Archive for January, 2008

My first question when seeing this article was, “Why would anyone do this?”

A man who calls himself a “tantric master” has broken his own world record by standing in ice for 72 minutes.

The 48-year-old Wim Hof stood on a Manhattan street in a clear container filled with ice for an hour and 12 minutes Saturday.

My second question was, “Does ‘tantric’ stand for ‘crazy’?”

The headline grabbed me. “Rate Cut Puts Whiff Of Re-Fi In The Air”. Oh wow. Mortgage rates were sliding before the fed announced their rate cut. Now even more people who couldn’t afford their mortgages before can get roped into new adjustable rate mortgages that they won’t be able to pay a couple years from now. Crazy.

Even before Tuesday’s 0.75% slash in the federal funds rate by the Federal Reserve, mortgage rates had been sliding. Last week’s cut pulled down home loan rates more.

The average rate for a conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.57%, according to Bankrate.com data released Jan. 23. Conforming loans are those for amounts up to $417,000. That’s down from 6.31% in late 2007. Rates averaged 5.75% as of Jan. 16.

So it’s increasingly attractive to take out a home loan or refinance an existing mortgage.

“It’s the largest four-week decline in nearly 20 years,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

At the current 5.57% rate, borrowers would pay $153 a month less on a $200,000 loan than six months ago.

Being in a fixed rate mortgage is the best thing that ever happened to me. While the rate is almost low enough to make re-financing more attractive to me, I doubt I will even look into it, as I am not in the mood to deal with all the crap that comes along with it, especially now.

Ford Motor Company is still struggling, so they are resorting to one of their best known tactics when things get tough. Buyouts.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) posted a sharply narrower fourth-quarter loss on Thursday after cutting costs and boosting margins on vehicles and said it expects another net loss for the full year 2008.

The nation’s No. 3 automaker, which has struggled with declining sales and sliding market share in the United States, said it would take further cost-cutting actions on its home turf, including offering buyouts to all of its unionized work force.

Ford reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $2.75 billion, or $1.30 per share, compared with a loss of $5.63 billion, or $2.98 per share, a year earlier.

In 2006, Ford spent a minimum of $1.33 billion on buyouts, and they saved a bundle doing so. If almost half (38,000) of them took the buyout offers back then, how many more people can they spare before they have to stop producing automobiles and become another empty building?

Ring. Ring.

“Hello”

“Yes, I am calling about the horse for sale”

“oh yes, do you have any questions?”

“Yes, is horse tastier than dog?”

Kristen DeGroat just wanted to sell her horse to another animal lover, but her ad ended up under “Good Things to Eat” in the classified sections of two newspapers.

About a third of the 60 or so calls she received were from people interested in buying horse meat.

“It’s been enough to turn your stomach,” said DeGroat, who eventually sold her 3-year-old mare, Foxy, to a man who wanted a live horse for his grandchildren.

DeGroat’s ad, offering the registered pinto for $200 or the best offer, was intended to run Sunday and Monday under the classified ad heading for horses and stables in The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times.

Imagine the horror on the face of the horse when he read the paper that morning.

Attention employees. We’re cutting your pay, but trust us, it’s really a good thing. No really, you have nothing to worry about.

Sit down. It’s not so bad, it’s only 15%. You can handle that if you work your ass off a couple days each week. No, we don’t care what you had planned after work, if you want your money you will bust your ass.

Even as IBM Corp. reports record profits, thousands of its U.S. employees are staring at pay cuts.

It’s the result of IBM’s response to a lawsuit in which the company was accused of illegally withholding overtime pay from some technical employees. IBM settled the case for $65 million in 2006 and has now decided that it needs to reclassify 7,600 technical-support workers as eligible for overtime.

But their underlying salary — the base pay they earn for their first 40 hours of work each week — will be cut 15 percent to compensate.

The spokesman says the employees “overtime” will compensate for the pay cut, yet internal documents prove otherwise. Damn those internal documents.

Knock knock.

