Hooray for Coffee!!!
If 3 cups give you a 10% mortality boost, I've got it made in the shade. (Knock wood.)
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Slate has just posted a "poverty" map, which shows Deschutes County sitting prominently in the middle of Oregon with a big increase. At first it looks like the big black spot in the middle of Oregon is the only county in the state with an increase, until you look into the far southeast corner.
Malheur County has had a doubling of it's poverty rate.
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I read a profile of hot IPO's a number of years ago which made if very clear that, for most of us, buying on opening day is a sucker play. The insiders have already bought a ton of the stock, and they're selling to you at a huge profit.
Thanks, but no thanks, Facebook.
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If I'm reading the article on Pronghorn correctly, it seems to me that what this new "management company" (Bulletin, 5/18/12.) is doing is setting up time-shares with the other resorts it manages.
Seems like kind of a comedown.
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I was preparing to start opening a few boxes of sports cards and put some fresh singles out.
Until yesterday.
I had a customer in, who I thought was questioning my integrity (not buying from an open box despite my assurances that no one was allowed to pick through them). Turns out, he wasn't buying because he felt the cards had "curled." (I assured him, that all cards made of that particular process did that over time, and that they flatten out nicely -- he didn't believe me.)
Anyway, I got really angry in a millisecond. It shows me I still harbor strong anger about sports cards that can come to the surface at any moment. We talked it out and there were no hard feelings, but whew....it showed I need to keep to the box and pack selling strategy I've had over the last decade or so, even if it means fewer sales.
Fewer sales, but more sanity.
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PERSON OF INTEREST had a great episode for the season ending; it was almost like Matrix there at the end. This show just got progressively better as the season went along.
It seems to be running beneath the radar, at least I haven't talked to anyone else who watches it or seen any article about it.
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I'm getting the sense that they are dragging out the Greek crisis until everyone is ready for the last shoe to drop.
It'll hurt, but everyone will be more prepared.
I don't know. It's pretty screwed up that my finances could in any way be infected by a crisis in Greece.
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I had a traveler from Fort Collins, Co., who said there were 5 comic shops there.
I looked it up, and it's a smaller urban area than Bend.
Sure enough, when I Googled it, I saw there are at least four legit comic shops. (Plus, according to the customer, a new one opened by a friend of his...)
I'm not sure how these things happen. There are town all over America bigger than Fort Collins that have NO comic shops. I've never been able to get to more than about 65% of the way toward a living wage with comics, thus adding in cards, games, books, toys.
But just because 5 shops exist, that doesn't mean that 5 shops will continue to exist. I have to believe one is probably so new it doesn't know where it stands, another may be quietly on it's way out, another may be a 'hobby' shop supported by it's owner, another may be selling a majority of something else, or maybe they have all created some magical forcefield for comic shops.
There is a four year college there, so that would probably allow for 2 viable comic shops, and then - - maybe a third shop could exist from the synergistic forces involved in multiple shops.
It's sort of like the fluky numbers of card shops in Eugene -- again, it's inexplicable on the face of it.
LATER: Did some more research, and I think I was mixing apples and oranges. Fort Collins itself has a population of 145K, twice the size of Bend. I was comparing it to Bend's Metro numbers. The Wiki doesn't give the Metro numbers for Fort Collins, but it usually roughly doubles.
So by those numbers, two shops could be viable. Add a third shop because of the four year college. It's also on an interstate, and it's midway between Cheyenne and Denver, about an hour from each. Close enough to pull in some customers, I would think.
So, yeah, I can see three shops, though even that is unusual.
It's something I've always wondered -- do more shops create more business, or does more business create more shops?
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4 comments:
"Slate has just posted a "poverty" map, which shows Deschutes County sitting prominently in the middle of Oregon with a big increase."
Yup, still "poverty with a view" despite decades of record-breaking growth.
Only now, with all the tract houses and shopping centers in the way, the view isn't as good.
I don't know. It's pretty screwed up that my finances could in any way be infected by a crisis in Greece.
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You, USA parasites sold some 2 quadrillion dollars worth of CDS to the world. All on the pretense that government local don't go down. It does go down, and countrys go down too. The problem is there is hardly 2% to cover losses, as all insurance is backed by paper.
When country's like Greece DEFAULT, fail to pay their DEBT their investors will be the first to be made good on the loss and be paid CDS insurance. Which menans that by the time this gets around to CALIF which is even more insolvent thant Greece, that there will be no money.
Just like FDIC, it only has about 2% to cover bank-losses on its 'insured' accounts of $250k. Only the first to claim will be paid.
So yes, Greece is your problem, ... but look at it this way the the first to go will be the first to be paid. In this case the last man standing will be holding the bag. Which means those hold USA debt.
It's going to go down hard in the USA, and not come back. Will it effect you and your Bend? Fuck Yes.
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The old figure that $600 Trillion of CDS DEBT was written has now been found to be a conservative number, its closer to $2 quadrillion. The entire world GDP is only around $100 trillion, bad enough that CDS DEBT was only thought to be 5-10X, now we learn its 20X, ... of world GDP.
Greece owes about $500 Billion in Euros, or 3/4 trillion dollars, there simply isn't enough CASH in the world to even make good on the Greek debt before the 'reserves' are gone.
JP Morgan admits to be sitting on $70 Trillion in CDS debt, but again that could be a lie, but the fact is that they have lost most of their CASH on trading bet's long before they even have to cover other peoples losses.
Where does Bend come in? Long ago places like Bend got CASH up front by selling CDS insurance, on the presumption that governments don't fail, in theory local governments like Bend all over the USA owe trillions of dollars on these insurance losses that will come due.
Three anti-NATO protesters face terrorism charges
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This is so Bend, but has to be mentioned, first of all because we always knew that Obama would use Bush terrorism laws against protestors.
But what is fascinating here is these protesters at NATO which is a front for OBAMA-WAR-MONGERING, they had beer making equipment in their car, and thus the FBI and local police have deemed they could have made a nuclear weapon. Funny if it weren't so fucking true. Sort of like a few years ago when Arabs were arrested for 'bomb making tools', aka possesion of pliers and screw-drivers in the work-related travel kit.
Beer making equipment, terrorism charges coming to Bend.
"Slate has just posted a "poverty" map"
You have to be careful how you interpret these statistics. For example, Benton county and Lane counties are rated high in poverty. However, this doesn't square with all the construction going on around here.
I think it's because these are both major college towns (have OSU and U of O, respectively) and students going to college, and not earning income, are counted in these surveys.
So as OSU-Cascades you're going to have more "poverty" whether the town is otherwise doing great, or not.
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