The Penalty Box

…you find out it gets much much worse. A while back, I wrote a post about how the housing market killed the economy. The podcast isn’t hosted there anymore, so here it is (it’s about 27 MB). If you haven’t already listened to it, you should. Alternatively, if you want to employ the Ostrich Algorithm, don’t read the rest of this post.

Usual web browsing got me to come across this article today. If you’re in tl;dr mode, essentially the banks were in such a hurry to package up bad mortgages and sell them as AAA investments on Wall Street that they lost or destroyed a lot of the original mortgage documents. In a last ditch effort to stave off foreclosure, some homeowners just said, “Show me the document that says I owe you money for this house.” Banks kinda went, “uhh…we’ll um…get back to you.” So instead of the banks pressuring the homeowner to foreclose and be out of house and home, the banks are now being pressured to renegotiate the mortgage.

MBAs mean jack when greed prevents you from making the most idiotic of business decisions.

I blame the engineers. Why? Because they’re there.

I’ve been trying for a while now to get my Rocketfish Bluetooth dongle to work in Linux so I can pair my phone and Bluetooth headset with my laptop to do useful wireless things. Unfortunately, despite a few claims of “just works” my dongle has yet to register as a Bluetooth device. Currently it registers as a mouse, keyboard and hub. Why? I haven’t a clue, and ye olde Google turns up no help.

The thing works in Windows, mainly because it comes with a CD that has Windows drivers on it.  I’m wondering if this is a hardware issue at this point because there are a few other dongle success stories on the Internet with plug-n-play ease after the appropriate Bluetooth packages were installed. I am having no such luck.

Does anyone have a USB Bluetooth dongle I could borrow to see if it’s just a hardware incompatibility? I’d rather not gamble on another device only to encounter the same problem again.

I lost it when he started rhyming in Cantonese.  I’m pretty sure there will be like 3 people who read this blog that will do the same.  Enjoy.