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Category: ebay

Tues. Nov. 2, 2021 – 110221 – hurtling into the future… one day at a time

Cool to start, warming gradually, then maybe hot, reverse and repeat until dark. Mid 80s high in the sun. 60F when I went to bed, mid 50s when I woke up. REALLY nice weather.

Boxed up a couple of sales, and dealt with a complaint. I’ll be re-shipping that today, along with a couple of low dollar items. Good margin, just low gross. Still, stuff is actually selling. One sale, Ebay recommended an auction for a PS3 game, new and sealed, and recommended a starting price. I got 3 offers below the open price, and then one of them bid and won with essentially the open. I haven’t done an auction in a long time, because buy it now generally brings more money. I can’t recall anyone making lowball offers before the auction completed. Not sure if this is a ‘game’ thing, or if the nature of auctions has changed. I’ll be sticking with buy it now, for now.

Put away a bunch (but not all) of the Halloween decor.

Then the rest of my day got eaten by ducks and I got not much done.

Besides frustrations with banking, and chauffeuring children, and delivering takeout, I’m fighting a stupid apple file format issue. One of the extra curricular programs sent out a .doc file with instructions to their big event. My wife sees it as a .doc attachment to an email, but when she forwards it to me, it’s a .pages attachment. Which of course windows knows nothing about. Turns out it’s a zip file, with a thumbnail image, and (ONLY SOMETIMES) an actual pdf file in a folder structure. WTAF? So much fail. In my case, I can see the map, as the thumbnail, but all the instructions are hidden inside some other file in the folders, in a format I can’t read. pdf is what? 30 years old? And people are still sending out docs? and Apple takes it on themselves to mung that up? Jeez.

I’m looking at a couple of area credit unions to move my business account. The first free one has only one branch but lists all the branches of another CU and ATMs, including inside costco, so if I can do all my business online or at an ATM, that should work. Even if I chose to use the affiliated CU directly, their requirements for business checking are not onerous. I’ve been over IBC for years but inertia is a thing.

That won’t be the first business that made me work just a little too hard. If I’m going to work that hard, I might as well look at other options too. And since I spent the time on the other options, I might as well pick one…

With hard times coming, it’s probably worth taking a look at the things you’ve taken for granted, or have been allowing to just ‘coast’. You might have too much or too little insurance, the wrong phone plan, cable tv or other subs you don’t use (F YOU Freedom Pop), TiVO, streaming services, etc. Your habits or lifestyle may have changed enough that you are stocking the wrong foods, or your burn rate may have changed so your amounts are wrong. Is it time for a new mattress? Shoes? Winter coat? Do some things need repair? Well, if I’ve got a big list, so should you. No rest for the wicked…

And probably, you should be stacking something…

nick

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Mon. Nov. 1, 2021 – officially on the way to winter, and 2022

Middling warm, but sunny and nice. OR not. No one really knows. Probably like yesterday which was very nice and even cool in the later part of the evening. 57F when I went to bed.

Got my Halloween stuff set up, added a couple of tweaks, one of which didn’t really work, but generally built off the success of last year. Got a bunch of complements. I accomplished my goals. Do something creative. Share it with people. Meet some new neighbors. Reassure the old neighbors that I’m a harmless and fun guy, not a creepy guy with a stockpile, spying on them…. that sort of thing.

Sold a couple of items on ebay over the weekend that I have to ship today. Have a TON of stuff to list, including some big money items that need a bit of extra attention. And it’s the day I spend some extra time with D2 after school. PLUS I’ve got to put all the Halloween stuff away, get down the “fall” or Thanksgiving stuff, and go do some volunteer work at D1’s school helping with the set for their fall theatrical production.

All very normal ‘life’ stuff. What I want to be doing involves a lot of stacking, mods to existing stuff, and fixing some stuff I let slide. Add on the really sudden feeling that it’s the end of the year that starting November triggers, and I feel 2x farther behind than I felt last week.

Ah the joys of too much to do. No matter what I do or don’t do, I’ll fall behind on something.

It’s past time to pull my head out and start cutting through some of the blockages.

THAT’s the goal for today. Start that process.

