You know about the "donut effect" - suburbs around an urban core? An exburb is the area outside a suburb, usually developed because land is cheap, not because it's a practical commute to anywhere. Some exburbs become town centers in their own right, others die off and are abandonned, and still others slowly sink into decrepitude.
There are a lot of McMansions in exburbs; combine the rising house payments, the gas-guzzling SUV financed via a HELOC, the long commute times, the lack of a local commercial base, $5-$6/gallon gas, and you'll see why the "ex" is so appropriate.
NEW YORK, April 25 (UPI) -- Large numbers of Americans face the prospect of energy shutoffs during the coming months because of rising energy prices and stagnant wages, officials said.
Millions of U.S. consumers are behind on paying their utility bills following a winter in which many struggled to cover the increasing cost of heating their homes, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported Friday, citing energy and utilities officials.
The cost of heating oil, propane and kerosene is the biggest problem, officials told the newspaper, but natural gas and electricity prices are also a problem for workers at the lower end of the income scale, who are also struggling with higher prices for food and gasoline.
An NEADA survey this month shows 8% of four-member households earning $33,500 to $55,500 have had their power turned off for non-payment. "It's hitting people in the suburbs with two cars and two kids," Wolfe says.
The disconnects are rising as warm-weather power bills increase, some state moratoriums on winter shutoffs expire, and rates are climbing in many states.
...
In Michigan, where home foreclosures are soaring and the unemployment rate is the USA's highest, more than one in five Detroit Edison customers were behind in their electric bills in May.
We'e talking about the proverbial family with 2 parents and a cuple of kids. 20%. And once you fall behind, its harder to dig yourself out.
Gas won't pass $5 per gallon, at least not during the winter. As we approach the turn of the year, fuel oil prices will fall, perhaps drastically.
The CPI is calculated without factoring in the cost of gas. True inflation has been a LOT higher than what the government figures show with their so-called "core inflation", which also doesn't include another esential - FOOD!
Up here, a liter of gas is currently $1.47. What will happen is that people will move closer to where they work, buy more fuel-efficient cars, and, with the money they save, they'll be able to spend more on other stuff, so their lifestyle will actually improve over time. I'll probably be moving a lot closer to work next month - I'm looking to cut my travel in each direction from 3/4 hr to 5 minutes, which means that I'll be cutting my gas bill by about 80%.
That's a couple of hundred bucks extra in my pocket every month, as well as about 30 hours a month more free time.
Photovoltaics output decreases with time. Wind turbines need maintenance, same as hydro dams (and we haven't seen what the long-term implications of removing large amounts of energy from winds will mean in terms of climate. We could very well end up with stagnant air masses that end up costing us more in AC to cool our cities than we get from the winds.
Natural gas is also going up - way up. Natural gas is not just used for heating - its the feedstock for LOTS of products, as well as powering electric generators at utilities, so your home AC uses it too.
Problem is, a lot of those people who bought those fancy McMansions in the exburbs bought too much house, with the idea that "worse comes to worse, they can always sell at a profit." Higher energy costs work against the basic exonomics of the house in three ways: higher costs to heat and cool it, higher transportation costs, and higher taxes because the municipal services (police, fire, lighting, water, etc) also use energy.
Even if their mortgages weren't due to reset at a much higher rate, they'd still be screwed. Add to this the idiots who took out a HELOC to buy a gas-guzzler, and they're really screwed.
An additional problem is that many of these newer homes are built out of pretty crappy materials, that can't withstand much in the way of abuse. Leave the place unoccupied over the winter, and you'll find warped walls, delaminated structural elements, and all sorts of other problems. Todays presswood, laminated beams, and stapled finishes don't age as gracefully as solid wood, nails, and lag bolts from previous generations of construction.
Already there are places that aren't finding takers at less than half the current mortgage, at $4/gallon. What is it going to be like at world oil prices?
Bad analogy. Take your analogy of water - less water wasted doesn't make the world poorer. It makes it richer, since that means less wasted chemicals treating waste water, and less pollution and energy consumed.
Or ae you going to argue that lo-flow shower heads, that help people save water AND energy, somehow make everyone poorer? Come on.
As for "half the food produced" - the average American can afford to eat a lot less. Let me change that - they'd be a lot better off eating a lot less.
