FYI:

I'm doing most of my blogging at the moment over at:

The (new) Eclectic Dragonfly.

Just thought you might like to know...

NEVER FORGET

Photo by Sister72

Who in their right mind would think this is a good idea?

CNN is reporting that the President’s jobs plan may create as many as 1 million jobs.  They go on to add that ‘economists gave generally positive reviews’ to the President’s plan.

Um, FYI, the President gave a speech.  He hasn’t actually given us the plan.  The actual plan hasn’t even been written yet!

OK.  Now let’s look at the numbers.

1,000,000 Jobs created

$447,000,000,000.00 Estimated cost of Obama’s “plan”
    (that $447 billion dollars!)

That’s $447,000.00 per job!

If you take that cost for each job and broke it down for one year’s paycheck for one person that’s:

$447,000.00 cost per job

divided by 52 weeks in a year

divided by 40 hours in a week

That pay rate would be $214.90 an hour!

Unless it’s the economist that’s getting paid that call it $215 an hour, how can they possibly consider this a good investment?  The President doesn’t care.  He’s spending our money on this lame brained idea, not his own!  And he’ll be out of office before the bill comes due.

Should Congress pass a cockamamie scheme like this?  With those numbers?  Where the ROI is only a million jobs?  And probably the vast majority of them will be bureaucrats overseeing the new Centralized Federal Workers Administration?  Lord help us! 

Well, I suppose the - still to be proposed - Federal Works Planning Kommittee vill need verkers…

“Und if you don’t like verre ve assigned you to verk you vill be reassigned instead to a kamp to be reeducated!”

America was nice while it lasted.

Please take a number…

Two weeks ago I made an appointment to meet with someone from the mortgage department at my bank.  That appointment was this morning. 

I got all dressed up.  Trousers and polo by Botany 500, my best going to the office shoes, watch by Michelle* on a tooled leather strap made by yours truly.  I don’t get that spiffed up on the weekend for just anybody…

[* It’s very real but I got it for next to nothing at the flea market.  It’s so nice when the venders don’t know what they have! ;-) ]

I arrived about ten minutes early and fully prepared.  I had my pay stubs.  I had my bank statements.  I had two years worth of tax returns. I had documentation regarding my pension and 401(k).  All laid out nice and neat in a ring binder.

I also had five (5) copies of my personal Income Statement and Balance Sheet.  The first one shows things as they stand today (admittedly not very pretty…), the next three show the three steps I’ve laid out that will solve my cashflow problems once and for all, and the final result – a wonderfully clean and productive Income Statement and Balance Sheet that, once I achieve it, will give me the freedom to invest as I see fit for my future.

She didn’t look and any of it.

She just fired up the banks web-based mortgage application form and filled it in for me as if I didn’t know how to type.  I could have done that myself two weeks ago at home on my own computer in my skivvies had I chosen to do so.  The “person from the mortgage department” we were meeting with turned out to be nothing more than an order taker!

(muffled by the speaker)

“Would you like fries with that? – Please drive up…”

This was a total waste of time!  Both my time in the meeting this morning and of the two weeks we waited for this morning to arrive!  I need to talk one-on-one with a real decision maker, not waste my time with low level data entry clerks!  How do I get past these underlings and reach the real mortgage people?  I may not be independently wealthy now – but very soon after I get to that fifth spreadsheet I expect to be someone my bankers will know on a first name basis!

I’m sooo confused!

So, if then candidate Obama had as he stated been to fifty-seven states and he had at the time one left to go to, but they wouldn’t let him go to Alaska or Hawaii – how does North Dakota not qualifying to be a state mess up the math?

For extra credit factor in the fact that two ‘states’ are actually not states but commonwealths…

Now that it’s come to light that North Dakota is not now nor has it never been a state, what happens to all that federal money that has been spent there low these many years?  And what about all the federal taxes paid by North Dakotans over those same many years?

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

I suspect the .gov of the territory will try to quietly “fix the problem” and sweep it under the rug.  All the while hopping that nobody notices.

H/T to SayUncle for bringing this to our attention.  Go forth and read the comments.  Many a good point are made there in.

Why get into Real Estate?

“… Real Estate or other entrepreneurial investments” might be more accurate.  But that makes for a lousy headline.  ;-)

Anyway, my answer to that is simple.  The old industrial age model no longer works. 

That was:

• Go to school* so you can
• Get a good education so you can
• Get a good job
• With a good company
• With good benefits
• And a retirement plan
• And you’ll be set for life

* By school they really mean collage.  For most people and most careers these days a high school education simply won’t cut it.

I had friends who retired from Polaroid many years ago.  They retired with a full pension and benefits and should have been set for life.  Then Polaroid filed Chapter 11.  As part of their reorganization they convinced the bankruptcy judge to ‘relieve them of the burden’ of their obligations to their retirees.  In an effort to save the corporation the judge threw all of the ‘no longer productive employees’ under the bus, as it were, and cut off all of their pensions and health insurance.  That saved the corporation a bundle!  And hosed all of the people who made Polaroid what it once was.  Not the Board of Directors, mind you.  All of the rank and file.

This is but one example of many and it was quite a few years ago now.  But it is still going on to this very day.  In some cases the corporations skip all the fuss and bother with filing bankruptcy and just cut the bennies themselves.  CNN has an article on their Money page on that very subject, as a matter of fact.

Early retirement a scary health care option

You simply cannot rely on the old model of retiring from the company you’ve worked for for thirty years, plus what Mum calls Social Obscurity, to guarantee a secure retirement.  And don’t expect your 401(k) to be there for you either.  Robert Kiyosaki has a whole book on thesubject.

