One year ago today: February 27, 2016, what’s the standard term?
Five years ago today: February 27, 2012, deadbeat? or destitute?
Nine years ago today: February 27, 2008, I just raised my prices.
Random years ago today: February 27, 2013, actor or con man?
I kind of stayed up late and grappled that problem with the solenoid. It was a question of amperage. You need the oomph to trigger the relay and I think my recent battery is fried. The one I paid $50 bucks for in December. Hey, I’ve got a $monthly budget for vehicle repairs, which is comparable to the amount others pay for insurance. Insurance that would be unnecessary if they changed the law to allow people to sue bad drivers until they were weeded out of the system. Feast your eyes on this repair. See the big-amp marine battery and the robot-grade charger in action? This outfit is the real McCoy.
[Author’s note: If it was up to me, I’d track down every bone-head that foisted that “radio” crap onto this formerly-okay coffee chain. I’d make sure the actors who recorded those lame commercials never worked again—this country is already full of enough third-raters who’ve sold out. And I’d run the whole staff of that “radio station” out of town on the rails, with the dogs barking. May they all wind up the same place as telemarketers. It kind of resembles a large pit lined by people with gasoline cans and fireworks.]
While reviewing more music by that band recently in focus, I ran across other tunes with interesting bass lines. Um, that includes bass lines that I find could be made interesting, Justin. The tune that rose to the top is the Judd’s “Why Not Me”. It isn’t really suitable for me or for bass solo, but talk about potential for duo treatment. Why not give it a listen and see if you hear the same qualities I do? Honest, I won’t make a lot of conclusions if you don’t. But I’d consider anyone who can’t hear the potential as some third-rate write-off guitar hack. Um, er, I mean, a polite and sensitive unoffended Millennial who believes all music should be equal. A lot of that song’s appeal is its lack of a disco beat. Did I say disco? Yeah, well you know what I meant.
Once in a while, I listen to audio books. I get them cheap when the library has a sale. There is a shift in topics, the contemporary books all tend to stress the “tough life” aspect of the children of terrorists, or at least populations that support terrorism. The producers carefully intersperse the passages so you can’t fast forward over them. The motive appears to be spoon-feeding the reader the nonsense that nobody should go after these fanatics because their families might suffer. Like the thought never crossed the radical’s mind as he strapped on his dynamite vest. Yep, that’s about as liberal as it gets. Forget the innocent sufferers, sympathize with the criminal.
$230,000 playhouse.
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A close inspection of the siding shows that very little of it needs replacing. That’s a relief and I recall reading that it is sometimes possible to blast off loose paint with a pressure washer. Aren’t those things really cheap these days? I’ll check it out. Do I know anyone I can borrow from? Let me think . . ., nope, and that didn’t take long. Get back to me, that is an idea that needs a look. The paint that is loose is really loose, I can pull parts of it off by hand. Yet other patches a foot away are so stuck that the belt sander still leaves traces.
But so what? I was feeling listless and only put in a hour today. That gap below the window? Gone. I also scraped another comparable sized area of the siding and it ain’t that bad, maybe people just find it distasteful? You keep along at it and it goes around half as fast as painting. Again the wood shows itself in fine shape. A few minor patches, but it is 99% straight and strong. A few nail heads had worked loose but those are replaced and the rest sanded down to those shiny metal. I’ve now done 1/27th of the area and did not find it a backbreaker. And if I’m wise, I’ll learn to consider such things exciting in the context of retirement. I’ll carry on with it, see how long until it gets to me, as they say it must.
Next, I took a third look at that old Honda solenoid. I can report that it is not true they cannot be repaired. That should read they cannot be repaired economically. I was able to free up the mechanism. With a shiny coat of black heat-resistant spray paint, the unit works fine. She fires right up, and I now have a spare solenoid that I can wire into any 12V system. They are basically nothing but a heavy duty relay that is not meant to be latched more than temporarily.
Which brings up the good news. Because I can return the battery and I did not travel to Lake Placid this weekend, for the first time since I took early retirement (not to be confused with turning 65, which is still in the future for me) that means this month I had a total surplus. Keeping mind the terms I use for my expenses can be considerably narrower than common practice, I’m saying I can now, in a month with no extraordinaries (expenses) actually wind up getting ahead in the game. This was influential in my decision to get out of south Florida. There was a consistent drain of resources between $660 and $1,400 per month just living there. I won’t explain, but those were real monthly loses of equity.
Of the top of my head, the best month I ever had in the Miami area caused a $565 loss. If you must know, the surplus this month will be $56.52 unless the house gets hit by lightning tomorrow. Sounds like nothing, huh? We shall see. That’s from a real loss to a real gain, so just you watch what happens if that keeps up. JZ, get mobile or I’m going to wind up with a second house before you get your first one. It took six months for this to happen and I still have not see the Smithsonian.
“They say my father was stealing from the department of highways, yet at
home we never suspected a thing—but all the signs were there.”
ADDENDUM
This is a copy of the posting I made on Craiglist, in Rhode Island. Just to be nasty.
Who’s on the blacklist? Dunkin Donut Entertainment radio. It used to be a nice coffee shop you could go relax and read a chapter, or work the crossword. No more. They now have a headquarters mandate to blast their propaganda throughout the premises. It is some of the most idiotic drivel imaginable, geared to the lowest possible mentality. They are clearly intended to target marginally functional retards with a fourth grade comprehension level. “Hey, Honey, are you putting your coffee in the microwave”?
It smacks of Big Brother because the staff can turn it down, but they cannot turn it off. Dunkin management consists of imbecile Millennials who have never read Orwell’s 1984. I picture this swarthy third-rate journalism grad in some bunker up in Massachusetts who thinks he’s invented something clever—just because he is so thickly unread he doesn’t know it’s all been done. Like the scum who invented the subscription card that falls out of your magazine, these people need to be hunted down.
Now it has become difficult to impossible to have a quiet coffee at Dunkin. Forget working the puzzle, the music is mostly elevator-grade pseudo-rap and the commercials come on ten decibels louder than the programming. It’s been outlawed on late night TV, but not on private radio. How sad that a generation of half-educated clowns can impose this horrid practice on others who mistakenly remember when Dunkin was a pleasant experience.
Please, Dunkin, get rid of those commercials, get rid of the bozos who came up with the concept. Tune in to some local easy listening station if you must. Until then, I’m advising my entire circle to avoid Dunkin, whose coffee, by the way, has gone downhill something fierce in the past few years. And somebody get the name of that hipster jerk-off in the commercials and make sure he never gets another job in the field. Being an actor is not, with the possible exception of Richard Gere, a license to annoy the hell out of people.
I primarily blame upper management, however. It is obvious those impossibly stupid hypocrites never take a coffee break in their own stores. Like all corporate heads, they keep mentally aloof from their victims.
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