BloodhoundBlog

There’s always something to howl about.

Month: September 2011 (page 2 of 2)

September 9, 2011

Who “Nose” What’s Right?

by

Realtor, Renaissance Man

Author website

This is an article whose inception has come from some recent interactions on other blogs with regard to NAR’s update of Article 10 of the Code of Ethics concerning discrimination against sexual orientation. Though I participated in commentary on this topic, what really was bothering me was what follows. Simply put, I’m pretty damned tired of being proselytized and dumbed down by NAR, and even more tired of watching the planet forsake common sense because crafty special interest groups have figured out how to dilute the “Fathertongue” so as to render it useless.

I’m against “Gay Marriage”, and wanted to talk with you about why.

Wait, excuse me for a minute…there’s a bunch of people at my door.  Oh my, it’s the ACLU, some folks with signs with something about LGBT on them, some reporters from MSNBC, and even someone from NAR with a photocopy of the newly amended Article 10 sexual orientation anti-discriminatory verbiage.

Ground rule #1 – This is not about religion. Yes, I am a Christian, and yes Christians mostly believe that gay marriage is not appropriate. Yes, I’m one of them. But in this article you get no traction with any comments slamming Christianity. This is not about my faith. As with most “discrimination” issues, I am well able to separate my philosophy and faith from an honest discussion about rule of law, society, sociology, the family, and more importantly, the long hand of a master to whom I owe no allegiance.

Your Right to Throw a Punch Ends Where My Nose Begins

This saying has been a way of life for me for as long as I was able to stick up for myself. Hopefully you won’t find the saying controversial. It’s a reminder that I am an individual, complete and independent, and while we do in fact interact, your right to exercise your independence ends where my “nose” begins. You may shout or debate. You may whisper behind my back, or come to my door with placards. You may join with your own pugilists to wage war on my philosophy. You may lobby and convince. All these things you may Read more

September 5, 2011

Splendor on — and in spite of — Labor Day.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me looking back on looking back on a Labor Day a long time ago. The first extract was written on Labor Day, 2005, as the City of New Orleans was demonstrating for all of us that dependence on government is a fatal error. The second extract was written a year or two before that. And the Labor Day I am talking about there must have been eleven or twelve years ago. Even so, every bit of this is perfectly apposite to the world we live in now — more is the pity.

This is me from elsewhen. I think about this every year at Labor Day. I spent much of the weekend working on business planning issues, macro, micro and meta. I remember from the days when I had a job how much I relished long weekends, because I could build so much on vast tracts of uninterrupted time. I did a bunch of money work last week, but my weekend was virtually my own — to fill with the work that too often takes a back seat to money work. Off and on we had Fox News on in the office, and the whining, pissing and moaning was an effective counterpoint to my entire way of life. My world is where the Splendor is, no alternatives, no substitutions, no adulterations, no crybaby excuses:

The time of your life is your sole capital. If you trade that time in such a way that you get in exchange less than you really want, less than you might actually have achieved, you have deliberately cheated yourself. You have acted to your own destruction by failing to use your time to construct of your life what you want most and need most and deserve most. You have let your obsession or anger — over what amounts to a trivial evil in a world where people are shredded alive — deprive you of all of the rest of your values. This is anegoic, acting contrary to the true needs of the self.

One of my favorite memories is of a Labor Day years ago. My son Read more

September 3, 2011

Unchained melody: Robert Earl Keen, Feelin’ good again.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is my kind of country song, a celebration of what human social interaction can be and should be.

This is what Don Reedy comes to BloodhoundBlog for. Teri Lussier, too. Al Lorenz, as well, I think, all of them in their own ways, along with a few other folks.

The funny part is, I’m actually pretty poor at delivering that experience here.

That feelin’-good-again feeling comes not so much from BloodhoundBlog as it does from BloodhoundBlog Unchained, from our memories of our shared experiences in Phoenix, Orlando and Seattle.

Here’s why: BloodhoundBlog Unchained brought out the best in you, wherever we did it. We were all of us learning, all of us teaching, and all of us were appreciated for our accomplishments. Just making it through our killer workdays was an achievement all on its own, but what made those workdays feel so right was that your virtues were fully visible to everyone, and each one of us was in full agreement about the worthiness and admirability of those virtues.

I am due some credit for this, I think. You cannot both attract my attention and hide from me. I learn a lot about the people I see from every opportunity I have to observe them. I have done this for my entire adult life, and I know I am good at it. When I see you, even if you don’t know I am aware of you, I am figuring out everything I can about you, gleaning every implication I can from every action of yours I am aware of. I can do a plausible back-story on just about anyone, and if I take the time to think about you, any secrets you keep from me will be matters of meaningless detail. I will have inferred everything about you that matters to you.

That’s actually a fine reason to dismiss me: I am scary-good at “reading” people.

But that matters in this context because I think that feelin’-good-again feeling starts with me seeing, understanding, admiring and celebrating your virtues — and celebrating you for being so wonderfully virtuous — by my standards and by your own. I Read more

September 2, 2011

Some black real estate humor for Friday: We have to destroy the village to save it? No, save it first, then destroy it.

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

A couple of real estate headlines from the you-have-to-laugh section of the news-nets:

From the New York Times, when a bank is too big to fail, you have to rescue it so you can sue it later. Missing, for some reason, from the list of parties to be sued: Barney Franks, Christopher Dodd, Andrew Cuomo, the NAR — and FannieMae and FreddieMac. Given that crony-“capitalist” Warren (tax-me-more-please) Buffett just dumped billions into the Bank of America, I’m thinking we can look forward to this lawsuit ending with a whimper.

Meanwhile, in bucolic New London, CT, the land that the city fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the “right” to steal in the famous Kelo case is now — wait for it — a dumping ground. Nice.

September 1, 2011

Google Thinks Your IDX Site Sucks

by

IDX Search Entrepreneur

Author website

There are plenty of places to go if this is your first time hearing about “Panda”, but the general idea is that Google has set out to target what it considers to be “low quality” content of the sort generally propagated by link farms, scrapers, and the eHows of the Web.

Any time Google makes a major change to their algorithm there are winners and losers, and you can count on the losers to raise a fuss about Google goring their ox. This time, Google has come back and said, in effect, “If you don’t publish crap you have nothing to worry about”.

The problem for those of us who currently rely on IDX to power listing search on broker and agent Web sites is that IDX content is, by Google’s definition, crap — and the crap has come home to roost: Some of our sites are down 30% since Panda hit.

This, finally, should force some brokers to address the issue of content quality and strategy, because the alternative is to pay through the nose for inquiries that Google would send, for free, if brokers understood what Google wants.

Here are some of the questions Google suggests site owners ask themselves about their content. I’ve picked a few that speak directly to real estate listings and IDX (the whole list is here). Every place that Google had the words “article”, “content”, or “page” I’ve inserted the real estate specific terminology {in brackets}:

  • Does the {listing detail page} provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
    Google is focused on sending its users to the creators of original content, because that is generally the best user experience. Since the listing agent is the only one who actually knows anything about the listing, that is doubly true for real estate.The irony is that all listing content — the text, the pictures, the video — is original content right up until the moment it goes into IDX and listing syndication. As soon as that happens, Google cannot distinguish the listing creator’s domain from the rest, and you have just given up the value of Read more
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