And mine, excuses that is, probably stink too. I was out of town all last week, arriving home late Thursday evening. I was at a conference in Savannah and made exactly no time to actually update anything on the site. I fully admit it – I was drunk on the job. At least most of the time.

There wasn’t anything truly remarkable about Savannah, aside from the fact that I actually took the time to relax and enjoy myself. I learned a lot of cool stuff during the day, but unfortunately can’t put much of it into action at work because we’re broke. I’d love to figure out some way to virtualize my data center, and will some day, but I’m not competing for any money with other projects or departments – there ISN’T any to compete for. So, the class part was good for information gathering only.

But spending my evenings eating great food and drinking good, cheap beer was just what the doctor ordered. I even managed to sneak away to play golf at a course called Crosswinds Golf Club, which was a beautiful meeting of golf and technology. I can’t find it on the site, but the carts have these cool LCD Heads Up Displays that display yardages from where you are on the course, where other carts are, keeps score and has some OnStar-type features. They even shut your cart down when you try to drive on the fairway on the Cart Path Only holes. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I got back Thursday night and got some pretty good news – the Goon made straight A’s on his report card. The only thing about this is, while I’ve told him that my expectations are A’s and B’s, straight A’s will net something cool. So, when I picked him up on Friday we had to fulfill the coolness prophecy. It came down to him getting a new game for his XBOX and eating at McDonald’s, so that worked out on the cheap for me. But we spent the weekend just hanging out before I skipped town again.

Saturday, I dozed through the Georgia – Vandy game, catching most of the second half. It wasn’t worth running a live blog for a rather unspectacular second half. I’m concerned about playing LSU and Florida in the next 2 weeks because we were so unspectacular. But all that’s for another post later.

I’ll do my best to get them all in this week, but no promises. Sunday I flew up to Pennsylvania for yet another conference. This one purportedly has open bars. Lots of open bars. With top shelf liquor. But the experience thus far is worth a post and I have several posts that are almost wrapped up and ready to go out as well. So, I’m going to head out to the first meet and greet and see how much fun this will be. With any luck, it’ll be lots of fun but end early enough for me to get some work done and recover for the next day…..

So, the savior of all mankind – the $700B federal bailout of the financial markets – was finally passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law over the weekend. Hoorah. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm, but I’m on the side of (depending on which poll you look at) the 70 – 85% of American taxpayers who think this was a BAD idea. But I understand the rationale and I can see how it works. I just don’t like the direction that it points the country. And before you get into this lengthy diatribe, let me say that I will not be discussing the effects it had on Wall Street after one whole day.

First, let’s examine how we got in the mess. I think we can all rationally agree that the root cause was greed. Now, Gordon Gekko (one of my personal fictional heroes) and his mantra notwithstanding, greed wasn’t good and certainly didn’t work here. I’m not very religious, but it’s one of the 7 Deadly Sins for a reason, folks. Anyway, all of these bankers and lenders that jumped, without much forethought or reservation, into the “subprime mortgage” lending business are reaping their whirlwind now.

I’m certainly not an economist but I understand more than just the basics, so let me put this in a nutshell: They gave people, who have either proven themselves unworthy of borrowing or NOT proven themselves worthy, loans for more than what most of the property was worth (mostly houses, but some cars and even credit cards), that in the standard market said people would not be able to afford. Or phrased a la an analogy, the lenders gave them $250,000 for a $150,000 house when they could only afford a $100,000 house. And both parties thought everything would be okay with this.

Well, that thought process, while without the backing of logic, wasn’t without precedent. The stock markets, thus the economy, was at an all-time high and growth rate. Everybody was doing great financially. It was like the good old dot-com days all over again. Ummm, yeah. That turned out well, didn’t it. See, if you remember the dot-com bust from days past you’ll remember what happens when an economy grows faster than it can sustain itself. See the Federal Reserve looks at things like this and, in a effort to curb this nasty thing call inflation, takes steps to try to keep growth steady and solid. Rather than watch the economy get so gluttonous (another of those Deadly Sins) and eat its own head. But, if you listen to some of those pie-in-the-sky “economists” and lenders, the whole dot-com economy bust was based almost solely on 9/11.

So, what’s happened more or less is that Newton’s Third Law has hit the financial sector. See, because we were having such a tremendous upswing we were simply due for a tremendous downswing. Well, because that downswing started causing some of the oldest and most respected names on Wall Street (e.g., Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Wachovia) to outright fail it shook confidence on Wall Street. Say what you want about the motives for saving corporate America from itself, but this action was prompted by saving the failing mortgages of voters, who probably are too stupid to be voting anyway – and it’s an election year. And because 95% of Americans’ only view of the economy comes from what the Dow did today (and another 4% add mostly biased media coverage that doesn’t like the current administration), they all freaked out. Which means that the government HAS to do SOMETHING, right? Here’s where I start to get concerned. read this entry »

Like I said back here, The Ex finally got off the stick and got my Money Sewer, or the house we built, refinanced back in late April. Well, there were a lot of headaches from all corners of my life about this damn thing and I was happy to get rid of it. I got a pretty sizable payout from the refi, but not nearly as much as half the equity. Since it doesn’t fall under capital gains for either of us, I’ll tell you it was more than $19,999. I was good with that.

Still, I heard from every direction that they couldn’t believe I’d let the old home site go (we got 10 acres from my folks, right behind them, for a whopping 10 cents per), or that I was letting her off too cheap, or that I should make her move out, or whatever. Matter of fact, the only person who was really happy about this (aside from me, of course) was my Mom. She was glad to know that the whole thing wouldn’t be going to a stranger.

The house was on the market for a couple of months – my aunt is a realtor – and got a few serious nibbles. I’m pretty sure that this was what got The Ex off the stick. That, and she got engaged so she could afford it without my paying half the mortgage. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah, I was still paying half the mortgage in addition to all my other bills. I was happy to – I didn’t think it would do the Goon any good to have to deal with BOTH parents uprooting and getting adjusted to new living quarters in the wake of the divorce. Unfortunately, I was essentially paying the whole mortgage (counting my new place) and trying to deal with all the other living expenses that were no longer shared. It put me deep over my ass in debt in a big damn hurry. read this entry »