“Oh, hello”

“Have you seen our dog?”

*BURP* “No, what did he look like?”

Two former golf club employees are charged with theft and cruelty to animals in the death of a pet dog the owners say was cooked and eaten. An Oahu grand jury indicted Saturnino Palting, 58, and Nelson Domingo, 43, both of Kalihi.

They were accused of stealing a dog owned by Frank Manuma who lost his 8-month-old German shepherd-Labrador mix named Caddy.

Gross. Don’t they know poodles are not as tough?

The headline should have read, “Woman saves enough copper to replumb house”. Holy mackerel, 55,000 pennies? Did she hire a moving company to help take them to the bank?

Vicki Armstrong has been saving her pennies for almost 19 years and she was making plans this week to cash them in at a bank — all 55,000 of them.

She knows the $550 won’t make her rich, but says the symbolism reinforced frugal spending habits. “It helped me be a little bit more conservative in my lifestyle,” said Armstrong, who is planning to retire at the end of the year from Christus Schumpert Highland Hospital, where she works as a maternity technician.

What’s going to happen to the economy when all those pennies get back into circulation? Mayhem I tell you, mayhem!

Technorati Tags: pennies, saving

The President and Congress better get their plan to stimulate the economy moving, and quick. It sounds like it’s trying to stall out on us, and soon. Kind of like that car you owned in college that you had to keep idling high at the stoplights to keep it from dying, only when it did get going you had to use yuor emergency brake to stop it too.

The FTSE 100 on Monday suffered its biggest one-day fall since the attacks on the World Trade Centre more than six years ago as the worst fears about the prospects for the global economy took hold.

In a tumultuous session, the index was down as much as 5.7 per cent to 5,571.0 as dealers capitulated following sharp falls on Asian markets overnight.

This is equal to the 5.7 per cent fall on September 11 2001. “The acrid smell of fears hangs over the City. I’ve never seen fear like this,” said David Buik, strategist at Cantor Index.

Too bad our economy doesn’t need an emergency brake, I know a Plymouth Valiant that has a great emergency brake.

Oh man. I am so glad I am not the guy who has to stand there and sniff the cow burps.

A Swedish university has received $590,000 in research funds to measure the greenhouse gases released when cows belch.

…

Cattle release methane, a greenhouse gas believed to contribute to global warming, when they digest their food. Researchers believe the level of methane released depends on the type of food the eat.

…

He said 95 percent of the methane released by cows comes out through the mouth.

95 percent is released from their mouth? Oh yuck. Still hungry for that cow tongue now?

I was talking with a former co-worker today and he brought up the impending job cuts at Yahoo! He thought it was “funny” that Yahoo! was going to be cutting jobs as part of their plan to streamline the company and attempt to increase revenue growth. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, figuring he thought improving the whole Yahoo! experience would make more of a difference, but I was wrong. He was being an ass. He actually thinks it is funny that people are going to lose their jobs, all because he hates Yahoo! Nice guy, huh?

Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) is planning to announce cutbacks later this month that will likely lead to hundreds of job losses at the nearly 14,000 employee company, a source familiar with the plan said on Monday.

Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong declined to comment on a report published on the Silicon Alley Insider blog, which on Saturday said Yahoo has created a list of “1,500-2,500 jobs that may be eliminated in the next two weeks.”

Why is that funny to people? Why is it funny when people lose their jobs? Do you not have a mortgage, or rent to pay? Do you not have kids or a spouse to support? Do you not have bills due each month that you are obligated to pay? Do you not require a paycheck? What makes you so high and mighty that laughing at someone elses misfortune makes you a better person?

Needless to say, I doubt he’ll be contacting me again any time soon. Ha!

I was laid off once a long time ago, and it wasn’t funny at all. It took me a while to get back on my feet and I didn’t have any responsibilities at the time to make it more difficult. It sounds like the cuts at Yahoo! are a pretty sure thing, I just hope the people who get cut are able to land on their feet, or at least get back up real quick.