we excluded all the folks who earned less than $25K in gross commissions. This shifted the graph to the right a bit, but otherwise we still saw a very small number of agents earning a huge proportion of the total commissions in a market:

Then we asked ourselves how much money a good agent — say, someone earning $100,000 in gross commissions — has to shell out in costs each year:

Type of Expense Traditional Agent, Annual Costs
Brokerage fee $10,000
Health insurance $10,500
Marketing $10,000
Social Security, Medicare Taxes $6,500
Transportation $3,600
Cell service $1,200
Equipment $1,000
Dues, education $783
IT $1,000
Total $44,583

All told, the data left us scratching our heads. In a fairly wealthy market where sales volume has been increasing, a good agent — someone among the top 15% of his peers — is probably netting less than $60,000 per year. Does that sound right?

The greatest risk of resurrgent statism is that we will forsake the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness…

Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute in The Washington Post:

The new statism in America, made possible by years of drift and accelerated by the panic over the economic crisis, threatens to make us permanently poorer. But that is not the greatest danger. The real risk is that in the new culture war, we will forsake the third unalienable right set out in our Declaration of Independence: the pursuit of happiness.

Free enterprise brings happiness; redistribution does not. The reason is that only free enterprise brings earned success.

Earned success involves the ability to create value honestly — not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn’t mean making money in and of itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek value through innovation, hard work and passion. Earned success is what parents feel when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, what artists feel when they create something of beauty.

Money is not the same as earned success but is rather a symbol, important not for what it can buy but for what it says about how people are contributing and what kind of difference they are making. Money corresponds to happiness only through earned success.

Not surprisingly, unearned money — while it may help alleviate suffering — carries with it no personal satisfaction. Studies of lottery winners, for instance, show that after a brief period of increased happiness, their moods darken as they no longer derive the same enjoyment from the simple pleasures in life, and as the glow of buying things wears off.

The same results emerge with other kinds of unearned income — welfare payments, for example. According to the University of Michigan’s 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, going on the welfare rolls increases by 16 percent the likelihood of a person saying that she or he has felt inconsolably sad over the past month. Of course, the misery of welfare recipients probably goes well beyond the check itself. Nonetheless, studies Read more

Free Market Solutions To Government- Hatched Problems

Got oil in your water?  How’s that government supervised clean up working out for you?  A few weeks ago, I said:

This may be a hard pill for government groupies to swallow but the response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill (more government regulations and a limit on liability) is what caused this disaster.  Regulations offer a false sense of security.  Moreover, when the State manages risk for private industry, private industry will take as much risk as they are legally permitted.  It happened in the housing market and now its happening to our environment.  This is what free market supporters call “moral hazard” which is a fancy way of saying “with reward comes responsibility”.

Still, the chocolate milk pumps into the sea at a rate of 150 gallons per minute.  In my conclusion I said the free market might develop some new technology to clean up oil spills:

The solution?  Government should do one of its two legitimate functions and adjudicate the claims.  The judgments will properly quantify the risk associated with an oil spill so that the industry can better measure that risk.  Maybe all offshore drilling will cease.  Maybe new technology will be developed to bring the oil through the water safely.  Maybe reinsurance products will be developed to diversify the risk.  …but we’ll never know.  We’ll never know because Senator Sara and the rest of the superheroes in Washington are certain that they can corral what Adam Smith called “The Invisible Hand”

and…perhaps the private sector, financially backed by the most unlikely of entrepreneurs, did:

Motivated by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, Kevin Costner began assembling a team of scientists to construct a machine that could clean up massive spills. A decade and a half later, that technology might now be put to use off the coast of Louisiana.

A massive oil slick creeping to the coast, vulnerable Louisiana wildlife just miles from its path, and Kevin Costner mingling on the lakefront. These are unusual times, and the Hollywood star is introducing Read more

Everything the ancient Greeks warned us about democracy has come true in modern Greece — and right here in River City as well

Mark Steyn in Macleans:

Traditionally, a bank is a means by which old people with capital lend to young people with ideas. But the advanced democracies with their mountains of sovereign debt are in effect old people who’ve blown through their capital and are all out of ideas looking for young people flush enough to bail them out. And the idea that it might be time for the spendthrift geezers to change their ways butts up against their indestructible moral vanity. Last year, President Sarkozy said that the G20 summit provided “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience.” European capitalism may have a conscience. It’s not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you’re burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your “conscience” isn’t much in evidence, either.

Let us take it as read that Greece is an outlier. As waggish officials in Brussels and Strasbourg will tell you, it only snuck into the EU due to some sort of clerical error. It’s a cesspit of sloth and corruption even by Mediterranean standards. On my last brief visit, Athens was a visibly decrepit dump: a town with a handful of splendid ancient ruins surrounded by a multitude of hideous graffiti-covered contemporary ruins. If you were going to cut one “advanced” social democracy loose and watch it plunge into the abyss pour encourager les autres, it would be hard to devise a better candidate than Greece.

And yet and yet . . . riot-wracked Athens isn’t that much of an outlier. Greece’s 2010 budget deficit is 12.2 per cent of GDP; Ireland’s is 14.7. Greece’s debt is 125 per cent of GDP; Italy’s is 117 per cent. Greece’s 65-plus population will increase from 18 per cent in 2005 to 25 per cent in 2030; Spain’s will increase from 17 per cent to 25 per cent. As lazy, feckless, squalid, corrupt and violent as Greece undoubtedly is, it’s not that untypical. It’s where the rest of Europe’s headed, and Japan and North America shortly thereafter. About half the global economy is living beyond not only its means but its diminished number of children’s means.

Instead Read more

The Next bubble to burst: Government!

I’ve been a bit slow on this one.  I have been wondering what sector of the economy was going to over inflate and burst next.  The answer has been right in front of me the whole time but the reason I did not see it very clearly is because I was wondering what part of the private economy would burst next.  Sure, I knew the government was in trouble, but I did not think of it as a “bubble”, like real estate or the dot.com era.

A simple headline today put the perfect perspective out there for me to get it.  If I apply “bubble economics” to the government sector, it is perfectly clear.

The economic collapse of Greece is a wake-up call. The unsustainable combination of a bloated public bureaucracy, high deficit spending and unfunded pension obligations busted Greece’s government bubble. Now the birthplace of modern democracy is on the brink of becoming a failed state.

The Bank of England recently warned that the U.S. is on the road to the same fiscal failure as Greece, and the Obama administration’s insistence on massive public spending and increasing deficits is the reason.

At this rate, the U.S. government will be the next economic bubble to burst. We’ve seen similar downturns: the information technology bubble in 2000, housing in 2007 and Wall Street in 2008. If unchecked, America’s government bubble will depress our economy with higher interest rates and defaulting state and local governments.

Politicians Aren’t Businessmen

Federal spending alone this year accounts for 25% of our nation’s gross domestic product. If you add state and local spending, the number is closer to 50%. No economy can thrive when nearly half of all economic output is directed by politicians rather than entrepreneurs and small businesses.

After big government spending, government employee unions pose a serious threat to America’s fiscal health. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined significantly, from 23% of all workers in 1980 to about 12% today. But the percentage of union members working for government has Read more