word!

I suppose I shouldn’t keep my little secret any longer, but by the telling title of this post, you probably can take a rough guess as to what it might entail. On June 1, 2007, I finally purchased a personal dream of mine ~ a Chevy Corvette.

Purchased it from a chatty retired contractor in Hutchinson, Mn after seeing it in the Hutch Leader newspaper. It’s a 1988 350 V-8 White Coupe, with Red Interior. Came with factory installed Bose speakers and an after market CD player.

Quite a fun ride. Having never had driven, let alone owned a true sports car, it’s a blast to drive. Extremely responsive on the gas, meaning I can pass cars just by pressing the pedal, no hesitation. Ah, speed is nice.

Now, what we’ve all been waiting for the photos:

More pix of course on Flickr

The vacation was a whirlwind, but fun. Everyone says we packed in quite a bunch of things for the full week we were gone. Flew into San Fran Sunday night, and drove north through the city and Golden Gate up towards Wine Country. Next day toured Budweiser Beer & Jelly Belly factories and Wine country that afternoon. Wine country was hot and after a bit, it got boring with all the places that wanted to take your money for anything wine-related. That night headed south and met with my friend Nicole (she was the one I visited out in MI last summer). Headed to Yosemite for the next full day. Communed with nature, hoards of tourists and sickening mountain roads. Next day toured gold mining history, a current gold mine and a awesome cave. After that drove into Silicon Valley, where we saw Yahoo, Google and Apple to varying degrees. All were in office/industrial parks, with no real touristy type stores, save for Apple. We actually walked into Google’s campus and checked out their front office. Elyssa was scared about security, but we didn’t meet any until after we walked off the property! My highlight for sure.

Next two days were spent in SanFran. Did self-guided walking tour that Friday, walking a few miles from downtown/Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf. Good lot to see that day. Went on Bus tour the next day and out to Alcatraz that afternoon.

Was a very good trip, one I’m glad we took, even if we planned a good chuck of it on the fly!

Having enjoyed the many ventures I’ve set out on with online banking, I’ve always been interested in the next new direction internet based banking has been going.

It seems that now personal, bankless loans are starting to become all the rage. After hearing about Zopa, a leading British-only online lending site, I heard that someone else has begun business here in the U.S. under the guise of Prosper.

Basically, both sites get people together that want to borrow money and those willing to lend it to them. Sounds easy enough. Pretty much just like borrowing someone a buck for a pop or candy, although a tad bigger scale. It might be of note that you don’t personally know these people, unlike your local bankers might. The only problem seems to be when those borrowing default partially or totatlly on the loan. Seems that Zopa counters this by spreading lenders money between numerous accounts and verification by a ‘risk managers’.
With Prosper one could borrow directly to a sole person or spread the ‘risk’ among numerous people. Also poor reports to the credit agencies and debt collectors will enter the fray upon defaults of loans. Both sites don’t guarantee your won’t lose money, but banks work the same way I guess.

And if you are borrowing money and aren’t happy with the rates the banks are forcing you to swallow, this may be a suitable backup plan.

Seems like an interesting field on finance to be invovled in, as well as keeping an eye on. It seems Zopa itself is entering the US market in late 2006 which should keep Prosper and others like it on their collective toes.

Not that I’m a big Paypal user, but I found an alarming problem in their structure that could make for some unpleasantries. About this time last year, I signed up for a hosting plan for a small website. It cost a few bucks, which was okay, but little did I know that it would be considered a reoccurring annual transaction or subscription.

So while reconciling my checking account, I notice an odd amount deducted that I can’t verify other than coming from Paypal. Seems that hosting company charged me this year too, again not a large amount, but they did charge me without my implicit approval.

Problem is that Paypal insists on using a checking account to link to. This causes problems if said checking account balance is less than charge which you are unaware that is going to be made to that account. Seems to me that a subscription should warn you a few days/weeks in advance the pending charge and then you can accept or deny it.

Otherwise, one could overdraft on an account for this silly reason and I’m sure given the trouble numerous people have reaching Paypal support, it would fall on deaf ears.

Hard to believe it’s already a week since we (Linda, Lynnea and myself) were in Nashville, TN. What was the special occasion? Nothing really. Lynnea had planned to go to Nashville to view Vanderbilt for it’s grad program, but after getting offered something better from Duke, we decided this would just be a vacation with no other obligations.

It was neat to see/hear all the country bands along Nashville’s Broadway St. Every bar had what seemed a new act every night, save the weekend, but all country. And this was for a good two city blocks which made it fun to stroll. Also the recording studios didn’t seem to stick out much in Nashville. Most were in converted houses, and every so often you see the big ones, like Curb Records and Blue Note Music. Somewhat odd.

We did the touristy things and seen the Parthenon (Nashville’s exact replica), The Hermitage, Jack Daniels’ Distillery, Broadway and the Recording Studio Row, The Grand Ole Opry and Opry Mills.

So we seen quite a bit of the city and it’s attractions,a few pix are below.

Mr. Jack Daniels Office and only original distillery building.

The Parthenon in Nashville’s Centennial Park

The Hermitage. Home of President Andrew Jackson

All in all, Nashville was a good place to visit for a bit, but there wasn’t much there to make you want to move there, unless you are a country musician.