One year ago today: September 24, 2016, Tampa 44.
Five years ago today: September 24, 2012, projected cost $17 billion . . .
Nine years ago today: September 24, 2008, bicycle advertising.
Random years ago today: September 24, 2011, at the Pines Mall.
Richard, my [former] motorcycle riding pal, is a stereo installation pro. When I asked about an MP3 player in the car, he reminded me I have one of those FM radio adapters. That’s right, remember that puppy? You use the headphone jack, set it to an FM station, and tune in the radio. I knew there was a reason I kept that thing. The trick now is to find a decent MP3 player. Not one of the millennial playlist jobbies where you have to fumble with the buttons for longer than the song plays. (I fully understand how the fumbling part amuses such people.) Something I can operate by touch while driving. The car has no center console, just a fold-down armrest.
Progress report a few hours later. This photo shows the best work I can do of this kind. Sorry about the tinge to the picture, it turns out the Vivitar T016 has trouble taking pictures in any conditions except bright outdoor sunlight. Another lesson learned is my bandsaw is missing a tiny set screw. This could also explain why I’ve broken several saw blades. It is the screw that tensions the back of the blade, so although I never press the work into the saw, that blade was surely getting stressed wrongly at times. I found the dovetail work quite interesting. Not those fancy angled dovetails, but just the block style shown here. Fortunately, I know a store that sells those exact same screws, a type of Allen or hex head type. It surprises me they even build a saw these days with a screw that even can come loose like that.
Worse, I don’t have any welding gear, so the blades must be purchased new each time. Who remembers that guy at Young Circle who was selling those beautiful boxes for $30 or $60 each? At least, those are the prices I remember. He was looking for an apprentice, but said the training period was several years, which I didn’t think I had at the time. Ah, speaking of life expectancies, I went over to check on JZ and he’s pretending that back and leg injury is nothing. He’s the guy, near my age, who tried to haul a 200 pound beach tent across the sand by himself a little over a month ago.
If he pulls another stunt like that, I’ll have a permanent tenant for a house if I buy one. Or send him over to Agt. R’s to rent a room and make enemies. Ha, ha, just kidding, maybe. I’ve been scouting what’s available for nearly three months now. The situation is similar to 2006. There are houses for sale, but nobody is buying because the prices are too high. The newspapers love to report house prices rising even if there are no corresponding sales to back up the stats.
I ran the numbers and there is no way at this time anything on the market could be rented at a profit. The Judge’s house, with six bedrooms, could not possibly turn a profit unless all six rooms were constantly full of long-term tenants. However, let me qualify a few things about that. The global factor is that I do not look at any investment in isolation and I find fault with instructions that give that advice.
For example, first look at that same house by itself. My rule of thumb is a rental property must pay back the initial investment plus interest (under a set of rules not specified here) within ten years, or it is too risky. If you spend $120,000 on a property and rent it, the net income per year has to be $12,000 (plus interest) per year. You might think that’s only $1,000 per month, but don’t forget operating costs, repairs, taxes, insurance, and tenant problems. Plus the fact such property ties you down. A lot.
Iceberg.
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So, why look at it [real estate] at all? Because the situation changes when you take the venture out of isolation. In Polk county, there are few other worthwhile investments. Poor as the return might be on rental accomodations, nothing else comes even close. The local job market is also piss poor, with all the grads hightailing it for the cities, except the few unskilled laborers who remain behind to clerk the convenience stores. They won’t be paying no $1,000 per month in rent. Still, a house that brings in a substandard return on investment can become semi-attractive when every alternative is even worse. Got that? Good, now go try and explain it to JZ. Just kidding.
[Author’s note: take a closer look at this picture. While it looks like a Florida flood, it is actually a stealth boat dock. Apparently, there is a pool pump that will drain the interior portion in a few minutes. The overhead door is remote controlled and faces a dead end channel of the river. The history of this house is checkered.]
For something to do, I was looking at the specs on that hand-held scanner that wasn’t really a scanner. It’s packed away in the red shed. Hmmm, it can pick up the frequencies of such things as the voice channel of the space station and all the common ham radio frequencies. I say it is not a scanner, because you have to know each frequency you want in advance and program it into the device. Then, months later when you have all those set up, the radio will scan those and only those channels. Piece of crap there, Radio Shack. No wonder you went down the tubes.
