10/20  Earthquake!
       http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71667366.html
       \_ It's funny that the Great California ShakeOut earthquake drill just
          took place this morning.  It'd be even more funny if the quake hit
          during the drill.
	...

12/2    So I am trying to convince my company to take disaster planning
        more seriously. Does anyone have any hard numbers on how often
        data centers fail? I mean blow up, burn down, flood, etc, with
        total loss of all services for an extended period of time.
        \_ hard numbers tend to be SEKRET.  But check out Yahoo's recent
           outage and UltraDNS' outage.  Those were both pretty bad.
	...

7/29    5.8 quake in LA
        \_ Felt exactly like Whittier quake, so it's not surprising it's
           roughly the same size. A whole lotta shaking, though.
        \_ Chino Hills is NOT Los Angeles. Los Angeles is in-between
           the 110 the 10 and the 5. Chino Hills is far away from
           Los Angeles. Fucking ignorant northerners. To be precise,
	...

5/19    Picture of China earthquake site.
        http://tinyurl.com/65lr67 (news.yahoo.com)
        I don't know what to say.  It's good if the China earthquake victims
        are drawing inspiration and encouragement from the Sep 11 victims.  I
        just hope that the flag wasn't planted by the Reuters journalist
        himself trying to get a Pulitzer Prize.
	...

10/30   Whoo big earthquake
        \_ Was it just me, or did this quake feel very different than the other
           ones I went through?  In all the other ones I went through (San Jose
           during Loma Prieta quake in '89, Irvine during Northridge quake in
           '94, and a few smaller ones), the buildings swung or shook.
           However, last night my house in Fremont literally vibrated
	...

5/8     http://csua.com/?entry=52724
        I had my day in court today. Was awarded the $350 he owed me, $150
        in damages, and $200 for having to drive down from SF to LA. If I had
        a pay stub, he probably would have given me money for PTO. The case
        went extremely quickly. He asked when I moved out, how long I lived
        there (2.5 years) and if I got a statement of deductions within 21
	...

3/17    I posted on 2/10 about a landlord that stiffed me $600 on
        my deposit. I wrote him a "strongly worded letter" and followed it up
        with a "Pay up or I'm going to file a small claims court in 10 days"
        template. He didn't respond so I filed a claim, but the day I filed
        a claim, he wrote me back and added $250 to the deposit. If I hadn't
        already spent the $60 on the filing, I would have been happy and taken
	...

3/10    Sure glad I didn't take suburban guys advice and buy a big place
        in the outer suburbs:
        http://tinyurl.com/b68rty
        \_ My house just got appraised for 2x what I paid for it in 2001,
           which is down from 2.5x in 2007. I'm really upset about it,
           especially since the appraisal was because I refinanced at
	...

2/26    REAL ESTATE, IT ONLY GOES UP!  LANDLORD - WITH A YACHT!!!!!!!!one
        \_ I use to be boat person, now I own boat.  -John Vu
        \_ you call now, make money in real estare wit no money down, i come
           here make money wit no money down, look at these women!
        \_ Nice thing about being a landlord is that some schmuck pays
           the mortgage for you whether the property is going up or down in
	...

2/10    I've mailed my landlord about excess withholdings from my deposit
        (certified mail), quoting legal code and all that. I'm going to write
        him a followup letter saying he never responded. Is the next step
        to go to some free legal clinic and then take him to small claims?
        Any advise? (I've actually been looking forward to this for a while...
        when I moved in, I knew this would happen so I've tried to keep
	...

2/3     There's a glut of apartments out there. Three units on my floor
        (of a 80 unit apartment) are now vacant, in less than a month.
        The weird thing is my landlord is increasing the rent by $200
        a month, bumping it to $2200. I'm told her about the rate out
        there, and she only budged $100. WTF, is this common? Oh well,
        time to look for another place. I hate corporate managed apartments.
	...

9/8     Dear landlord question. If my net flow is negative (e.g.
        rent - operation cost < 0), can I write off my loss for tax purpose?
        Say I work a 9-5 job and make $100,000K/year, and my total
        rent - operation cost is $20,000 loss, is my taxable income
        $80,000K? In addition, can I write off HOA+repair+advertising+etc
        in addition to my net loss, meaning a taxable income of
	...

8/19    Quick landlord question. If I'm paying X interest per year to a
        rental property, does that mean I can write off X from my income?
        Or do I do a (home-value)/27.5 depreciation for Schedule D? Can
        I do both?
        \_ You can do both, but you add the rent as income. I think you
           know this, but it's the value of the improvement (less land)
	...

4/24    Landlord with a ... Yacht??? No, with landlord rage.
        http://www.csua.org/u/lce (sfgate)
        \_ More: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/27/MN0R10CDQC.DTL
        \_ Is he a Libertarian?
           \_ No, but he is a CSUA'er.
              \_ can't finger macy
	...