Quantum Theology

I thought I would try to repair the faulty headlight switch myself today. Haha, after looking at the switch, any attempt at fixing it would have a high probability of breaking it more. I can see why the switch costs 92 dollars at the dealer; it is an integrated unit which includes the control stick.

If it were an emergency, I suppose I could ‘hotwire’ the headlights. Since the high-beams work, and there are different power wires for the high and low beams, I would probably just splice the high beam power into the low beam power.

So, for anyone finding this blog entry through a search: If your high beams work, but not your lows and you have a Nissan Maxima, your problem is probably either in the relay under the hood, or most likely the combo switch in the steering column.

The headlights don’t work in my car. I traced the problem and I think the problem lies in the switch that is on the steering column. I won’t be able to get my 95 dollar switch until the dealer re-opens next week. Until then….

My brother got me War and Peace for Christmas this year. I had first heard of Tolstoy from another book - Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey. Yancey does a good job giving a short biography of Tolstoy and I got the impression that I shared some traits with the Russian aristocrat. Here are some excerpts from the biography.

Tolstoy’s spritual writings, unlike his fiction, stir up arguments on all sides. Mahatma Ghandi, for one, found them profoundly moving, and credited Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within as the font of inspiration for his own guiding principles of nonviolence, simplicity, and intentional poverty. In Tolstoy’s own day, a parade of idealists, revolutionaries, would-be saints, and anarchists made their way to his house to listen to his strong words about justice and human dignity. For every Ghandi stirred by Tolstoy’s high-minded ideals, however, another reader is repelled by how miserably he failed to fulfill those ideals. What Tolstoy encountered in the gospels attracted him like a flame; his failure to attain it ultimately consumed him.

In modern times, it may be easy to confuse the gospel with ‘The American Dream’ of contentment, prosperity, and a trouble-free existence. Tolstoy saw that Jesus calls us to far more than a beautiful home with pleasant neighbors. He tasted fortune, talent, education, and worldwide fame: “I would say to myself. ‘Very well; you will be more famous than Gogol or Pushkin or Shakespeare or Moliere, or than all the other writers in the world - and what of it?’ And I could find no answer at all.” Tolstoy took as dead-serious Jesus’ question, “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?”

A man willing to liberate his serfs and give away his possessions in simple obedience to Jesus’s command is not easy to dismiss. Other Russian nobility were buying and trading their serfs like cattle,  and viciously beating those who disobeyed - this in a nation that considered itself the home of Christ’s pure church. Tolstoy voluntarily set his serfs free. If others had followed Tolstoy’s lead on issues of justice, the nighmare revolution of 1917 might never have happened.

Yet by any measure Tolstoy’s quest for holiness ended in disappointment. In short, he failed to practice what he preached. His wife put it well:

There is so little genuine warmth about him; his kindness does not come from his heart, but merely from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the laborers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wife a rest and never - in all these thirty two years - gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give me a chance to rest from all my labors.

“Where is his love?” she demanded after one violent shouting match. “His nonresistance? His Christianity?” He never showed affection toward the children who consumed so much of her life. The one who professed such love of humanity had difficulty loving any single individuals, even members of his own family.

Tostoy’s ardent strides toward perfection never resulted in any semblance of peace or serenity. Up to the moment of his death the diaries and letters kept circling back to the rueful theme of failure, exposing the gap between gospel ideals and the contradictions of his own life. Too honest for self-deception, he could not silence the conscience the convicted him. Some have called him a hypocrite. But a hypocrite pretends to be something he is not; Tolstoy knew above anyone how short he fell.

I don’t know if anyone noticed, but my blog was out of action for about a week. I attempted to blog certain IP addresses from accessing my blog due to the number of spammers. I often grow tired of deleting spam. In any case, the software that was provided to block IP addresses was not working properly. It broke the entire website! On the upside, I didn’t get spam for a week! I found out what the problem was and I fixed it myself. It can be handy to be a geek!

