One year ago today: April 20, 2021, history—and nothing since.
Five years ago today: April 20, 2017, defective guitarisms.
Nine years ago today: April 20, 2013, trim travel packaging.
Random years ago today: April 20, 2007, touring the Everglades.
5:30AM and I’m in the mood for a breakfast of rice. It’s pitch black out, let’s check the news feeds and real estate, about the only thing that interests me before morning coffee. I read some of the mounting evidence that Europeans had settled or traded on the US east coast before today’s Indians had arrived. That would upset more than a few land claims, though land claims were, in my opinion, invented by underemployed lawyers. Today is Hitler’s birthday in 1889, and the mood on the Internet is fewer people than ever are buying the demon theories about him. Some might say now is year 132 of the Hitler era.
To this day, the majority of my MP3s are on an ordinary solid state memory drive. If I move them at all, it is on a flash drive. In the van, they are played on disks. And I have no intention of moving to any other formats or devices, once again, until they prove themselves. So follow what I mean here, not the MP3 only directly, but also because the MP3 concept kept pace with all my other changes and I would probably not touch a device that was not compatible.
Man, I love this new phone system I set up. My phone does not ring, outgoing calls only. An answering service takes care of the rest. This, it turns out, pisses off a lot of millennials because they can’t do their number on you. They have nothing to go on, no profile, no credit check, and they seem paranoid in not having a safe space unless they have something on you, like a home address. Boost Mobile and I traded words again today. I went in to pay my bill, understanding my SIM-less flip-phone was disabled, but they never said they would deactivate my Internet service.
Being that my surf device still works, I searched my entire files for the password on that account. No luck, I just never needed an account per se as long as the device worked. And it always worked as long as the account was paid. I’m still working on it, but seeing the Virgin Mobile site was still up, I got connected to a Paki in Canada. So, rather than waste the call, I got some information. In Canada, you must show ID and a Canadian address to get a cell phone. Even then, you need a special plan to call outside of the country and the USA is subject to outrageous roaming charges. No wonder their clown Trudeau is verbally abused wherever he goes.
A review of what music I have shows the only really organized files I have are what I play live. Some of the tunes on the new guy’s list, I had to go searching for. And anybody who’s tried to use the search feature of Win 7 or higher knows how little need the millennial class has for knowing where things are kept. What’s apparent is my hesitancy to adopt new technologies paid off incredibly well with my decision to adopt the MP3 format. It has saved me countless hours and dollars, and it has survived how many pieces of crap and junk that came along since?
To this day, the majority of my MP3s are on an ordinary solid state memory drive. If I move them at all, it is on a flash drive. In the van, they are played on disks. And I have no intention of moving to any other formats or devices, once again, until they prove themselves. So follow what I mean here, not the MP3 only directly, but also because the MP3 concept kept pace with all my other changes and I would probably not touch a device that was not compatible.
Man, I love this new phone system I set up. It’s the old one giving me problems. My new phone does not ring, outgoing calls only. An answering service takes care of the rest. This, it turns out, pisses off a lot of millennials because they can’t do their number on you. They have nothing to go on, no profile, no credit check, and they seem paranoid in not having a safe space unless they have something on you, like a home address. Boost Mobile and I traded words again today. I went in to pay my bill, understanding my SIM-less flip-phone was disabled, but they never said they would deactivate my Internet service.
Being that my surf device still works, I searched my entire files for the password on that account. No luck, I just never needed an account per se as long as the device worked. And it always worked as long as the account was paid. I’m still working on it, but seeing the Virgin Mobile site was still up, I got connected to a Paki in Canada. So, rather than waste the call, I got some information. In Canada, you must show ID and a Canadian address to get a cell phone. Even then, you need a special plan to call outside of the country and the USA is subject to outrageous roaming charges. No wonder their clown Trudeau is verbally abused wherever he goes.
First Fender Stratocaster, 1954.
(around $250,000)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
At noon, this day went downhill. I drove 18 miles one way to pay my cellular bill and ran into Boost Mobile. I’ve previously had the same phone with Virgin Mobile for nearly 19 years without a problem, but with Boost, it is always one thing or another. They change the rules and when I go in to straighten things out, they have some squat Cuban lady lecture me on what I can do until I finally tell her to stop. Lady, why don’t you call customer service? When I do it, they put me on hold for 45 minutes. And is Boost going to pay me for making a 30 mile round trip to find my original contract? Nobody told I’d need it. And another thing, if you can’t make decisions or exceptions, don’t tell me you are the manager. All you do is parrot the rule book.