All the rest of you, keep stacking. Time is getting short. No one wants to mess up Christmas, but after that, it’s on.

nick

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Thur. Oct. 28, 2021 – …and be just like the other men, I’m tired of monkeying around…

Well, I think it will be cool to start, warming through the day, then hot, humid throughout, and partly sunny. And if it is like yesterday, we’ll get a little downpour with high winds right in the middle. 62F when I went to bed.

I didn’t get much of anything done yesterday. I fell asleep for a while in the morning, got rained out of some of my plans, and then the day was gone. Somewhere in there I talked with my auctioneer, arranged a trailer for my ‘parts truck’ pickup, played with the dog, and did some ebay listings. Once again, I’m seeing a strong correlation between listing, and selling, to the tune of “if you don’t list every day, you won’t sell.” I went a couple of days without listing anything, and had no sales. Did just a couple of listings yesterday and sold an item last night. Other resellers on youtube have noticed as well. Doesn’t even have to be a good listing, one dvd a day is fine, but there has to be something. I share because I care. Sell some cr@p. Buy some preps.

Speaking of, I ordered new frying pans, some coffee, and a book from amazon. My pans need to be replaced. Nonstick pans are an expendable, and not something I see in the auctions very often. If there were never any more, I’ve got good stainless, but the nonstick are so much easier for some things… the pans will be here in a few days, but the coffee is “in stock soon” showing a December 12 delivery estimate. Um, it’s the manufacturer’s store on amazon. I’m going to have to pay about $6 more per 48oz bag to order direct from the manufacturer’s website if I want any next month. I’ve GOT some on the shelf, probably enough to get through ’til then, but jeez. There have been mentions in the press of coffee shortages, but until this order I haven’t had any problem. The brand is in stock at Costco even, but they changed varieties to something light and fruity, instead of the classic dark I prefer. I’ve got depth of backup for coffee, but I’d like to stay with fresh for as long as possible. Issues somewhere in the chain. One more indication you need to stock up when you see something you need.

In other news, the dog seems to be fine again. Daughter’s cut on her leg had the stitches out and looks fine. She’s completely over the procedure she had done for an ingrown toenail. Neighbor had a crew knocking down his chimney today, in the most slipshod way possible, and I think they still left the part between the roof and the ceiling. From the noise of brick chunks hitting the ground, I suspect a chunk fell inside the house. It felt like it fell in MY house. They have cut a bunch of holes in the new roof, near where the giant beam sticks through. I don’t see a plan in effect, but it’s not my house so my curiosity is high but my GAF is low. Neighbors across the street had 6 big trees trimmed pretty dramatically in one afternoon, which only confirms that the monkeys that took 3 days to cut down two trees at the next door neighbor’s were monkeys. I don’t think I’ve seen one company name painted or even stickered on the vehicles for the guys working on the house. That’s some fly by night trunk slammers right there.

I have a goal for today, we’ll see if I hit it. I better, or the boss’s patience might be exhausted.

So I’m off to work, so I can clear the way for better stuff to stack. Stack it high, before you can’t.

nick

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Wed. Oct. 27, 2021 – getting more work to do, and some small portion done

Hot and damp again, although the chance of rain seems to be lessened a bit. We got a couple of spritzes of rain late in the day. Just enough to convince me to put the tarp back on the truck, but not even really enough to get wet.

Among my tasks for today are getting stuff out of the house and out of storage and TO the auction. I also need to arrange and maybe pick up a car trailer for my Thursday adventure picking up my parts truck. Wife was not thrilled btw. Who knew? If I leave it in the lot at my secondary, it will get destroyed, starting with cutting out the catalytic converter, ending with someone breaking windows and using the back seat to fornicate, or defecate. Neither is appealing to me. If I can’t flip it to the repair place it will be in my driveway for a while.

One of my auction stops was for radio stuff, antenna cables mostly but there was some other stuff in the box. The other stop was the county surplus facility. I haven’t been there in a long time so I spent some time chatting with the clerk/admin that runs the office. They are getting crazy high prices for their surplus, mostly from new buyers. This was the case last time I was there too, but has only increased. There are a lot of people trying to be resellers and competition for product is getting intense. While I was there chatting a buyer called in and renounced her lot, offering it to anyone who wanted it. It was radios and chargers. Yep, I’ll have that for free, thanks. Turned out to be FRS/GMRS mostly but also one nice Moto business radio. I officially have far too many of the little radios and should start pairing them up and selling them.