So, what happened last week? I got stuck in Denver during the ‘Blizzard of 2006!’ I was leaving Beaver Creek on Wednesday afternoon and I ran smack into a blizzard! It was my first - hehehe It was quite an adventure when it was all said and done. Come to think of it, the blizzard was more fun than the snowboarding! It was also much more dangerous. I was trying to get out of Denver on Friday morning, and I discovered that my wiper fluid container had a leak in it. The dirt/slush mixture that kept flying onto my windshield made it impossible to see in the morning sun. With nothing to clean the windshield, I spit on a rag and managed to clean a spot the size of my hand. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything quite as stupid and dangerous in my life.

I’ve have found some magical way to avoid the snow so far the winter. I missed two snow storms this year thanks to my trips to Boston. No more! The line must be drawn here. Here and no further! It’s time for epic abandon! Show me the POWDER! Sadly, tommorow I must show at work to give my boss an update on the progress of work. Who makes a deadline for the week before Christmas?

Anyways, shall it be Beaver Creek or Vail?  I have 10 days to burn at those resorts as part of my season pass. I really should use those up before heading back to Breckenridge, Keystone, and A-Basin. On the other hand, I’ve heard that Wolf Creek is pretty epic. Ahh, so much snow, so little time!

Joy, ain’t it grand?

I put in a verbal offer on a house 4-5 months ago. The seller was trying to get 200k for the property that he had purchased in November 2005 for 182k. I offered him 180k and he promptly declined.

I just noticed today that a Notice of Default was filed 2 months ago, and his property is headed to auction at the end of January. I might have been interested in purchasing the property at auction, but I also noticed that 2 weeks ago Capital One filed a lein on the house.

This was clearly a house flip gone bad since the property was vacant. The rampant rise of real estate is a social ill and I did the community a favor by refusing to bail him out.

I think I’ve decided on a Thesis/Project for my Masters Degree. Only I haven’t actually applied to UCCS yet. Cart before the horse?

At the beginning of the year I made a number of wild predictions:

• Stocks would decline
• The dollar would decline
• Gold would rise
• Housing would tank
• Recession by the end of the year

So, how did I do?

• Stocks went up, now down
• The dollar did decline, but not as much as I was expecting
• Gold did go up, but not nearly as much as I was expecting.
• Housing did slow dramatically, but it didn’t plunge off a cliff like I was expecting.
• We won’t know recession numbers for this quarter until next year, however the numbers don’t point towards a recession.

All things considered, 2006 wasn’t a bad year economically. The biggest number that speaks to me about the past year was the very low unemployment numbers. Right now, we are sitting at 4.5 percent unemployment which is very low by historical standards. Another key factor is the still low numbers of forclosures. They are on the rise, but still very low. The economy is tied to credit, and I don’t see the supply of housing credit dropping unless large numbers of non-performing loans and reclaimed houses clog up the banks books. Indeed, I think the only reason 2006 was a decent year was because housing did NOT take a nose dive. The good news for homeowners is that if housing was going to nose dive, it would have done so already. The bad news for me is that if housing was going to nose dive, it would have done so already.
So, what about my predictions for next year? Well, I think I need to go back and re-jiggle the economic model in my head. Too many numbers don’t make sense. So, I’ll go ahead and make a SWAG now and possibly revise my predictions later following my research.

Housing

As I already said, if housing was going to dive, it would have done so already. It’s poised to nose dive, but I think it would take some heavy unknown catalyst to kick it into freefall. Absent such a catalyst, It looks like housing is going to be a looser investment for the next year. That’s now going to stop large numbers of people from trying to buy though.

An interesting thing to keep an eye on is the movement by Zillow.com into the real estate market of home listings. The days of Realtors are numbered by the internet, along with those 6 percent commissions. I think 2006 marked the high point of realtor jobs, and 07 onward will see a steady decline in this profession.

