One year ago today: July 24, 2015, catching the super-rat.
Five years ago today: July 24, 2011, my first fancy circuit.
Nine years ago today: July 24, 2007, I helped paint this.
Random years ago today: July 24, 2006, a DNS (Dragon) transcript.
MORNING
What’s this? Kmart is running on empty? I find that doubly amusing because Kmart was one of the stores presented for case study in my third year of accounting. The lesson was about how to calculate the “proper” amount of product a location should have on credit. There were similar calculations for the “proper” amount of borrowing and accounts receivable. The results were often many times the amounts these stores ever sold or paid in cash. I remember feeling disgust at the very concept of buying inventory on credit. I can see selling for credit, but not buying your goods for sale with it.
Call it something like being “Cosby-ized” and using the “Monica defense”. Anyway, a secretary tries to blackmail a lawyer who hires totally the wrong street hood to kill her.
I took the morning to review the stock market. JZ has asked questions about such investing and I can’t give any meaningful answers. I haven’t really traded in so many years, I’m not sure if I understand computerized markets. I can tell you things like seminars and books are a waste of time. It's like finding gold--if you do find gold the last thing you'll go public with is how you did it. Like real estate, the top 1% make money. I find you cannot make money using a broker and if you trade yourself, the odds are nearly as bad. All the material available is about the circumstances that worked for the author, but real world trading is too highly dependent on personal education, experience, and examples which cannot be duplicated by another individual.
Stock indexes are too unreliable and you should be aware the Dow is not an index, it is an average. If you don’t know the difference, the wise course is to ignore both. The only remaining stock since its inception is General Electric, which does little more than go with the flow, that is, when the whole economy grows, people buy more electricity. I may dabble in the market again after 2017, but only if it collapses first. Otherwise, it is speculation only for me, calculated speculation like silver, where even if I lose, I still got the silver.
Pony express route.
NOON
That pepper tree in my old back yard is gone. It grew too fast and was hitting either the neighbor’s roof or my own. Cut it, and in a week it’s back. The office crew came over with a chain saw too small for the job and finally took care of it. Now I have no shade at all and they could have waited until I sold the place. The "urgency" came when the tree roots began to interfere with the court water lines to vacant plots. And the office wonders why nobody likes them. There was a similar tree causing the same problem over by the swimming pool and cutting that down didn't help there either. The problem is the office is too cheap to replace the entire shallow system.
Then I watched the movie “Montana Sky”. Hmmm. While I did not identify with the plot, you know, rich bitches inherit the ranch and can’t get along for the year specified in the will. But I totally identified with the women individually because by sheer coincidence, I’ve dated all three types. And as usual, I was never impressed by the types of men they dated before we met. How women can be so blind and stupid has been a mystery since before the flood. Women complain all men want is the young pretty ones but look at the choices they make—and still never blame themselves.
Oddly, I’ve been all around Montana for nearly 40 years, but have never actually been back there in all that time. The nearest was the trip I had planned along the entire northern states in 2014 that was forestalled when I saw house prices rising again. I’ll be back there on the sidecar at the first ooportunity, which could be not that far away now. If I live that long, I’ll see Missoula again. I’ve pretty much forgotten the place, you know.
Which brings me to a tough decision. I’ve assessed the purchase of a car in 2017, a used station wagon like the Taurus. Much as I like the sidecar, the trips are confined to summer months when I have money and since I had to buy the house, it may be a long time before everything matches up again. In the whirlwind of saving every penny and driving out to look at houses since May 2015, I’ve learned my old ticker can tolerate country driving. And in the city, a limited amount with the windows down. On a scale of one to ten, the worst I ever get is a one. If it ever gets over that, I promise to stop on the spot and sell the car.
I plan to see every state by driving. This year I’ll be lucky to get to the Smithsonian, but by next year, it could be back to a nice trip every month and a big trip out of state every few months. Stick with me, the major thing that could still go wrong is if I meet the right gal. That hasn’t happened in two decades. In all that time, I think I’ve only dated one who didn’t ask me for money far too soon. And she turned out to be a big-time liar.
Diallah Kareem: Diagnostic Medicine, 2015. Di was the junior member (a trainee) on a team of surgeons who determined a more accurate test for appendicitis than the once in use at the clinic. They simply asked patients how much pain they perceived on the way to the hospital as the ambulance drove over speed bumps.
This Friday after work, the team is getting together at Di’s place to develop a test for STDs. BYOB.
NIGHT
I don’t recall publishing that many pictures of the house model with the projected add-ons. Those are the stick-frames shown in this photo. If this is a repeat, good, it will remind you that I really do like the new place. Let’s go over it again because I want to. This is an early picture that does not show the cupola and finished siding. But you can easily see the projected porch and the 228 square foot planned sun room. The porch is the money-maker, adding a whopping $16,000 to the house value instantly. Probably more, if you let me explain.
The sun room takes over as the living room, converting the old building back into a two bedroom. Except for a washer/dryer, the entire sun room is pure living space, with internal soundproofing, its own separate electric, and up to two skylights. Each bedroom would then be large enough for a desk slash private den-workspace combo in one corner. The high ceilings give quite the spacious feel. Right now it is speculative, but like the budget, the plans are already drawn up.
