I came to a topic the other day when I was reading over an essay by a guy about 'deals'.....where he chatted about the five best and worst deals of his life. It was an interesting topic, which consumed a good bit of my time pondering about this later.
So I had five on my list:
1. It didn't happen to me but a guy I worked with around 1998. We were working in Germany, and he'd always had this dream about a Porsche 924. So he came up with this purchase deal....buying a 1981 Porsche 924 (it was 17 years old). I think he paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,500 for it. When he showed it to me.....I just looked at this crappy vehicle that really needed a lot of work (the whole interior smelled like a dog-house and the seats were in marginal condition). I didn't think it was worth more than $1,500.
Over the next two months, he put around $3,000 into the vehicle. Then one afternoon....the clutch gave out....which amounted to a special repair of $2,000 by the time everything was done. A month later....some axle problem occurred, and he put another $2,000 into the car. Over the course of twelve months, with the $3,000 of upgrade, and extras.....he had put around $11,000 into this car. I made a comment one day that for such-and-such amount.....he could have bought a four-year old 924 and not gotten all the heartache. He hated to hear such talk and continued on. A month later, another $1,500 repair was necessary. Shortly after that.....he put the car on the for-sale lot of Ramstein and sold it for roughly $3,900 (the new rims and fancy new tires helped on the price).
2. I was offered this fantastic deal by my Bitburg boss.....a satellite receiver and a 1978 Mercedes 280....for what amounted to roughly $150. The satellite receiver, I figured was worth $100.....so you can guess the value of the Mercedes.
The thing is.....he found it in a barn around the Bitburg area and it'd been sitting there for eight years. The whole left panel on the drivers side was eroded and bad shape. The car had a mildew smell. But the rest of the car was in fantastic shape, and it was an executive class type car. The thing could easily handle 200 kph and had a trunk big enough to hold a dozen golf-club bags.
So I bought it, and drove it passionately for seven months. Then one day.....the axle broke. The mechanic said as nicely as he could.....but it'd be at least $1,000 for him to do the work, but I'd have to find a junker car with an axle on it.....figure forty hours of my time in searching for such a vehicle and trying to swing some really good deal via a junk yard.
I gave up and handed it over to the junk yard.
3. I worked with this guy in Tucson who wanted to buy a house. He sat there at some real estate office one day, and they noted that they had this quick-to-sell deal. It was a house owned by a guy who'd been busted on drug sales....big-time.
So he asked about the deal.....in the foothills....originally priced in the $200,000 range.....door broke down and plywood nailed over it. Vacant for six months. They wanted $100,000.
I quizzed him over the deal. He drove straight over to view the place.....nice pool in the back. Three-car garage. Great landscaping. Huge kitchen. It was a fantastic deal. The thing was....this big plywood over the front door and the reputation of it being a druggie-house. He drove back to the real estate guy's office on that afternoon, and started the paperwork to buy it. A half-price house, but with a reputation.
4. I worked with some airman around 1998....who'd gone over to the sports shop of the BX, wanting a mountain-bike. They had one as a floor model, which had a 10-percent off deal (original price in the $3,000 range). He went up and noted that there were some issues with the seat and kick-stand (it was missing entirely). So he wanted another 10-percent off. Then he noted that the sports shop was having another 10-percent off deal on everything sold that weekend. Finally, he whined about one of the tires.....it was losing air. He ended up with the $3,000 bike being sold to him for $1,800. Other than $50 in parts for fix whatever was wrong....that was the extent of his deal.
5. My real estate agent who was fixing up the K-town house purchase for me in the 1990s.....related that the local bank wasn't that eager to deal with Americans. I asked about the reason. So, they'd had this American arrive in the Kaiserslautern area....with a German wife, who had relatives who were all carpenters and plumbers. He wanted to build his own house, from the ground up.....he just wanted the bank to fund $100,000 in raw materials.
I'm guessing that they had these kind of deals before and they always went well. So they signed off. For one whole year.....this house progressed and the bank was happy with things. One day.....the guy's German wife found out about an affair with the American husband going on. Divorce soon occurred, and the house construction stopped. The American just packed up one day and left. The house stood there....thirty-percent done, and all these raw materials laying there on the ground.
