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Hi-Tech Repo Man
jhaberman writes: "MSNBC has an amusing article.
It is a ride-along with a Silicon Valley repo man. You know, those guys who swipe cars from people who can't pay. He is taking cars right out of all the big players (Apple, Intel, Cisco, Sun) parking lots! Needless to say, he has quite a bit of work right now. Hilarious."
Why not? They chose to work in a high-risk speculative field for the chance to make it rich. It was their personal choice to do this rather than a more stable, boring job in a more average community. If you want to gamble everything on living high, you have to accept the responsibility for loosing big.
Has he taken the Andover Slashdot cruiser yet?
Personally, I find that happiness is good brain chemistry. Some people have it and some don't. For those with good brain chemistry, nothing will make them unhappy. Once in a while one of these people make it to prominence. You've seem them. A lot of them are fitness gurus. Some of them are insufferable.
For those with bad brain chemistry, only turning around that chemistry will make them happy. This can be done in the short run with drugs or in the long run with therapy. Therapy can be self-administered, even without knowing it, and I'm sure training in getting rid of desire is really good therapy.
I'm just not sure that, without all the mysticism involved, getting rid of desire is all that healthy. Desire, it seems to me, is tightly linked to motivation. Without desire of any kind, it is hard to see getting out of bed in the morning. Even if that bed is going to be repossessed.
Life is a big old mystery. Every day we learn more about it by living it. If our possessions are taken away, and it makes us unhappy, at least we are humbled by the experience. How can life be improved without the experience? Color me skeptical.
Of course that doesn't change the fact that someone with a million-dollar house is by definition quite wealthy. The simple fact that they live in an expensive neighborhood (so they aren't wealthier than their neighbors) doesn't change this. Most people could not afford to move into such neighborhoods to begin with...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Erm, isn't that the entire point of the term lease? The bank owns the car, and you are leasing it from them; you have not bought it from them, and thus ownership hasn't transferred from the bank to you.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just because someone is living high doesn't mean they're wealthy....more likely the opposite.
Perhaps, but they're still relatively wealthy to even be able to purchase a million-dollar house, even if it took all their money. Most people couldn't afford a million-dollar house even if they were living well beyond their means.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is that we here in America rarely take the long view. It's always "Buy something, hope it lasts a few years, buy something else to replace it." I grew up in a part of the country where keeping old cars running for a long time was a part of the way of life. For some reason we've lost that part of our culture in our "buy buy buy" consumer feeding frenzy.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"...Dynamic 601-b self-loading boom..."
Interesting to see a geek at work in a different field. I'm assuming, of course, that Mr. Kevern told the reported the model number of the self-loading boom off the top of his head.
-Paul Komarek
Zillions of studies have been done on WHY millionaires are rich.
THE single largest factor has been a general disdain for extravagance.
Use less than you get, and you accumulate wealth. Simple. Why is this so hard for so many people to understand?
Extravagance doesn't inform the soul. It doesn't please your partner. It might get you laid, but that's all. Laid. NOT loved, which is infinitely more valuable.
It does only one thing really well..
The attractance of Jackals. Land Sharks. Sycophants.
Millionaires are generally rich because they possess and excercise something approximating a value system.
Dot Com bozo's were generally into status, and the getting of STUFF. Illusion.
THAT idea is the germ of self-inflicted brain death.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Excuse me, but Shadenfreude is a (DUH!) German term, tangentially related to enjoyment at seeing the self-inflated succumb to their own hubris.
There's nothing 'only in America' about it.
These people *knew* they were in a speculative bubble, and just chose not to recognize it. They gambled that they'd cash out some tasty stock options befor the souffle' fell, and they lost.
I have ZERO pity for these people. None. Nada.
Having known some leeter than thou yuppie wannabe scum personally, I feel that these folks are getting off far too easily.
Eventually, the greedy have to pay.
The dotbomb debacle was swift, sure justice, and I've enjoyed every second of it.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
The sickening read of this article basically states what a high kick this guy gets off the human misery that is a round of layoffs, just so he can make a few bucks.
.com's own damn faults for going haywire when a much more modest care would have not got them in this situation.
Not really. What he was saying is that he feels bad when he has to repo a car from a mother of two that is doing the best she can, and that it's the
Not so much he gets a kick, as it's hard to feel sorry for them.
you just might think "i don't care, i want a #&*@ ferrari before i die!".
