Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more.
Greenwich, Connecticut real estate, politics, and more
Introducing our airline seat room expander. Break out one of these, give a few small coughs and watch that idiot who’s reclined her seat into your face clear out.
Chopsticks not included but suggested, for the prodding of inattentive passengers. Poke, cough, glance down at the box. Repeat as necessary.
Village Idiots
They’re live blogging it over at PJ Media. Less painful than watching it live, I suppose, but really, why bother?
Coding is hard. Bloomberg can’t do it, nor can Joe, “we’ll teach coal miners to code” Biden. Excellent article on the subject here.
[Biden]: “Anybody who can go down 300 to 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”
It’s true that some Americans can quickly learn the rudiments of some high-level programming language, like COBOL, and then write a program to do some low-level task, like spit out some dinky report. But becoming a dependable programmer involves much more than knowing a programming language. This will be driven home when you get a 3 AM call to leave your warm bed and come into work. And when you arrive there and turn into your cubicle what do you see sitting in the middle of your desk but a foot-high stack of interconnected computer paper; it’s called a “core dump” and it’s all in hexadecimal code (i.e. machine language, not COBOL) and you’re supposed to find out what the hell happened to a batch update program that just blew up and which must run before the program that cuts the payroll checks can be run, and the program is not one that you wrote nor know anything about, but it’s a program that you must fix and pronto. And the thing is: the program that blew up might not even be the problem. So, to function as a programmer, you often need to be something of a sleuth, a detective.
This kid started programming computers before Mike Bloomberg formed his company in 1981, which means before the debut of the personal computer by IBM. It was during the “Age of the Mainframe Computer,” RIP. Back then, businesses and institutions had large staffs of applications programmers developing systems specifically for those enterprises. One couldn’t just saunter into Best Buy and buy a DVD to do your payroll, taxes, or whatever; your programmers had to write such software for you. And back in those hoary days of yesteryear when I would encounter jokers like Joe Biden pooh-poohing the difficulty of writing computer programs, I’d think about how quickly they could become dependable productive programmers. And what I came up with was: a minimum of a year of fulltime work and study. And that’s a year not for somebody “who can throw coal into a furnace,” but for your average Ph.D. without experience in computers.
Of course, nowadays one can’t find PhDs without computer experience. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find Americans who don’t own computers, inasmuch as their smartphones are sophisticated computers. So virtually everybody has some experience with some kind of computer, even if it’s just the self-check-out lines at Walmart or an ATM. Despite that, it may be more difficult to learn programming now than 40 years ago, because computers do so much more now. Even when mainframes ruled the Earth, programmers had to continually be updating their know-how by learning new programming languages, new operating systems, new access methods, etc. etc.
It’s a pity that at the aforementioned event when Biden spoke of the ease of learning to program that no one thought to ask the obvious question: Vice-President Biden, can you program? If Joe can’t program computers, then his observations on the ease with which coal miners can retrain and move into a radically different profession carry no weight and can be summarily dismissed. Now more than ever, it’s essential that our leaders know what they don’t know.
Unlike Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg is someone who appreciates the rigors of working in Information Technology. However, Bloomberg doesn’t appreciate the brains it takes to be a farmer, which Victor Davis Hanson passionately responded to on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. (For more of VDH on farming, listen to this podcast at Hoover.) Bloomberg’s “genius” was incorrectly identifying a need 40 years ago and then filling that need. And to corner the market on market information, Mike had to hire a bunch of “nerds” who could program.
It should be fairly obvious that computer programming might not be quite as simple as Joe Biden thinks it is. If it were so simple, then why would some of the biggest personal fortunes in the world be those of people in the software biz? There was a time when Microsoft’s Bill Gates was the richest man on the planet. Biden’s claims about the ease of learning to program are facially false. (I’d say Mr. Biden needs a “core dump.”) But the question remains: What the devil is old Joe really planning to do about all the coal miners he’s planning to put out of work?
Avocado/lime time capsule tearing up the California real estate market
This remarkable condo in Ramona, Calif., was a green-saturated masterpiece when first built in 1974.
