The mind of a certified genius

For those of you who might remember me, and for those of you who don't, in June of this year, I found evidence of a sink hole on my property.

This property is in the Highlands Homeowners' Association, in Winter Springs.  If you can believe it, six months later, I JUST got this issue resolved.  This is actually considered very fast - most sink hole resolutions take a year.

When I first discovered the sink hole, I contacted my insurance company and found out that my mortgage company hadn't paid them on time - this, supposedly, happens quite frequently as banks merge.  I contacted my mortgage company and discovered that not only had they not paid my insurance, they'd reinsured me at a higher rate.  This coincided with them telling me that they were going to take a higher escrow amount, so when the price fluctuated, I attributed it to that. 

Lo and behold, kiddies - YOU are responsible EVERY YEAR to verify that your insurance company gets paid, and the mortgage company, amazingly, is not, and has NO LIABILITY for doing so.

So, I'm now insured by a company that considers me a high risk - well, right they were!  I had a sink hole.  It took them a month to respond to my claim with an adjuster.

If you don't know, the adjuster is there to look for a reason to put this to rest.  He cannot diagnose a problem with your house and has almost NO ability to assess damage.  He records and reports based on a program that the insurance company provides him, and this is usually just a measure of the 'percent ruined' each room is in your house.  This program is designed to make it difficult to assess specific damage to your house, and the adjuster can do nothing to alter it.

The adjuster recommended that the insurance company call a geologist.  The geological company took another month to show up - at this point there were cracks in my walls that you could stick your fingers into, and the ants and roaches pretty much ruled the place.  The geologist first does a 'sounding,' where they essentially do sonar all over your yard and then inside your house, which (a) looks for pockets underneath your house and (b) ruins your carpets. 

Then the geologist leaves with a promise to drill later, within a month.  A month to a geologist is about sixty days, and they're usually late.  At this point I'm seeing things like the a/c won't hold a charge anymore, and there are yellow stains in the ceiling where the roof is coming apart and leaking onto the ceilings.  When he came, not only was he kind enough to drill the property, he broke the water main outside of the property with his drill rig.  Three months later the city of Winter Springs has yet to figure out how to fix it.

And now you wait - it takes the geologist another six weeks to say, "You know what?  You have a sink hole," and four MORE weeks to write a detailed, fifty-page report on what a great sink hole it is.  Now there is a definate bend in the roof and you have dead gecko's in your walls.  The flashing under the eaves in the roof has come loose and there are trails in the fibreglass blown through the attic, where things are living up there and crawling around - but that's ok, because the insurance company, which has been completely non-committal up to now, has to admit: there is a sink hole.

Count on ANOTHER TWO MONTHS to get your check.  Why?

Well, you see, insurance companies used to do just the minimum they could to fix these things - usually patch the walls and grout, meaning pump concrete underneath them.  This would stop the progress for a few months or years, let them patch the walls, and then they would drop you as a client and you could go to the state-run 'insurance company of last resort.'  Well, a lot of lawyers got really, really rich suing them for that, so now they pretty much just roll over with their legs in the air when you have a sink hole.

It is practically guaranteed that the cost of the sink hole will exceed the insurance on the house.  In my case, the estimated cost of repairs on a 1,100 square foot house was $275,000.  This included grouting, underpinning (putting metal shafts between the bedrock and the slab under the house), raising the house and straightening it, repairing the damage throughout the house, but did NOT include things like fixing the roof, the a/c, the eaves, etc.

When the insurance company 'totals' your house, you don't give it to them, like you would your car.  The insurance company doesn't want your house.  They buy your policy out and drop you (in my case, you have to call and cancel your policy, which you never asked for in the first place), and then you have a broken house with no insurance, and a check for the full value of your coverage.

Did you notice that, at no time during this post, did I say 'Get a lawyer?'

DO NOT GET A SINK HOLE LAWYER.  NO, NO, NO, NO, NO.  DO NOT, NOT FOR ANY REASON, GET A SINK HOLE LAWYER.

