Figuratively, not literally – I’m trying to lay a kitchen floor before the gas man cometh tomorrow, we’re getting a dog tomorrow so have enjoyed a trip to the pet shop working out why there are more varieties of dog food than human food, and we’re two weeks away from shipping at work. So now it’s time for bed, and the sleep of the harried just.
Here’s an interesting video showing the growth of Wal-Mart since it’s founding in 1962. It’s interesting to see the population distribution of the US (roughly) reflected in retail.
I’ve been using a newish (at least for the latest beta) note taking and crap collecting app called Evernote recently. Among its cool features are a decent Mac client (or a Windows one if you must), syncing to an online client, OCR for pictures you insert, various mobile clients, and publishing of any items you want to a web page (so you can make notes of your shopping needs during the week, then browse to your shopping list on your phone at the weekend).
Anyway, I’ve been rather impressed. Take a look, and if you’d like an invite to the beta let me know (verloren at Google’s excellent email service).
Apparently the American Mortgage Bankers Association is having problems paying its mortgage.
I’d been thinking that I was a potential future victim of the crisis. The mortgage we have cost £195 to set up, and gets us 1.5% off the standard rate for the life of the mortgage. The current equivalent deal costs £795, and only gets you 1.25% off. And that’s with a very traditional lender, who cover at least 90% of their lending from their own savers.
But then I realized (and oh how this will make a capitalist reader’s heart soar) that there’s no ‘right’ level for such deals. I think it’s pretty clear that mortgages at the moment are a little expensive, but the one we got was probably a little cheap, depending as it did on an inflated lending market. Hopefully by the time we’re looking to move again things will have evened up some.
Oh yes, I took a little time off from blogging accidentally – work, life, that sort of thing – but I’m back now.