Long time, no posting
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here at knuckleheadidjitgaloot.com.
Started a new job in March. The long-awaited sheriff sale of my house of nearly a decade happened at last at the end of May. We packed up and moved to a rental house that’s way out in the country, right in the middle of a 1,400 acre farm.
The place is beautiful. The house is really cool. I feel like we’re living in a national park.
But the downside is we have no Internet access. Cell phone service is spotty, and the landline phone by Verizon delivers Third World service. Really, there’s a constant loud buzz on the line and the phone goes dead for several hours a day.
Did I mention that VERIZON SUCKS!
Anyway, been trying to get a rural broadband carrier to make good on threats to put an antenna or dish or whatever on a silo on the farm to send the wireless signal to our house.
Until then, posting will continue to be spotty.
Sorry.
Ending It All
Not my life, just this blog.
The blog hosting company wants some money, not a lot mind you, but every little bit counts. So I’m trying to decide whether to keep this blog going.
I enjoy writing, although some days I don’t do a lot of that, and the daily hunt for items to post. And, I suppose I write this blog just for the hell of it, really.
Every once in a while a blog post will generate a lot of visitors, but most often only about 10 or so people read this thing on a regular basis.
The regular visitors to this blog hail from Los Angeles and other towns in California; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Alexandria, Catlett, Front Royal, Leesburg, Marshall, Rectortown and Upperville in Virginia; Naperville, Ill.; Puyallup, Wash.
Some folks from New Dehli, India, and Ottawa, Ontario, also regulary check us out.
Is it worth your while? Would you miss us if we quit?
What do you like about this blog? Why do you read it? Are there topics you’d like to see added to the content? Stuff covered that you don’t like to read?
I’ve opened the comments so you don’t have to register to post. Let me know what you think.
Note About Light/Nonexistent Posting
Been MIA over the past couple days.
We’ve had connection problems with our Verizon DSL. Seems when son number 2 is on the Xbox, it screws up the connection for everyone else. I think it has something to do with an IP address conflict.
Spent about an hour on the phone with a Verizon tech guy (who sounded like he was calling from Mumbai, and probably was). After doing several useless and obvious things, like rebooting the computer, powering off the modem and router and powering everything up again, do an IP config, etc., etc., etc., nothing appeared to work.
Until suddenly both my notebook and desktop connected. Don’t know why they connected. Don’t know why they wouldn’t connect. Nothing has changed, no new equipment, wiring, software, etc.
Well, there was one new thing, we upgraded to the next level of Verizon’s DSL service, which was supposed to be three times faster than what we had before. I haven’t noticed a difference, other than constant connection problems.
And, now that I think about it. I also upgraded to IE8, but that was only on the notebook, so shouldn’t have affected the desktop unit.
Still, the Verizon guy had no clue why things didn’t/won’t work or how to fix it. I coming to the conclusion that calling tech support for anything is just a waste of time.
The other thing that kept me too busy to update the blog was three days of American Red Cross disaster assistance training. I’ve been wanting to volunteer with the Fairfax County chapter for some time now, and finally got around to resigning up to volunteer.
That meant having to spend the weekend from Thursday through Sunday at a DAT boot camp where they cram all kinds of training into a few days.
Anyway, I’m back to blogging, as long as Verizon works.
Spread the Wealth
Michelle Malkin asks, “What should Obama do with his $30 million campaign surplus?”
Beats me, but he could always hit the my donate button over there to the upper right.
Typos & Such
Got an email from a reader helpfully pointing out the misspellings and other grammatical errors in my posts over the past couple weeks. Though it irritates to make mistakes, I’m glad to know about them so I can correct them. So thanks, and feel free to use the comment section to let me know when I’ve screwed up.
Reading the post on Obama saying he wanted to “spread the wealth around” got me to thinking, “man I wish he’d spread some wealth my way.” Heard on the radio that the collective brain trust known as Congress may come up with some money for people with homes on the way to foreclosure.
I got a foreclosure notice from the mortgage company the other day. Yes, I’m one of those subprime borrowers who only barely qualified for a loan. At the time, 2001, I was making plenty of money and could easily afford the payments of my otherwise crappy loan (ARM, pre-payment penalties, etc.)
But, I’ve been out of steady work since April. Was doing odd jobs to keep cash coming in to pay the bills. Then I got sick at the end of June, spent most of July in the hospital, came out unable to even walk across the livingroom let alone work. Headed back to the hospital in September for yet another operation and only this week got the green light to return to normal activity.
I’ve had a few telephone interviews for jobs in my profession, journalism, and actually thought I landed a pretty lucrative one, but alas, none of them have panned out. I’ve lowered by sites, been applying for retail jobs, even convenience store jobs, promising to work any hours offered.
Finally started a new job — retail, low pay, but at least some pay — this week. Doesn’t pay a lot, not enough, in fact to pay the mortgage, second mortgage, car payment, phone, electric, etc., etc., etc., ad naseum.
Been debating filing for bankruptcy. I’ve got a huge amount of medical bills (from a previous, not the most recent, medical misadventure), and I figure between that and the mortgage debt, it might make sense just to bite the bullet and go bankrupt. They say it takes money to make money. Well, it also takes money to hire a lawyer to negotiate the bankruptcy process. A friend of mine is going through it now and it’s costing him 3K.
Needless to say I don’t have that kind of dough. So, I think I’m resigned to letting the bank take the house, scaling back to an apartment or smaller rental house and just letting the financial chips fall where they may.