One year ago today: September 27, 2024, no airlock, saves money.
Five years ago today: September 27, 2020, I had a peach tree.
Nine years ago today: September 27, 2016, the saildrone.
Random years ago today: September 27, 2005, first official Argus pic..
Here’s on of those problems of the modern era. Flash drives have become cheaper and more durable than disks for transferring information. They also get lost easier. Shown here are seven drives, and no easy way to determine what is on them. Somewhere in there is a list I need. I’m taking a half-hour to create a file with nothing but backups of these, but no plans to keep those updated. Later, it took four hours to make the backups, as they had to be categorized. The good news is I found some files I’d been looking for. Wow, did I look young ten years ago.
What you got was year one of the tribes dancing in the streets after every White who could afford to leave did so. Then year 2 rioting in the trash-filled street that there were no buses to ride and no crops to pick. I recall those times as the turning point in American policies. We were leaders in a way before that, but the political class backed the wrong side. The place is now a shit-hole and this video blamed it all on the Whites. How dare them build railroads and electricity plants the tribesmen don’t know how to operate.
There was a bit of military footage, but as background to the anti-White narrative. Natives from hundreds of miles away who spoke only Portuguese claiming Salisbury was their homeland. I regard the war as the last of the Vietnam-style operations. Toward the end, increasing use of civilian equipment, like the Lynx which was really a Cessna Skymaster, designated O2A in Nam. It’s difficult to find combat footage. My opinion is that the second propeller behind the cabin allowed the craft to “hang” in the air and strafe without having to make a swoop over the target. It probably helped that they were often flown by “retired” fully-qualified combat pilots.
Another great day, but I may have wasted most of it. My blog rules include mentioning my diet (although that has morphed into just food itself), and this morning I made pancakes and coffee, promptly falling asleep until past 3:00PM. Retirement is not all bad, maybe. I found that missing router, the only thing wrong with it is it won’t lock to change the bit. So I’ll have a go at building my first one-function router table. Do I have the skill for that yet?
There is a school of thought saying I should not be climbing ladders at my age, but I think I may have to build one in place. Turns out this joint needs a bit for care in the attic than ever planned. This time, it is the wiring for the kitchen heater. I don’t mind the cable running out of the wall in the back room, but the kitchen is what company sees first. The cabin main door opens directly into the kitchen work area, right beside where the store will be if I get moving this week.
A major sweat is not getting into the attic, it is hauling the ten-foot ladder through the house to the bathroom where the hatch is located. I need to run in another switched outlet, the one that turns the radio and fans on when you enter the area is a true luxury, and I’ve got a winter heater ready to install. (The bathroom has no heat or AC, but I’m here alone so I just leave the door open, not a long term solution.)
I’ve identified a small “dead” area on the new enlarge bathroom floor directly under the hatch where a ladder would also be a convenient spot to block the corner of the tub to form a permanent shower spot. I’m thinking. I’ve never built a real ladder before.
Fred Astaire’s dance shoes museum display.
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I admit to being inside under the AC most of this afternoon, so here’s the result. A picture of where I may plan to put the portable AC. The logic is below the coat rack of the kitchen door, like so, one should not long have the AC on and the door wide open at the same time. Or, at least don’t let me catch you doing that. What a terrible picture, but you can justsee what I’m talking about. That’s the power cable dangling down.
I disagree with Trump on re-establishing mental institutions. It is wrong unless they are paid for by the families instead of the taxpayer. Trump was alluding to the homeless situation, that the truly weird ones get help. I say the solution is to disallow them to congregate in city cores and cut off the free food. Then we shall see about all those jobs Americans won’t do. When I grew up, you took any job you could get, regardless of how disagreeable it was. In my life, I have piled lumber, cribbed basements, driven taxi, worked in the bush and the oil rigs, pushed a broom, worked the assembly lines, and picked apples. Don’t tell me Josh & Tyler can’t find a job.
I’ve said it before, all that’s lacking is a damn good whacking.
nd I’ll tell you something more. None of those jobs paid enough to live in dignity. None paid enough to even slowly get ahead. You knew taking such a job was a guaranteed dead end. You did it because there was no welfare and you had no choice. I had to sacrifice everything nice until I was 36 to break even, but I never plunged into the debt that kept most others in those jobs.
To this day, I owe nothing anywhere—but I have no wife, no children, and my biggest accomplishment was avoiding a life of drudgery. I was dumb, but not that dumb. One thing to know, I’m not seeking any sympathy, for there is no guarantee if I had gotten married I would not wind up exactly where I am, but paying support and living in miser as well. I’m not sure which path I would recommend to others raised in poverty. Not sure at all.