You need to take responsibility for your own financial future.  You personally as an individual. 

Don’t expect the government to save you.  They can’t even save themselves!  Just take a look at the latest budget crisis spawned by our ‘leadership’ in Washington.  I don’t even need to post a link here because no matter how many years down the road you may be reading this there will be some financial crisis in the news that has as its origins foolishness emanating from Capital Hill.

Don’t expect some NGO to save your bacon either.  I’m not casting aspersions there.  It’s just that an NGO’s resources are invariably much more limited than the government with its ability to print currency on a whim.

You may get lucky and get help from somewhere.  But you can’t count on it.  That is why YOU have to take the initiative and take care of yourself for yourself.

The safety briefing given by the flight crew always states “If the oxygen masks are deployed PUT ON YOUR OWN MASK FIRST!”  You cannot help others if you pass out.

Likewise, you have to take care of your own financial well being, especially if you want to help others.

Bringing this back around to the headline: Investing in real estate that produces a solid passive income, such as the 14-unit apartment complex I am working on purchasing, is a time tested and proven method of generating a reliable income without trading time for cash as in an industrial age job.  It also has the benefit of providing that income even after you retire from your job in the corporate world.

Some would say that now is a lousy time to get into real estate.  “The bubble’s burst and property values are in the tank.  Why on Earth would you want to get into that mess?”  I would reply that now it the best time to get into real estate that will ever occur in our lifetime!  Everything’s on sale!  There are bargains everywhere you look! 

Buying to “flip” in a rapidly appreciating market is only one way to make money in real estate and IMHO it’s far from the most reliable.  Frankly, it’s a form of gambling.  You are buying something in the hope that someone else will pay you more than you paid.  That model will simply not work in most markets at this point in the cycle.

On the other hand, buying a rental property that will pay you more than the cost of owning it over however many years you choose to own it is a sound investment.  That passive income may not be the big flashy bundle of cash the flipper may have made a few years ago, but it will continue to come in.  Month after month.  Year after year.  And if managed property it can continue to do so for your kids and their kids and barring some great calamity for many generations into the future.

Now about that calamity, that’s what insurance is for.

Right now is the very best time we will ever see to get into real estate.  That is why I am working so hard, even staying up late to get the paperwork done, to get this first deal under my belt.  As I said in my one pager: once I have completed a couple of deals of this type my next destination is “To Infinity and Beyond!”  (Thank you Buzz Lightyear for that quote!)

If you’ve read Robert or Dolf or Loral or the other Robert or any of a dozen others this will all sound familiar to you.  If you haven’t I’d suggest you get on down to your local library or book seller and get your hands on a few of these books.  Reading them will open your eyes to a whole new world of opportunity!

One Pager

One of the things that one of my favorite authors, Robert Shemin, recommends is to write up a personal business plan.  His is all of one page long.  He calls it his One Pager.  I’m openly swiping that phrase for mine, though the title on the page is The Master Plan.

I had been thinking about this for quite some time and finally sat down and wrote it out in detail.  Actually I was working on it at lunch yesterday much as I am writing this today.  It was up on my screen when my boss comes along, plunks himself down in my guest chair and asks “Whatcha got going?”  I told him about the actual work I was working on and that I’d switch back to that after lunch.  I don’t know how good a look he got, but my one pager was almost finished…

Anyway, I included that in the fax I mentioned in my last post to try to give the lender a sense that I have a defined plan that includes a time-line for getting myself out of the mess that becomes apparent when you examine my financial statement.

I hope it helps!

In any event, I now have the plan.  I know what my next steps need to be and what to do after that.  I just need a little OPM (that’s Other People’s Money) to get me started along the path.

Another Step Taken

Last night I faxed in the application for my first ever commercial mortgage.  (At 2:00 very AM this morning, actually…)  It was so humid that my fax was trying to take the pages 3 at a time.  I had to feed each sheet individually by hand to keep it from jamming.  Talk about a pain! 

But the problems with the fax machine were nothing compared to the effort of compiling the data to fill out the forms. 

Actually, the application itself wasn’t bad at all.  The problem I had was pulling together everything I needed to fill out a full fledged personal financial statement.  I already have one, but it’s based on the form in Robert Kiyosaki’s game Cashflow 101 that I fleshed out into an Excel spreadsheet.  It turns out that form is somewhat simplified in order to make game play flow along more smoothly.  Having that grounding in the process, I was at least somewhat prepared to “do it for real.” 

I’d hate to think what it must be like for someone who’s never even thought about personal financial statements before!

So the fax is off to one of the banks that my buyer’s agent recommended.  Hopefully we will be adding them to our team.

Now about this blog…

So now that The Guilded Cage is officially off life support and has been allowed to go quietly off into the night, that brings us to a crossroads.

What should I do regarding the name and stated purpose of this here blog?

I intend to continue posting here, mainly about our adventures in the realm or real estate for fun and profit.  And I will also be throwing in some of my thoughts of a more political/economic nature.

But the project that spawned this blog is no more.

So what do you, my reader (note the singular), have to say on the matter?  I am open to suggestions…

Update on The Guilded Cage (the B&B)

Denise was in fact not reading this so I sent an email formally pulling the plug on my offer.  We received the check in the mail today.  So that project is now a thing of the past.  That’s not to say it will never happen.  I still like the property.  I would still very much like to own it.  But I have other fish to fry and having that hanging over my head was just getting in the way.  If it’s still available after we get this deal and another like it done we may revisit buying that property.  Only time will tell.