Thinking along even further, several of the unsuccessful antennas that the robot club built were never tested on those bands. It’s just a thought, but I’ll dig the gear out of the boxes and maybe see what happens when they are coupled in the bright clear skies of central Florida. I’ll try, I mean, because I’ve seen the size of the antennas used by ham operators and they are several times larger than the TV and Internet bandwidths that we were testing back at the trailer court. So many of those antennas failed us that there were times I gave away $100 rigs just to get rid of them. They were in danger of becoming target practice.
“postmaster = stamp store.”
~ anagram
I grabbed a book by the Herald reporter Edna Buchanan. That’s the redhead I met at Soyka’s, or whatever the name of that club was on North Miami Avenue back in 2002. We chatted for around a half hour over at the bar, which is a record for me to talk to an older lady. Especially one with dyed hair trying to shave off twenty years or more. I remember she was only an interesting person for the first ten of those minutes. But she’s a reporter and she can write. Her job was to cover the daily murders in Miami, and like most good reporters, she writes what she is told to write.
Other than that glaring omission, she is a talented writer. She points out the vast majority of victims contribute to their own murders. They are Cuban and African males who steal, cheat, deal drugs, sleep with people’s wives, taunt, threaten, and almost every one of them already has a criminal record. They are raised in single parent households on welfare, watch violent TV all day, and demand the rights to act like back where they come from while being protected by liberal American laws.
True, Buchanan would be restricted by whoever signs her paycheck, but somehow the same would not apply when she writes her independent books about murder. In fact, she seems to purposely try to cover up the ethnicity of the killers despite the fact it is the single most important determinant of the suspect. Drug murder has become so common it is usually only big news when innocent bystanders and tourists get caught in a cross-fire. The next largest group are the queers. Between these three types of males, you’ve got something like 95% of your criminals in South Florida. But the liberals live in gated communities, so it is always the other people’s problem. Why, if those dead people had just been more tolerant. Or rich.
Do not get the impression that I dislike Buchanan. I accuse all reporters of avoiding the facts when it comes to the racial aspects of American crime. They should have their passes revoked. The Constitution does not protect liars including those who lie by omission. But I will say that Buchanan is so totally not my type that, placed alone with her on a desert island, the human race would face imminent extinction. I’m also leery of certain types of women that don’t revert to their maiden names after a divorce and things like that. No way is Edna an Irishwoman. (I think she is Polish.) Oddly, with the maiden name thing, it doesn’t bother me when some women do it. Explain that one, if you can, but do so on a case-by-case basis. Um, no need to get back to me on that one.
ADDENDUM
Alaine called to check on things. They are not officially moving in to the new place for a while, she wants me to maybe lend a hand in November if I’m up to it. She asked about the pool pump, but all I can report it is that everything was silent when I did the walk-around. I would have noticed anything rattling. And I’m determined to get a trailer hitch on the station wagon. Didn’t I mention, the air conditioner fan quit working, probably from going from complete disuse to my leaving it on constantly. I checked the fuse box and found nothing, but by tomorrow I’ll be back on-line. I also am looking at the roof rack on the station wagon.
The house itself is a mini-mansion. The rooms are huge, a contemporary style in south Florida, though who needs a 16x16 bedroom still puzzles me. And I just thought of something else. The batbike and the station wagon have both been blessed, but the Rebel was not. I don’t believe in blessings, but I should point that out. Nearby is another photo of the Taurus in the driveway just before the storm hit. The real estate agent is so far keeping his word to tend to the lawn and such until they move in. It is one of the smaller houses in the subdivision.
Last, my investigation so far reveals that a station wagon is not quite heavy-duty enough to handle a [motorcycle] tailgate rack. They are designed for SUVs and pickup trucks. But, I can definitely haul a trailer, so that is not out of the question. If a trailer it is, I would lean more toward an enclosed unit, or a small travel trailer with the motorcycle rack attached to that. Stick around, as usual, you’ll get the results of my top-notch research abilities even if what I’m searching is the standard Internet third rate millennial crap.
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