Christopher Burnley Blog

Bowling

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 08:17:00 -0800

11 of us from CoreFact went bowling and to dinner the other night. It was a blast. I bowled a 165 and then a 159 which is pretty good for me. My team won! I have been bowling a few times with my son who is 4 and it is one of those great father son things to do. He really gets a kick out of it. Hopefully I can break 200 this year.

Disneyland with the kids

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:47:00 -0800

The kids had a blast at disneyland

What was your experience?

New Year 2008

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:26:12 -0800

Happy New Year! 2008 is going to be an interesting year for real estate. There are a number of economic factors at play as well as a media which loves to predict doom and gloom.

Mortgage interest rates are currently very low.

30 Year Fixed: 6.07%
15 Year Fixed: 5.68%
1 Year Adjust: 5.47%

Interest rates might even go lower if the Federal Reserve drops short term rates by another half point as expected later this month.
On other economic news, unemployment rates jumped a bit in December which caused a stir in the stock market. Existing home sales rose 4/10% showing very modest growth. The current expectation is that we will begin to see a very slow recovery starting in the Spring. It is currently a buyers market so it might be a good time to look for a second home or move up by renting your existing home and purchasing a new home. With low interest rates, a buyers advantage, and good inventory, now might be a good time to act before market becomes extremely competitive as it has been over the last several years.
If you or anyone you know have any real estate questions or needs please feel free to call or e-mail me.

Here is a snapshot of the activity between 2006 and 2007 in Santa Clara County.

Audrey turns one!

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 07:43:00 -0700

My perfect daughter has turned one!!

Programming for Kids

Wed, 15 Nov 2006 19:35:00 -0800

Now that I have kids I reflect on my own childhood from time to time. Yesterday I was thinking about how and when I learned to program. When I was 11 years old, I started programming on a Commodore 64. Initially I started doing BASIC programming and then jumped to assembly programming which was the natural progression at that time for many of us. The beauty of the C64 was that you could completely understand all the components of the computer. Whether it was memory mapped video or programming the SID chip to generate sounds the basic functionality was easy to understand. Now a days the underlying hardware software-relationship is almost completely abstracted from the programmer unless you are in the business of writing drivers. In a way I think this is really unfortunate since there is so much to learn from solving problems at interrupt time. The beauty of the old systems is that a single person could do all the work. Since deep down I am an entrepreneur, I quickly jumped to the idea of creating a virtual environment for young kids to begin programming. It could be delivered in such a way that children could be introduced to new concepts when they are ready for them. Maybe it would start with a simple language like logo giving them a procedural way to draw on the screen. Then graduate them to something like BASIC or C and then to an object oriented language such as Ruby or Scheme. Projects could be conceived around programming the hardware to generate simple games. Maybe the solution is to just buy your kid a C64 or install an interpreter for them. There probably isn't a large enough market for such a product, but I think it would be useful to young kids that want to get into programming.

Kauai

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:45:00 -0800

We took a family trip to Kauai to attend my brother Mike's wedding. The wedding went off without a hitch. It was raining right before the wedding but cleared just in time for Michelle to walk down the isle. This was our first vacation with two kids. Vacationing with an infant and toddler is challenging I have to admit. No longer can we do the same things we used to do when visiting Hawaii. I think the solution is to go with other families with kids around the same age. This way you can trade off watching the kids and have a few minutes to jump into the pool. I left the camera battery on the table at home so I didn't capture any pictures of the wedding myself. I ended up buying a fifteen dollar battery for forty dollars a day after the wedding. When I get some pictures I'll post a few.

America - The Melting Pot

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 22:51:00 -0800

When I was a child I remember watching a School House Rock cartoon on the "Great American Melting Pot". At the time I never imagined that the multi-cultural transformation of America would be so great. It is particularly true here in California. My brother recently was married and I was looking at a few of the wedding photos and the thing that struck me was the true diversity of our extended family. My own children are a beautiful combination of European and Asian ethnic heritages. But at the core they are Americans. I have travelled to other parts of the world and I have yet to visit a place so culturally diverse as this. I'm sure it exists, but I have yet to see it. It is in this place where freedom of expression reigns and commerce flourishes that the great expression of humanity comes forth and melts into one. It seems to me that cartoon I watched so many years ago has come true. America truly is a melting pot. Take a look at a photo and see what I mean.