The World According to Mike.

Tagged, but why…

huenemeca — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:27:59 +0000

Attached or Single? Attached.
Best Friend? Betahany
Cake or Pie? Depends on what kind but I think Cake, Carrot Cake mmmm.
Day of Choice? 10/25/2002
Essential Items? wallet, keys, smile, Bethany
Favorite Color? why must I have a favorite
Gummy Bears or Worms? no thank you
Home Town? Port Hueneme, CA currently Thousand Oaks
Indulgences? Ice Cream, Ice Cream with toppings, Ice Cream on something with toppings
January or July? January
Kids? What!! more… you are kidding right.
Like or Love? Love
Marriage Date? 10/25/2002
Number of Siblings? four
Phobias/fears? Not being able to provide for my family, Something happening to my girls (Bethany, Amanda, and Kaitlyn)
Quotes? “Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
Reason to Smile? My Girls, especially Bethany
Season? Fall
Tag Four: If you are reading this you are tagged.
Unknown fact about me? I would like to run my own business. But the risk is too high. I don’t want to put my Girls at risk.
Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animals? Oppressor of Animals all the way, but I don’t like beef as much as I used to.
X-Rays or Ultrasounds? X-Rays, they are superheroish
Your Favorite Food? Ice Cream, Cereal, Bethany’s cooking
Zodiac? Killer, no thank you.

BOS:BIAB

What a Rollercoaster Ride

huenemeca — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 16:14:48 +0000

So there I was minding my own business cleaning up from dinner when the phone rings. The person on the other end asked for me by name. My first thought was “oh great, a telemarketer”. Then the person introduces himself and it was even worse, a recruiter. Now for those of you who have never had to deal with recruiters before just let me say this, they can be really pushy. The only way that they make a living is by getting you to change jobs. Me being a programmer with a pretty good resume I get called by them a lot when I am looking for work, but I was not looking for work.

I had actually worked with this recruiter before and he is a pretty nice guy. While he talks fast just like the rest of them he is a lot less pushy and he knows that we are dealing with my life and not just a commission. I listened to what he had to say and asked him to give me a few days to think about it. Well, it seemed like it wouldn’t hurt to go to an interview so a week ago Friday I went to talk to some people about a job opening they had.

Now, when I say that I was not working for work I should clarify. The current job I have is not something that I want to be doing for the rest of my life. I work on phone voice recognition systems, but it is not as exciting as it sounds. My real love is in web/windows application programming. To top it off the company that I work for is have some pretty bad financial problems, even though there are over 40 thousand employees all over the US. I do really like the team that I work on, my boss is great, and the team I am on is not one that is likely to get let go anytime soon. So when the recruiter called me back this Monday and offered me the job it was a hard decision.

On the one hand I have a pretty good job that is very family friendly. On the other hand this new job is a pretty high level position with higher pay and more visibility to the big bosses. Also, the new job would be using the latest technologies to build web applications, a good resume builder.

Well, on Thursday just 6 days after I went to an interview I was in my bosses office turning in my 2 week notice. I am really excited about this new opportunity but also pretty nervous. Hopefully I will like my coworkers and this will be a great new position with long term potential.

New Design for 2DoNext

huenemeca — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:39:08 +0000

So we put out the new design for 2DoNext.com a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to Trevor it looks really good. I hope that people will like the new design and it will get more action on the site.

With the new design I also added a buddy feature. This is more like a traditional social networking site where you can request to be buddies with someone and they have to accept the invitation. This allows you to get better recommendations based on your buddies ratings.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Busy, Busy, Busy…

huenemeca — Sat, 24 May 2008 16:07:15 +0000

Well, I have been so busy working on my site that I have had to push the blog off to the side. There are only so many hours in the day and playing with the little girls is not something that can be postponed.

The facelift for 2DoNext.com is almost complete, thanks to my brother who helped me out with the new look of the site. Hopefully, people will like the new look and it will generate more attention. If you get a chance check it out and let me know what you think. The updated site will be there in a few days.

Rent this house, only 4000 a month!!

huenemeca — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:23:51 +0000

I like to browse craigslist. It is a good time killer and has become an obsession. Lately I have been seeing people trying to rent out their houses. I assume these are homes that they can not sell but are not living in so they want to make some money on them. The part I find so interesting is that they are trying to get people to pay most of the mortgage payment in rent. A mortgage payment that most people know was too high to start with.

Here is a great example.
http://ventura.craigslist.org/apa/569214155.html

You only have to pay 4k a month to live in this house. I will admit that this is a very nice house in a nice area of Thousand Oaks, CA. But 4,000 a month, wow. 4,000 that is just thrown away. I could not imagine having that much money to just throw out every month.

What could you get for 4000 a month, besides a huge savings account. Let’s take a look. At a 6% interest rate you could get a loan for about 600k. The average home you can buy in this area for that kind of money is 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1800 square feet.

I don’t know about you but I think that I would rather buy than rent. But it is still taking home owners a while to understand that their properties are not worth what realtors were once telling them.

