I enjoyed this short film about creative people and their desks. I especially like the quote (I'm paraphrasing), "If a cluttered desk is evidence of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty desk?" Above is a picture of my own cluttered mind.
Desk – Music and Sound Design from Aaron Trinder Film:Motion:Music on Vimeo.
Clear title is becoming a serious issue in the residential mortgage sector. It might be more accurate to say that clear title has been a serious issue in the residential mortgage sector, but it's now becoming a more commonly known problem. It appears that what's happening is people are realizing that the banks have done some pretty crappy, and sometimes fraudulent paper work on the mortgages that they're now trying to foreclose, and as the courts have started calling them on it the title insurance companies have decided that they can't insure what the banks are trying to resell. Here's the scoop:
So why is it a big deal that Old Republic National Title isn’t going to insure Chase’s or GMAC’s foreclosures?
Because if a house doesn’t have clear title, you can’t get a title insurance policy for it. If you can’t get a title insurance policy for a property, lenders won’t lend because there is a huge risk that someone else is going to come forward with a valid title claim and take away the property and they will lose the investment they’ve made in the mortgage.
Clear title is one of the main tenets of homeownership in this country. If lenders can’t be assured that the seller (in this case, the banks who are reselling millions of foreclosures as REOs) have clear title to the property, they won’t issue a mortgage.
Which means homeowners can’t buy homes.
Which will be the perfect storm scenario that tanks the already crippled housing market.
If you think the current foreclosure freeze is bad news, think about what will happen if the millions of homes that are already in foreclosure and the millions more heading into foreclosure can’t be resold.
You know where all this is heading, right? Hello class action lawsuits.
(h/t to Fec for the link)
I hate malls. I hate shopping. So why am I at Concord Mills? Well the plan was to hit the outlets in Blowing Rock, but then we heard that today is App State’s homecoming. The only thing worse than shopping is shopping in the vicinity of a bunch of drunken homecoming folks from a school that is not your own. Thus we made the trek to the home of more than one million square feet of retail. I’ve gotta qualify for some sort of husband-dad award for this, right?
One of those stories that highlights why life truly is stranger, or at least more interesting, than fiction:
Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.
The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.
But when she died recently aged 91, experts were tasked with drawing up an inventory of her possessions and homed in on the flat near the Trinité church in Paris between the Pigalle red light district and Opera…
But he said his heart missed a beat when he caught sight of a stunning tableau of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress.
The painting was by Boldini and the subject a beautiful Frenchwoman who turned out to be the artist's former muse and whose granddaughter it was who had left the flat uninhabited for more than half a century.
I'm not a big fan of hybrid animals. Flying squirrels? Rats with long poofy tails are bad enough, but when they can fly they become downright repulsive. Fish that can walk across land? Scary. Fish that can fly? They just keep me from wanting to get into any kind of boat that's not armored. Even if you don't agree with me you have to admit that this is kinda freaky:
Last week the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) hosted its regular monthly dinner meeting and it was one of the most successful meetings we've had in a long time. The topic was social media and it featured a presentation on the "Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Social Media" and was followed by a Q&A session with some social media experts from the apartment industry. One recurring theme that evolved from the presentation and the Q&A was the importance of being active in the social media sphere, and being prepared to engage with customers and prospects via Facebook, Twitter, etc.
I thought of that today when I observed the interaction between one of my coworkers, Rachel, and Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Enterprise told Rachel that they'd be at our office to pick her up at 2 p.m. At 2:15 she called them to see where they were and they indicated that the driver had left on time and knew where he was going so he should be here any time. Rachel waited a few more minutes and then wrote this on Twitter at 2:21:
Hey Enterprise, remember when you said "We'll pick you up at 2!" That was awesome. Except. You didn't. #tickfreakingtock
Obviously she was being funny, but it's also obvious she's getting a little annoyed. Well, someone at Enterprise is on the ball because within 20 minutes @enterprisecares Tweeted the this:
Have you called re: the delay? If you need anything else follow us & I'll DM my contact info to get details (Elizabeth)
Needless to say Rachel was impressed and is currently a very happy Enterprise customer. BTW, the driver showed up just a couple of minutes later; he'd gone to the wrong address which is not uncommon for people coming to our office since it's a kind of weird location.
Here's a screen shot of my Tweetdeck showing the interaction. Very well done Enterprise:
I found it fascinating that Rob Clapper, who recently left his position as president of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce for what he termed a great career opportunity, is landing at the Prince William Chamber of Commerce in Northern Virginia. It's fascinating to me because Prince William County is where I lived for close to 10 years before moving to the Piedmont Triad, and Clapper's move reinforces for me just how much has changed in Northern Virginia in the last 15 years.
Until very recently Prince William was a sleepy bedroom community for Washington, DC and the various chambers in the county reflected that stature. If you'd have told me in 1996 that someone was leaving the role of president of the chamber of one of the biggest cities in North Carolina to take over a chamber in Prince William, and that he'd see it as a step up on the career curve, I'd have asked you what you or he was smoking.
Fifteen years later the population in Prince William has exploded and lots of companies have chosen to plant roots there; just from 2000-2009 the population and number of non-farm jobs each grew by about 35%. Add to that the merger of the smaller chambers to create one large chamber and you have a pretty attractive job for someone in Clapper's position.
Of course one of the main reasons my wife and I moved our family out of Prince William County was that the growth was just too much for us. The growth was happening so quickly, and with such poor planning, that day-to-day life was becoming unbearable. Because the road infrastructure didn't keep up with the residential and commercial development the traffic came to be a defining factor in how we lived, and according to my in-laws things have only gotten worse.
So my congratulations to Mr. Clapper on the new gig, but also my best wishes in adjusting to the ever growing beast that is the DC metroplex. As for the Greensboro gig, well I'd say to any candidate considering the position it's a pretty sweet opportunity. The Piedmont Triad's a great place to live and I think there's a lot of opportunity to do great things here as we move beyond the recent economic apocalypse.
BTW, I received an email sent today to all Greensboro Chamber members letting us know that a search committee has been formed, and telling us that if we know anyone interested in the job to have them contact Ingrid Hopper at ihopper@greensboro.org. So there you go.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote an incredible cover letter to accompany his application for a job with the Vancouver Sun in 1958. You can read the full in all its glory here, but I offer this excerpt as evidence that journalism apparently hasn't changed much in 50 years:
The enclosed clippings should give you a rough idea of who I am. It's a year old, however, and I've changed a bit since it was written. I've taken some writing courses from Columbia in my spare time, learned a hell of a lot about the newspaper business, and developed a healthy contempt for journalism as a profession.
As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity. If this is what you're trying to get The Sun away from, then I think I'd like to work for you.
Rep. Alan Grayson, who's one of those Congresscritters who occasionally make C-SPAN the most entertaining daytime television viewing, explains the corrupt foreclosure system (h/t to Fec):
Via the Fooducate blog:
Folks, this is mechanically separated chicken, an invention of the late 20th century. Someone figured out in the 1960’s that meat processors can eek out a few more percent of profit from chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows by scraping the bones 100% clean of meat. This is done by machines, not humans, by passing bones leftover after the initial cutting through a high pressure sieve. The paste you see in the picture above is the result.
This paste goes on to become the main ingredient in many a hot dog, bologna, chicken nuggets, pepperoni, salami, jerky etc…
The industry calls this method AMR – Advanced Meat Recovery.
Just think about that picture the next time you get ready to bite into a hot dog. Yuuuum!
Befuddled 