'cuz life sucks and then you die. or you just get too old and/or fat to get in the bloody car anyway. i mean, point well taken and all, but i find my toys are excellent motivation to get my ass out and working. besides, a little self-confidence and risk-taking is really essential at some point if you're trying to do something career-wise.
don't get me wrong, i have little sympathy for people eating $100 lunches while their car gets towed away, but sometimes you just have to make a fashion statement, and if it doesn't work out well hey, try again next time.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I can afford it :-) Sure, I work for a 'dotcom', and we're doing pretty darned well, but I'm not stupid enough to go out and spend a lot of money I don't have. Heck, I'm about to take a honeymoon, and it's all paid for. Now, did that come from money from the 'dotcom' craze?
No! I saved this money into a savings account and some stocks for YEARS, just for either a honeymoon or a serious vacation. Go figure, I have a lot of 'dotcom' friends the repo man will meet, while I have no bills I can't handle on much above minimum wage, and I've even gotten ahead on most of the payments on stuff I do have (car insurance, house insurance, etc) so if I DO have to get a new job, I'm not scrambling for cash.
I have zero sympathy for 'dotcom' geniuses who dug themselves into a hole. Dad worked in a factory his whole life, and I learned what it means to have a backup plan for when it all goes to hell! Thanks dad!
A reposession man should no more be happy about layoffs than an undertaker should be happy about an epidemic.
It's just an extension of the dotcom craze - borrowing and spending huge amounts of money you don't have, nor have a hope of ever having.
That would be kind of hard - since he *owns it outright*. Grand Theft Auto doesn't tend to look good on a resume.
Two cars are so new their license plates still have dealer tags.
New cars in California, at least in Sillicon Valley, don't have "dealer tags" on their plates. A dealer sticker is placed in the front windshield, and the dealer also typically puts cardboard advertisment where the plates should go (though it's perfectly legal to remove them, and many people do).
Makes me a bit suspicious about the accuracy of the rest of the article...
Forget Keating... he got the press and trial but the biggest of the s&l failures was Silverado... with Mr. Neil Bush on the Board. That's the son of GHWBush and bro to Dubya for y'all a little slow on the draw. Course Neil only got a little fine as a result of a civil suit brought against Silverado. No Congressional hearings were held in a case that cost Amercian taxpayers $2 Billion (that's with a B, 2 thousand million for you on the other side of the pond) compared to countless hearings about whether a stain was or was not on a certain dress.
And frankly... the pilfering of loot from suckers by dot com boards and executives does not even come close to what the S&L's sucked out of the economy. Pud can rant about dot bombs til the mad cows come home... but simply put...Lump em all together and ya still don't have $300 Billion (that's with a b, 300 thousand million for you on the other side of the pond) paid by American taxpayers to clean up the mess left by Bush and Keating during Reagan's administration.
And in the end... a fool and his money are soon parted... and the P.T. Barnum's and Fidelity's (go check their financial statements) make out as your money gets fleeced from the sheeple of America. And BMW of America has to create a certified used car program like Lexus of America already does.
only in about 3 bass-ackwards states buddy. Protecting your property IS NOT a valid excuse for homcide.
:)
:) A shitty job but it DOES PAY WELL.
Also if the repo man is ANY good the only way you'll find out is when he honks driving out of your driveway or when the dead-beat tries to drive his car again
I say this as a retired repo man from the Bay Area Calif
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
My family is from Latin America. I have relatives that, I assure, have studied as hard and worked twice as hard as you do, and never even had a chance at the kind of lifestyle you were enjoying. There are physicists and doctors from the former eastern bloc that drive cabs in the US. During the boom, folks like you (although not necessarily you) smugly claimed that they *deserved* their wealth, which (since wealth is relative) is an implicit claim that others deserve their lack of it. That is what makes the comeuppance so sweet.
Many of the people in the article were living beyond their means and ripping off lenders. Considering the best place to find luxury cars in the article was swanky restaurants. If they cant pay thier loans, whey are they buting $100 meals?
When some people were doing very well during the InterNet bubble, there was no shortage of articles admiring and envious of those smart and lucky to make a fortune.
Now during the downtown the media is going to the other extreme and amusing us on the misfortune and greed of others.