So I start traveling to a string or Wal*Marts. I finally wound up at the SuperCenter in SE Winter Haven. This is the one where that freaky lady security guard wanted to “check on my camper” after she go off duty. Ha, maybe twenty years and forty pounds ago, come back then. No luck, but the associate was, for once, not a millennial. In fact, he was over 60, white, and spoke clearly. This is somebody who can get things done instead of stand there making shit-face excuses. He remembered they once had some, so I asked him to open the supply cage and check to see if any old stock had fallen into that dead space behind so many stacks of boxes. He did and he did. He found two. I bought them both. See pic.
I made it back to the Boost store moments before closing time and forced them to stay open until the service was back up. No, I’m not coming back tomorrow, I put 115 miles on the van today and they didn’t pay me for that. Again, that dazed blank millennial goof look, that, “we didn’t tell you to drive 115 miles” look. Yeah, like I did it to waste some gas because I’m anti-climate-change you dismal bastards.
ADDENDUM
A new brace of studies is about, mostly concluding what I had figured out when I was twenty. Things I learned were that the largest component of getting rich was luck, that hard work does not pay, and above a certain income level, protecting your wealth from the lazy becomes an increasingly expensive chore. I encountered some new terms today, one of which is the “power law”. I’ll explain, along with why it makes perfect sense to me. A normal distribution curve exhibits the rule of central tendency. Well, it seems some of the newer algorithms, including what they call A.I. show a power distribution.
This is where results don’t follow the bell curve. I know people who work twice as hard as I do, but they certainly do not have twice as much money. At the top of that scale are billioniares, who don’t work in the real sense at all, they are totally occupied keeping and expanding their wealth. At age 28, I adopted the guidelines I largely use today. I shout, do not bog yourself down in matters that stop you from taking advantage of opportunity. Because the luck factor says it is those chances that pay off better than anything else you can do.
So I’m not surprise how all these years later, the studies reach the same conclusion—that the wealthy are rarely the most educated or talented. It is mostly luck, and I’ve had my share of bad luck though I would point out for me it was rarely self-inflicted. I have always worn my seat belt, I don’t use credit cards, and I don’t give my phone number to strangers at the checkout.
What the studies are missing is what can be done by you, in the absence of luck, to tilt matters in your favor. That’s an encyclopedia I’m not writing while saying there are countless things you can do. They are different for everyone so I can’t dish out advice except maybe general concepts. For instance, I don’t watch TV, but that is a far cry from saying I do nothing instead. This blog is one of twenty items on the go with the time that is freed up. Because I often write in public, tens of thousands of people have seen this, but I doubt even one of them ever thought, “There’s a guy not watching TV”.
Thus I get much amusement reading these so-called latest studies. What’s new is the Internet gives them a forum. Otherwise they are rehashing the obvious. You don’t get rich by copying others, you don’t get very smart either, but if you do, again it is luck. It was at age 28 I deduced my “retirement equivalent” formula which you know from this blog. I don’t have a million dollars, but I have the equivalent income in realistic terms.
As a distraction, I’ll give you the [quick] formula to calculate my income based on what I just said. Take one million dollars and invest it, remembering anything above a steady 10% is too risky. Now pay your taxes on the investment income. From what is left over, take the rate of inflation on the full million and plow at least that much back in or you are getting poorer. Remind yourself that of what is left over, at least 15% is needed to keep doing things the way you do. Take what is left over and divide by 12 for a monthly amount. See that amount? Pretty small, innit? Well, that’s the income I carved out for myself without ever killing myself for the million.
Ah, I heard some sharpie say, but 10% of a million is only $100,000. And inflation is 9%, which is $90,000. If you have to plow back that much, you only have $10,000 for yourself. To that, I reply, ah, now you are thinking. The sad news is if you figure out a way to beat this situation, the system calls it cheating, but as long as you don't break the law, type of thing. Ah, you also forgot about taxes. Gee, now it makes sense why I would love to make an extra $500 per month in a band. It’s because the way I do things, that’s the equivalent having a lot of money in the bank.
As for working hard, I only did it because I had no choice. When you spend 40 hours a week working in a lumber mill twenty miles from town and get back every day dusty and tired, you are in no condition to take advantage of any opportunity. Now take this cabin, an opportunity that could not have happened if I’d been the same as others. It took all the money I had in the world and it was the 509th property I looked at. The process took years. Most people can’t do that. They are too busy watching cable TV.