If you have a sink hole, the slow bastards at the Insurance Company are going to pay, but they will take about two months to cut the check.  Count on them promising to cut the check before the weekend, every weekend of that two months.  There is nothing that any court can do to expedite that process - they have this down to a lack of science, they are slow, deal with it.  All a lawyer can do is to charge you 1/3 of the value of your settlement.

If the insurance company says, "Hey - no sink hole here," and they're wrong, then they're liable.  Sell the house for what you can get for it and run.  You can legally say, "I know that there is no sink hole here."  Patch it and unload it.  You can get your own geologist for around $10,000, but they're going to tell you the exact same thing.

So comes the final step - unloading your home.  There are people who buy sink hole houses.

These are not to be confused with 'we will buy any house,' 'we buy ugly houses' and 'sell your property fast,' places.  Buying sink hole properties is an exact science.  Rest assured - you aren't going to get even the cost of a new car for your house from them, but you won't own it anymore.

At one point, these properties were selling for $65k or more.  In this economy and for the next few years, if you get a third of that, God bless you.  They don't buy these houses out of the goodness of their hearts - they are going long on your property and looking to make a profit on the other end. 

Don't even waste your time with the people who just buy troubled houses.  They aren't going to know how to bid and they aren't going to give you a serious amount.

OK - you think that's it?  Oh, no, kiddies.  That ain't it.  There's one more thing:

Your neighbors are SCREWED.

You see, you have a sink hole.  That means that your neighbors are ABOUT to have (wait for it) a sink hole.

That's how I got mine - gift of my neighbor.  She filled hers and mine opened up.  But yanno what?  If I'd seen hers and sold right away, I'd have had to tell the next buyer, "My neighbor has a sink hole," and, in fact, there is a sink hole rider in your sales paperwork now.

The only people who get out of that are banks that are foreclosing.  Isn't that cool?  You can buy a foreclosure house next to sinkhole house, and they don't have to tell you, because your bank can legitimately say, "Hey, man - how are we supposed to know?"

But, for example, if you're buying nextdoor to my property, my neighbor has to tell you, "See that house?  It had a sink hole," for the next seven years.

Yeah - can't wait to buy that!

So that concludes it, kiddies.  That's the whole sinkhole story for me.  I hope this helps someone else who may someday have one.  As for me?  I've moved.  I'd been in the same place for 14 years - I ended up with better than market value for my house, so I did ok.  If you just bought your place, and you're already upside down, and you just read this and are wondering how fast a bottle of pills will actually get the job done, keep this in mind:

If you plan to stay in your house, then the insurance company can often exceed the value of your policy by as much as ten percent, but you have to know to ask for it and to make your case.  Again - DO NOT INVOLVE A LAWYER.  You have a WAY better chance with the actual insurance company reps, the lawyer just wants to get you into court so that he can get a big pay off.  You're almost guaranteed to be worse off when he's done.

OK, my little droogies, I'm out.  I've moved to TN, I'm done with the Lightening State.

I came to Florida in 1994, and I bought a house in three great school districts (elementary, middle and high) for $72,000.  I was able to get a job pretty quickly, to change careers, to get more work when I needed it and to live a pretty decent life.

What happened in Central Florida is what's going wrong with America - we became over confident.

Our grandparents lived in a world where the US had to struggle for its position.  They believed that the state had a responsibility to its own people, that the Fed was a solutuion of last resort, and that personal responsibility should take care of no less than 75% of what's going on in your life.

Now we believe that we're living in a Star Trek version of our world - where the real enemies are conquered, where we can ask the omnicient computer for solutions to our problems, if we can just phrase the question cleverly enough, and where taking care of us is someone else's problem.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Right now, we are run by some of the most corrupt politicians in our history, and our news media are blind to it.  In Central Florida it's easier to resurface a road than it is to fund a school, because there is a MOUNTAIN of graft in the construction project and almost none in the educational system. 

