08:55 – It was 60.7F (16C) when I took Colin out at 0615, partly cloudy and calm. Barbara is out filling bottles for science kits, which she’ll be doing most of the day. She’s headed down to East Bend, outside Winston, around 1700 to have dinner with her friend Marcy. She should be back mid-evening.
As it turned out, it wasn’t the water heater. It was one of the copper feed lines coming out the top of it. Two guys from Shaw showed up yesterday around 1100 and replaced both the old copper lines with PEX. It took them less than half an hour. They were both surprised that we had a 110V well pump. Neither of them had ever seen one before.
A few minutes after they left, Jay Shaw stopped back with a sheath of paint swatches to show me. He matched the existing paint pretty closely with an off-white color called “cotton ball”. I told him that, fortunately, Barbara didn’t really care about the exact color as long as it was an off-white and a reasonably close match for what was on the walls now.
I ordered 250 grams of reagent-grade (AR) iodine crystals off eBay yesterday. Thirty bucks, including shipping from China. If it weren’t for federal regulations, I could have just ordered it from Fisher Scientific or another US supplier. But that involves an incredible amount of paperwork, so much so that many US vendors no longer sell elemental iodine, and if they do the cost is outrageous.
Understand, I’m not breaking any laws by ordering iodine on eBay. It’s perfectly legal for me to buy it, import it, or possess it in any quantity. It’s just illegal for US resellers to sell elemental iodine to US customers without going through all the regulatory bullshit. I can even sell iodine solutions, as long as I don’t sell more than 30 mL at a time and it’s less than 2.2% iodine w/v. That’s fortunate, because every kit we sell includes a 30 mL bottle of Lugol’s iodine solution, which is 1.27% w/v iodine in a 2% solution of potassium iodide.
For that matter, it’s trivially easy to isolate elemental iodine from potassium iodide, which is completely uncontrolled. I could order a hundred kilos of KI, and no one would blink an eye. And all it takes to convert that potassium iodide to iodine is some hardware store muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) and a jug of supermarket chlorine bleach. I did that as a demo at MakerFaire in 2008 to demonstrate how futile federal regulations are.
Lisa emailed me an update of their progress. They’re well past her initial goal of food/water/shelter for three months, but are still accumulating LTS food and other supplies. They’re now studying for their Technician Class ham radio licenses in preparation for taking the test in August.
They’ve also stocked up on OTC medications, bandages, etc., but Lisa came across one of my posts about SHTF antibiotics and wants to get some. She said that the source I recommended, aquabiotics.net, appears to be out of business. Their web page is still up, but it’s nothing but a placeholder.
They’re actually still in business, but not on the Internet. PayPal and other credit-card processors have banned them solely because they’re selling antibiotics. The owner, Dave Folsom, is now processing orders solely by email. Email him at dcfolsom@reagan.com and ask for his current price list. Decide what you want, total up the price, and send him a check. I know that’ll probably make a lot of people nervous, but I’ve bought from him twice that way, and each time he’s shipped exactly what I ordered via USPS Priority Mail the day he got the check.
I suggested to Lisa that for the six of them (assuming no drug allergies) she order at least a few courses each of 100 mg doxycycline, 800/160 mg SMZ/TMP, 875/125 mg amoxicillin/clavulanate, and 400 mg metronidazole. And, in case nothing else works, at least a course or two of 500 mg levofloxacin. Stick them in the freezer, and don’t even think of touching them unless the S has really, really HTF and you’re convinced the patient is going to die if you don’t take desperate measures.
More email from Jen. They routinely run readiness exercises every time there’s a three-day holiday weekend. This one is four days, which is better still. They’re starting as of 1800 tomorrow and running their exercise through next Wednesday morning. David is on call for a couple of those days, so he has to keep his cell phone on, but otherwise they’ll be completely off-grid for the duration. No grid power or other utilities, no TV other than DVDs and other local stuff, no Internet (although they do cheat and check email and news sites in case there’s a real emergency), etc. These exercises became routine for all of them a long time back. As Jen says, it’s essentially just a family camping trip at home.
Brittany and her family are also doing a readiness exercise over the holiday weekend. These aren’t as routine for them, yet, because they haven’t been doing them as long or as often as Jen and her family have, but they did get most of the bugs worked out some time ago.
11:15 – I forgot to mention one new thing Jen and her family will be trying out. In past readiness exercises, their main problem was keeping a 24×7 watch, particularly when it was just the six of them participating. So they decided to install an HD NV surveillance system. The system they bought has eight Ethernet PoE 1080P surveillance cameras with IR illuminators, and is rated for 100-foot detection at 0 lux (with the IR working). Those cameras feed into a 16-port DVR that has all kinds of bells and whistles.
Jen’s husband, brother, and nephews spent some time last weekend getting cameras mounted and everything installed. The cameras and DVR have standard Ethernet RJ-45 jacks. They mounted the cameras under the eaves at each corner of the house facing out at 45-degree angles and at the center of each wall, facing out at 90 degrees, and ran pre-made Ethernet cables to each camera. Jen didn’t want a bundle of Ethernet cables coming down into the house proper, so they declared the main floor utility room to be their comm center and ran all the cables back there.
They were a bit concerned that the rated 100-foot IR detection range was insufficient, so they also bought one PoE IR illuminator, installed it under the eaves near one of the cameras, and ran an Ethernet cable back to the comm center. They’re going to try that one camera with and without the supplementary IR illuminator and see how much difference it makes. If it greatly increases the range, they’ll install seven more IR illumintors, one per camera.
They’ll power the illuminators with an old 8-port Ethernet hub, of which they have several. They also bought a low-end BPS that should run the cameras, DVR, and illuminator for a long time on battery. The comm center is near their solar power charge controller and battery bank, so in a grid-down situation they’d be able to power their surveillance gear indefinitely.
I’m looking forward to hearing how that all works. They spent a fair amount on all the gear, but getting a smaller system costs only a few hundred dollars and would be a useful security supplement.
