October 21, 2004 Thursday
Author's note 2020: When reading these old posts, do try to keep in mind they were not necessarily intended to be published on-line. Some may be records of conversations earlier in the day written down from memory.]
You decide how my day went, here’s the facts. John did not show up, or call, today as promised. I moved a load myself. The new place, although half again the size of here, is better laid out, although it will be just as cramped when I get everything moved in. Robert King, the Project Manager called today to find out what the delay was with payroll. I gladly filled him in, including the fact that although both Mike and I were here, there was only one computer. And that the “brilliant” time sheet was actually a copy of an idea I created close to five years ago, and threw out as impractical for large-scale use.
I had Mikey show me the locations of the jobclocks, only to discover at least two of them had been moved to floors unknown. Mickey seemed quite willing to wander around looking for them until I put a stop to it. New rule, nobody moves a clock unless telling the office, and nobody goes reading the clocks without a radio. It took close to an hour to get the data, but I did see the coast from the 22nd floor of a high-rise condo. That I could never afford unless the market is good. The company shares fell to less than $4 and I put in a low-ball limit order at $3.90, a little bottom-feeding. What information highway, most people around me, it seems, have never seen on-line trading.
Then, I had to call Los Angeles and find out why the Exaktime help-desk never called back about the double readings. Get this, after I explained the problem, we get a call back from this high power tech type who really knows his stuff. He mentions that I seem to have predicted every issue they are bringing up at their next meeting, and that I don’t seem like a construction type. That I assured him is true, why that perceptive chap. He then points out that he is the CEO and owns 1/3 of the company. I mentioned, almost naturally, that had I known earlier the files were ordinary Access, I could have corrected it myself, and that led even more naturally to us discussing (very indirectly since I was on company time) a potential job. I have long since informed Daniel that at $80,000 per year, I am gone.
Then, oh yes, it is only mid-afternoon, I took the time to show Pete the problem with the time sheet revisions. Each new version has to have all 40 new sheets created, and the employee name and number typed in. This takes time, and I had to do it three times last pay period. First, Hector has the annoying habit of sending compressed files even if they don’t require that step. For those of us who don’t use file compression (it is a signal that your files are too large or over-formatted) there is more time wasted unzipping the file. Since I don’t use the software, I’ve never learned the difference between “New”, “Open” and “Extract” and think it presumptuous if anyone sends me such a file. I want to open the new file and extract the information, dude, so I can get some work done around here.
Also, they abuse the e-mail system by using it to distribute both the spreadsheets and the notice of new versions. It is the old game of telephone tag now played on the internet. Just because you can send all kinds of notices and versions, some dickhead will start doing it whenever they feel like it. What’s the matter, didn’t you read your e-mail this morning? The proper method is to test the software first, then announce in formal writing (for now) that a new version will be available at such a time in the future, so the users can plan around it. Okay?
As you see, I am ready for after-work coffee. I see this ad in the paper for second mortgage money offering 18%. This one may not be a scam. Aha, I hear the question. How can a plain offer of 18% be a scam, they either pay you or you go to court with the contract and sue their butts off. Here is the scam. Say you lend somebody $10,000 at 10% for a year, we are talking a mortgage here. At the end of the year, you should get back $10,000 plus $1,000 interest. Hey, not so fast. The borrower is making monthly payments, not a lump sum payment at the year’s end. That means each month, the borrower’s payment is part interest and part repayment of your principle. The third party, that is the second mortgage broker to whom you lent the original $10,000 takes possession of these cash payments in every case I have ever seen.
If they had lent the money [borrowed from you at 10%] to the homebuyer at say 15%, they make good and easy money. Easy, because they are risking your money, not theirs and you can bet they take their cut off the top. Now this would be fine if they send you your cut each month. But if they keep the entire payments until year-end, you now have a second mortgage company holding all your money instead of a person with a fairly hard to hide house against which you could take recourse for non-payment. Having somebody owe you a big pile of money at once is far more risky than a declining loan balance. The mortgage company I talked to may have established a sinking fund, if so it would be hard to scam.