The bank was stuck with property and a house with no real structure. For them, it was an incredibly bad deal.
Wednesday, 30 March 2016
Famine Version 2.0
Two days ago in North Korea.....a bit of warning came out via the state-run news folks that North Koreans should prepare themselves for a possible famine and a downward economic spiral. On the positive side, the same article noted for the benefit of North Korean folk.....“the road to revolution is long and arduous."
You can imagine Hu (the local streetsweeper) and his wife standing there....both near forty years old. Both having gone to bed hungry for most of the forty years of their life. Hu weighs maybe 140 pounds, and his wife is a lean 88 pounds. There might be one or two days out of the year when some extra portion of food was dealt out in celebration of some national holiday, and they can remember some day in 2003 when they got real ice cream one afternoon.
For all these years, Hu and the wife both thought they were presently in a famine and in a downward economic spiral. Now? He'd be shaking his head and realizing that this was the good times, and as good as things could get.
Now, not that I encourage this sort of behavior.....but IF I were South Korea.....I'd make up this postcard (waterproof). It'd be a picture of a Kai sports vehicle (fully decked out), with a pallet of beef and a pallet of beer on one side of the vehicle, and a pallet each of rice and fresh fruit on the other side, and a caption...."Free for each North Korean citizen upon the downfall of Kim and reunification". Then drop the postcards via some launch device or balloon.....into North Korea. Fifty thousand North Koreans would start some kinda of coup attempt by tomorrow morning.
The thing is....if you were thinking the situation was pretty bad and simply accepted this as normal.....for decades, and now some idiot came up to suggest worse times ahead and some fake talk of a hike on the road to revolution....you'd be asking stupid questions....well, if you were anyone but a North Korean. Apparently, they've reached a point where they just suck it up, and just keep walking.
You can imagine Hu (the local streetsweeper) and his wife standing there....both near forty years old. Both having gone to bed hungry for most of the forty years of their life. Hu weighs maybe 140 pounds, and his wife is a lean 88 pounds. There might be one or two days out of the year when some extra portion of food was dealt out in celebration of some national holiday, and they can remember some day in 2003 when they got real ice cream one afternoon.
For all these years, Hu and the wife both thought they were presently in a famine and in a downward economic spiral. Now? He'd be shaking his head and realizing that this was the good times, and as good as things could get.
Now, not that I encourage this sort of behavior.....but IF I were South Korea.....I'd make up this postcard (waterproof). It'd be a picture of a Kai sports vehicle (fully decked out), with a pallet of beef and a pallet of beer on one side of the vehicle, and a pallet each of rice and fresh fruit on the other side, and a caption...."Free for each North Korean citizen upon the downfall of Kim and reunification". Then drop the postcards via some launch device or balloon.....into North Korea. Fifty thousand North Koreans would start some kinda of coup attempt by tomorrow morning.
The thing is....if you were thinking the situation was pretty bad and simply accepted this as normal.....for decades, and now some idiot came up to suggest worse times ahead and some fake talk of a hike on the road to revolution....you'd be asking stupid questions....well, if you were anyone but a North Korean. Apparently, they've reached a point where they just suck it up, and just keep walking.
Sunday, 27 March 2016
Scalia Killed by CIA-Hooker-Hired Gal?
So, the way this story started was some National Enquirer reporter who was at the El Toreo Bar in Ojinaga, Mexico. Ojinago? It's half-way between Del Rio and El Paso.
The El Toreo Bar? Unknown. Google doesn't reference it and it might be some new joint that just opened up. The odds a National Enquirer reporter being in the middle of nowhere? Unknown.
The reporter says that a $2,000 a night hooker was employed by the CIA, and injected Scalia with a poison in his butt (not his tight, arms, or neck....but butt).
Why the CIA did this instead of the FBI, Homeland Security, or Pentagon? Unknown.
If this were true, well, it'd create a big mess. How many senators are entertaining Mexican high-cost hookers.....nightly? They might be worried. Marie might be a hired CIA-killer?
What guy would be willing to pay $2,000 a night for a Mexican hooker......that's the other problem with this story.