Home prices down in Los Angeles County.

huenemeca — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:16:39 +0000

The average price of a home in LA county is down to $458,000. Still very high but down 11% from the previous year and down 16.7% from August 07. That is a nice decline. I have been seeing this in Ventura County for the last few months but it is always nice to see it in an actual report. Here is a blog that talks about the falling home prices in LA county.

As someone who doesn’t own a home and wants to, this is good news. I think that lowering of home prices is good because it will allow more people to get into homes without having to get some crazy loan (interest only).

Of course home prices have gone up about 300% over the last 8 years so coming down even 20% is not really good enough. I work as a Software Engineer in Ventura County and the only way I could afford a house right now is to either buy a 2 bedroom 800 square foot junker or spend every dime on a mortgage payment. So I choose to rent and hope.�

Talk with a Realtor

huenemeca — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:13:02 +0000

I was out yesterday looking at rental properties with a realtor. During our casual chat I asked him about rental rates and why they move up and down. He said something about rates are always going up and that rates going down is just a seasonal thing and then rates will go right back up. Seems like these are confilicting statements but he didn’t notice that in the same sentence he had said rates always go up and that rates going down is just temporary.

He then proceded to tell me how real estate in my area (Thousand Oaks, CA) is always strong and prices never come down. You can look anywhere and see that this is just not true. Prices are coming down all over the country, sure then aren’t dropping as dramatically here but I think it is just a matter of time before people realize that a 2 bedroom 1 bath condo is not worth $450k.

Realtors are a funny group of people, they are feed this housing stuff morning day and night and they really seem to believe it. Their favorite saying seems to be oh this is just temporary. Well, I agree we are in year 2 of a 5 year temporary down turn in the real estate market.

I always wanted to do that

huenemeca — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:07:13 +0000

I just read this short article on reuters a I just had to laugh. Seems a guy in Germany go so fed up with his computer that he chucked it out the window. I have always wanted to do that. I guess he scared his neighbors because it was the middle of the night.

Link development the random way

huenemeca — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:07:08 +0000

Here is a fun idea I got from for some random linking.

———copy and paste the Eclectolink and instructions below this line———

Below is a matrix of 100 randomly generated words, I have already added a link to my blog to one of the random words. All you need to do is copy and paste the matrix into your blog and add your own link to one of the other vacant words, and then tell others to do exactly the same!

ECLECTOLINK

dealt : grants : detected : rotating : finishes : expiring : obscure : films : land : grouped : swallowed : hey : activate : releasing : psychologist : selected : serious : forgiving : pacifier : alarmed : tracking : green : telling : unlimited : fitting : hammer : founds : engage : stretches : psychological : reliable : citizen : should : mileage : inferiority : appalling : midnight : shows : provides : sharing : instruct : waved : ride : migrated : country : drawings : uninteresting : quibble : consecutive : advertises: filming : method : premise : incentive : flips : designers : damned : regretting : coincidence : layers : immense : info : skills : definitions : mum : somewhere : atom : illustration : opened : thought : smoking : compiler : credits : liberties : mail : deductions : integrating : cap : collapse : consuming : dragon : elderly : declared : prohibited : forests : precisely : notifies : weakness : arrogant : difference : heel : everybody : pretty : bundle : accord : writings : wars : verb : factually : participates

Rules

No Porn Sites

Only 1 link per person

Please don’t tamper with other peoples url’s

Enjoy!

———copy and paste the Eclectolink and instructions above this line———

All-Star Fun

huenemeca — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 16:43:27 +0000

I don’t usually enjoy the all star game too much. I don’t know why, probably because it doesn’t really mean much. Except for the home field advantage now, but that has got to go.

Last night was different, it was an entertaining game. I can’t put my finger on exactly why but I was much more interested in the game this time. Since I am a Dodgers fan I was pulling for the national league. They made it fun in the 9th inning but came up short. I am getting tired of people saying that because the national league doesn’t win as much in inter-league play and they have this losing streak in the All-star game it means that the National league is not as good as the American league. People don’t seem to remember that power shifts from league to league and team to team. It always happens and will always happen. Also, the Cardinals did win the World Series last year and last I looked they are in the National League.

I think it might be time for Giants fans to love baseball too. I understand that it is cool to boo a player when you are playing them. I also understand that there is an uncontrollable anger between Giants and Dodgers fans. But at the All-Star game? Come on your guys and our guys are playing on the same team. I personally don’t see a reason to hate a player just because he is on a team you hate. The saddest part of all this is that if the All-Star game was in LA, I know our fans would boo the Giants players for no reason. Can’t we all just get along.

Last point, did anyone see Barry Bonds face when he thought he hit that home run. He was really excited. It was great to see, after having played the game for 20 years or so I am sure there are times when Barry is just going through the motions. Even at a big game I would be that the love is just not there like it used to be. But yesterday he was having fun, you could see that he wanted to play and it was great. Too bad it didn’t go out, we might have won.