I understand from other sources that today is Mr. Lynn’s anniversary of his exterior world arrival date. Let’s all wish him happy birthday and make him feel really old (as if he needs any help).
So, first out of the blocks, Happy Birthday Mr. Lynn. Hope it is a good one, just not memorable.
Happy Birthday to Lynn!
And it won’t be long until that young whippersnapper OFD turns 64, although I’m not sure if that’s decimal or hexadecimal.
I forgot to mention that the two guys who showed up from Shaw yesterday were my kind of guys. Colin barked and I walked out to find them standing at the back of their pickup. At first, I though it was ZZ Top out there. Then I remembered that lots of guys up here could be ZZ Top impersonators.
Life in the city, dancing around the issues– Or how to parse the media
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-29/after-164-years-aetna-leaving-connecticut-new-york
“a potential boon for Aetna, which stands to receive $24 million in tax breaks over the next decade,” — so NYC is buying the jobs
“Hartford, which had agreed to match the package after news broke this year about Aetna’s plan to move,”– so it’s NOT just about the money
“New York provides “the ecosystem of having people in the knowledge economy, working in a town they want to be living in, and we want to attract those folks, and we want to have them on our team,” Mr. Bertolini said in an interview. “It’s very hard to recruit people like that to Hartford.” — no one who’s hip, educated, or a hard worker wants to live in Hartford
The dancing–
“we are proud of the city’s revitalization,’’ — we know it’s a shithole, but we’re spending money we don’t have to try to make it better, someday…
““While Hartford -snip- Hartford -snip- From ….. to incredible school systems and a high quality of life for employees, Connecticut… — I see what you did there….
“where recent real estate developments could help reverse its economic slide. “We are encouraged by the early signs of revitalization in the city and the more honest assessment and discussion of priorities in light of fiscal realities at the city and state level.” — things MIGHT get better, eventually
” if – as some have speculated – a bankruptcy for Connecticut is imminent. ” — or maybe not, just another failed state
And maybe there is something in the demographic data??
“Estimated median household income in 2015: $34,240 (it was $24,820 in 2000)
Hartford: $34,240
CT: $71,346”
Races in Hartford, CT (2000)
49,260 40.5%Hispanic
43,775 36.0%Black alone
21,677 17.8%White alone
Races in Hartford, CT (2015)
55,959 45.1%Hispanic
44,739 36.1%Black alone
17,092 13.8%White alone
Compared to the whole state:
Races in Connecticut (2015)
2,439,796 67.9%White alone
553,783 15.4%Hispanic
355,469 9.9%Black alone
English speakers – Total
53.8% of residents of Hartford speak English at home.
36.6% of residents speak Spanish at home
63.4% Speak English very well
36.6% Speak English less than very well
Renters outnumber homeowners 3:1, and 1 in 4 homes has someone over 60 yo.
OH, and the crime!
“With a crime rate of 56 per one thousand residents, Hartford has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes – from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One’s chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18. Within Connecticut, more than 100% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Hartford. In fact, after researching dangerous places to live, NeighborhoodScout found Hartford to be one of the top 100 most dangerous cities in the U.S.A.”
Hartford VIOLENT CRIMES
Population: 124,006
Murder Rape Robbery Assault
Report Total 32 44 510 835
Rate per 1,000 0.26 0.35 4.11 6.73
United States VIOLENT CRIMES
Population: 321,418,820
Murder Rape Robbery Assault
Report Total 15,696 124,047 327,374 764,449
Rate per 1,000 0.05 0.39 1.02 2.38
5x the US murder rate, 3x the assault rate!
So you have a classic inner city with falling incomes, fleeing whites, low earnings, and they don’t speak english. Sounds like EXACTLY where I’d want my headquarters, NOT.
I’ll admit, having been there, I wouldn’t have guessed at the percentage of hispanics, but it has been over a decade. I think of Hartford as a black slum, but apparently, it’s a Hispanic, and black slum.
nick
(just felt like diving into this one, esp as it’s in the alt-media and STILL dances around the issues.)
BTW, AETNA is gonna spend $89 MILLION on a new building. They are willing to spend net $65 Million to get out of Hartford.
I’m one of those that has adverse reactions to fluroquinolones–insomnia, de-personalization, de-realization, etc. so I concur about only using those in extremis. Nasty stuff all around, including the black box warnings about ruptured tendons, etc.
.mg
Yep, I stopped after the first dose, due to anxiety and racing heatbeat, increased respirations….
@Dad is still sitting back in the corner watching you guys, but this ol’ codger must pipe up and add my Best Wishes for @Lynn’s Birthday.
Been having more “senior moments/brain farts” for about the past week. Something prods my brain and I get the overview memory but little in the detail department. Exasperating.
Enjoy:
http://geezerguff.com/senior-moments-brain-farts/
Happy Birthday, Mr. Lynn!
I’m having fun at Disney. The Twins are 22 so hang mostly with them. I’m not watching the grandkids for less than $1,000/day.
That sounds like a fair offer, I’m sure your kids will put the $1000 to good use… 🙂
I had a friend give me a ‘heads up’ when my wife was first pregnant. He said I should start making plans for travel with babies to do the mandatory visits to grandparents. I laughed out loud. I said “Dude, I’VE GOT THE GRAND BABIES, they will come to ME.”
And they have. Never underestimate the ‘power of the cute.’
n
[snip] PayPal and other credit-card processors have banned them solely because they’re selling antibiotics. [snip]
PayPal is currently being sued by a group of gun shops, having also been refused service.
[snip] Within Connecticut, more than 100% of the communities have a lower crime rate than Hartford. [snip]
Someone failed math, and I don’t think it was me!
[snip] Dude, I’VE GOT THE GRAND BABIES, they will come to ME [snip]
When my younger sister had her first baby, her in-laws moved from Fort Meyers to Jax to go into the grandparent business. Win for everyone!
Happy B-Day, Mr. Lynn, yet another kid on here. Hope it’s a good day for ya.
