Hi friends. The user forum software went haywire this weekend and caused the site to go down. Seeing as how nobody was using the forum any more, I’ve shut it down rather than go through the expense of fixing it. It was fun while it lasted. (Kind of?)
You can still have discussions in the comments for individual articles.
Along similar lines I also de-activated the private message function, which nobody has used in a while either. If anyone has content in there that they want to access, let me know and I can flip it back on temporarily.
It was a good run, Rich! Really enjoyed most of the discussion over the years.
Only most?
I personally enjoyed all of it.
Same! This site has been a great place to get advice-thank you for all that you do!
Thanks to you both!
Thanks for everything Rich! It was a great run that helped keep me sane way back in the beginning. But all good things eventually run their course and come to an end. Made some of my best friends to this day through the forums that I communicate with daily, FLU/Coronita Im talking to you buddy:)
And a few enemies LOL
Im forever grateful for you and the rest of the hooligans who called this place home for so long.
I started winding down my business about 5 years ago and pretty much shut it down completely two years ago. It was time and I did not need the aggravation this business gives one anymore. I’m enjoying a mostly retired life except for some side gig work I enjoy as time permits. Traveling often to my favorite places in the world, drinking great wines I spent decades collecting and attending lots of concerts! I still have my active license but mostly just helping set people up with others I know will take good care of them.
See you all out there in the Streets of San Diego!
I can’t retire. I hate traveling, stopped drinking and concerts are too loud for me.
I did start attending the sd symphony tho. It’s amazing! I’ve never enjoyed classical music before. Might be a sign of old age?
Although alcohol isn’t my thing, I do enjoy psychedelic mushrooms occasionally. Perhaps that could provide some framework for retirement
Another sign of old age. I read a lot of history. Calms me down. Lately it’s been about the end
THE END OF EVERYTHING, about civilization ending wars (Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, Aztecs) ; and 1177 bc the year civilization ended, by Eric cline…
If you’ve avoided the history section your whole life like me, maybe now is the time to plunge in. It’s great to get the wider timeline picture.
All those ancient businesses are kaput, but the gold remains.
Well, whatever your thing is, you should do more of it. Time waits for no one.
Sniff….. RIP user forum!
Very sad indeed. It seems another lifetime ago, 2000’s. What the heck was I so scared about?
Oh wait, I remember; social chaos and the implosion of the system. I’m still a little scared about that. All these years I kept 15-20% of investable stocks in gold and gold miners and streamers (WPM). Seemed pretty stupidly contrarianly fearful, even to myself, up until recently…yeah, i wouldve done better being normal…but I’m scaredycat! The end is still near. Any thoughts on gold?
also, I’m still scared to buy a condo in SD, even though i’d like one. The future is so unclear, HOA fees go up constantly, prices are softening, global warming, etc etc. On the bright side, my timeline is shorter, I’ll be dead soon, adn none of it really matters….
Rich, thanks for providing a forum for us to gather around.
Dumb question: have you considered using something like Claude to manage this forum and fix shit? If not, I would seriously consider it.
I went back to work march 2025 to help out this CTO to build out the advanced tech research group, and we have a mandate: 80% AI generated software by end of 2025 and 90% by 1/2 half of 2026….
Company hasn’t hired any new junior or mid level software engineers for the past 3 years (to my knowledge). We already have an AI pipeline to do a good portion of the software management and deployment lifecycle, and I’m in the process of building Claude “skills” that allows Claude to control the hardware such that that our sub-agents can directly control the hardware platform to do real integration test.
You can probably find a Claude plugin to manage this website for you. Claude Pro is like $20/month, just don’t use the fastest engine, and it won’t burn through tokens….
I was skeptical last year, but man has things changed so much.
I wanted to put together a OBD II scanner for my mclaren because the factory scan tool is ridiculously expensive, so I spliced a Y adapter OBD dongle and used a CANable CAN to USB device connected to my linux box to sniff the CAN traffic and borrowed a factory scan tool and used it, while Claude was running to capture all the CAN traffic…
It generated me a OBDII scan app with vendor specfic functions in around 35 minutes….
Never thought this would happen, but I get paid to hack shit up with hardware to enable Claude to do the heavy lifting software and software management, I just need figure out how to enable Claude “access” to the physical world…
I am terrified of AI. Listened to THE LAST INVENTION podcast on the topic. I think it could get very very bad. But if it revives the forum I suppose some good could come of it
Hi flu – It’s not a dumb question, but setting that up would be a project unto itself that would cost time and money. The forum really wasn’t being used at all, so it didn’t seem worth it to try to resurrect. We can still hang out in the comments here. (But yeah what Claude can do is amazing, or at least so my developer friends tell me)…
Looks like the comment section just might become the ‘new’ user forum!! Thanks again Rich for hosting and sharing your data.
I do miss such an eclectic crowd!! Glad to see some of my favorites chiming in. It would be great to have some kind of forum to stay connected with all of their antics.
I actually thought Scaredy would have sold his gold at the top and would be posting from some island saying,’ I told you guys to buy gold’.
Fun times all.
Hobie
I’m scared to sell
Scared to buy
Scared to live
Ambivalent to die
I do find rebalancing winners very difficult. Managing money is painful. I prefer to stay mired in the muck of past decisions. Buy and hold. I see it’s irrational. And yet that’s where I’m at.
I was also way too early on the buy foreign stocks, screw the USA train. But it’s been working out well lately.
Maybe the future belongs to scaredy! My time is finally here!
The weird thing is, the crazier the world gets, the less scared I am.
I did recently attend several meetings of the communist party of San Diego. It’s rather small. No good investment ideas there.
I despise capitalism but want desperately to make a buck.
I never say I told you so. Because I know nothing. Even a broken scaredy is right twice a day.
Although in a digital age, a broken clock is never right
Perhaps not a bad weekend to be overweighted gold.
But gold is supposed to be insurance, something bad things happening. But when you look at the 5 y chart for gold, it sure looks like the insurance is paying out which makes you wonder. Maybe things really are bad right now?
Buy the rumor sell the news. Or was it the other way around. Dammit. I guess I’ll do nothing
The user forum will come alive again like it did post 2008. We are entering similar economic territory. Rich’s analysis in invaluable in such cases.
Where are the housing data posts? It’s been quiet for a bit. The silence can be me feel a bit ominously …
Rich, I wanted to share my thanks for your years of work on this site. I wasn’t a frequent poster, but the insights shared here as we turned market chaos into opportunity were invaluable. More than that, it’s been great to see so many familiar names popping up in this thread; it speaks to the quality of the community that so many of us stayed tuned in for twenty years.
This was truly my de facto space for a grounded perspective on just about any topic, and I always appreciated how this site helped filter out the noise. It’s the end of an era, and I’m grateful for the sanctuary you provided.
Thank you!
Is there a way to pin this post at the top? I’d hate for it to get buried below updates and an old timer show up and miss it.
Good idea – I will do something along those lines.
SD Native and real estate junkie here, feeling nostalgic and chiming in…
I have been lurking here for, oh, about 10 years for tidbits on my inland rental, very-occasionally commenting, and learning much from you all and Rich’s wonderful charts, articles, etc. I appreciate the levity and reflect fondly on spirited discussions and friendly-insults (I’m looking at you, SD Realtor and (all I can remember is the guy who moved to St. George, Utah)! Such fun!
Although keeping up with this blog didn’t keep me from buying a coastal condo w/ ever-increasing-HOAs (life’s too short to not live on the beach), I am happy to learn that Piggington Place can still be a thing while not burdening Rich as much as in the past.
Stay cool!