March 17, 2012

There were 5 posts published on March 17, 2012 (this is page 1 of 1).

Ides of March

It was mid-March when I first arrived in North Carolina 29 years ago. Charlotte was still small town and a New Yorker named Jimmy Valvano had just coached his team to the national championship. I was a 14 year old kid moving from Columbia, South Carolina and North Carolina seemed to be an exciting place, a great place to grow.

I attended Quail Hollow Junior High School, where I was one of the AV kids who worked the camera during homeroom for principal Charlie Daniels’s morning broadcast throughout the school. I also got elected to the student council during my junior year at South Meck High School.
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A high bar for refinancing

Kelly and I recently decided to jump on the recent (and absurdly low) 4% mortgage rates and started the process to refinance our home. Though we have sterling credit, this is the third home we’ve owned, and would be our fifth mortgage, by the hoops we’ve had to jump through you’d have thought we were clueless about the whole process.

Certainly this isn’t the go-go 2000s, when I could buy a house without having a job (while erroneously having my brother’s mortgage on my credit report, too!), but the due diligence of the mortgage broker has been remarkable. We’ve had an appraisal of the house done, supplied far more financial documentation than ever, and had employment verification calls done on our behalf. I was even asked about a business the former owner of our home used to have here, possibly because it showed up on some report.

While the one we’ve been working with has been pleasant throughout the process, it seems mortgage brokers are going out of their way to make this as challenging as possible. It made Kelly ponder that if we have great credit and it’s this hard for us to get a loan, just who exactly are they lending money to?

Creepy guy at Chik-Fil-A playground

A friend who’s a parent told me of an incident that happened yesterday at the newly-opened Chik-Fil-A at Cameron Village. While the kids played at the restaurant’s playground they were joined by a man who played with the kids but didn’t seem to have a kid of his own in the mix. After watching the man for a bit, my friend realized the man was intoxicated and continually tried to engage the kids. When the kids eventually moved on, the man would take a break and smoke a cigarette before approaching whatever new kids showed up.

After an hour of watching this guy my friend alerted the restaurant’s manager, who then asked the man to leave. They guy was looked much like a frat boy would, only older. He was a white male in his upper 20s wearing a button-down shirt and backwards baseball cap.

Keep an eye on your kids at all times, folks.

Yet another infographic

An Internet acquaintance forwarded to me this email he received from our infographic-making friend Tony Shin:

From: Tony Shin imtinytony@gmail.com
Date: Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 1:17 AM
Subject: A graphic on the ethics of the wealthy
To: blah blah blah at gmail.com

Dear Editor,

While I was searching for blogs and posts that have talked about social psychology, I came across your site and wanted to reach out to see if I could get your readership’s feedback on a graphic my team and I designed, which focuses on the studies found on how those socially and financially well-off behave unethically compared to the lower ladder.

If you’re interested, let’s connect.

Thanks! =)

—
Tony Shin
@ohtinytony

The infographic in question can be viewed here.