This is not about increasing the cost of trade - it is ending the artificial market distortions of trade that artificially low energy costs created. Stop equating excess consumption with wealth. The world is not "poorer" because you can no longer afford to drive a piece of shit gas guzzler like a Hummer or an Escalade. The world is better off. If you feel poorer because you can't afford to "make a statement" by driving a Canyonero, spend the money you save on gas and glitz on a few sessions with a shrink to find out why your ego is so dependent on prolifigate, ostentatious consumption.
The fall in prices for the exburbs is not a short-term phenomena. We saw the same thing in some communities in California in 1990-91. They never "came back." This is much wider, and much more permanent. Energy costs aren't a one-time expenditure. Like takex, you pay, and pay, and pay. What are people going to do with $8/gallon for heating oil? Divide those McMansions into apartments. Unfortunately, they're poorly located, and constructed so cheaply that they won't be "desireable." When gas was a buck a gallon, people could rationalize a 2-hour commute "for the lifestyle." Even though the lifestyle essentially meant spending 3 to 4 hours a day in traffic. Now that gas is between $4 and $5 a gallon, and will probably pass $5 this winter, the commute isn't worth it.
Already there are people complaining that 1/4 of their take-home pay is going to gas. Houses that kind of made sense at $1/gallon, just aren't worth it any more. Better to pay a bit more (you can afford it from the gas savings), live closer to work, and reap the additional benefits of more free time and less wear and tear on your car tp boot.
Even if there were no foreclosure crisis, $5/gallon gas would be lowering the value of houses that were built too far from any commercial center. This is just a happy coincidence - let the get-rich-quick house flippers, speculators, and everyone who lied on their mortgage application "because they just had to have their overpriced dream" eat shit and die. I have zero sympathy for realtwhores crying about how they're going to lose their own homes because they can't find anyone else to drink the kook-aid (no, that's not a typo - too many of them were were kooks, con artists, fraudsters, hucksters, etc. and they made the mistake of believing their own lies).
... but it still means less energy consumed overall, which means the global economy is more efficient, so everyone wins in the end. "Subsidizing" foreign jobs via cheap oil and inflated dollars just promotes inefficiency.
The price of the average house is falling because it was never worth what the bubble fanatics thought it was.
That McMansion out in the exburbs is looking to cost a lot more to heat this winter... and next,... and the year after. Transportation costs are going up as well. Plus, people don't want to spend an hour each way commuting. Cities are going to make a comeback, and those McMansions, stuck in the wilderness, with a declining tax base, will be the new slums. Look for a reverse donut-hole effect.
Good luck for you, but this guy was *seriously* fucked up. Stuck in a wheelchair by his late-20s. Leg "muscles" stiff as a board a decade later, frozen from non-use. Legally blind, lots of tremors. Watching him trying to eat a sandwich, you'd think he was taking part in a food fight, shit flying all over the place.
Legally blind, memory lapses, the whole 9 yards. Everything I wrote might sound like a George Carlin skit, but it was all also true. I housed him for a while when his family "got tired" of him. I found out the first day that of necessity included "fun" stuff like taking care of his catheter. Eventually, his family decided that they wanted him back... they were really, really pissed off that I had told him about his diagnosis - that he was developing both Alzhemers' and Parkinsons, though how they could tell Parkinson's from his usual spastic movements was beyond me - probably from the "non-motor" symptoms. I believe the mood swings were just from frustration and anger, though they were never directed at me.
Funny how they claimed to be such great born-again christians but they could try to justify lying to one of their own. Real cock-suckers.
I can understand why MS patients lack vitamin D, but it may be BECAUSE they have MS tht they have less vitamin D.
As George Carlin would have said:
I can understand why people with MS don't get enough sun. I had a friend who had MS. Taking him anywhere was tough. It wasn't like I could just hook a chain to his wheelchar and just TOW the motherfucker to a party...
Going to the Dairy Queen was out of the question. You couldn't give him a milkshake. With his tremors, he'd just churn that shit into butter. Bet he would have been great milking a cow - just duct-tape his hands to those cow-tits and let 'er rip.
He got alzheimers in his late 30's. His family knew about it, but rather than tell him early on, so he could make the best of what time he had left, the cocksuckers made it into a big secret. They got pissed off at me because I told him, "Dude, you got the fucking alzheimers!" I don't know why they had to be such cunts and not tell him... it's not like he'd remember anyway.