WRT Hartford; yep, like most of the Northeast cities, it’s a shit-hole now, thanks mainly to commie policies and theft. And WRT to the rest of the state, it’s headed in the same direction as Illinois now.
Pouring rain again today; can’t do the outside yard work I had in mind, and I hope we get at least one more day between today and Sunday when I can do it. So back to the taxes, VA paperwork and reorganizing the office, plus cleanup ops in the kitchen, back porch, cellar, etc. One of the great things about having a five-page to-do list is that you get to pick and choose the stuff you wanna work on, amirite?
Also made SeaMonkey my main browser again; Firefox was just outta-control wicked slow and unresponsive no matter what I did to google up fixes and try them. Imported bookmarks and all is good, so fah.
Happy birthday to Lynn!
Yes, time for another trip thru the spanking machine for ol’ Mr Lynn…..
“Many happy returns of the day!”
n
@lynn,
if you wanted to check out an estate sale, one of my favorite sellers is running a sale down your way.
https://www.estatesales.net/TX/Sugar-Land/77478/1592520
nothing particularly “prepper” in the listing that I could see, but a nice clean estate, and honest sellers.
nick
ADDED This one is more like a typical sale, with some good stuff. Generator, tools, freezer, old stuff..
https://www.estatesales.net/TX/Sugar-Land/77498/1592598
So, did a cop really overdose on fentanyl by brushing some off his shirt? Probably not.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/06/toxicologists_explain_the_medical_impossibility_of_overdosing_by_touching.html
So, first out of the blocks, Happy Birthday Mr. Lynn. Hope it is a good one, just not memorable.
Thanks to all ! I’ve now been around the sun fifty and seven times. The Joan Jett concert last night with 6,400 new friends was awesome and Boston was OK (I never liked the concerts where they play three old hit songs and then three new meh songs). Joan Jett just played her greatest hits cd which was awesome.
La multi ani, dl. Lynn!
I’m in an irregular reader mode. I’ve managed today to read a week worth of past post and comments on this blog. But I’m expecting this irregular mode to continue much of this summer.
Have fun!
“… Boston was OK (I never liked the concerts where they play three old hit songs and then three new meh songs).”
Boston, the rock band? Oh, yeah, I see they’re touring now with Joan Jett. Their one and only lead singer for all the hits was Brad Delp and he offed himself ten years ago just when you’d think that things were about go really well for him. I never saw them in concert but when I got back from working for Uncle, their stuff was all over the radio in Maffachufetts, along with Aerosmith, the J. Geils Band, Earth Wind and Fire, and the Electric Light Orchestra.
It was a kind of melancholic era for me and I still feel it when I hear that stuff or think about it; girlfriends long gone; fellow soldiers and cops likewise; even high school friends from that time. 17% unemployment back then in MA, and I worked variously as a department store oriental rug flunky; same store in “mens’ furnishings;” and same store again as a store dick. Then a series of alternating factory and cop jobs and even a stint as a college bookstore assistant mangler, until I got into IT by 1986-89.
Over forty years gone like a cool breeze…which is what we have here today for weather, along with steady light rain. Continuing on paperwork and office reorg…
Joan Jett just played her greatest hits cd which was awesome
[snarky]Well I hope she at least performed. Just playing a CD has got to be boring.[/snarky]
Oh, you meant she performed songs from her greatest hits CD.
I’ve now been around the sun fifty and seven times
I am ahead of you by about 9 years. Thus Boston, Joan Jett, etc. are a little after my time. I know the music, just doesn’t spawn the memories of my youth. I cut my teeth on the Beatles, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, etc.
Have ridden the bicycle about 60 miles thus far in the few days I have been here. Legs are feeling it even with the electric assist. Tomorrow is supposed to rain, leave on Saturday so I am about done.
Still suffering some effects from the crash. Wounds are healing. The knee wound is the worst as flexing the knee stretches the massive scab and that hurts.
Overall it has been a good time. Had to dodge a few cars that don’t look out for bicycles. All them them older folks who look like they died but no one has informed them of such.
“CBO: Income Taxes Up 9.5% Next Year; But Debt Climbs More Than $1 Trillion”
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/cbo-income-taxes-95-next-year-debt-climbs-more-1-trillion
Tax receipts are going upwards due to the improving economy and the hidden taxes in Obolacare. But the federal spending is screaming upwards due to Medicaid, Medicare, Obolacare, Social Security, food stamps, hud housing, SSI, and myriads of other items the feddies have poked their Pinocchio long noses into. I do think that Mr. Trump can shutdown the spending on Obolacare with just an executive order, I am waiting for such.
I actually had a heated discussion with my dad Monday about hiring a lawyer and getting my daughter on SSI (Supplemental Security Income) and Medicaid. I just do not want to go down that road unless we are forced to financially. She is obviously disabled now and probably will be the rest of her life. Maybe I should get proof that she is 1/8th Cherokee now, that may prove helpful in the future.
I still see a long path into financial dystopia for the USA over the next 5 to 15 years. Of course, we may get a CME, a EMP, a world war, a worldwide pandemic, a zombie plague, a asteroid strike, or something else horrid on the way there.
We are all Illinois. And Venezuela.
Hat tip to:
http://drudgereport.com/
I’m guessing 3 to 10 years and we’re not quite at Illinois stage yet but heading that way, and mos def not yet at Venezuela, which could be quite a ways off and still only regionally. I continue to see eventual civil war and balkanization in our future, regardless of any Black Swan events.
What sucks about it is that it’s all hitting as I’m gonna be in my late 60s and 70s, where the mind and spirit are willing but the flesh is less and less cooperative.
Maybe I should get proof that she is 1/8th Cherokee now, that may prove helpful in the future.
If you can get proof of an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls then you can probably get Cherokee citizenship. I don’t know what the Cherokee citizenship rules are or what benefits they provide. I do know that my trib, Muscogee Creek, have excelent education and health benefits. My wife has proven Choctaw linage but her ancestors refused to sign the Dawes roll and so are not considered eligible for tribal enrolment.