And because it hasn’t really been inhabited over the decades, what remains is a jaw-dropping time capsule decked out in groovy shades of bright green. It’s currently on the market for $375,000, and admirers of the impeccably executed emerald interiors are taking notice.
When the Country Villas West condo complex was built just outside San Diego in the early ’70s, the best unit was reserved for its developer. This particular developer had an abiding affection for hues in the green spectrum and hired a professional designer to create a trendy, fearless, one-of-a-kind space.
A short time later, the 1,800-square-foot condo was sold to a retired couple as a vacation property. However, they rarely set foot in the place. Now the couple’s children are ready to sell the kiwi-infused residence, complete with green wallpaper, green carpets, green countertops, green cabinetry and green custom fabrics.
It’s a vintage lover’s dream come true! Closed up tight for more than four decades, everything inside is in mint condition and will be included with the sale.
“Everything is vintage — even the magazine on the coffee table is 30 years old,” says listing agent Nancy Maranan. “It’s a true time capsule.”
Maranan says interest in the house has been off the charts, thanks in large part to the listing photos.
But, like anything these days, there are plenty of folks out there who are put off by the throwback avocado home.
“Some people are mean, but what can you do?” Maranan says. “I’m looking for a buyer.”
Reached for comment, Ms. Rinfret’s publicist confirmed to FWIW that the designer was aware of this new appreciation of classic avocado, and was busy revising the proof-sheets of Volume III of Greenwich Style as we spoke.
Lookout ape
EVERY BABOON DIES. NOT EVERY BABOON REALLY LIVES: Baboon escapes vasectomy op at testing lab and flees with two female monkeys.
Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll (InstaPundit)
Have you hugged a fracker today?
A comment today from Captain Cob reminded me of this:
PUTIN PUPPETS, UNMASKED: Impeachment Testimony Describes Putin’s Propaganda War On American Fracking. “In recent testimony to House lawmakers, Fiona Hill, John Bolton’s former direct report at the National Security Council and the White House’s former top expert on Russia, reported that Russian propaganda was working to undermine the use of hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, in the United States.”
Well, of course. Fracking has done more to undermine Putin than any other single U.S. initiative.
As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:
If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:
Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.
Yep. You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.
Not so much traitors, most of them, but useful idiots.
528 Riverside Road sold as a building lot for the surprising sum of $2 million back in January 2015, and those buyers resold it at a $400,000 loss less than two years later. They, in turn, tried selling it for $1.9 million in July this past year and today have retreated to the sum they paid for it, $1.6 million. I’m not sure how much money they put into preparing the land for a new house, but whatever it was, they’ve lost it, and more.
Spring Training Begins
Bloomberg offices across the country are vandalized by Bernie Bros
Chicago campaign workers for the former New York mayor woke up Monday to find the office spray-painted in large red letters with slurs including “racist,” “sexist,” and “oligarch,” the Chicago Sun-Times said.
At least six other offices have also been similarly tagged, including ones in Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Utah, where windows were smashed, Bloomberg’s office then revealed.
Those attacks once again included the word “oligarch” — along with “eat the rich” and “corporate pig.”
Should be an exciting next few months — or years.
Clean slate
The owner of 29 Twin Lakes Road (the lower half of Riverside’s Gilliam Lane) paid $2.195 million for it when it was put up for sale in 2013 @$2.150. He scraped the exiting house (that would be the Searles’ Cobra) and nothing more. Now, seven years later, he’s asking $2.695 for a one-acre lot. Could get it; it’s a desirable location, but there’s nothing particularly special about this specific parcel, so we’ll see.
What, you want driveway sealer for this price? Come on.
78 Zaccheus Mead Lane is now listed with Joe Barbieri, and the price has dropped to $5.995 million. You couldn’t find a better agent than Joe, but I’ve been following this house during its downward path from $12.950 over several years, and nothing so far has given me reason for optimism about its chances. In fact, though I predicted it would eventually sell for half its asking price back then, that marker has already been passed. There’s bound to be a bottom here, because the combination of 5 acres, a good road, and quality construction must be worth something. Question is, what?
The owner paid $13 million for this behemoth in 2006 — poor choice.
Roof looks a little peaked, too
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