This was less of a problem for coders "back in the day", since many of us brought our dogs to work. This made for a coding population that were outside early in the morning, one or more times during the day, and in the evening, rain or shine. Fresh air, exposure to sunlight, and exercise. Also gave you a chance to actually think about the problem you were working on away from the keyboard.
Ironically, now the only people who go outside on a regular basis, rain or shine, snow, sleet, hail, pestilence, whatever... are those who need their "nicotine fix". They're certainly not going outside for their health, and smoking reduces your body's ability to make and use vitamin D, so they're fuxored anyway...
Too bad George Carlin isn't around to say how fucked up THAT is...
The "Sunk costs" idiot: "There's not enough time to do it right, but there's always time to do it again."
Wishful thinking from the Monkeys-Flying-Out-The-Ass-With-Ouija-Boards department;
"We promised this by X date so that's how long it should take";
Throw some numbers at the devs and see how much they scream;
Throw some numbers at the devs and tell them that if they're any good they should be able to beat it easily...;
Ask for a guestimate, cut 20%, and make it into a hard date (and when it takes more than X, throw "But you said X" back at you... when you actually said "between X and 4X);
Ask for a guestimate, cut 50%, cut resources 25% "because everybody always include padding when they make estimates" and make it into a hard date;
"Our competitor is going to be shipping on such-and-such - we need to beat them!"
"We have a quote from XYZ for $x and $y months - why can't your team beat that?"
"Here's an outline of what we want - you have X time in which to complete it."
"Here's an outline of what (THINK) we want (WARNING: This is what we want TODAY - MAY change tomorrow, DEFINITELY will change by next week) - you have X time in which to complete it."
"Come on, you guys are supposed to be good at this. Why can't you tell me how long it will take (just seconds after being given the vaguest description of what they have in mind, inviting YOU to do the Monkeys-Flying-Out-The-Ass-With-Ouija-Boards bit)
The things all these have in common are:
They're all real-life, actual examples (real life IS fucked up, and George Carlin was an optimist);
they show a "laying out of specifications and planning is a waste of time... just code it!" mentality,
they attempt to play off on the teams'/individual devs' egos or insecurites, rather than to their strengths.
they guarantee failure.
So what happens is everyone attempts to "negotiate" the length of time something will take, rather than realizing that it's not something that is negotiable. If it takes X time, it takes X time, all things remaining equal.
That old saw - "price | quality | speed - pick any 2" was optimistic. Going too fast inevitably results in both lower quality and higher costs down the road, as bugs that aren't fixed at an earlier stage end up being either more expensive to fix, or show-stoppers. Planning for quality initially takes more time that *seems* unproductive to *cough* "certain types of people" *cough* but it's also, in the end, cheaper, and quicker. Problem is that too many people think that development is just "throwing code together, finding and fixing the bugs, and deploying".
"Price, quality, speed" - either expend the time to get high quality, or you'll waste money and any speed gains are temporary at best. Instead of cutting quality, cut feature scope, and kill off any attempts at feature creep - that's where the biggest problems are. If whoever is managing the project hasn't got the backbone to do that, they deserve yet another death march.
The way he lived and what he said, there's no way he's in heaven. Unless he was saved, which his life didn't show it, he's in Hell.
I'm sure that's one motherfucker who'd prefer it that way, since heaven would be full of ignorant cocksuckers, you know, the type of cunt-heads who like to shit all over everyone who prefers worshiping tits over their pissyfucked-up superstitions.
"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits." Yep - got 'em all covered.
PS: Father's day is when we pay homage to motherfuckers. After all, they wouldn't be your father if they hadn't fucked your momma!
Slashdot Mirror
LAG = Lesbian Ass Grabber. Of course you won't get it.
ISO-SWF = I Shit Often - Smelly Wet Farts
MVA = My Vagina's Available
Yep, that should be ass offensive as DMV = Dildo Meets Vulva
POS =
Point Of Sale.
Poor Old Sod
Piss Off, Shithead
Conside
r yours
elf luc
ky. You
know Ge
orge Ca
rlin's
7 words
you can
't say
on TV -
I can't
even li
st 2 of
them he
re, you
ignoran
t clod!
