Ed Menendez's Blog

99 Cent Stores and Florida Homelessness

When a manufacturer incorrectly predicts demand for a product, it's left with a giant glut of product. The glut of product is either dumped by the manufacturer at a steep discount to raise cash, or it runs out of cash and its sold to someone to liquidate the excess inventory. Suddently, the product shows up at a 99 cent store. The manufacturer or liquidator gets some cash, the 99 cent store makes some money, and you can afford that Milli Vanili CD you've always wanted.

Unfortunately, because of the government, that's not how the housing market works. In the name of protecting american home owners, but really bailing out the well connected banks, we're propping up home prices. There are 300k such homes on property value stilts in Florida alone.

Meanwhile, Florida now has tent cities to help out the recently homeless. That's right, there are 300k homes vacant, yet we have tent cities in Florida. Obviously, there is demand for housing. Obviously there is too much supply. Unlike the unconnected manufacturer liquidating inventory at wholesale, banks have to do no such thing. They're better than us so they get bailouts.

Imagine, in a John Lennon sort of way, that the bailout didn't happen. That we went the 99 store route. Eventually, those houses would have been bought for pennies on the dollar. Some of those recently homeless would instead easily renegotiate what they owe to only half. If you bought the loan for 20 cents on the dollar, would you rather try to deal with the hassle of finding a buyer or take the offer from the family already living there of 50 cents on the dollar? Some might be converted to rentals. But instead of having to charge $1,000 per month, you could make a tidy profit only charging $300 per month.

Congratulations. We've all been mugged by Bushama. What can we do about it? Next time the government announces a multi-billion dollar program... Realize that those with more than you are better connected to the government. They're simply trying to dip their hands into your pockets through IRS forms. Next time don't ask what the government can do for you. Ask, what can the government do to you.

Efficiently Test Emails in Django

Testing emails can be an inefficient process. The email needs to leave your machine, arrive at the SMTP server, get forwarded to your test mail server and then downloaded by your email client. Do you want those 30 seconds of your life back?

Using an SMTP sink, you can receive the email to your screen instantly. Setup is easy.

♦ Download smtp_sink.py
♦ Put it in whatever your project directory is. You will want to create a "inbox" directory. Besides outputting to the screen, this will automatically copy the email to the inbox directory in case you need to reference it later
♦ Change your settings.py to have: EMAIL_HOST = '127.0.0.1', EMAIL_HOST_USER = '', EMAIL_PORT = 25

If you have a script that loads your sandbox environment automatically, you will want to load smtp_sink.py automatically. It will send a test signal to see if it's already running and not start twice.

If you run automated test scripts, the output of the "inbox" can be tested.

You Might Be a Murderer and a Thief If...

Outside of a self defence scenario, Would you kill someone? Would you pay someone to kill for you? It's only a semi-rhetorical question.

Taking a life is murder. Taking liberty is slavery. Taking property is theft. Would you do these things? Would you have others do these things for you? Probably not. But someone steals, murders and owns slaves in your name every day. The government does all three of these things every single day. When we pay for GM, give money to Isreal or print government welfare checks those are all theft. Your liberty is taken away every day when the governments bans pot, bans guns and prevents you from leaving or entering the country. The government murders people daily through "preemptive" wars.

If you voted for the government to do these things, you're stealing, murdering and creating slaves of future generations. If you support the government, congratulations, you are too! No fireworks or BBQ for you on independence day.

Here's a clear and concise definition of liberty and how it can never be legally taken away:

AvaTint Launched!

The site very simply takes your avatar and turns it into any color you select. The online community is starting to do this to support and protest many things. This is the 2.0 way of making your page background black for a cause.

We created this site in 90 minutes using Django on June 19th.

Bush + Obama Debt = Slavery

You probably recall the term "Taxation without Representation" as being a motto that fueled the American Revolution. The idea is simple. Englishmen in America paid taxes which were spent by a government they did not have a direct representative in.

Bush & Obama have done the same. When a government borrows money, the politicians who spent the money do not have to answer to the people who pay that debt. Instead of being separated by distance from the people paying, these politicians are now separated by time.

When you're forced to pay and not represented, you are a slave of the state. Be sure to send thank you letters to your slave masters from the future. Or, be sure to go to one of the TEA Parties and be a part of the next revolution.

Also, change your avatar color to yellow at AvaTint.com to protest the increased government spending.

Global Warming and Gay Marriage Don't Matter

When someone on the left, as socialists are often referred to in America, talks about Global Warming, now called Global Climate Change™, it often has the same ring to it as when someone who seriously believes about supernatural dieties speaks about god. Let's compare.

Besides the believing in god thing, some may sum up the religious right as those people who think you should have no fun. If you have fun, god will smite you.

Some may sum up the religious left as those who believe that you should not focus on producing wealth and industry. If you do, you will be smote.

Of course, both generalizations are inaccurate. Unfortunately for everyone, both sides hold truths in their arguments that get missed because both groups get lost in the trees of their arguments and completely forget about the forest. On the right, the point is to be a moral person. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat.

Easily Code Templates for iPhone in Django

Sometimes, you want to create a custom page for an iPhone or other small phone browser but don't want a custom URL or view for it. This can easily be handled by using the mini_render_to_response function.

Lawyer Army 1.0

Is government better than the people?

As we've been told again and again... capitalism has failed. It's not our fault that we believed property values would go up like a man over dosing on ED drugs. It's not our fault that we lied on our mortgage forms. It's definitely not our fault that no one checked those forms. We wouldn't have lied if we knew someone was going to look at it. It no one's fault. It's the system's fault. If we had a better system, none of this would have happened!

Let's investigate this system we're going to discard.

Hollywood Draft Private League Launch!

This new game allows you to play in a more traditional fantasy game model where you draft from a pool celebrities. This allows fun things like draft parties, benching players and all the regular things those familiar with fantasy sport already know.

MyEmailDraft.com Launched!

The site solves one simple problem. Messy email based fantasy drafts. Our goal was to make something as simple to setup as an email draft but without any of the downside.

Drug Warriors Terrorize Freedom

America has a very strong tradition of protecting speech. With good reason. Tyrants can never control thoughts, but if they can control speech, then they control your thoughts and indirectly your actions. Ultimately that's what they care about. Since it's prudent to solve the problem in utero, controlling speech is simply an abortion of your actions.

Tyrants, however, are clever animals. While Americans are militantly vigilant of the right to speak freely, we're not so vigilant of everything else. Tyrants are happy to let you say whatever you want, as long as you do what they say.

You're Too Little to Not Fail

Recently, you may have heard the term "Too Big to Fail" (TBF). TBF is simply a euphemism for well connected. The company or industry being spoken about is too well connected and has too many lobbyists. Notice how the financial sector and auto industry both get bailouts, but the realtors and the builders get nothing. The reason for this is that realtors and the construction industry don't have enough lobbyists making laws for them in congress. Too bad for them. Even worse for the rest of us since we've committed our kids to paying off a few trillion dollars in debt. AIG is too big to fail but your kid is little enough to saddle with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.