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Category: ebay

Sun. Feb. 13, 2022 – Friday the 13th falls on a Sunday this month…

Cold again, and still damp.   I could barely walk yesterday morning.  And it was blowing to beat the band.  Today should be more of the same.

Did my stuff yesterday.   Been doing a lot of driving around so I’ve got various audio books in the vehicles to keep me interested and awake.  I am finding that I really like it, if I like the reader.   In the pickup, Frozen Heat, Richard Castle.  Melodrama in the pretend style of pretend author, spun off [or filled in?] from the TV show Castle.  Nathan Fillon in the original role, and I keep trying to hear his voice, but the reader does a good job despite not being Fillon.   It’s silly, and very much a ‘play within a play, within a play.’   Really liked the show, and I’m enjoying the silly book.  It has some easter eggs, like a cop duo named Malcom, and Reynolds and it doesn’t take itself seriously.

In the Expy, Einstein, Walter  Isaacson.  Well read, it’s a bio of Einstein along with an explanation of his ideas.  Very accessible, and I’m learning things.

Also in the Expy, when the kid is in the truck, The Magician’s Nephew, Chronicles of Narnia, CS Lewis.  Produced by Focus on the Family, it’s a dramatization and is fully produced with voice talent, sound effects, etc.   I read through the Chronicles many times, but don’t remember this one so it’s fun to hear it.  All of the discs in this set are well done, with the exception of a VERY strange vocal acting choice for Aslan.  Recommended if you liked the stories.

I ran out of the Louis Lamour stories, but I found some more of the Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve got a couple more of the Richard Castle books too.   Audiobooks on CD are cheap on ebay, and I’m really enjoying listening to them, which I really didn’t expect.  Beats the snot out of AM talk radio….

 

I’ve talked to a lot of people this week, during my errands.   Most of them thing wuflu is about over, and certainly treating it as a special ongoing disaster is D O N E done.    There is a broad awareness of coming hard times.  People see the shortages, they feel the pinch of the inflation.  Let’s Go Brandon got a return chorus from the group at my hobby club meeting when someone mentioned inflation.   There are a lot of retired technical specialists and small business owners in the group, but this is the first year there has been much mention of politics.  It’s normally a politely politics free space  focused on our common interest.   I spent about 10-15 minutes talking to one of the guys about lakehouses, rent houses, and how he’s selling stuff off and getting out of his investments.  He figures property is about as high as it’s really likely to go, and interest rates will kill it.  I’m kinda inclined to agree.  And everyone was talking about supply chain issues and scarcity impacts on construction, repair, and the economy.

 

Do your own research, draw your own conclusions, but I’m betting on “much worse before it gets better” and while I can’t pick a specific time, “soon” seems about right.   Stack all the things.   It’s gonna get sporty.

nick

 

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Wed. Feb. 9, 2022 – client day, so afk, brb

Cold, clear, kinda damp. Yesterday started out below freezing.   It did get into the 60s during the day, but what a start.  Today should be very similar.

Did some stuff around the house in the morning, and then headed to my secondary to drop off all the stuff still in the back of my pickup.  Then off to Costco to buy a 75″ TV.  They are giving away the additional 3 year insurance with big TVs so for ~$1K I got the TV and the extension.   Took that out to my client’s house and unloaded it into the garage.   Tried to install the mounts I had, but neither was going to be good.  Made it to the electronics store just before close and bought two new heavy duty full motion mounts.    Then home to make dinner.

Today I’ve got to mount the TVs.  I’ve got a friend helping me.  Freaking TVs are too big.  It’ll take a bit longer than I expected because I’ll have to hang the mounts first, but should be done in a couple of hours.  Then I’ve got some pickups to do, and some getting ready for the plumber tomorrow.  It just never ends.

Should be a mad scramble of a day.

Trying to stack some do-re-mi, and get work done while there are parts and workers.

Take a look at what you can ‘bring forward’ and get done now.  You might not be able to later.

Oh, and stack all the things.

n

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Wed. Feb. 2, 2022 – 02022022 -kinda cool. In a pointless kinda way

A bit cooler today, from weather, not numbers 😉  And maybe some more ‘moisture from the sky’.  Got a bunch of rain in various parts of Houston yesterday as I drove around.   Went from Hockley to Crosby and back home.  Lot of driving.

But I did get a billable half day at my client’s place, and I’ll get another on Friday or next Monday to put it back together.  And I got some good stuff for the households.

Today I need to do more.  I need to do some grocery shopping (will take D1 as part of her daddy together time) since she has been whining about the snacks I don’t put in their lunches.  I have a couple of pickups that I can do, if the timing works.   And I’ve got to get stuff out of the foyer, because the GS cookies arrive at noon today.

