Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
August 20, 2012 at 6:26 PM in reply to: What would be the first thing(or second or third…) to do after losing your keys #750595
Ren
Participant[quote=svelte]If I must set something down (very very rarely), I set it on the hood directly in front of the steering wheel so that when I start the car, I will see what I’ve forgotten.[/quote]
This is brilliant.
August 20, 2012 at 6:24 PM in reply to: What would be the first thing(or second or third…) to do after losing your keys #750594ParticipantSomeone did that with a baby in a car seat recently. The baby ended up sitting in the middle of an intersection, not a scratch.
ParticipantA woman has the right to expect that a man have the ability to at least support himself, in order to help her build a nest and feed the offspring, and that doesn’t make her the least bit materialistic. A single man who drives a beater is one or more of four things – a teenager, perpetually unemployed/bad with money, cheap to the point of being crazy, or divorced and can barely support himself – none of which are an appealing first choice to any woman worth having. Driving a newer car isn’t necessarily more expensive, and it’s usually smarter. We are talking about an Accord after all, not a Ferrari. I think the best way for a wealthy man to find a non-golddigger is to maintain a separate residence and car – say, a condo in a decent area and a… newer Accord.
No one (male or female) should be put down because they don’t want to drive around in a beater, for the same reason they don’t go around hugging the mentally ill homeless – it’s smelly and dangerous.
Participant[quote=flu]
You need to have practical experience using all the types of navigation system to understand why they exist….[/quote]I’ve had good and bad experiences with both Android and dedicated nav devices. I try to have a real map handy.
When driving a lonely highway through a remote forested area in northern California with no cell signal, the Magellan couldn’t get a GPS signal and stopped functioning, while the Droid X continued to operate (its nav had been activated back when there was a cell signal). I can understand the Droid working, but I don’t get how the Magellan would fail in the same circumstances – unless the Droid lost the GPS signal too but didn’t care and didn’t bother to tell me.
In the city, the Magellan once in a while routes me to turn where no street has ever existed. Data issue, I guess.
On the way to Palm Springs recently, the Droid never found a satellite in an hour of searching. Tried restarting, uninstalling map updates, etc. We did NOT have a real map (too reliant on tech!) and so had to find the address using only cell phone tower locations and wild guesses, which only added 15 minutes to the drive, but still, that was 15 minutes of drinking time.
Every Android update to my Droid X degrades its performance or otherwise screws things up.
ParticipantEdit: removed rant about penny pinching when I realized you actually made an attempt to buy something new.
My step-father-in-law is as stubborn and cheap as they come, but even he has the sense to buy a safe car. He was also t-boned in it recently, by someone even older than he is, and he walked away – which would not have happened without the side curtain airbag.
You can get invoice price, which is a decent (if not great) deal, via email without going into a dealer. Or just buy a 3-year-old Camry and forget about it.
Participant[quote=sdrealtor]Ren
What some posters fail to understand is that many of todays first time buyers have great jobs with higher incomes and great upward mobility but often lack two key things – time and large down payments. They want newer turnkey houses because they can easily serivce the debt but dont have $30 to $50K lying around for remodeling. They work long hard hours during the week and want to enjoy their weekends with their young children not spend them fixing paint, drywall, roofs, plumbing and electrical issues. They havent gone through multiple home remodelling projects and dont have time or interest in learning the ins n outs of doing them. Turnkey fits their financial position and lifestyle. For buyers like that its the right way to go.
[/quote]Exactly. I have two toddlers and we both work full time, so pretty much ’nuff said.
[quote]FWIW, Mello Roos actually helped prevent overbuilding in my neighborhood. The developers were forced to set aside land for a school (that wasnt actually needed anytime soon and is being landbanked for the longterm) and to use a modest MR bonds to finance the purchase. The developers would have loved to build another couple hundred homes there but couldnt. Without MR there would have been no mechanism for the land to be purchased and the developers would have most likely just been able to add more density here.[/quote]
Interesting, I didn’t know that. I’ll have to take a closer look at MR properties in the future. I always thought of them as crazy expensive, but really my only exposure has been SEH and 4S.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]No one is calling anyone “stupid,” here, Ren. Perhaps you have a “chip” on your shoulder.
[/quote]You never call anyone stupid, and I didn’t say you did. However, you imply it constantly (almost daily) when people simply don’t share your opinion, and that’s when the chip occurs. I can’t write that any way other than I already have, so I officially give up. I’m going on vacation now.
[quote]
The houses you are describing with small kitchens and substandard (less than 8′) ceilings…
[/quote]And you’re still missing the point. All layout issues aside, if I want (key word) a newer property (let’s say with low HOA and no MR, which is what I would aim for) over an older property with a bigger yard, and it’s for a home not an investment, that’s what I’m going to buy, and that’s the right decision for me. You telling someone that they’re making a bad decision for doing so will ONLY succeed in pissing them off. Get it?
I’m guessing you’ve got a touch of Asperger’s, so to further the lesson, when discussing opinion:
OKAY
“I prefer [x], and here’s why.”
“I like [x] better than [y].”NOT OKAY
“[x] is better that [y].”
“You’re wrong.”I’ve got a boat to catch.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]
Ren . . . so many misconceptions here.
[/quote]Generalizations to try to make a point. I didn’t think you’d get it, BG, and you didn’t disappoint me.