Good luck.
Happy Birthday, Lynn!
What percent do you have to be before you qualify to be a member of a tribe? An eighth is one full-blooded great-grandparent. That doesn’t sound like enough. Back in slave days, they would have called someone with one black great-grandparent an octoroon. IIRC, they counted as far as one great-great-grandparent, which was something like hexadecaroon. To me, it seems odd to try to quantify things like that.
Didn’t look it up but I seem to remember 1/16th and the most I could be is 1/32. Missing out on the sweet sweet casino money, for sure.
Don’t have to spend as much money on razors….
n
“I’m guessing 3 to 10 years and we’re not quite at Illinois stage yet but…”
When it happens it will happen quickly. Everything is so intertwined now. I expect that far more than Illinois and CT are teetering on the edge, and once one goes, esp if there is any kind of help for them, the others will go if for no other reason than to secure a place in the handout line.
If pensions collapse, the Pension Guarantee will not last very long, ditto with the FDIC and the securities insurance fund. None of them are designed to deal with very many at a time.
If you are offered a buyout, take it. If you have some sort of structured payments, get one of the buyout companies to get you a lump sum. Don’t be holding a lottery annuity that won’t and can’t pay……
nick
Should we be congratulating Lynn or offering condolences to the world? Could be both, I suppose. Happy birthday, Lynn. You have my deepest sympathies, world.
Mrs. OFD has a small state retirement pension and has not yet signed up for SS. I only have SS and VA disability at present. I would not be at all surprised to see all of that get raided and looted almost immediately by whomever at the upper levels and nothing at all for us once her employment goes away.
Assuming this happens to many tens of millions across the country, good luck to the banks and finance companies on foreclosing on houses and vehicles.
But then we all still gotta eat and get our homes heated or air-conditioned somehow and life could get really interesting really fast.
I feel somewhat better that we live where we do, surrounded on three sides by farmland, among the most fertile in the Northeast, and on the other side by the sixth-largest lake in CONUS. And in a village within a small town near a small “city.” A vastly homogenous population where the exotic peoples are French or Irish.
I do not feel that great about trying to haul ass at my age and current physical condition.
Didn’t look it up but I seem to remember 1/16th and the most I could be is 1/32. Missing out on the sweet sweet casino money, for sure.
Don’t have to spend as much money on razors….
I think that it is 1/64th for federal purposes. Not sure about tribal.
Two of my wife’s great-grandmothers were reputed full blooded Cherokees from Arkansas. Her uncle says that they were little bitty women. His mother (1/2 Cherokee) was just 5 ft tall during her prime.
My son is also 1/8th Cherokee and had to shave twice per day in Marine Corps boot camp. He can grow a beard in about three days. Me, not even three weeks.
EDIT: I think that you have to live on the rez in order to get casino, oil, or gas money.
WRT money you may have saved for “retirement”:
The gooberment already has the plans in place to seize any money and assets a person has or had. You ever hear of clawback and lookback? Say you decide to reduce your assets by giving some to a relative (or a stranger). Well the gooberment reserves the right to lookback at any asset you had in the past 3, 5, 7, 10 years or more and declare that they have a right to it, claw it back (clawback). You see this particularly when you put grandma is an old folks home. If grandma gave you some money in the past the gooberment will say you must pay that back for grandma’s care. The goobermet intends for everyone not in the privileged class to not only die penniless but to spend their last days penniless.
Sometimes a talk show host writes a book that has a few pieces of relevance and enlightenment:
From: “Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism” by Mark Levin June 2017
The gummint in that case is simply and out-and-out fucking thief, a pirate, a brigand, a highwayman, an outlaw. We used to hang those bastards back in the day. And without a whole lot of folderol and appeals and lefty demonstrators spouting bullshit.
I hope I live to see the collapse of the gummint before they rob us all blind and leave us lying like dogs in a ditch for our last days. I’ll go out on my feet if at all possible.
WRT to First Nations ancestry, mine would go back too far, back to the 1700s and prior. Algonqian, Wampanoag tribes in southeastern MA and the Islands. My dad was recognized instantly as such during his work-related gigs to Martha’s Vineyard, however; the Gay Head band of Wampanoags:
http://www.wampanoagtribe.net/Pages/index
They wouldn’t take money from him for his cab rides to and from the airport there.
And his father told me a million years ago that our family, i.e., my dad’s side, mostly Quakers since King Philip’s War, had intermarried several times with local Indians.
I’d have to root through the genealogies more than I already have for any supporting information, though; no time for it right now, but I am wrapping up my Mayflower ancestry chain of evidence, as the 400th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth is coming up soon. I hope to attend the festivities there.
If grandma gave you some money in the past the gooberment will say you must pay that back for grandma’s care
Been there, done that. When I put my aunt in the nursing home the look back period was 3 years. I applied for the medicaid and the person at the counter wanted 5 years of financial information. I told her no, the time period was 3 years. She argued with me and I walked out. Went to the state office in a different county and got someone with knowledge and also said 5 years. I had a copy of the printed documentation that stated 3 years and suddenly I was correct. The change was going to occur in the next two months but the state was already looking to cheat people.
I had moved all of my aunt’s assets into my name about 3.5 years past. Because of her mental condition she should not have access to any funds. But she outlived all her money and thus required nursing home and medicaid. The movement of the funds was to avoid the IRS. Placed myself as joint on all the accounts (power of attorney). Then after about six months removed her name from all the accounts. This avoided any IRS scrutiny (I lost the paper work in the Brazos River along with the guns). I did not want to have to pay taxes in the process of getting her name off the money. In the end it did not matter as I spent it all on her care. It was, after all, her money.
