No doubt many recent
home buyers lauded the Federal Making Home
Affordable program when it was
announced. The program which began in 2009 promised to give some relief
to certain homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages. The actual
details on what it takes to get a lender to agree to a modification &
under this program are slim. Details on the nature of these
modifications are even more scarce. What exactly can an applicant
reasonably expect? Is it really worth all the time and effort to apply?
This is what I set out to discover as I began applying in June, 2009. I
say began applying because I applied many times. The initial application
process was nothing more than a long survey of my financial situation.
Since my situation changes from day to day as paychecks come in and
bills go out, I didn’t lose heart as I got denied the first three times.
Each time I answered the survey (once online and 3 times on the phone),
I was able to truthfully give different answers especially when it came
to the last few questions about how much cash was in my bank account at
that moment. In August, I called CitiMortgage again and answered the
survey. I was completely prepared for another denial and I probably
wouldn’t have applied many more times had I been denied again. Instead,
I was accepted for a trial modification. The agent on the phone
explained to me the basic terms of the trial plan and asked if I’d like
to accept them.
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I might make this a regular feature because I think pointing out some of
these bad job listings in a humorous way may help some businesses figure
out how to attract great web developers and designers. I’m hoping this
will be both funny and educational. This is an example from Fresno’s
craigslist. I’m going to copy it here stripping out most of the
identifying information to protect the guilty.
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I have two good options for internet service at my home in the Fresno High
area: AT&T DSL which tops out at 1.5Mbits at my location or comcast which is
much faster but can’t be unbundled from cable TV service which I don’t want and
costs almost $80 / month. This is not attractive to a young professional like
myself and doesn’t score the city any points when trying to attract other young
professionals to the area.
This is why I was excited to see Google’s announcement
today about offering
its own internet service to interested municipalities. What’s more, they want
residents and city officials to nominate their own communities to be among the
first on Google’s rollout list. If we can get enough interest going, perhaps we
can be one of the first cities on Google’s new internet service area plus it
would get us some national attention and in a good way. Can we do it?
The service Google will be offering is 1Gb on an all-fiber network which is
many hundreds of times more than my current service with AT&T. Lets force AT&T
and Comcast into a real competition for once. I’m tired of crappy internet
service and sometimes it makes me wish I lived elsewhere.
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A new development in the
mobile operating system market brings an open source convert to the
table. As of Symbian’s
announcement
today, three of the five major players can now be considered open source
systems. This pits Microsoft and Apple’s closed systems directly against
Google, Palm and Symbian in an epic battle of ideology. The playing
field for desktop operating systems has always been slanted because open
source systems haven’t had competitive desktop systems until recently
(after most folks have already grown well accustomed to their closed
source systems).
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The central valley buy local
campaign probably began with the best of
intentions. The idea is simple, get people to pump their hard earned
cash right back into the place they live and work. If everyone did this
more, the local economy would be much better off. It would be an easy
way to stimulate the local economy and we’d all be better off for the
benefits in public services funding.
Before I launch into my tirade which I’m particularly jazzed about, let
me just start by saying that I actually like buying local and I even
like the buy local campaign. I would go so far as to say that the
campaign doesn’t even come close to covering all the benefits the
economy would see if we were all following along.
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