10:42 – Barbara, Colin, and I were down in Winston yesterday. She had some errands to run, followed by lunch with one of her friends, after which they went to the Ansel Adams exhibit at Reynolda House.
While they were doing that, I was supposed to be scrubbing down walls, preparing them to be painted. Barbara thought scrubbing and painting would be too much for us, but was willing to at least give it a try. She was right. I got a total of two walls scrubbed down in my office before I called her and said she’d been right. Constantly looking up and bending over was playing Hobb with my vertigo. It is simply beyond my capacity to do this. Barbara was relieved, because she was dreading doing the wall scrubbing and painting. We decided just to pay someone to do it for us, particularly since we have a lot of work remaining to be done up in Sparta, particularly science kit stuff. What was easy for both of us at age 30 isn’t easy at age 60+.
While I was taking a break out on the front porch, Mr. Marshall showed up with his crew to cut our grass. He cuts several of the lawns in the neighborhood, and had done some yard work for us in the past, so Barbara arranged with him to cut our grass in Winston until we sell the house. When I told him what I was doing, he mentioned that he owns 67 rental properties and has good people that do all that kind of stuff for him. He said all of his folks were good at what they did, reliable, and charged reasonable prices. I asked if he’d give us the names and numbers of the people he used for washing down walls and painting, and said he’d be happy to do so, although he didn’t have the information with him. He asked me to call him at home in the evening, which I did last night. We arranged for him to meet us at the house the next time we’re down and get the ball rolling.
When Barbara gets home from the gym and supermarket, we’ll go to work on science kit stuff. We’re running short of a lot of kits and subassemblies, so we’ll be working on those for the next several days.
We decided just to pay someone to do it for us
Yay!
Seeing your mention of Ansel Adams brought back memories. I was a photography major in college in Marin California way back in 1970. Our instructor was good friends with Mr. Adams and arranged for him to spend a week with us teaching his Zone System of light metering and his darkroom techniques. Then he invited us all to spend a week in Big Sur with him doing some nature photography. It was a FANTASTIC experience. Even though my life took me into a career in IT, I cherish those images I made back then and the time I spent with the genius.
Sometimes it makes sense to do the job yourself, sometimes not.
If it’s messing you up physically, and keeping you from paying work, that is a good time to look at hiring help, even for work you could do.
Just be sure you are getting value, ie, the house will sell for enough more to cover the cost of the work you are doing.
nick
I went to an Ansel Adams exhibit back when I was living in North Royalton, OH in the late 70’s. When I walked in to the exhibit area, Adams was sitting there all by himself. Not another person in the place. So we sat and talked for a couple hours. He was an amazing man. I’d done some work with an old 11×14 cherrywood field camera with a red-dot Artar lens that I grabbed when someone was about to discard(!) them. Adams seemed to be as interested in my shooting and darkroom experiences as I was in his. He acted as though we were both just photographers discussing our craft. He wasn’t in the least impressed with himself.
We’re doing only cosmetic work. The house doesn’t really need any significant work. The buyer may want to redo the kitchen and main bath, but they’re perfectly fine as is. We’re not going to refinish the hardwood floors, although they need it, because there are a lot of different options available regarding stain, finish, etc., so that’s better left up to the buyer.
Mainly, we want to get it to the point where someone could just move in without having any work that needs urgently to be done.
Welcome to old age.
Line up a rough estimate for the floors just so a potential buyer can be told what it might cost. Paint everything basic off white.
Price just above what you really want and come down. Last, good luck.
As I get older I find it more time effective to pay professionals with superior tools to do the jobs I used to do myself. Part of it is related to just not being as physically able as I was n my 30’s and part is that I have more disposable income and prefer to save my time and have a better outcome than if I did so myself. I was never a very good handyman even in my prime. At some point you realize that your most precious resource is time and you want to maximize your use of it.
“Trump and Abortion”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/142015399311/trump-and-abortion
“In movies, just when you think things can’t get any worse for the hero, things do get a lot worse. That just happened for Trump. No candidate for president can survive being labelled a sexist and a racist.”
“I have predicted the so-called third act for Trump since 2015. If he solves the third act, he wins the general election in a landslide.”
My son has an infamous saying from his Marine Corps days, “Don’t get any on you”. Meaning, when the crap starts flying, stop it from happening. Or, run away. But since it is a Marine Corps saying, I’m fairly sure that it means the former.
Trump 2016! “The Great White Dope(tm)”
When I told him what I was doing, he mentioned that he owns 67 rental properties and has good people that do all that kind of stuff for him.
