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Make Your Own Cat and Girl

Well I never thought I’d see the day, but there it is right there;

Cat and Girl Creator

It will be hard to out-obscure Dorothy Gambrell, but here’s my first try;

Sweet.

Now get crackin’, I want to see your Cat and Girl, too.

This would be great if we could do it for (to?) Garfield.

And then in another way, it would be great if we could do it to Bloom County.

Someday.

Stalk This

I am highly enamoured of the new Gawker Stalker feature, head on over there - let’s keep those celebs under constant surveillance!

However I just emailed Gawker inquiring about when they will start accepting pictures directly from a cell phone - with a decent Java applet (and corresponding server api on the Gawker end) you could just whip out the phone, snap a pic of the unsuspecting celeb, type a brief message and hit “send.” Bam! It goes right on the up-to-the-minute map for anyone to peruse.

We can all see where this is going…

Housing Threedux

What I am hearing is that in 2005, almost half of the people who bought a house in this country put 0% down (1).

There’s only one way to get a house with 0% down I’m aware of, that’s by taking out a very bad loan - an “Interest Only” or the slightly less bad but still dangerous “Variable Rate” loan. Don’t even talk to me about those “negative amortization” loans, where the interest actually gets added to the principal for the first 5 years!

So you have one of these loans, and now let’s say in the next 5 years your house doesn’t appreciate in value, or worse it loses some value. At the same time, interest rates are rising and so’s your monthly payment. Well you’d like to sell the place and get out of this situation - after all, now your home is worth less than your outstanding loan balance, and its only getting worse. But guess what, the market is already starting to flood with bank foreclosures that are selling for a fraction of their original retail value. Why would anyone pay what you paid for your house, when they can spend half as much for your neighbor’s house instead?

And you’re saying perhaps half the homebuyers in this country are in the same precarious situation right now? Who’s responsible for this impending catastrophe!?

I have some names for ya;

Bxxx Exxxxxx, CEO, Quicken Loans
Dxxxxx H. Mxxx, President and CEO, Fannie Mae

I’m sure these guys are pleasant in person, and swing a mean golf club. But “irresponsible lending,” in the name of helping good American people get ahead in life, is something I’d like to hear them apologize for. I’m not holding my breath.

Gamespot New Look

This is new-ish;

I guess the new thing at Gamespot is to sell the entire page as a billboard, with the “content” to weave betwixt.

Kinda 1984, but nonetheless I sorta like it.

Color Ignorant

Here a pretty good example of how colorblind I actually am;

Color Blindness Check

I can see a “25” in the upper-left figure, and absolutely nothing else in the remaining figures.

Apparently 12-20 percent of white males, and virtually no females, have the same problem.

Actually its not a terrible problem, except at work when I have to determine which router is not working by comparing the red and green lights. They all just look kinda yellow to me. So I have to ask for help.

That's About Right

My blog is now the #1 search result for “define ascerbic.”

Unfortunately, nothing there regarding “wit.”