Our first team member

So Mum and I are back home after a busy day of getting things done. 

The afternoon edition was incredibly boring!  We spent several hours hanging around at Pepboys while they replaced an arthritic ball joint in Galileo’s left front suspension.  I’m glad we had lunch before we had the work done!

Lunch was good and our waitress was great.  (And cute, but I digress…  (I wonder if she’d be interested in managing a B&B?  But I digress still further!)

Things took so long at Pepboys (not their fault.  We didn’t get there until lunch time and because they were booked solid at the moment we went off to get lunch first…) we didn’t get back in time to pick up my Armani suit at the cleaners.  I’ll have to get that Monday after work and bring it to the consignment shop next Saturday.  But that’s worthy of a blog post all its own.  :-)

Now the morning edition is the part you may be more interested in, ‘specially if your reading this blog.

After floundering a bit with our latest real estate adventure and not getting much accomplished, yesterday Mum took the initiative and made a few phone calls. 

I really can’t do much phone work because of my Just Over Broke.  A while back my boss bitched me out for making calls during work hours – even though I was still getting my work done even as I talked on the phone.  “It sounds like an MLS office around here!”  My day job is mechanical design on SolidWorks 3D CAD so reading back MLS numbers to make sure I’m looking at the right listing and having Realtor.com up in a small window off to the side of my screen really doesn’t go over too well.

So anywho, Mum was unable to find a commercial real estate lawyer who sounded worthy of our time.  One actually wanted to know all the details of the deal up front.  Mum responded “I am not at liberty to reveal any details at this time.”  You done good, Mum!  He sounded like the kind of skunk who’d run right out and get it under contract himself and cut us right out of the deal!  In fact I saw his name on several signs listing commercial property for lease while we were out.

Failing to find a lawyer to help out with keeping this deal as strictly a FSBO I suggested we try to find a buyer’s agent.  Mum found one and we met in person at his office this morning.  Our first team member is now firmly on board and he likes the sound of this deal.  More than that, he’s been involved in the real estate game as an investor himself in the two to four family market.  That’s exactly the kind of help we need.  This deal is for a fourteen unit apartment complex, so it’s bigger than any of his, but it’s not that much of a stretch.

As Mum and I were talking about this latest step I used the analogy: “Our ship is on the launch pad and being fueled.”  Once we own this property we will have lift off.  With two more like it we will have reached orbit.  From there who knows how far we’ll go!

Not sitting idly by...

Since the Guilded Cage is flying a holding pattern right now I'm keeping busy looking at other property a bit closer to home.  As in a 14-unit apartment complex.  This property cash-flows right out of the box.  Wish me luck!

Round 1 goes to the stupid.

Or so it seems. 

Apparently I will not be buying the jail from the imbecile that owns it now.  I may still buy it, but it will either be from the County after they seize if for non-payment of the property tax or from the lender assuming he forecloses on the mortgage, which is in default, and pays the taxes himself before the County takes it.

It's really too bad.  I was truly looking for a solution where everybody wins.  But in trying not to loose the present owner has forfeited the game.

Denise, if you are reading this, you can send my uncashed check to the address you have on file.

Accomplishing stuff instead of wasting time on Facebook for a change.

So now that my craigslist water heater’s been installed (and thus is no longer in my way in the shop…) I’ve rearranged the shop and made it more ‘shop like.’ 

My $25 yard sale find in the form of a DeWalt radial arm saw is now in line with the porch door.  That way I can open the door to work with much longer stock than I could where it first landed in my shop. 

The yard sale find in the form of a back-up generator is now where last years failed experiment in the form of a (now deceased) tomato plant was. 

The little computer table that had been in the living room before finding it’s way to the shop (also a yard sale find) is now where the radial arm saw was and will shortly be transferred to storage pending its being listed on craigslist.  (You wouldn’t happen to need a nice little computer table by any chance?  I’ll give you a really good deal on it…)  Once brought to storage the table will be replaced by my Black & Decker Workmate (which is yet another yard sale find from a bunch of years ago.)

I had to reposition the main power strip and reconnect everything because of the equipment’s new locations in the shop.  Yes, there are several significant power tools plugged into the same power strip.  They only get used one or at most two at a time.  So I don’t think the load is a problem.  (The second being either the compressor or the shop vac.)  The power strip has its own breaker anyway, just in case.  I don’t remember if the power strip was from a yard sale of not…

A bunch of other little stuff has been shuffled around to make things a bit neater.  And a bunch of boxes of stuff that piled up out there while the shop was unusably filled with a water heater have been moved to Galileo’s cargo bay pending delivery to storage.

As for all this yard sale stuff…  Why pay full price?  That vintage radial arm saw set me back $25.  A modern RAS if purchased new would cost at least $250 for a piece of junk that wouldn’t last and would potentially be dangerous to boot.  A good saw comparable to my yard sale find would probably set you back a grand or more.  I have seen high end radial arm saws listed on-line for as much as $3,500 (!) though I don’t think this one’s quite in that league…  All mine needs is a good cleaning and for the table to be replaced, which, if used the way the previous owned did, is sacrificial anyway.  I know better and will set it up right, so that won’t be an issue in the future.

A lot of this ‘getting the shop back in shop shape’ was spawned by last night’s efforts to fix the power head of my electric string trimmer.  I managed to get the job done – and the lawn mowed – but it wasn’t the most convenient shop that I’ve ever worked in by any stretch of the imagination!  This arrangement should be much better and when it’s finally organized the way I want, it may actually be a pleasure to spend time out there puttering.

