I was outraged to learn that my property taxes have increased by 110% from the last assessment on the few properties that my wife and I have purchased over the past three years in Breckenridge, Colorado. Our aching economy just cannot handle another blow like this one, specifically when our local economy is mainly driven by the real estate industry from sales, vacation rentals, new construction projects and other services tightly associated with the real estate industry. My property tax on a vacant lot in the Breckenridge Highlands went up from $3800 to $8000 from the last assessment on the pretentious argument that the value of my lot has increased to exceed $500,000. The fact of the matter is that I actually had this particular lot for sale for almost two years and I have initially listed the property at $420,000 and I had to lower the price to $325,000 and still I have not received one offer.
I understand the strict mathematical formula used to determine property taxes based on comparable sales values within a specific year, nevertheless, our local assessors are purposefully acting dump and evaluating all properties in a given area at a similar values regardless of location, age, views and other factors that usually play a big role in determining the true value of a property in the real market.
The increase in assessed property values throughout Breckenridge and Summit county is adding a heavy burden on an already struggling community making it harder for businesses and families to survive the current nationwide economical crises where everyone is being demanded to pay taxes on property values that exceed the current market values by almost %20-40%.
Many community residents are being forced to sell their commercial and residential properties due to the higher taxation and the lack of local economical stimulation. Summit county residents who bought their homes over 10 years ago for $200,000 – $300,000 and have lower paying jobs find it very difficult to pay property taxes on an assessed $800,000 property values. Property tax reform is really needed in Colorado where, like many other states such as Florida, property owners are taxed on the purchased value and never on the assessed value of their properties. It is unfair for government assessors to impose such a burden on our community now and in the future.
Published on
April 30, 2009 in
Mobile.
Pink is my favorite color, if and only if, it was a cute outfit for my little baby girl. As for a phone code-named Pink, it almost sounds like the marketing department at Microsoft is going 100% metro-sexual. I will never buy Pink and I am not really sure if I know anyone who would let go of their iPhone for Pink.
Sorry Microsoft, you lost me 10 years ago when I decided to format my brand new toshiba notebook and replace your windows with RHL 7. Pink is not going to bring me back but I like your beta of Windows7, not enough to leave Apple’s OS X though.
Is Microsoft losing the innovation battle? My short answer is yes. I have successfully converted all my clients to OS X because I really got sick and tired of getting at least one phone call a day about MS machines that just don’t work. So long Microsoft, I will stick my my OS X and Linux machines and I will run your OS under a virtualization platform for testing purposes only. As for your phone, pink doesn’t belong in my pocket.
Published on
March 26, 2009 in
Mobile.
Apple is finally selling non-contract binding iPhones at their Apple Stores. at&t is also offering a similar deal but for some odd reason they have a limit of one device per customer. This is really great news, nevertheless, what will be the fate of a consumer who wishes to discontinue using at&t as a provider and just paid $600 for a smart phone that is currently only works with the at&t network. Are we seeing an early signal for an unlocked iphone and the possibility of other carriers being supported by iTunes?
I’m generally disappointed by at&t’s wireless service and I would have to say that a number of friends in our mountainous area agree with me that at&t’s coverage in the Colorado mountains has been less than sufficient and the number of missed calls is just becoming unbearable. Addicted to my iPhone and my ability to establish ssh connections directly to my servers along with all the other bling bling the iPhone has to offer I find myself stuck with a wireless provider I don’t appreciate and it would be really nice if I was able to use my device on some other network. There is a rumor about iPhone on Verizon and if the rumor is true, then we should expect the iPhones to be running on the most capable wireless network in the US this year.
With the slowing economy it just makes a lot of sense for Apple to target multiple wireless providers and maximize on the their profits by selling the phone directly to consumers who can in-turn choose their provider or switch providers as they please.
It is really time to end this legalized monopoly and give consumers a choice.
As always, innovations is controlled by fear and most security experts are apparently not as smart as hackers. Security experts are warning against digitally based electricity distribution and transmission system known as the “Smart Grid” due to their speculations on hackers ability to hack into the system leaving millions of households and business without power. Given the many advantages of having a nationwide “Smart Grid” technology implantation I just don’t see why such technology cannot be protected efficiently especially when such systems are built, implemented and maintained by individuals who are smarter than the feared hackers.
I’m not going to describe and analyze the technology as much as I would like to focus on the fact that fear is limiting innovation and in most cases the wrong people are hired to do such projects. Innovative individuals and extremely smart engineer find it difficult to work on such projects for corporations that choose not to pay them more than what they would make if they just run their own small businesses.
So to stop the hackers, we must pay innovative individuals the right money, otherwise, power will be out for few minutes until backup systems go online, if there is a backup system. Knowing how most corporations cut corners to save money, such technology could be problematic at first but eventually the system will be perfected.
I just finished replacing a hard drive in an iMac and what a fun experience that was. I took the dead drive over the the graveyard, a small storage closet, and I counted over 50 dead hard drives I replaced in the past 8 years on servers, desktops and notebooks in my office where we have an average of 10 total heavily used systems. Most failures where attributed to overheating in our high altitude environment. Our office is located in Breckenridge CO at an elevation of almost 10,000 ft.
I was able to get some replaced by manufacturers at no cost but we had to pay for the majority of them.
I have tried all manufacturers and in most cases when a machine is used excessively to process video and or transfer huge amount of data we lose the hard drive in about 1 year.
I have been searching for high altitude hard drives but I have not been able to find any that has specific high altitude design specifications. The interesting observation is that my 3rd generation 30G iPod still works. I dropped my iPod in snow while skiing, I dropped it on rocky hiking trails on the deck and once it dropped and bounced down the cement driveway leaving few nice dents in it.
Next time you decide to take your laptop with you on your ski vacation, seriously, back up your data before traveling or risk loosing your data, especially if you are in the habit of moving your notebook around while it’s turned on.
A simple study on battery performance when running multiple operating systems on a MacBook Pro using VirtualBox vs. Parallels Desktop for Mac.
Continue reading ‘VirtualBox VS Parallels Desktop on MacBooks’
While cleaning my hard drive from old meaningless photos and other junk I stumbled upon this photo of the future, easy to use, home computer.
Continue reading ‘Future home computer of the past’