Snarkolepsy's pumpkin flashback.

2018.

It's still warm in California at this time of year, so I didn't do any pumpkins. It's too far from the weekend and last year my eyes started crying. They were almost mushy enough that they couldn't be picked up. Not sure what I am going to do next year.



2017.



2016. Evil Clown Pumpkin. I think this was one of the better years. I used artificial nails for the teeth.

I missed a couple of years.



2012.  Pacman Pumpkins.   With them lit up.



2010.



2009.  South Park pumpkins.



2006.

For all you paranoids.

There is a processor on that chip. It's called Secure Element. I guess they are trying to embed these into phones and watches. And whatever else. It is an NFC enabled chip.

I don't know much about it yet as this was the first time I'd ever seen it. I was a little startled by how small they are. I know we have already have on our credit cards, but as you can see this one is a little raised.

Normally I wouldn't be so freaked out about this stuff, but Silicon Valley has pretty much abused the privilege of your data. Most technology didn't start out to be evil, people just became people and made it that way.

"Instead of user name and password, access to an online service may be protected by a strong authentication mechanism, based on credentials stored and processed in the secure element. So to log into a VPN or your email, a Secure Element could be involved in the background to ensure you are who you say you are." 

"Applications may use the SE to digitally sign a document or any data with a key stored in this secure element. This key helps the secure element unlock encrypted data so it can be read. Again this is used to prove you are you. So your email program could use connect to the Secure Element to digitally “sign” emails you send, or a government web application could access it when you are using their digital services." Source.

New housing is getting monkey punched.

I was not surprised by the rate cut today. I've been saying for a little while that housing was saying that everyone was lying.

But todays stroll through the MLS was pukeworthy.

There is a new development in my city. It's about a year old now. There are a few units for sale. A couple have been on the market for 223 days. Another has been on the market for 263 days. They were listed for about 50 grand higher when they first went on the market. Brand new construction!

It sort of looks like new construction is going no bid. But don't hold me to that. But there are starting to be a lot of new houses that have been on the market for a REALLY long time now.

I always hesitate to extrapolate my city to everywhere else. But this is really what I've been seeing in other States too. I don't know the exact numbers because I don't track them as closely as my area, but.....it doesn't look good.

Galaxy Fold.

Got to see this phone. It was a bit larger than I expected. There was nothing exciting about it, or not exciting about it. It was a finger print magnet though. You can find specs literally anywhere else.









This guy was demo'ing the phone to someone else and stopped mid sentence because he recognized my Light camera. Since there is no more buzz I'm always a bit surprised that people still notice it. It does have 16 lenses though. I would notice it even if I didn't know who made it.

Mirror camera concept.

Full size image here. My blog is left biasing my images so it's cutting off the full picture.

This is a car dash concept from Harmon. You know how with a lot of the new cars they are trying to phase our mirrors and just have cameras? Well, this concept had dedicated displays for that.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I just bring you content, and you can talk amongst yourselves.  But is is sort an interesting take on adjusting you to the future. People are already programmed to look to the side. This keeps that behavior natural. But I guess if you are looking there anyway, it's not that different than looking at a mirror. Maybe it's a transitional phase?





Also a better picture.



And here.



Here.



And here.

So phony.

Robert Shiller on October 20:

Robert Shiller: Recession likely years away due to bullish Trump effect.

"Nobel-prize winning economist Robert Shiller believes a recession may be years away due to a bullish Trump effect in the market."

Robert Shiller today:

"I See Bubbles Everywhere" - Fearful Bob Shiller Warns "There's No Place To Hide".

"I see bubbles everywhere," Shiller, economics professor at Yale University and author of just-published "Narrative Economics" told investors gathered in Los Angeles Wednesday. "There's no place to go. You just have to ride it out. You invest even though you expect the price to decline." Shiller famously predicted the 2000 stock market crash and the 2007 crash of the housing market.

Updates.

We did have a pretty good wind event yesterday, so I stayed in the burbs. I didn't want to get trapped on a freeway where I couldn't get back to check on my property in a very quick amount of time. The wind wouldn't have been much of a scare, but the trees are just starting to drop leaves.  Which made it a very dangerous time. What wasn't on the ground was still up in the trees. So at least the wind knocked a bunch of that down and at least cut the fuel to some degree.

Spent the day with Mr S. reinstalling a light because I'd painted the ceiling. During a break I just disappeared. When I came back in the house Mr S. said - it' looks like you are freaking out. I'm like - yeah I'm freaking out - I was out cutting our climbing exposure. Because if there is anything I know about fire - it loves to climb.

