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Wednesday Wanderings
by: Debra
Some people are really out of touch. While an increasing majority of Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages, put food on the table and pay for the gas to get to their increasingly unstable jobs, other people are worried about not being able to get their next meal from a restaurant.“It’s anybody’s guess how long the downturn will last,” Mr. Breyer said.I almost feel for you, it must be hard to have to cut back. While I don't feel sorry for them not being able to enjoy some of the niceties, I do feel sorry for the people who provide those niceties. This is going to get ugly.
If it lasts through this year, he said, “it will be far more than an inconvenience for all companies.” The dried-up market for public offerings and acquisitions is affecting not just the atmosphere of innovation but also the lifestyle of its participants.
“Less cash coming into the Valley means less cash to purchase homes, and go out to nice dinners, spend on consumer products and go on vacations,” said Hans Swildens, founder and principal of Industry Ventures, an investment firm that buys stakes in start-up companies that need infusions of cash.
Hotpads.com has a dynamic color map that shows you the foreclosures (pictures, prices and description of the homes) in your area. Silicon Valley and surrounding areas are in the red zone at 1 in 500. Palo Alto, where the rich live, is in blue at 1 in 60000. The rest of the map is pretty much shades of pink on their way to red.
Have you ever felt like the world was picking on you? This guy thinks he's being picked on by aliens because his house has been hit by meteorites five times since November.
Does anybody think that this will end well? Considering the amount of road rage and workplace disgruntlement, allowing people to bring their guns to work doesn't sound like a good idea.
It seems that global warming is a threat to beer production. Severe shrinkage in malted barley production will be the result. As if the price of Guinness wasn't high enough.
Who knew that Verizon could be that sweet?
Debsweb
is probably your best bet for a cheap house. I would factor in water accessibility and the weather before I bought anything. 
Talk about making your niche where you find it.
And beer isn't all that hard to make, really. Once you've gotten past the initial outlay for the equipment, (which is surprisingly simple, if you're just doing home batches for yourself) it's fairly inexpensive to make. Been assured that once you've had a good homebrew, commercial beer...even the 'good' stuff just isn't the same.
Me, I make wine, so I don't have the numbers on beer...but I scrounge...s'cuse me...I ask local restaurants to save the bottles for me; sweetening the request with a bottle of homebrew upon delivery. They know me. :wink
I soak the labels off (for recalcitrant labels, Goo-Gone(TM) is your best friend) and sterilize the bottles, so I'm only out for the price of the corks and the pretty, stained-glass-looking labels.