1. Housing is usually a person's largest investment. Want to see depression, anger, outrage? Tell the Jones's that not only have they entirely lost their biggest family investment, but that their biggest investment has just turned into their biggest liability.
2. The rise of the "walk away" solution. Do underwater homeowners want to bring $10,000 to over $100,000 in some cases to the table in order to sell their home? Most probably don't. They'd simply rather foreclose than deal with such a huge debt, and I can't say I blame them. Here's where I think the Obama administration went wrong when trying to come up with a "solution": the ability to pay is not the main reason for forclosures, it's the desire to pay. No one wants to "feed" a loosing mortgage only to see their total debt continue to rise to astronomical levels, many would simply rather get out and move on, start over.
3. Creating a vicious cycle. As more and more home-owners choose to walk away, values decline further, causing more and more homeowners to become underwater, thus repeating the cycle.
4. Market Re-programming. Because of the recent decline in home prices, people are now being re-programmed to think that maybe owning a house is not such a great idea.  As values decline further, fear sets in, taking even more buyers off the market, thus causing houses to decline even further.  It wasn't too long ago that no one ever imagined a house going down in value. It's tough to say just exactly what the long term consequences of this change in mindset might be.

On the contrary, some would say that being underwater isn't a huge problem for most people, as they'll just wait until their values return so that they can then sell without taking the loss. The problem with this arguement is that it relies on 1) values going back up and 2) people being willing to wait that long. For some, that requires a tough stomach and a lot of faith, both which are increasingly difficult to do once you've been re-programmed for declining values. I'd also argue that if 25% of homeowners are doing this, then there's no way values will return to normal with so many people potentially just waiting on the sidelines to sell.

So what's the solution? Unfortunately, I think the only solution in this case is dramatic government intervention to stop the root problem, declining home values. If we can somehow stop this problem, people will find a way to pay their mortgage... because they want to... and more and more people will be attracted to buying, thus increasing demand and getting rid of supply. The trick is to do this temporarily, and at the risk of over-using a term, provide a good "exit strategy" for this intervention. So yes, in this case I would argue for some sort of a bailout.

Investing is entirely about being able to look forward into the future. People who make money in the market know the most important rule in investing: stock prices should always reflect future expectations. This is why "average" investors seem to get burned, they simply get into a stock too late, after they've heard all the good news... or... vice versa, they exit too late, after they've heard all the bad news. By the time they've heard about the news, it's already been reflected in the stock price, and is most-likely in the process of turning the other way. Why do I mention this? Because I believe we're currently seeing inaccurate stock price reflections for both Apple and Google considering the strategies they are taking for future growth. Let me explain:

I believe we're seeing a point now where Google's expectations are not high enough simply because people don't fully understand what Google is doing with the cloud and what that means, while Apple's expectations are currently too high because of it's recent (but past) success.

Google is developing a next-generation, always-on, super-computer that you don't have to own, buy, or maintain. They will do it for you... for free. You can do everything you're doing on your computer right now, but you can do it from any device, anywhere, and without worrying about transferring to computer XYZ, syncing it with version T, or storing it on drive F.  Everything is always on, available, accessible, and stored all in one place. Oh, and everything you use is smart too, meaning it is search-able, can interact with others, itself, and it's contextual. If everything is stored in the cloud, the cloud can work with it all together leveraging contextual relationships, meaning documents can access calendars can access contacts can access location, all irrespective of your device. This framework is extremely powerful and will allow Google deliver real and tangible benefits to consumers in ways they haven't yet even thought of.

Apple has had great success in the past with hardware development and it's music store. However, the basic principals of the Internet are working against both of these models of success. Hardware is becoming less and less relevant as more "work" is done in the cloud (the decline of desktop PC sales), and there is an extremely low barrier to entry for online music sales, pretty much anyone can enter that market rather cheaply. There's nothing revolutionary about selling and downloading digital music.

The main reason I'm betting on Google is I just don't believe Apple's great hardware design and easy-to-use iTunes application is enough to power much more meaningful future growth 2-5 years down the line the way Google's cloud framework is. Sadly enough, many amateur investors are still pouring into Apple because of it's recent but past success. iPhone 4 and the iPad are great products and currently great sellers, but nothing revolutionary or game-changing. Even more importantly, Apple's strategy for the future appears to be "just crank out more cool devices." Do they have anything new, anything truly remarkable, any game changers? It's really just nice hardware, which will be profitable, and probably for a while, but it doesn't compare to a new way of doing everything that truly adds value to everyone that uses it regardless of what device they are using. To me, the cloud represents the future infrastructure, highway, and even the gas companies, whereas Apple really just makes nice cars.

DELIMITER $$

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS changeEmail $$
CREATE PROCEDURE changeEmail (oldEmail varchar(100), newEmail varchar(100))
BEGIN
 -- First check our arguments and that the old email exists
 IF (oldEmail IS NOT NULL) AND (newEmail IS NOT NULL) AND
    (EXISTS (SELECT * FROM users WHERE email=oldEmail))
 THEN
   -- Update all references of the old email to the new one here
   UPDATE users set email=newEmail WHERE email=oldEmail LIMIT 1;
   UPDATE billing set email=newEmail WHERE email=oldEmail;
   UPDATE cards set email=newEmail WHERE email=oldEmail;
   UPDATE orders set user_email=newEmail WHERE user_email=oldEmail;
 END IF;
END $$

DELIMITER ;

Enjoy!

Step 1: Government buys all "upside down" loans and loans where the LTV is greater than 80%.  The central reason for this economic downturn is the decline in housing prices.  Average homeowners see their largest asset suddenly turn into their largest debt as they owe more on thier house than it is worth.  If the government is going to spend a massive amount of money, I would argue that money would better be spent on something that would primarily help the average tax payer while providing an outlet for banks to get rid of potentially toxic loans at the same time.  The most risky loans out there are loans for more than the house is worth, or loans where the loan to value is greater than the historical standard of 80%.  If the government is given the option to buy these loans from the banks (at a discount that the banks would pay for), the banks would suddenly have a way to get all of these loans off of their books -- help for wall street, but at a penalizing discount too.