With the radios and antenna stuff, that aspect of prepping gets a few more thing on the stack. I’ve been doing food, and hard to get medical. Now I need some bigger things, like the gennie hookup, whole house water heater, and master bath … since it’s getting cooler, attic work is back on the table. Oh, and I need to get my client sorted.

All while decorating for Halloween, and then the endless stream of holiday preps, including freaking air travel Thanksgiving week. I better get cracking.

Keep stacking.

nick

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Mon. Oct. 25, 2021 – a brand new week, what will it bring?

Hot and humid, maybe some rain today, somewhere in the area. We never got any yesterday but it sure was damp. I was sweating through my t-shirt standing still in the shade. I’m pretty sure I saw 97F in the sun late in the day. It was down to 77F when I went to bed though.

I spent too much time on tattoo grrl and The Bad Baldwin yesterday and don’t intend to do it again today. The fish don’t see the water, and can’t be convinced it’s there. The ‘four rules’ are a CULTURAL artifact of the gun culture in the US. They are not laws, or laws of nature, or even universally revered. Freaking afgans probably think we’re p#ssies for our fear of firearms and ‘rules’. An American shooter’s insistence on the ‘four rules’ is very modern and FAR from universal and is CULTURAL. The cultural traditions of the actors on a movie set are different. They’ve got no knowledge of or worship of the ‘four rules.’ They believe that every gun they encounter at work is going to be made safe by the people whose job it is to do so, and that they can and should point guns where they’re told to, and pull the trigger if they’re told to do so- SAFELY. The results of following the rules speak for themselves, as do the results of NOT following the rules. Different culture, different rules. Different churches, different gods. So unless something new comes to light (like that tatgrrl was barred from properly doing her job by covid restrictions) I’ll be responding to any questions or comments about TBB, or Tatgrrl at my leisure and in my spare time.

That is a conscious departure from my normal mode of trying for a timely and helpful comment or response to any exchange here.

Yesterday I felt unwell all day, slightly dizzy, slightly nauseous. I think it was because I smashed and scratched up my cheater glasses, and I was doing a ton of staring at screens with them on. I noticed that if I wear them while moving around, I’ll get ‘swirly’ when I move my head and everything in my field of view moves. So it makes sense to me that if they were scratched up and no longer centered on my face it would mess with my brain. Or it could be I’m just feeling poorly. In any case, I was content to be sitting down in front of the computer and not busting @ss moving pallets at my secondary location. It didn’t help with my list of stuff to do though. Fortunately I’m a prepper, so I got another pair out of the cabinet, and Lo! one of the auctions has Costco overstock reading glasses in it. I won a set of three in 1.25 and another in 1.50 strengths. $7 for 6 pairs of glasses works for me.

I did get my bookshelf projects painted. I’ve got an old VHS tape storage tower to use for displaying small lego models, and the bigger unit to use for books in D2’s room. At least we started the project together…

I got some of my Halloween decor set up over the weekend. I need to get more of it out. I like doing it. It’s a creative outlet and a social thing… and I would miss it if I didn’t. So I make time for it despite all the other things on the list. Meatspace baby!

Speaking of meatspace, I met the new owner of the house next door. Seems nice. Married, no kids yet, intends to live in the house. I did ask him what was holding up the chimney. He was a bit shocked when he realized what I meant. I had to point out that they took the chimney and fireplace out from the bottom up…but left everything above the roof just hanging there. Surprise! It’s a pretty big oversight and would destroy any confidence I had in the GC. I guess that’s just me though.