I sure hope so!

Hardball

It’s about time I update y’all on the status of our offer.

Since my last post we’ve bounced back and forth several emails and even faxed in a new set of offer papers with updated figures and dates.

And we’ve waited.

And waited.

I finally heard back from the realtor last Thursday.  Supposedly "the seller" wants another prequel letter.  And "he" wants me to double my earnest money deposit right after the inspection.

I sent back an email that said NO in no uncertain terms.

I pointed out that a contract can be made legal with as little as one dollar changing hands.  They already have a check in hand for a lot more than that.  I also stated unequivocally  that I will not apply for a mortgage on a house that has not been inspected and for which we have not yet settled upon a price.  While I was at it I also mentioned that they already have a prequel latter from another property I was looking at just prior to my offer on this one.  And that house was about double the range we are negotiating in for this one.

The final tactical nuke I dropped in that email was to point out that they have had this listing for at least a year and a half.  “In this buyer’s market it would be unwise to chase away the one serious offer you’ve had on this property.”

I also signed it more formally than I’ve been signing my emails up to this point.

The reply was cordial and made no mention of increasing the deposit or requiring another prequel letter.  We’ll see if future correspondence is any more timely…

One more thing about those pocket knives…

The fact that the government is perfectly willing to turn around and sell them to the general public after having confiscated them as ‘dangerous weapons that simply can’t be permitted in the hands of the general public’ when at the airport just goes to show that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the objects or the people possessing them.  The whole point of this unconstitutional exercise is to desensitize the sheep to the idea that the government can take your possessions any time they want and without any kind of warrant.  A little erosion here, a little shaved off the edges there...  Pretty soon the Bill of Rights will be thought of as a quaint idea that was nice in its time.

I may be willing to purchase and use or give away knives that were once ‘confiscated’ by our own government.  But that in no way indicates my acceptance of the government practice of stealing them in the first place.

Flea Market Finds

I went to the Hollis Flea Market on Sunday.  I was mostly there to see friends and actually hoping not to spend any money.  Well, fiat.  You know...

So there I was digging through a pile of TSA confiscations and having a grand conversation with a new friend.  The way we were chatting the folks running the table thought we'd known each other for years!

Among the government stolen pocket knives I picked out four little Victorinox classic size folders that came home with me.  I've always had a soft spot for a good quality pocket knife.  More than a year ago I got my Victorinox Mini-Champ from a bucket of knives much like this one at an antique shop on some property in Hillsborough I was interested in buying actually during the showing!  It now goes with me everywhere I go riding in its custom fitted 'magazine pouch' in my pancake cellphone holster.  I didn't find another in this pile unfortunately.  The closest was a new-to-me Rambler.  The others are an Escort in purple advertising Nexium (whatever that is...), a vintage Classic in blue with the old big P Piper Aircraft logo and no key ring/lanyard loop, and a standard red scaled Rally with a straight screwdriver instead of the current Phillips and a nail file without the screwdriver tip. 

At Mum's friend 'the movie man's' table I bought a book on antique kitchen stuff.  That will come in handy as we restore the B&B's kitchen to reflect the period when the house was built.  That may be a bit of a challenge since the entire kitchen was gutted and replaced with modern cabinets and appliances.  Well, many of the appliances have gone AWOL, but fortunately the original wood kitchen stove is still there waiting to be restored.

Back to the flea...

The only other thing I picked up was a pair of cufflinks.  They're marked 14K.  The guy who sold them to me pointed that out and said that he didn't think they really were.  I bought them anyway. because they are both little working abacuses.  I used to actually use an abacus every day at work.  Back when I was drafting 'on the board' I would frequently need to add up a series of dimensions to work out the over-all length of a part.  As a check I would first do the math on my calculator.  Then I'd re-do it on my abacus.  If there was ever a discrepancy it always turned out that I'd fat-fingered something on the calculator.  I can't think of an instance when I'd screwed up on the abacus.  With that you can actually see the numbers as you are working the math.

So I looked around on-line and found several sellers who had the same set of ofcufflinks.  All were being sold as real 14k gold.  For grins and giggles I weighed them up and checked the price at Kitco for scrap 14k.  My $10 cufflinks, if real, would fetch over $200!  I have no intention of scrapping them.  What I need now is a shirt that I can wear them with.  :-)

So that was my weekend at the flea.

Another analogy

I am a Space Shuttle Pilot.*  I’m well trained and I’m among the best of the best at what I do.

Putting me in a Nuclear Submarine and expecting my training in the Shuttle to directly transfer to a similar level of competency piloting the Submarine is nonsense!

Both the Shuttle and the Submarine are vehicles.  They both go from one place to another and they both operate in a challenging and dangerous three-dimensional environment. They are both very complex systems.  And they both do their jobs well.

But even with those similarities it is obvious that they are totally different.  The user interface is incompatible and the skills needed to operate them safely much less with any degree of proficiency are not transferable.  And asking me to fly the Space Shuttle underwater to do the job of the Submarine is simply stupid!

If you need something welded together don’t use duct tape!

If you need a facilities guy to work in AutoCAD don’t ask a product guy who specializes in SolidWorks to slap something together for you! 

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon.  He has no place in engineering!

What’s more, I have Asperger’s Syndrome.  Don’t force me to work under a tight time-line on a high visibility project in an area where I have no expertise!

I do not like being set up to fail!