I'd already made a plan that if fire was imminent I was going to start dropping tree limbs, and the wind was high enough that I thought I should thin a few things out just in case. Usually by this time of year you feel home free as it rains right after Halloween.

I also spent a lot of time running the sprinklers and making sure what I had on the property at least had some moisture content in it. My thought was - it may still burn - but hopefully I sill slow it down. I ran the sprinklers off and on all day.

Rumor has it that we get to do this all over again on Tue/Wed. Lacy gets to go to work with Mr S. as the freeway rule comes back into play. My feeling is that if I lose the house I still want a pet to cry into. It all seems like a lot of drama - but you don't know how little time you have if the worst happens. A house can be fully engulfed in three minutes.

But at least I might have some tech stuff to bitch about week.

I guess I'm disaster blogging .

I still have power. What going on up North in Vallejo is pretty crazy. There was a fire on both sides of the bridge. People were stuck in the middle. It's a very anxious time. Vallejo was suppose to be in the shutoff zone.

The cities next to me have started losing power. If my pictures go down you know I have been hit. I self host.

I guess Vallejo has been notified that they (PG&E) are cutting power to the main water building.  So...... I guess no water for Vallejo now or whenever they start the shutoff process.

Just keeping those who are watching from the bleachers updated on our insanity.

I'm a bit anxious.

I'm sure this weather event is going to turn out to be a nothingburger, but they are now evacing the towns of Healdsburg and Winsor.

Every single year I study the fires and the damage to see if I would have survived had that been me. I'm like - that house would have never made it. That house would have been fine. Every year I have the conversation with Mr S. that I am not evacing. I'm staying to fight for my house. I'm not reckless. Please no comments about that. I just pray to a gawd I don't believe in that I'm never tested. Fire is the number one way I don't want to die.

Survivor guilt is a powerful thing though. I've always felt if I wouldn't have gone to stay with my boyfriend that night my cousin would still be here. And I'm not losing everything I own twice. You do eventually get over it but....It's like you have no history. Like you don't exist before a certain time. You are just an article in a newspaper.

Out here in the burbs there is a lot of grass. Fire is an omnipresent thing. The creek by my house goes up almost every year and all it would take is a little wind. But the firefighters tamp stuff down super quick out here. It only becomes concerting if they are stretched too thin.

At least my deck is fire door rated. It covers about 1/4th of my roof surface.  I just can't believe every year I have to have this conversation. But I'm reasonably sure everything will just be overhyped. You can never take things too much for granted though.

Next year - every time I say 2020 I'm going to say it like Barbara Walters. Just thought you should know. It's going to make Mr S. crazy.

PG&E trying shut down the worlds 5th largest economy. Apparently.

For fucks sakes! People are absolutely losing their minds tonight as PG&E has started notifying ALL the Bay Area counties that they could lose power on Saturday into Monday afternoon. Even mine. (the burbs) We are all going to be so HANGRY.

I have seen reports all the way to Monterey. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing started coming through to Southern California.

So yeah. It going to be fun to see how this works out.  Grab your popcorn now. It's so stupid it's funny.

Allegedly there is also a fire burning in Southern California and people are claiming they had their power shut off pre-fire. It's called the tickfire.

Maybe these things are ya know - connected.

Durable-goods orders fall 1.1%, business investment shrinks again, in bad sign for U.S. economy.

I hated having a front row seat to the housing crisis. But the only way to know how viscerally people are going to react to things is to walk in their shoes. To know emotionally how things are affect people. We are pack animals and we pretty much all feel the same things just at different times. I have lived through some crazy stuff and I understand ( a little bit) why people do the things they do.

When houses go down in price, people pull back.

Trump really deserves a lot of credit for keeping this going as long as he has considering what is happening with the economies in the rest of the world. We are all intertwined now. So, what affects them affects us.

US New Home Sales Slow In September, Prices Plunge To Lowest Since 2017.

"Very notably, the median home price plunged 8.8% from a year earlier to $299,400 - to its lowest since Feb 2017..."

I didn't think this would happen so fast.

Latest news: Second Sonoma County fire reported.

I think I'm on a bit of a bitchy tangent today because the dearth of shallow thinkers are really overwhelming me.

Just last night I was telling Mr. S. - just because they shut off the power doesn't mean there won't be fires. People start most fires.

Can you imagine the backlash if they shut off the power and people's homes still burn. And really I just can't BELIEVE the attitude of the PG&E CEO. No effs given! 

It is third world insanity.

I wouldn't trust Yelp data.

Consumer Activity Falters In California's Largest Metros, Yelp Warns.

