Category Archives: Problems

Anticipating A Large Drop in the Stock Market From the US Losing the AAA Credit Rating

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I’ve never heard of the US Credit Rating dropping from Triple A before, it’s a first in my lifetime.

I personally think that it’s the government’s fault for not being in touch with reality.  For instance, while I can see the benefits in the healthcare reform, it comes at a bad time.  In my opinion, it’s like throwing gasoline on a forest fire, obviously it’s not going to help and will definitely make matters worse. I also think it’s a bit silly to attack the restrict the banks.  The banks provide the blood lines for our country.  To attack them is like a dog biting the person feeding it.  Then we have all of those lovely layers upon layers of complex innovation-restricting compliance laws…  Like those are going to help, geez…  Even the politicians can’t keep them straight…

Then we have the war that was based on preventing Iraq’s former leader (Saddam Hussein) from developing WMD (weapsons of mass destruction).  It seems like we picked the one country that didn’t have such a program (but who really knows?).  Do we really believe that a true democratic society will stay in existence in Iraq?  Really?  Or eventually will a Muslim Theocracy or another dictator come into power and pretty much control things from that point on?  Democracy is like a plant than needs certain conditions to exists, and I don’t believe those conditions are in Iraq.  Hopefully I’m wrong, but…

To me, it seems like both the republican and the democrats are going after their own agendas and casting a blind eye to the real problems in the US, which is the inability of the US worker to compete and acquire jobs, and obviously control our own debt.

Instead of looking around and solving problems, they are looking at their own party agendas with a level of tunnel vision that I’ve never seen before.  The problem is that both parties represent different classes other than the middle class which seems to be getting a raw deal from both!

The government need to wake up and stop making excuses.  The parties need to stop following their party agendas and look around and come up with new, smarter ideas from a global perspective.  After all, the game has changed and both parties need to consider the up and comers like China and other emerging countries.

In the meant time, the US stock markets are going to get pummeled tomorrow (Monday).  I wonder how much the markets will retreat and what, if anything, will stop a long continuous decline?

Update (still Monday):  The market dropped as expected and surprisingly, I decided to buy some stocks.  While not a huge position, I have to wonder if I’m trying to catch a falling knife?…

 

MR

 

Backstabbing Friends – Are They Really Worth It

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During my college days, I lived in a co-ed dorm for a short period of time.  The guys lived on the odd floors and the women lived on the even floors.

At the cafeteria, I kept eating the same time as this friendly and fairly attractive girl that lived in my dorm building did.  After a while of being in the lines at the same time, we started joking around and became friends.  Occasionally, we would even eat together, but this wasn’t an everyday common occurrence since I had a girlfriend and she had a boyfriend.

One day she was almost in tears back at the dorm.  I asked what was wrong and she told me that she was going to flunk a class because she didn’t prepare a report on the movie “Blade Runner” (I think she didn’t read the book or something like that).  So she was desperately looking for someone with a car that could take her to get the video so that she could watch and create a report based off of the video.

Since I felt like we were friends, I told her I could help.  So I drove her to a video store that was 5 miles away.  She picked up the movie and as we were going to the cashier to rent the movie, but the owner said we needed to be a member.  Fine, so I thought I’d sit back and let her become a member.

Well, turns out she didn’t bring her driver’s license and they required a license to get a movie.  I put on my proverbial super hero cape AGAIN and got a membership card.  My “friend” then gave me the money to rent the video.

She thanked me profusely when we got back to the dorm and almost ran to her dorm room to watch the video and write the report.

Time Lapse…  2 or 3 weeks.

I forgot about the video, thinking my “friend” got her boyfriend to drive her to the video store, but he hadn’t and the video store called me wanting their video back.

I try to contact her multiple times, but she didn’t respond and wasn’t around as much.  Eventually I did bump into her and asked her about the video.  She said something lame like she forgot and told me she is moving out of the dorm and into her boyfriend’s house.  I was pissed, and said that I need the video.  She said that she would get it for me before she moved.

A few days later, I came back from classes to my dorm and my roommate asked if a video he found outside leaning against our dorm door was mine.  I looked and it was!  Apparently my “friend” came, realized nobody was in the dorm and leaned it against the door and left… Nice…

So I returned it, and the video store wanted some outrageous money for it being so late.  I was hot about then entire deal and explained the problems I had and walked out never to return (yes I realize that it wasn’t the right thing to do).

After that, I never seen my “friend” again, and I’m guessing she did poorly in the class and dropped out of school entire or transferred.

