And yes, it is hot out. Likely to be humid too. And sunny. Because it’s summer. I was reading my rural electricity co-op provider’s magazine while at the BOL, and had grabbed one out of the stack from LAST summer. Guess what it said? Yeah, conserve electricity because of the high heat. Also they were raising our rates because of inflation. So this year is pretty much just like last year. Hot.
Somehow we forget. Like the pain of childbirth.
Despite the heat I ran a couple of loads to my local auction house. Picked up one lot I’d won in a more industrial auction. That was for resale. I will try to run at least one more good load to the auction today before heading over to my rent house to start work on it. The ceiling needs repair. I’m going to end up doing the patch in the wall, instead of the painter… and the porch floor has some rotten boards that will need to be replaced. I have to do that every couple of years.
Then I have to seriously consider what to do about the fence. Some of it is pretty worn, as I discovered when the strange neighbor drew my attention to it. I’m tempted to do the absolute minimum, just add a board so I can re-nail the rotten bottoms of the pickets. That will buy a couple of more years for the fence. I don’t want to put thousands or even hundreds of dollars into it. I’ve power washed it a couple of times though, and it’s pretty worn out. Western red cedar 5 inch pickets on pressure treated posts and rails is the default fencing here, and it holds up pretty well, better with washing and sealing, but it doesn’t last forever and that fence is over 15 years old. The joy of property ownership. It’ll be hot out, no matter what I choose to do.
I do think that having a revenue stream from a rental property is a good idea, and a decent hedge against inflation. As long as you can count on .gov to honor property rights, and insist that tenants pay you what you are owed, that is. We’ve seen that we can’t actually count on that in most places. Still a good investment in theory, and for us, in practice. I’d prefer to have some commercial rental property too. It’s easier to get rid of bad tenants, but if the economy goes south, it’s harder to keep good ones. Everyone needs a place to live, businesses can condense down to ‘home based’ if needed, or they go broke completely leaving commercial landlords with empty properties. Every investment involves trade offs, and different risks.
Even cash buried in jars involves risk.
The only way I know to reduce the risk is to diversify, and I don’t mean by holding 10 different stocks. Diversify your investments. Diversify your income. Diversify your suppliers and sources. Diversify what you stack. And hope that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down all at the same time.
Even if it does, if you’ve stacked, you’ll still be able to eat. Stack it up.
nick
We had a “back to work” rally of sorts at the office about a month ago, and I noted that the real estate and facilities people were around my age if not older.
The Chinese relation who has haunted C-suites in failing divisions of tech companies for the last 30 years effectively became a realtor last year, accepting a gig as a “product officer” at one of the franchise broker operations.
His web page at the company’s site has an asterisk next to his title, indicating at the bottom of the page that he is a “non-executive officer”. I wonder why that is there.
Metal posts in concrete are the standard here currently, but the rest is the same. What really sucks right now is that the practice with the gates is to not even try to center, specifying the possibility of up to an inch and a half gap between the edge of the gate and the post in the contract, wide enough for an adult male to stick their hand through. The contracts also do not include a right of refusal of final payment for sloppy work.
We just replaced two sections of fence including one with a gate. $100/linear foot installed. The gap at the gate edge is uneven, an inch at the top increasing to an inch and a quarter at the bottom. In theory, they will attempt to correct it today, but if I hold back payment much longer trying to make them fix the issues, I’m risking a mechanics lien.
I also waived the sprinkler damage coverage, assuming the line was not near the old posts, which was a bad move on my part.
The wife’s nephew is trying to do the landlord thing with borrowed money and his off base housing allowance, which seems insane to me.
With his relocation to Fort Hood (or whatever it is called this month) about a month away, I’ve been curious about what he’s come up with in this market, but my rule is that we are not involved.
@Greg: I reckon they have standard contracts. However, one can always negotiate. I’ve done it rarely, but before signing a contract saying “this paragraph gets crossed out”, or “I want this additional condition added”. Of course, they can always say “no”.
