Josh Eastburn.com

Last week’s episode of This American Life has the best explanation I’ve heard of the current housing crisis. Listen here

My friend, James, just launched his new online store, Red Lantern. Lots of cool products and best of all, 20% of all purchases go to help those in need. Take a look.

Google’s new “My Maps” feature now lets me do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while: map out every place I’ve ever visited. To make the task more manageable, the map is limited to places I’ve been for 12 or more hours and multiple visits to a city have been consolidated to a single point. Red markers indicate places I’ve lived for 3 or more months and blue markers show places I’ve visited.

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Here is a great collection of maps based on pronunciation of words and phrases. When I moved to the Midwest after growing up in the Northeast, I was often made fun of for saying “hoagie” instead of “sub,” “soda” instead of “pop,” and “crown” instead of “crayon.” (OK, that last one is a bit weird, I admit).

Update: The link no longer works (probably from the huge increase in traffic from this site. . .). I’ll update again if the site comes back.

Update: I asked Dr. Bert Vaux, the creator of the survey, why the results were taken down. He is now working on a new study at Cambridge. The site is in a pilot phase and requires registration to view the results.

Last weekend I went whitewater rafting at the National Whitewater Center outside Charlotte. Aside from being the largest man-made whitewater facility in the world, it also provides miles of mountain biking trails and the largest climbing wall in the Southeast.

Before seeing it in person, I was a bit skeptical about how fun and challenging it would be, but it truly is an impressive place. The whitewater course is entirely contained, with huge pumps moving water from the lower reservoir to the upper one. A conveyor belt carries you from the bottom to the top in the raft. From the top, you have 3 whitewater courses to follow with rapids rated class II - IV. One loop takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

The only downside to the trip was that on the very last run of the day, I parted ways with my wedding ring. Fortunately, I lost the ring in the top reservoir and when the pumps are turned off every night, all of the water drains to the bottom pool. Our rafting guide was skeptical, but after a call to the facility manager, he was able to find it a few days later right where I lost it. Phew. Just in time for our 7th anniversary.

We are now settled into our new home near Charlotte, NC. More pictures in the photo album.

A recent post on the Freakonomics Blog (thx, James) discusses the challenges and changes that lie ahead for the 1.2 million Realtors in the country. The Internet is slowly starting to loosen the grip brokers have had on real estate sales for decades.

We recently sold our home in the Chicago area by using a flat-fee MLS service from Flatland Homes and we couldn’t have been happier with the decision. Rather than pay close to $20,000 to sell our home with a broker, we paid a total of $300 (no zeros are missing in that number). Using a flat-fee service isn’t for everyone, but if you are willing to put in a little extra effort to hold your own open house and print your own listing sheets, the payoff can be tremendous. Next week we close on a new house in Charlotte that was for sale by owner. Without having a broker involved, we were able to get a great price on a house and the sellers can put more money in their pocket as well.

I don’t intend to criticize the career choice of thousands of real estate professionals, but it seems like some much-needed adjustment is starting to take place in the real estate market.

For once I have a valid reason not to post anything to my blog for months on end. Over the last several weeks, we have made our transition from the Chicago area to Charlotte, NC. Thanks to my Uline employee discount, I was able to stock up on boxes, moving blankets and stretch wrap at cost (one of the first times it made the employee discount worth while). We used ABF’s U-Pack moving trailer which worked out great. The night before the move, they dropped the 28′ trailer in our driveway, leaving only a few feet to spare. They recommended that I notify the police that I was obstructing the driveway for a day and that the police “will have no problem with it.” Upon calling the Buffalo Grove police department, they told me that I would most certainly receive a citation for blocking the sidewalk and that I need to move the trailer (oops, too late). Fortunately, the BGPD never followed up on that promise.

We hired 2 movers to load the truck and they packed 19 of the 28 linear feet of trailer in just over an hour. Since ABF charges by the foot, it was well worth their expert packing to use every cubic foot of the trailer. Three days later, the trailer arrived at our storage unit where we are temporarily storing our possessions until we move into our new house. Overall, it was a fairly painless process and we paid less than half the cost of a U-Haul one-way trailer.

As we get settled in, I will try to post my observations on life in the South, which will undoubtedly include references to NASCAR and sweet tea.

I suppose I was asking for trouble when I mentioned that I would never trade in my DirecTV TiVo for the DirecTV Plus DVR. Super Bowl XLI, 3rd quarter, the picture suddenly freezes. I didn’t press the pause button and nothing on the remote seems to work. This had happened a handful of times over the last few weeks, but a reboot would always solve the problem. Not this time. After I accepted the fact that my TiVo was not coming back, I placed a call with DirecTV. I explained the situation to the rep who kindly offered to ship out their DirecTV Plus DVR in exchange for a new 2-year commitment. I said, “no thank you, your DVR is awful.” The rep asked, “have you ever USED our DVR?” I answered, “yes, have you ever USED TiVo??” He told me that he had, but I think he was lying.
As I saw it, I was left with 3 options:

1. Give in and take the DirecTV DVR (I refused this as a matter of principle)
2. Buy another DirecTV TiVo at Weaknees or eBay (over $150 to get what I have now)
3. Give up DirecTV entirely and get a standalone TiVo

After much contemplation, I went with a refurbished standalone TiVo for $50 and $13/month TiVo service. Paired with the basic, basic cable package from Comcast, I would be paying $40 less each month than I was with DirecTV. Sure, I’ll miss the excellent picture quality and the huge storage upgrade I had with my DirecTV TiVo, but now I’ll finally get to try some of the features that are only available on standalone TiVos, such as the Home Media Option and hopefully in the near future, Amazon Unbox on TiVo.

Netflix is gradually rolling out its new streaming movie service. Subscribers get 1 hour of streaming movies for every $1 in their subscription price. Those with the $17.99 plan will get 18 hours every month for no additional charge. The selection is a bit limited now and you can only watch movies on your computer (XP with Internet Explorer), but it is a nice extra feature that may or may not keep people from defecting to Blockbuster’s Total Access.

If you do not see a link on your account page, it seems like just viewing this link while signed in will activate the service on your account:
http://www.netflix.com/WatchNow