One year ago today: April 29, 2025, early symptoms?
Five years ago today: April 29, 2021, no more digi-dog,
Nine years ago today: April 29, 2017, it’s windy here.
Random years ago today: April 29, 2007, visiting the Hard Rock.
Cancel this morning as well, but the stores don’t open for another two hours, I’ll editorialize. Yep, it was around now in 1981 I made my first financial investment, a CD (savings bond). Note, I said financial, I already owned an apartment and two houses in partnership with RofR, both of us had been dirt poor living in my rented attic a few years before. Never talk to me about hard times and no way out. More in the addendum, I’ve got a morning of chasing around ahead.
I’ll share some rare blog stats. I lost 500+ views per day during that time I was in the hospital. I’d planned ahead a bit, but not for months, so it’s logical many concluded I was dead. My stats do not show if any views are repeats but I know from long experience which blog inclusions or changes affect the counter. Food handily tops the list, followed by the picture of the day—but that is very sketchy. That feature is full of links that eventually go dead. Third place could be the Last Laff or Yesteryear. Drop those and lose 177 views per day. The good news is since I got back, readership has slowly climbed back to slightly over 5/7ths of the three-month running average prior to my disappearance. Not bad for a special-interest theme.
The Reb, who has no control over my life and cannot tell me what to do, has advised the morning off. So I did. So there. Y’day was whirlwind, I cannot supply details, but gawd people, I only spent $18,000 on the house I live in. Which is where I’m staying put, my plan is to review game cam footage, which you are used to by now—I’ll publish anything interesting, promise. Here is Mrs. Red at dawn, I’ve looked long stretches how that squirrel is getting to the feeder. This are not nature pics, this is part of my study to catch the little bastard.
The game cam reveals its shortcomings. If you position it too close, it can show either the squirrel or the approach, but not both. If you move it back, wind movements in the tree leaves sets it off and you get hours of nothing (which I’m busy with just now, but what a tedious waste). I’m thinking of a plan to focus the camera on the afternoon shadow. That might reveal something. The real solution is to build a stand for the stand and put the camera fifteen feet in the air staring at the ground, which we hope does not move.
[Author's note: take today's post as uninspired. What follows is not a still, but a still embedded in a video. It show a squirrel hanging off the part of the contraption that is supposed to make it squirrel proof.]
It is now 9:00AM and I am going to brave driving through downtown Lakeland going shopping for a camera that BestBuy has told me they keep in regular stock at the store. We shall see.
Next item caps the morning, nothing gets done much of today. I get a call from the husband of the lady who works the same office as the lady housecleaner next door. The guitar player and that is a tale from the trailer court. He has been looking and asking for a year for anybody with band experience. That, gang, is why they call it the moccasin telegraph—because that is how slow it moves. He phoned as I was about to leave and we were on the line until noon.
Caution, nothing in music is as it seems, but here goes. He is totally into blues, country, and bluegrass. He has been on the music sites for the whole time, which gives you a good idea of what a disappointment those are. Good, he knows there is a reason some people have been running the same ad for five years. The guy is 71, so he’s been through the meatgrinder. And he knows how to sing. He’s played acoustic in many bands and my have played a year with the early Ramones. That says I don’t have to worry about stage presence.
Like myself, he finds studio work dull. He sings and harmonizes, has all his own gear and transpo, so he’s been in this business. He has no e-mail but he will soon. I’ve sent him a list of what I’ve played in the past 24 hours, leaving out the latest material out of respect. He may be a Legion member, so I’ll dust off the Prez’s song list. How many tunes have I played in the last day. Mumble, mumble, hang on, 21 that I know of. No doubt, he has played every last one of them.
“Trenchless” augur.
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Now 2:30PM and I’ve not gotten an inch closer to my chores. This next section is because I promised to keep you abreast of how things went with Caltier. I meant the investment, but you recall I meant also learning more about the procedures—because I could not get any plain talk or text out of anybody, I chose Calter. So you can decide over what follows as somewhere between bragging rights and confusion. So here, chew on this.
In the past, I’ve mentioned (and joked) about Caltier has often mistaken us for accredited investors. You can look up for yourself what that is, but the Reb and I are not rich enough for that label. I regularly chuckled that the accreditation process was mostly conduct that I had already learned long before I retired, which will be 30 years ago next month. I naturally treated the Caltier account with what professionalism I had, even timing the random “Found Money” transfers to emulate how seasoned investors manage along. This had nothing to do with Caltier, just that it reflects well on credit reports and it never hurts to behave.
What the helck? Another message, they want to talk now, the CEO guy. This does not make sense, our account is too tiny to move the Caltier needle. What does the co-founder have to discuss with us? I thought it might be over how there was no contact for a year, then the same day we liquidate 80% of our investment—but as I just said, our share is peanuts. So, I’m stumped, let’s test if I can guess it.
Okay, we’ve been mistaken for accredited before. The corporate side, which we know is not on top of the department that does their coding, has a set of parameters that sets off alarms if accredited people pull out—and that is what they could logically see as what is happening here.. Shift a decimal point and it is an easy misinterpretation. We’ll know in less than 30 minutes, so make your side bets now.
You won the $20. The call was to the point. Caltier is on pause due to a change in their accounting system (you’ll remember me downloading their daily transactions) and the SEC did not like that they changed accounting firms. But, we now have the information needed to plan ahead. The problem stemmed from the fact that the pause on the fund also paused redemptions.
However, I brought up the clause that influenced my choice of Caltier, that is, they had a segregated fund for redemptions. However, it was capped at $5,000 per month—subsequent to my decision. I countered by explaining if they had communicated over the past year, I would have planned serial withdrawals within that parameter.
Last, I was happy with the call, though it was really us who finally pushed through the contact [after a year]t. Parker is a born salesman who got into a good deal. But his support staff let him down on this one. It makes more sense now, information has a way of doing that, at least around here. So we put it to him to make an exception and expedite this one Trust me, he is not going to forget the team Reb & I. Nor his “customer success” lady, who would have been the one to finally get my to-the-point e-mails and who else could prance into the boss’s office and get him to respond same day? Now, if you don’t mind, I am mentally exhausted.
ADDENDUM
Still wide awake, I located a documentary of why there are no longer any Heathkits. A sad tale of a market that disappeared. New components that were tiny coupled by cheap imports meant the company was doomed. Along with it, a huge loss in tech savvy which led to people today who have no idea how their gear works. And you would need a million-dollar factory to repair it. Some, such as myself would say the product is not the peril, but how the user has no clue how it works. This lack of savvy is now three generations deep.
Equally fun were the reader comments, for I had once wanted to learn this skill. But can you just see me saying to my parents I want a gizmo that comes in 300 pieces that does nothing useful around here. I’ll need a clean, quiet spot away from the others for several weeks. Oh, and I’ll need $39.95. Now imagine some loud, severe slapping noises.
