Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Food Fight Between Winston-Salem and Greensboro

Leave a reply

Here's the deal: the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) has kicked off its annual food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank of NW NC.  For the past several years we've hosted an event at a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game and invited the public to bring cans of food to contribute to Second Harvest.  This year we've stepped it up and are hosting an event at the Winston-Salem Dash game on July 12 and the Greensboro Grasshoppers game on July 14 and we're holding a contest to see which game will raise more food/money for Second Harvest.

As part of our efforts WXII has agreed to partner with us and both Mayor Joines (W-S) and Mayor Knight (GSO) have filmed public service messages that will run on WXII as part of our efforts.  Obviously we're most thankful to the mayors, the Dash, the Grasshopper and WXII for working with us on this effort.

If you'd like to participate you can do so in several ways:

  • Attend one of the games and bring food or financial donations ($1 = 12 cans of food)
  • Drop off cans of food at one of our participating apartment communities (see the map below, or the list on the TAA website).
  • If you'd like to mail in a donation you can send it to TAA at 3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E, Greensboro NC 27407. Checks should be made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC
  • An added bonus: if you want to donate a couple of bucks just write "Shave Jon's Head" in the memo field of any check, or on a cover note with the donation, and if we get $1,000 with that note then I'll have my head shaved.

I hope to see you all at one of the ballgames!

Winston-Salem/Kernersville Drop Off Locations

View 2010 TAA Food Drive W-S Drop Off Locations in a larger map

Greensboro/High Point Drop Off Locations

Best Piece on Investing I’ve Ever Read

Leave a reply

Why, oh why, can't all business writing be like this piece from Dilbert's Scott Adams, who believes you should only invest in companies you hate:

Having absorbed all of the wisdom I have presented here so far, you are naturally wondering if I have any additional investment tips. Yes, and I will put my tips in the form of a true story. Recently I bought something called an iPhone. It drops calls so often that I no longer use it for audio conversations. It's too frustrating. And unlike my old BlackBerry days, I don't send e-mail on the iPhone because the on-screen keyboard is, as far as I can tell, an elaborate practical joke. I am, however, willing to respond to incoming text messages a long as they are in the form of yes-no questions and my answer are in the affirmative. In those cases I can simply type "k," the shorthand for OK, and I have trained my friends and family to accept L, J, O, or comma as meaning the same thing.

The other day I was in the Apple Store, asking how to repair a defective Apple laptop, and decided, irrationally, that I needed to have Apple's new iPad. The smiling Apple employee said she would be willing to put me on a list so I could wait an indefinite amount of time to maybe someday have one. I instinctively put my wallet on my nose and started barking like a seal, thinking it might reduce the wait time, but they're so used to seeing that maneuver that it didn't help.

My point is that I hate Apple. I hate that I irrationally crave their products, I hate their emotional control over my entire family, I hate the time I waste trying to make iTunes work, I hate how they manipulate my desires, I hate their closed systems, I hate Steve Jobs's black turtlenecks, and I hate that they call their store employees Geniuses which, as far as I can tell, is actually true. My point is that I wish I had bought stock in Apple five years ago when I first started hating them. But I hate them more every day, which is a positive sign for investing, so I'll probably buy some shares.

Again, I remind you to ignore me.

Yarddawg Reviews BB&T (Dash) Ballpark

Leave a reply

Yarddawg offers a great review of the downtown BB&T Ballpark.

The ballpark is as nice –albeit on a smaller scale- as any Major League ballpark I have ever been in. One Chicago White Sox executive stated the players would not play in a better facility until they made the Big Leagues and I completely agree. And remember this is Class A ball, the lowest of the three classes (A, AA, & AAA) in Minor League Baseball.

Think You Volunteer a Lot of Your Time?

Leave a reply

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has benefited from the services of a world record setting volunteer.  According to this article a fellow named Don Moss has volunteered over 47,000 hours of his time to WFUBMC since 1982 and has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for his efforts.

If WFUBMC had paid Mr. Moss $5 an hour then it would have cost them $235,000.  I picked $5/hour because it's a nice round number that makes it easy to do the math and kind of the middle range of the minimum wage from 1982 until now.

23.3% of US Mortgages Underwater

1 Reply

There is a stunning graph about foreclosures between 2005 and 2010 here.  One of the pieces of info contained therein is that 23.3% of ALL mortgages are underwater.  Not of sub-prime mortgages, or mortgages taken out during the boom, or mortgages in Florida, etc.  That's 23.3%, or nearly a quarter, of every single mortgage in the US of A is underwater.  The chart also shows that there will be over 1 million homes repossessed in the US in 2010.