The Countdown to V...

Ok gang - our countdown is official - 5 days until the premiere of the new (reboot) V.

Mortgage debt waived after bank can't find paperwork

Two weeks ago, a bankruptcy court in suburban New York did the formerly unthinkable: It waived a homeowner's mortgage debt after the bank trying to foreclose on the home couldn't submit any proof that it actually had a claim on the property. According to the New York Times, when lender PHH Mortgage was asked to provide proof that it actually held the deed for the $461,263 mortgage, it couldn't give the judge any records. Operating on the entirely reasonable principal that someone who claims to possess a piece of paper that gives them ownership to a nearly half-million dollar house should actually have that piece of paper, the judge slapped a stiff and possibly game-changing punishment on the disorganized lender. Real estate experts say this is a more common occurrence than many people realize, and the potential implications are huge. During the go-go mortgage boom years, millions of loans were bundled into financial instruments called securities and sold to investors. They, in turn, often turned around and sold those securities to other investors. Making money hand over fist was the priority; keeping good records of who actually owned which mortgage wasn't. The shambles that many banks' mortgage records are in today could cost them big -- and keep potentially thousands upon thousands of people from losing their homes. The idea that banks should have to prove that they actually own the mortgage that gives them the right to foreclose if the homeowner falls behind on their payments isn't new. A group called Consumer Warning Network has been advocating for homeowners who feel railroaded into foreclosure by the lending industry by advising them to ask the lender to "produce the note" in court during foreclosure proceedings. Good Morning America covered this tactic last spring. At the time, though, the advice was just intended to help beleageured homeowners buy some time to get their mortgage modified or find another way to come up with the money they owed. It was assumed that the banks had the proof of their claim buried in a filing cabinet somewhere. Now, though, it's clear that some lenders don't have proof that they have the right to foreclose on a home, and at least one judge has put his foot down and refused to let the lender take the home without that proof. It's a small step so far, but it's one that could have far-reaching implications because of the large number of mortgages that were repackaged and resold many times over earlier this decade. Of course, if a homeowner is in foreclosure, he or she will still lose the house if the bank has all the proper documentation. But if the bank can't produce the documentation, it's comforting to think that a judge won't let them put a family on the street just on that lender's say-so that they have the proof... somewhere.

What NOT to Use On a Job Hunt: A Gun

I don't know what is more shocking on this story. I used to live in Haverstraw, NY and yes the town is filled with some very interesting personalities to tell the truth but this just takes the cake. In these times, people use a lot crazy tactics to try to get a job, and some actually work. Brandishing a gun, however, is not one of them.

According to LoHud.com, a man took the term "Job Hunt" a little too literally. He walked into a Taco Bell in Haverstraw, NY on Monday afternoon, pulled out a gun, demanded money, then continued on to the manager's office.

This time, instead of pointing his gun, he asked the manager for an employment application.

Although the manager did not witness the attempted holdup, he told the suspect no and asked him to leave the restaurant.

The man left -- without the money or the job. Funny thing is I used to live right up the hill from the Taco Bell and used to sneak out late at night and go out my back yard and down the small sloping hill to the Taco Bell and stand at the order box and then walk up along the drive thru and pick up my order. LOL Oh, good times, good times.... and good to see that they are still there!

15 Signs Your Workplace is Dysfunctional

Does your job drive you crazy? Do you sometimes wonder if you are the only sane person in working there? Is your workplace dysfunctional, or is it you? Here's how to find out"

Sign No. 1: Conspicuously posted vision or value statements are filled with vague but important-sounding words like "excellence" and "quality"

These words are seldom defined and the concepts they allude to are never measured.


Sign No. 2: Bringing up a problem is considered more as evidence of a personality defect rather than as an actual observation of reality

In a dysfunctional company, what it looks like is not only more important than what it is, it is what it is. If you don't believe that, you are the problem. A surprising amount of information is classified. Dysfunctional companies have more state secrets than the CIA. Anything that might embarrass the boss turns out to be a national security issue.


Sign No. 3: If by chance there are problems, the usual solution is a motivational seminar

Attitude is everything, especially in places where facts are embarrassing or inconvenient. In a dysfunctional family, there's an elephant -- usually a drunken abusive parent -- in the parlor, but no one ever mentions him. To appear sane, you have to pretend that the elephant is invisible, and that drives you crazy. Businesses are full of invisible elephants, too. Usually they are things that might cause difficulties for people with enough clout to prevent their discussion. The emperor may be naked, but if you have a good attitude, you won't mention it.


Sign No. 4: Double messages are delivered with a straight face

Quality and quantity are both job one. You can do it both cheaper and better, just don't ask how. If you're motivated enough you should know already.


Sign No. 5: History is regularly edited to make executive decisions more correct, and correct decisions more executive than they actually were

Those huge salaries require some justification.


Sign No. 6: People are discouraged from putting things in writing

What is written, especially financial records, is purposely confusing. You can never tell when you might need a little deniability.


Sign No. 7: Directions are ambiguous and often vaguely threatening

Before you respond to a vague threat, remember this: Virtually every corporate scandal begins with someone saying, "Do it; I don't care how." That person is seldom the one who gets indicted.