That’s key if you want to be a landlord. A friend of my father owned a bunch of small apartment complexes (4-10 units or so) and he said he had a Rolodex with all the people he needed to do repairs and the like. He also had enough units that he had a full time manager. Another friend owned a bunch of shotgun shacks in the 3rd ward. His most important number in the Rolodex were the two big guys with guns that went with him to collect rents each month.
You might ask him if he wants to buy the place.
Now they do section 8 and get the money direct from Uncle Sam. Repair money for the inevitable destruction too.
It’s not a bad racket if you have the stomach for it.
nick
Found the following in my inbox, from Houston OEM:
Note the sneaky “official events” stuck in there. Any “unofficial” event on taxpayer owned land is not subject to the firearms ban, by state law. Won’t stop them from trying though.
There’s a graphic of what’s not allowed, including backpacks, camera bags, binocular cases, fanny pack, seat cushion, DIAPER BAGS, or otherwise clear bags with a pattern printed on them.
I didn’t realize we were hosting this nonsense. Wonder who’s paying for all the extra security and public works time? Oh right, me. Won’t catch me in downtown next week…
nick
Note too that there isn’t any requirement that the CONTENTS of the bag be clear, which means the stazi won’t be able to see into the bags anyway.
And from FEMA:
nick
21 Emmy awards, and still fired for inadvertently speaking the truth:
“Award-winning anchorwoman is FIRED for ‘racist’ Facebook post about murder suspects, saying ‘you needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers… they’re black'”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3517476/Award-winning-anchorwoman-FIRED-racist-Facebook-post-alluding-identities-murderers-saying-needn-t-criminal-profiler-draw-mental-sketch-killers-black.html
You can suck up and play the game forever, but they’ll still throw you under the bus. Best advice is NOT TO PLAY.
nick
“You might ask him if he wants to buy the place.”
I thought about that yesterday, and I’ll probably ask him next week when we meet him at the house. Also, when we got down yesterday, Kim was out in her front yard with Colin’s dog buddy Sophie, so Barbara dropped me at Kim’s house, three houses down the street from ours. I talked with Kim for a little while and then walked down the street. I saw an AT&T truck parked in front of our neighbor’s house, and Barbara was coming out the front door with the AT&T linewoman. Turns out she’s been looking for a house in the area to buy, and asked if she could come in and look at ours. Barbara got her name and number, so that’s another possibility.
So he’s Gloria Vanderbilt’s child… I wondered where the blond freak got his connection to the oligarchy.
“How Anderson Cooper’s brother’s suicide drove him to be a journalist and he and his mom Gloria Vanderbilt stopped celebrating Christmas in the wake of his death”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3517598/Anderson-Cooper-reveals-brother-Carter-s-suicide-led-seek-job-confronts-death-daily-mom-Gloria-Vanderbilt-stopped-celebrating-Christmas-wake-death.html
nick
“You might ask him if he wants to buy the place.
I’m sure an offer would be well below market value.
Most people with many rent houses use the following to find more rent houses.
http://www.webuyuglyhouses.com
Somebody continuously throws up a staked advertisement with this on it in poor subdivision behind mine.
An email from my aunt with a great cartoon:
Drug Cartels: I got an Obama gun!
Terrorists: I got an Obama gun!
Fat American Guy: I got an Obama phone!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-19/president-obamas-handouts-1-cartoon
” I was a photography major in college in Marin California way back in 1970.”
@Harold; were you still there in ’73? I was up at the AF radar site on top of Mt. Tam that year.
Trump: I’m still trying to figure if he’s just part of the show, like Sanders, or if he’s for real and has a genuine shot at the gig. The progs and SJWs seriously want Sanders; the corporate warmonger assholes, whether Dem or Rep, want Cankles. And the swarms of derps clinging bitterly to their guns and religion seem to want Trump. Or Calgary Ted with the Goldman Sachs wife.
Back from the vets group; four of us had a good chat; one Army artillery; one Army paratrooper; one Army infantry, and little old me, the one AF brat. I reminded them that we were a superior service and saved their bacon countless times, of course. I also remind them that I was an Army infantry MP, too, so how they like them apples? And I tell the jarheads and swabbies to fuck off. OFD on how to make friends and influence people, lol.
“State trooper and gunman ‘shot dead’ and two injured after shooter opened fire at Greyhound bus station in Richmond, Virginia”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3517958/Four-people-including-two-state-troopers-shot-Greyhound-bus-station-Richmond-Virginia.html
“Virginia State Police were on a training exercise at the bus station when the gunman opened fire, police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.”
Umm, I’m not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this is the second shooting in a public place in as many weeks that “had a training exercise” going on earlier. WTF is up with that?
nick
“WTF is up with that?”