I would not be at all surprised to see all of that get raided and looted almost immediately by whomever at the upper levels and nothing at all for us
Actually I would not be entirely surprised to see the government seize all private pension funds from companies and put them under government control as part of SS. Even further down the road is that all IRA’s become the property of the government and will be doled out as a supplement to your SS. Your SS reduced by the same amount. Any amount left in the account when you die becomes the property of the government and not your heirs. Maybe not in my lifetime but perhaps in my son’s lifetime.
“If you are offered a buyout, take it. ”
Not sure if this is the same thing but I had three friends retire from SWB (who bought DeathStar Telecom) within a few months of each other.
Two took the lump sum. I told them they are crazy. Big pot of money and you will piss it away. They are now 72ish, one is mostly broke, and both are still working.
One took the payments and has so far, collected almost three times the lump sum. Hey, yeah, $1100 a month for life pre tax doesn’t seem like a lot but X 12 X 20 years… is a lot more than _one_ guy’s big fat check for $80,000 sunk into stocks.
But /I’m/ the one with the bad attitude.. … 🙂
But. I can make a Buffalo nickle squeal.
Actually I would not be entirely surprised to see the government seize all private pension funds from companies and put them under government control as part of SS. Even further down the road is that all IRA’s become the property of the government and will be doled out as a supplement to your SS. Your SS reduced by the same amount. Any amount left in the account when you die becomes the property of the government and not your heirs. Maybe not in my lifetime but perhaps in my son’s lifetime.
That is when we will know that the financial slide into dystopia has hit a steep slope downward. Hopefully, we will have enough time to get our money and things (I have five acres of land in my IRA) out of our IRAs. After the grabbing of the private pension plans, the IRAs, the 401Ks, etc, the financial slide will go quickly. I still think that we are 10+ years out but the inability of Trump and company to control the feddies is beginning to bother me.
Of course, they could do a clawback on all IRA and 401K withdrawals after the slide and the seizures. That would be … interesting.
In the end it did not matter as I spent it all on her care. It was, after all, her money.
Does any one tell you that you are awesome?
A promise of a future payout is nothing but a promise. You might die. The company might fold. (Bethlehem Steel, as an example) The .gov could decide that they can better spend that money than you, etc.
There was a time when certain of those promises looked rock solid and gold plated. If you’re due a pension from Cali, or Illinois, or CT, or dozens of other state and local entities, do you REALLY think you’ll get the money? When the freakin’ TEAMSTERS pension is busted and trying to reduce payouts to delay the end?
Nope, take the money and run.
n
@lynn, any links or experiences you care to share re: holding land inside your IRA? I’m vaguely aware you can do this, with lots of restrictions, and am considering land in La Grainge or Bastrop….
n
Mr. Ray is indeed awesome. Not only that; he is one hardcore mofo. Goes out biking while the giant scab keeps peeling off his knee. He’d give that Lance guy a run for his money, I bet. Hardcore.
“Of course, they could do a clawback on all IRA and 401K withdrawals after the slide and the seizures. That would be … interesting.
Here’s the deal: we know for certain that we are ruled by looters and criminal scumbags, mostly, plus a giant army of bureaucrats. Is there any logical reason not to assume that they’re gonna rob us blind and send us out in abject poverty? While they laugh their asses off? Is there anything different at all in our history from any other empire’s history over the past 4,000 years? Oh yeah; the brigands wear suits and ties now.
From the New Technology Spying on Us Department:
https://straightlinelogic.com/2017/06/29/new-device-allows-cops-to-download-all-of-your-smartphone-activity-in-seconds-from-anti-media/
Ok, got the Roku box today. Nice presentation. AKA, fancy packaging.
My brother came to visit today. It’s been maybe 10 years. He brought a Terk amplified antenna and wifi extender. PITA to install on a wall mounted TV what with coax not being push-on…. Anyway, the TV found one channel… KXAN’s repeater out of Llano. So, that’s good. That’s the one channel we watch.
I’ll play with the Roku box tomorrow.
A promise of a future payout is nothing but a promise. You might die. The company might fold.
Totally understood. But The Phone Company ain’t going away any time soon. And he’s made (so far) 3X his lump payment option.
Yeah, it was a guess.
Just an update; Firefox was bogging down like no tomorrow for a few days and I tried half a dozen googled fixes to no avail.
SeaMonkey is running great, very fast, and slicker than goose snot on a warm doorknob.
Chrome is also running fast, but I only use it for a couple of things; otherwise that’s what Mrs. OFD uses. She has one more day in Idaho and then the weekend in the East Bay to see the grandkids and then back here in the wee hours of Monday morning.
I have Bay Day here on Saturday, w/approx. 3,000 peeps, less if it keeps pouring like this, and der feurwerken off the pier. I was gonna put out red-white-blue bunting off the windows but again, not if it keeps raining cats and dogs here tomorrow and the next day, as forecast. Flood warnings in effect again…
We had scattered smatterings of drops all day today. No real rain though at my house.
Hot and HUMID, yep we had that.
n
I don’t have any problems with FF on win8.2 as my main machine. I’ve usually got 2 windows open with a half dozen tabs in each. Sometimes I have a LOT more tabs.
I did notice I can’t leave the UK Daily Mail site open anymore. It will lock up FF and IE.
I only open it a couple of times a day now.
n
Just an update; Firefox was bogging down like no tomorrow for a few days and I tried half a dozen googled fixes to no avail.
With Firefox, when in doubt:
Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Refresh Firefox
If that doesn’t work, stay with SeaMonkey.
From the New Technology Spying on Us Department:
https://straightlinelogic.com/2017/06/29/new-device-allows-cops-to-download-all-of-your-smartphone-activity-in-seconds-from-anti-media/
Keep a second phone in the car with a FreedomPop SIM.
After the Moto E4 and E4 Plus hit the streets in the morning, stores are going to eventually look to unload the G4 and G4 Play models cheap. The G4 Play can be wiped almost to bare metal with LineageOS.
@lynn, any links or experiences you care to share re: holding land inside your IRA? I’m vaguely aware you can do this, with lots of restrictions, and am considering land in La Grainge or Bastrop….
