Friday, October 31, 2008
Best Break up letter ever
If this is true this is awesome. Check out the apology letter and the response if you just want to read the funny part, read the response. Here's the link.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Inner Geek Going Crazy
...must resist urge to buy totally useless but awesome toy. It's so damn hard, must fight the inner geek in me. This is awesome it is a mini Van de Graaff Generator wand, a what you may ask read about it here.
This battery powered wand features a mini Van de Graaff generator inside. Push a button on the handle and the static charge built up in the wand causes the included 3D mylar shapes to levitate at your command. You can also do some cool tricks causing the shapes to jump back and forth from your hand to the wand. Not quite Harry Potter… but hey, we do our best for you.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sitting in the Library...
...not the one I work at, but the university Library, yes I know I go to another library to try to study, you'd think I'd be sick of them already. Trying to catch up in my classes and am realizing that a degree only proves how much bullshit you can actually put up with for your employers. I am reading about how to find information, and how to assess information in grad school. Seriously if I had no idea how to do this I wouldn't be here.
This is still a thousand times better than what would be considered a computer fundamentals class that I am taking. The joys of online classes for a person with little motivation are few and far between, and sitting through mandatory videos about stuff you already know how to do is awesome! Let me repeat awesome!! Everyone should do this, go and watch videos about stuff you know for up to 3 hours a week, see how soon you want to kill yourself. So, so far I've learned how to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, basic html/css (not the good css where you actually create a style sheet, but the ghetto kind where it goes in the head of the page and of course no mention of php), and we will learn Access and databases next. I can barely contain my excitement about this, I mean wow databases, it's not like I had to learn how to do this in High school, or the Programming classes where holy crap you would learn how to write your own database. Could I not test out of this class you greedy money hungry whore of a school? I was told that before I could talk to someone and explain what I do, and would not be forced to take this sham of a class.
Back to trying to read crap, or better yet there's a bar down the street can you figure out what I'm going to do? If you answered that I'll be the good student and do the readings, you
A) either have more hope for me than I do
B) Do not know me
C) Forgot that I stopped that no drinking thing
This is still a thousand times better than what would be considered a computer fundamentals class that I am taking. The joys of online classes for a person with little motivation are few and far between, and sitting through mandatory videos about stuff you already know how to do is awesome! Let me repeat awesome!! Everyone should do this, go and watch videos about stuff you know for up to 3 hours a week, see how soon you want to kill yourself. So, so far I've learned how to use Word, Excel, Powerpoint, basic html/css (not the good css where you actually create a style sheet, but the ghetto kind where it goes in the head of the page and of course no mention of php), and we will learn Access and databases next. I can barely contain my excitement about this, I mean wow databases, it's not like I had to learn how to do this in High school, or the Programming classes where holy crap you would learn how to write your own database. Could I not test out of this class you greedy money hungry whore of a school? I was told that before I could talk to someone and explain what I do, and would not be forced to take this sham of a class.
Back to trying to read crap, or better yet there's a bar down the street can you figure out what I'm going to do? If you answered that I'll be the good student and do the readings, you
A) either have more hope for me than I do
B) Do not know me
C) Forgot that I stopped that no drinking thing
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Depressing Global Warming Ad
I feel bad after watching it, and now I want all of you to feel bad too.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Beer and Bangers
Just a thought. Eric it is up to you, but with that what are the plans for next week?
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
What's the difference between your mouth and your vagina?
It's a joke about Palin Check it out here.
Monday, October 13, 2008
I think I might be in trouble
"The more alcohol an individual drinks, the smaller his or her total brain volume, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals."
So your brain volume decreases with age, and they are now telling me the more I drink the faster it happens. So when a few months ago I stopped drinking, I was trying to save brain volume, and everyone wanted me to drink more. The only saving grace for me is:
"Most participants reported low alcohol consumption, and men were more likely than women to be moderate or heavy drinkers," the authors write. "There was a significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and total cerebral brain volume."
Although men were more likely to drink alcohol, the association between drinking and brain volume was stronger in women, they note. This could be due to biological factors, including women's smaller size and greater susceptibility to alcohol's effects." (Read more here)
Screw it life is short, I don't drink to get drunk, I drink because I like it, and if in 50 years it makes me an idiot well then in 50 years I'll be the loud obnoxious grandpa no one wants to talk about.
So your brain volume decreases with age, and they are now telling me the more I drink the faster it happens. So when a few months ago I stopped drinking, I was trying to save brain volume, and everyone wanted me to drink more. The only saving grace for me is:
"Most participants reported low alcohol consumption, and men were more likely than women to be moderate or heavy drinkers," the authors write. "There was a significant negative linear relationship between alcohol consumption and total cerebral brain volume."
