Hey me! Talk to me!
combined monthly household income woman called a HKD$10K monthly mortgage payment condominium “affordable”. A prime candidate for negative assetee.
“Affordable” is a term for the full payment in one shot, lady. The correct term for that condo for you is “way-out-of-your-league”!
After lunch today while we were about to head home for a nap. The sun suddenly came out for a bit, so we decided to go for a short drive instead. We were heading out toward Saikong via Ma On Shan to avoid possible traffic the opposite way.
As we arrived the Bak Sak area, where there is a Golf Course and BBQ area, we decided to stop for some fresh air. We used to come here for afternoon golf during the last two summers. This is our first time here this year.
While it was still overcast, the warm breeze was very nice. We just stopped there and walked for a bit, bought some ice-tea and sat in the car for some shut eyes. The feeling was very calm and peaceful.
There used to be a restaurant at the club house with some lawn tables and chairs outside. It has since been replaced with pop dispenser machines. In the carpark just before entering the BBQ area, there is a “new” container type temporary cafe. As this is a government rental area, permitted permanent buildings are very strictly enforced. So any other structures would have to be of temporary type. However, it is this kind of structures and the lack of maintenance that makes it very shabby. Lowering the style of an otherwise a very rare uncrowded wonderful area.
Many times I have to print a load of outline guiding forms for Alec to write his creative writing homework for school. The all-in-one at home is just too slow for the job even though using refill ink cuts the ink cost down by about 1/5. I have been thinking for getting a color laser printer for home when I bought the Xerox Phaser 3116 monochrome laser for work.
After browsing through brochures and reviews on the Internet, I find none of them is all that good. The HP LJ2550 and the Lexmark C510 are just about the only two that supports emulated postscript for Mac. And I am not about to go thru all the hassle again trying to figure out whether the others are indeed Mac compatible. The Epson Acculaser C1100 is one without postscript support but has OS X drivers. Although the price of the printer itself is the least expensive color laser at about HKD$2800, I worry that the drum costs might add up as well as its rather large body size.
To be honest, most color laser printers are almost 4 times the size of a monochrome one and about a 1.5X diagonal footprint. The safest bet would be the HP LJ2550, but it doesn’t have a proper paper tray and the photo quality is said to be inferior to that of the Lexmark C510’s.
The Lexmark comes in a close second in lowest price at HKD$3288 but if you factored in the promotional free multifunction inkjet printer or a monochrome toner cartridge, it is the lowest color laser printer in the market. However, first off, the price in the US is almost US$80 less than the HK price, so the freebie is not exactly free. It has no single sheet feeder, so changing paper sizes or printing the odd envelope would be a big hassle. Accessories are said to be very expensive although toner cartridges are said to be relatively inexpensive. Then there is the noise issue. It is said to be extremely noisy. Cons out weigh pros here, at least for me.
So back to monochromes. It would be nice to have double sided printing and perhaps network capability to boot. These two function alone adds to over HKD$3400 for something like the Brother 5170DNT, which puts it right in the ball park of a color laser printer. Forget that idea.
So, I was once again faced with none but one solution that’s truly inexpensive. Hence, a second Xerox Phaser 3116, for home this time, which has been tested to run on both PC and Mac with a workaround. At HKD$688 with six $100 toner cartridge coupons, I doubt anyone can go too wrong with it.
They do things by the book irregardless to real world situations.
In April’s issue of Macworld, it was reported that a product marketing official from Rio, the first company to ship MP3 players, said “Apple shipped a somewhat neutered product” in regards to the iPod Shuffle presumably for the player’s not having an user interface.
In the real world, one indeed needs an user interface for large capacity MP3 players with a huge number of songs stored in the player, and preferably an excellent UI for that matter. But in capacities under 1GB, and especially those who strive for audio quality but prefer a solid state unit so number of songs are kept fairly low, all that is really needed is a shuffle function so that the player would not play the exact same song as well as sequence as it gets turned on every single time.
Even if the shuffle function were to be optional, I doubt anyone would want to omit it. Besides, if one loves that one opening song so much, one can simply unload just that one song like my cousin used to fill up an audio cassette tape with just one song recorded over and over again on the entire tape both sides.
In a recent Government’s urban renewal project, officials tried to convince property owners who have an entire building rented out with the fact that the fair market value of a vacant building being higher than one collecting rents, so such rent collecting building owners are therefore expected to accept an offer to buy at that same market value as the vacant building without further saying unless and only unless an independent surveyor had calculated otherwise.
While that fact for the sake of calculating market value by the book is indeed true, it does not take into account that the “building value” of such a rent collecting building especially when it is over several decades old is also higher than that vacant building with the exact same specifications in the real world.
Lawyers and Government officials tried to explain and support their point with an analogy that if the two buildings were to be bought out with the help of a bank loan, then banks would no doubt give a much more attractive and lower interest rate for the purchase of the vacant building than the fully occupied one.
And heaven forbid that I should be not stupid enough to know also in fact that if the owner of the same 40 year old building were to try to take out a second mortgage from a bank, it would be rather difficult to get anything at all for such a fully vacant building let alone a better interest rate.
