JayB

The deductions on the interest on a $425K 30-year fixed at ~6% generates a tax savings of ~$8500 if you assume that a $100K salary lands you in the 28% bracket. http://www.dinkytown.net/java/MortgageTaxes.html Unless the assumptions built into that thingy are off. If not, assuming $11K in federal subsidies may have been a bit on the generous side.

a hundred k isn't "far less" than what's needed to finance a standard 30 year fixed for an average price house in king county. Plus, keep in mind that the dual income household isn't anomalous nowadays. If by "finance" you mean "afford." we may have different understandings of the word. Some Simplified Numbers: Gross Salary: $100K Medicare: ~$1500 Social Security: ~$6K Federal Taxes: ~ 14K Net Salary: $78,500. Monthly Take Home: $6541. Monthly Payment on 30 year fixed for $425K (assume ~5% downpayment) at 6.1% ~$2600/mo Property Taxes on $450K, ~$5000, ~416/mo Total Montly Obligation before Federal tax subsidies for homeowners kick in: $3166. $3166/6541 = ~48% of monthly take home pay. This doesn't include PMI, homeowners insurance, maintenance, repairs, utilities, etc. I'd figure roughly $11K/year in interest/property-tax subsidies for the first few years of the mortgage when the amount of principal being paid off is negligible, but I'm willing to bet that these don't help the average household cover the check at the end of each month. Toss in car payments, auto insurance, health insurance, homeowners insurance, utilities, other debt, groceries, gas, etc and you are no longer looking at a situation that's consistent with my personal definition of the term "afford." YMMV.

UW Rock.

Pretty much put most of Montana in the shitter as well. I can remember a scout trip that took us through Yellowstone and the Tetons in the mid-80's when Montana hadn't yet begun to suffer from the tantric-midlife-crisis-emeliorating-zen-state-via-flyfishing vibe . One of the grownups brought along a list of humorous questions that he read aloud to the van full of scouts in order to pass the time during the long stretches of driving. The one question I remember was "Would you rather spend all of eternity in the seventh level of hell or Bozeman, Montana?" We'd just passed through Bozeman, and that country looked like heaven to me at the time. I can remember being both simultaneously puzzled and relieved by the question. Puzzled that anyone would chose Bozeman over, say, Jersey City - for that designation and relieved that the average person in the US would recoil in horror at the prospect of spending time in, much living in most of the places that I loved in the West. Not quite how things turned out.

Straight downhill since "A River Ran Through It." Bummer. Love that river/canyon.

Those jobs are at or near the top of the skill-set echelon in most biotech companies, and the average of those medians is way under $100K. Include all of the AA-degree-or-less-requiring "Jr Production QC Tech" and admin jobs and you end up even further south of $100K.

Average salary is one thing, median is another. No way the median is over $100K unless the entire operation is staffed by senior scientists and execs. Might also be helpful to compare and contrast Amgen with any commerical biotech operation in the PNW.

You can pretty much count-out biotech as a driver of elevated home prices. Capital intensive? expensive? Yes. Mass employer capable of elevating average pay rates region-wide or even citywide - no. Not now, not ever - at least not in Washington. Even in the highest sliver of the non-executive strata in Biotech (the Senior Scientists and whatnot)- which number in the hundreds, at most, in Washington - I'd be mighty surprised to very many pay-packages in excess of $100K, which is far less than you need to be bringing home to afford a home in King-county with anything other than suicide financing. The average guy working in a lab is probably working on a payscale roughly equivalent to that of the average supermarket employee, and will either have to change careers or change locations in order to get within reach of the average one-bedroom condo, much less a SFH.

Counterargument: http://seattlebubble.blogspot.com/2007/03/spot-fundamentals.html The real-estate markets are local, but credit markets are global, so it's hard to forsee a scenario in which any particular metro-market is not impacted by the global appetite for Alt-A and sub-prime MBS. The psychology of market participants is one thing, their access to credit is another. It'll be interesting to see how those two variables influence one another over the course of the next couple of years.