Also, WTF is up with the state trooper evidently not wearing a ballistic vest??? During a training exercise???
Or was the shooter’s ammo some kinda armor-piercing round?
This is the long-continuing trend of our LE people here and in other Western countries becoming fully geared infantry and our infantry overseas becoming security/babysitters and convoy guards. Mirror World Redux.
And LE here ought to be conducting their “training exercises” the hell away from civvie areas, WTF is up with THAT???
I reminded them that we were a superior service and saved their bacon countless times
Did you support from the airfield Enlisted Club like the officers?
lol! I’m a quiche eatin’ fukstik Army Aviator!
“Did you support from the airfield Enlisted Club like the officers?”
You mean the “NCO Club?” Air-conditioned. Choice selection of beer, wine and hahd likka. Jukebox (which, during a certain ethnic hour would be reserved for Motown and Soul and during another certain ethnic hour for old-skool C&W and for a third certain ethnic hour Sixties Rock, with some overlap between the three. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” and “Stand By Your Man.”
OFD worked part-time as a bartender at the Mill Valley Air Force Station NCO Club in 1973, home of the 666 Radar Squadron of the 26th (NORAD) Air Division. Serving the same guys we’d sometimes get called in for ’cause they were fighting in there. (my day job was Security Police). Where everybody knows your name, lol. Sometimes my partner was a black fellow SP sergeant, my size, too, and we’d hab us sum fun bustin’ up the fights.
Five years later I was an Army MP for the 344th MP Company, 182nd Infantry Brigade.
Now I’m a pathetic old broken-down derelict, clinging bitterly to my guns and religion.
Let’s write another report rather than do anything substantive:
http://www.businessinsider.com/more-than-125000-us-veterans-were-denied-va-benefits-2016-3
“Let’s write another report rather than do anything substantive…”
Hey buddy, don’t be jumping the gun there; first we gotta set up a study group, and then form committees. Then we gotta set up a plan to plan a plan, which we might plan to implement, depending on the Budget, in the year 2050 or so, when we retire the last B52s.
We put people in nasty combat situations during multiple deployments in foreign shit-hole clusterfucks and then when they start acting or talking funny or get uppity, we hand them some bad paper discharges. So they come home still fucked up in the head (and by now OFD has seen a BUNCH of these guys, and being one himself) and they apply for bennies, any little bit of fucking help they can get, and they’re blown off. So eventually, after the usual methods of self-medication don’t work anymore, they kill themselves. 22 a DAY now. And not just the kids, either. We’ve got at least two suicidal guys in our little group.
Hey kids! STOP SIGNING UP FOR THIS SHIT! Because when you do, you become the property of a criminal rogue regime that doesn’t give a blind rat’s syphilitic ass about you. Not while you’re still on active duty, and mos def once you come back to The World and the Land of the Big PX.
Can I get a amen on dat, fratres et sorores?
And how much stuff do young kids get sent off to that is the result or consequence of these:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-31/governments-admit-much-modern-history-has-been-manipulated-false-flag-attacks
Naw, can’t happen here:
http://stopshouting.blogspot.com/2016/03/calls-to-debaathification.html
“America need not become a vast Balkan horror show — I think it’s more likely in coming decades to become a huge nuclear-armed Brazil, with entrenched economic inequality, often among racial lines, that I find noxious and unworthy of our country — but the fate of Yugoslavia must be avoided at all costs. Our next Civil War would be much more vicious and protracted than the last one, have no illusions.”
OFD approves this message.
http://20committee.com/2015/03/02/yugoslavias-warning-to-america/
Let’s see what the Stupid Half of the Party actually does:
http://buchanan.org/blog/lock-establishment-cleveland-125077
first we gotta set up a study group
Almost correct. We have to pay a company a lot of money to do the research, then do nothing with the study.
Yes @OFD, you get a big Amen +1000
My days of boring holes in the oceans, seas, and rivers (you don’t want to know about that one) are quite tame compared to what the fellows with boots on the ground did. The Corpsman on my first boat had several tours in country with some super secret marine sniper groups and got his relief telling us stories. Doc was the best, but he had nightmares. Anybody but Doc would have been put off the boat, but he needed to be around caring people in a sealed steel tube. Doc stayed with the boat when our home port was changed to Hawaii, I stayed behind to go to another boat out of Norfolk. A few months later I got a letter from one of my buds still on the old boat, Doc couldn’t take it anymore, he took his motorcycle and drove into the fires of Kilauea to meet Pele.
“…Doc couldn’t take it anymore, he took his motorcycle and drove into the fires of Kilauea to meet Pele.”
