One year ago today: June 29, 2014, West Palm Beach
Five years ago today: June 29, 2010, closing up the computer shop.
Six years ago today: June 29, 2009, drinking Tiswin?
MORNING
Yep, I’ve got my pick of low-end houses up in the interior and Florida west coast. Around 113 came on the market over the weekend. My guess is that the banks are reacting to some change of events. It could be they are just flushing their least performing REOs. This is good for me, as it can mean perfectly good properties suddenly fall into my price range. Something is afoot.
Now, a lot can be gleaned from meta-information so I’ll devote some time to finding the pattern. What do all these listings have in common? I’ll figure it out. Meanwhile, I’m still in the market for a doublewide. Note the distinction—I will accept a fixer-upper house, but a trailer has to be in tip-top condition before I’ll buy. I’ve put in an offer on this place. It is in the middle of nowhere, but so what? Living in South Florida is functionally the same.
It is up near Orlando, includes the land, and you can see the deck is ready for a Florida room. It is 22 miles into town. A fifth of an acre, built in 1995, so still under warranty (25 years). What’s novel about this is the owner financing. It is so cheap, it would cost half what I’m paying here and I’d have ownership. That means I could buy it, leave it sit, and carry on house-hunting. Use it as a summer cottage or a waypoint to Alabama.
NOON
“To make money hand over fist you first have to put your foot down.” ~Old English or Irish saying.
Here’s a nice picture of a quiet rural setting just north of Ft. Myers Beach. Well, maybe not so quiet. Can anybody else see the evidence in this satellite photo? I see it plain as day. That is a meteor impact crater at dead center. The road slices it almost in half. From the Florida climate and rates of water erosion, I’d say it isn’t that old either. Maybe 8,000 years.
It is getting trickier to pry information out of people about bad neighborhoods, even on Cragislist where people love to post dirty laundry. Wiki only gives general demographics as in city-wide, but not by district. Trulia publishes crime stats, but these are open to interpretation. I watch for too many missing persons reports and burglaries. Still, the system has tightened up enough that you really can’t tell without wasting a trip out there. Pity they force that on us.
What have I got so far? An inordinate amount of trespassing reports but no hard facts about the ethnic mix. The area around this morning’s photo is 96.98% white and the average household income is high enough to keep it that way. But I dunno about that 22 mile trip into town.
Getting closer to home, I was looking again at Arcadia, which is 80 miles north of Ft. Myers, where JZ and I partied up exactly two years ago tomorrow. That’s the time we had all the single women in the bar at the Lanai Kai (six of them) move up to the counter and party with us. It is easier to party sitting up on the bar stools. That’s the time JZ almost ran off to New York to open a restaurant with the 26 year old until I put a stop to that. What? I wasn’t supposed to say anything about that? Okay, my lips are sealed.
NIGHT
Have you seen that new InstantCheckMate hype, the one that amalgamates all public records? It claim it can find anyone. Not so, but as far as I’m concerned this type of thing is dangerous because people are not qualified to interpret the results. So what if someone had a DUI thirty years ago? The law says he cannot be punished twice nor in an ongoing fashion over it. Be careful, it keeps a database of the searching computer and links to every name you put in there.
That’s odd, because I had phones in my own name in those states and that is the first thing they check. So, it can be spoofed. Yet, when you think of it, there is more information about my life on-line than the next 10,000 people combined. Here’s even a picture of the street I live on. Not bad for a guy who has not had a real job since 1981.
Then, there’s that guy who got barred from Canada because a border agent saw pictures on his camera of helping his girlfriend patch holes in her basement wall. That’s taking a job away from a Canadian, you see. My question is why do border agents even have the authority to look at people’s photos.
I also filmed (camcorder) myself playing bass and yep, I’m getting rusty. It’s been 10 months since I played. On a lark, I pulled up some satellite maps of the places I’ve been and it was revealing what has changed and what hasn’t. The old houses are still there, and they were already old when I was a kid. And didn’t I warn you about MicroSoft Outlook. Now it installs Skype spyware on your computer as a condition of service. Give me ten bucks and I’ll tell you how to stop it.
ADDENDUM
Here’s something you might find amusing about Florida’s extortion law. There is a distinction between public “officers” and private “citizens”. In the case of the officers, they must actually gain financially (in practice, take money) or the charges are dropped. They can accept all the “favors” they please. Not so for citizens. There is no such stipulation for ordinary people, for whom even taking a minor advantage is a felony.
Extortion is any type of threat that compels another to do anything against their will, or in the alternative to not do something which they have a right to do. Threats include any type of harm, including to a reputation. It does not matter if the threatened act is a legal or illegal act, if it is malicious, it is extortion. Florida law does not require any intent or even the ability to carry out the threat.
Last Laugh
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