In Winter Springs (which is awful for its corruption) we have all new fake-brick intersections down SR434, and the city sent out a secondary bill to fund the fire department, with a threat to slap a lien on your house if you didn't pay this secondary, un-voted-for tax.

In Orlando, homes and businesses will bear the burden of of a 14% tax increase to pay for the city's swollen welfare rolls, adopted after Katrina, to keep that base of loyal Democrat voters from moving. 

And you will all enjoy tighter and tighter water restrictions no matter how much it rains, and more dramatic sink holes (and more ways for homeowners to not be covered by insurance companies) as these politicians have allowed the state to be dramatically overbuilt in centralized locations, as they seek more tax revenues and accept higher and higher pay offs from developers.

 With 800+ people per day coming into the state for over two years, most of them from CA and the Northeast, stand by for Florida to become a blue state, meaning higher taxes, a state income tax, increased crime and more people like me fleeing for a better life.

In fact, you're already well on your way.  I predict that you'll have that state income tax within the next two years - just as soon as they can put a Democrat in the governor's seat.  I saw this happen in Connecticut.  Then all of the big insurance companies left and the big manufacturers with them. 

So good-bye for the final time, Florida.  Sorry to be so gloomy, but as Americans, we don't always get the government we want, however we ALWAYS get the government we deserve.

It's looking as of this morning that our Congress is incapable of proposing and then paying a bail out.

Personally, I hope it doesn't happen. This is NOT a good idea. First - let's look at what happened:

We had a housing boom, and of course when any sector of the economy does well, two things happen:
1. Another sector points at it and says, "Hey! Not fair!"
2. The government looks at it as a revenue source, and usually then spends that revenue immediately.

In this case, you have a few culprits who got together, inside and outside of the government, who decided that they could make themselves REALLY wealthy on this bubble, and then did. In this case, persons like Franklin Raines (director of Fannie Mae, former Clinton advisor, present Obama advisor), and congressmen like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, worked together to force a series of high risk loans at exceptional rates, using Fannie Mae to actually purchase the loans and then power of Congress to (a) mandate the writing of loans to persons with questionable abilities to pay them, under the guise of equal opportunity housing and (b) block any legislation that would stop the practice or correct the problem.

Raines cleaned up to the tune of over $50,000,000 in commissions that he awarded himself, and rewarded his cronies with a series of cheap loans that we already know of, and exceptional contributions to their political campaigns that we're just finding out about.

More seriously, using a dynamo like Fannie Mae, Raines forced the private sector to parrot his actions in order to do business. Their practice became to buy these loans with the intention of selling them to Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae, who was only too happy to buy them. This was supported on a liquidity practice as loose as $1 against $30, which is pretty much insane.

Now you're looking at a Congress which doesn't dare do much investigation for fear of repeating 2006 on the Democrat side (remember how a few pervert Republican Congressmen dragged the whole party down - you do NOT want to blame a trillion dollar disaster on key Democrats), which just lost the off-shore drilling battle, which has a 9% approval rating already and which now might have to either (a) survive a thundering deficit born under a weak economy driving up interest rates (recreating the conditions of the Carter administration or (b) not bailing out the economy and handing the Republicans a disasterous October in an election year.

The big question: will a bail out actually work?

Well, if you create a slush fund of cheap loans for struggling businesses and say, "Show us how you'll pay us back, and we'll help you," then yes, it works. Look at the 2001 airlines bailout. Of $10,000,000,000 proposed dollars, only $1,100,000,000 was actually loaned, and then paid back in stock to the Fed, which sold it at a huge profit, so in fact we made money on that bail out as tax payers.

However, if you take this money and use it to buy influence and control of all of the major financial institutions and then turn that over to members of Congress, you're going to recreate the problem on a larger scale, which seems to be what Congress wants to do. They want to limit persons like Raines and not actually prosecute the actual Franklin Raines, which is the logical choice. They want to be able to hire their own watch-dog organizations which usually end up being their political cronies, with goals closer to making sure that loans are still going to people who can't afford them (the original problem) than to making sure that good loans are being written.