He’s making extensive structural changes to the roof system, and from what I can see, I’m surprised there is an engineer on the permit. Eh, what do I know? Taking out all the rafter ties (ie ceiling joists) PROBABLY won’t cause the weight of the roof to push the tops of the walls apart and let the roof slowly sink down while the walls spread out. Probably there is some magic I don’t know about to replace that bottom part of the triangle that makes the roof a truss. Hope they don’t wait too long to install the magic. It’s been my direct and hands on experience that those walls start to push out pretty quickly… and I’m not sure how they intend to close the slot they cut in the NEW roof to install a big beam, when the beam still sticks out through that slot, and if they cut down the height of the beam they reduce its strength… I’m sure the low bidder illegals will figure out how to cash the checks before it falls apart. In any case it’s only my problem peripherally in that I don’t want a failed project next door and I hate to see anyone get taken advantage of.

It does make my life marginally more interesting.

As if I needed another hobby.

Plan for today, do some work. Pick up D2. Do some daddy daughter stuff, like maybe rearranging her room to accommodate the new bookcases. Maybe I can convince her to put the resin printer and the filament printer in HER room…. hey that’s an idea!

I’ve also got a 3 year old dell pc to check out. Bought it for $8 so no big deal if it is a parts machine. Should be a Core i5 with win10. We’ll see. There is a bunch of ebay stuff to prep too, and stuff to pull for the local auctions. There’s always more to do. I did get 7 loads of laundry washed and dried and mostly folded this weekend. So there is that bit of domestic bliss to feel good about.

Life goes on, even during the decline. Plan for the worst, hope for the best, don’t do anything irrevocable. Get yourself centered and ready to move in whatever direction is best.

And stack it high.

nick

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Fri. Oct. 22, 2021 – no particular insights

Cooler, overcast, some chance of rain. Houston is in a very small “thunderstorms possible” area on the national map today and tomorrow, so someone will probably get rained on. I covered the stuff in the bed of my pickup overnight in case we got some showers.

Spent most of yesterday driving around and picking stuff up. One auction I got some radio stuff. One I got some more hand sanitizer. Two cases for $5/. It’s alcohol and water with a bit of hydrogen peroxide in a spritz bottle. Very light and clean, no sticky. I use it to clean all kinds of things. It’s my favorite for cleaning my hands when I get back in the truck. Does great on my desk and other surfaces, and it’s cheap because people are ‘over it’.

That’s why fugitives get caught, it’s why people leave school without a degree, it’s why they quit going to the gym by February… I’m not good at following through with some things, but there are others where I can “just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” for as long as needed. Whatever is coming is likely to be long and you’ll need to keep doing the right thing for a long time. It gets repetitive to keep hammering away at prepping, but – I think the need is great, and it bears repeating.

There are a lot of similar voices out there in the blogosphere all of a sudden. I even sometimes see my own words coming around, and I wonder if they are mine or the person got there the same way I did, and it just took a bit longer. No matter, as long as the message gets out. It’s frustrating when I can’t remember where I wrote something, only that I did.

Was it Cliff Stoltz that envisioned your computer keeping track of everything you did in a ‘lifestream’ that you could later move back and forth in? That would be handy for some stuff, that’s for sure. It would allow me to collect some of the stuff I’ve scattered around in various places recently and put it together into some sweet recycled ‘content’ with minimal additional effort 🙂 Maybe I need a keylogger. If there was one smart enough to group and stamp stuff that 99% of the time I don’t ever look at again, but could highlight it when I eventually search for it, I might be tempted. Or I guess I could ask the NSA.

If I could find it all, I’d collect what I’ve written about living in the secondary market, practicing for it, and how that’s all relevant to the coming unpleasantness. I’d collect what I’ve written recently about shortages and logistics too. Lot’s of people having those discussions in different places and my [meager] contributions are scattered around. IP is best when you can re-use it 🙂

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Anyway, today is a couple more pickups, radio stuff and household buys, then school activities until late. I’ve realized that I buy very little outside of food in traditional retail settings anymore. It gives one a very different perspective on what stuff ‘should’ cost when you see it selling for 1/3 or 1/2 of retail all the time. Now if I could do that with food too…

Then I could REALLY stack it high 😉

nick

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Thur. Oct. 21, 2021 – 10212021 – yes I am sending you secret messages

Cool and clear again, or maybe damp and overcast, but probably much like yesterday. I sometimes wish the forecasters would just come out and say it that way. Yesterday was saturated most of the day with highs in the low 90s in the sun. I was sweaty standing still.