I would think that losing your home would be horrible no matter what tax bracket you are in. Your kids lives' get disrupted, your life gets crazy, etc. Except if your rich you can go out and buy a Mercedes to salve the paing, whereas if you are poor you might be able to buy a Happy Meal. I think it depends where you are defining as LA. I believe much of the unconventional financing for primary residences was the Inland Empire and Orange County. Speculators getting burned are getting their just desserts. I'd be mighty surprised if the current valuation metrics are sustainable in a more restrictive lending environment and/or in the absence of hefty downpayments generated by rapid appreciation. Some LA Metrics: http://www.housingtracker.net/affordability/california/los-angeles When the first time buyer actually has to qualify for the fully-indexed payments instead of the I/O, payment-option, ARM-teaser rate and actually accumulate a down payment in the $50-$100K range through savings generated via earned income - everyone above them on the real estate food chain is going to feel it. First time buyers = the plankton of the real-estate ecosystem.

The important way - it's impacting "the people". LA proper is still sitting relatively pretty - the shitholes of the Inland Empire are hurting. Good riddance. It's early yet. I'll be surprised if the credit tightening leaves LA proper unscathed. How many folks there could have bought their home with conventional financing? Toss in some dwindling appreciation and ARM resets, the challenges that will confront first time buyers in a more restrictive lending environment, etc and it's far from clear that the inland empire will suffer alone.

Hahaha. The "Z-Snap!" Oft-seen, never so aptly described until now. You should trademark that one.

All joking aside, I think the *last* reason any woman posted her pic or sanctioned it posted to the "hot climbing chics" thread was to "bring hope" to some cardre of socially inept guys who can't otherwise get a date. You couldn't be more correct, of course, but it was an unintended consequence that I thought that they should be made aware of before doing anything that might heap yet another misfortune on this vulnerable and oft-neglected population. Think of what would happened if the editors of Climbing had come out and revealed that the photo of whatshername was a hoax. Much wailing around the firepits at J-Tree and elsewhere had any such thing come to pass...

What pisses me off is that I have posted here for *years* without ever posting a pic of myself. Then I see a thread where a bunch of the ladies here are having fun and supporting each other. And the fallout, of course, is getting shit from the guys on this site. I have never regretted a single post I have put up until this one. I honestly regret posting my pics and getting shit for it. I made a big mistake. If anyone deserved to catch shit for the pictures that they posted, it's me, and I'm actually kind of disappointed by the lack of abuse I got, especially for the late-pubescent-shirtless-flexo-pano-photo that I put up. Lame. When it comes to your photos though, I haven't seen anything but positive comments that referred to your photos in particular. You look great, and pretty much everyone that chimed in seemed to echo my own comments, where I said that any woman who is into active stuff in the outdoors that's brave enough to post a photo here is a 10 in my book. Don't regret posting those photos, ladies! Your collective contributions will probably serve as a beacon of hope to the hordes of single-male climbers milling around in a state of perpetual despair over their chances of finding an attractive woman that not only shares their passion for the outdoors, but has a healthy sense of humor, and self. If you pull the photos, scores of men ranging from bearded, hemp-clad, marginally employed dudes living out of the backs of their Subarus, to intense, introverted and awkward techies languishing in their cubicles between trips to the North Cascades will figure that all hope is lost and hang their heads in despair. "All is lost, it was all a cruel hoax - and there's nothing left to do but gird myself for a life spent alongside an erstwhile soul-mate who thinks the woods are "icky" and is transported into a state of transcendental ecstasy at the sight of the latest Pottery Barn catalog arriving in the mail. Jerry Roach was right. 10 things I learned in the mountains. Number four - 'Surfer girl isn't in the mountains!...Aaaaaargh why couldn't I have been born with a passion for cutting edge male fashions, gourmet cooking, and ....ballroom dancing. Someone kill me now...Aaargh." Don't do it!

At least in Orange County/Irvine 'bad' may be a bit of an understatement: http://ml-implode.com/

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-subprimemap07-sort2.html And from the too little, too late files:

I'm waiting for the Twenty-first Century's answer to Thorstein Veblen to come along and dissect the rise of Conspicuous Virtue in the US.

Hey Ballo: Check the messages in the Climbing Partners Forum, and/or put up a post with some plans of your own and you should have no problem hooking up with folks. Quite a few of the regulars on this site live in Portland.