In a perfect world, you slap handcuffs on a clearly corrupt CEO, who would then very likely cry, "I couldn't do it if the Congress didn't let me!" to the first camera he could find, and take your lumps.

Not going to happen - especially not in an election year.

So, no - no bail out. Bad, bad idea. Capitolism works, it just doesn't work fairly. Tell me something - what does? When did ANYONE every say, "I got my fair share of success" with a smile on their face? In Capitolism, the strong survive and, oddly, it's the people who actually believe in Darwinism who seem not to like it.

are you going to be ok with me telling you that you aren't straight forward enough, and that you need to call a spade a spade?

I was done blogging here, but this morning, here was Barack Obama, in a puff-piece interview with George "Bill Clinton is my Hero" Stephanopoulous.

During it, he gets agitated because George is daring to press him on his campaign's claim that McCain has been calling him a Muslim.  GS wants to set the record straight that it is right-wing bloggers, not McCain, that have made this accusation, and in fact that McCain asked them to stop.

After trying a few times to say that this is just bloggers acting under McCain's direction, he says, "Look, I know that John McCain has never made comments about my Muslim faith."

"Your Christian Faith," GS IMMEDIATELY corrects him, because, let's face it, George isn't going to take Obama down THAT road.

Obama leaps out of the question and changes the subject and, of course, GS doesn't press him, however, if you've every read either of Obama's yawner books, you'll be reminded of something he said in 'Dreams of my father":

"If the winds of political opinion ever really turned, I'd have no choice but to stand with the Muslim people."

So when Obama says, "My Muslim faith," I think it's a pretty legitimate question to ask, "WHAT Muslim faith, specifically?"

Kudo's and well done, Sarah - I was even able to overlook your frightening resemblance to Tina Fey.

You, my girl, have nailed it - you've done EXACTLY what it's going to take to win this election and to lead your party for possibly the next 16 years:

You took Obama on, you called him what he is, and you REALLY pissed him off.

The key to beating ol' big ears is to take him on directly, because he doesn't handle confrontation well, he doesn't like to be questioned or made fun of, and when he's off script he invariably says something stupid that he regrets later and that hurts him.

The key to this victory will be to get Obama to disqualify himself, and he'll do that by changing his story, making misquotes that can be used to show his lack of understanding of the world around him, and looking uncomfortable and unsure under stress.

Which is why he won't agree to the debates he initially wanted with McCain. 

Palin took Obama on directly and now he has to answer.  I'm sure that David Axelrod is writing furiously as I type this, but reporters looking to 'give Obama a chance to respond' are going to be waving microphones in his face while he's upset, and that bodes well for our party.

Well done, Sara - and as you put it so well, "The only difference between a pitbull and a soccer mom is the lipstick."

This will likely be my last blog entry.  I'm sure that Sussi will be happy about that.

Like many, many, MANY technology-employed people, I am getting out of Orlando.

I can make the same money in a more decent place, like Tennessee, and stil have no state tax.  I won't have to deal with a local government which has become REMARKABLY corrupt and greedy, and home owners associations with jack-booted thugs who vote themselves the power to tell me what color my house is allowed to be.

I drive home every day, all of nine miles, and never see less than two speed traps.  Imagine that - Florida cops have actually become tax collectors with guns now.  In Winter Springs, we received, with NO VOTE, an additional bill on top of our taxes for the services of the fire department.  Meanwhile, Winter Springs has surfaced a bunch of intersections along SR 434 at a cost of millions of dollars, so that they would have fake brick instead of asphalt.

I could go on and on, but it isn't like the rest of you don't know what I'm talking about.  In parting, a few tips I've picked up on living here:

1. You know the service writer at the car dealership where you bring your car for warranty work?  You are greeted by him as he writes up your car for repair?  Yeah - he makes $50k - $75k/yr, and I know because I did that job for a year. 