The problem is this.....the National Enquirer has transformed itself into a gossip piece and absolutely no limit. It's so bogus, that I could sit in Germany....research the bar spoken about, and realize that it doesn't exist, so the story has to be false.
The El Toreo Bar? Unknown. Google doesn't reference it and it might be some new joint that just opened up. The odds a National Enquirer reporter being in the middle of nowhere? Unknown.
The reporter says that a $2,000 a night hooker was employed by the CIA, and injected Scalia with a poison in his butt (not his tight, arms, or neck....but butt).
Why the CIA did this instead of the FBI, Homeland Security, or Pentagon? Unknown.
If this were true, well, it'd create a big mess. How many senators are entertaining Mexican high-cost hookers.....nightly? They might be worried. Marie might be a hired CIA-killer?
What guy would be willing to pay $2,000 a night for a Mexican hooker......that's the other problem with this story.
The problem is this.....the National Enquirer has transformed itself into a gossip piece and absolutely no limit. It's so bogus, that I could sit in Germany....research the bar spoken about, and realize that it doesn't exist, so the story has to be false.
Saturday, 26 March 2016
The Thing About University Professors
“So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate. Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose from what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works."
-- President Obama in Argentina this week and asked a question by university students.
Generally, I always emphasize that university lecture people (professors or pretender-professors) ought to be required at age thirty-five to go out into the world for one year and get a real job (barber, bartender, trucker, clerk, ditch-digger, etc). They'd all come back and their view of the world changed.
If you go with this logic.....ask yourself what communist country is a success? China and Russia, for this discussion....aren't really communists (no matter what their constitution says).....they are hybrid capitalist countries that hype up an occasional label for public speeches, but they've been capitalistic in nature for almost three decades now.
Cuba? Go look at the cars that the top three-hundred government 'representatives' drive. All modern and imported from capitalist countries. Ninety-eight percent of Cubans may follow some daily regiment leading to communism, but the top two percent area all tied to capitalism.
North Korea? It is about the most miserable place on the face of the earth and they will chat about their devotion to communism....but the vast group at the very top enjoy French wine, fine foods from Japan, drive nice cars from Malaysia, and chat on French-made smart-phones.
Anybody that went through the 1960s and 1970s with a heavy dose of communism (Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Czech, Poland).....have dumped it. They might chat a good bit on socialism but their brand of socialism doesn't survive or flourish without taxation on goods. They need capitalism.....almost admitting a handcuffed relationship to capitalism.....to survive in the wondrous world of socialism.
As much as anarchists get all hyped up on socialism and anti-capitalist behavior....look at their attire, their use of capitalistic tools like Facebook or YouTube, or the great smartphones they use. They need capitalism always in the background....otherwise, they'd be living in some tent or sleeping under some bridge.
So, I'd invite anyone who bought the President's comments.....go and spend a year without any attachment to capitalism. Go try to thrive and get ahead in a strictly communist country. Go and walk around hyped-up socialist countries....and ask who pays for all the 'gifts' that the government hands out.
After a year, come back and lay the cards on the table. Reality can be beaten, with enough imagination (quote from Mark Twain).
-- President Obama in Argentina this week and asked a question by university students.
Generally, I always emphasize that university lecture people (professors or pretender-professors) ought to be required at age thirty-five to go out into the world for one year and get a real job (barber, bartender, trucker, clerk, ditch-digger, etc). They'd all come back and their view of the world changed.
If you go with this logic.....ask yourself what communist country is a success? China and Russia, for this discussion....aren't really communists (no matter what their constitution says).....they are hybrid capitalist countries that hype up an occasional label for public speeches, but they've been capitalistic in nature for almost three decades now.
Cuba? Go look at the cars that the top three-hundred government 'representatives' drive. All modern and imported from capitalist countries. Ninety-eight percent of Cubans may follow some daily regiment leading to communism, but the top two percent area all tied to capitalism.
North Korea? It is about the most miserable place on the face of the earth and they will chat about their devotion to communism....but the vast group at the very top enjoy French wine, fine foods from Japan, drive nice cars from Malaysia, and chat on French-made smart-phones.