You know about the "donut effect" - suburbs around an urban core? An exburb is the area outside a suburb, usually developed because land is cheap, not because it's a practical commute to anywhere. Some exburbs become town centers in their own right, others die off and are abandonned, and still others slowly sink into decrepitude.
There are a lot of McMansions in exburbs; combine the rising house payments, the gas-guzzling SUV financed via a HELOC, the long commute times, the lack of a local commercial base, $5-$6/gallon gas, and you'll see why the "ex" is so appropriate.
If you doubt, check this out
We'e talking about the proverbial family with 2 parents and a cuple of kids. 20%. And once you fall behind, its harder to dig yourself out.
It's currently $1.47 here (Canada), peaked at $1.51.9 a few weeks ago ... predictions are for $2.25/litre by 2012.
There's a LOT more than "an article on MSNBC". Try analysts with the various banks, Fannie Mae, etc.
One word - foreclosure. It's now happening to millions each year, and we're nowhere near the bottom. Maybe 2010, more likely 2011, will be the bottom.
The CPI is calculated without factoring in the cost of gas. True inflation has been a LOT higher than what the government figures show with their so-called "core inflation", which also doesn't include another esential - FOOD!
Up here, a liter of gas is currently $1.47. What will happen is that people will move closer to where they work, buy more fuel-efficient cars, and, with the money they save, they'll be able to spend more on other stuff, so their lifestyle will actually improve over time. I'll probably be moving a lot closer to work next month - I'm looking to cut my travel in each direction from 3/4 hr to 5 minutes, which means that I'll be cutting my gas bill by about 80%.
That's a couple of hundred bucks extra in my pocket every month, as well as about 30 hours a month more free time.
Photovoltaics output decreases with time. Wind turbines need maintenance, same as hydro dams (and we haven't seen what the long-term implications of removing large amounts of energy from winds will mean in terms of climate. We could very well end up with stagnant air masses that end up costing us more in AC to cool our cities than we get from the winds.
Have too. BTW, the US is a net importer of natural gas (warning - pdf). Also, the government predicts shortfalls after 2020 (google cache to avoid pdf).
You wish! Easily-recoverable nn-OPEC oil is getting scarce, and domestic demand in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) is growing a LOT.
Supply vs demand.
Natural gas is also going up - way up. Natural gas is not just used for heating - its the feedstock for LOTS of products, as well as powering electric generators at utilities, so your home AC uses it too.
Problem is, a lot of those people who bought those fancy McMansions in the exburbs bought too much house, with the idea that "worse comes to worse, they can always sell at a profit." Higher energy costs work against the basic exonomics of the house in three ways: higher costs to heat and cool it, higher transportation costs, and higher taxes because the municipal services (police, fire, lighting, water, etc) also use energy.
Even if their mortgages weren't due to reset at a much higher rate, they'd still be screwed. Add to this the idiots who took out a HELOC to buy a gas-guzzler, and they're really screwed.
An additional problem is that many of these newer homes are built out of pretty crappy materials, that can't withstand much in the way of abuse. Leave the place unoccupied over the winter, and you'll find warped walls, delaminated structural elements, and all sorts of other problems. Todays presswood, laminated beams, and stapled finishes don't age as gracefully as solid wood, nails, and lag bolts from previous generations of construction.
Already there are places that aren't finding takers at less than half the current mortgage, at $4/gallon. What is it going to be like at world oil prices?
Bad analogy. Take your analogy of water - less water wasted doesn't make the world poorer. It makes it richer, since that means less wasted chemicals treating waste water, and less pollution and energy consumed.
Or ae you going to argue that lo-flow shower heads, that help people save water AND energy, somehow make everyone poorer? Come on.
As for "half the food produced" - the average American can afford to eat a lot less. Let me change that - they'd be a lot better off eating a lot less.
This is not about increasing the cost of trade - it is ending the artificial market distortions of trade that artificially low energy costs created. Stop equating excess consumption with wealth. The world is not "poorer" because you can no longer afford to drive a piece of shit gas guzzler like a Hummer or an Escalade. The world is better off. If you feel poorer because you can't afford to "make a statement" by driving a Canyonero, spend the money you save on gas and glitz on a few sessions with a shrink to find out why your ego is so dependent on prolifigate, ostentatious consumption.