The Dollar and Credit

I really don’t know enough to make even a SWAG. I’ll have to settle for a simple WAG. I think the dollar will decline another 10-20% against the Euro next year, and what happens to credit will depend on what happens to housing. I don’t expect any substantial changes in the availability of credit over the next year.

For Your Information

Now a word on the federal reserve. The average Joe has no idea what the Reserve does, but the actions of the Fed can be seen in the credit rate your credit card gives you, and also the rate on your adjustable rate mortgage or line of credit. The Federal Reserve likes to tweak the overnight lending rate it charges banks. Right now it is sitting at 5.25 percent. According to common wisdom, dropping this rate is supposed to jump start the economy by making credit cheaper to obtain. Raising this rate slows down the economy by making credit more expensive. It is also expected that raising this rate is a good way to combat inflation (inflation being bad). The current rate of 5.25 percent is making a lot of peoples lives rather interesting, because in the last few years, a LOT of people took out those adjustable rate loans on their house purchases. When they bought, the Fed rate was probably only 1-2 percent.  Since their loan is based on a number that is now around 5 percent, their payments will jump, or have already jumped dramatically. The good news for those folks is that they can refinance into a 30 year fixed. The bad news is that they can refinance into a 30 year fixed. Why the conundrum? Either way, their payments are going up substantially. For folks in California, that could mean going from a 2k a month to 3k a month. Ouch!!!

Oh, one final word on housing leverage.  People like to say that you shouldn’t throw your money away on rent. I agree. However you can just as easily throw your money away on your house. Take for instance the scenario. You buy a house today in San Diego and put down 10k of your own money. Let’s say you buy a condo,  because houses are just too far out of reach. Lets say that condo is worth 300k today. Lets say that this time next year, your condo is now worth 290k, a drop of only 3.3 percent.  Let’s say that you need to sell because of some unknown situation. Ooops, you just LOST all your 10k AND you are out ANOTHER 20k because of that 6 percent sales commission to the realtors. You just blew 30k in only a year. I have not even mentioned the 1500 a month you paid on the  interest only mortgage. That’s obviously a near worst case scenario, but the problem is that this scenario is becoming more and more probable as we move foward. Take for instance the condo that I lived in for a year in Rancho Bernardo. Thanks to public records, I know that my landlord bought in Sept 04 for 405k. Furthermore, I know that a unit in the same complex that is the same size, sold in Sept 06 for 375k. Here is another tidbit, the property tax on that condo for 2006 is over 4000 dollars.

I’ll be heading back to San Diego for Christmas. But, I won’t be heading home. Home is where the heart is, and in San Diego it is not. Yes, I will enjoy hanging out with family, and getting together with old friends. I really didn’t know what home was until I actually left home.
It’s remarkable the draw that this area has on me. I felt it first 5-6 years ago while on a river rafting trip to Buena Vista. I remember standing on ridge partway up a 14er (14000 ft peak). It had an incredible view of the mountain valley. Off to the side was a cross which had ‘Be Still And Know That I Am God’ inscribed. No shit sherlock.
In January 05 I took a scouting trip to Denver and Colorado Springs. I was in Colorado Springs for only a few hours as it was the end of my trip and I was only in town for a job fair. On a whim I decided to take route 24 out towards the mountains. I remember passing Manitou Springs, although I didn’t know the name of the town at the time, and thinking that it would be fabulous to live there.

Between that scouting trip and when I eventually moved in April 06, I considered living everywhere between Boulder and Colorado Springs. At that time I had forgotten about that little town on the side of the 24. I finally narrowed my search to Colorado Springs, and I picked an apartment in Manitou simply because it had some character and it was really cheap. Cheap was good because moving somewhere without a job does not always work out well unless you plan for the worst case.

I can’t tell you how pleased I was when I rolled into town with my trailer. I was so very fortunate to nail the perfect place to live on the first try.

I think every fantastic winter weekend should be closed out with this fabulous drink. Simply heat milk with a single tea bag of chai tea. Add sugar to taste. Why pay 3-4 bucks for the starbucks variety?