That's not good at all. If these companies really wanted to help they would encourage their people to give the cars back and help out with the carpooling.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
I chatted with a guy who works for a telecommunications firm in Little Rock, AK. The repo business has been big business for as long as he's been there (long before the dot-com crash). Seems that the ratio of people who care more about appearances than a decent standard of living is pretty high.
:)
Its not uncommon to find a twenty something guy who drives around in a $40,000 car and a nice pair of clothes. But those are the *only* decent clothes he has, he lives in an efficiency (bare bones cheap housing) and works full time at McDonads and Wendys to pay for his car.
The guy I talked to parks in a lot that takes 5,000 or so cars, and half a dozen visits from repo guys are not uncommon. He also said its a great place to sell used cars.
"One day I came home, and accidentally stuck my car key in the lock instead of the house key. To my surprise, it started right up. So I took it for a spin.
I parked it in the middle of the Interstate, and started yelling at all the drivers to get the hell out of my driveway."
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are"
:P
I ride a bike, and read on the subway when the weather sucks
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The science of matter over mind... It seems that Mr. Nesmith's predictions of the early 80's may be true...
"You ever feel like your mind is going to explode???... You ever been to Utah?" - J. Frank Parnell
"Find one in every car, You'll see" - miller
Attention Moderators: before going ape on my karma, please check out http://us.imdb.com/Details?0087995 for a better understanding of my comments as well as the parent threads... Great movie with an even better soundtrack!!
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
People who exercise options and just hang onto the stock are being incredibly stupid, or are severely misinformed. There is *NO REASON AT ALL* to do such a thing. Simply holding the options harbors no risk at all. There is absolutely no need to exercise until you want to sell.
You can exercise, and then have your broker shortsell on the exercise date to recover your costs. Or before, if you want (slight risk if the stock goes up before exercise date).If you short it and your exercise date is a day or two later, and the stock drops, all the better (you incurr a slight capital gain on top of the option benefit, but that's good)
Blaming the fall of silicon vally on this option benefit tax is rediculous; again, there is absolutely no reason to exercise the options until you are ready to sell. The options themselves harbor no risk, but if you exercise, you open yourself up to a dangerous tax liability.
Also... (this is how it works in Canada)... capital losses can only be used to offset capital gains... so the massive capital loss you get in your scenario doesn't help you at all unless you happen to have some large capital gains elsewhere.
I made the mistake of not selling all the stock I exercised, and it cost me dearly. It's silly that I have to pay tax on money I never really had... but I knew the risk beforehand. If you ask me, stock option benefit should be capital gains, not income... but unfortunately, it's not.
Cheers.
Let's say you exercise 2000 options, say, to buy a stock at $1, and it's now at $11 . The benefit you will be taxed on is $10 x 2000 = $20,000 of added *income* (not capital gains). If you then sell, say, 500 shares at the same price, earning you 500 * $11/share = $5500 bux to put away for tax. There is not a dime of capital gain in this situation. Your 'purchase price' for the stock, for gains caluclation is the fair market value on the day you exercised, not your option price, because you already incurred a taxable benefit on the difference between the fair market value and your option price. You don't get taxed twice for the same thing.
To repeat, the instant-money you make from exercising stock options is not a capital gain, it is a taxable benefit (income). You did not invest and have your capital increase in value, you purchased something that was worth more than what you paid (just like if you buy a house for $1, they tax you on the market value of the house anyway).
Cheers.
So what you are really saying is, if you have to exercise, and you think the stock has a good chance of more growth, you should let it stay, but have some standing sell orders in case the stock drops, to cover your tax liability.
That makes good sense, but of course, if it DOES drop, you end up with less money than you otherwise would have had...though you can cover your taxes. It's just another calculated risk.
And about getting the advice of an accountant.. ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT QUESTION, you should do this. I sure wish I had. (I ended up paying a great deal more tax than planned this year simply because I didn't know I had to file a simple piece of paper with my employer to defer an option benefit into next year. Or more accurately, because I waited too long to get professional advice.)
Cheers.
Okay. Yes, options have a time limit, usually several years, or near termination of employment. I don't believe it is common practice to have options that must be exercised soon after they vest.
Holding onto stock in a hot market is smart, yes.