Although men were more likely to drink alcohol, the association between drinking and brain volume was stronger in women, they note. This could be due to biological factors, including women's smaller size and greater susceptibility to alcohol's effects." (Read more here)
Screw it life is short, I don't drink to get drunk, I drink because I like it, and if in 50 years it makes me an idiot well then in 50 years I'll be the loud obnoxious grandpa no one wants to talk about.
The best explanation so far
An 8 minute comedy video of the financial mess that gets it right. It hits the nail in the head, and it's about a year old.
Friday, October 10, 2008
How it all started
Over the past few days I've been talking at work how the financial crisis started, I gave multiple reasons for why it happened, but here is a sort of simple reason as to why the global economy is going bust.
Everyone is trying to blame the bad mortgages, and homeowners who could not pay their debts. This is not really the case bad debt from mortgages only accounted for between $200-$300 billion of debt. The problem is that banks around the world, espescially the US and Europe being completely over leveraged, and in some cases leveraged 30:1, which means that you are borrowing 30 times the amount of money you have in reserve. With that you can either make 30 times your average profit or on the downside 30 times the loss. With High Risk there is high reward, but also very high dangers. But banks have their own regulations on what they can hold right? Yup its called the Basel II accord. "The purpose of Basel II, which was initially published in June 2004, is to create an international standard that banking regulators can use when creating regulations about how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operational risks banks face."
The riskier the loans a bank owns, the more capital it must keep in reserve.So when banks follow this rule they should be safe, but hello AIG, and thank you for your complete and utter disastrous methods of taking banks money. You see AIG would offer banks a way to get around the Basel rules, via unregulated insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps. The bank calls AIG, and are told that historical loss rates on American mortgages is close to nothing, what drew in European investment, and AIG would sell them subprime securities for 2% of face value, and were guaranteed against default for 5 years.
"Although AIG's credit default swaps were really insurance contracts, they weren't regulated. That meant AIG didn't have to put up any capital as collateral on its swaps, as long as it maintained a triple-A credit rating. There was no real capital cost to selling these swaps; there was no limit. And thanks to what's called "mark-to-market" accounting, AIG could book the profit from a five-year credit default swap as soon as the contract was sold, based on the expected default rate. " (Porter Stansberry) Profit was written off right away by AIG, and as long as they kept their triple A credit rating they could do this as much as they wanted."The bank could leverage itself to the full extent allowable under Basel II. AIG could book hundreds of millions in "profit" each year, without having to pony up billions in collateral."
AIG never had the collateral to back up their loans, and the proft that they wrote off never actually happened. The next to nothing chance of loss on mortgages? Much worse and many times higher than they thought. Those securities in some cases were worth $0.15 to the dollar. Everyone seemed to notice this and on September 15th AIG credit score was lowered. And this is where the proverbial dominoes fell, when AIG's credit score was lowered, they needed to come up with capital to come up with an $11 billion charge, they actually managed to do this, but when they were downgraded all those swaps finally reared their ugly heads and AIG had no money to come up with the collateral they needed. Let's not forget that AIG leveraged themselves out too, and had their own debts they needed to pay. OOPS they went Bankrupt and went to cry for help.
Then "Lehman Brothers failed on the same day. Merrill was sold to Bank of America. The Fed stepped in and agreed to lend AIG $85 billion to facilitate an orderly sell off of its assets in exchange for essentially all the company's equity."
Now it gets scary when you look at the facts:
"Why do you need to know all of these details? First, you must understand that without the government's actions, the collapse of AIG could have caused every major bank in the world to fail.
Second, without the credit default swap market, there's no way banks can report the true state of their assets – they'd all be in default of Basel II. That's why the government will push through a measure that requires the suspension of mark-to-market accounting. Essentially, banks will be allowed to pretend they have far higher-quality loans than they actually do. AIG can't cover for them anymore.
And third, and most importantly, without the huge fraud perpetrated by AIG, the mortgage bubble could have never grown as large as it did. Yes, other factors contributed, like the role of Fannie and Freddie in particular. But the key to enabling the huge global growth in credit during the last decade can be tied directly to AIG's sale of credit default swaps without collateral. That was the barn door. And it was left open for nearly a decade."
SO now you know why the execs needed their $400,000 little get away, it was a stressful time when you almost destroyed the world banking system. THe pain will continue and it will get worse, much worse before it gets better, but it will get better, and hopefully the government and banking systems will enact rules to prevent any future forms of fraud that banks and their executives committed to chase a profit.