The welding machine I picked up looks like it’s in decent shape for its age.  The leads are cracked and too old but I’ve got NIB replacements somewhere…  I don’t think I’ll have time to test it for a while.  Too much to do.

And my brain is foggy right now, so short shrift today in the blogging column.  Go read Peter’s post about supply chain issues in the spare and repair parts field, https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/ for more confirmation bias that we are rapidly slipping backwards.   The problem will really be when we lose the ability to fix the machines we need to make the parts to fix the machines.   That is going to hurt, and take a long time to recover from.

I’m adding oil filters for all three vehicles and at least a case of oil to the stack this week.  Hopefully Costco will have it on sale, as they didn’t last month.  If these were normal times, that means it would be on sale this month.  Oil for the gennies wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

So many things to stack.   So get busy stacking.

n

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Sat. Jan. 29, 2022 – Life is but a dream, shiboom shiboom…

Chilly willy today.  Supposed to be clear and breezy.  It was pretty chilly all day on Friday, and was 38F when I went to bed.

Did my pickups, did some messing around.  Auctioneer did not set a time when I could bring down some more stuff.  I did get the breakdown for my sales with his last auction.  Stuff did better than I thought and there was a lot of it that I didn’t realize was mine when I looked at the listings.   I’ll get a check next week.  The big surprise was books with a local theme.  I grabbed several last week so I’ll try to get them into an auction too.

Purchase of the lakehouse is proceeding.  The title guarantee is the next delay as they do the search.  They aren’t in any hurry.

Today’s plan, sleep in.  I’m definitely running on empty sleep wise. Then I need to get to work.

I have lost track of what’s going on in Ukraine, so if anyone can summarize below, that would be cool…

Divemedic has been posting about some radio traffic and flight tracking that makes me think that the words are just words as they pick their moment.  When that kicks off, it’s going to make some really big waves.

So stack some things.  Chances are you’ll need them.

n

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Fri. Jan. 28, 2022 – madness is….. one step beyond

Cool and damp again.  Yeah, whoddathunkit?  Got into the low 60s yesterday.  There was part sun in various places in town but predominately overcast.

Spent the morning watching various auction lots for beds and mattresses for the lakehouse.  Didn’t win any.  Then I got my pickup done.  Dropped some stuff off at my secondary, and swung by Goodwill’s Outlet store.

There are things we will need for the lakehouse.  And because of the way my life works, in one of the bins was a box for a cell phone booster.   There were actually two different ones in the bin, so I scooped up all those pieces.  I’ll know later today if all the pieces are there, and if they will work now that 3G sunsetted.  I also picked up two pieces that will pay for the rest of my full cart.  They are the rarest of vintage audio gear– black face components that are worth something on ebay.  Kenwood GE-76 and the tuner from the same line.  No power amp though I did find the instruction book for it.  You never know what you’ll  find.

Today will be a meeting with one of my auctioneers, and pickup of some medical stuff.  I’ll have to go spend some time at my storage unit, and at my secondary.   I got another two pallets ready for the pallet lot auction, but I’ve got to get at least a couple more with some more valuable stuff to fill out this first auction with them.

The purchase of the lakehouse is proceeding.   The seller kept having ‘trouble’ with her email, claiming she didn’t get our signed contract, and we thought she might be entertaining other offers without telling us.  I now think she was actually having net issues, because she’s told us that she finally has the doc and is proceeding with the escrow company, etc.  Or maybe the offers weren’t sweet enough to overcome us being first through the door…  we’re still set to close on the 21st.   The first quote for insurance was pretty freaking expensive.  I’ll have to take a few minutes and talk to them about changes and maybe we can get it down into the reasonable range.

I’m really looking forward to finally having a Bug Out Location.  It was a pretty big gap in our preps to not have anywhere specific to go if we needed to leave town.   Fixing it up, stocking it, and actually using it for weekends is going to be a ton of work, but will be satisfying too.

Should generate some blogfodder too.

Now I can stack even more things.  And you can too!

nick

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Thur. Jan. 27, 2022 – making progress, and yet falling behind…

Cold again, with more damp.  Maybe getting to the low 60s like yesterday.  We had occasional sun, but mostly overcast, and I expect the same today.

Spent the morning doing email and phone calls.  Actual talking to people.  I know, how strange.  Had to call the insurance people and get a quote for the new house.  NOT cheap as it turns out.  Also spoke with them about the work on my Ranger (I can still get it done if I can find the time) and the burglary at my storage unit.    Then I spent some time on the phone with the county clerk in Houston County.  She was able to pull the deed history for my new properties, and the boundary descriptions.   It’s pretty cool to go back  to the original land grant, Ramon De La Garza in this case.  Only took a couple of steps.  And I confirmed that the mineral rights were separated from the land rights before it became a subdivision.  Most of the area was in timber production prior to the ’70s, and there is still a lot of timber in the area.  She printed old scans to a pdf, emailed them to me, and I was good to go.  She was apologetic that it cost $1/page.  The $5 is the smallest bill I’ll pay in this process, I’m pretty sure.

