One year ago today: March 30, 2023, the Titanic conspiracy theory.
Five years ago today: March 30, 2019, Broaway: get there late.
Nine years ago today: March 30, 2015, get this man to Wendy’s.
Random years ago today: March 30, 2014, my “Acapulco wallet.
Shall we start the day witn some good news? The Civic insurance dispute is over. The settlement 100% in our favor. Some might say that’s proof you have to duke it out with these companies, but the reality is quite different. Insurance companies are a symbol of corruptions in America, it is the only consumer product you are required by law to buy. That alone tells most people who is behind it, but in America, poor people have few common goals. It is no accident people don’t unite, for in America there has always been enough for all the people who wanted to work. It’s the ones in for the free ride that drag us all into the pit.
Turns out I have no pictures for you today, so any you see this morning are filler. I’ll do my best, but it climed to 70F damn near the same time I set up the ladder to do some painting. Now I’m back inside with a mug of coffee, so be glad if you see any pics at all. And JZ called it right. We got rats again. I haven’t seen any yet but it wasn’t the butterflies knocked over my bag of bird seed. Wait, here’s a picture of my bedroom picture window in the morning sun. The shadow is the double squirrel baffle on the birdfeeder.
So, you can say it was a victory because it was not a loss. It’s a sad affair, this standing up for your rights when it costs a lot of money. All I have received so far is the letter stating they will pay the amount I calculated, but in a sense that is taking a loss on their behalf. That is, I offered to split the difference to get things over with. This was hardly about the merits of the claim because I know what I paid for. Insurance companies know most people cannot walk for two months. I waited them out. They blinked first.
Mind you, this takes the pressure off Caltier for a year into the future. Up to now I had to constantly check balances and monitor progress, as the funds came [primarily] out of my operating budgets for other things. Like a new kitchen stove, but it could be argued since the old one works, there was no real panic All this into tips off the asture reader that there is far more to the way the Caltier investment is handled at this end than just socking away a few bucks now and again. Put another way, I only got this cabin because I had some cash standing by at the right moment. Planned cash, like the kind that goes into Caltier.
I’ll confirm again when the insurance check clears. (Not a moment sooner, it’s not like I trust those people.) I’ve re-balanced the books to allow for this new ballast. These idiot Democrat voters just got themselves 30 years of inflation in 3 years and I hope they feel the bite deep. Their spinners are working overtime to twist this one but there is no change the real majority will be fooled. I will be taking another look at the Caltier Reggae fund. Would that not be something if silver or art went up 1,000%.
As for other alternatives, silver remains the most manipulated. And as for house prices, the market is still stalled. For that matter, adjusted for inflation the housing market has rarely done worse. That’s except for the Fannie Mae event that let every loser in the country get a mortgage they could not afford.
Last for this morning, I received an e-mail that removes the hope Jay could join our duo, even occasionally. Nope, says the wife, he is too busy. Did I mention they’ve been out of town for weeks since the last gig? What’s more is way this potential insurance settlement affects the books. It causes a series of “splits” in the source of all money. Until this money, originally from the motorcycle collision, was returned to the fold, there was little incentive to segregate where smaller amounts came from. Here is the revelation.
The fact is, if I back out all sources, such as the $3,200 from the so-called “stimulus” program, y’know, where Biden printed up a bunch of money and told you it was a gift, guess how much of my own money is actually today in Caltier? This may be a shock to some people who believe in the system. I represents the actual amount of “spar” money even a responsible money manager like myself could spare to put into a new investment. All my other income would be taken up by the costs of living.
So, how much of my own real money have I been able to invest in Caltier, taking into account all the vagaries of the Biden shennaigans? This figures is the true amount someone like me could actually contribute without any of the hype, indexes, statistics, or bull-crap. The exacr true amount I was able cough up, the dollar figure of how much was my own and those with less are fooling themselves if they think they are gaining. The numbers go up, but what is the final amount of my own “new money” that is presently in the Caltier fund.. Are you ready? It’s 41 cents. You heard me.
This should tip you off that savings and investing are not easy in a system that works against you in this way. If that’s all the actual new cash I was able to come up with, how do you suppose others are faring. We get back to the first realization I ever had about money—that even if you cannot get rich, it is a good idea to get poorer at a slower rate than hordes that are blocking the way. Consider this especially true in Florida, where everybody who is not a stupendous jackass is a broke jackass.
We have another paperback on the bedside, this one a story of the crazies attracted to the field of code-breaking. That makes two simultaeous stories. The audio-book “Signal”, which is great, and the paperback “Crytonomicon” which is off to a damn good start.
Early toaster.
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Noon. That’s my start time today. I got yhr painting done on the [neighbor’s] carport and the cash money in my jeans. There were a few spots bound to give him headaches so I cleaned out any dry rot and gave it a coar of hardener. What great way to spend a day. The guy sure knows a lot of pretty women I’d never meet anywhere else. Well, except for places I would not look, like church picnics. Besides, divorcees are on to the picnic thing.
Years ago I heard an excellent rendition of “Rocky Top Tennessee” and I can’t find it again. I’ve got dozens of versions but none capture the tune right. And in my opinion, the Osbornes just butcher the song. But I dig how some people associate super speed an squeaky voices with good bluegrass. The guy even looks funny.