A sinking fund is where they put part of each month’s income away to satisfy a future payment, in this case to you. This is acceptable, but I have seen places that not only keep all your money, they reinvest it again in new mortgages. This means instead of setting your monthly amount aside, they roll it over into new investments, against which you may have no direct security in case of a default. True, the sinking fund is another investment, but it carries very, very low risk, as in a Treasury Bond. You should also be aware the mortgage company will not pay you even one cent interest for the secondary loan they made with your cash. In such arrangements, somebody eventually has to get stung because they have no money to pay everybody back at any point in time.
The day is not over. I dropped into Church to see if JZ had been in. No, but that ignorant smartass that eavesdropped last day was. Benny mentioned he has a scooter for sale, and I said call me in about three weeks. This smartass then says to me, “How did the stock market go today?” You don’t see the harm in that, because you were not there last time. This guy, like my family, has already strongly shown that he does not give a damn how the market went. He is out to bait you, it does not matter what the market did, he’s got some negative point to prove. If you said it went up, you didn’t make as much as he thinks a smarter person would have. If it went down, you lost money because you are stupid. If it stayed the same you wasted time, and if you tell him to go buy a newspaper he accuses you of not knowing and that is your dodge. I know the type, and I saw it coming.
Now watch how the sumbitch is trying to insult. I said I did not invest by the day. Well, he never heard of such a thing, as if he is the measure of things. I told him I was not concerned with what he has never heard of. He tries the old claim that he is just asking intelligent questions. I told him I do not consider baiting questions intelligent, and it is not his concern what I do. He says it is, because he heard me talking stocks one time ago. I said I was not talking to him. Oh, but it was a friend of his. Still not any of his business. He is getting irate, but better him than me. I am forcing his true colors to the surface. He wants to know if I invest long term, what if I need the money. I told him that is none of his concern, but I don’t risk money I will ever need.
[Author’s note 2018: I have no conscious memory of Benny, but the type of numb-nuts these people are is certainly something you never forget. But read on, I’m beginning to wonder just who this jerk was, I mean, sounds like a total write-off.]
Still saying he is intelligent, he tells me that things can go wrong. This is a boy-genius, you see. I told him I did not want to hear anymore of his juvenile stupidity, just go bother somebody else. His real self? He says he does not think I should be “giving stock market advice” when I have to “buy a scooter and can’t even afford that for another three weeks”. At that point, polite little me told him to go feck himself.
In an unrelated peeve, I see that there are several court cases going on that show the law has become just too departed from reality for my easy digestion. Maybe I am blind, or maybe I can see just fine, because I see something nobody seems to talk about. That is, that a lot of crimes are committed by people who know they have to pay for things others get for free. Stop and think about that concept. Is the ten-year-old who steals a bicycle as motivated by pure greed as the law would have us believe? My contention is that the kid knows he can go get a job and earn a bicycle, but that he has seen others get one for free and stole to protest such unfairness. Why should he work for what others get for free? My point is that there is a lot more involved than greed, and that is where the law fails us.
It is plain wrong for the law to assume motivations are standardized, that everybody who commits a specific crime does so for the same reason. Stupid people think that way. That just cannot be true if every case. Especially young men may only want what he sees others getting for free – the rich kid gets a fancy trophy wife because he has a big fancy house and a big fancy car. (At street level, paying for it with your daddy’s money is the same as getting it for free.) If the game is set up to play favorites, you can’t expect all pre-determined losers to take it lying down for infinity. To those who insist the definition of greed or lust already allows for such motives, I confess I myself have done a lot of things out of spite alone that would easily fall within the legal definition of greed, yet I have never been greedy. I would never steal money out of greed – but I would steal it from the government for totally different reasons, if I ever had the chance. That plainly could not be called greed in my case, for I have no need of such money.