The point of this story is even though I was being a superhero, I really ended up being a victim.

That was the last time I’ve ever lent anything of value to a friend.  So far, this has worked out quite nicely for me.  I know and heard of other friends going lending thousands and never getting paid back.

You can have a friend like I had (she was fun to be around), but if they are kind of flaky, don’t lend them money or things of value!

Have you even went out of your way to help a friend, only to have them stab you in the back afterwards?

MR

Purging Items That Appear To Have Value But Don’t

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My basement is full of Items That Appear To Have Value But Don’t!

I have over 15 computers in my house, but only 4 are currently being used.  While I don’t have any computer that doesn’t have at least a 32 bit CPU inside, some of them are still just too slow and obsolete to ever be useful again.

Having such computers sitting in your house taking up precious space is just a waste of floor space.  I know that I will never use those computers again, and yet I still have many of them sitting down in my basement.  My logic is that I might use them for router or perhaps install some variant of a Linux operating system on some of them…, but I won’t…

Why do we hold onto old things that once had value but really doesn’t anymore?  Perhaps there is a bit of a nostalgic feeling with the item?  Or maybe we feel like we’ll give the obsolete item to our children, or other family members, or even friends.  Knowing that it held great value to us during a time period and we would like it to mean something to someone else too.

But unfortunately most of the time it’s really just junk, especially technology.  If you are holding onto a “Palm Pilot” thinking that your kids could use it, don’t!  First, it now looks horrible and is terribly underpowered.  Your child’s peers will laugh at them if they were to use it, don’t put your kids through that type of embarrassment!

With other junk, you just throw it in the garbage can and it’s taken away.  With computer this isn’t a good move!  There are toxic pieces in the computer that should be taken to a recycling plant so they can either recycling the toxic pieces or properly dispose of the toxic parts.

Another thing that people tend to hang onto is old outdated clothes.  Even if you could fit in them, they are so out of fashion that you would look odd trying to wear them again, at least in public.  If your clothes are older than 5 years old, and you haven’t worn them in the past five years, send them to goodwill, put them in a garage sale, or pitch them!  You know that you will never wear them again, so don’t kid yourself!

Free yourself of unnecessary clutter and experience more room!

Have a good weekend,

MR

 

Toro Lawn Mower Woes, Complaining To Get It Fixed For Free

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Toro Lawn Mower

Toro Lawn Mower

Well after writing up a glowing review of my Toro Lawn Mower, it decided to break… Murphy’s Law strikes again!

Once of the most important points for me when I bought my lawn mower, was that the product had to have some type of warranty.  But when I called the dealer where I bought my lawn mower to complain about my problem, he said that my issue sounds like bad gas and that Toro doesn’t include that in their warranty.

This really irked me because the lady salesperson that I bought the mower from said that the Toro warranty covers everything between the wheels.  I specifically asked that question twice, and she said that it was all covered no matter what the problem.  So I started complaining calling the Toro product junk and while I didn’t swear, I called the product and warranty crap…  After a while the guy (I believe the owner of the store), caved and told me to bring it in and that they would look at it and fix it for free.

During the phone conversation, he told me all kinds of reasons why the problem wasn’t with the mower.  Problems like the gas, the EPA changes, and how I must have used old gas, etc…  I went to the two gas stations that I typically go to fill my gas can and asked them directly, they stood by their gas quality.  Next, I called the owner back and explained how the gas was good and that I used the same can for the previous four lawn cuts this year already.

The point is, I didn’t give up and kept to the facts and even did extra work to backup my claim.  I continued to have a dissatisfied voice, but I wasn’t condescending.  After a verbal joust, eventually the owner caved and fixed my mower.  He said that I had some brown stuff in the tank which must have clogged up the carburetor (or so they claimed).  I don’t care as long as it’s fixed and works again.

Since the mower was worked on I noticed that the engine sounds even better than when I bought it, so I’m guessing that the engine had problems from the start.

This little adventure just goes to show that the squeaky wheel does get oiled the most!  I stuck by my guns and got my problem fixed for free by talking about my the past experiences and how I’ve mowed with many types of mowers and never encountered this problems, etc.  And eventually the owner offered assistance.

Never give up when you are wronged in cases like this one!  By sticking to my guns, I saved myself both time and money.

MR

Update:  Since the toro lawnmower was repaired, it’s been running great and even sounds better than when I first bought it.  I’m starting to think there was something in the tank that did clog the fuel lines, but I’m sure it wasn’t from bad gas as was claimed.  It’s good to have a decent mower again!