Not having the cash to cover a tax liability you cannot escape is *stupid*. You should at least sell enough to cover the tax on the option benefit, else you simply put yourself at greater risk.
This is not about foresight, it's about risk. If you invest in some hot company on the market, you only risk your investment, no matter how volatile the stock is. Better even, if the stock bottoms out, you can at least use the capital loss against your other capital gains.
A stock option benefit is a different matter altogether. the moment you exercise, you incur a taxable benefit. You WILL have to include it in your income for tax purposes, and WILL have to pay whatever tax you owe on it. So it only makes sense to ensure that you can pay up, otherwise, you are taking a big risk.
At the company I work for, you can only hold options for four years after you receive them. They have some additional screwey properties that mean you might very well want to exercise them long before the time limit, but I won't go into that here...
I really wanted to address the point of selling enough stock right after you excercise to pay for the taxes. The issue I have with doing that (and I think one reason why perhaps a lot of people didn't sell stock as soon as they exercised) is that then you pay short term capital gains taxes if you sell the stock right away, whereas you only have to wait a year to pay long terms capital gains and a LOT less in tax! If I had exercised anything last year I'm pretty sure I would have been screwed over as well, since I would have figured just waiting one year was probably safe...
Now that we are all wiser, what I would do after exercising is to set aside a certain amount of stock with a sell limit set at an amount to cover my tax liability should the stock price drop. That way I potentially get the benefit of selling all my stock at the long term rate, but also am covered in case the stock really tanks. Of course, using that system you could be hosed by temporary dips but I figure you could set the selling point fairly low if you had some other savings or assets you knew you could rely on to cover losses (though of course as the original poster said, it's pretty painful to have to pay for money you never saw).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lottery tickets in the glove boxes of expensive cars purchased by once-rich executives. I love it.
like most other repo men, he owns his car outright.
Too bad I can't say the same about all the code I've written...
Well, actually he is restoring the cars to their rightful owners, which might make it a bit better (remember, if those people default on their loans, _you_ will get the pleasure of paying for it one way or the other).
And the systems built by a lot of the bombed dot.commers were neither beautiful nor sophisticated, nor used by very many people apparently. Paid for by money conned out of the inexperienced and gullible in a lot of cases too.
So the choice isnt exactly as clear cut as you might think.
Justice? No-one owes you a job, no matter how smart or hard working you are. It's up to you to handle your own life, and find your own way to make a living. It's your choice if you stay in the midst of the layoffs living off your savings - other people might choose to move someplace else where they can get a job.
But their hardware runs well without Windows; find it here.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
when they still work for someone else?
I wouldn't call this work.
when they still have to act a certain way,
Havn't noticed any change.
dress a certain way,
t-shirt and shorts, no shoes, same as always
or be in certain places at certain times?
Meetings suck, but if I didn't go I wouldn't cop too much shit.
when being without a few paychecks would mean losing your toys, or even your home?
have neither a home nor toys I own (well, there is that laptop..)
when I started enjoying success in a high-tech job I didn't go out and buy a bmw.
me either
I drive a 60's model volkswagen.
dont drive.
I didn't "buy" real estate in california either.
why would you want to live here for longer than you have to? It's a fucking suburb, everything is too far apart, there's nothing to do here, the pubs close at 2am, and most of em only serve beer and wine anyway.
what the fuck were you people thinking?
They weren't, they were reacting to the wants and needs that have been driven into them by society.
that you shit gold and pee perfume?
Indeed.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Heehee...
"Sun Microsystems. We put the dot in 'OH SHIT, WE'RE BROKE!'"
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
As tragedies go, some rich people getting a little less richer is hardly
much to brag about. Almost all those people are skilled professionals and will get new jobs soon, and do fine, just not with millions rolling all around them.
The repo people don't get the kick from the human misery, but from the business opportunity and chance to put some more and better food on the table. These guys make $30-60k, live in Silicon Valley, and you expect them to feel sorry for overspending tech workers?
Like the guy said, when it's real human misery, he does feel bad about it.
Learn life
Want Root?
Hey, don't get down about it, look at it this way: somebody has to free() the malloc()s.
All your cars are belong... nevermind. Couldn't help myself.
--
The vastness of space and time, and I end up here?