You need the job to get the loan to get the house!

You need the job to get the loan to get the house!

You need the job to get the loan to get the house!

You need the job to get the loan …


* This is an analogy.  Don't take it literally, even though I might if reading this...


UPDATE: Not only am I flying my Space Shuttle under water, but my navigator is taking a nap!

The End of an Era

I read in the news today that Claude Choules passed away today.  He was 110 years old.  What makes his passing significant for more than just his family and friends is that he was the last known surviving combat veteran of the Great War.  What we have come to know as World War I has truly come to an end.

So the process continues.

After getting some corrections made to the offer papers and ironing out a few more details with the Realtor, the latest batch have been signed and submitted.  The ball is now in the seller’s court.  Frankly, I’m getting a bit antsy.

Work: an analogy…

You’ve been flying R/C planes for years and you’re good at it.

Now we’re going to train you as a helicopter gunship pilot.

OK.  Now that you’ve been through the training and have a couple of weeks experience in a chopper here’s your Indy car.  The race starts in 20 minutes.

Make us proud!

I’ve done none of the above.  But my latest assignment at work seems as connected to my training and experience as that guy jumping in an Indy car and thinking he’s actually got a shot at winning the race.

CNN reports:

Osama bin Laden is DEAD!

Revised offer papers in hand

The headline pretty much says it.  I've got the revised paperwork in hand and under review.  Baby steps, but steps none the less.

Another very brief update

Had a nice chat with the Realtor last night.  I worked some of my spreadsheet magic and we’ve started piecing together a counter to the counter.  We’ll see where it goes from here.

Oh, I gave out a couple of cards to friends at the flea market this morning and one to a friend from the old neighborhood last night at the store.  Mostly for Mum’s relìv business that’s mentioned on the back.  Before long I may have to print some more.

Some thoughts on currant economic policy

Gold: $1,507.70 per ounce Troy - Trend: Up

Silver: $46.68 per ounce Troy - Trend: Up

Oil: $112.29 per barrel - Trend: Up

$1US = .95¢Canadian - Trend: Down

That whooshing sound you hear is the dollar circling the bowel.

Seriously.  It’s not that the commodities are getting more expensive.  Gold is gold.  It always has been and always will be.  What we are seeing is the erosion of the buying power of the dollar as a direct result of the Federal Reserve Bank’s (which is neither Federal nor does it have any reserves) policy of running the printing presses 24/7 and flooding the market with worthless paper. 

Would the prices charged for Tickle Me Elmo have been anywhere near as high a few years ago if you could just walk into any store and find hundreds of them?  Of course not! 

Supply and demand. 

The supply of Federal Reserve Notes, that’s US paper currency, has reached market saturation.  As a result, its perceived value has gone down.  It has to.  We the People don’t want it to, but apparently the President and the head of the Federal Reserve do as evidenced by their policies.

It’s not about saving the country from a recession.  It’s about ending the dollar’s status as the reserve currency of the world.

Sources:

Kitco Precious Metals

Gold

Silver

CNN/Money’s ticker

Yahoo! Finance USD/CAD

When you go to the currency pairs link at Yahoo! Finance it will put you on the day trader chart.  Below the chart is a navigation panel with links to the charts for 1 day, 5 days, 1 month, etc.  [1D][5D][1M]…  Click the link for Max.  The long term trend will astound you.

Not wanting to just sit around twiddling my thumbs...

Now that I'm fairly satisfied with the floor plans I've drawn* my focus has shifted to designing things like business cards and return address labels.  I finally got around to loading some software that I picked up on the cheap (do you hear birds?) at the used book store over on Daniel Webster Highway.  It's an old copy of Microsoft Publisher 2000.  Up until now I had been fighting with MS Word for this type of project.  Being able to move chunks of text all around however I want is fantabulous!  And it has built in templates that work with commercially available card stock, labels and such!  This opens up so many possibilities that I could get lost for a week playing with my new toy!

Hmm...  I wonder if it has CafePress compatible templates? 
[ HerrBGone's eyes light up and say TILT! ]


* What I have is based on a very poor quality scan of a badly revised old plan that was probably done for the county many years ago, as well as my own recollection from the viewing and the few photographs I have.  It's a given that my drawing will need extensive revision once more information becomes available.

TAG! You're IT!

I've been playing phone-tag with the realtor for the past few days.  The delay is helping on my end since I'm still waiting for my checks to come in.  But I am getting antsy to get this show on the road...

More on the water heater

Last night around twenty past eleven I was in the vicinity of the water heater.  OK, I was in the can getting ready for bed…  And I could hear this dripping that sounded like it might be coming from the water heater.  I thought to my self “That must be drained out by now!  I wonder if it’s just rain dripping from the roof.”  It had been extremely windy just a little while before and it came along with a nasty sounding driving rain.  But it seemed to have stopped.  So I threw some clothes back on, grabbed the cordless drill (it has a couple of screw driver bits that live in a compartment on top of the motor housing) and went out side to check.  You see, the water heater is in a closet accessed from the outside of my home and the original door was long gone by the time I bought the place and was replaced by a sheet of plywood that’s screwed to the door frame..

All of the connections Ted made are holding just fine without a drip in sight.  But the pipe we cut off that feeds the water heater was still dripping at an alarming rate.  Something must be back-feeding the tank.  I thought I’d checked everything inside and made sure they were all off.  Time to button up the hatch and go check again.