I happen to agree with what they say. I just don't believe they know anything.

Yelp has become the biggest piece of crap software out there. Their search function is completely corrupted at this point. It's WORTHLESS. You see - everyone paid to get their site up listed, and now if you search for any topic you do not get the result you want. I would wager to say that people have stopped using Yelp because other than listing all the companies in your area, you can't refine a search to save your life. Google actually does a better job. And that's not saying much.

And also - it's just become SO STALE at this point. It sends me recommendations for restaurants in cities I've never even set foot in. WTF. Not to mention - if Google can recognize in two seconds that I have been in an establishment - why can't yelp recognize that I am in a restaurant and bring up pictures. That restaurant should be that the top of the list.

I don't even know how they are strong arming companies out of their revenue at this point because everyone is in every list. It's ridiculous!

I'm doing more daytime Halloween stuff this year because Halloween falls on a Friday Thursday. I'm not going to be able to do pumpkins. Last year my pumpkins started crying. So I will be doing a pumpkin retrospective.

This has to be the bubble top.

Tech and finance experts are shocked by SoftBank’s 'stone-cold crazy' $1.7 billion golden parachute for ousted WeWork CEO Adam Neumann.

I know I blogged about this already today. But it just gets more hilarious with each passing hour. This Softbank guy has to be the worst businessman evar!

First he says - we didn't have any competition - so we paid up. Who does that?!? Then he gives that CEO a giant golden parachute for no effing reason.

All I know is- no one knows which Silicon Valley companies are at risk right now. If people are not throwing up in the bathroom - they need to be.

This spring (April 2019)I said "All I know if that if something happens to Softbank the Valley is going to be a little screwed. They own a little of everything around here."

Masayoshi Son’s unyielding optimism — and lack of challengers — led SoftBank to overvalue WeWork, sources say.

Guess who feels like they don't need money.

Here we go again: PG&E customers are bracing for the worst.

I was reminded recently that Gray Davis a previous governor of California was recalled due to rolling blackouts. And those were not even as crazy as what this company keeps trying to do. We would have shut offs for PART of a day. Not two days. And how at this stage in the internet can you not have a website that stays up? HOW?

I just do not understand how a company can try to bankrupt the very people they need for financial existence keeps doing this. Shutting down commerce is really putting a financial strain on some of these small businesses. Who does that! And the CEO of PG&E clearly gives no fucks. Boy is that guy a shallow thinker.

Last I remember, if you don't give people power - companies don't make money. But one can hope that the younger silky pony will eventually feel some heat.

My area is not in the zone this time.

I wonder what skeletons are in this guys closet.

SoftBank, WeWork's largest investor, will reportedly take control of the company — and Adam Neumann will take home nearly $1.7 billion.

This news started coming through last night. The whole thing sort of made me laugh because it was being reported they couldn't lay off people because they didn't have the funds for severance also was hitting the wire. When I told Mr S. - the conversation roughly went like this.

Me - can you believe they are going to pay that guy to leave the board of directors? Looking back through my history of Silicon Valley no one has never needed to pay someone to leave. They would just boot them off!

Him - It almost seems like money laundering scheme.

Sometimes Mr S. says stuff that just stops me in my tracks.

Me  - go on.

Him - Well, if you are laundering money you don't really care how much good money you get back because it's clean money. So if you get back 75 cents of good money on a dollar of dirty money - you are doing pretty good.

Neither of us is saying this is a money laundering scheme obvi. But I certainly have never seen ANYTHING like this in Silicon Valley. But apparently they wanted that nondisclosure super bad or they wouldn't have paid him anything to leave. Sort of makes you wonder what they are hiding.

This robot can toss your salad.

‘Sally’ robot prepares custom salads for students looking for healthier food options.

It's sort of an old robot. But I just ran across it a couple of days ago and I HAD to use that subject line. Didn't I?

Underwater is back!

Anyone who bought last year is likely underwater now. And I want to take out the likely part, but I don't know everyones circumstance - so I'm hedging my bets. The top was in April of last year and has been declining every since.  At that time houses were selling in 6 days - NO CONTINGENCIES. I blogged about it three times that month.  Here, here and here. This does not bode well for the holiday season.

The reason I bring this up again today is because this Wolf of Wall Street article hit my feed and it basically matches what I have been seeing on the ground. Although my area could even be a bit more severe than these numbers. I will get to that in a minute. This is what he is reporting on his blog:

San Fransisco down 16.2% from May of 2018.

San Mateo down 16.9% from April 2018.

Santa Clara down 15.8 from March 2018.

Alameda (the burbs) down 11.2 from May 2018.

