Category: internet

I’ve been plugging a lot of numbers into this Rent vs. Buy Calculator, and most of the scenarios I come up with point me towards continuing to rent. The big variable is the expected appreciation of the home you’re theoretically buying. There’s no real way of knowing that, of course. If I pick a conservative value, like 2% or 4%, it usually comes back telling me I should continue renting. If I assume a 10% annual appreciation, and I stick with the place for 10+ years, then it tells me I might want to buy.

This calculator, on the other hand, is pointing me towards buying over renting in most scenarios. It’s taking into account a number of variables that the other one doesn’t ask for. Who really knows what calculations they’re doing behind the scenes, though. I guess I need to do some more reading.

I’m not sure if I should be taking this website seriously or not. It’s pretty funny, either way. And they actually do have a point or two to make.

Here’s an interesting security-related blog from a Microsoft guy. I’m starting to see a lot more in-depth security stuff in blogs. The ISC handler’s diary is always interesting, for instance.

Walt Mossberg thinks the new MSN search isn’t quite as good as Google, and I tend to agree.

Searching for Andrew Huey on Google, for instance, finds my home page, and my Amazon page, no problem, along with a bunch of pages related to other Andrew Hueys.

Seaching my name on MSN though, comes up with a pretty weird result list. The very first link has neither Andrew nor Huey in it anywhere, as far as I can tell. It’s a pretty interesting quote, though.

Yahoo! Mail Plus now gives me pretty everything I would have wanted out of Yahoo mail. And the $20/year price is reasonable. Unfortunately, they didn’t introduce it until after I’d moved everything over to Gmail.

I’ve got a few Gmail invites, if anyone wants an account.

Perhaps I should swap my Gmail account for a picture of Gary Coleman’s head or this guy’s vote in the next election or lunch at the Carnegie deli. Or not. Geez, it’s just an e-mail account.

I just got myself a Gmail account! I spent the last hour or so changing my e-mail address at various web sites so that all the newsletters that used to go to my yahoo account will now go to Gmail. I really like the interface, and the absence of obnoxious, blinking Flash ads. The gigabyte of space is nice too. It’ll be interesting to see how the spam filtering works out. I’m getting about 50 spams a day to my Yahoo account. It files most of the them correctly, but I have to fish 2 or 3 good e-mails a week out of the spam folder, and I usually get 3 or 4 spam e-mails a day that wind up in my inbox instead of the spam folder.