I am relatively bearish on all the US market right now. Market sentiment for both stocks and bonds is pretty bad. Most of the analysis I have read calls for no recovery until next year at the earliest and the housing market may take a full two years or more to show growth again. The steep drop in housing prices and equally steep rise in unsold homes means it will take a while for the housing market to reach a bottom. I’ve got some cash I would like to put in the market, but I’m going to wait a few more months at least. I think the financial stocks are also going to be hurt more, but I think they have been hurt plenty already so I’m not sure if it will continue. Obviously I’m no economist so don’t put too much faith in my view.

A few days ago someone left a note on my door saying they were coming to paint the street numbers on my curb and that they would do it voluntarily and they asked for a donation of $10. I was a bit skeptical, but last night they came knocking on my door for the donation and they had indeed painted my curb.

Now if they had tried to sell me a curb painting service for $10, they would have never gotten my money because I hate being sold things. But because they provided the service first and then asked for a donation later, they actually got my money. I wonder what sort of donation rate they get by giving it away for free and then asking for money later. I wonder how that compares to the rates of donating for free online music.

This week I switched from my old text email client mutt over to GMail. I’m pleased with my increased productivity. GMail is faster and just generally makes managing mail easier. Things I like: keyboard shortcuts, labels, filters, better attachment handling. I don’t actually use conversation features much.

There are some features I am still not sure about. For instance the spam filter is a too aggressive. I had to look through my spam folder for some legit email which my old filter would deliver correctly, but GMail didn’t like them. Also I’m not yet sure how I like the AIM integration. And the Calendar to Exchange sync feature has failed pretty miserably so far.

Lucas has trouble pronouncing Baby Sister, so instead it’s Baby Fishy. We’re still undecided on names, so I think this is the winner.

Yay. The new conforming loan limits are out. I put together a table with all of them, and it looks like all the SF Bay area markets hit the cap and are now $729.5k. Let the refi craze begin.