One year ago today: December 25, 2014, the old red Mazda.
Five years ago today: December 25, 2010, that memory is DNA.
Nine years ago today: December 25, 2006, 40 clicks bike ride.
Random years ago today: December 25, 2011, a study day.
MORNING
This is what the Xmas Day looks like to a man who writes his own ticket. It’s what you don’t see here that counts. Just me in an empty coffee shop, Starbucks which I dislike, but the self-service has become better than the bad service at Denny’s, my choice before they went wrong with the counter service. No screaming relatives, no backstabbing gossip, and I won’t have to listen to anyone who attended complain about all those things instead of ever growing the huevos to just not go there in the first place.
Them soldier-boys seem to have forgotten what happened to their 2,600 Humvees just the other day. But they’ll be first to scream when they meet them again on the other side. What’s the bets these Iraqi pilots quickly defect to ISIS and take their F-16s with them? Well, none, actually, because the jets have built in GPS disabling systems if that should occur, but that is hardly the point. If you train them to fly a General Dynamics , before you know it, they’ll be coming at you with a Chengdu. Which, in sufficient quantities, have a quality of their own.
How stoopid can our military be? We keep finding out, but never learning. Let me rephrase that, how stoopid are the brass? The dolts who make the orders, not the others who have to follow them. Um, on the other hand, it is a volunteer force, so technically, nobody has to follow orders. This is why, if the world were people like me, there would be no military. Nobody would voluntarily follow orders.
December 25, the semi-traditional day of quiet study and reading for me. Just me, the coffee pot and some books. Although these times a good Internet documentary will find its way in there. Today, I watched a program on the design of wooden aircraft wings. I have no idea why, since airplane design is totally not on my list of interests. Maybe it was just time. That, and my other tradition, a hot sandwich in a sit-down restaurant set me back $10. Add it up. $6.95 for the sandwich, $1.95 for the coffee and a $1.00 tip. Inflation is your Xmas present from the central banking system.
Let me scan back and see if I’ve printed any photos of the property in focus. It does not appear so. Yeah, I did, y'day afternoon, the place with the green trim. The only reason I originally looked at this was it was the lowest price non-mobile home. It looks rather well maintained. The satellite shows it to be in the middle of the block in the northeast end of town. This is within the city limits, so I would get a lawyer or title company involved before any final decision.
This morning was different in that I examined the cottage in more detail. It was built in 1940, so it must be solid, but many evils can be hidden by aluminum siding. The point is, the structure only has to last longer than I do. And if it doesn’t, I’ll have a built in pity-story to follow the lead of other Florida residents if disaster should strike. The only crime reported within 2 miles of this place was a car theft on Xmas Eve 2014. Some kid hot-wired his neighbor’s 67 Corvette, maybe?
I’m running a half-dozen spreadsheets on the property and I’m coming around to the other point of view. If I get the right price on this puppy, I will be ready to pounce again in six and a half months. That’s what, June 2016. Whether prices go up or down hardly matters if I get a place cheaply enough. And I can always pull the money for an extra trip to the interior out of the burgeoning PA system fund. (That’s the fund for the Fishman PA system I haven’t bought yet.)
NOON
I am still at a loss to figure out why nothing has come along to replace the now out-dated and over regulated Internet. All of the original premises for the Internet have been defeated by the traditional system. The Internet is about censorship, propaganda, in-your-face advertising, privacy invasion, and imposition of unpopular government mandates world-wide. Here is an example of an ordinary talk show posting shut down by the authorities. The premise is that the public, if allowed to view this type of material, “is not educated enough” to draw the "correct" conclusions. No doubt they mean "politically correct".
Okay, ask me anything about fiberglass reinforced airplane wing laminates. Betcha can’t, because I found out the only time the technique was used large scale was by the Soviets in the Great Patriotic War. I have no evidence it was ever used in robot construction. So it is nice to know. You see, the back yard of this little house is huge. As in big enough for a real workshed. Or a small barn.
Whichever decision I make will be wrong in some way. But yes, I’d live in a place like that. It’s a beauty for a guy like me. The additional rationale is put in an exterior entrance around back, keep that as a place to crash, and rent out the rest as a one bedroom. Or just keep it as a summer cottage. It sold, less the new aluminum siding, for $8,000 three years ago.
For no better reason than that I have experience doing so, I sat down and calculated why this property owner has to sell. He did not factor in the “standing costs” of ownership in that county. Without going into detail, the true cost of “isolating” this shack, that is, to prevent another panic sell, is $7,260. Whatever you buy the place for, you will need that amount of money held in reserve for the first two years before you make anything. At the same time, the startup costs of being a near-total idiot remain at $0.00. Just ask Wallace’s daughter.
NIGHT
For anyone who hasn’t seen, this is a typical “crime map” as displayed by Trulia. It is gleaned from Google Maps, so right there is an alert they are not being honest with you. How can a map lie to you? Well, easy. On these maps, green means “safer” and “red” means “less safe”. Shown yere, you do not want to live in downtown Dade City, Florida. Ha, looks more like Dodge City.
Anyway, the thrust here is that the colors are relative, not absolute. I have seen areas with 53 and 61 crimes per mile radius that appear green—but only because the next map area over had 312 crimes. Google knows what you want, but they have to be pricks about everything.
Be sure to click and review the nature of the crimes. Jaywalking is probably a safer bet than “shooting of a person in prog”. Anyway, stay on the freeway past Dade City, and same with Fort Pierce. In fact, you might even want to avoid properties that have a view of those places.
Here’s another warning, The website Realtor.com sets off so many of my intruder alarms that I rarely logged onto it. I don’t know what it is with that site, but you only think it is you looking up their information. You done been told. For that matter, the site won’t even work if you have Kaspersky on your computer, or if you have an ad blocker active. And you should have an ad blocker on principle alone. The blockers are all equally bad, but I use ABP.
Be further aware that many of the new anti-malware apps are extensions and will turn themselves off when you reboot the computer. Always check your extension manager after a boot. MicroSoft Outlook now establishes a “user account” whether or not you asked for one, and regularly steals a copy of your address book, or contacts. The button to manage your contacts has been removed. (You now have to go into the “people.live” section of the account you didn’t ask for. There are restrictions on which of your own addresses you are able to delete.
Last Laugh
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