General rules:
1. your IRA must pay for the land with cash, no borrowed money
2. you cannot benefit yourself with the land whatsoever (no management fee, no cows, no selling to a close relative, no living on the IRA land, etc, etc, etc)
My real estate IRA is at IRA Innovations in Alabama.
http://irainnovations.com/investments/real-estate-ira/
If desired I can expound on the transaction. I’m sure that I have already done so here two or three times already but finding it would be a bear.
If you are offered a buyout, take it.
When the IT department at the bank holding company I worked with (National Bancshares Corporation) (spelling is correct), anyone with $3500 or less in their retirement account got a payout, no option. Those with more than that amount would have to wait until retirement. I had about $4800 in my account and was bummed out. I figured the money was gone forever.
Then when I turned 55 I got a letter from Bank of America asking what to do with my retirement plan. Take it early or wait. I had never worked for BofA in my life so was confused. I called and the BofA people knew nothing about my NBC employment, just said I had a retirement account with them. Turns out the account (well the fund) had been sold multiple times, or passed around, or otherwise used in shady dealings and now BofA owned the funds.
I took the early option, $118 a month until I die. Thus far I have collected $15,000 from the account and hope to collected at least another $30K. Not bad for only working for the company for only six years.
Mr. Ray is indeed awesome. Not only that; he is one hardcore mofo.
Don’t know if awesome is the proper term and you are making me blush. I have an attitude towards money that what is yours is yours and what is mine is mine. If I owe you a dollar you will get your dollar back. My aunt’s money was hers to spend, not mine. All I could morally do was spend the money for her needs. Although it pained me to be spending my inheritance.
As for hardcore, I was out biking tonight at 10:00PM. Headed out on the path and put in another 8 miles in the dark. The bicycle does have lights, but not that great on the front. I need to get another brighter LED light for the handlebar that I can turn on when needed. Without the the headlights of the cars I could see OK. But oncoming cars, even being on the bike path, made it difficult to see ahead of me. Thus far I have put 80 miles on the bicycle on this trip.
“take it”– advice in today’s world, for today’s situation….
No way do I believe any promised money will come, or if it does it will be in inflated currency. Like the brits with a guaranteed yearly income of 20 pounds sterling. Not gonna go very far now. Sure, I’ll get $115/mo but if that only buys a loaf of bread (or less, vis Venezuela) it doesn’t do me good.
You guys that got something for the promise lucked out. Not sure your (or my) luck will last another 20 years.
n
An observation that has certainly been made here before:
It’s harder for them to confiscate a stash of canned food than for them to take a digital “cash” account. Extrapolate…
“Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Refresh Firefox”
Yes. Which blows away all the plugins and addon stuff like NoScript, the downloader apps, HTTPS Everywhere, etc. Fine, I guess. Maybe I’ll add stuff one by one and see how it goes.
Mr. Spook is correct; some fucking clerk in some office somewhere can yank your one’s and zeroes off cyberspace databases with a few mouse clicks. Harder to come get your Chef Boyardee cans and Aladdin lamp and sacks of basmati rice.
Wife dealing with bad allergy reaction out in Boise, her eyes really hurt and she’s trying to get some sleep before the last day. I note that allergies hit some people hard around here lately, too, including our town administrator. I have been, for some odd reason, totally unaffected thus far, knock on wood.
Spam spam spam spam !
I ate about half of a can of (turkey) spam that had been in unprotected storage for two or 3 years, and it was a year beyond expiration… Not bad for Spam. Summer heat, hard freezes… Of course, the second half of that portion is still in the refrigerator, probably bad there by now. Hard for me to eat much Spam…
OK, here is a controversial question. Our local free rag newspaper thrown to our house had an article about splitting the school district board into single member districts. This would be so that the seven east side black majority schools (all with an F state rating out of an A-F scale) could get black school board members to properly direct those schools to excellence. Like I said, a rag newspaper so cheap that the newsprint comes off on your hands.
So, are there ANY black majority school districts doing well in the USA ?
“…are there any black majority school districts doing well in the USA ?”
Not to be a rayciss dick but probably not or could be counted on one hand. It’s a total mess. I refer interested parties to research that’s out there but never reported by the MSM. Not only that, but it’s gotten much worse in the last thirty years, despite the trillion per year spent on trying to rectify whatever perceived situation/s. They’re committing educational and cultural suicide, pretty much, and the leadership wishes the same for the rest of us, or so it appears.
Let’s become some combination of Zimbabwe, Mexico City, Venezuela, and North Korea, seems to be the plan, while the top echelons light their cigars with thousand-dollar bills and laugh.
I took the early option, $118 a month until I die. Thus far I have collected $15,000 from the account and hope to collected at least another $30K. Not bad for only working for the company for only six years.
When I turn 65, eight years from yesterday, I will get a $265/month pension for life from Fidelity, courtesy of TESCO / TU Electric / TXU Energy / Energy Future Holdings / Vistra Energy. I believe that I chose the survivor option so the wife will be able to take the monthly check until she is 95 or so.
Let’s become some combination of Zimbabwe, Mexico City, Venezuela, and North Korea, seems to be the plan, while the top echelons light their cigars with thousand-dollar bills and laugh.
Unfortunately, yes. Sounds like a Robert Heinlein book.
BTW, the wife told me I was an idiot and all I needed to know was the KIPP charter schools. I told her those were handpicked students but she claimed that they took all applicants.
Our spouses seem to be heck-bent on finding a pony in that room full of manure no matter what.
Well, today’s needle did not sting but it sure did leave a 3/4 inch by 3/4 inch mark that I will wear for a week or so. Johnny Cash said it best when he borrowed Trent Reznor’s song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5pc
Yes. Which blows away all the plugins and addon stuff like NoScript, the downloader apps, HTTPS Everywhere, etc. Fine, I guess. Maybe I’ll add stuff one by one and see how it goes.
I run AdBlock Plus as my only plugin so the refresh isn’t as big a deal.