Got a couple of things done. Moved some stuff, threw out some food that was old or damaged, repacked some too. I need to replace a couple of bags of salt, and one bag of flour. Salt doesn’t go “bad” but it can be affected by moisture from water or “other things”. Oh, one bag of sugar was rock hard too. Not expensive, and I have acknowledged that I’ve got ‘breakage’ due to poor conditions that others might not have. On the other hand, the rice was fine.

Took a load to the auctioneer and he’s still happy to see me and get more stuff. He’s having trouble sourcing his normal stuff, there really aren’t as many returns/overstocks now as there were months ago. He’s glad to have my stuff to sell, and I have more for him 🙂

Get your holiday shopping done early. In fact, get ALL your shopping done early. I’m even looking for a cheap Christmas tree, in case the real ones end up in short supply. If they don’t have labor to cut them, or trucks to ship them, they could be scarce or crazy expensive. Normally you can’t give away artificial trees at estate sales and thrift stores. I’ll be curious if that is different this year. As an aside, it’s the first year I’ve ever actually looked at prices. Hole-y Bat shrub Batman. Artificial trees are expensive! Modern good looking ones anyway.

So that’s it, your secret message. Stack it high, stack it early. All signs point to trouble ahead.

nick

huh, this is the 600th post I’ve tagged wuflu. Tired of this.

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Sat. Oct. 16, 2021 – trying to sleep late…

Cooler and windy. Should blow any rain and overcast right the heck out of here, but – say it with me – we’ll see. Yesterday we got some rain at the house, but it was after I’d left on my errands. I went north, and missed the rain entirely. It was almost dry by the time I got back here. Had to ask the family if they got wet.

Houston micro-climates. Someone is getting rain when there is rain in the forecast. It just probably won’t be everybody.

Wind picked up around 8pm and has been blowing stuff around since.

After I did my auction pickup, some storage cases for ‘tools’, I hit a thrift I don’t usually have a chance to shop. It’s run by the LDS church, called “Deseret Industries”, and it’s really nice. They have a ton of staff, nice stuff, and it’s well organized. I hit their ‘outdoor section’ and scored. Camping stuff, hooray. Thermarest pad, two old school open frame back packs, coleman lantern for a buck, inflatable kayak and paddle for $10, some other small camping stuff, real RollerBlade knee, elbow, and wrist protectors for a couple of bucks each, times two…crazy good prices on the stuff. Indoors, the prices were fair to a bit high for most things, but still a third below ebay. They just take most of the margin out for resellers. Stuff was subsequently piled high on the shelves.

The thrift stores rely on Americans having more than they need, and being too lazy or busy to get rid of it on their own, or to recover any value from it. That isn’t the reality in most countries in the world, and it won’t be true forever here either.

We’re in a window for a lot of things, and that window may be closing. Don’t be left outside with your face pressed against the glass.

Stack it up.

nick

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Fri. Oct. 15, 2021 – the decline of Western civ continues

Hot and humid, maybe cooler and wet. Yesterday was rainy all day, so technically cooler than hotter, and wetter than notter…

Did some auction stuff through most of the day because of the rain. The lost item appeared at the buyer’s door today. After I refunded him, and after he’d bought a replacement from someone else. Didn’t make sense to ship it back and he didn’t think to refuse delivery. It never did show up in the USPS system. That’s 11 days to get from Houston to Virginia without Christmas rush…that ain’t great.

Sold another couple of items on a ‘make an offer’. Usually if I can do 2 or more I can combine shipping and pass on the reduction in cost, but UPS and the Post Office both raised rates and I couldn’t quite make it work until I countered. Surprisingly he went for it. My experience has been that 99% of the time, the offer is the max they want to pay, a counter almost always fails.

I’m surprised by the sale, as I usually get shut out when my store has been on vacation hold…glad of it though.

Got out to Costco in the late afternoon and put some observations in yesterday’s comments. A year and a half later, we are still seeing shortages of stuff like paper products. Had an interesting chat with a lady in the TP area. She’s very aware of shortages, “saw it reported”, is stacking extra food (“I never liked canned food but I’m buying it because you never know”) and when I mentioned planting a garden, she wholeheartedly agreed because “there might not be any food”. Nice lady, and well outside of my demographic… so it’s not just white middle aged men prepping.