Back to work it is. yesterday was wading through a month’s accumulated emails. Today it’s starting prep on one of the two new courses. I’m a convert to ChatGPT, because this course is in Kotlin, which I have only used a little. Typing in a question “how do you do X in Kotlin” has yielded really nice results, including explanations and examples. What a great learning tool!
High today will be 75. Rain all day. Really cool for August. It has not been over 92 so far this year. And that has only been 3 days above 90. Global warming is not happening here.
It’s really been quite cool here as well. We had 2-3 weeks of hot weather in July, but that’s less that usual. Of course, the global-warmists were very loud for those 2-3 weeks. The temperatures were catastrophic! Only…they weren’t. Just normal, summer weather. Now, most of Europe is unseasonally cool. Even Spain, which is often around 40C this time of year, is mostly in the mid- to high-20s. Yup, we’re all gonna fry. Oh, right, that’s just passing weather. It’s only climate if the temperatures are hot. /s
I also tripped across a really hilarious pair of articles about the Great Barrier Reef. One was titled something like “Great Barrier Reef is dying”. The other one was of “Great Barrier Reef has highest coral cover in 36 years”. In truth, the reef appears to largely have recovered from the damage it had suffered. Australia has massively reduced the pollution flowing off its coast, which was apparently the problem all along. But the global-warming crowd just can’t let go…
@brad:
You can’t change someone’s mind, if his income depends on his not believing it..
G.
The fence company has Netsuite and I had to read the contract from the sales guy’s iPad.
Austin.
They’re supposed to come out today and correct the crooked gate.
Waiting for a car inspection today in Round Rock, I noticed that, even after the massive power outages in the region caused by downed lines due to tree limbs, Oncor still hasn’t trimmed the trees around the power lines servicing the neighborhood, a major commercial district. The growth is easily multple years’ worth, and I doubt it is an isolated example.
Texas invented “swimming naked” in Buffet-speak terms. No wonder The Gecko thinks he can eventually take control of the energy market here.
In theory, that might be a foothold into invalidating part of the contract. Look up contract of adhesion. In practice, they have more lawyers than you do. Also, many judges are reluctant to reject even part of an all-or-nothing contract.
Several times I’ve crossed out a clause in a standard contract. IIRC, every single time, the other guy said something along the lines of “You can’t do that”. In every case I walked away, but that would have made a solid case for rejecting the bad terms in court. A digital-only contract, with no possible way to cross out clauses, would be even more solid. Assuming it was worth the effort. Assuming an honest judge and no legal shenanigans. Assuming…
Nah, not worth it. Walk away and find someone else or do without.
The global warmening is happening in spades here today. And the sun will be trying to boil my brains in my own fluids before the day is over.
—————-
For some examples of online articles written by an AI take a look at the results of this search
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=cost+of+wooden+fence+per+foot
Most of them quote the same two sources. They are full of the same equivocating language and appeals to consult experts. And there is a certain ‘feel’ or mental voice that I believe you can recognize. The bob villa one is typical.
Love the “national average cost” which doesn’t mention HOW MUCH fence you get for the money, or WHAT KIND.
I’m gonna bet that to get a company out to do the work, for only 50ft of fence, I end up paying much more than $10/ft. Who can make money at $500 per day for at least 2 workers, tools, truck, etc? Oh yeah, illegals and tailgate slammers.
n
The alternative these days is social media. Around Austin, with the Locust Class having recently descended on the city en masse, everything is word of mouth, Yelp, Neighborhood, etc. A bad review online can be bad.
I’m not a fan of the practice, but it works here until the Locusts move on to feast somewhere else.
Lesson learned. I learned from the first AC replacement and didn’t repeat with the second install this year.
BTW, coffee this morning was from the freezer. I’ve misplaced my stacked coffee while cleaning the shelves, and reorganizing the stacks, so I went to the backup in the freezer.