Preparing for October (my fiscal year) tells me 2025 was a flat tire for investment. It will be February 2026 before I can look again at putting anything away. For those inquiring minds, here is the formula I use for each investment transaction. Some people never learn this.
It’s read like this: Beginning Balance plus Transfers In plus Interest minus Transfers Out equals Ending Balance. It is recorded in full for each transaction alone [by itself on one line], often with extras such as the date, source, reason, and brief explanation. Where most people fail is determining what is a transaction. Hint, in each transaction, only ONE of the middle three items can change. If you go to the bank, deposit money, notice you got some interest, and take out $20, that is three transactions, Sport.
A proper bank statement should be little more than a complete list of these lines with a total at the bottom showing your final ending balance. For that reason, above is an actual example of my bank statement for the Caltier investment from April 24, 2024 until end of that year. This shows every important feature, but does not show other information I’ve learned to track except over in the far right column is the serial number the bank attaches to the transaction. Other columns not shown include who made the transaction, random balance checks, and an explanation of the destination of each transfer out. ACH is the clearing house that monitors not your balance, but bank transaction in the USA. Exe means an exception, Cash means cash, a security breach indicating I was personally in Nashville.
Some may notice there is a second transfer out column, the one with “out of place” numbers. My own deposits and withdrawals show a pattern, but that is intentional. If it is a nice even round number, that is me. The $189 transfers are the Caltier speculation fund. Remember that one? I do, and the $1,890 is still sitting there waiting for Caltier to get off their arses. But what is that odd second transfer out column?
The answer is simple. The Reb has access to this account. I instantly recognize this as vet bills or gasoline. You should have such a system, it takes no time to set up. But then a few minutes a few times a week to maintain. A far better use of your time than trying to figure anything out when something goes wrong. One set for each account, plus your budget which is similar but has lots more columns, such as groceries, entertainment, household, and vehicle expenses where I would be interested in the monthly totals.
Once more, I enter year-end mode and 2025 was a wild ride. It takes money to make money, but I was not ready for this. You know about the 2-1/2 weeks now required to cash an international check, that hurts. I have, let me think, six different spreadsheets like the one above plus the budget. When I say broke until February, I’m not your kid brother picking numbers out of the air. I know damn well my house needs new siding and I need a haircut.
And one thing a budget does, besides keeping you aware of your balance which you should be anyway, is bring out problems you might normally not meet until they become serious. Not that they are all bad, for example the one I’m contending with now was talked about earlier this week. My clamp-down on spending. How it was brought forward from my twenties, where it was more like a switch than a tap. That is, full on or full off, no in between. Thus, despite the trip to Miami and buying the new camera, September will come in $195 below budget. But let me tell you, it was one long, long month.
ADDENDUM
The pedal pub crawler thing gets back in focus. I stopped at the club last evening at what I thought would be prime time, 10:00PM. Nine people where there should be ninety. It surprised me to learn Wilford and others had never heard of pedal pubs. I know the business is in this town and part of the lure for me is that it’s quiet. The hitch is that there is also nothing to do, any type of novelty brings business. There’s a guy who’s making money in Bartow charging people $20 each to walk them around downtown, leading them with lantern and telling which buildings are haunted. Now, the bicycle thing isn’t licensed (BYOB), so first thing I checked was the rental prices.
You need a team pedaling to move the contraption, and most cities rent them for $175 per hour. Some popular tourist spots charge $20 per person. It would cost $12,000 to set this business up and the usual rules would apply. The person who comes up with the money gets the lion’s share, and must have enough to undercut any competition, including from his own trained staff. That’s where Wilford comes in. He just inherited two houses, but really needs work on his business savvy. (The houses are in Nowheresville.)
Yeah, yeah, I know, let him set it up, fail, and buy him out for 10ȼ on the dollar. Can’t, Wilford is a fellow musician. He is very iffy on money matters, there is a lot of that going around. He knows of but not about things such insurance, reserves, parking space, and is woefully unequipped to operate what outwardly appears a simple business. It isn’t, for example, do you have eight friends to get it back home, or will you need somebody with a spare truck with a trailer hitch?
Another option is to let somebody else try it and flop, but that’s too obvious for a small town, unless you don’t mind making a ton of fast enemies. Hey, I’m not saying don’t start a business or a band, I’m saying don’t copy mine. Get yer own ideas, Buster.