So I made some progress on something.   We completed the sales contract and got it back to the seller, and hope to close on the 21st of Feb.

Didn’t make any progress on getting more stuff to auction.  I’ll have to email the newest auctioneer and try to get some stuff placed with him.  I need to get some bins filled from the burgled unit too.   Today I’ll do something, so I don’t fall farther behind.

Girl Scout cookies arrive next week and the house needs to be clear for that.

I did get some needful things and some good stuff for the house and the new place too.

The seed display had a LOT of good veggies and tons of flowers in it.  I think I’ll scatter a bunch of the flowers at the new place.  Most of the veg were varieties I haven’t tried and failed with yet, so I’ll give them a try too.   The seeds sold 4 packets for a dollar.  I never saw any that cheap before, and the label says they have the same number of seeds as the other guys… wonder if they’ll germinate and what the rate will be.  It’ll be ‘science-y’ content for sure 🙂

That’s that for today, I better actually get some stuff done.

So I can stack some other things that will help more.

n

 

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Sun. Jan. 23, 2022 – 01232022 – silly, I know.

Cold and clear.  Was 34F when I went to bed.  Didn’t get very warm during the day, probably won’t today either. Pretty sure we froze at some point, but I’ve got the citrus indoors, and I’m hoping nothing is negatively affected.

Did some more cleanup on the old family pc.  I’d previously upgraded it with an SSD and it breathed new life, along with making the RAM and adding a second drive for data… but the main reason for retiring it (technically anyway, the real reason was the newer $8 pc I picked up) was that the SSD was full and it’s a pain to manage where stuff goes on it.

Well.  I killed more than half the drive’s capacity which was taken up with LOG FILES from failed updates.  150GB of pure crap was filling the drive.  And windows ‘drive cleanup’ tool doesn’t even look for the files.  WinDirStat identified the biggest files, and where they were, and I deleted them.  Just like that the PC is usable again.   I went looking because windows update was failing with useless error messages.  It sure looked to me like the updates were failing when they tried to make a restore point, because the drive was full.

After making space, update found 23 more updates to apply under ‘safety and security’, so I did those and it updated without an issue.  Freaking windows storing cr@p and failing with useless errors.

Now I’ve got to look for the same sorts of things on this, my primary desktop.  I bet it’s full of cruft too.

— spent the evening watching Bukaroo Bonsai with D1.  She laughed and enjoyed it.

The at bedtime we had a long philosophical discussion.   Kid’s smart but since we’re not religious, she doesn’t  have a framework she can fit the more mystical workings of the universe into…  And old movies give us plenty to discuss regarding PC language, wokeness, and changing times.  She’s anti-wokeness.  The kids are starting to back lash against it.  They’re tired of saying the opposite of what their eyes tell them.  Interesting times.

Took some stuff to my secondary, and spent some time stacking stuff on a pallet for auction.   Monday I’ll be talking to another auction company about consigning a truck full of stuff with them.  They definitely do ‘estate sale’ type stuff, and it sells, if not always for highest dollar.   They just moved to a bigger, and empty warehouse space so the time to strike is now.

Ordered some powdered cream for the stacks.   It was finally back in stock.   The powdered cream, butter, and cheese all do age out.  They get hard and lumpy, and get an ‘old’ flavor, so I need to rotate them, even if it means wasting them.  I won a ‘seed display’ in one auction too.  It looks like it’s about half flowers, half veg.  We’ll see if it was worth the money when I pick it up.  Seeds aren’t cheap.

Don’t forget to stack up  the little things that make all the other things better, like butter and cream.   Stack the things.

 

nick

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Sat. Jan. 22, 2022, or 01222022 or fun with completely meaningless numbers

Why yes, on this cold winter’s night I am easily amused.   And it was cold, 33F at 1:30am.   Don’t know what today will bring, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “cold and damp, with clear sky”.

Did some indoor stuff yesterday morning, and early afternoon.  I was watching an auction for household stuff including a desk for D2 to go under her new lofted bed.   Won it, and some other stuff.   I was alternating that with stripping stuff off the family All In One PC, preparatory to either selling it or repurposing it as my “radio” pc.  Not sure yet what I’ll do but I have to get it depersonalized and ready to sell, so I can get it out of the house.   Didn’t get much else done.  Did test some audio gear for resale, so there is that.