Foil vac bag retail packaging ground coffee, put into plastic vac seal bag and frozen. January 2020. Just as good today as it was when it went to freezer camp.
n
ChatGPT is a monkey trick. OpenAI gets away with it because human writers would produce the exact same garbage in most cases.
Why pay the Art History major from Brown six figures a year to process HR paperwork and badger people about jabs when an AI could be just as effective.
People pushing paper for a living without any other skills are in trouble.
And my sympathy for them is exactly nil. “Learn to code!”
Why pay the Art History major from Brown six figures
– art majors are making 6 figures? F-me.
n
I do think that having a revenue stream from a rental property is a good idea, and a decent hedge against inflation. As long as you can count on .gov to honor property rights, and insist that tenants pay you what you are owed, that is. We’ve seen that we can’t actually count on that in most places. Still a good investment in theory, and for us, in practice.
In practice yes. But you need to protect against the downturn. My friend had 30+ rent houses in the barrio off South Post Oak in 2008. When the illegals lost their jobs because of the downturn, he lost most of his tenants because they went back to Mexico. The bank called his note when he could not make his payment and seized all of the houses. He had over 50% equity before that.
To handle HR at a medium size wanna be defense contractor located near DC, keep their mouths shut about what they see, no matter how outrageous, and, more recently, do the C-suites dirty work with regard to enforcing jab policy? Yeah, that’s a guess, but I doubt I’m far off.
With a $1 Trillion annual Defense budget, a lot of beaks are getting wet.
The civilian world isn’t far behind, however. The big asset in my friends’ divorce is her revenue stream from DEI consulting teaching the reeducation camps on weekends, a lot more money than her “day job” income running HR for a boutique hotel chain.
It is interesting how many buried hoards are found centuries later – I suppose people often bury treasure when serious (lethal) trouble is imminent … and some aren’t around to dig it up later.
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/67854
I heard Texas is doing away with the inspection next year after finding it makes little difference. You’ll see $10 added to the registration fee.
Any confirmation?
The labor is still questionably legal, but the fence company has a legit mailing address.
The crew is out there making corrections now. We’ll see if they hang a new gate or just try and fudge it.
The “inspection” is going away in … two years? However, the major metro areas will still have emissions tests and require a tech to look for the “check engine” light once a year.
Ah, so like the Nevada ripoff. Plug into the computer, press a button, and pay $10+ whether you pass or not.
I got my “inspection” two days ago: check headlamps, brake lights, turn signals, horn, wipers, and something under the hood for $7. Like any of those failing would be caught in the 5-minute “inspection”.
Just adding the $10 would probably put a lot of the unemployable out of work. Gotta buy those votes.
As predicted:
Sorry, CNN, nobody is buying your OMG IT’S A COVID SUMMER SURGE BS so kindly ‘blow it out your a*s’
A little early, but, tRump, tho.
Is tRump in jail yet? I read the Dumbocrats finally “got him”. Third time is a charm.
I have a “check engine” light for the evap system which comes and goes on my 2001 Solara. Theoretically, it is an emissions problem, but the car runs fine otherwise.
Still, I wouldn’t pass inspection if either the light was on when I pulled up to the station or they detected that I had cleared the light/code within … 24 hours … ?
Whenever inspection time rolls around, I clear the code and wait a week. If the light doesn’t come back on by the following Saturday morning, I take the car for inspection. Otherwise, rinse and repeat for the expiration month of the tag.
The light is off now and just passed inspection last weekend. The code will probably come back when the first cold front passes.
Fixing the $500 car properly would cost $400. Right. And the moment I do that, one of my kids will total the car.
Lately, the car has also thrown misfire codes every now and then, but a bottle of ATS oil treatment seemed to stop that problem. Misfire would be the end of the car passing inspection in Texas, even under the new regimen.
Is tRump in jail yet? I read the Dumbocrats finally “got him”. Third time is a charm.