Amazing way to go. But that’s the thing; most peeps don’t get it: you can’t put young kids into nasty combat situations repeatedly and not expect them to be messed up by it. It’s simply not natural. Their brains are actually still being formed at that age. Wiring them for this kinda stuff is insane.
So to this day, what, nearly half a century later, I’m still “hyper-vigilant” and checking out potential fields of fire everywhere I go. And that behavior got jacked up a notch or two by the years of street cop gigs.
RIP, Doc.
My days of boring holes in the oceans, seas, and rivers (you don’t want to know about that one) are quite tame compared to what the fellows with boots on the ground did.
@DadCooks, I read this book, “Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage” several years ago. The number of things that we, the USA, were doing with submarines was simply amazing. The story about the diesel-electric submerged in the Barents Sea for several months while the crew was slowly getting CO2 poisoning from waves down the snorkel stack was freaking unreal.
http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/1610393589/
One of the guys that used to work with me was the junior man on Rickover’s staff in the early 1960s. He was on the initial voyage of the Thresher when they did the “dangle the angle” test or something like that. They had him strapped to a bunk with strict instructions to stay there no matter what. The next time the Thresher went out, she was lost with all hands due to a hull penetration that failed behind a tank. Really freaked him out.
Small correction @Lynn, it’s “angles and dangles” usually done shortly after submerging to ensure that everything is properly stowed. Low be the department that had something come flying during angles and dangles.
During our initial seas trials on the LA (before it was accepted by the US Navy) we did extreme maneuvers that had only previously been computer simulated. The Navy wanted to see if the computer models were accurate. All I can tell you is that they were not, but we did prove that the maximum rated depth was very conservative.
Part of SUBSAFE requires that on the initial sea trial of a boat, all the craft foreman have to ride as well as a selection of craftsmen. It’s good when the people who build boats have a vested interest in everything being done right.
“Part of SUBSAFE requires that on the initial sea trial of a boat, all the craft foreman have to ride as well as a selection of craftsmen. It’s good when the people who build boats have a vested interest in everything being done right.”
That is awesome. EVERY .gov contract should have a requirement like this.
nick
I’ve seen a billboard on business 40 by Miller St about the Ansel Adams exhibit. I hope I can get over there before it finishes.
It used to be a requirement that the senior engineer for a bridge had to either be the first to cross it or be under it when someone else was the first to cross it.
That’s fine for construction or items which can catastrophically fail on first use. What’s the best way to make the top managers of other boondoggles have a strong interest in its success? Inject the president of CGI with hepatitis and make him sign up through the Obolacare website before he can get any treatment? I’m in favor of creative incentives, but don’t know that they can be made to work for all govt contracts.
“What’s the best way to make the top managers of other boondoggles have a strong interest in its success? Inject the president of CGI with hepatitis and make him sign up through the Obolacare website before he can get any treatment? I’m in favor of creative incentives, but don’t know that they can be made to work for all govt contracts.”
Why not simply borrow a page from the NORK Pillsbury Doughboy Dicktater’s playbook? If the contracted work or project is not 100% successful, fire a friggin’ artillery shell at the bugger. Or feed him or her to a pack of starving dogs. I can think of some gummint (and corporate) execs I’d like to see get that treatment….
Well, even if you couldn’t make it work for everything, it’s worth trying to make it work wherever you could.
Practically speaking, you’d need an exception for the truly dangerous stuff. As long as there was a clear and honest statement up front. “This is dangerous. We’ve done all we can to make it less dangerous, but it is still dangerous.”
And I think it’s perfectly reasonable that “congress shall make no law that doesn’t fully apply to them and their families, dependents and descendants.” No more exempting themselves from the onerous crap they foist off on us.
nick
In re: Congress: my recommendation is to dispose of the Senate completely, first of all. Then weed out all the damn lawyers from the House and set term limits. Ditto on term limits for SCOTUS; no more coddling dinosaurs until they fall apart, awaiting archaeologists and paleontologists of the far future. Strictly limit the President’s power; no more of this imperial Presidency shit. Make the House rats do their fucking jobs or expect severe consequences. And get rid of 2/3 of the Fed bureaucracy.
Only 2/3?
@miles, some areas of the commons benefit from management, for example, spectrum…
But even 1/3 of the current bloat is probably more than is needed..
n
Part of SUBSAFE requires that on the initial sea trial of a boat, all the craft foreman have to ride as well as a selection of craftsmen.
It’s been a while, but the Army used to make parachute riggers jump with a random chute. When I went through jump school, we toured the rigging facility. Every jump we made, a rigger was with us wearing a random chute. Not as nerve racking as testing a new sub, but a never ending chore.
What a great morale builder!