October 23, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 23, 2023, more like eight.
Five years ago today: October 23, 2019, you didn’t kick in.
Nine years ago today: October 23, 2015, non-twist-off. (Primitive.)
Random years ago today: October 23, 2009, near the Orinoco.

           Silver just poked past $35 and that means it will make $40. The neat thing about owning your own blog is you can make so many predictions, some of them come true. If it hits $40, it will hit $50 and the panic buying will get it to $60 and so on. Again, buying is easy, the work is deciding when to sell. Today I’ve decided to do nothing, so let’s find out how I define nothing. I made it downtown y’day so we have another month’s supply of coffee. It is now 4:44AM so we’re off to a good start. I have theory on the silver price.

           If you watch the [silver] graph, there is a series of small increases followed by a plunge. I way this lop-sided behavior is big banks again. But this time the effect is pennies, not dollars plus they must make the decline look like a trend or people will start buying. This is only my theory, but it’s as good as what’s out there. With China setting to buy, this is no longer just manipulation by the bank, it is positioning. Especially by those [banks] who have “rented” out their silver. It’s complicated but it won’t be if we see $50 per ounce soon. Now is the time for the banks, I believe, to fight back before their pants catch on fire.
Today’s pictures will be output from the now re-installed MicroSoft Picture Manager. The one they quit supporting because it works. This curious set of photos shows the effectiveness of the deer camera photo. Alas, when in this position, it will not pick up traffic in the street.

           We got one order today, the total for this month. That’s a $7 sale and it would have been easy except for eBay. The order did not appear in the messages, order list, or active folder. I found in my email, the easiest place for a message from an unknown sender to get overlooked. Talking to other eBayers is useless, they have long accepted this form of inefficiency as normal. This is why I conclude the average eBay user is dumber than a sack of wet hammers. The email was stamped 6:04AM today, but did not appear on eBay until noon. As a sales experience, eBay is a near-abject failure.
           So far, most every eBay order involved some manner of messing around. If you seek a place where you simply take a photo, upload it with a description, and then ship it when you get the money, eBay is not the outfit. There are six different categories of listings and three different categories of order info. For a carefree side-hustle, eBay is not your best option. But the truism of the computer era is that first to market, no matter how slipshod or crappy, becomes the standard. Until eBay develops a single location where you can check in once a day for all your orders, I rate the place as a company of imbeciles with zero concept of efficiency.

           All three shed radios are picking up only Tampa again, just enough to hear the political gossip. Like how the Democrats no longer talk issues, only Trump this and Trump that. Poon talked on NBC about how she would “pardon Trump” but laughed so badly I didn’t get her answer. And Trump is so far ahead in the Georgia polls, Kamala has stated if he declares an early victory, she will send in a “team of experts”.
           Closer to home, I have the deer cam set up in the popular walkway between the silo and the work shed. It is now a foot off the ground so the raccoons using that approach will walk directly toward the camera.for added drama, etc. Between now and dark, all we get is pictures of my shins and shoes as I traipse about. My calendar guide says mention food, so how about coffee? The last batch of Maxwell House was great, but cumulative time in South America made this a good choice.

Picture of the day.
The Flashcubes.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Next, I would like to take a few extra paragraphs to update you on the vacuum tubes. They are not moving in the volume that would justify either my time or the supplier, who likes to keep an eye on his inventory much like I do on my databases. Thus, I scheduled today’s phone meeting to map out a better strategy than eBay. Here’s where I get to mention my percentage of the sales has been upped to much more than the 50% we agreed because he realizes it is the database that makes them worth more than anything.

           Here is the situation. I have a buyer in Orlando that I met via Skycraft. They can move the tubes in enough quantity to have somebody both shipping and buying full time. The opportunity to move say, 500 tubes, in a single sale and suddenly I’m very interested. Thus, I contacted their buyer who, methinks, must have went to the same database school that I did. He maintains an update list of tubes they are buying.
           Before continuing, here is the only nice graphic I have for you today. Turns out the JPEG format on the deer cam is not compatible with Windows Picture Manage. How typically millennial. The entire process appears to work, but the system will not save the finished file--tell me again these millennial didn't do that to make sure you wasted all your time up to the last click.