2. The reason that all of the hurricanes are hyped so much, even when they're clearly not going to hit us, is that hurricanes are HUGE advertising money.  I know THAT from working at WDBO. 

3. If you want to sell to Disney, as I used to, hang out at the Orlando Ale House in Lake Buena Vista on Fridays.

4. A decent programmer in Central Florida will make $87,000/yr on average, with no college education in programming.  At least that's what I'm making.  All I ever did was read the book that I bought on the discount table at Books-A-Million, and bought Visual Studio on EBay.  ANYONE can be a programmer, who has the ability to fail a few hundred times before they succeed, and not get frustrated.

5. I made most of my money here as a consultant.  If you believe that a recession is coming, then being a consultant is a REALLY good idea, because no one buys software in a recession, and no one hires new people, but they still need the services and the productivity. 

What is the key to being a successful consultant, you ask?  Wait for it......

CHARGE A LOT.  I shi'ite you not - I had an average web site and one year of programming experience, and I was charging $125/hr for my services and couldn't keep up.  No one pays for advice from someone who makes less than they do.  People with more knowledge who tried to undercut my prices often ended up working for me.  I would hang out on forums where people asked for advice on how to do things, I would look the answers up (usually on the Internet) and post them, and then when these people became frustrated, they'd pay me to do the work for them. 

So good-by to Hell's Waiting Room, Florida. I won't miss you, but I'll probably root for the Bucs for a while.

This was passed to me by a friend.  Maybe this is a job for {gasp} Sussi

http://thechaistory.blogspot.com/search?updated-min
=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01
T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=3

The toy that they are talking about, and which is still available for purchase, is here:

http://www.fourpaws.com/products/pimple-ball-with-b
ell.htm

Four Paws is fully aware that this toy is poorly designed, and can result in SUCKING THE DOG'S TONGUE INTO THE BALL, requiring surgery to remove the ball, and the removal of the dog's tongue.

My advice: don't roll these dice.  Boycott all Four Paws toys

Seriously, Sussi - if you take these bastards on, I'll hand deliver you a signed copy of my book.

This morning I got the call from the stables, and I knew it. He'd been collicky yesterday, while I was on a plane back from Tennessee, where I had a job interview. I'd set the alarm to see him early this morning, but not early enough.

Gandalf died of a stomach rupture. I wish I could say that I could have done something more, but in fact the bad weather carrying on for SO long probably exascerbated what would have been a relatively minor problem, and it was more than he could handle.

Gandalf was a 2,000 lb Belgian, but his heart was bigger. He'd been abused, and I reclaimed him and taught him that he could have fun with people. He loved to ride, to pound the earth with his gigantic hooves, me on his back, leaning into the wind.

When I finally learned to move with him, he showed me feelings that I didn't even know I could have.

Everyone at the stable was in tears. People just loved him. People would just stop by, total strangers, to see him run out in the pasture. Little kids would get on his back to be pony-ridden, sometimes three at a time, and he just knew to be gentle with him.

We who rescue, who take the animals that others have abandoned, have harmed, have left, we know both a joy and a sadness that raises us up higher than the clouds, sometimes just to dash us to the ground without warning.

I think the Lord does that to remind us that we are not angels, only men, only people, mortals with heart, and a desire to, if we can't save them, help as best we can.

Our reward isn't in our accomplishments. Our reward is in ourselves, before we even try.

So here we have a little sneeze, Tropical Storm Fizzle - um, Fay.

Two days, no school for the kids.

Calling for an emergency before the storm is within 100 miles of Florida

Evacuations for moderate rain.

Why?

Because the people in power will be DARNED if they're going to have little Suzy Sunshine get hit by a flying branch on the way to the bus stop and the news vultures screaming, "Why wasn't school cancelled?"

Or someone who left their windows open crying their eyes out on the evening news, "Why wasn't I warned?  Everything is ruined!"