Step 2: Government resets these loans to 0.00% interest.  Yes, that's right zero percent, zilch.  Suddenly homeowners are paying 100% principle in their monthly payments, and their monthly payment go down by hundreds of dollars a month.  People who were tempted to take the foreclosure route before, would now be crazy not to take advantage of 100% principle payments -- the opportunity of a lifetime, so these people will more than likely stay in their homes.  There would be no reduction in principle owed so main street doesn't get a complete bail out either.

Step 3: When LTV reaches 80%, loans are reset to original amoritization schedule.  When the loan to value is back down to a reasonable level, like 80%, the interest rate kicks back in.  Yes, the payments go back up, BUT there is an incentive to make the payments now that you have 20% of your home's value.  If you can't make the payments, you should be able to sell your home and at least break even.  This works because presumably these loans will reset at different times, thus avoiding a sudden influx of home inventory on the market.

Step 4: Change the rules.  Writing bad loans, wall street creating credit insurance worth many more times than the actual loan values, and preditory lenders all need to be curtailed.  Capitalism is great, but only with laws and rules to ensure that no one cheats the market or each other.

Is this fair?  No, not totally.  Those who have not indulged or who have wisely paid down the balance on their home won't get any direct help.  However, everyone will see their home values stablize and begin to trend upward again with the deflux of inventory from the market.  This won't be a permanent solution, unless things are done to ensure that homes are not being bought that shouldn't be and people are not getting the kind of loans they shouldn't be, otherwise we will be revisiting this situation again in the near future.

A simple way around this problem is to create a settings file for your project.  To do so, right click on your project and select "Properties"

Navigate to the "Settings" tab and click the link to create a new settings file

Add the application specific parameters to your settings file via the designer.  Save and rebuild your project.

To use your settings, reference them via the following syntax:

Properties.Settings.Default.MySetting

Enjoy!

DROP TABLE #Results
CREATE TABLE #Results (ColumnName nvarchar(370), ColumnValue nvarchar(3630))
SET NOCOUNT ON
 
DECLARE @TableName nvarchar(256), @ColumnName nvarchar(128), @SearchStr2 nvarchar(110)
SET  @TableName = ''
SET @SearchStr2 = QUOTENAME('<YOUR_SEARCH_DATA_HERE>','''')
 
WHILE @TableName IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
  SET @ColumnName = ''
  SET @TableName =
  (
    SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME))
    FROM   INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
    AND QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME) > @TableName
    AND OBJECTPROPERTY(
      OBJECT_ID(
        QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME)
      ), 'IsMSShipped'
    ) = 0
  )
 
  WHILE (@TableName IS NOT NULL) AND (@ColumnName IS NOT NULL)
  BEGIN
    SET @ColumnName =
    (
      SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME))
      FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
      WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = PARSENAME(@TableName, 2)
      AND TABLE_NAME  = PARSENAME(@TableName, 1)
      AND DATA_TYPE IN (
        'char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar', 'uniqueidentifier', 'smallint', 'identity'
      )
      AND QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME) > @ColumnName
    )
 
    IF @ColumnName IS NOT NULL
    BEGIN
    INSERT INTO #Results
    EXEC
    (
      'SELECT ''' + @TableName + '.' + @ColumnName + ''', LEFT(' + @ColumnName + ', 3630)
      FROM ' + @TableName + ' (NOLOCK) ' +
      ' WHERE ' + @ColumnName + ' LIKE ' + @SearchStr2
    )
    END
  END
END
 
SELECT ColumnName, ColumnValue FROM #Results

Nothing to do.  This doesn't sound stressful, but when you go to work and don't have anything to do it is extremely unfullfilling.  Not to mention the temptation to pull up inappropriate material from the web...

Working for other people's mistakes. When working on a team project, if you're having to work on code that is not yours, not your design, or dependant on others, this can be an extremely stressful environment.  If you find that your project/tasks are simply garbage because of other people's inability to write clean code, it is sometimes difficult to show others the fault is not your own.

At least those have been the two main culprits of my work-related stress as of late, what's yours?

Disclaimer: as a company that provides web development services, Holley Grove is partial to browsers which actually attempt to adhere to web standards and valid HTML/CSS.  Firefox 3 is a great browser to use to make sure you're doing your part to promote web standards and make the Internet a better place to visit!

1. You're basically using SSH to communicate.  SSH is encrypted, and as such can be one of the most secure methods of communication available.
2. The setup is relatively simple, as you only need a few libraries on the client computers, and an SSH server running on the remote server.
3. Permissions, users, and groups are all preserved as they would be using normal SSH.
4. You can turn off in-secure, un-encrypted FTP completely.
5. Fast access to files via your file manager application as if they were stored locally on your computer.  For Linux Gnome users, your SSHFS mounted shares will show up in Nautilus and act accordingly.

HowTo:

For Ubuntu, simply install sshfs via the package manager.  You'll then need to add your Ubuntu user account to the Fuse group so that you'll have permission to use Fuse.  To do this, go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups.  Click on your username and click the "Properties" button.  Make sure the checkbox for "fuse" is checked and save your settings.  You may need to log out and log back in for these changes to take effect.  Now you can mount an SSH server in the directory called "remote":

sshfs landon@holleygrove.com: remote

And to disconnect:

fusermount -u remote

It's great to be able to run a command to mount an SSH server, then pop open nautlius and have all the remote files and directories listed right there just as any other files!