I’ll have to get some Charmin blue out of my storage if I can’t buy any at Costco.

I’m buying masks at auction too. People are too quick to unload and there are some real bargains on PPE at the moment. This is the first of the plagues, not the last, and I need to restock stuff I’ve used now that it’s available again.

Some gub stuff and tactical gear in the estate auctions this week too, but it went for too much money. Lots of bidders looking for that sort of thing.

I rounded out the afternoon by swinging by one of my favorite ‘high end’ thrift stores. It’s an independent run by a collection of churches in a very affluent neighborhood. Not much for resale, but lots for personal use. VERY STRANGE to see shortages in a thrift store, but there were. This store can be counted on to have the same sort of stuff from week to week, and there were departments that were WAY under normal levels of stock. Kids toys was almost bare. On the other hand, someone raised prices in electronics and small appliances so there was a LOT of stock in that area.

Stuff is weird all over.

Secondary market is getting patchy too.

Time and past time to be stackin’. Get to it.

nick

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Wed. Oct. 13, 2021 – getting back to normal

Hot and humid later, but a cool and humid morning. I expect several days or more of this, drifting cooler each day. Eventually it will be winter. Until then, I’m enjoying the cooler temps while they are here. BTW, it was 95F in the sun yesterday afternoon, so I’m not sure some of you would recognize this as “Fall” quite yet.

Spent most of yesterday getting caught up with stuff. I’ve got an ebay shipment lost somewhere. The post office didn’t scan it in when I dropped it off, so it will either arrive or not. At this point it’s fairly late, even by USPO standards but there was a holiday in there. I told the guy to give it one more day and I’ll refund him. Since it wasn’t scanned in, the PO can’t track it or find it. The best I can do is file for money back on the shipping label postage. The buyer has been very cool about it so far. Looks like I have to go back to getting receipts for every package.

I’ve got to get some more listing done and try to counteract the hit my sales take when I shut down my ebay store. It sucks to be dependent on them for sales, but that is where I’ve spent my effort for these last few years. I still haven’t checked out FB Marketplace, and I’m reluctant to do so because it’s Facebook. I should be able to take more to my local guy, and get the pallets listed this week since my wife is WFH and can get the kids managed in the afternoon. Both of those things will help too.

It sure feels like time is getting short before something big breaks loose. Biddn and Kamel faking videos. Pilots and ATC both possibly staging walkouts. Hospital staff and teachers sure went from heroes to zeros quickly didn’t they? .Mil and the police forces are going to start shedding people too. Someone pointed out that much of the historical unrest surrounding the Depression was fueled by having a whole bunch of p!ssed off veterans at home. Hmm. History sure does rhyme.

Or it could be that we just simmer along like Venezuela did. No sharp changes, but after two years they were in ruin. Maybe TPTB continue to lie and we continue to pretend to believe them, all the while, everything gets worse. One of the things that amazes me is the number of online commentors that profess to recognize that this or that bad thing is here/coming/or just a heartbeat away, but who don’t seem to have processed that reality. They seem to think they can just continue talking sh!t on the internet while the world burns, without having made any plans or preparations. They are USED to moaning and complaining, and they think that will go on forever.

If you think CWII is only a spark away, WHAT DOES THAT REALLY MEAN? No trucks, or severely reduced, even from today’s levels. No food, no stuff, starvation, and desperation. Bank holidays and insolvencies. Street violence, and street justice. Killings. Seizures of people and assets. Texas rebels and all Texans’ out of state accounts get frozen…. no money for you! Maybe the big red switch gets pulled and all of the internet goes dark for a while, and when it comes back up the Great Firewall of China looks like a toddler’s attempt. No more alt-news. No more high speed. Packet shaping and speed limiting for all! If you claim this might happen and you aren’t prepping for it, I will not take you seriously.

Ditto for the other scenarios for what might be coming.

If you think some bad thing is coming, get ready. If you are sure it won’t, get ready for good times. Doing nothing won’t help or save you.

Stack it up while you can.

nick

(more Disney report later)

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