Ah ha!  The valve in the tub. While turned off was still set to mix for the temperature I prefer for my shower!  That must be the path for the water to flow backward down the out-flow from the water heater and out the cut off in-flow pipe!  I cranked the knob over to full cold (I really hope I remember to check that after the new water heater is installed!) and after a few minutes the dripping has stopped.

Thank goodness!  If that hadn’t worked I don’t know what else I could have checked…

One other little tidbit, while I was checking for leaks I noticed that my idea to cut off the pipe after the valve would not have worked.  Whoever installed the water heater that’s there now used the shortest possible nipple between the tank and valve that they could.  There is simply no room there to even cut it off, much less to install a cap.  So to borrow a line from Weekend Update: “Oh, um, never mind…”

It’s always something…

Friday night I was sitting at the table with Mum finishing my pizza when I heard what sounded like water running.  Since we were both at the table and it wasn’t raining why would there be water running?  There shouldn’t be…  I got up and traced the sound and it was coming from the water heater.

Uh oh!

I already knew from a previous problem we’d had with this water heater that the valve to shut it off didn’t work.  I had to shut off the main to the whole house – which meant no water anywhere, and no tank refill the next time the toilet gets flushed.

Oh crap!  Or, well, try NOT to crap…

I called my friend and handyman Ted: “Buddy, pall, friend o’ mine…”  He had a job that had to be done in the morning before it rained, but he could come over and install the new one after that.  Works fer me.  Mum and I can ‘fly a holding pattern’ until then.

Actually we went out for breakfast the next morning (and their bathrooms!) and went over to the old house after so I could pick some more at the carcass.  We still have some things over there and I’ve been slowly grabbing the best of what’s left and bringing it to storage or here to the new house.  Ted  was working a couple houses down the street from his and saw us drive by.  He called my cell phone and told me where he was so Mum and I stopped there.

Poor Ted looked wrecked!  I don’t know anyone with a stronger work ethic than he has and I include myself in that list.  I had come up with a quick fix to get the water back on.  But I’m no plumber.  The idea was to remove the bad valve and replace it with a good one so we can isolate the water heater and turn the water back on to feed the cold side of the system.  That way Ted wouldn’t have to install my new water heater that night.  My plan was approved and I learned about a new kind of plumbing fitting I’d never heard of before.  SharkBite fittings.  They are a snap-on fitting that work with the copper I have here and with PEX or CPVC.  They are versatile, easy to use and can be disconnected and reused.  What they aren’t is cheap!

Ted still had quite a bit of work to do on that job so we let him get back to it and went on our way.

Later that evening Ted came over and I drove the two of us over to Home Despot to pick up some parts.  Then we set to work on fixing my plumbing well enough to at least be able to flush the toilet.

Then we went back to Home Despot for more parts.  All told I probably spent around $60 on parts.

In the end, we were successful and the cold water side is functioning normally.  We’ll schedule the water heater install around Ted’s other jobs.  Mum and I can make due in the mean time.  Well just heat water on the stove when we need it.

This morning (as I was sitting in my now functional ‘thinking room’) I realized there was an easier way to accomplish the same thing.  Both Ted and I were thinking of the feed side of the bad valve.  If I had known more about the fittings we used and was thinking more holistically, and if Ted hadn't been so wrecked, we would have realized that we could accomplish exactly the same functionality with one cut and one $6 fitting.  If we had cut the pipe after the valve and put on a cap the job would have been done in under two minutes!

Doh!

Live and learn…

And to my friend, Alan

As I said in chat over on Facebook:

:-) B-day 2 U, :-) B-day 2 U, :-) B-day U Geezer, :-) B-day 2 U!

Teehee!

One of my Pet Peeves

Mum and I like riding around scouting for yard sales.  Now that the weather is turning nicer the sales are starting up again.  :-)  We’ve already stopped at a few and scored some good deals.  As I mentioned in the post about the rather disappointing opening day at the flea market we’ve even had an addition to the family at one of the sales this year.

Where I get peeved is when people post bad signs.  Over the past few years I’ve noticed a trend where people have started putting their address on their signs instead of an arrow.  Some have even posted signs printed on their computer with not more than 72 point text and a full inventory of what they have to sell.

HOW THE BLODY HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO READ THAT  

AS I’M DRIVING BY IN MY CAR?!

Sorry.  I get a little peeved…

So in an attempt to save myself from (another) full-on melt-down over it I have written a special web page dedicated to proper signage for yard sales, garage sales, tag sales and all similar types of events that one may wish to direct people to via homespun signage.

I have even provided two styles of signs that can be downloaded for free and printed on your very own laser printer.  The larger set is even customizable.

You can find my signage tutorial and the free downloads at Beetlemania, my original web site.

BTW: If you happen to be looking for yard sales in the Boston Northwest/Merrimack area on Craigslist you may see my ad for the signs web page.  I posted the first iteration of that for the year last night.

You know, it’s always something…

I’ve been expecting it for a while now.  This evening it finally happened.  My water heater took the gas pipe both literally as well as figuratively.  I have its replacement warming up in the bullpen just waiting for the coach to wave him in.  Now I just need to schedule the inst – pardon me, the phone is ringing…

That was Ted, the handiest handyman south-west of the Merrimac.  We’re on for tomorrow afternoon.  He has a job that has to be done in the morning, then he’ll call and come over.

Progress!

Just heard from Mum who heard from the Realtor who has, in turn, finally heard from the seller.  We have our counter-offer.  Unfortunately I am at work and my spreadsheet is at home.  So I don’t know for sure how their counter-offer fits in with my needs for the property.  At first blush it still looks doable, but before I call the realtor and accept I have to do a little more homework.

