Tag Archives: California

CRC Foreclosure Crisis Documentary

The California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) sent an email earlier this week saying they’d updated and re-released a documentary they had on file.  Here’s a bit of what CRC had to say about the video titled Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Money: How Greedy Corporations Destroy the American Dream

[The documentary] shows the crisis affects everyone. Mo’ Money tells the story of borrowers who were lied to and ignored by their mortgage loan servicers, and the people who are working to keep them in their homes. It also reveals how this disaster could have been avoided if regulators and government officials did not ignore predatory lending practices.

How has the foreclosure crisis affected you?  Have you had to deal with a difficult lender, or are you taking advantage of declining house prices?

Gas Dreams In California

As it’s showing right now over on gasbuddy.com, the top ten most expensive cities to buy gas in the United States are all in California (no surprise). And a few more past that, too. I think it’s at sixteen where there’s a break to some other place in the US.

What boggles my mind, though, is that four of the top six are in the central valley (Fresno, Stockton, Modesto, Bakersfield. I suppose you could also include Sacramento, but I prefer not to.) What is the reason for that? I mean, I get that California is going to be more expensive than just about everywhere else, fighting with Alaska and Hawaii for holding the daily top position — a lot of the California costs having to do with clean air taxes — but why specifically in the central valley are the prices higher? I don’t know.

I’m also unsure as to whether or not I actually care. Sure, more and more folks are complaining, but I haven’t a real reason to complain about the price of gas. I hope it gets into the $6 per gallon region. That’d be interesting to watch.

Now I just have to fix my bicycle. It stopped working Saturday, so I had to leave it where I left it, and now I’m worried it won’t be there when I return for it. The question, though, is how to get it home so I can make the repairs. We’ll have to see how it goes.

GTC West – Governor Schwarzenegger Speaks

After being introduced by the CEO of GTC, and then again by California CIO, Teri Takai, the honorable Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger addressed a room bursting at the seams with IT folks eager to snap photos and record video with their latest and greatest hand held devices. He cracked some jokes, warned us to keep an eye on elderly neighbors while the heatwave is passing through, and said a little about our great State and its current state. Pointing out that the State lacks the necessary infrastructure to adequately support its residents.

That’s it. There wasn’t a whole lot going on. Most of the folks left when Arnold left. I guess not everyone was interested in hearing Scott McNealy speak about…well, I’m not sure, because I left. Doh!

All in all, the conference is a good use of a few hours of your time if you have it to spare. It’s free to attend, so you can’t beat the price, and you’ll meet a bunch of new folks eager to sell you things for your business. They’re going to have to spring for some drinks at the bar, though, if they expect to get anything done.

GTC West – Wednesday Highlights

GTC stands for Government Technology Conference.  It’s a time for a large group of people working in the IT field to gather in one place with all their favorite vendors, as well as enjoy lectures from a few keynote speakers.  The most notable at this year’s confrence being California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (speaking tomorrow morning.)

OpenDNS.com — Perhaps the most useful thing I took away from visiting with a variety of vendors.  There are two server IPs they use, and after configuring my network to utilize these addresses, managing where my office network traffic goes becomes much much easier.  Management is a breeze once the online account is set up for tracking stats and configuring access.  I can easily block entire categories (adult themes, social networking, nudity, etc.) from being accessed by anyone using one of my networks.

YouTube — Offers up 10 hours of content every minute.  I don’t know if this is true, but I could believe it.  It came up in conversation while I was talking with a software developer from IBM who is currently working on a video-mining project.  (He writes code to search video.)  I had never given much thought to it, I just assumed there was a lot of data moving around, but 10 hours every minute is an insane amount.