“I’m afraid he’s right”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/08/im-afraid-hes-right.html
“Let me say up front that I’m not particularly enamored at the thought of a second term for President Trump. I think he’s too old, and too opinionated, and too brash, loud-mouthed and egotistical to make a good President in future. I will admit that his first term was a whole lot better than I expected, and he did a number of very good things – but he also did a number of very bad things, such as choose entirely the wrong people for his team who proceeded to undermine his authority, and his wholesale cock-up of the response to COVID-19, the effects of which are still with us.”
“That said, I agree he has every right to run for a second term, and if he wins the popular vote, he should be allowed to serve as POTUS once again. However, I also agree with The Good Citizen that he’s very, very unlikely to be given that chance, because the process (and the US constitution, and our institutions of government) is/are being openly and maliciously manipulated to block him. I don’t believe we can have another honest election while the powers that be are in control.”
I just don’t know who else to make President right now. The USA is down the road from the crossroads of a major decision. That decision was to replace all fossil based energy with the so-called renewables. We can still walk that decision back but it will take a strong leader.
Desantis is ok but he needs more seasoning. And he needs a good replacement in Florida, I do not see one.
And this war in Ukraine is spooking me. I suspect that it will go nuclear soon. I expect Germany to get nuked in the process too.
What a jerk Pence has turned out to be !
Well, that was a pleasant surprise. When we cleaned out my aunt’s place back in 2002, we kept some silverware. It was not a complete set as it was missing some pieces. I hung on to the silverware because it was silver. From what I have learned a very good brand. We will never use the stuff so we took it in to a jewelry store to sell. I figured maybe $100.00. Uh, nope, $560.00. Probably about two pounds of stuff. The knife blades are stainless steel so I got nothing for that part of the knives. The handles were silver.
I have got a couple of gold rings left over from deceased relatives. I have no use for the rings. One has several diamonds in the ring. I guess I will be taking those in to sell. No use keeping them around.
Well, if tRump is in the slammer, dunciden won’t be there to share a cell with him.
There are certainly decent candidates out there. But (1) the corrupt establishment won’t promote them, and (2) if you were one of them, would you do that to yourself?
So it’s safe to say you have an OBDI gizmo and something like Torque on your phone? Torque’s pretty good (for me) telling you what the codes mean.
The van would turn on the light. It ran fine. Clear the code and it would be back in a couple of weeks. It was “high fuel pressure on the fuel rail”. An $18 part that is used on a lot of Fords and probably designed to fail as it’s on top of the engine and not much has to be removed to get at it. Two bolt/screws, 8mm as I recall, and a wire connector. I spent more time finding the correct socket.
The 2002 Dodge truck tossed a code. For the charcoal canister purge valve. $30. Canister is nowhere near the purge valve. The valve is sort of under the battery. Just a vacuum line and an electric connection. I spent more time looking for it than I did replacing it.
Two parts designed to fail and get you to the dealer for no telling how large a bill.
For both the ‘Net is full of “OMG you have to replace, in no particular order, your fuel pump, your gas cap, fuel injectors, vacuum lines, fuel lines, your engine computer!” and I forget the rest.
I bought both from Big River. Same prices on eBay but I had some other stuff I wanted and min $25 for free shipping, well, easy choice.
@Greg
Does the car have a coil on each cylinder? Next time you pull the code check the cylinder number. If it’s the same one each time coil is a good possibility, but change the plug at the same time as it could be fouled.
Yeah, pass. 22% interest? They are crazy.
Congratulations! You’re pre-selected to apply for the Wells Fargo Reflect Visa® Card, which gives you 21 months of our lowest intro APR on purchases and qualifying balance transfers. 0% intro APR for 21 months from account opening on purchases and qualifying balance transfers. 22.24% variable APR thereafter. Balance transfers made within 120 days qualify for the intro rate and fee.
