taks

our first was a 7/1 ARM, this last one was a 5/1 ARM. we got the last one in december of 2002, with a 3.875% rate. no matter what the housing market does, i'm sitting pretty. the first house was a high rate (i think actually lower than the 8.75% number i mentioned previously), but the regular 30-year loans were mid 8% range anyway. we were both working and had few expenses so it was a good deal and a good learning experience. taks

wow, that's complete nonsense. our economy actually tends to benefit when one of two things (or both) happen: 1) taxes are cut and 2) there's a party split between congress and the white house. in the former, people simply spend more, which also coincidentally increases revenues (happened after both reagan and bush cuts, i can't understand why everyone refuses to acknowledge the facts!). the latter simply means the government doesn't spend us into oblivion. clinton had a split, bush did not for the first 6. that's the last 15 years. to make such a broad statement as you have, without delving deeper is truly superficial and silly biased. again i note, people seem to only read deep enough to find the facts that support their pre-conceived notions, then all else is ignored. taks

yup. it matters not one whit when there is a party split between the branches, but once there is total control, spend, spend, spend. the only difference between republican spend, spend, spend and democrat spend, spend, spend is the former tends to cut taxes while the latter tends to raise taxes in one way or another. i'm not too concerned about government debt (as long as it is considerably lower than our GDP), so the former is what i would prefer if given only these two choices. the optimal solution would be to cut both spending and taxes, but that's a stretch to expect from any modern politician. taks

oh, oddly, my current HELOC (actually a line of credit) has a lower interest rate than my mortgage, which went adjustable this past january. much lower, in fact, and my mortgage is only 6.5%. HELOCs are more closely reflective of the discount rate which explains the inversion. taks

^enoch: www.americanblinds.com - you'll save 40% or more on blinds. you can get all the same ones that are offered in stores. these are actually only 10% or so cheaper than at places like home depot or lowes, but there's no tax and no shipping. blinds are ridiculously easy to install yourself. even mechanically declined folks like me (with a motto "if i can afford to pay someone to do something, i will") can handle blinds. ^theslug: i'd prefer to be a hermit living in the woods somewhere, too. actually, i'd like to live in south fork, CO, but in a nice cabin on the rio grande. of course, that would also require a mortgage. i'm toying with the idea of going full contract/consultant anyway, so such a dream may be reality sometime in the near future. yes, btw, 20% is the magic number for PMI, but there are caveats. one that isn't widely publicized is that while banks don't charge PMI on new loans if your down payment is over 20%, they don't have to drop your PMI till after you get to 22% on an existing loan. complicating matters further, they do not have to take into consideration appreciation, either. HOWEVER, if you can prove you are at 20% of the home equity (appraisal), you can request to have the PMI dropped, and they are required to oblige you. the problem with getting an appraisal is that your property taxes will likely go up. here's another catch that most don't know about and lenders don't often tell you about: the 80-10-10 loan. a good lender, when faced with a client that has excellent credit (720 or above usually), should offer this type of loan. 80% mortgage, 10% down, 10% home equity loan. the home equity loan is usually at a higher rate, but it is on such a small portion (relatively speaking) of the total loan that the interest rate is immaterial. this type of loan is particularly attractive for ARM buyers that do not intend to stay in their home for the length of the equity loan, which is typically less than 10 years. that way, you end up paying mostly interest on the HEL, which is deductible, and you pay the thing off when you sell. taks

world peace is an impossible goal... oh wait, whirled peas is an impossible goal. taks

Yes, that's generally what the knee-jerk conservatives foresee whenever the Democrats come along to clean up their mess. Meanwhile the rest of the world cheers. interesting that you call them conservatives and democrats instead of either republicans and democrats or conservatives and liberals. hehe... if any politician, republican or democrat, ever were to clean up any mess, i'd cheer. the rest of the world can pound sand as far as i'm concerned because they have proven time and again that their opinions regarding the US are largely worthless. taks

ultimately a bigger problem is one party controlling both the legislative and executive branches. bush didn't wield his veto pen once during republican control of congress, and i'm sure we'll see something similar with obama and democrat control of congress. that means spend, spend, spend, regardless of party affiliation. when there's a split, nothing gets done, which is often better than people are willing to believe. taks