Now if only my Federal refund check will come in… 
* crosses finger & toes & everything else! *

UPDATE:  The spreadsheet says it’s outside of my parameters.  The plan was to arrange the payments to be equal to or less than what I am paying now for storage.  Looks like it’s a miss.  By $5.00 a month.  Hope I can swing it…  :-)  

BTW: The check was not in the mail tonight.  Grumblegrumble!

Update, such as it is...

I had an email from the Realtor this evening replying to my voice-mail from last night.  It turns out they are having a hard time making contact with the seller.  He's apparently moved out of the area and has become hard to reach.

Hmm...

Some delay on their end may be a good thing as I'm still waiting for my Federal refund check to come in, but zoiks!  This may complicate things just a bit.

Yawn...

Sorry I haven't had much to add over the past couple of days.  I left a message with the realtor last night looking for an update on my offer.  Haven't heard back yet.  I'll let you know as soon as I do.

Time-kill central…

Well, busywork actually.  While I’ve been waiting to hear back about the offer I’ve been keeping myself busy what with working on the floor plan, designing business cards, thinking about additional sources of income and thinking up suitable phone numbers. 

The right phone number for a business is important.  For example when you see 1-800-GOT-JUNK you know exactly what that whole business is all about. 

I’m not at all satisfied with the business cards I’ve come up with so far.  I’ll get it eventually.  I just haven’t got it yet.  But I think I have hit on an 800 number that I like.  And it’s even available!  While it may not be as iconic as my example, it works well for our little B & B.  Several of the numbers I’ve looked at are already in use.  Their owners probably don’t even know they spell anything!

Anywho, we need to move the P&S to the next step before I go and spend any cash on locking in a telephone number.  What is it?  I’ll let you know as soon as we’re ready to start taking reservations.  ;-)

Your call is important to us ...

... Please continue to hold ...

Actually I'm not surprised that it's taking a little while to hear back about the offer. 

First the broker has to get it to the seller.  That should have been done already. 

Then the seller has to come to after passing out because
    a) he actually got an offer on the property, and
    b) the amount that I offered. 

Once the seller collects himself, he has to come up with a counter offer and tell the broker, who will tell the realtor, who will in turn tell us.

And the realtor is away at a conference until at least the weekend.

I am eager to find out the seller’s bottom line so we can get this process rolling.  But at the same time having a delay on their end is good for me because I am depending on my Federal tax refund to cover some incidental costs like, oh, hiring a home inspector, paying the lawyer and title company, other closing costs…  You know, minor things like that.  It hasn’t arrived yet.

And the .gov may shut down at midnight tonight.  * eyeroll *

How a tractor beam works

The Starship Enterprise featured quite a few cool technologies that didn’t exist when the show débuted back in 1966.  Cell phones (communicators), portable computers (tricorders), Bluetooth earpieces (those gizmos Spock and Uhura would stick in their ear on the Bridge), transporters and tractor beams.  Many of those things exist in some form today.  Some do not.  I can’t help you with designing a transporter or a warp engine, but I do have a theory about how to make a tractor beam.

The premise behind a tractor beam is that it is some kind of probably electro-magnetic beam that can somehow grab hold of an object and either hold it in place or push it away or pull it in closer relative to the device that generates the beam.  How this was done was never explained.  We just assumed that it worked and in the context of the show it did.

But could such a thing work in the real world?  I don’t see why not.  All we have to do is figure out how gravity works.  Then we need to figure out how to generate gravity without lugging around a 55 gallon drum of the stuff neutron stars are made of.  Oh yes, once we have gravity figured out then we’ll also need anti-gravity.

Minor little details…

Flying a holding pattern...

Nothing much to report tonight.  I haven't heard from the realtor today.  The managing broker was supposed to present my offer to the seller.  It may take a couple of days for the seller to counter and the realtor to notify me.  It might even take a couple of days for the broker to get a hold of the seller.  Hurry up and wait...

Again? That trick never works!

I called the realtor this evening.  I was beginning to wonder at not being on the receiving end of a call confirming receipt of the fax I sent last night.  Turns out it had apparently gone AWOL.  After resending and confirming that it was received I went back to my Vonage logs.  Same fax number, same call duration to the second, both fax transmissions said “completed” on the display of my fax machine.  I have no idea where the one I sent at 12:10am this morning went, but the resend was confirmed both received and legible.  The printout should be on the managing broker’s desk even as I write this.  Hopefully in a day or two I’ll know the next step.

"It's away!"

The fax has been sent.  All 17 pages.

Update: I wonder what my blood-pressure's like just now... 8-o

Please leave a message after the tone…

The realtor finally returned my call this evening and we had a nice, long, conversation.  In it we discussed several creative ways to put this deal together.  I think she’s reassured that I’m not just an idle tire kicker.  (I could kick my car right at the moment, but I’ve already written about that at length…)  I’ll be getting a fax out to her this evening and a more detailed letter about the other ideas we discussed tomorrow evening.  So some progress is being made.

I gleaned from this evening’s conversation that the ‘other couple that was interested’ has withdrawn their offer.  I think this was the couple that wanted to turn the old jail into a tea room.  I don’t blame them for taking their idea to another property.  I really don’t see how that could work here.