Sign No. 8: Internal competition is encouraged and rewarded

The word "teamwork" may be batted around like a softball at a company picnic, but in a dysfunctional company the star players are the only ones who get recognition and big bucks.


Sign No. 9: Decisions are made at the highest level possible

Regardless of what it is, you have to check with your boss before doing it. She also has to check with her boss.


Sign No. 10: Delegating means telling somebody to do something, not giving them the power to do it

According to Webster's Dictionary, you delegate authority, not tasks. In dysfunctional companies you may have responsibility, but the authority lives in the office upstairs.


Sign No. 11: Management approaches from the latest bestseller are regularly misunderstood to mean what we're doing already is right on the mark

"Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," "Good to Great" and "Who Moved My Cheese?" all seem to boil down to, "quit griping and do more with less."


Sign No. 12: Resources are tightly controlled

Your department may need upgraded software, but there's been a spending freeze since 2006. Cost control is entry-level management, but in a dysfunctional company anything more sophisticated is considered too touchy-feely. Whatever you propose, the first question you will be asked is if it can be done cheaper.


Sign No. 13: You are expected to feel lucky to have a job and know you could lose it if you don't toe the line

Dysfunctional companies maintain control using the threat of punishment. Most will maintain that they also use positive rewards ... like your paycheck. A few people are actually fired, but most of those who go are driven to quit.


Sign No. 14: Rules are enforced based on who you are rather than what you do

In a dysfunctional company, there are clearly insiders and outsiders and everyone knows who belongs in each group. Accountability has different meanings depending on which group you're in.


Sign No. 15: The company fails the Dilbert Test

Dysfunctional organizations have no sense of humor. People who post unflattering cartoons risk joining the ranks of the disappeared. When an organization loses the ability to laugh at itself, it is headed for big trouble. If you'd get in trouble for printing this article and posting it on the bulletin board at work, maybe it's time to look for another job before this one drives you crazy.

Social networking saviors: Twitter, Facebook used in effort to help save a baby's life

Social networking is helping to save one very tiny baby's life.

Jaeli Brow came into the world last June with an extremely rare condition -- a chromosomal mutation that makes her incapable of tolerating most forms of nutrition, including most formula and breast milk, or to put on weight. For a tiny baby fighting to gain even a few precious ounces (Jaeli weighed just 5 pounds, 4 ounces when she was born), the condition can be life threatening.

Earlier this month, the situation grew even more dire when Jaeli's family found themselves struggling to afford the one type of milk that she can stomach. But thanks to donations from 60 or so perfect strangers who read about her on Facebook and Twitter, Jaeli has received some much-needed meals.

Jaeli's official diagnosis is referred to as unbalanced translocation between short arm of Xp and a duplication of 2q. The condition is so rare -- only three other children have been diagnosed with it -- that it doesn't even have a name yet. "[W]e call it Jaeli's Syndrome," says Angela England, a family friend who is helping Jaeli's family to raise money.

As if the condition isn't hard enough for the youngest of seven kids and her parents, Brandy and Jim, to cope with, Jaeli was also born with a host of health issues including a minor cleft palate and two large holes in her heart. Thanks to a combination of drug therapies, she has narrowly avoided open heart surgery.

But it's Jaeli's inability to tolerate formula, or even most breast milk, that is particularly daunting. Severe reactions to feedings often result in extreme vomiting and bleeding in Jaeli's nose and mouth. One of the only ways Jaeli can eat without such a violent reaction is to consume 24 calorie-per-ounce breast milk that comes from the Human Milk Banking Association of North America. The price tag: $4.25 per ounce. Considering that Jaeli currently needs about 30 ounces a day, it's an an expense that quickly adds up.

Yet, says England, since Jaeli's doctors want to continue to experiment with other, cheaper treatment plans, they refuse to categorize the high-calorie, pre-screened, banked breast milk as a necessity. As a result, the Brow's can't file an insurance claim to help pay for the milk. And since an insurer isn't helping to foot the bill, the hospital refuses to order the milk without "cash in hand."

Earlier this month, Jaeli was down to her final ounces of banked breast milk and losing weight. Desperately hoping to help her friends, England turned to social networking. On her Twitter page and a FaceBook page entitled "Jaeli's Syndrome" she started a campaign to collect donations for Jaeli's milk. "I just knew if other moms knew about the situation, they'd band together and get Jaeli food," she says.

Parents across the country started donating. "In a few hours, we collected over $1,300," she says. The initial effort was enough to keep Jaeli fed for about two weeks. To date, the group has raised more than $3,200 and The Mother's Milk Bank of Ohio has donated an extra box of banked milk, says England.



Last week, Jaeli returned home after a three-week stay in the hospital where she was treated for a urinary tract infection, along with numerous digestive and weight complications. Her parents, siblings and friends are hopeful she's turned a corner (according to her mother, Jaeli now weighs 9 pounds, 2 ounces), but are only cautiously optimistic. They're hoping surgery, growth and time will eventually allow Jaeli to eat solid foods, but her prognosis is uncertain.