In general, Fox news casters have more class, but you know darn well that CBS news (especially) would be all over that, and no one with tax dollars to spend is going to let it happen.

I may sound cynical, but see if I'm wrong: this is going to be a VERY expensive, take-no-chances hurricane season.

Hurricane coverage.

Now, this time, Fox hasn't been so guilty of it, but I just watched Stephanopolis' morning show, and it was interupted TWICE to report a storm that won't be here until Tuesday at the earliest

If it comes here at all.

You know, if I were in Miami, I'd probably want to know every hour where the storm was, and if I am going to be keeping the kid home on Monday

But to hear about this EVERY TWENTY MINUTES - no, absolutely not.

And the KIND of coverage:

We aren't doing anything now here at Emergency operations, but we're READY to!

We are ready to go at a moment's notice.

We're watching, and we're waiting.

Hey, guys - if people WANT to watch this, how about a new TV show, based on filming grass growing, huh? 

Fox - stick with what you're doing.  Nothing.  We aren't worried about this, and we aren't going to be until - MAYBE - Monday night.

Supposedly Kerry is on the short, short list for Obama's VP choices.

I PRAY that this is the decision he makes.

They look at Kerry as bring foreign relations experience, money and credibility to the ticket.  Kerry has recently started a web site to fight back against what he considers to be 'Obama smears,' like the #1 selling book right now: Obama Nation.

Of course, Kerry is also the genius who, standing 25 feet away from his Chevy Suburban, swore that he'd never own an SUV

Who made legendary the phrase, "I voted for it before I voted against it."

Who couldn't remember his own Vietnam experience, who admittedly lied before Congress after that experience, and then who couldn't remember if he'd thrown his own medals over the White House wall as a protest - or what the difference was between ribbons and medals.

I have a new phrase all ready for the Obama/Kerry ticket:

Dumb and Dumber

Whenever I see a movie about ancient Greeks

Or Romans

Or Egyptians

That all of the actors affect English accents?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-mayor080
7,0,4563211.story

OK, here it is in a nutshell.

A bold new way to smuggle drugs is to ship them to the homes of random people and, when they're dropped off, go pick them up, once you're sure that there isn't a cop there waiting for you.

And who do these smugglers pick but the Mayor Berwyn Heights, Maryland?  So the cops, aware that these drugs are being shipped because a drug dog detected them, wait for the Mayor to come home, and bring the drugs inside, and then wait for him to walk his two labradors, and THEN wait for him to get back.

Then they converge on the house and bust in, guns out.

We aren't talking crack house here - we're talking Mayor's pretty expensive house, in a part of town where you'd expect a Mayor to live.

First move out of the first lab, and they gun it down in the Mayor's kitchen, in front of his mom, whom they hand cuff and toss on the floor next to the dead dog.

Next move - gun down the other dog as it tries to run away.

Follow up - track dog blood all over the house as they round up the rest of the family, before they realize what's going on, four hours later.

When they untie the old lady, still lying on the floor next to the dead dog.

Hence: Out of control cops.

I am no advocate for the rights of criminals - far from it, but these are guys who just thought it would be cool to kill some dogs while they raid a drug dealer's house, and according to the article, they've done it before.

You know, if a cop busted open my door and tied me up for four hours, and then realized that they were at the wrong address or something similar, that's one thing.  They're human, mistakes happen. 

They come in guns blazing, leave my mom tied up on the floor for four hours and gun down my dogs for kicks - I don't care who they are.  They are each going to have a REAL bad accident, off the clock, and I'm not going to lose a wink of sleep over it.  That badge doesn't mean, "I have all the rights, and you have none."

I didn't like what I saw on Fox News tonight.

Look, there is no reason to go digging into the past of her boyfriend and why he didn't make it as a cop.  As well, there's no reason to harass the guy as he tries to go out to eat and ask him questions about dating Anthony.

THIS is tabloid journalism, and it's cheesey.