The porch only requires $1,700 in materials. If I come in under budget, I’m considering wooden shingles. If I didn’t say, JZ reports the existing shingles are older than they appear from ground level.
Now that I’ve owned the place for two months, I’ve adjusted to the operation of the entire household as far as expenses. Allowing for taxes, utilities, and repairs, I will still have four times more funding per month to enjoy that house than what I have here. Like people who finally pay off a mortgage, the amount of money saved will so quickly find other uses that my joy will be short-lived. But having no debt on the property means I don’t have that massive sense of having missed out on half my life to pay it down. You know what I’m talking about. We shall see how I handle the freedom. My biggest beef about rent is that you still have to pay it when you go on holidays.
If I had not opted to renovate and put in a new bathroom, you bet I’d be traveling right now. But don’t expect much by way of new music, or any of the other big plans I’ve made because for the next year, I intend to do most of the renovation myself. As long as I have that insulated, soundproofed, air conditioned big bedroom in the back complete by the end of August, who cares about the rest?
When I add it up, I’ve lived nearly ten consecutive years in a mobile home. But I was never “cooped up” like so many of the neighbors. And the only trouble I had was when I was foolish enough to share. That was the only time I did without. Outside of that, I had always had at least some money to operate a vehicle, travel, read, and all the things I like. Most of the people who live in the same courts turned out to have one big story in their pasts, but otherwise had been put out to pasture. I like to make that distinction, that if I walk into a seedy bar, I’m there by choice, not because I screwed up in life.
Myself, I always knew I’d get a nice house, I just could not have known it would be in Florida. In those ten years, I shelled out approximately $50,000 in rent. That is not that very much these days, and it shrinks to nothing when you consider the true cost of a mortgage over the same period.
ADDENDUM
Most serious students of history have heard of the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time I’ve never met anyone who has read it. I view that treaty as the rotten degeneracy of the entire “statesman” and “diplomatic” system. These morally corrupt “delegates” were appointed by political cronyism, identical to how it is done in America today. There persists a fallacy that the over-educated Liberal class know better what common people want than the common people themselves. But let’s confine ourselves to the treaty creation process.
The entire “conference” was a fiesta for the rich who had made money off the war. And yes, you know who that was. Another serious delusion is that diplomats can't do a good job unless they have best food and hotels. This, folks, is why the meetings were not held in Versailles, but moved to Paris. There were no fancy hotels and not enough prostitutes in Versailles. The British rented an entire luxury hotel and brought their own butlers. Wartime propaganda had spread the myth that Germany caused the war and should pay for it. Few of these "diplomats" attended the conferences because Paris was a city where the women “did not wear enough clothes”.
I’ll bet you know the names of two people at the conference who applied for independence for their nations, but were soundly ignored. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and Ho Chi Minh of Viet Nam. The treaty was no treaty at all, but a carving up of the world by corporate-backed interests. Germany, which had not been defeated, was treated as the loser. American entry into the World Wars has never been adequately explained. But it makes perfect sense if you understand Rothschild banking.
Tell you what, here’s a little trivia you had no idea about. Winston Churchill was owned by the Zionists. It’s been purged from the English history books, but his mother was well-connected with the rich Jews. After the failure at Gallipoli, Churchill went home to a luxury estate that was far beyond his salary of 500 pounds per year as a parliamentary representative. There he sat, doing nothing for 15 years, during which time he mentioned Germany in his extensive writings only twice.
Then, in 1936, he received a fat check for, in today’s money, around $880,000 from a Jewish banker. Thereafter, Churchill exploded with anti-German hatred and declared he would drag Germany into another war whether or not Germany wanted one. He rejected all German peace offers. At this point, the English history books pick up the story again.
There was another undercurrent at the conference, the Japanese. For all that can be praised in their 2,000 years of wonderfully advanced civilization, they never discovered Australia. Once the English had found it and built it into a wealthy nation, by 1900 the Japanese suddenly were demanding “racial equality” everywhere but in Japan itself. They demanded racial superiority in China—and got it.
As for Germany? They were prevented from attending the “peace” conference. Germany was “invited” only to sign the treaty, not to read it. And to ensure cooperation, the French moved 42 army divisions into attack positions on the German frontier. The Armistice of 1918 was only effective for 30 days. However, it should be clearly understood that Germany had accepted Woodrow Wilson’s famous “fourteen points”, announced in January, as the basis of the Armistice. Yet, Germany was the only nation disarmed by Versailles, and the Germans have never made the same mistake since.
The fourteen points forbade secret alliances, yet France and England had already begun to make “military support” treaties with nations that surrounded Germany. Large ethnic German cities and farming areas in the east had been occupied by the Poles as soon as Germany stopped shooting. This is where you can read about what happened in Bromberg. One version says the Polish army massacred 58,000 ethnic Germans. Enough to make you question who really started the next war.
Those who are disgusted how Hitler “forced” the French to surrender in the same railway car as the Treaty of Versailles seem to forget that the French had forced Germany to surrender in exactly the same manner 21 years earlier. Ah, the power of propaganda and brainwashing. Why, it must be true--it's what they teach the kids in school.
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