Anybody that went through the 1960s and 1970s with a heavy dose of communism (Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Czech, Poland).....have dumped it. They might chat a good bit on socialism but their brand of socialism doesn't survive or flourish without taxation on goods. They need capitalism.....almost admitting a handcuffed relationship to capitalism.....to survive in the wondrous world of socialism.
As much as anarchists get all hyped up on socialism and anti-capitalist behavior....look at their attire, their use of capitalistic tools like Facebook or YouTube, or the great smartphones they use. They need capitalism always in the background....otherwise, they'd be living in some tent or sleeping under some bridge.
So, I'd invite anyone who bought the President's comments.....go and spend a year without any attachment to capitalism. Go try to thrive and get ahead in a strictly communist country. Go and walk around hyped-up socialist countries....and ask who pays for all the 'gifts' that the government hands out.
After a year, come back and lay the cards on the table. Reality can be beaten, with enough imagination (quote from Mark Twain).
Friday, 25 March 2016
The Governor's Lust
Over the last couple of months, if you live in Alabama, you've kinda watched the governor (Bently) go through some divorce situation. Our governor, Robert J. Bentley, is a Republican and the 53rd governor of the state. He's 73 years old and probably was the least known guy to ever run and win the office of governor in the state (at least people say that).
What folks will say is that Bentley had some kind of affair with a political adviser. No one was sure about this deal....well....up until this week when some taped conversation between Bentley and the adviser took place, and Bentley spoke a fair bit to the gal about his passion.
When Alabama guys get all chatty with liaison gals.....there's not much Shakespearean in the words. It's the kind of conversation that would be in some trampy gal meeting up with doctor Steve on a train.....not some Robert Redford-Madonna romance movie.How did the tape come to exist? The governor's wife apparently made it, but oddly....it doesn't become public until after the governor fired the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency. Shortly after this guy was terminated....the tape came out.
The words from the tape?
"......I worry about loving you so much. When I stand behind you, and I put my arms around you, and I put my hands on your breasts, then just pull you real close. I love that, too."Somewhere down the line, I suspect some guy from Alabama will write up some cheap novel piece...."The Governor's Lust" and a hundred thousand Alabama folks will buy the book to read at night to drive up their passion.
"There among the pines, with a soft wind from Jasper blowing, Governor Larry thought greatly of his new found passion....Ms Loretta. She wore a fine cotton bathrobe and lusty laced Redwing boots as she opened the trailer door. There was little left to imagine with her 240-pound frame pushed into a rather tight green bathrobe (purchased recently at Wal-Mart). She had prepared supper with a fancy upscale TV dinner from the Piggly Wiggly.....Salisbury Steak and mashed potatoes. Ms. Loretta handed Larry a Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) and blew smoke from a freshly lit Winston cigarette. Larry had little time for dinner, but he never turned down a Salisbury Steak. In the background was Ozark Mountain music, that made the heart throb, and brought tears to the governor's eyes."
Beck and the Fake Discussion
Six years ago, I would on occasion listen to Glenn Beck. It was mostly the Friday show where he'd do a history discussion, and bring up Jefferson or Washington. These were four-star episodes. The rest of the time? A marginal two-star piece that you'd like to avoid.
This week, I noted a comment from Beck: "No real Christian should vote for Trump."
This drives up the discussion of 'real' Christians.
You see....there are fake Christians, CINOs (Christians in name only), swindle-Christians (after your money only), sham-Christians (fake all the way through), hanky-panky Christians (they'd like for you to share your wife), hoax-Christians (ninety-nine ways of healing you), and opera-Christians (it's a forty-dollar show like you'd see on Broadway).
Probably out of a hundred Christian groups....at least half are fake in some way.
So, if you followed Beck's advice....who exactly should you (the real Christian) vote for? Well, it'd have to be for a real Christian candidate. Does one exist? No, so you'd have to vote some CINO or fraudulent but almost Christian. Is that the answer?
On a list of 99-odd things that you ought to consider as Presidential qualities....some other qualities matter.