No one without severe brain damage passes on a house because of bad carpeting. That kind of assumption is what makes your posts so insulting. People pass on a house because the kitchen would barely fit a card table, or because the low ceilings make them feel like they’re in a coal mine. Before you go quoting statistics about how many thousands of older homes have larger kitchens and high ceilings, don’t bother, because all that matters is that tiny kitchens and low ceilings are negatives for houses that DO have them. If I can get a beautiful layout with a smaller lot (when I don’t need a larger lot to begin with!) and those happen to be in a newer home, then that’s the home I’ll choose. The newness is almost beside the point – I like older houses, but more often than not, there are serious layout issues and it’s easier to find newer houses with layouts that someone actually thought through. You don’t share my opinion, and that doesn’t bother me. Why it bothers you is the big mystery here.
To each his own. Is that clearer? Just because someone doesn’t agree with your definition of a good piece of property doesn’t make them stupid, and I’m sick of you insinuating that it does.
Participant[quote=spdrun]
…an HOA is a useless parasitic entity.
[/quote]This topic has been beaten to death in other threads. All that really matters to me is that I’ve lived in both, from one extreme to the other, and I prefer HOAs.
[quote]
I for one wouldn’t care less if I lived in the ‘burbs and my neighbors painted their house neon fluorescent orange, and neither would anyone else, so long as it’s kept in good repair.
[/quote]You’re assuming everyone else thinks like you. I don’t want my neighbor’s house to be neon fluorescent orange, and I’ll return the favor by not putting a chain link fence around my front yard. Most people are this considerate without an HOA, but many aren’t.
ParticipantApologies to any nice NJ’ers reading this, but… I’ve racked up about 12 years of experience dealing with tens of thousands of customers all over the country, and for whatever reason, New Jersey has by far the worst, nastiest human beings I’ve ever encountered. I can count the nice New Jersey people that I’ve talked to on one hand – normally they run the gamut from merely mean and obnoxious to complete, raving, screaming lunatics. This isn’t just my opinion – most customer service reps who communicate nationwide will say the same thing. Is it the water?
Participant[quote=bearishgurl]It seems the vast majority of today’s buyers want “turnkey” property and are willing to pay for that. Hence the continued (irrationally exuberant) interest in *new construction tracts* by the younger cohort of Gen X, as well as Gen Y. This appears to be true, no matter WHERE these new tracts are located (i.e. adjacent to fmr landfill, out in lizardland, in boxed-in warm inland area, etc).
[/quote]BG, you are aware this is insulting, right? Every single time you post it (which is annoyingly often)? Yes, some like newer or upgraded properties and are willing to pay for them, but you spit this out like it’s the definition of stupidity – when it’s really just a preference. You prefer not to pay HOA, but some of us like HOAs, we can afford it, and we think it’s worth it. Others can easily afford MR and like the newer ammenities they provide. I wouldn’t personally pay them, but I understand that others think differently and independently of Ren and BG. You think it’s irrational to buy a new house on a less than desirable lot? I think it’s irrational to buy a functionally obsolete house just because the lot is 2ksf bigger and I can paint the exterior purple. I’d rather have a walk-in closet and not have to look at my neighbor’s purple house.
For another example, some of us prefer buying cars new, because we like warranties, and many years of trouble-free operation, and knowing it’s had regular oil changes, and new car smell, and not finding someone else’s french fries under the seat. That may be a wrong choice for you, but it’s the right one for me.
ParticipantAnother point of view…
I was a sort of “clique diplomant” in my youth, getting along just as well with jocks as I did with punks and stoners. I still know many of these people, and in hindsight, I found that what mattered most to their success wasn’t whether they were into drugs in their youth, but how they were raised – the character their parents instilled in them, their very early education (elementary school is more important than you may think), and how involved their parents were in their lives. Some of the most successful people I know partied the hardest, and I know perpetual losers who never touched the stuff. And vice versa, of course.
As scaredy mentioned, in Riverside (including Temecula), the dirty little secret in the high schools is now heroin. In Del Mar and Encinitas, I have no doubt it’s oxy and various forms of prescription speed. You can’t escape it, but you can somewhat influence the friends your kids end up with by keeping them busy and being involved. That doesn’t necessarily mean hovering or locking them up away from the world. And they aren’t doomed if they experiment – but they are doomed if you ignore them while they experiment. I also believe that if they are surrounded by kids with like-minded parents, their chances of success are better even if drugs are more prevalent in a wealthier school.
As for dirty hippies on the street selling pot, I have a better reason for not wanting to live there than just not exposing my kids to it. I don’t personally want to see dirty hippies on the street selling pot. I like my sidewalks scum-free. If my kids want drugs, they’ll have to get them at school, not on my clean, pleasant downtown streets.
ParticipantRired, my two cents…
I’ll be relocating back to the coast next year, and my criteria is more or less the same as yours – good public schools and a place where about $1m will get a nice 4 or 5-bdrm place with a decent lot (certainly not an acre, but enough for a pool and play equipment). I’ve lived in and/or visted every corner of the county for 40 years, spent 5 years actually looking hard, and ended up picking Encinitas/La Costa – the San Dieguito district. $1.5m will get you a VERY nice house there.
La Jolla and Coronado were removed from my list very early on in the search. Del Mar lasted a little longer, but the value isn’t there like it is in Encinitas.
ParticipantOkay, I feel better. Paid $800 for 18″ Bridgestone Potenza RE760 Sport recently, with free rotations for the life of the tire. So far they’re quiet with awesome grip. We’ll see how long they last.
-
AuthorPosts