With another analogy. Would any owner of a fully rented building be stupid enough to be let to believe that he should exchange buildings with the owner who owns the exact same spec’d but fully vacant one and pay for the difference of the market value?
The problem here is whether or not the owner had put the building up for sale. In the case of the urban renewal project, the owners were offered to buy. Most owners did not offer to sell. So what it boils down to is if the offered prices were attractive enough to the owners.
To the owners of fully vacant 40 year old buildings who had been paying for Government Rates, repairs, and all other necessary expenses without any income generated by the building at all, the answer is simple. However, to the owners receiving a fair investment return rate from rents with the protential to increase the rent in the immediate future, who were told that by the book and calculation of the professional surveyors that their buildings are worth 6% less than those that are fully vacant – without the rights to decline the offer for it is a Government’s urban renewal project, it is meet on a cutting board.
The owers may not be bookworms and may look like “Don-Paul Meet” or fish toros, but they are not as stupid as the Government looks.
我又唔係傻強，你地唔好當我係傻既至得0架~。
iTune is a very nice program. iPhoto is total crap.
I want my iPicasa.
Saving is a good virtue.
However, if money were worth above everything, and even when one is so well off that basically no necessity or desire is out of grasp and then some but when money to one is still more valuable than anything (and especially) including the health and wellbeing of one’s offspring and elderlies…
then what good is money anyway?
What’s the difference between whether money were in fact worth more than anything or absolutely worthless? Either way would money then be either not used to or not being able to exchanged for anything else. So that one would then be either left with nothing at all or simply money alone.
There are things that are bought with money well spent, and then there are things that’s not. But when money were spent traveling for deluxe leisure yet not for traveling in order to look after the health and wellbeing of the closest one when time permits, then the undoing cancels out any virtue.
Maybe that’s the difference between Christianity and Buddhism.
But then again, I am no Christian nor am I a Buddhist; so what do I know?
This is, after all, my own soliloquy.
I knew more iPod Mini accessories would be in need, that’s why I didn’t go for the 6GB version. However, I’d never thought that I should have bought an iPod set speakers, some sort of stereo line-out attachment, as well as a FM transmitter for the car radio all at once right from the start.
Now, instead of my music enjoyment, M is enjoying my music collection, and I am forced to listen to amateur singing the same collection – like Lionel Richie’s song put it… “all night long, all night~, all night long~~”…
And all day as well for weekends…
……………………………..
Reminds me of Eddie Murphy’s impression of a headphone wearing singing public transporter scene in one of his movies.
In an in-law-family dinner last night, some questioned why I bought the iPod Mini for M when “those other” MP3 players can be had for a less price, and what good is a HKD$1K’ish MP3 player when a radio only costs a couple of hundreds?
First of all, need I remind anyone that radios are for news and not for music enjoyment when every single song from any other stations other than Radio 4 is interrupted by the DJ’s stupid comments just so people can’t record off of it?
Who needs more memory than 256MB and 512MB? The question is, did you want to bore yourself with a “broken record” or enjoy your music collection?
I then asked why on earth would I want to buy a HKD$1300 512MB Christmas ornaments like el cheapo player, when I could get a 4GB Lamborghini like player with utmost craftsmanship, free engraving, and free delivery for just a couple of hundreds more?
Even something closer in comparison like the Creative Zen Micro with a semi-cool design, it isn’t Mac compatible. Not to mention how much better and much more user intuitive iPod’s accompanied software iTune is compared to others. And iTune is both PC and Mac compatible.
To me, I wouldn’t spend a dime on any MP3 players if it wasn’t the Mini with free engraving for the occasion. The Mini itself may or may not do it for me but the point is, for the sake of saving money like some might desire, I simply do away with craps and save not just a small percentage for less of a product, but rather the entire amount all together.
To me, that HKD$5K with a 25% discount dinner for 8 in itself was a total waste if it wasn’t for mom’s birthday day. Besides, I could have cooked better for less.
More Zen than the Creative Zen Micro.
It was our 15th Wedding Anniversary a few days ago. I was surfing the Apple site and suddenly realized that only shopping online with Apple’s site do we get free engraving for iPods. I had thought about getting a Zen Micro for M since she needed some sort of recording device for Alec’s school activity committee meetings, which I don’t really want her to continue going. But the engraving fits the occasion better. Besides, The Zen does not support Mac. So I went ahead and ordered an iPod Mini. It took them 3-1/2 days to have it delivered to our door! Speedy service.
The Pink is definitely the best color of this generation of the iPod Minis. I got her the 4GB version for I know there would be more spending on accessories and that she doesn’t need all that many songs with her all at once. While looking thru Apple’s site and a few other shops, none of the cases really do justice to the good looks of the Mini and belt clipping would mean a remote control earphone would also be necessary, I think the armband should work out for her. All of a sudden I realized there was a armband that came with one of the bicycle lights and it seems to do the trick with the belt clip that came with the Mini.
The craftsmanship, material used, and finishing of the Mini is every bit as good as the Powerbook, which is top notch. I am very pleased with it.
Now, if only they would put out iPods in color cases…
WhaUSay?!