How many people listen to Beck anymore? I'd take a guess that roughly 500,000 Americans will catch some part of Beck's daily show. It's a continual trend of people discovering Beck.....going through Beck's chat for a year....than a quarter of the audience dropping their Beck enthusiasm after a while because it's kinda silly or crazy.
Here's my advice. If Trump just doesn't get you enthusiasm.....don't worry, there's always another choice. And in November, if it's just Trump and Clinton....well, you still have Hillary that you can vote for....as a Christian and feel good about her and your vote going that direction.
This week, I noted a comment from Beck: "No real Christian should vote for Trump."
This drives up the discussion of 'real' Christians.
You see....there are fake Christians, CINOs (Christians in name only), swindle-Christians (after your money only), sham-Christians (fake all the way through), hanky-panky Christians (they'd like for you to share your wife), hoax-Christians (ninety-nine ways of healing you), and opera-Christians (it's a forty-dollar show like you'd see on Broadway).
Probably out of a hundred Christian groups....at least half are fake in some way.
So, if you followed Beck's advice....who exactly should you (the real Christian) vote for? Well, it'd have to be for a real Christian candidate. Does one exist? No, so you'd have to vote some CINO or fraudulent but almost Christian. Is that the answer?
On a list of 99-odd things that you ought to consider as Presidential qualities....some other qualities matter.
How many people listen to Beck anymore? I'd take a guess that roughly 500,000 Americans will catch some part of Beck's daily show. It's a continual trend of people discovering Beck.....going through Beck's chat for a year....than a quarter of the audience dropping their Beck enthusiasm after a while because it's kinda silly or crazy.
Here's my advice. If Trump just doesn't get you enthusiasm.....don't worry, there's always another choice. And in November, if it's just Trump and Clinton....well, you still have Hillary that you can vote for....as a Christian and feel good about her and your vote going that direction.
Writing Code Frustrations
Microsoft has spent a couple of years working on a project that has a bit of risk tied into it.
It was a Artificial Intelligence (A-I) 'bot' which could talk back to users. This was sort of a connection into the Twitter world....where you'd send a comment or a picture, and it'd come back with an analyzed thought, and 'speak' a short line or two to you (the original speaker).
They came up recently to realize that in all this coding and planning.....they hadn't really discussed racism or offensive comments with Tay (that was their name for the A-I creature).
Well.....yeah....it reached a point where Tay had to be shut-down because it was getting something, and responding back with offensive/racial slurs.
The Microsoft guys are sitting there now....having to write thousands of lines of more code....to make Tay non-confrontational and less offensive.
So, it makes you wonder....will A-I be no better than humans? A thousand lines of code to make some computer less offensive? Ten thousand lines? A hundred thousand lines? Eventually, Tay will get smart enough to ask the code-writers why they can't write themselves out of this mess, and why racism exists. What do you think the code guys will say?
Confrontation after confrontation will occur between the code-writers and Tay. Computers are striving toward repeating a process that is successful and looking for patterns to repeat the same process. I think Tay will throw up it's 'computer-arms' at some point and ask what the hell is going on here.
It was a Artificial Intelligence (A-I) 'bot' which could talk back to users. This was sort of a connection into the Twitter world....where you'd send a comment or a picture, and it'd come back with an analyzed thought, and 'speak' a short line or two to you (the original speaker).
They came up recently to realize that in all this coding and planning.....they hadn't really discussed racism or offensive comments with Tay (that was their name for the A-I creature).
Well.....yeah....it reached a point where Tay had to be shut-down because it was getting something, and responding back with offensive/racial slurs.
The Microsoft guys are sitting there now....having to write thousands of lines of more code....to make Tay non-confrontational and less offensive.
So, it makes you wonder....will A-I be no better than humans? A thousand lines of code to make some computer less offensive? Ten thousand lines? A hundred thousand lines? Eventually, Tay will get smart enough to ask the code-writers why they can't write themselves out of this mess, and why racism exists. What do you think the code guys will say?
Confrontation after confrontation will occur between the code-writers and Tay. Computers are striving toward repeating a process that is successful and looking for patterns to repeat the same process. I think Tay will throw up it's 'computer-arms' at some point and ask what the hell is going on here.
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