craigb

I'm of the opinion that, if I made it once, I can do it again and even better this time! I've been in several start-up companies because I'm too old to start a new career from scratch. I did try to find "normal" work just to survive, but you would not believe how much age discrimination goes on now either! Almost everyone uses an online job application, but they're sneaky and require you to enter the year you graduated high school which allows the software to weed you out. I tried for 13 months to find a job, ANY job (I happen to like eating and having a roof over my head). At one point, I applied for over 130 positions over 13 months. I was over-qualified for all of them (all your basic minimum-wage type jobs like stocking shelves during a graveyard shift were included). I only heard back from THREE (out of the 130). Of the three potential jobs, I had two successful interviews with one (joining the electronics department at Target) where they really wanted me however, before the final interview, I got a generic email that the process wouldn't be going any further (no reason given). During my interview at Home Depot, they guy said I really should be applying for his boss' job. I jokingly asked "Is it available?" to which he laughed and said no... He subtly made it known though that they would highly prefer cheap Mexican labor with no aspirations of moving up (gee, I thought that was illegal...). The third interview was at a UPS Store where I was literally told that they were afraid that, if they hired me, that I would probably leave in two weeks as soon as I got a better job (the fact that I'd been looking for months without any luck didn't seem to sink in with them). I ended up doing my own IT consulting mostly with friends who owned businesses. Then I had a nice turn of events. I had been taking my Mom to see the same hair stylists for ten years. Needless to say, I got to know most of the main stylists. When I was talking with one she said "Hey, your Mom says you're looking for a new job. What do you do?" When I said IT consulting she immediately said I needed to talk with her son. He'd been having trouble finding anyone he could rely on (I found out later this was a poke at his brother and a cousin that he had tried to help by hiring them). After a 20 minute phone interview where we hardly touched on any of the usual questions, I was hired. I later found out that his Mom had said "He takes great care of his Mother! Hire him!" LOL! That was almost four years ago now and, although he's still my boss for his IT consulting firm, he's occasionally my employee when we do things for my prior clients and, together, we're business partners in two side-business start-ups (soon to have a third). We'd love to get away from the annoying IT world and have an internet-only business. So, my life is something like 40 hours per week with the normal job (pays the bills) and 50 hours per week getting the startups going (or winding them down if they don't work out). I'm busy, but surviving and making progress. Ironically, 90% of my entire social life is this forum! Just not a lot of time (or money) yet to go out a lot. Soon! ? Man Christian, you'd make a good psychiatrist! ?

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Yes, I'm referring to Toddskin's topic. While I do believe it had run its course, started to go wild and should have been locked, there was good information in there that is now lost. No need to take it any further, but I did want to add something I just calculated for others during lunch: Looking at today's statistics, I'm seeing 1,088 cases of COVID-19 in the US with 31 deaths (source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html). This equates to almost exactly the same mortality rate as shown in the video I linked to earlier (2.8%). Sure, this will continue to spread for a while and more deaths will be attributed to it but, as of now, with 327.2 million people in the US, this means you have less than a 1 in 10.5 million chance of dying from the virus. For perspective, you have a 1 in 700,000 chance of dying due to being hit by lightning. So, be safe (it's about time people started paying more attention), but don't be fooled into thinking this is worse than all the toxicity already in everything or all the deficiencies in things like food and water. These are FAR more of a threat.

Wow... Only 32... Sad.

And... Just in case it was missed... "in" & "Posts" "Posts" -> "Po sts" "Po" + "in" + "sts" = "Points" See what I did there? ? .

This just blows!

You post in posts and you get points. . Simples.

