Howdy y’all!
All you sharp- eyes readers out there are probably wondering two things:
- First, what happened to Monday’s “What Up!!!” post.
- and second,, why haven’t recent posts had featured images and links to previous posts.
- And third, why I haven’t been posting more.
- And fourth, what’s up with all the really screwy typos and shit in my posts.
- And fifth, why can’t Jack count!?! Two things some how morphed into five? Haven’t you ever heard of editing?
Well, all y’all haters are gonna be feeling bad because I got two good reasons:
First, Ye Olde Blogge BOUGHT A HOUSE, y’all!
We closed this week. Even though Ma Femme went back to Ye Olde Country of origin to sign the paperwork and walk everything through. Honestly, it didn’t take long to figure out that Jack was shyte at most grownup stuff — thanks, pathological demand avoidance! I still had some things to do like having my signature witnessed via Zoom meeting and getting my ID’s authenticated by a notary public and printing, signing, scanning, and emailing stuff.
I don’t know if you ever watched The Amazing Race, but that was my life for the past three days.
Second, I’ve been using my Kindle Fire and smartphone for all my online needs. While I love my Kindle Fire — Hello, a thousand volume personal library follows me around the world! Hello, no brainer — it is a bitch to tap out posts, emails, and other documents on. At least it is big enough 5o tap out t3xt on,but my phone! Holy crap, my phone. I swear that it isn’t just smarter than me, it is far more passive aggressive than me, too. If I had to do much more than social media on it, one of us would end up dead, and it wouldn’t be the phone. That thing is just sinister.
In addition to the Fire 🔥 making media nearly impossible to do, copying and pasting, as in links, as in URLs of the things I’ve been reading has become a Himalayan -sized effort. It is just too time consuming unless I can space it out over the week and can drink 🍸heavily.
This week it was all too much.
And, that is what up with Ye Olde Blogge for the past week
Huzzah!
Jack
The Psy of Life 
grats on the house (and for having an SO so mush smarter than you about stuff like that).
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Howdy Suze!
I fall to my knees and express my gratitude to the universe and anyone who will sit still long enough to listen every single day. My life wouldn’t be half of what it is now without my family. I also scratch my ass and wonder why they put up with me.
Huzzah!
Jack
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they “put up with yopo” because they see what I do…you are immensly lovable.
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Aw shucks, Suze. You’re making me blush.
Jack
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Calico Jack – Real estate and tec limitations
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Congrats on the house. Having recently sold one in the whirlwind local market (4 days from listing to contract and 32 from contract to closing), the idea of having to do some of the paperwork from the othe side of the planet is daunting (My buyer was in Florida and the realtors were set up to do virtual signatures.).
I would not want to ever try to do my internet stuff on only the phone with that little virtual keyboard and my fat fingers – yikes. (I use a stylus on that v-keyboard)
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Howdy Bob!
In addition to my fat fingers, I lost my glasses and can’t see what I’m typing very clearly. Good god, if it’s ain’t one thing, it’s another.
My next big task is getting my work visa which includes a Cambodia police check requiring fingerprinting which you can’t get at the Ministry of Justice.
If you ever watched The Amazing Race and thought, That would be pure torture, you shouldn’t be an expat, but if you thought it looked like fun or, like I did, that seems kinda easy — not some of the physical feats, but most of the navigation and finding things — it’s probably for you. I’ve always likened it to solving puzzles.
Congrats on selling your house. It is always an adventure. There has been a hiccup in the sale. We needed proof of residence for the mortgage company to release the funds. Usually, you would use a utility bill to do so, but we don’t get official mail in our name here — I don’t think we ever have. So, we’ve gotten a letter from the school in the hopes that it will suffice.
My big fear about the booming housing market is that big investment firms are doing most of the purchases by automatically going over the asking price by thousands of dollars. We’ll be locking a generation into renting for the rest of their lives.
Anywho, it was another fun day of errands during the middle of a delta outbreak. I’ve been isolating in my room to protect my unvaxxed daughter from anything that I may have brought home.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Oh, no, lost glasses is a major pain. Since I got my cataracts fixed I’m far sighted instead of short, so I have multiple reading glasses scattered all over the house and in the car.
The Great Race was fun. I haven’t done much international travel, but numerous road trips domestically, some when relocating and a lot back when doing a business selling at art and craft fairs. That was long before GPS apps. Once, an unfinished section of interstate sent us on a long wander in the mountains of West Virginia.
Investment firm buying did grab up a lot of foreclosed properties in the Great Recession, and the pattern is continuing. They are also buying up farm land, another problem. The looming eviction crisis will add to that with a lot of small landlords selling out because they lost too much rent money in the pandemic.
The CDC just reported that the Delta Variant is even worse than we thought. “More contagious than Chicken Pox, Small Pox, or Ebola.” And, that vaccinated people who get a break through infection can have as high a viral load as the unvaccinated even if non-symptomatic. The headline of the report is, “The War Has Changed.” Texas Governor Abbott has banned any and all vaccination and mask mandates by local governments and school districts in the state. I wish I could say that is un-F—-ing believable, but it is so true to form. I am grateful my state has a sane (and Democrat) governor.
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Howdy Bob!
Road trips have always been my favorite kind of trips. My mother spent her retirement years traveling the country in a fifth wheel with her husband. We got into the habit of renting an RV and meeting them in RV parks around the country. Those. were some of my most memorable times with my mother.