At the new job, the security layers make Firefox gripe about every page being insecure so I’m forced to use Chrome or Exploiter (Windows 7 shop). I’m guessing they have Blue Coat or something similar intercepting every page.
SeaMonkey and Thunderbird are, unfortunately, the bastard stepchildren of Mozilla, and they’ve become mostly volunteer efforts. Until “The Cloud” melts down with a huge breach event, most people don’t see the point of POP/IMAP mail readers.
When I turn 65, eight years from yesterday, I will get a $265/month
If I waited until I was 65 to start my pension I would have gotten $245 a month. But I opted to start when I was 55 instead with a reduced amount. Somewhere I did the math and starting early was a better option if I don’t live beyond 85 or somewhere around that number. If I live longer I will lose money.
With SS I waited until I was 66 as I was quitting full time work. Take SS early and every two dollars above $16,700 level reduces your SS payment by one dollar. At my current salary my SS would have been reduced to zero. I liked my work and wanted to continue.
I actually had plans to work until about 70. But my best friend of 28 years, two months older than me, died December 2105. That markedly changed my plans and I decided it was time to enjoy life and to hell with full time work.
“SeaMonkey and Thunderbird are, unfortunately, the bastard stepchildren of Mozilla, and they’ve become mostly volunteer efforts. Until “The Cloud” melts down with a huge breach event, most people don’t see the point of POP/IMAP mail readers.”
I sorely lamented the demise of Mozilla, and I really liked my Thunderbird and the WISIWYG html editor. (I only switched to Thunderbird because Pegasus Mail went away…) I will be downloading and trying SeaMonkey for Linux Mint asap.
The Firefox refresh worked great for me. I only had to add uBlock, Ghostery, and Tab Mix Plus.
How’s South Africa doing?
RE: US Education
The wife is a retired English Professor, specializing in early english (IE: Chaucer / Beowulf / etc.). She taught at University in the US then in the UK when I took a position there and when we moved to Hong Kong she taught ESL to mostly Korean Women. She refuses to even think about teaching in the US again even if her health would permit. Most US Universities, she says, are high-cost babby sitters for kids who now have the power to run the place. No discipline, no standards, no one ever tells them “no” for fear of their jobs. She sees some of the essays her teacher friends send her from their students and they wouldn’t pass a high school sophmore english class. She LOVED teaching in the UK in the 90’s. She taught at Nottingham University and they had standards, motivated students, and adults ran the place. Sadly she hears that the UK is falling for the same “progressive” BS that infected Amercan higher learning.
I took an early pension from my time working for MCI in the UK. It was 15,000 pounds up-front, and 50 pounds a month. The up-front money we put down on our current house. And the 50 pounds buys a good dinner out every month. My primary MCI pension, over half a million in stocks and options dissapeared when MCI went bankrupt. So I have been creating business to give me a revenue stream in retirement.
“ver half a million in stocks and options dissapeared when MCI went bankrupt. ”
This.
and no one thought the government would let Bethlehem Steel go bankrupt and be sold for pennies to foreign interests. After all, they were the last US producer of armor plate…
Well, they did, and they did, and thousands got a 50-60% haircut on their pensions when the Guarantor took over. It happens all the time. Promises are only as good as the entity making them, and both the world and the entities change over time.
n
MCI pension, over half a million in stocks and options dissapeared when MCI went bankrupt
Happened to a friend of mine that work for a company that made seat belt webbing and parts. He had several hundred thousand in his retirement fund. Unfortunately it was managed by his company and was in company stock and some cash. When his company got bought the government ruled that all the money was part of the company’s assets and did not belong to the people. It was all company contributions and thus was fair game. Any employee contributions would have been returned to the employees.
This forced him to remain with the new company (he kept his job, sort of) for several more years until he could get the higher SS amount.
There is a real danger in company contributions placed in company stock. That is what happened at the bank holding company I worked for. All the money was company contributions and I figured to never see the money again when IT was outsourced. Eventually the holding company was bought/transferred/absorbed/whatever and that was the end of the holding company.
I was very much surprised when I was contacted by BofA about the retirement. Figured I would never see any of the money. That is why I was bummed out I did not get the payout. Latest report I got showed the retirement fund at several BILLION dollars. There is some law firm that gets paid $15 million a year to administer the fund. As with most legal firms I think they are ripping the fund off and are paid about 10 times too much. Regardless, there is enough money to last my lifetime unless uncle sammy gets greedy and the congressional leaches start eyeing the money to fund their healthcare and personal retirement.
The problem with all the guarantors is that they’re not funded. They’re using a numbers game that became obsolete decades ago. If one group’s pension plan goes bankrupt, they can (usually) handle that, depending on its size. If ten go bankrupt, not so much. If 100 or 1,000 go bankrupt, NFW. Same deal with FDIC, except that they and the Fed are in the position of creating as much “money” as they want to. As I said before, “Money from nothing, and your checks for free.”
For you folks that experience problems with your internet, cable, cell phone, etc. one of the first things to check (if you are not totally down is:
http://downdetector.com/
The home page lists the most current problem providers, basically IMHO if your provider is on the first screen you are up a creek.
Spectrum/Charter has been top of the list for 3-days now, and they do not have a clue. It is a national thing and even if you do not have Charter/Spectrum, if the site/company you are trying to get to is serviced by them you are screwed too.
I’ll spare you all my lost retirement story, just to say it involves the gooberment (DOE) and Hanford Contractors (Westinghouse Hanford Company, Kaiser Engineering Hanford, and UNC Nuclear Industries) and the shell game they played with pensions. $795/month at 62 lost forever.
“The wife is a retired English Professor, specializing in early english (IE: Chaucer / Beowulf / etc.).”
If I’d continued with the program, I’d have about 20 years in now as a specialist in early Medieval, but British Isles and Continent-wide, and rocking about six dead languages. Or precursors, like Old French, medieval Italian and Latin, etc. I’d be in the last ten years and retiring around age 72, with a hopefully decent pension plus SS. But I couldn’t stomach the super-PC commie bullshit anymore (and that was in 1991-93!), plus my dad was dying in Massaschusetts, my first marriage was disintegrating (with lots of help from the FIL), and of course I was still boozing away (to help with the stress and let me sleep at night, both epic fails).