Ah, "the story" (since it's been told too many times)... While I was going to college to try and finish a PhD (and not working), the 2008-9 so-called "Credit Crunch" hit and, due to a lot of bizarre and illegal banking events, I ended up losing two houses, a vehicle and over $820k. Although laws were passed to stop foreclosures and relief programs were created eventually, these were aimed only at those that had actually caused the problem: I.e., Those that had bought real estate for 0-5% down and were not making their payments... I (and several of my friends actually) come from the other end of the spectrum. Even while not working and owning two houses, I had an 811 FICO score and had never had a late payment plus I had put a lot down of each house (35% on mine and 25% on the one I bought for my Mom). While doing some minor remodeling on mine, I a lot of code violations were discovered (the previous owners were crooks). Add that to some expensive fencing I had to do when an 80 foot top of a tree fell and wiped out a section (there were some legal issues discovered here too), and these totaled well over $100k using up a lot of my cash reserves. If you aren't familiar with the Credit Crunch time period, basically the Central Banks did a ploy where they told all commercial banks that they were not allowed to lend money to anyone for any reason. For me, this meant I had several hundred thousands in equity I couldn't get to, so I had to use lines of credit to pay things off until I could get to more of my money (checks I had that could be used for 2.9% fixed for the life of the loan). After this, there were a string of illegal bank maneuvers (better explained over a beer) which forced me to stop going to college and try to get work ASAP to keep things. That's when I found out about the next effect: Employers weren't hiring. I was told that, regardless of how qualified I was, they were only allowed to hire someone with two years of current experience. I was able to find some IT consulting work with a friend, but the client to the company that hired us lost their funding (due to the Credit Crunch) which caused the company that hired us to cut projects and staff to survive. That included us. As a last ditch effort, I tried selling first one house and then the other at HUGE discounts. In each case, the financial institutions put up whatever barriers were required to make the sales fail (like taking 10 days to provide a payoff amount!). On my Mom's house, we had it sold but, during the closing, we found out that they had illegally gone in, changed the locks and sold it at auction for $30k less before the foreclosure date! We had to literally track down the guy hired to take out whatever was in the house to get back some of my Mom's furniture (I already had moved her into my house). On my house, I sold it six times (the last for just $239k after it had just been appraised for $541k right before the s*** hit the fan). In all cases, the sale fell through because the banks still weren't lending. Sure, I tried selling things, including parts of my studio (I had about $134k invested into it), but nobody could get to their cash or they were also facing foreclosure. By the end of this fiasco, banks owned 1/3(!!!!) of all residential property in the U.S. (they're not supposed to own any!). Fortunately, I've always helped my friends and one gave me a tiny 9' x 11' room to sleep in (prior to his having to go through similar crap). I was also lucky to get my Mom into a Government subsidized senior apartment complex (she's 90 now). It took me a year and a half to earn enough to go bankrupt and, part of the requirements, were to only have up to $300 worth of musical gear. Sure, I know now that, due to the overwhelming number of people who went under, I could have lied and kept a lot of things, but I was always the one trying to do things legally - silly me. The only reason I have the guitar in the avatar (which is worth three times everything else I own) is that it had been paid for, but was not finished being built. It didn't get finished until nine years later! My luthier did buy one of my other customs just to hold it for me until I was back on my feet. I pay him $100 here or $200 there when I can and I've almost paid it off. Although I wouldn't wish the scenario on my worst enemy (if I had any), I definitely learned a lot about what's important in life and who my friends really are! I was never even close to the lowest point even when I was young, and certainly never almost homeless. Starting over when you're approaching 50 is not for the faint of heart either, but I intend to be even more well off in the fairly near future! (Damn Craig! He only typed FIVE words! Sorry... ? tl;dr "I got screwed by the Fed and went bankrupt!")

An old bull and a young bull are on top of a hill looking down at the herd... Young bull: "Hey! Let's run down and f*** a cow!" Old bull: "No, Son... Let's walk down and f*** ALL the cows."

There does seem to be a lot of static around... Maybe a Faraday Cage would help?

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Hmm... What did Wibbles quote of mine and then delete? ? .

That second one has a very Mandala look to it - noice! ?

It hear it prefers a large dongle...

Wibbles gets first runner-up though... ?

We have a winner! Good job Mesh! ??

I'm constantly reminded how there's so much good music and so little time! ?

I get some with just a high-end cable between the guitar and amp (yes, I've tried multiple cables). However, the wah pedal REALLY "amps" up the radio sound (my roommate has the same one and both do this). I know, I really still need to try my guitar into another amp to make sure it's not only the amp, but I kind of think it's a bit of both. BTW - I used to have a Keely compressor - VERY cool pedal!

Oh... I was guessing he accidentally sat on a hot bench while streaking. My bad.

Cooper Temple > Stone Temple Blind Pilots > Pilots

Well, that's what I get for making a quick assumption! I'll have to go back and listen then!

TD does a pretty nice version of Purple Haze too but, after two, I thought I'd go a different way (and let someone ELSE choose Prince's song!). ?

TMI? ?