One thing I haven't seen here is the flip side. People are saying "they should have lived in their means" yet many of these people DID live in their means. The tax code, however, screwed them out due to some quirks in it. If you owned options and exercised them, many times you have to pay taxes on the price of the stock AT THE TIME YOU EXERCISE the stock, not how much you sell the stock for. This is taxed as income, and there is pretty much NO WAY TO AVOID IT. If the stock goes down after you exercise it, then you can take a capital loss off the stock, but you can only write off $3,000 a year for that. So, if you excercise 1000 shares of stock that was values at the time at $100 and your strike price was $10, then it dropped back to $10 and you sold, then you would owe taxes on $90,000 of income you never saw. Put that on even a fairly good income and you would see why many people in the valley are screwed. Lots of people didn't see it coming till it was too late as they have never seen this type of money, and the tax advisors never told them about the risk of excercise and holding stock. People know about it now though...
We've enjoyed the longest peacetime economic expansion in our history, but it's over. The saying is that a recession is when someone you know loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. There but for fortune...
Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold...
Well, if you read the actual article instead of the /. blurb, you'll find that's not what the reporter wrote.
-Legion
They've come far and fast by having the right kind of smarts at the right time and place. That they didn't know they were living in a speculative bubble and far beyond their means
I refuse to believe that anybody smart (heck, anyone with an ounce of intelligence) couldn't tell that LEASING three cars for his girlfriend was a stupid idea when he was a salaried employee for a company that was extremely overvalued (they all were) and not a rich millionairre with cash in the bank.
--
Sounds like one might make a nice B2C auction site for the repoed cars. Of course, whe the economy perks up again, repo.vulture.com will crashland...
This is not a signature.
True enough. But I spent 3 years working as a medic for a busy city fire department, and I took a lot of pleasure in it.
- --------
Not once, however, did I ever say "Woohoo! Another near-fatal car wreck involving three children! Today's my day to be good at giving IV's."
-----------------------------------------
While right now the tech industry is in a slump, and I'm lucky to be one of the techs who was intelligent enough to live within my means, I still have to resent the tone of the article.
- --------
"Whenever another company announces layoffs, we get all excited". Straight from the article.
Yes, it means you get more business, Mr. Repo man, but slow down for a second and realize that the 8,000 layoffs mean two things. 1) They mean that 50 workers who lived too lavishly will pay for it. 2) They mean that the other 7,950 workers who were just trying to get by in the most expensive place on this coast to live, are now probably apartment/home-less.
The sickening read of this article basically states what a high kick this guy gets off the human misery that is a round of layoffs, just so he can make a few bucks.
The article portrays the tech workers in a very bad light by focusing on the lavish, stupid guys. But frankly, when I read the article, it puts this repo guy in a FAR worse light.
-----------------------------------------
So what? We're talking about Micro$oft bashing here. There are no frontiers or any sort of rules for that. Let the guy show his indignation.
Funny, even before the dot bust one of the perks I got working for a chip maker in colorado springs is "repo man protection".   Seems some of the fab workers had/have credit trouble so about the only thing security actually does besides endangering all donut species is chase tow trucks out of the parking lots.   Since some of the good ones can get in and out faster than security can respond, and w/o leaving license plate images on the security cameras (so trespassing charges can't be filed) there is a special locked parking area for those that really don't want to take chances.   Sounds like this practice may become more common
Sounds pretty rough.
Lots of people decided to get into the tech world for solid reasons-- like, tech is what they enjoy and do well. But for the last few years, the tech sector has been pulled through a violent boom/bust by Wall Street investors, buzzword babbling bimbos on CNNfn, and "visionary geniuses" revealed as blowhards. All their hot air made for a turbulence ride even down at ground level. For a while it was fun like a roller-coaster, but now it mostly makes you puke. I think a lot of us would have preferred to skip the whole up-and-down, "new economy" bullshit trip and just do good work.
I hope things look up for you soon!
Speaking of money, I forgot to pay the rent again! ;)
Pray you don't come home from work one day and find your apartment building is gone. Those damn repo men can do anything these days.
NO CARRIER
I worked my way up from the bottom of Silicon Valley. When I started as a programmer here, I was making a salary below the poverty line, because it was the only company that would hire me. (I didn't have experience.)
After a year and a half of that, I finally got my first 'break': a major company wanted me. I moved to them for a year, and I was miserable. Better salary, but a lot more bullshit on the job.
