November 11, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 11, 2016, CFM boots.
Five years ago today: November 11, 2012, by the boatload.
Nine years ago today: November 11, 2008, a whopping 0.1%.
Random years ago today: November 11, 2013, Area 51.

           See photo. This, folks, is why you do not trust string levels by themselves. Use them only for running your string and double check. Shown here the bubble on the right says we have level, the same make and model of bubble on the left, where I’m pointing, tells a different tale from the trailer court. Say, did you know my ratings go up when the title of the blog is mentioned often in the body? But I’d never resort to such shameless self-promotion by saying tales from the trailer court too often in my posts.

           Still griping about VISA this morning on the phone, I was reminded of another blatant rip-off built into the system. When you sign a mortgage of, say, $200,000, you will be repaying that company something like $500,000. That’s a lifetime of after tax dollars, so why the hell should you be paying that bank another $5,000 in “closing costs”. You may remember in the early 2000s, that was me that partially triggered the investigation into closing costs. I rejected a $32,000 mortgage because they wanted another $6,000 in “closing costs” and I told them where to stick it.
           That evening, I complained about that to a bunch of reporters at Sojka’s. Why should I, for instance, pay $600 to survey if there was a watercourse on the property, and why is each successive owner of an existing place being charged the fee over and over? And most of the other fees were internal bank requirements that added nothing to the value of the property, so let the damn bank absorb them out of the interest monster.

           [Author’s note: that was the property in the Design District back in 2002, where the other guy showed up at the last minute with the loan after defaulting something like six weeks in a row. The price was $61,000 and I was waving half that under the seller’s nose. The fact I didn’t buy could be interpreted two ways. One, I missed out on flipping the property four years later for $300,000. Or, I’d have lost my shirt because it was only 18 months later I had my heart attack and nobody correctly predicted the real estate bust shortly thereafter. But things were that close.]

           With cooperative weather, I was out there at 7:30 AM marking the hole depths for the piers. They have to be set 20” to allow for 4” of gravel. Even if I have to buy that gravel. I mean, what kind of place is Florida when you got to pay for ordinary rocks. At least it isn’t like Canada, where you’d need a license to get a permit to qualify for a waiver to get your certificate—and bring your ID. We’re talking gravel here.
           You know how I stacked the salvaged oak flooring over against the north side of the yard? I can’t say for sure but that same day the cardinals stopped using the feeder. It’s full but they won’t go near it, even though there are closer spots for the feral cats to lurk. I don’t know if it is the lumber pile, but it is too much work to move it just to find out. Maybe move the feeder round back until the porch is built. I have the trenches dug but have to go buy a hard disk drive. Once again, I’ve filled up my resident hard drives at just around the time a new size goes on the market that will hold my data.
           Strange how data requirements balloon like that. There are no movies, no porno, no large music or any kind of file like that on my drives, yet I still fill up space. I have home movies, mostly band and music clips. Other than that, the only large files are the photos for this blog, and they are only 640x480s. Windows is terrible for memory overhead. It creates thousands of small hidden files most of which are ever used only the once.

Picture of the day.
Before & after.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.


Last Laugh

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++