The size of the bill depends on how ignorant or gullible they think that you are. Very annoying. What’s more annoying is that when my wife comes back from, say, a car inspection with a list of critical safety problems – sneer quotes very much implied – and then I open up the brakes or whatever and take photos of them in perfect condition and then send a scan of the thousand-dollar quote and the photos to both the corporate complaint line and the state DMW … and hear nothing back from either. It’s a scam, the state regulators are in on the scam, and frankly there’s not much to be done except kill everyone.
Funny, how often all options other than destruction, mayhem, and death are closed off.
Oh, and before you suggest denouncing them in public, we’ve tried that, on a non-automotive matter. The corporation sent us a letter demanding that we take down the bad reviews or they’d sue us into oblivion. Consulted with our lawyer and he agreed that it was definitely extortion, threat to abuse the legal process, and so on, but in practice they were able to drag it out until we’d run up a six-figure legal bill with no end in sight. And the state bar association and state regulators would be of no use because they knew where their bread was buttered. I was willing to double down but my wife caved. As I say, no solution other than Kill Everyone.
“Backblaze Drive Stats for Q2 2023”
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2023/
“At the end of Q2 2023, Backblaze was monitoring 245,757 hard drives and SSDs in our data centers around the world. Of that number, 4,460 are boot drives, with 3,144 being SSDs and 1,316 being HDDs. The failure rates for the SSDs are analyzed in the SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats review.”
“Zero Failures: There were six drive models with zero failures in Q2 2023 as shown in the table below.”
Wow. I just bought a 12 TB WD External USB drive a couple of months ago. I am staying with WD drives. Not perfect but very very good.
“Biden Blames USA Downgrade On Trump”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-blames-downgrade-trump
“The new regime talking points are out – namely that Fitch downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+ on Tuesday because of MAGA Republicans and all things Trump.”
Of course.
>> Back to work it is. yesterday was wading through a month’s accumulated emails. Today it’s starting prep on one of the two new courses. I’m a convert to ChatGPT, because this course is in Kotlin, which I have only used a little. Typing in a question “how do you do X in Kotlin” has yielded really nice results, including explanations and examples. What a great learning tool!
The question is though, do you know enough Kotlin to know if GPT “really” knows Kotlin…
>> Yeah, pass. 22% interest? They are crazy.
Actually, if you’re carrying any balances it is a good deal if the transfer fee is low enough and you can pay off the balance at the end of the 21 months.
I feel preyed upon. I get dozens of these credit card invitations annually. They all say that I have been “preselected”, but I have never been “post-selected”. How discriminatory has that been?
If the war goes that far, everyone will get nuked.
That would depend on how well the developers on GitHub know Kotlin.
Media Criticism of ‘Sound of Freedom’ Now Looking ‘Awkward’ After What an FBI Operation Just Found
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/08/03/fbi-finds-hundreds-of-sex-trafficking-victims-in-major-operation-n2626518
I expect a media apology just as soon as NPR admits that they have a history of pushing bug eating.
Two 7-11 Workers Defend Themselves After Would-Be Robber Pulls Knife
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/08/two-7-11-workers-defend-themselves-after-would-be-robber-pulls-knife/
Follow-up on the link posted yesterday.
>> The “inspection” is going away in … two years? However, the major metro areas will still have emissions tests and require a tech to look for the “check engine” light once a year.
I presume EVs are exempt?
A number of the podcasts that I listen to, focused on technology or current events*, have dedicated episodes to “debunking” the claims of Underground Railroad. “Well, actually, OUR wasn’t behind the raid on XX.” “Well, actually, OUR didn’t rescue 500 children in any one year.” “Well, actually, …” I didn’t notice any of the podcast hosts or guests coming right out and saying that the whole story is BS but they came close to implying it with endless nitpick attacks and not a single “Yes, it’s mostly true but the movie got some things wrong.”