Today should be occupied with pickups and cleanup.   Unless I drive 2 hours north to look at a property one of our friends clued us into last night.  Sounds nice and it’s on the lake we want to be on.  In fact it’s near our friend’s lake house.  Nice to have friends…  It’s not the rural retreat that first one we looked at was, but it’s better than most and near people we know, and on a good sized lot.   Given the way inflation has been going, I would like to get some cash turned into real estate.  The asking price seems pretty good too.

We’ll see how quickly we need to jump.

If this is the one, I’ll have a whole new place to stack stuff…..

Stack some of your own!

n

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Fri. Jan. 21, 2022 – or 01212022 – another week slid by, yet this month is really long…

Cold, but I don’t know yet how cold it will get, or how cold it got.  It was 35F when I went to bed.  It is supposed to be clear today anyway, and tomorrow as well.

Mostly spent yesterday poking at things.  I did get to the grocery store, and noted in comments that  there were big gaps in the shelves in several areas.   Cat food and cold and flu OTC meds being the most prominent.

Today should be more auction and ebay stuff. If the weather stays clear I’ll go to my storage unit and clean and sort.  If not, I’ll do some more ebay stuff here at the house.  I’ve got stuff to test and clean and list.   Last night I had stuff sell in the auction by the guy who changed his mind about taking all of my stuff.   I think I did well with LPs and with books, of all things.  There were a couple of collectibles that didn’t do badly, and there was some stuff that sold for $1, but  at least it’s gone.

I hope he’ll be happy and take another load right away.

This afternoon and evening, my wife and D2 will be joined by the rest of her troop and they’ll be off to GS camp for a Gymkana, whatever that is.   The hope is sports on horseback, and related to horses.  Hard to be sure from the GS description.  Friday and Saturday night away, home Sunday afternoon.  That leaves me with D1 and a bunch of work to do.  We’ll see how that goes.  Cookie season is in a week or two, so the last bits have to be out of the house to make way.  Of course that was supposed to have already happened, but …  plans vs reality.

While I was at the grocery, I did add a flat of canned peas to the stacks,  6 pounds of bacon, and some pork chops and loin.  Beef was in short supply and none was on sale.  A little voice keeps poking me to add alternatives to fresh milk.  I have a bunch of Lido powdered full fat, and we don’t use as  much as we did a year ago, but I think I’ll add more.   It keeps fairly well.   I should open an old can and see how it’s doing.  For science or something.   But seriously, when I get little pokes from the universe like I’ve been getting about the milk, I ignore it at my peril.   YMMV but I’ll be checking the old and adding some new.

Anyone else getting weird vibes or feel short of something?

If you do, stack it up.

nick

 

BTW, I’ve now been doing this officially for 4 years ( a bit longer if you count the days I was just filling in for Bob while he was sick), without missing a day that I can remember.  Some days the end product was pretty weak, but at least the lights were on and the door unlocked.  All y’all are the reason I do it, to keep this unique thing that Bob built alive.  Thanks for sticking around and making this place somewhere I enjoy spending my time.  And thank you Barbara for letting us, and Rick for making it all work.  We’ve got a rocky road ahead, but we’re all better prepared for it than we were, and we will get through it.

n

 

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Thur. Jan. 13, 2022 – Friday the 13th comes on a Thursday this month…

Cool and damp again. Overcast? Maybe. Was overcast and threatening all day Wednesday. It was 45F when I went to bed, but not bad during the day. Jacket weather for sure. It’s cold enough that my fingers are cracking again.

Did my pickup, mostly stuff for my non-prepping hobby. Did my drop off and then went to meet the auctioneer where she was going through a house to get ready for an auction. I was able to help her
ID some stuff. And turned down her job offer for the week… My other auctioneer wanted to hire me too, but I’d go nuts in his shop and I doubt he could afford me. I’m always better off either looking after my client, or listing, or working on my house.

Today is household stuff in the AM, then client’s house if the weather is ok for outdoor work. Other than networking, and the next round of gear replacement, I’ve only got a few items left to complete. I can leave the net stuff as is for the time being, and we’ll straighten it out when the fiber gets installed. The new speakers should be installed though.

The other thing I did yesterday was spending some time talking to the manager at the storage company. She’s going to review the video, and if she gets anything usable, then I’ll call my constable’s deputy buddy and see if they want to investigate. I’d think that going after an organized group would be an easier sell than going after individual crooks. The Constable formed his investigative group specifically to go after the stuff HPD wouldn’t touch. It’s another data point that everyone agrees that HPD won’t do anything. They are stretched at the moment, and have been for years.

The manager is an interesting character. She spent 20 years working in city politics then walked away about the time I moved to Houston. She’s got some interesting stories and an interesting perspective. Black, single mom, three successful grown kids. Meatspace baby. Get out and TALK to people.

And stack some stuff, because that pantry ain’t gonna fill itself.

nick

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