little_old_man

You're worring about the image in your head? I'd think you would be more concerned about that ball funk after taste on the back of your tongue.

You're one of the cool kids BB, I'm just not a fan of reality shows.

He already built a tunnel over to Joe's house.

B-M-B Bite Me Beer I know it's difficult, but stop being a dickhead.

Congratulations Edd. Now we have two ducks on the senior team. We better be careful and try to look more diverse as a clan and appoint a chicken or a cow next.

That's a smart way to look at things. The trouble with Texas is that they've seen more booms and busts than anyplace else in the US. I've known guys down there that have lost everything in real estate. My town (Petaluma) went through the same thing before the dot.com bubble burst. They built a few million square feet of commercial space in town in anticipation of broadband companies expanding, and wanted to compete with SF and Silicon Valley for office space. It was a bad gamble and a lot of that space has sat empty for the last 15 years because AT&T and Comcast have dominated the broadband market. Needless to say there have been some screaming deals on office space in my area for the last 10 years which kind of sucks because my family owns a commercial building where my company used to be, but we lucked out and found a printing company that took out a long term lease. But I did have my artifact business in 1500 square feet of class A office space for about .50 cents per foot for a few years. That was a sweet deal. I do think that buying a fixer upper in the current market would pay off in the short-term if you can afford it because the market is expected to boom for at least the next couple years. With a fresh coat of paint, knocking down of walls to turn small rooms into big ones, and drought resistent landscaping, you could double your money quickly in that area. I think most of the well known tech firms are here for at the next decade as things in the bay area get more expensive and crowded. California doesn't make it easy for firms to do business here with high taxes and expensive real estate. It's always been that way, but it's going to get much worse. If the weather wasn't so damn nice I would have moved a long time ago.

My wife picked up her perscription yesterday and it worked great. I printed out the coupon and she walked into our local target store and picked them up.

There are a lot of great things about living in the Bay Area, most of which is the weather and the beauty of it all. But sometimes the price for that is just too high unless you're a millionaire or more. Silicon Valley and San Francisco are experiencing some real problems right now trying to attract talent that can afford to live in the area. Money is no object for many of these tech firms, but even sky high salaries aren't enough if there simply isn't anywhere to live, and who the Hell wants to get paid a half million a year to live in a place that doesn't reflect such a salary? Many of the tech firms are looking north to my area. Fireman's Fund has been doing poorly for the last decade and is moving out of their 700k square foot campus in northern Novato and moving into a much smaller office in my town. That's 500 new workers for Petaluma which is great, but what's better is the tech firms that are fighting over their old space. So far Google, Facebook and several others are trying to get the space, and that means about 3,000 new workers just 8 miles from me. That's going to force real estate in my area to skyrocket, but I doubt if I'm going to hang onto my house long enough to take advantage of the boom. Sonoma county just put in a new rail system and they're putting the finishing touches on a freeway expansion that will help the commute a lot. I expect that there will be quite a few tech firms moving up here over the next 10 years and I don't want to be here for the explosion. I may join leadfinger in Montana.

Not exactly, but very similar. There are quite a few meds that are delivered through a patch, and from what I've seen most are horribly expensive when you have to pay for them yourself.

You know, it's an hour and 45 minutes driving from where I live to SJ with no traffic. But you can take the ferry from Marin to SF then take BART to SJ. Lots of people do it so they can live in the north bay. Golden Gate transit also stops about 3 blocks from my house and they run from SJ to SF and up to here and beyond. Yes it's a pain in the ass, but the median price for a home in Sonoma county just jumped all the way up to $550,000. That's for an actual house, not a portable out house.

Holy shit, that's more than my mortgage, a lot more.

I always thought you looked a little Mexican.