oh, i don't argue that they don't get involved, rather, they shouldn't. don't get me started. um, keep in mind, what bush and/or more appropriately, republicans/conservatives, are attempting to allow is a bit more limited in scope than this. the jehova example, while a bit interesting, is probably a stretch beyond reality what could ever happen (i would doubt that a JW is even allowed to practice medicine in a modern sense since it requires touching dead bodies, internal organs, etc., and lots of other people's blood comes into play, alive and dead). barring the obvious situations such as with a JW practitioner, the scope in this case is clearly not designed to cover life threatening procedures. a blood transfusion is typically not considered elective, but abortion is more often than not. taks

oh, yeah. blame sagan. i think the artistic license clause was invoked because such a solution would require an exposition of what they might actually discover. taks

Very few things in this world are lamer than the ending of Contact. i kinda liked it, though it could have been better. what was confusing about it, WILL? taks

i enjoyed crafting my characters, too, probably moreso than with the 2E games. with 2E it seemed like i was more concerned with how powerful the characters got, rather than how cool their customizations were. 3E crafting, however, allows some nifty ways to make your characters really good in precise ways, or very broad, etc. i definitely spent more time thinking about 3E builds, before beginning and during level-up, than with the 2E builds. anyway, i'm on to ToB now that my BG2: SoA romp has finished. without mods, irenicus goes down waaaaay easy when your entire party members each have nearly 4M exp. points. so far, ToB is similarly easy, and it is mod-free for the most part as well. i might hunt down the level 50 ruleset just for the halibut. taks

probably. some sense mixed in with a bunch of silliness, hehe. sand has had probably a dozen known alts, not to mention probably 100 unknowns. heck, for all you know, maybe i'm one of his alts!* taks *uh, i'm not. anyone that really tried could figure out who i am anyway.

not sure what you're getting at here. rather than paraphrase what you think i said, why don't you post what i actually said and then explain to the rest of us why you are incapable of understanding what it means. i know plenty of socialism, and what it means to europe. folks like you benefit madly from cradle to grave government support. nuff said. still not sure how the strawman is relevant. the US is where people come for treatment of these and other diseases. you're sort of shooting yourself in the foot. my biggest point is that you really don't understand... much of anything. uh, not sure about what you're getting at here, either. sweden has more socialist aspects than the US, by far. but the country makes its living off of capitalism. at some point that is going to take its toll (and apparently it has, since it was sweden that was discussing reducing benefits because they are running into issues paying for them...). taks

ya know, i'm repeatedly amazed by the ignorance displayed by those of you that have never lived in the US, yet seem so qualified to judge our systems. i'm not even sure what xard's retarded aids comment means. what does that have to do with our healthcare system at all? are you capable of making any sort of argument without committing every known fallacy (this one is a strawman)? really, i want to know, what the heck are they teaching you in finland? is it back to the old "rah rah, communism good" nonsense? i know several finnish engineers (one is a professor) and they certainly aren't this myopic about the world. taks

the only people that think canada and europe have better healthcare than the US are the same fools that think socialism works. it's not a surprise that people in canada and europe come to the US for quality care, not the other way around. or were you just trying to be sarcastic? certainly you aren't so foolish to think either of those two systems are "better" in any measurable way, are you? hehe... i should add, once the US system goes socialist it won't be a surprise to folks like me when all healthcare around the globe deteriorates. drugs in particular. taks

repeatedly ignoring data that is contrary to your existing ideology is even more insane. reagan's economic policies are what started the boon we had up through the clinton years. sane economists know this. one of these days we might actually see some proof that there is a problem. i'm sorry, but rational scientists, nay, rational people do not believe that simply because a handful of broken computer programs say we are cooking does it make it true. both are idiots for falling for the scam. the populace largely does not care, but i'm not surprised at your opinion here. hehe, there was a reason billary's efforts failed miserably. you think it's bad now, wait till the last bastion of capitalist healthcare goes socialist. finally... finally number 2. almost here... why not simply remove federal recognition at all? leave it to the states to deal with unions, churches to deal with marriages, and companies to decide how benefits should be allocated for "life partners." edward jones allows anyone to be designated a partner for insurance benefits, for example, without a law mandating it. others will follow simply to attract qualified candidates for employment. the ultimate tax on the poor should be abolished. soak the rich. it's always easy to advocate taxing the other guy, ain't it? and i'm the greedy one for supporting capitalist solutions. sheesh. same benefit for me either way, btw, perhaps 0.2% in favor of obama (can't recall), but immaterial overall. we have a full year of two incomes and not enough deductions for the first time in 6 years so i'm screwed either way. while you're certainly entitled to your opinion, factual breakdowns such as these are rather silly. your score-keeping was pre-determined in your head, for sure, even if you fail to recognize it as such. taks

