To this day, most of the e-mails I receive are from people asking me some variation of “No, really, how much does it cost to use these calculators? When am I going to be charged? What’s the catch?”
I intend to keep all the calculators free for anyone who cares to use them. I have built this website because I really do enjoy the hell out of blogging about tech stuff and workers’ comp law, dissecting complex workers’ compensation math formulas, and building something useful to myself and other professionals. This is quite literally how I spend my free time. I’m just that nerdy.
I upgraded the website to WordPress 2.7 RC 1 over the weekend.
I generally do not bother installing the updates between the major upgrades. My major concern in upgrading is eliminating possible security issues and obtaining additional program features. I maintain a totally separate website from PDRater.com, also running on WordPress, where I install the very latest versions of WordPress and try out new variations on the look-and-feel of this website, new calculators, and new ideas about how best to present the current calculators.
Very late Wednesday night I upgraded this website to WordPress v2.7. I’m not sure I fully appreciate how much better it might be than the various release candidates.
Thursday morning I discovered an unintended effect of upgrading is that it “broke” one of my plugins. (Reza: Thanks for pointing it out!) I had modified an existing plugin, EasyPayPal, to allow this website to accept credit card payments. WordPress v2.7 changed the user profiles area of the website – and made it so that instead of seeing an option to become a paid subscriber, you just saw a cryptic PHP error. This is nothing that would have compromised a credit card number or anything – it just would have prevented anyone from giving me money.
A little bit of bug testing, one new line of code and its back up and running. :)
Maybe I’m just being thick or just something here. Someone, please, explain this to me. Our president was adamant that home owners needed to learn a lesson about the free market and that the government would not bail them out of bad mortgages. A few weeks ago, $700 billion in bailouts for huge companies was also unthinkable. As of last night, our president tried to convince us that bailing out these companies is a good idea.
And, it probably is – that’s not the point. The point is that this seems a double standard. I realize that every major bank closing its doors overnight is not a good thing. Millions of people losing their homes is not good either. After all of this, I’ve got one question and one idea.
The Question:
Assuming (at the time I’m writing this) a U.S. population of 305,248,844 of which there are 138,000,000 taxpayers. Our government is about to spend $700,000,000,000 of our money. I figure that’s about $5,072.46 a person. Hey, what’s the worst that could happen if we passed that money out to the taxpayers? A complete collapse of our financial institutions overnight? HAHAhaha … um… ha? <crickets chirping>
The Idea:
The big problem right now isn’t so much the bad mortgages, its that people aren’t paying their mortgages. And, people aren’t paying their mortgages because they can’t afford the increased payments due to the higher interest rates from their adjustable rate mortgages. My idea is give everyone with an ARM the option to freeze their interest rate at their introductory rate.
Upsides:
Mortgages and property taxes get paid.
Lawns get mowed.
Banks get paid back.
Downsides:
People get to live in houses they can’t really afford. So what? At least they’re mowing their lawn.
I’ve just invented the 90 year home loan. Again, so what? That loan will have to be paid off before its sold – and they will sell it.
Banks get paid back slower than they thought. Its better than closing your doors, amiright WaMu?
Anyhow, I guess I’ll leave the economic policy up to the professionals. (’cause, you know, they’ve been doing a bang up job).