I really enjoyed the trips before GPS, but was grateful for it in Kenya. It got us through some interesting off-road ventures. “The GPS says turn right here, but there isn’t anything here but this dirt track. Do you think we should?” Good thing most Kenyans were kind and friendly. We saw some of the best of the country that way.
I think the country has been sold out from under us. You can see signs of it everywhere, but never a smoking gun, so proportionality bias makes it hard to believe or accept. One of the worst signs was the purchase of an entire newly built subdivision outside of Houston — I think — by an investment firm. Seriously, life long renting makes each of us a profit-center for our entire lives. They don’t want us owning our homes any more.
And, this Delta variant scares the devil out of me. The line, “If you’re not vaccinated, it will come to you,” keeps echoing through my head as I look at our unvaxxed daughter. Luckily, they just opened up vaccination to the over 12 set here in Cambodia. Unfortunately, she has a needle phobia and hasn’t had an injection of anything in the past six or so years. Since she got to be too big for me to hold still long enough for the shot to be administered.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Turning owners into renters is probably the largest transfer of wealth currently in operation. It has long been the practice to make sure that POC stay renters to prevent their multi-generational wealth accumulation. That is now being extended to the (former?) middle class white population.
The national moratorium on evictions has now ended and the courts will be open on Monday. One of the un discussed consequences of eviction is that the address on someone’s voter registration is no longer valid, and not having a fixed physical address makes updating the registration very difficult even if the person can focus on getting that done.
Good luck with your daughter’s phobia and finding a way around it short of sedation. I doubt that it would help to point out that if she were to get sick enough to be hospitalized, the needles would get more numerous and bigger.
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Howdy Bob!
It isn’t a rational thing with her. The level of freak out is pretty frightening, especially for the uninitiated. Eventually, she’ll get to the place where she realizes she can and has to take some command of her mind and will exert some control over her emotions. My sister and I both independently came to that realization and addressed many of the things that plague her now including getting shots.
The transition of the housing market from individual to corporate ownership is happening under the radar. As we were looking for our house, I kept hearing about how houses were being bought by people from out West sight-unseen and initial offers thousands of dollars over asking. I wondered why would anyone who is living out West want to buy a house in a podunk East town? The answer, rental investment, and it ain’t no individual doing it. You don’t even read about it in the MSM. I think I read one article recently about how investment firms are buying up housing. One. And, I was actively looking.
It makes me glad to be old and soon passing from this world… okay in twenty or so years, knock on something resembling wood, and we’ll be able to shield La Petite Fille from the worst ravages of the new world order.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Phobias don’t need a rational basis (how much of our behavior does?). I remember being terrified at some early age of my mother trimming my nails. That didn’t last long, but it was intense.
It’s not just housing, it is corporate ownership of everything. Look at the row about “right to repair”. Then there was the claim that even if you buy the CD, you still don’t own the music and can’t copy it to another medium for personal use. Now, it is all about streaming – renting music and video content.
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The right to repair thing became clear to me as I transitioned out of 60’s VW’s into more modern vehicles in the 90’s. I still remember the astonishment I felt when I had to pay $125.00 to replace a headlamp because you had to buy the whole assembly. It used to be $0.25 for the bulb.
Asia and Africa have been tricky with the repair stuff. You have to find authorized repair places if you want anything worthwhile. In Viet Nam, they would have you sign the parts of your computer — hard drive, CPU, battery, etc. — if you brought it in to be repaired to prove to you that it came out with the same parts it went in with. In Africa, they fix any and every thing. Often, it’s not well, but it can be repaired. Often over priced for the foreigner, but it can be repaired.
I don’t know what I’ll do when we’re living in the States again.
Huzzah!
Jack
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With the exception of laptops and cell phones, I build my own desktop machines from parts and run Linux, not Windows (except for two, one for TurboTax, and one as backup to that one.) The laptop also runs Linux. I learned long ago that if you want to keep your data, never have just one copy on just one hard drive in just one computer.
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Christ organizing data and backing up is one of the biggest headaches. I don’t know how many portable hard drives have been lost literally or electronically. It drives me nuts. And, printing pictures just ain’t the same.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I have quite a fine collection of dead hard drives, even after managing to sufficiently damage some of the oldest so that they could go into the metal recycling bin (never in the electronics bin). It is a pain, but better than trusting everything to The Cloud.
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Howdy Bob!
I think we have to resign ourselves to data losses no matter what you do, just like material records could be destroyed and ruined. The world is not perfect.
Huzzah!
Jack
The Cloud is just another way for corporate America to own what is yours and make you continue paying for it.
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Data, like every other human artifact is fragile. And electronic records depend on a complex and globally interconnected infrastructure which is vulnerable in many ways.
And then, there is the evil child of The Cloud that thrives on the limited resources of smart phones and wearable devices, Software As A Service.
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Howdy Bob!
I still greatly appreciate my Kindle… or at least the idea of it. I’ve had two now. Never lost a book. There are shortcomings to reading from those e-readers, but the portability of a thousand books is pretty amazing. Nothing makes my day better than realizing that I read something in that book and can go find it and look it up. I’d prefer a room with bookshelves packed with books, but the Kindle will do.
Huzzah!
Jack
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I’ve never gotten an e-reader – just an old fashioned book hoarder.
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I wish I could be, but lifestyle choices…
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Right. I do tend to stay put because books are heavy.
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It’s a trade off. Definitely advantages to both.
Jack
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Yep
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Congratulations! (and please check this email inbox, I was wondering where you were!) Enjoy and take care! Cathy
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