For now, "Jaeli's Angels," the growing number of donors, "tweeps" and "friends" willing her to gain weight and thrive, have their sights set on keeping her in pre-screened breast milk until that happens. "I wish I could buy her several days worth myself," says England.

If you'd like to donate, follow Jaeli's progress, or spread the word, log onto Twitter and follow @angengland, @brandybrow and @rarechromobaby. Or, stop by her website.

DVD Review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Leoben, that tricky toaster, was right: All of this has happened before, and all of it is happening again.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan retells major events from the first two years of the celebrated sci-fi series through the eyes of the Cylons. It weaves together recycled scenes from the series with new footage to reveal a first-hand account of the Cylon agenda, or "plan."

The result is a film that feels incomplete, episodic and disjointed. It plays less like a movie and largely like a disk full of high quality bonus material. Most of what happens here feels irrelevant to the series -- almost like it was tacked on to the BSG mythos to satisfy completists and hardcore fans. Still, it's worth watching to see Dean Stockwell carry the film with a fearless performance as the scheming and duplicitous Brother Cavil. The veteran character actor takes center stage in The Plan, and your enjoyment of the film will rest largely on how much you like, or dislike, Cavil and his major role in the series.

Stockwell's performance isn't the only thing worth recommending here. The Plan fleshes out a few of the series' more compelling stories, and it makes room for a new one involving Simon (Rock Worthy), aka Cylon Number Four. Worthy is terrific as a Four living with a human family and torn between his human life and his duty as a Cylon. Cylons learning to love other humans and to cherish their own humanity is a repeating theme in The Plan.

We also get more insight into Boomer's (Grace Park) headspace from season one, when she was working as a Cylon sleeper agent. It's not necessary to learn the details of her mission or how the Cylons controlled her, but the new scenes between Park and Stockwell are fantastic. In a scene that foreshadows the Cylon civil war, Boomer tells Cavil that she prefers being human – feeling love, friendship, and even heartache – to being a machine. Cavil responds with a nasty rant about the inferiority of humans to machines, echoing his famous "I want to see gamma rays" speech from the series.

Some small loose ends from the series are tied up here (Whatever happened to Shelly Godfrey? Who was Six waiting for on Caprica before the attack?), but these aren't really questions I was dying to have answered. I would have preferred to learn more about Cavil's past with the Final Five or about Leoben and his obsession with Starbuck. The Plan devotes some screen time to Leoben's story, but his scenes feel rushed and underdeveloped, especially when compared to the Simon or Boomer scenes. The Plan is more interested in showing us how Cavil was directly responsible for a lot of the havoc aboard the Galactica, and how his efforts to destroy humanity were doomed from the start.

Also missing is the biting social and political commentary we've come to expect from Battlestar Galactica. Many of the series' major cast members are MIA as well. Great actors like like Katee Sackhoff, Tahmoh Penikett and James Callis only show up in old footage from the series. Even the Admiral himself, director Edward James Olmos, is mostly seen in recycled clips.

Olmos pulls great performances from his cast, and his film offers some very impressive special effects for a straight-to-DVD movie. The Cylon attack on the colonies is shown in vivid detail and is scored by a hybrid Cylon's haunting play-by-play of the devastation.

The Plan DVD does feature some male and female nudity. Olmos and writer Jane Espenson defend this choice on the commentary track by arguing that Colonial society didn't have the same hang-ups that we do about our bodies (or something like that). Still, it feels a little unnecessary, especially one scene in the Galactica's unisex locker room.

I was hoping The Plan would offer more original content and would be able to stand on its own as a film. Instead, it's an imperfect but welcome love letter to the fans, and it was clearly a labor of love for the cast and crew.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan premieres on DVD Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Janet Jackson recording 'up-tempo dance album'; can she recapture a rhythm nation?

MTV reports today that Janet Jackson’s upcoming 11th studio album, a follow-up to 2008’s Discipline, is focused on uptempo and mid-tempo dance tracks, with a sound “inspired by worldwide influences,” including Brazilian, African and Latin rhythms.

According to producer Rodney Jerkins (Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child, Pussycat Dolls), she’ll also be addressing recent personal events: “You gotta understand, she lost her brother,” he told MTV. “She was in a relationship for seven years that’s over now. There’s things that she told me that I didn’t even realize. You know, certain [things] like self-esteem … I kinda had to persuade her, ‘Let’s just go, let’s talk about that.’ And she’s been doing it, and she’s a pro about it.”

I love me some Janet; I really do. And she’s had what anyone would deem an insanely difficult year. But after the disappointment of Discipline, I’m wondering whether I should just stick with her upcoming greatest-hits collection, Number Ones, due November 17.

Honestly, she still had me hanging on to 1997’s The Velvet Rope (I can take a Joni Mitchell mash-up!), but sort of lost me for good in ‘04 with Damita Jo’s relentlessly same-y sex-me jams. Where is the Janet who took us on an Escapade? That fierce Black Cat in Control who taught us all about the Pleasure Principle? (Requires knee-pads and an empty warehouse, fyi.) And where the Minneapolis are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis?

If only you would Come Back to Me, Janet! But tell me if I’m wrong, readers. Will love still never do without her?