i agree, but the broad stroke they took was beyond their mandate. recall, too, that just because something is dangerous does not mean the federal government has the responsibility (nor the right) to restrict or outlaw it. their purpose is not to save us from ourselves. taks

well, they do, kind of, but yes, it wasn't a very good implementation. implement the "pause after every round" option and you get close, but the actual execution of the round is not really "turn-based" in the same sense as pnp. but, the whole "it's not the same as pnp" argument (in favor of TB combat) is a bit tired since, well, computer games are NOT pnp. you should expect differences. also, had ToEE actually been done better (i mean overall game), we might have seen a paradigm shift in the industry towards that style of combat. in spite of its flaws, it was sort of cool to get the pnp experience (sort of) in a computer game. taks

first of all, you've erected a straw-man here. what bush is supporting isn't the freedom to discriminate who to treat (race, religion, orientation, etc.), but the freedom to discriminate what to treat. tsk, tsk. abortion is an elective procedure (most of the time). whether or not a doctor chooses to perform elective abortions has nothing to do with the hippocratic oath, either. none of this applies to situations in which the mother's health is threatened. in such cases, abortion has always been legal, roe v. wade notwithstanding. oh, btw hurlshot, it is hard to say that the SCOTUS ruling on roe v. wade was "reasonable." whether right or wrong to allow abortion, it's not a federal issue and SCOTUS should not have even taken the matter up. this was clearly a case of states that allowed abortion pushing their ideology onto states that did not. SCOTUS should have simply said "this is a state issue" and left it at that. here we have yet another intrusion by the federal government into state power. if you don't like your state's viewpoint on abortion, either change the state law, or move. that was the original intent of separate states to begin with. taks

it's really screwy how that works, isn't it? i mean, as long as you can afford the down payment, it's actually a good idea to buy, perhaps even sell, right now. if you aren't selling, and simply buying, yeah, you can get a lot of house. this is particularly true given the current interest rates. while higher than they were several years ago, historically a 6.5% rate is quite low (my first house, bought in 2002, came with an 8.75% rate). now, it is true that you get the screws on a sale, but if you are stepping up, i.e., buying a more expensive house, you actually end up with a net gain. you lose 10% or so (relatively speaking) on your sale, but gain 10% on a more expensive deal, so you end up ahead overall. yay! i need to pay down some of my debt before i consider buying again, but i'll likely be in a new house within 2 years. that and john's school costs are going down every year. last year was $900/month (goddard, private pre-k), this year will be $600/month ($300/month for full-day k, $300/month for hope montessori after school care) and next year will be $300/month (after school care only). btw, enoch, we didn't really do a starter home, either (the 2002 house), but the two of us were both working making quite a lot together without a child. we waaaaay under-bought on the first one which worked out well when my company folded and we had a ton of cash in the bank to afford a several month job search. phew! taks

a friend of mine is co-owner of a business with his dad that does exactly that in missouri. taks

from what i understand, the guy largely responsible for the absolutely ridiculous federal drug laws (now apparently conceding that they were perhaps a mistake). one of these days somebody will figure out that this guy is not electable. never heard of him till today. taks

that's a pretty ill-informed statement. look at the demographics and you'll see two things that stand out: 1) the democratic party base is "labor," which generally implies uneducated and 2) the republican base has traditionally been the upper 20% income bracket, which generally implies educated. pretty standard demographics. taks

uh, no. not true at all. bush's tax cuts are perfect example: revenues went UP from what was otherwise expected. remember, it's feedback. the tax money comes from the taxpayers. increase taxes and they spend less. they spend less and companies make less. companies make less and they slow down, hire fewer taxpayers, and dole out smaller raises. less pay means less tax to pay. it's not just my word, this has happened every time taxes were raised and/or lowered. revenues go up when taxes go down (in general, recessions, etc., can impact that). taks