One year ago today: January 2, 2023, even with my glasses . . . .
Five years ago today: January 2, 2019, pipes for future vacuum?
Nine years ago today: January 2, 20145, Kroger’s absorbed Freddy.
Random years ago today: January 2, 1977, already growing cautious.
Into the shop first thing in the morning and found the major problem with this computer. And learned my computer knowledge is ten years out of date. It’s more like twenty years, but let’s be fair about this. There is some spillover, much like an old-school mechanic can still fix most or your car. The problem was twofold and embarrasses me that some of the clues got missed. It was $40 well spent just for the new input, some guy half my age who talked me through some changes I never bothered with. Example, how to detune the gaming settings, which led to the problem. This computer, although only ten years old, needs to max out the CPU just to keep up.
Here is a yard flower, the only picture I have for you today. I didn’t say nothing grew in my yard, this is a weed. Don’t ask me why it’s blooming in January. The front yard especially gets these outbreaks but nothing that covers the whole yard or makes it look pretty for very long. That’s why I use the whole yard as my driveway.
Caltier, fashionably late with the month-end again, seems to have paid out a lousy $52 in December, bringing their return for the year to 6.72%, under target. Be patient, as their web site was designed by no-techs (accounting-wise) and has bumped up amounts before. Later, nope, unless they’ve royally screwed up, the return for the year is under target. We ended the year with just over $16,000 in the pot, not bad since it was really just a year’s invesing. The income was $776, I predict double that for 2024. Just you remember, the year coming up could be the end of America as we know it. Still, property values tend to be resilient and that’s what Caltier is all about.
If you read through Caltier’s portfolio, there is a point they make that a lot of newcomers won’t spot or understand. They stress they do not rely on investors money for investments. They could do a better job of wording it. They mean they invest only in properties whose cash flow covers expenses. They have mortgages on these properties and they are point out they can make those payments without new incoming investment. That makes them rather the exception in the property investment game. That is, if there is a bust, they won’t have to start panic selling as has happened with Blackrock.
Later, I ran the numbers and the low payout is correct. I do not know how to interpret that, but I set the goal for 2024 at $1,400 unofficially. That means I didn’t outline a budget, I jotted it on my calendar. This is the benchmark but it is also a minimum, as plans are to continue funneling money into Caltier as long as they match my property taxes here, which are low at $65 per month. The goal is tax protection for a larger place in maybe Tennessee, but this wee cabin will always figure as the bottom line in any financial survival situation.
Looks like my Canon printer is incompatible with Win 8. It will run without the correct driver, but I’m without my scanner until I figure this out. Win 8 had a very short caeer for good reason. It had all these issues but with MicroSoft there is one big issue that I wish would bankrupt that company so some decent startups could get off the ground. That issue is the lack of standards. One place we’ve all seen them is directions that tell you to choose, click or select an invisible icon or the option that is not there.
Centennial, Wyoming.
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Nope, too cold to even be outside in the afternoon, so I read more Jules Verne. I recognized the names from various other sources, just never placing them with this novel. The book bases a lot on description, sometimes to exhaustion. Do we really need to know the exact minute that Phineas takes a nap? Then again, I recognize this as the fashion at the time. It slows me down, but I intend to read it because it is referenced so often in crossword puzzles. At the same time, I’m looking at the story of Thomas Jefferson. Before I begin, I know that I will eventually be accused of jealousy by the shallow-minded. You see, I never much, in my years of reading, came across a list of his accomplishments other than building himself fancy houses. Yes, I know he wrote the Declaration, but he was a lawyer, abeit a gifted one. That was part of his stock in trade.
Because the rules of getting an infrastructure are out there, but there is nobody to tell you how to interpret them. I was weary at 25 of financial planners who went on how any working man, in his lifetime, made enough money to become wealthy. On paper. None of them can tell you at street level how to do it, I mean, has nobody noticed how few working men ever get anywhere? Once I had an infrastructure, at a sacrifice of 18 years of meaningless work, I was retired (you know what I mean) less than six years later. It is with this eye that I look, not specifically at Jefferson, but at people like Jefferson who were essentially born retired. I point out my space is envy, not jealousy, for I judge the system with the same harshness it judges back. I may not have performed miracles, but I would certainly have taken a hand in causing them to happen.
I knew very little elsewise about Thomas Jefferson until today. I regarded him as the sort of person I would be if I had inherited a 5,000 acre plantation and 11 slaves. He had a wide variety of interests, certainly, and never having to bother with mundane things like rent and food, he had the time to pursue them. I was curious to learn what he accomplished that was not a direct result of such a head start. There are two issues with that. One that he seems to have done very little on his own and second, every available source goes on and on that he owned slaves. This seems to be a horrific obsession with your average historians, as if anyone cares whether it was free or slave labor that cut the lumber for his houses.
He became a lawyer and got into politics, a profession as was and is normal for rich kids who don’t like getting their hands dirty. But since he was reputedly an unusually talented rich kid, I’m trying to find out what it is he did that was out of the ordinary in that context. He read a lot, but so do I. He wrote a lot, ditto. You see where I’m going here. It cost me a lifetime to get these things, so II’m not exactly one to idolize anyone who got around to them at his leisure.
My take is he wrote legal documents that became famous as a consequence of history, not any particular talent for writing. He wrote about pressing issues of the time that most everyone was familiar with and he wrote in the lawyer’s vernacular. By late evening, my unanswered question remains what did this guy do that was above and beyond what could be expected from anyone in his position? I’m still looking, but I’ve found nothing to suggest he was any better motivated or harder working than the less fortunate in relative terms. I said relative terms. So I went back to Verne, it was more riveting.