Most artists try to change the song, there could be legal reasons for that. But the worst thing they can do is try to jazz up the bass line. It’s bad enough how so many guitarists thing because a stand-up bass is played with the fingers that they do the same on an electric and change the effect. “Finger bass” my eye, I’ll show you the finger. That Osbourne version kind of grates on me. And Dolly Parton? Each time she sings it, she gets a little further from the original melody. I happen to like the original.
Here’s a picture of an old railway coupling in southeastern Tennessee. Suitable for framing. It shows the gap left of expansion and to give sensitive riders a migrane. It is posted here mainly because I figure it is easier to look at than that beady-eyed Osborne brother in the white cowboy hat.
Little else is aft to happen until evening, I’’ll record some of my thoughts on navigation. No formulas, just some of my evolved opinions on the topic. It’s a fascinating field for those who enjoy a mingling of theory and practice. You can’t pick just one. Almost every stage involves some rounding off, estimation, or a bit of guesswork. This is why you’ll unlikely use it unless you were in the middle of the ocean, where twenty miles is close enough.
Navigation was a nightmare before sight reduction, a term that gets flung around on this subject like you are supposed to know what it is. It’s a concept of using a sextant and a booklet of tables to find out some information about a point you choose that you think is nearby where you are, based on dead reckoning. Did you get that? It took me years of doing it to grasp the concept.
You take a guess where you are. It does not matter if you are wrong, but the closer, the better. Fortunately, angles are something that mankind can measure very accurately so you haul out your sextant, which can get it to a tenth of a degree, or one nautical mile. You make a series of four corrections for items like parallax, instrument error, and the fact your eye on a boat some distance off the surface. So far so good. We’ll presume you “shot” the Sun, which is the glamorous part of this trade.
You can use the resulting angle to calculate how far you are from the single point on Earth that the Sun is directly above at that moment in time. It’s in the Almanac. This is normally where I’d stop and where classical navigation would begin. It is also where sight reduction becomes a welcome shortcut. The exact location where you are is probably not in the Almanac, but there is always a known position in the Almanac that is close to where you are.
So you use that nearby spot, called an assumed position, to get your distance and bearing. Those figures are what is contained in the sight reduction tables. You can construct a line on a map and know you are somewhere on that line. What you need is a second line, or a reading from a different star or planet, and where they cross is your likely position. Anybody who has even stood near this operation can tell you it isn’t that easy. But that is the entire theory.
One major reason it is not easy is the instructions are written by different people. The terms used by map-makers, sailors, scientists, and astronomers are bound to clash. Example, the minutes and seconds of Greenwich Mean Time are not the same as the minutes and seconds on your sextant. The only solution appears to be practice. After all these years, I’ve never shot anything but the Sun. I’m also “Western Man” ruled by the clock time, not dawn or dusk. I would have to destroy other schedules to be present for the ever-changing twilight.
ADDENDUM
From the musing this morning, I got around to doing something which, for reasons I don’t know, I never actually did before. Run a spreadsheet on my entire life. What if somebody had put a hundred bucks in the bank for me on day one and just left it there. You see, I never did much trust those bank charts about how much you’d make. While the arithmetic is clear, the effects of taxation and inflation are not. Nor is the fact that you are surrounded by greedy, conniving fiends who call it anything but that. Not everyone is that way, but enough to keep you in the poorhouse.
We’ll make some assumptions, that interest averages 7% and that I’ll live to be 70. We’ll figure in that I’ll top up the account every once in a while with the amount paid in taxes and that I have the inclination to put money in the bank and never take it out, which does not make sense to most people. Let’s see what happens in 840 months.
The original depost is $100, very doable to anyone with the inclination. It takes ten years for it to double. Hmmm, $12,000 today, so just marginally ahead of inflation. Ah, but I’ve proven I can save long-term. Let’s add, say $10 per month. We’ve also proven most people can’t do this. That comes to $230,000 which is more like it. You can live off the interest on that if you had to AND [you] had your house and car paid for. Like I do. My conclusion from this spreadsheet study is that investing money at interest is, by itself, not a good way to get ahead.
Ah, but I’ve become a master at the “reverse investment” strategy. How do I set things up now so that things progress in a way that I can stick with the plan. In the case of Caltier, where the goal is $50,000 by the end of 2030, how does it work. Well, I have to put money away regularly, which is a hassle. Would it not be better to, say, forego the new kitchen stove until I sock away enough cash that the investment becomes self-sustaining?
In other words, how much do I have to put up here and now as a lump sum for it to reach the goal by itself? Wrong. That is how so many people wind up failing. If you had that kind of money, you are doing better than you imagine. So what is the trick to making it easy? For me, it is to put away just enough at the beginning that the monthly amount I have to deposit is easy to swallow. I’ve already done this in two ways. If I put $22,946 into Caltier, I need only add $100 per month. Or if I put 25,000 into Caltier, the recurring deposit is only $67.11. Very doable, but I’d best accomplish it while I’m still so young and spry, don’t you think?