Also, roughly half of the students were at the remedial/developmental stage and years behind where you’d assume they should be, or ESL foreign kids.
But that’s what I’d loved and tried to do and of course now it’s water under the bridge and long gone, although I still read the stuff for my own enjoyment. Peeps nowadays simply assume that we’re the smartest and most adept human beans to walk the earth, but those men and women a thousand years ago were just like us, only without smartypants phones or indoor plumbing. In some ways they were a LOT smarter than us.
I’ll spare you all my lost retirement story, just to say it involves the gooberment (DOE) and Hanford Contractors (Westinghouse Hanford Company, Kaiser Engineering Hanford, and UNC Nuclear Industries) and the shell game they played with pensions. $795/month at 62 lost forever.
The cash money was probably never actually there in the retirement accounts. But, you know that.
It turns out that retirement accounts and pensions were/are yet another shell game, con game, whatever, perpetrated on hard-working regular Murkan citizens, many of whom got fleeced pretty badly and it’s still going on. Others were luckier or savvier and got theirs while the gettin’ was good.
We have zip for retirement saved here; we’ve gone through four accounts over the past fifteen years just to pay regular bills and we’ve also been at the point of scraping together loose change and using gas cards to buy pet food (not for us, silly, for the pets). Not recently, but we’ve been there. And at another point wife and daughter were living with GG while I lived three miles away in a studio apartment above a real estate office.
Looking back, going into IT and college teaching were mistakes; I probably could have got on the MA State Police back in the late 1980s, being an Academy graduate and scoring 110 on the exam, with vets preference, but I’d had a bellyful of that stuff and no family to support at the time. By now I’d be retired, of course, with a…..state pension. Uh-oh.
No idea what I really should have been doing instead; I made the moves I did thinking it was the right thing to do and that’s what I wanted in life, etc., and it’s pretty much all turned to ashes. So it is what it is and here we all are in 2017 and most of us now in our 50s, 60s and 70s.
We’re still above the grass and able to take nourishment and we can still speak freely in venues like this, still buy all the guns and ammo we want and can afford, and I think most of us enjoy three hots and a cot, at least. With twenty kinds of lettuce at the supermarket and pixels galore. We live far better than medieval royalty did.
We live far better than medieval royalty did.
We’ve got the same tax collectors though and with better information.
True, dat. And now they won’t necessarily cut you down with a pike or sword; they’ll just seize all your chit and put you On the Road.
Your home and property will be sold off at auction or simply given to new migrants yearning to breathe free, etc. And your house may sport a nice ISIS flag and sullen young males eyeballing the local elementary skool grrls.
Take THE MONEY! Anything else is a 20th century game. Worked then, can’t possibly now. My uncle, now deceased, had pensions from SS, Navy, State of California and a quite nice IRA. Good for him, bless him. NOT THE SITUATION TODAY. The crack up crash is obvious to ANYONE with a lick of sense, particularly those here. The only question is “when”.
If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. Oh! and bury it out of sight of TPTB.
TPTB
TPTB = The Powers That Be ?
@ofd, try
7.730 in florida
7.570
7.375 from the mediteranean
6.115 nashville
6060 cuba
9.570 cuba
9.730 med
By now I’d be retired, of course, with a…..state pension. Uh-oh.
I haven’t heard anything bad about Vermont finances. And Jane Sanders does not run Vermont, so, maybe they are ok.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/judicial-watch-jane-sanders-tried-evicting-disabled-residents/
Making decisions is tough. But never second guess your decisions. For all you know, you could have gotten shot in the back making some 2 am traffic stop ten years ago.
I crucify myself on my decisions, both good and bad. I wish that I did not.
9.265 is right on top of you – fire and brimstone
oh, and at the top of the hour lots of programs change….
n
Basically you should be getting good signals from the south of you, cuba and the US broadcasters, and the Med should be coming up.
Mid 9.x and all the 9. mid 7.x and the 7 and mid 6.x should all get you good signals at the moment.
n
If you’re getting lots of loud buzzing, turn of all your LEDs
“@ofd, try..”
Roger that. Will do. Thanks!
“I haven’t heard anything bad about Vermont finances.”
I would have been a MA state trooper; wrap up the BA or BS in Criminal Justice and then get an MA in it for the Quinn Bill (bonuses added on to pay for degrees) and then law school, all pretty much on the Commonwealth’s dime. Keep taking the promotional exams and move on up, like the old Jeffersons theme song. Retired by now as a captain or major, probably, if I could have kept my big mouth shut and played the game. Wear the nifty Gestapo uniform, but hopefully not as top-heavy as this ranking heavy hitter with twenty years on the job:
http://media.masslive.com/breakingnews/photo/2014/05/14899465-standard.jpg
” For all you know, you could have gotten shot in the back making some 2 am traffic stop ten years ago.”
True, dat. I hope I would have had my six under control enough to prevent that, however; funny chit can still happen to the best of us.
“I crucify myself on my decisions, both good and bad. I wish that I did not.”
Ditto. I made a chit-load of very bad choices back in the day. But what use to kill myself now over them? Hopefully I’ve learned something and try harder not to eff up again, but I still do anyway. Oh well. We’re imperfect little sinners and few of us are saints. We must endeavor to persevere, sir.
Thanks for the tips, Mr. Nick; I’ll be on those tomorrow night after the fireworks here; got other stuff going on with the scanners right now. Pursuits, domestics, somebody pretty close by driving all over the road, from ditch to ditch, not too good, etc.
Those should be good around the same time tomorrow. Conditions are always different though.
N
Roger that. Conditions here will be very noisy until midnight or so. Assuming they even get the fireworks off; we’re supposed to get drenched again with heavy rains.