I got my second, and what I thought was my greatest 'break'. A small company would hire me for the same salary that the major company was giving me. I didn't change over for the money. I did it for the chance to do something more intesting, less boring, and with bosses that didn't have Redwoods up their asses. (The business was a consulting business. No one expected to get super-rich from any stock options, even if the company ever went public.)
For eight months, the small business thrived. It was the best time of my life. I was creating software that was helping people. I was working with creative, intelligent people. Then the dot-com crunch hit everything.
I was renting a house with two other geeks. The owners were relocated back to the Bay Area, and they needed to move back into their home.
The small business had a 15% layoff. Then an 80% layoff.
I'm now crashing at my girlfriend's house. All that I own, except my car and my computer, is in storage, and I'm living off my savings. The crash is keeping me from getting a job, even though I'm writing more than twenty companies every week.
Now listen to me. I fucking studied hard, I fucking worked hard, I fucking kept on learning, and now I'm on unemployment insurance. What the fuck justice is this, you asshole?
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
Those that has support the concept of a trickle down economy will be happy! Proof of concept is here and now.
----
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who
I have seen it in a number of areas of the country. Heck even in SF, where you can have studio apartment for thousands per month. Shear insanity. talk about herd mentality (we are all individuals!)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'd like to give him a taste of his own medicine!
Off the job, he drives a rare 1971 AMC Javelin that he restored himself; like most other repo men, he owns his car outright.
--
"And like that
Um, I live in Portland, near the shipyards. Um what are those shiney colorful things with 4 wheels they unload off the ship with the big word Toyota on the side? True some Japanese cars are assembled in the US but not all.
The truth shall set you free!
Mr. Kevern is offering prizes to all dealerships to hand over the names and addresses of all Microsoft employees buying 'clean' cars (ones without payment protection plays).
While Mr. Kervern does not believe all Microsoft employees intend to default on their repayments, he feels he has a right to be ready just in case.
Meanwhile, in other news... Bugs Bunny episodes are going to be banned for being "racially charged." Now that's news for nerds, stuff that's interesting, I'd think. I may be wrong.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Still their own stupid fault. I'm young, slightly immature, and certainly inexperienced...yet I have the intelligence to realise that borrowed money is expensive money, and living beyond your means is risky business. The repo man won't get my vehicle because I paid cash for it. I'd rather have a less expensive used car that's cheap to insure and paid for than a luxury vehicle or big SUV that I have to make payments on. I get sticker shock from the depreciation cost of driving a new car off the lot, so I don't do it ;-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Looks like you should read this.
Emin
You put them on a pedestal so you can see up the skirt better, not to watch them fall....
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
avoiding tense situations... A repoman spends his life getting into tense situations.
"I saw weird stuff in that place last night! Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff!! And I want in!"
People with as deep a connection to your homeland as yourself confuse me. Move to Seattle if you like nice scenery. Move to Texas if you like cheap housing and sprawling land. There's a lot to be said for freeing your mind from territorialism.
Look at me, I left the comfort of Scandanavia to live at the North Pole.
Dancin Santa
Speaking of money, I forgot to pay the rent again! ;)
Hell, you can buy Z8's at DigiKey for a lot less than that. Price depends on what on-chip peripherals you want, and stuff like that. Check the Zilog website. Or (and this isn't that bad an idea) salvage 'em off the circuit boards on many failed hard drives.
(this is a geek board, right? What's with the yuppie car thread in the first place??)
Actually, there is a difference.
Silicon Valley attracted a whole lot of scum in the past decade. Some of us, who knew about Silicon Valley fifteen years ago, maybe even know the difference between TTL and CMOS logic gates, are a little pleased that some of that scum is now being hosed off the pavement.
It's not really 'revenge' or a manifestation of envy so much as the satisfaction of knowing that in the end everything generally does work out fairly.
You know, I wonder if I can get in on some of those repo sales. The silicon valley people have some insanely nice cars. Imagine getting a BMW with a built-in server-class computer? Pennies on the dollar man
I'm an Angry Clam. You would be angry too if you were a ball of snot in a shell.
Look here.
And here.
Actually they're more like advertisements, but I thought they were a pretty good look for getting an idea as to what the guy is working with.