I’m admitting temporary defeat. There is a sharp group on the Internet that seem to know a countermeasure to everything I do. Well, what is it I do that attracts such attention? I’ve already hinted at it, I teach people how to protect themselves from the nasties out there. One of the perpetual problems with Craigslist is when people figure out how to group flag with multiple accounts. You can’t prevent all flagging, but often the simplest tactics can defeat your average computer user.How do I know it is a group? That’s easy. It physically takes time to bring up a post and flag it with each fake account. When three or four flags occur within a half-minute, you are outnumbered. One person with many computers would gain nothing by moving so fast. Also, the flags occur within moments of a new post and always during school hours.
Another indicator is the speed at which they can react to new situations. Somebody smart enough by themselves is not going to sit there all day. But a group of brats could easily form exactly such a group. The only reason I don’t is because I have no peers that know enough. I’ve joined too many clubs where I was the only one who knew how to do things and others joined to get the knowledge without paying for it.
So congratulations on this round, whoever you are. The larger your group, the greater the chances one of you will make a mistake. We know who you are connected with and that is who I will be watching. It is also known that groups like yours have a very fragile and brittle structure.
To continue a so-so day, I stopped in at the pawn shop on Hollywood Blvd. No bargains in there at all. They had a used Ernie Ball swell pedal for $129 that sells new for $101. My quest was a tape deck, one of those old Radio Shack singles that produced fantastic quality studio sound. Nothing, not now that I’m needing one. I called around and nobody’s got anything like that. How do they record their live music? That is a loaded question – you can record live music digitally if you have expensive enough equipment, but the reasonably priced rigs will always let you down. Many musicians will confirm this. I want an good old analog tape which I will digitalize later.
Closest with gear was Cowboy Mike. He has a Tascam that is overkill for what I want so I declined the offer. He says the Radio Shack (Realistic) models are available for $79, which is twice what I’m looking to spend for limited usage. Especially since it was a terrible day for sales, which sure, I’ll tell you about in a moment.
Wallace has to move before May 1, and so do I. This is coincidental bad luck, more because he has to go on that Alaskan cruise on May 10. There is no way he is enthusiastic about that. Still, I don’t want him to fly here and stay less than two months this time, preferably for three so he can climatize (and experience a Florida summer). I will make the final cash offer on the new place tomorrow, meaning anything beyond that I will need time to pay.
This does not look like a good time to have a mortgage. Price is everything in that market when times are good. Cost is everything now. House prices locally are falling 19% per month, which I hope happens for another four months. (Careful to account for compounding, meaning a $200,000 house would drop to just under $79,000, not $10,000.) I say their troubles have only begun and one can only wonder which paper fortunes that are melting away each moment.
These people deserve to suffer, don’t get me wrong. They conspired to borrow their way to wealth and their merciless greed forced house prices out of the range of honest people. Stealing is stealing. If you are looking for a lack of sympathy, look at their behavior for the past four decades, not today.
I had one small sale today, and I almost lost that due to a co-worker with a bad attitude. There is a lot of abbreviated communication in the room, which is dumb, but a fact. Around a week ago I lost a sale because a verifier started grilling me. Today, she tried it again. Customers find it easier to hang up on hold music meaning I dislike delays. For some loco reason, she takes up to 6 minutes to take over a call, which others do in less than 30 seconds. Latricia, that’s her name. Probably has brothers named Latrick, and Laul. The verifiers are big on the name game. There is a Latasha over there, too.
