This is one of the funniest things I have seen – or maybe not. Have we really gone that far down the tubes that FBR, a local Phoenix financial institution, has given up their sponsorship of the famed ruckus PGA tour stop in Phoenix this year in 2010 to this year’s sponsor – Waste Management?

No offense to Waste Management – a big company in its own right – and one that will be around probably forever until we do not create any waste at all – ever. And the likelihood of this happening is most likely 0% chance of success.

If you have not been to this tournament it is one great event. The crowd is the best – costumes, super expensive clothes, wine, beer, quiet zones, and at times uncontrollable noise. Each year the crowd gets bigger and the cheering gets louder.

The event is from Feb 22 – Feb 28th and it is held at the TPC Scottsdale and it is dubbed the Greatest Show On Grass.

For more information – tickets etc. go to: Waste Management Phoenix Open

Well to all who have been kept in our confidence, we are not pregnant anymore. Sucks from the standpoint of being pregnant and bringing a new human into the world. However…

We didn’t want to bring another child into the world. We got really straight with each other on this. She was looking more hot to me and she was finally getting her body back to a point that was pre-Dale.

Good stuff…

Getting her stuff back before me. Yee Haw!

And for me, she was looking hotter than ever. I have been playing tennis and she was getting into yoga and then we got pregnant and everything got messy and collapsed.

But with the miscarriage, we’re reborn and to be quite honest neither of us wanted a new baby. WOW!

Homeowners are being hurt by the latest attempt by the Obama Administration and HUD – Fannie Mae and all other housing powers that be in the US to clean up the mortgage industry. The latest attempt to which I refer is a major policy change about how mortgage loan officers order appraisals for Fannie Mae home loans went into effect in May 2009. This change was called the: Home Valuation Code of Conduct or HVCC.

For more information on the HVCC see: Value Of A Home – The Rules Have Changed For Mortgage Brokers

The HVCC is a huge problem for the mortgage and real estate industry. Couple this with current trends in the appraising business and we may create more unexpected and serious problems for housing and mortgage industries.

• These problems ultimately arise from homeowners not being able to refinance because their home values continue to decline.
• Home sellers won’t be able to sell because they cannot get their home to appraise for enough to payoff their mortgage.

Appraisers Are Comparing Occupied Homes With Foreclosed Homes – Bad Idea

As a result of the high scrutiny that has been placed on the value of homes since 2008, appraisers have turned into an extremely conservative bunch. From my experience working with customers and their appraisals, it seems as though home values are being appraised far lower then expected – this is especially true since occupied homes are now being directly compared to foreclosed properties.

It is bad to compare an occupied and up kept home with a foreclosure property that is not kept up and possibly trashed. Foreclosed properties are being sold as is for far less money than they are worth just so that the bank can get some of their money back. With this being the case, the fundamental standard practice of appraising residential properties – comparing like properties to determine value – has been seriously compromised.

Appraisers Are Appraising Low To Cover Their A_ _ es!

Second, “appraisers are appraising low or deflating property values to the lowest possible point to insulate themselves from any possible accusation of impropriety,” says Tim Gilker of HomeRun Financial out of Chandler AZ. With this being the case, an appraiser is no longer appraising the property on the merits of the home rather the appraisal is based on the appraiser covering their ass. CYA at its appraising’s finest. But isn’t inflating or deflating an impropriety in and of itself?

Now back to the HVCC. Given that appraisers are appraising low, in my opinion, for the two reason just mentioned above, we deal with the facts of the HVCC.

Says Gilker, “HVCC management companies are not required to hold an appraiser’s license. With the HVCC being responsible for hiring an appraiser to work for it, is it possible for the HVCC to govern the quality of the appraiser and the appraisals that they are hired to complete? The answer is unequivocally NO.”

In theory, the HVCC was designed to put a buffer between the mortgage industry and the appraiser to prevent the mortgage industry or the real estate industry from influencing the values determined by the appraiser. Mortgage companies have to order their appraisal through an appraisal management company hired by the mortgage lender.

The HVCC is not a bad concept HOWEVER with what was presented here there are many more problems on the horizon for US homeowners, home buyers and the US banking and real estate industries if the HVCC doesn’t get modified and appraisers continue to feel the pressure be conservative and deflate values to cover their a_ _ es.

Let's Create Real Jobs With The Stimulus Money Not Temporary Bandaids!

I recently read a blog post by Neal Boortz that smacked me in the face. I voted for Barack Obama and I still believe in the guy, but I gotta tell ya, I am taking a closer look at the Obama Stimulus Plan and the errs of our spending ways.

My masters thesis was about Are There Enough Jobs – An Assessment of Job Availability for the Public Assistance Recipient living in the Public Housing. And from the work that I did over a decade ago, I have to wonder about the Obama Stimulus money and what good the money is not doing if Neal Boortz’s assessment is on track.

Did you know we spent money on educating inner city welfare recipients in particular job skills yet there weren’t any of those types of jobs to be had once the training program was over? Educating people to work in industries that actually need workers is a smart thing to do and there has been a lot of studies to prove this. But, educating people for jobs they can’t get because they aren’t there isn’t such a great idea – it is just plain stupid.

It seems as though the same type of misspending is starting to happen as a result of the Obama Stimulus Plan. And then years later, we’ll prove that it didn’t work…and we’ll scratch our heads wondering what we mismanage next.

Keep reading… [Read more...]