Yeah, well, actually, Ramon Menendez, the teacher from the movie Stand and Deliver, didn’t accomplish all he did in a single school year. I guess he was nothing but a fraud, too, right? Because there’s no such thing as a distinction between a movie meant for mass-market entertainment and a research paper which is supposed to contain nothing but dry facts.
I’ve dropped two podcast feeds as a result and would drop a couple more if I could remember which to drop. As I say in many contexts, if they lie or slant the truth on a topic you know something about and can catch, you can be sure that they’re lying about things that you don’t know much about.
* In theory, discussion of “context you haven’t heard about a current event” but I guess that works out to be more difficult than the channel creators expected, so most of them devolve to saying the same thing everyone else is about the event. I drop them, look for a replacement, and wait for the next to devolve.
>> The fence company has Netsuite and I had to read the contract from the sales guy’s iPad.
Do they at least email you a PDF of the signed contract? I presume you esign on his iPad?
Lynn says:
I agree. I’ve bought several WD hard drives over the past several years, and have had ZERO failures. Very impressed.
>> art majors are making 6 figures? F-me.
To handle HR at a medium size wanna be defense contractor located near DC, keep their mouths shut about what they see, no matter how outrageous, and, more recently, do the C-suites dirty work with regard to enforcing jab policy? Yeah, that’s a guess, but I doubt I’m far off.
Maybe a few dollars less now that the ‘hard’ stuff, like firing your azz can be done by email.
Hot hot hot…
Did some assessment at the rent house, did some shopping. I’ll jump into it tomorrow. It was HOT with no breeze. I believe I’ll be putting off the fence and landscape work as long as possible. At least the sun was behind storm clouds for part of the afternoon. Metal stuff was too hot to touch. Literally burned my fingers on it.
Dropped off a few more things at the auctioneer. Saw the owner, and he’s up, out, and moving around. Apparently they wire your chest shut sub Q and leave the wire in place now. No staples. Looked pretty painful nonetheless.
I’m home, fed everyone including X1 who we have with us again… for tonight at least. Dinner was spiral sliced ham slices from the freezer, two bags, one from last year, one from ’21. Both delicious. Leftover veg and starch, with one of the shelf stable take-and-bake sourdough loaves.
Time for me to do some grocery shopping when I’m eating from the stacks.
————
catching up on web stuff, Al Sharpton is a buffoon. Holly heII bat-person-assigned-male-at-birth, the cluelessness on display is breathtaking.
————–
Hey whoddathunkit, I could guess the names from the headlines…
n
Until Tesla runs out of hiding places for the “recycled” batteries down at the Gigafactory.
>> Is tRump in jail yet? I read the Dumbocrats finally “got him”. Third time is a charm.
CNN’s blaring graphics once again insisted that Trump was arrested. Surprisingly, MSNBCr@p gave it up.
>> I just don’t know who else to make President right now.
I heard that the Dumbocrats are vetting a Newsom / Whitmer ticket once they lock Plugs in the garage with the Vette.
>> There are certainly decent candidates out there. But (1) the corrupt establishment won’t promote them, and (2) if you were one of them, would you do that to yourself?
It’s like on The Walking Dead…once one of the zombies bites you, then you ‘turn’ too.
Decent people don’t want the job.
It should be like jury duty, people should be trying to get out of it. “Oh sh!t, I got called to be the Senator this year. But I’ve got kids in school, and my dad is sick, and I hate people…”
n
@Brad
If you are interested, there is a backstory about the GBR research, regarding Peter Ridd, a geophysicist and former professor, who was fired from the James Cook University for questioning the validity of some of the research on the GBR. There was a court battle, which he initially won, but was overturned on appeal by the university. He started a go fund me to help fight this appeal, but unfortunately lost.
https://joannenova.com.au/2019/06/peter-ridd-the-great-barrier-reef-has-about-the-same-amount-of-coral-as-in-1985/
https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/peter-ridds-fight-for-real-science-is-not-over
Cheers