Already there are people complaining that 1/4 of their take-home pay is going to gas. Houses that kind of made sense at $1/gallon, just aren't worth it any more. Better to pay a bit more (you can afford it from the gas savings), live closer to work, and reap the additional benefits of more free time and less wear and tear on your car tp boot.
Even if there were no foreclosure crisis, $5/gallon gas would be lowering the value of houses that were built too far from any commercial center. This is just a happy coincidence - let the get-rich-quick house flippers, speculators, and everyone who lied on their mortgage application "because they just had to have their overpriced dream" eat shit and die. I have zero sympathy for realtwhores crying about how they're going to lose their own homes because they can't find anyone else to drink the kook-aid (no, that's not a typo - too many of them were were kooks, con artists, fraudsters, hucksters, etc. and they made the mistake of believing their own lies).
The price of the average house is falling because it was never worth what the bubble fanatics thought it was.
That McMansion out in the exburbs is looking to cost a lot more to heat this winter ... and next, ... and the year after. Transportation costs are going up as well. Plus, people don't want to spend an hour each way commuting. Cities are going to make a comeback, and those McMansions, stuck in the wilderness, with a declining tax base, will be the new slums. Look for a reverse donut-hole effect.
Good luck for you, but this guy was *seriously* fucked up. Stuck in a wheelchair by his late-20s. Leg "muscles" stiff as a board a decade later, frozen from non-use. Legally blind, lots of tremors. Watching him trying to eat a sandwich, you'd think he was taking part in a food fight, shit flying all over the place.
Legally blind, memory lapses, the whole 9 yards. Everything I wrote might sound like a George Carlin skit, but it was all also true. I housed him for a while when his family "got tired" of him. I found out the first day that of necessity included "fun" stuff like taking care of his catheter. Eventually, his family decided that they wanted him back ... they were really, really pissed off that I had told him about his diagnosis - that he was developing both Alzhemers' and Parkinsons, though how they could tell Parkinson's from his usual spastic movements was beyond me - probably from the "non-motor" symptoms. I believe the mood swings were just from frustration and anger, though they were never directed at me.
Funny how they claimed to be such great born-again christians but they could try to justify lying to one of their own. Real cock-suckers.
I can understand why MS patients lack vitamin D, but it may be BECAUSE they have MS tht they have less vitamin D.
As George Carlin would have said:
This was less of a problem for coders "back in the day", since many of us brought our dogs to work. This made for a coding population that were outside early in the morning, one or more times during the day, and in the evening, rain or shine. Fresh air, exposure to sunlight, and exercise. Also gave you a chance to actually think about the problem you were working on away from the keyboard.
Ironically, now the only people who go outside on a regular basis, rain or shine, snow, sleet, hail, pestilence, whatever ... are those who need their "nicotine fix". They're certainly not going outside for their health, and smoking reduces your body's ability to make and use vitamin D, so they're fuxored anyway ...
Too bad George Carlin isn't around to say how fucked up THAT is ...
The top 12 techniques that are used in real life:
The things all these have in common are:
So what happens is everyone attempts to "negotiate" the length of time something will take, rather than realizing that it's not something that is negotiable. If it takes X time, it takes X time, all things remaining equal.
That old saw - "price | quality | speed - pick any 2" was optimistic. Going too fast inevitably results in both lower quality and higher costs down the road, as bugs that aren't fixed at an earlier stage end up being either more expensive to fix, or show-stoppers. Planning for quality initially takes more time that *seems* unproductive to *cough* "certain types of people" *cough* but it's also, in the end, cheaper, and quicker. Problem is that too many people think that development is just "throwing code together, finding and fixing the bugs, and deploying".
"Price, quality, speed" - either expend the time to get high quality, or you'll waste money and any speed gains are temporary at best. Instead of cutting quality, cut feature scope, and kill off any attempts at feature creep - that's where the biggest problems are. If whoever is managing the project hasn't got the backbone to do that, they deserve yet another death march.
He heard God was going to let/force him into heaven anyway as punishment, so he sent Joe to "deal with it".
I'm sure that's one motherfucker who'd prefer it that way, since heaven would be full of ignorant cocksuckers, you know, the type of cunt-heads who like to shit all over everyone who prefers worshiping tits over their pissy fucked-up superstitions.
"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits." Yep - got 'em all covered.
PS: Father's day is when we pay homage to motherfuckers. After all, they wouldn't be your father if they hadn't fucked your momma!