Microphone Please ...

I have to admit, vacation can be really enjoyable when you can take a week off and do absolutely nothing. As I stated before, last week I celebrated my birthday on July 14th. I decided to take the whole week off and just vedge and can I see that it was sheer HEAVEN!. It was a week off of nothing but some serious self indulgence. During the week, I had the chance to take in a couple of movies both with my family and by myself. I had the chance to watch my 2 girls finish up swim lessons and hung out at the pool a few times soaking up some rays and catching up on some audio books.

Bartimaeus Trilogy (My daughter got me hooked on this series, thank you Adrianne)
Cryptomnicon
RA Salvatore's Orc King


Hit the bookstore a few times. Southlake Towncenter's B&N is really nice. There is this one hidden soft couch/chair that is in the corner by the window on the second floor just below an A/C vent and its hidden away from the other chairs in the area. I can grab a couple of magazines a few books and fall asleep for a few minutes. Picked up my favorite copies of Hak magazine and 2600.

I also took a few trips over to the local Frys electronics to work on upgrading my main computer in the house.

Now its a ...
Athlon Dual Core X2 5800
4 gigs of Memory
1+T disk
Dual boot WindowsXP Pro/Ubuntu Linux Server 64bit
Gforce Video Dual SLI
42" Vizio monitor/HD

Also worked on updating the router, WRT54GS running new release of Kamikaze.
Updated Snort intrusion detection on it along with Dsniff tools.
loaded msploit on Ipod Touch with jailbreak at 1.1.4.
Did some wardriving to test it out. Ill post more on my findings here later but its amazing what people leave wide open on samba/windows shares.

Picked up off of Ebay a DVR for the Dish for my den as well.
Programmed for Dr. Who, Stargate Atlantis, DollHouse (Fall 08), Top Gear and others.

Ate some great food. There is something to be said for having a nice big fat medium rare steak, just you a fork and a knife.

All of this and a heck of an enjoyable birthday on the day itself. The week itself looking back now seems like it was almost two weeks. It was long and extremely enjoyable. Thanks goes out to my wonderful adoring wife who really let me just enjoy myself. I really needed it. Its back to work tomorrow but I am well rested and ready to go. Its hard for me to imagine someone that just doesn't work doing this all the time. Whats the point really? It wouldn't be nearly enjoyable without work being in place. But then again I enjoy my job and so it doesn't seem to me as if Im working if its something I like doing.

Enough of my ramblings. Back to enjoying my last day of my vacation. I think I'll go take a nap now. This blog post was tiring. (Hyuck Hyuck)

Ok, I recall about 6 years ago going to my local bank lender to apply for a new loan on my current home. I sat with my lender and listed to her tell me "We can pre-approve you for 250-285,000 on your new home." . At the time I pretty much knew the home I wanted and it wasn't going to cost me $285,000 bucks. At the time I pretty much knew that if I wanted to pay for a $285,000 mortgage I was going to have to skimp on quite a few luxuries. i.e. eating, toilet paper, tshirt on my back etc. There was no way I was going to put myself into payments for that kind of a mortgage and for what?? A huge home that I wasn't going to spend a whole lot of time in.
The way I figure it is this... My home has a place to prop my pillow, a room for the kids and everyone pretty much gets shelter. Its not a cardboard box, but it doesn't have to be a 5000 sq ft mansion either. 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a place to put the cars in a relatively (well really nice) neighborhood. Now come 6 years later and I'm living pretty comfortable with my payment arrangements and the house gets a few touch ups.
Now back to my point. Come July 2008, we are seeing in the news that Bush is asking congress to approve a multi billion dollar bailout for his cronies. Not for the people that were duped into signing for a mortgage that they never could have afforded to begin with. Granted, I will agree with you that 1/2 of this was the buyers fault. But you can't honestly tell me that the banks/lenders have some level of culpability in this from the start. They preyed upon the very nature that every family wants the dream home, so they fattened up the mortgages with balloons and variable rates and when the economy continues to go bust those variable rate mortgages went up as well. The banks knew this at the time they gave the loans. When a bank forecloses on a home, they just don't let the home go or call it a loss. They sell the home from its original owner for a pretty penny and get their money back.

Now lets think about this for a minute. The bank gives the lender a home on an interest only loan or one at a variable interest rate that the lender will probably have paid little to no principal in the last 4-8 years. Meanwhile the home is earning equity at a sizable amount. The buyer, with an every sinking economy, can't make good on the loan. As I stated the bank forecloses on the home, knowing in this economy the seller can't sell the home, and the bank gets the interest paid, the home itself and any equity on the home? The original owner is now out a home and ruined credit for at least the next 8-10 years.

I'm missing it?? Why are we bailing out the banks with billions of our tax dollars? Why aren't companies like Fannie Mae and other lenders not eating this one? Easy. Look who we have in office as our president and vice president. Follow the money.

BTW Fannie Mae's stock went up $2.50 on Friday. Go figure.
$4.00 a gallon for gas national average.

It would seem that time just flies buy occasionally stopping only to tag you on the should and say "You're it!". This happened again yesterday. What is interesting though, this time it didn't bother me so much. With everything this past year that has been going on, primarily dealing with my health, my wife and two wonderful daughters really made my birthday enjoyable. I think for me birthdays really never had that much importance, but to my wonderful wife, birthdays are the big to do.
Yesterday she put out all the stops as usual. She took me and my girls to go see "Journey to the Center of the Earth." in 3D. For me there is something about going to the movies with my family. It tears me away from everything else and just really slows time down for a couple of hours for some simple basic fun. No yelling or whining, just grab your snacks, kick back and relax. Whats funny is though, this cost my "Incredibly loving wife" (yes I know she'll read this) $70+ bucks for the tickets and the litany of snacks that ensued after hitting the in house cafe at the theater. (I got the chili Cheeseburger with fries and Diet Coke to wash it down) I didn't really think of the cost so much till I heard my oldest daughter Adrianne (12) gasp "$70 Dollars ?!?!" to mom on the way out in the parking lot only for mom to bark out a quick "shh!".
See if I had to pick out the one thing to put out on top of my list about my wife, its this. No matter what it costs her, you're going to be happy on your birthday!.

To this I say "THANK YOU!". You really know how to make a guy happy.


Oh one more note! The homemade chocolate cake her and the girls made along with the dinner at my favorite place to eat didn't go unnoticed either.

Thank you again!