OT: Democracy Californica Style

Do you spend all day on the web looking for things to be outraged about?

I'm happy to have other California companies leave for Arizona or Texas. Makes more room for us. But you're mostly going to get crazy money-losing web app things.

What sorts of stuff are you seeing in that tach park?

I'm so good (and fast) that I have lots of "self-amusement" time >:-}

There's only one declared tenant so far... a Linear design center.

That's a good indicator ;-)

Are you getting a good ROI on your Californica taxes? ...Jim Thompson

Missed commenting on "Makes more room for us." You're in San Fransicko, the "bailers" are coming from the San Jose neighborhoods.

"Makes more room for us" seems a rather stupid assertion. ...Jim Thompson

Probably so. The kind of engineering people that we need like to live here. It's expensive for production people, so we have to pay them a lot more than they would make somewhere else. It's a boutique business so it works here. What's embarassing is that we've accidentally made more money on real estate than we have selling electronics.

California is crazy but it's beautiful. And the pollen count is low. I can mostly ignore the crazy parts. The state taxes are an expense against the Federal taxes, which are the big ones.

Louisiana was cheap. I could have stayed there and fixed broken guitar amps or something. The women are better here too. No complaints.

Well, we're here and you're not, and we seem to know what we're doing. We'd welcome another real estate and tech bust, the sooner the better.

So many people hate California because they are afraid that it's as good as they have heard. I seriously explored America for six months or so before I loaded up my MG Midget and drove from New Orleans to San Francisco. It's worked pretty well so far.

No, it's not good for Arizona, or the country. You're just importing snowflakes from CA. Leave them where they are, where they can't do any more harm.

Whatever rings your chime. We lived in Cupertino from March to September... I didn't like the population density. I like the wide open spaces.

(How come gasoline costs ~$1/gal more in Californica than in Arizona? You've got the refineries right there, while Arizona's gasoline comes via pipeline from Texas. And Californica highway conditions are terrible.)

I don't like cold and I hate snow... completely got my fill of that in my youth... WV + MA were quite enough to last a lifetime.

As for mountain views, major ranges north and south of me, for my backyard viewing enjoyment ;-)

(I won't even need to leave my backyard to see a magnificent fireworks display on the 4th. Courtesy of Schnepf Farms, about a mile north... Joerg knows of them and the adjacent Olive Mill ;-) ...Jim Thompson

They're building a really cool choo-choo with the money.

Editing....

And house prices for an Arizona-comparable house (in Los Gatos) were

Came back to Arizona and bought a 2850 sq.ft. (single level) on an acre lot for $28,500 ;-) ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions.

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness." -James Barrie

We live in a village near a canyon with a creek and critters. We know a bunch of our neighbors. We rarely go to downtown San Francisco.

I couldn't stand a monster stone and steel city like New York. A few museums aren't worth it. The best thing about this town, and about California, is the natural stuff. I grew up in the tropics, mud and heat and mosquitoes and sorta dumb people. I do miss the thunderstorms, and the food.

I click a mouse all day, so on the way home I park somewhere and hike for a while. Stairways and trails.

The blackberries will be ripe soon. We had a wet winter and it looks like a good crop.

There's some special anti-smog gasoline blend. It's not certain that it actually helps.

We get snow when we want it; it's a 3 hour drive away. Mo is from Boston, but she still likes snow. I'm from New Orleans and it still amazes me.

Our kitchen table looks out on Mt San Bruno. Not the rockies, but not New Orleans either.

We do get a lot of fog.

We usually go to Truckee. They have the classic small-town parade, marching bands and fire trucks, and there's fireworks over Donner Lake later on. It's nice.

The tekkies are mostly OK, not too flakey. The current style is lumbersexual, meaning geeks dress up to look like lumberjacks, as if they actually know which end of a chain saw is which.

When I tell people that I design actual hardware, they are impressed.

An 8 million dollar house was sold near us last week. Sorta ugly.

They have an approach that if some additive is a good thing then loads of additives must be better. Californian fuel is more like a cocktail of additives with a modest amount of petroleum distillate in it. It is supposed to help with pollution caused by inefficient vehicle engines.

"Tasty" MTBE contaminated groundwater is one nasty side effect.

With Trump in power you can look forward to its reintroduction...

Improving car fuel efficiency to something nearer 50mpg would help more.

Here that'd buy you a 10,000 sq.ft. house, in high-end Scottsdale, on at least 5 acres. ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

Thinking outside the box... producing elegant solutions.

"It is not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do that is the secret of happiness." -James Barrie

That one looks to be on the standard 24-foot wide lot.

When I lived in NOLA, I hated the grass. In that climate, cutting grass is torture, and if you don't do it twice a week it grows so high that the mower bounces off.

Nobody has lawns here, although almost everyone around here is a gardener. We kept beehives in the back yard for years, until Mo got stung once and had a bad reaction. She misses her bees.

Egads! My driveway is wider than that.

WV was the same way... if you waited more than a week, you needed to use a scythe :-(

...Jim Thompson