           While his list is a different format so I cannot paste it directly into my tables, he has developed much the same sorting sequence, so I can lock-step down his list and pick what I know he is buying. This isn’t ideal, but it is far less of a time-waster than eBay. My plan is to put together an order of the tubes that I know they are seeking, in particular the lower priced tubes of which we have a plethora. There are a number of proprietory considerations I won’t share and I will okay each part of this with my supplier.
           This is new territory, making it impossible to predict what can go wrong, but I estimate I’ll have a preliminary order together in a few days. Test the water. I’ll allow plenty of extra lead time to pick any order we make and I would not be averse to driving the tubes to Orlando myself. I could tell from the buyer’s web page they are used to receiving boxes of co-mingled new and used tubes that take hours to sort. I’m hoping for the best and will let you know. Between us, I think I’ll be lucky to make a lousy thousand bucks out of all this.

           So, you know how far I got on the scooter lean-to? About ten minutes. The day was so nice once I got into the workshed, I built a couple more boxes. One was a concept I had while sawing rabbets. There is a way I could make a nice box with just rabbet joints by making all my cuts on the table saw won just two of the box sides. While I can imagine electric and computer circuits, it gets foggy with wood joint. That means I had to build it before I could design it, so I went half-way with both concepts. Make each cut and write the dimensions on the wood so I man make a diagram later. This kept me occupied for two hours but I seem to have got it the first try. The pieces fit and if I make four more shallow cuts, I have a fancier bottom and lid. Pics later.
           Finally it got up to Festus time, but we got another episode where he was not featured. This week was “Old Dan” played by the same guy in “Petticoat Junction” and “Green Acres” which I recognized mostly from re-runs at JZ’s place. Easy to mistake for Otis, the drunk on Andy Griffith. Lots of drama and not back acting, but I want a shoot-out and a bar fight, not Doc Adams and Matt playing temperance movements.

           As I walked back through my workshed, I saw the pieces cut earlier and decided to work extra on them. I got them sanded and conditioned, then decided to cut the extra rabbets mentioned earlier. I wound up out there until almost 10:00PM. Then, I went after that database, only to discover how out of practice I am. Just dumb stuff that slowed me down, like forgetting that concatenation won’t work on fields formatted as text. Most of the offers are for specialty tubes that have to be deleted out or you’ll spend half your time scrolling. I also forget my own formulas for finding matches in two columns, but that will come back easy enough.

ADDENDUM
           I mentioned predictions and it is curious to find some things I said or though that are long forgotten. My rotten memory for such things was [largely] the original impetus for this blog. I sometimes look in astonishment at how close or far I was. One thing I can be certain of, there were reasons at the time and I’ll match my reasonableness against 99% of the people I’ve ever met.
           INot all the news from Caltier is good, but I’m still happy with their performance. They just bought a gem of a condo on the coast in San Diego, so how come I’m not thrilled. Because once you know Caltier, you see they don’t always have the same priorities as I do. I’m invested in their Fund 1, the operation that buys, improves, then flips property. They also have a business segment that is focused on accredited investors. This generally means people who can afford to lose, but when they win, it is usually big. This is the Seacoast Sands, you can see the Ocean--and this is downtown San Diego.

           The property announced today was only for accredited investors with a minimum of $10,000. That excludes me only on the first count—you must have a net worth way above my wee budget. The rub is that I believe this property should not have been closed to non-accredited clients and the minimum should have been $4,000. They’ve done nothing wrong but it is my opinion they stray off the path when they favor larger investors on the really good deals. I mean, I get it, but I’m just sayin’.

           I’m no insider with Caltier, but I’ve been watching my account long enough to spot predictable patterns without knowing the motives—and a major cause of that is Caltier’s reticence. They don’t spell things out so tough luck if they get flak. I’ve long noticed the lock out smaller investors on any deal that pays more than 10% and I’ve been 100% right about that. Now this SeaCoast Sands deal comes along. Total capital $1.1 million, four units, it should have been a Fund 1 investment. But as soon as I saw the IRR (internal rate of return) was 14.47%, I knew it was accredited only, I didn’t have to look it up.
           To me, they should be focused on taking the pause off Fund 1, of which I own a small but measurable portion. They only say Fund 1 is now undergoing “requalification” but that tells me not much. What is it? Why the pause? Did it take them by surprise? Why four months? Should not such things be an internal matter for which I am certain they are handsomely paid?

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