Supposedly there is another buyer who might be interested.  I don’t know if that’s just being put out there in an effort to give me a sense of urgency to get my offer in first.  I hasten to point out that they already have my check for the earnest money in hand…

Tires & Tank Traps & Tow Trucks, oh my…

So Mum and I drove up to Vermont to check out the jail.  I mean Bed & Breakfast…  It was a nice ride that included Franconia Notch.  People drive clear across the country to see The Notch.  We’ve been through The Notch several times over the past couple of years and each time it was simply the road between here and there.  We didn’t even stop – except for traffic.  This last time was a breeze.  We were heading north when most of the other traffic was already heading south.

Klunk, our GPS, sent us on a couple of wild goose chases.  How she came up with one of the roads she put us on is a complete mystery to me! 

But we survived.  355 miles round trip. 

Well, it should have been 359 miles…   

We were about four miles from home driving down a road I’ve driven dozens if not hundreds of times when ...

Signs of Spring

Today was opening day at the flea market in Hollis New Hampshire.  Sort of…  The April Fools Day snow storm threw everybody off this weekend.  Two of the three fields decided to postpone opening until next weekend – even though they hadn’t changed the dates on their signs.  The one field that did open only had about ten venders.

We stopped at the first yard sale of the year on our way to the flea market.  Mum got a couple more cookbooks.  I picked up a box of over-wire style mason jars.  There’s one pint size and several 2-quart.  There was one of the larger size jars on a table at the flea, but I didn’t bother to find out what they were asking for it.  I paid $2.50 for the whole box that I already had in the car.

And our family added a new member at the yard sale.  There is a new Vermont Teddy in the family – and he’s a Wizard!

The one disappointing thing about today’s fun and frivolity was that some friends of ours that we were hoping to meet up with at the flea went elsewhere when they heard that the field they usually set up on was not going to open today after all.  I had brought along the floor plans that I mentioned a couple of posts ago so I could show them.  Well, maybe next week…

Can you hear me now?

I’ve been having a little bit of difficulty contacting the realtor over the past week or so.  She had a death in the family last week and has been out of the area attending to more important things.  I hope she’s doing OK.  We lost a close relative last October and it’s been rough few months for us as well.

Where are The Plans?

[/Vader voice]

For the past ‘seems like forever’ I’ve been working for a big company.  For now I’ll just refer to it as That Big Company.  Or just ‘work.’  At That Big Company I spend my days sitting in front of a computer from 0dark:30 until far too late.  I’m a mechanical designer and CAD draftsman.  There are a couple of patents at the USPTO with my name on them and several more applications on file.  All are from my work for That Big Company.

I’ve been doing this kind of work for the better part of three decades now.

This ties in to The Guilded Cage in that I have the skills and software available even here at home to do fairly decent CAD work. 

Now the software I use at work is not available here at home.  But SolidWorks the company that makes the high end 3D CAD software I use at work also makes a 2D CAD program that you can download for free.  That’s what I’m running here at home.

In that 2D program, DraftSight they call it, you can import bitmap graphics onto what they call a reference layer.  With that you can create a pretty good CAD drawing from a fairly poor quality scanned image.  And it’s scalable.  You can even measure and dimension drawings you create this way.

So that’s what I’ve been working on these past several evenings.  Creating a detailed plan of what I want The Guilded Cage to become.  I’ll be sharing the plans here after we lock in the P&S.

The more I get into it the more potential I see.

Genesis of an Idea

In the beginning there was a guy.  This guy, in fact.  He had a lot of stuff.  I wouldn’t call him a hoarder, but he had A LOT of stuff.  Several storage bins full.  It was costing him a fortune.  He decided it was time to find a place for his stuff, so he started searching through the Craig's List real estate listings looking for a barn to put his stuff in. 

Did I mention that he had a lot of stuff?  Oh, I did.

Well, he didn't find a barn that he liked all that much until he came across one in Vermont.  He likes Vermont.  It's pretty country up there.  His Mum used to own a place up there near Lake Champlain.  She always said they stayed on this side of the boarder because they didn't want the Canadian winters.  They were only about a mile and a half from the boarder, so I don't know if it made that much difference...

But I digress.

Anywho, the barn this guy found came along with a house.  It's right on the town common.  The town common is just across the river from New Hampshire.  He likes that, too because there is no sales tax in New Hampshire.

One of the problems he and his Mum had was that where they lived they only had one bathroom.  When they were on their way home from gallivanting they would often call "Dibs" which could be a problem for whoever didn't call it soon enough.  So they would often comment on how "Our next place will have more than one bathroom!"

Half joking about 'the next house' this guy would sometimes say "I want a moat!"  Particularly if he'd just read some ridiculous story in the news.

So there he was one fine evening surfing through the real estate listings looking for a barn for his stuff when he came across this one particular listing.

It had a barn.
It had more than one bathroom.
It even had a moat!  Though not exactly the kind he had been thinking of.

It also had a jail.

We'll pause here a moment for the reader to ponder on that.

After looking at the pictures the guy read the listing to his Mum who was sitting in her rocking chair in the living room crocheting.  He pointedly left out that one little detail until he'd fully described the rest of the property.

"Oh, and it also has a jail."

"Did you say it also has a jail?!"

"Yup!  I did."  :-)  "Here's a picture..."

"Oh, my..."  8-o

And then it happened.  He had a stroke of genius - although he thought he was kidding at the time.

"We could run it as a Bed & Breakfast..."

And the rest, as they say, is history!

---

In this blog I will attempt to chronicle that guy's, um, actually My efforts to transform this from a crazy idea to dream made real.  I'm not going to say exactly where the property is until we have the P&S settled and signed.  But we have seen the property and I’ve made a bona fide offer.  I think this is going to be fun!