We went to the OBGYN’s office last week at the 8th week and did not see the heartbeat. According to our doc, we should have seen the heartbeat. He did suggest that every once in a while they don’t see the heartbeat in the first look. So he has us coming back for a second look in a few weeks.

This is our second go around with being pregnant and then not being able to see the heartbeat. The first time, we did a D&C which didn’t take and Diane eventually passed everything naturally. The whole process took about 2 months from start to finish and it was not all the fun. Diane’s hormones were all over the map as well as here health. But things got back on track…

Now we may be faced with the same situation. So far, we are leaning towards letting her body do its thing naturally. We will see what the doc says in a few weeks if we don’t see the heartbeat. I’ll be sure to keep you posted as to what’s happening.

We are doing fine – so you don’t have to tiptoe around asking us how we’re doing. But reaching out to us to say hello would be most welcome. TTFN.

My wife and I watched this match almost in its entirety – thank goodness for DVR – as we needed a Starbucks break for coffee, low fat turkey bacon sandwich, banana bread for our daughter and a Venti Americano with several Splenda’s and cream.

I was shocked when Roddick went up one set to none – as was the rest of the world. I was even more shocked when Roddick had 4 set points in the second set and lost 6 straight points in a row. It seemed he had cracked.

But, he didn’t…

He came back and won the fourth set by breaking Federer’s serve for the second time in the match. Incidently, Federer only broke Roddick’s serve 1 time (the last game of the 5th set). And then, he showed some serious mental toughness as he served game after game with Federer until that one game where Federer broke.

I thought about this match all day. Do the sports announcers ever listen to what they way in the post match analysis? My wife and I had to shake our heads when one of the announcers was analyzing Roddick’s play and summed it up as “Unbelievable.” – Unbelievable – what the hell does that mean? It was believable – we watched it.

Ask Andy Roddick if his play was unbelievable – I’m sure he’d answer something to the effect 0f – “Believable – I just played it – I’ve been playing this way for the whole two weeks here at Wimbledon. I didn’t play Unbelievable enough as I didn’t win.”

Anyway, great match Andy. We were rooting for you the whole way. Way to reinvent your game.

Several friends of ours who have more than one child have told us that one child is a breeze, but adding a second child to the household makes for a very busy home. Oh I can hardly wait – no really – I can wait.

My mom always used to tell us kids growing up: “don’t wish your life away!” I have always had that in the back of mind about wishing for time to pass. Rare do I wish for time to pass. I think the exception to this rule was when I was in the Navy back in the 1980′s and I could not wait to get to the end of my enlistment. But for the most part, I generally do not wish for time to pass – I’m especially not going to start now with wishing for the second child to arrive.

In a recent article by the Worldwatch Institute, it was stated that 2008 was the best year ever for the solar power market with
dramatic increases in installations of solar photovoltaics (PV’s)…cumulative PV power installed worldwide jumped from 9,000 MW in 2007 to almost 15,000 MW in 2008. MW stands for Mega Watts.

The article went on to say that Europe continues to lead the market for PV’s with Europe accounting for more than 80% of the world demand in 2008. The US accounts for only 8 percent of the global demand for cumulatively installed PV capacity.

We have seen estimates of 1000 MW is enough to power between 420,ooo homes to 1,000,000 homes.

The two big countries in Europe that account for most of the PV demand is Spain and Germany. These countries have feed-in tariff systems that require utilities to buy electricity generated from solar power projects at government instituted premium guaranteed long-term prices.

These feed-in tariff systems are apparently designed to encourage adoption of renewable energy and seems to be working. However, as these programs are scaled back so seems the demand will follow as companies are less interested or cannot afford to stay profitable with the cost of PV still being higher than fossil fuel sources.

Are we as a worldwide society still not convinced to install solar as an alternative to fossil fuel based energy generation such that demand would wax and wane based on government subsidy?

And where is the US in all of this. The US has some of the best and most widely available resources to implement a wide scale solar initiative, more could be done – government subsidies are still not enough. Is the US really serious about breaking its dependency on foreign oil? From this report it doesn’t seem like it. What do you think?

Government investment in its own power infrastructure through solar and wind projects provides much needed jobs and long term economic and security protection.

For more information about this report visit: Worldwatch.org

Unbelievable difference already in this pregnancy from our first one. My wife is not feeling that great so far into this pregnancy. She has had a “sinus infection” for about a month now. No tossing her cookies as of yet, but certainly not at the top of her game. For the first pregnancy, she only had about 2 days of morning sickness and that was it. Her health the rest of the pregnancy was fabulous short a few times where she just got really tired.

Today, she came home complaining about “gas” way up in her stomach. As she was telling me this, she pulled her sweater/shirt up to show me the upper stomach crease that ran across her abdomen – and said, “I already have the crease which I do not recall getting until I was 3-4 months pregnant the last time.” Yikes was about all I said – oh and then I started telling how beautiful and attractive she is to me. Of course, she was in no mood for my trying to cheer her up…

When we were going through the first pregnancy all we heard from different folks was how different different pregnancies are. So far we are experiencing a much different pregnancy already with her being hampered by a nagging “sinus infection.” I try not to let my thoughts get to significant with all this thinking that we’re going to have a boy as he is already giving us and his momma his business. And as I type out this post, I can only imagine that with her already showing signs on her belly at 6 weeks with the crease that perhaps we’re staring down at twins??? Yikes heaven help us.