Not interested enough to dig into it, but it looks as though there's been something of a falling out between some of the CF disciples. Edit: Slow work day. "My, my, my what ever happened to the concept of being a good loser? Mark Twight gets some notoriety and all we hear are venomous accusations from the most generous fitness lunatic in the world about how Mark Twight stole his ideas. Did Glassdick invent pushups and pull-ups? Can he even do a push up or pull-up? Shit, can he even touch his toes? Mark Twight’s stock goes up as the film 300 continues to ratchet up top profits. This weekend the film was ranked #2 in ticket sales after being #1 the previous two weekends. Good for Mark Twight, he earned it. Here’s hoping that he will get other training gigs as a result of this. We here at the Moynihan Institute subscribe to the adage that winners win and losers whine. When I was still fighting I can remember all those Monday afternoon whiners in the gym, assuming they showed up. They all went over a litany of reasons of why they were “robbed” but the winners were silently banging away on the bag getting ready for the next fight. Such is life. Maybe it’s different in the world of minor league fitness celebrities but among professionals like myself in the world of business there are results and then there are results. No one judges my performance based on my intentions and no one gives two shits about my cry baby excuses and he said – she said stuff. That’s fine. I’m a professional and a hallmark of being a true professional is being stoic. This doesn’t mean I am some sort of droid but it does mean that I don’t let my emotions interfere with my professional performance. Let me make something clear and this I nothing unique. People “steal” shit from me ALL THE TIME. Every time someone does I attempt to get a little better at thwarting it in the future. I may even call them privately on it. This is part of the game and I accept it like a man not some belly aching bitch. It’s one thing when someone plagiarizes from a book or takes a copyrighted invention as his own. These are the exception not the rule. In most cases “stolen” stuff is much murkier and when you get down to it not stolen at all. There are a lot of gray areas in the world of grown ups. So Mark Twight gets a little notoriety from his hard work with the cast of 300 and all of a sudden Glassdick starts in with he stole this and he stole that. Assuming that he stole anything when did this happen? Would this have even been an issue if he had never got the 300 gig or if the movie was a dud? This reeks of sour grapes. Who does Glassdick think he is Bikram Choudhury? Get over yourself asshole. You squeezed your certification dough out of Twight. Consider yourself overpaid. Is there anything more pathetic than a grown man whining about how he was “screwed”? This surely doesn’t pass the John Wayne test. What’s that you ask? Well when in doubt of the masculinity of the action I am about to take I ask myself, “What would the Duke do”? It’s usually pretty clear cut. I can remember loosing a close fight on a decision and whining about it at length. After about an hour or two of it my trainer told me to shut up, suck it up and to knock the guy out next time so there’s no question about who the winner is. Well the winner in this saga is clearly Mark Twight. He will ALWAYS be a winner and Dregg Glassdick will ALWAYS be a loser. Bwhahahahahahahahahahaha!!!" http://www.moynihaninstitute.com/

One or two sets of nuts, double in finger sizes only if you want to economize Single set of cams from 0.5 to 4 if you have the money, otherwise #1,2,3 Double up coverage in the hand-size range with hexes. Odds and ends: ~8-12 over-the shoulder slings, 2 cordellettes, nut-tool, knife.

Places to avoid: - Ranier Valley - First Hill, -Northgate, -Large swaths of Capitol Hill unless you like find alocholo-junkie-transients and the myriad benefits they bring to any neighborhood, -Belltown. Supposedly some nightlife type stuff there but not the most desirable or affordable place to live. -Lake City/Kenmore. -Anyplace north of Greenwood.

Ballard/Freemont/Phinney Ridge/Green Lake/ and possibly Greenwood. Freelard is probably the best in many respects, with resonably affordably living, close to some nightlife and the climbing gyms. Getting to/from downtown/I-5 at any point during the weekdays probably sucks unless you can get there via bus or bike.

Also, please note the early onset on manboob. Sorry, JayB, but you put it right out there for anyone to take a swipe at it. Ah yes. The heartbreak of moobs. If it weren't for all of the balding and chest-hair I'd have the estrogen levels checked.

talkin to me? pay attention or go back to reps/dems debate. No. But thanks for paying attention.

Tvash: Better move that photo to the hot climbing chick thread before anyone gets offended... Nice work on the photo/calendar deal though.