On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:28:42 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> £300,000 divided by 30 years = £10,000 per year. So, a third of the
>>> highest income available. And that's neglecting the fact that they
>>> presumably charge you 80% APR or so on the loan...
>> 
>> 80% is illegal pretty much everywhere.  Try more like 5%-7% for the
>> average.
> 
> Illegal? That's impressive. I wonder how the banks have managed to not
> campaign to get that "fixed". You know, given that banks basically
> operate by extorting money from people...

Pretty easy that they wouldn't get that "fixed" - at 80%, nobody could 
afford to borrow money from them, so they wouldn't make any money.  But 
mortgage rates generally tied to a national index (in here, it's set by 
the FED as I understand it).  80% interest would be seen as being 
predatory and even those in the government wouldn't be able to afford 
that.

>> And 30K is not the "highest income available" - I know plenty of people
>> who make more than that.
> 
> OK, I rephrase. If you happen to be a doctor or a politician or have a
> PhD in something, sure, maybe you can earn more than £30,000 a year. I
> personally don't know of anybody who has managed to do this. (With the
> obvious exception of the upper management at the company I work for.)

I know people who work in IT who make that kind of money.  I had 
suggested to a friend in Scotland (where we're likely to move to in a 
couple of years) that I need a job, and I suggested 25K GPB (since that's 
the minimum to qualify for a work permit), and he said "oh, no, we'll pay 
you much better than that - don't worry about that").

And I have no degree.

But consulting work does pay well; generally, it pays very well.

>> Clearly it's not an impossible feat as there are millions of homeowners
>> in the UK, right?
> 
> As I understand it, most of them bought houses before the prices became
> as stupid as they are today...

Many of them certainly did, but I know people down around Hastings who 
bought just a few years ago.

> (I gather the idea was that eventually when prices were so high nobody
> could afford them, prices would start to come back down again. Instead,
> the banking sector went thermonuclear.)

Prices tend to adjust over time, partly because of inflation, partly 
because of "the market", but they do tend to settle out at times to where 
they're reasonable.

I've a friend in Colorado who paid $60K for her house some 20 years ago.  
Another here in Utah who paid about $25K for a house in the downtown 
area.  Ours?  $165K, and we're expecting to get about $350K for it when 
we move out (if we can't get that, we basically won't be in a position to 
move).

But we've also put a lot of money into fixing the place up.  There's a 
house just down the street from us that sold for $725K just a few weeks 
ago.  It's new construction, and that's a factor, but it's clearly the 
most expensive home in the neighbourhood.

But one other thing that's fairly common is to buy a house and let the 
value increase - and then sell it for the increased value and roll that 
over into another house.  If one is smart about it, one can make a pretty 
decent amount of money doing that through "trading up" like that.  It's 
rare at least here for anyone to live in the same house long enough to 
pay off a 30 year mortgage.

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>> And 30K is not the "highest income available" - I know plenty of 
>> people who make more than that.
> 
> OK, I rephrase. If you happen to be a doctor or a politician or have a 
> PhD in something, sure, maybe you can earn more than £30,000 a year. I 
> personally don't know of anybody who has managed to do this. (With the 
> obvious exception of the upper management at the company I work for.)
> 


You know me, I only have the equivalent of "A" levels and I'm a 
consultant. I'm also working with someone in the same position who 
doesn't even have "O" levels.

Think about it!

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Earthquake insurance is a required 
> part of our policy, and if it does hit, the company will take care of 
> things for us.

Where are you living? Not CA?

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:35:20 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 
>> 2. House prices appear to start at around £300,000 or so. The ver
y best,
>> most unobtainable jobs pay £30,000/year. That's a pretty friggin 
huge
>> gap.
> 
> Mortgages tend to be amortized over a 15 or 30 year period, at least ov
er 
> here.  Ours is about $1500/month.

No. Loans are amortized. Mortgages go the other direction. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> mortgage rates generally tied to a national index (in here, it's set by 
> the FED as I understand it).

There are USA loans indexed by London monitary measurements like LIBOR.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> The backup scan ran as an AT job.
>>
>> I'm assuming you mean it ran at the server to pull files, rather than 
>> at the client to push files. Might be better to switch that around.
> 
> Yeah, that would mean that all the directory scanning would be local 
> rather than remote. Probably a lot faster that way.

You'd still have to compare against the server, so that part is likely the 
same either way. Unless you're going to trust the last time it ran.

> Because that's the only way to specify the logon credentials for the 
> remote system.

net use \\xyz\pdq hispassword /user:xyz\hisusername

>>> mapped under the system account which runs AT jobs, 
>>
>> Why? Tell AT to run it as a different user.
> 
> There are other AT jobs running, of course...

Tell "at" to run *your* job under a different user ID. Not "at" itself.
Hmmm, if that doesn't work, use Task Manager, where that *is* an option.
And if you don't have that, then launch yourself and have yourself change privs.

Or use the domain administrator, which should have access to everything, 
right? Or give backup privs to the account running at jobs on the server?

>>> And don't even get me started on how absurdly difficult it is to 
>>> write DOS scripts that handle failure properly...
>>
>> That's what robocopy is for.
> 
> Not sure how you figure that out, but hey.

Google.

> Robocopy can't copy a file, it says "I can't copy this file" and exits. 

Uh, no. Do a "robocopy /?" and look at the retry options section. What would 
you have it do if the files it's backing up are on a PC that someone turns off?

> Now the script has to do something about this.

There isn't a lot it can do except look at the exit status of robocopy and 
send you a message if it failed.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:05:22 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Earthquake insurance is a required
>> part of our policy, and if it does hit, the company will take care of
>> things for us.
> 
> Where are you living? Not CA?

Utah - the Wasatch fault is the one I'm near - I think it's probably no 
more than 40 miles east of where I live, and closer to where my office is 
in Provo.

Jim

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On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:08:22 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> mortgage rates generally tied to a national index (in here, it's set by
>> the FED as I understand it).
> 
> There are USA loans indexed by London monitary measurements like LIBOR.

Interesting, I didn't know that. :-)

Jim

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On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:05:43 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:35:20 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>> 
>>> 2. House prices appear to start at around £300,000 or so. The very
>>> best, most unobtainable jobs pay £30,000/year. That's a pretty friggin
>>> huge gap.
>> 
>> Mortgages tend to be amortized over a 15 or 30 year period, at least
>> over here.  Ours is about $1500/month.
> 
> No. Loans are amortized. Mortgages go the other direction. :-)

Yes, right - I always get that backwards. :-)

Jim

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> Maybe I'm just bitter. I paid £900 for a moped. When it was stolen, they 
> gave me £25. Later I paid $1,200 for a car. When it was crashed, they gave 
> me £75.

You didn't haggle with them?  They *always* offer a ridiculously small 
amount to start with, after you complain a few times that your bike/car was 
worth way more than that with some evidence (eg print-outs and newspaper 
cut-outs) they give you *a lot* more.  They are meant to give you an amount 
necessary to replace the item that was stolen/written off, it's up to you to 
prove to them how much you need for that.

> I mean, seriously, it was *so* worth paying £700 per year in insurance 
> premiums for that.

Your 700 per year is because you are more likely (as a young male) to smash 
into someones $100k Audi or BMW (or force the driver to need years of 
medical care), not because your car might get stolen or you crash it.

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