Contra Costa and Sonoma respectively down 6.6 and 6.2 from June 2018.

When I blogged about this the other day I was only looking to see how my old house was faring. I didn't have time to go through the whole MLS. I did today and I have to say it pretty ugly honestly. Here are some examples. No mobile homes in this post. I already talked about those a couple of days ago, so you already know what happening in the low end market. Craziness obvi.

14 houses were worthy of making my holy shit meter. The bloody details as follows.

1130 square foot condo. They first listed it on 11/18 for 570,000. Still on market. Now listed as 479,000.

1860 square foot house.  First listed on 9/17/19 for 899,000. Now at 840,000.  That is about 40 grand in one month.

1754 square foot sure foot house. This one caught my eye because it's new construction built in 2017.   It sold in the summer of 2017 for 752,500. Now being listed for 779,950. That is less than a 25 grand profit in two years if it even goes for that. That's not even enough to cover your selling costs.

1289 square foot house.  Listed on 8/21/19 for 839,000. Still on market now listing for 779,000. a 60 grand hair cut.

1635 square foot condo.  Listed on 8/16/19 for 685,000. Now listed for 645,000.

1440 square foot house. Listed on 8/13/19 for 859,999. Now listed for 819,000.

828 square foot condo. These are arguably the lowest priced housing in my city next to mobile homes. First listed 8/11/19 for 359,888. Now listed for 335,900.

The next one is super painful. Brand new construction.There are two houses on this site being listed. First listed 8/8/19 for 1,449,000. These houses also have granny units in the back. Now being listed for 1,379,000.

This one is the first McMansion to really make the "oh shit" list.  3761 square feet. First listed on 8/6/19 for 1,528,000. Now listed 1,399,000. I'm not really going to do too many of the McMansions because their percentage drop is not as dramatic.

1274 foot condo. First listed on 7/25/19 for 549,000.  Now listed  for 509,000.

2006 square foot house. This one is bloody.  Built in 2016.  Listed on 11/14/18 for 945,000. Still on market.  Now being listed for 847,950.

This place is also fairly new.  Built in 2015. First listed on 7/8/19. for 825,000. Now listing for 789,000.

The last one is completely new construction built in 2019 and there are several in this development but this is by far the worst. 2169 square foot  condo. First listed for 860,000 on 2/9/19. Still on market. Now listing for 828,000.

All this is happening under ultra low interest rates. And clearly something happened in August because a lot of stuff has been sitting since then. I would go as far as to say the housing market has hit sort of a wall.

I guess I should have stopped.

"As to what we can expect out of a Tesla pickup truck, Musk also tweeted out that the vehicle may resemble an “armored personnel carrier from the future.” Now what this actually means is anybody’s guess, but it certainly does boost the level of intrigue surrounding the impending reveal." Source.

I am a little over the whole Tesla thing right now. But last week I drove by the plant just to sort of check out what was happening on Kato Drive. You can see it from the freeway. That road looked as chaotic as I've ever seen. With all the car carriers and random Semi's. Plus a RV city is basically popping up. It really looks a mess. I basically just shook my head.

But the interesting thing was there are an armored type vehicle on a flatbed sitting out there among the craziness. I couldn't stop at the time to investigate any further.  Now I wish I had. But it did seem odd to me. Odd enough that I told Mr S. about it because it just seemed like a strange place to have one parked. But since I don't have any pictures - I guess it never happened.

Update -  This is sort of what that vehicle on the flatbed looked like.  Mr S. and I were talking about it again last night. And I couldn't describe it so I found a picture. Since the image might be copy right protected I'm only providing a link.

Real Estate is still saying everyone is lying.

Went to check on my old house which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. It's still on the market and is set to get a price reduction. It's at two weeks on the market, and houses are getting price reductions at 17 days. And the price reductions are pretty savage. I'm still seeing 100k price reductions on houses in the 1.1 million dollar range. And 10-45 grand price reductions in houses under a mil.

Hell - mobile homes are still getting savaged. For example one was listed five weeks ago at 170,000 and they have been marking it down every week. Now selling for 130,000. A MOBILE HOME! Another was listed on 9/17 for 130,000. and currently is being listed for 110,500.

Retail sales will not improve until moral improves. I see all these articles today about how they are not going to do an interest rate cut. I would be very surprised if they didn't.

Creepy.

Look at what Google is selling the children.

"AIY Projects brings do-it-yourself artificial intelligence to your maker projects. The Google AIY Vision Kit lets you build an image recognition device that can see and identify objects, powered by TensorFlow’s machine learning models." Source.