I recently had to change to a different health insurance plan because of some messed up rules under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Now we have a $2,000 deductible for prescription drugs and I found that unacceptable. My wife takes a pain patch for a couple ruptured vertabrae in her neck and has for years. Surgery isn't an option and it's been manageble with these patches. Under our old plan we paid a $30 co-payment for a months supply and that was it. Now that we have the deductible we find out that the patches cost $1,500 per month, and that's on top of our more expensive health plan. So I did some research online and found this web site. http://www.goodrx.com/ The $1,500 patches at our local drug store only cost $135 through this web site for the same brand and dosage. All they do is provide you with a coupon and tell you which pharmacy in your area has them available. There are no fees to join the web site and nothing to sign up for. You don't even need to register with the web site to use the coupons, it's all free. Money is tight for almost everybody, and any time I find something that can save people this much money I like to spread the word.

PS: We rented that house 5 years ago. Four bedroom 1600 square feet for $1,500 a month. Sickening compared to current prices isn't it?

Where is your job, San Jose or Mtn View? I know what you mean about home prices out here, they are astronomical. Have you thought about looking south toward Gilroy or even Santa Cruz area? I think the traffic into SJ from Pleasanton might kill you and I hear it's a little better coming from the south. I've been thinking about selling my house and looking out in the boonies of the north bay. Prices are peaking up here right now, but it looks like either Google or Facebook is going to buy the old Fireman's Fund campus in Novato which means we'll have about 3,000 more wealthy techies moving up here which will drive the prices even higher over the next year.

Came across a few pictures I thought I would share from a few years ago. My wife and I rented a small farm house just a few miles from our home in town as a weekend getaway. We loved it so much that we lived there full time for a couple years and are sorry we're not still there. Lots of critters and beauty out there. About the only downside is no high speed internet. The property around the house was leased by a local cattle ranch and dairy for grazing, so we had many neighbors greeting us in the morning. My wife with her favorite holstein Cane (so named because my wife fed her candy canes). On a stormy night my wife heard a cow moaning out in a field in back of our house. It was pouring rain so she suited up and went out with a flashlight to investigate. This cow was giving birth and it was breech. I went out to see what what going on and my wife was up to her neck in blood and mud pulling the calf out of the mom. Both survived and my wife and the cow were inseparable after that. When the cow saw her it came running. We put a Finch feeder out hoping to attract a few. It worked too well and they were emptying the feeder every other day. View from the hill in back of our house. Our closest neighbor was about a mile away. This is spring when everything is green. Western Swallow Honey bee swarm I managed to catch a glimpse of a western Oriole from a distance. They don't hold still for long and I was lucky to get this shot. Cedar Waxwings in a maple tree

Did you actually try a shot? Usually the camera can pick up stars even with city light wash within 30 seconds. If you take an exposure much longer than that the stars tend to blur because they're moving, or should I say we're moving. Here are a couple I took a few years ago with my SLR resting on a fence post in my back yard in auto mode and allowing the timer to activate the shutter. As I recall it was about a 20 second exposure. I'm in the middle of town surrounded by street lights as you can see by the glowing orange trees, but it still managed to capture the stars and even a comet on the upper left side pretty well. Same shot cropped to show the comet on the left and the pleiades on the right.

Happy birthday Toot.

He played many great and memorable roles over the years. RIP Omar.

It looks like the alien space ship is about to burst through the clouds in te movie Independence Day. Beautiful shot by the way.

Seeing this fucking thread pop up every fucking day has ruined POP's fucking birthday for me for fucking ever.

Personally I don't want to live within 100 miles of @@bds1961 or @@eidolonFIRE.

Damn, talk about the boonies.

Scientific American doesn't appear to agree with the video that smokers get more radiation than astronauts or people receiving medical tests like CT scans. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/graphic-science-radiation-exposure/ Of course some of the claims made by the anti-smoking lobby are simply lies, so it wouldn't surprise me if they paid for the production of the video. I'm not denying that smoking is horrible for people, but the extent at which the anti-smokers go to to further their cause is just fraud. South Park even did an episode on it.

He still dreams about the anal probes.