Everyone is trying to blame the bad mortgages, and homeowners who could not pay their debts. This is not really the case bad debt from mortgages only accounted for between $200-$300 billion of debt. The problem is that banks around the world, espescially the US and Europe being completely over leveraged, and in some cases leveraged 30:1, which means that you are borrowing 30 times the amount of money you have in reserve. With that you can either make 30 times your average profit or on the downside 30 times the loss. With High Risk there is high reward, but also very high dangers. But banks have their own regulations on what they can hold right? Yup its called the Basel II accord. "The purpose of Basel II, which was initially published in June 2004, is to create an international standard that banking regulators can use when creating regulations about how much capital banks need to put aside to guard against the types of financial and operational risks banks face."
The riskier the loans a bank owns, the more capital it must keep in reserve.So when banks follow this rule they should be safe, but hello AIG, and thank you for your complete and utter disastrous methods of taking banks money. You see AIG would offer banks a way to get around the Basel rules, via unregulated insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps. The bank calls AIG, and are told that historical loss rates on American mortgages is close to nothing, what drew in European investment, and AIG would sell them subprime securities for 2% of face value, and were guaranteed against default for 5 years.
"Although AIG's credit default swaps were really insurance contracts, they weren't regulated. That meant AIG didn't have to put up any capital as collateral on its swaps, as long as it maintained a triple-A credit rating. There was no real capital cost to selling these swaps; there was no limit. And thanks to what's called "mark-to-market" accounting, AIG could book the profit from a five-year credit default swap as soon as the contract was sold, based on the expected default rate. " (Porter Stansberry) Profit was written off right away by AIG, and as long as they kept their triple A credit rating they could do this as much as they wanted."The bank could leverage itself to the full extent allowable under Basel II. AIG could book hundreds of millions in "profit" each year, without having to pony up billions in collateral."
AIG never had the collateral to back up their loans, and the proft that they wrote off never actually happened. The next to nothing chance of loss on mortgages? Much worse and many times higher than they thought. Those securities in some cases were worth $0.15 to the dollar. Everyone seemed to notice this and on September 15th AIG credit score was lowered. And this is where the proverbial dominoes fell, when AIG's credit score was lowered, they needed to come up with capital to come up with an $11 billion charge, they actually managed to do this, but when they were downgraded all those swaps finally reared their ugly heads and AIG had no money to come up with the collateral they needed. Let's not forget that AIG leveraged themselves out too, and had their own debts they needed to pay. OOPS they went Bankrupt and went to cry for help.
Then "Lehman Brothers failed on the same day. Merrill was sold to Bank of America. The Fed stepped in and agreed to lend AIG $85 billion to facilitate an orderly sell off of its assets in exchange for essentially all the company's equity."
Now it gets scary when you look at the facts:
"Why do you need to know all of these details? First, you must understand that without the government's actions, the collapse of AIG could have caused every major bank in the world to fail.
Second, without the credit default swap market, there's no way banks can report the true state of their assets – they'd all be in default of Basel II. That's why the government will push through a measure that requires the suspension of mark-to-market accounting. Essentially, banks will be allowed to pretend they have far higher-quality loans than they actually do. AIG can't cover for them anymore.
And third, and most importantly, without the huge fraud perpetrated by AIG, the mortgage bubble could have never grown as large as it did. Yes, other factors contributed, like the role of Fannie and Freddie in particular. But the key to enabling the huge global growth in credit during the last decade can be tied directly to AIG's sale of credit default swaps without collateral. That was the barn door. And it was left open for nearly a decade."
SO now you know why the execs needed their $400,000 little get away, it was a stressful time when you almost destroyed the world banking system. THe pain will continue and it will get worse, much worse before it gets better, but it will get better, and hopefully the government and banking systems will enact rules to prevent any future forms of fraud that banks and their executives committed to chase a profit.
Yahoo jumps the gun
So it's 3:30 the DJIA is up over 200 points, and Yahoo told me that the Dow lost for the 8th straight day. They must have a crystal ball, becuase there is still trading, and it's not over yet, but Yahoo has declared a loss.
Update #1
3:47 PM Dow up only 2.54
Update #2
3:49 PM Dow down 27.24
Update #3
4:16 PM Dow down 128.00
Diesel's Safe for Work Porn
You read that right good old fashioned safe for work PORN, isn't marketing fun?
Thursday, October 9, 2008
That's Awesome
So there is no netting for PATs in High School Football, and that is why this video is so damn great.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I am nothing like Joe Sixpack
Got to images.google.com and type in Joe Sixpack, First of all I am nothing like Joe Sixpack but wtf is picture 4. I just threw up. Or if you are too lazy click here.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Evolution of a Geek
I must have skipped 1.0 and went straight to 2.0. But for the most part the description is true.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
WOW
Go to the 2:55 mark, I'm speechless, how can anyone say she would be prepared to be president.
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