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Post by CampKohler on Nov 22, 2015 23:58:07 GMT
I found my notes in the back of the car under several layers. Why not lock your lock on your bike so you will always have it when you need it? I have found that most of the locks where cables come in from both sides of the lock body can be teased into revealing the combo by putting tension on the cable and turning the numbers.
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I tried looking at 70 Cushing, but SV has sparse coverage in Ashburnham. Which house is it on the aerial view of Cushing (counting from either Hwy 12 on the south or Hastings Rd on the north)?
In the pix, is the rear portion with a small window "the barn?"
What happened to drop the $306K 2003 price down to today's $90K?
Why is nearby Upper Naukeag Lake south of Lower Naukeag Lake? Does it have to do with elevation? (Using regular Google maps here at the library, I don't see elevation like you can on GE.)
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Yesterday I finished entering all the available data in on Excel file for one property, my friend's road. By the time I got through gussying it up, it had enough columns to make it as wide as the PC screen. So, if I tried putting all the properties in the original 10 acre subdivision lot into one file, it would be 36 PC screens wide. That is OK for viewing, but I would have to cut down trees in order to print it out. So I had better stick with 1 property = 1 file. I could put an excerpt of the county's parcel map on a Webpage and then put a link from each parcel to its own excel file, but I don't know how to embed a bunch of links in a photo. I think you have to map areas on the photo and then use each area to activate a link. The last time I looked into it was at least a decade ago, so it is a little fuzzy (Webheimer's).
I got a pair of Polk Audio R10 bookshelf speakers with stands at GW last night for 16 USD. Reviews say they sound decent, but, because they are small, they won't be earthshaking. In the past year, I have picked up a couple of big subwoofers for less than 20 USD, so maybe I can bodge them together.
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I finished Season 2 and 5 of the Mentalist. I put in a request at the library for Season 1 just out of curiosity. Also Season 1 of Downton Abbey. Might as well start at the beginning.
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Speaking of the library, I found a hole in their software. They use two different programs for a) managing the patrons/collections and b) PC reservations. I found out that because of this, I can make a reservation on the Web, sit down at a differently-numbered available PC and log in with my username from b) and then go to the reserved PC and login with my library card number from a) and it doesn't twig to it. When I showed this to the librarian, she said that is not supposed to be possible and will report it, but they may not be able to fix it due to the two different software packages from two different companies.
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Tomorrow the library is closed, but the Recorder's office is open. Zoom - zoom!
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 23, 2015 3:46:27 GMT
If you click the arrow on the side of the photo on the Zillow listing, the 2nd and 3rd photos will show the barn to the right of the house. Google Street View didn't make it up Cushing Street. In the satellite photos, the house is at the corner where Cushing Street meets Hastings Street, at the upper right corner of the triangular green, just below Meeting House Hill Cemetery. It is the top of a hill, and the views of the horizons are impressive.
2003-2005 was probably the peak for real estate prices around here. The people who paid $306,000 for this house 12 years ago probably found they couldn't keep up payments, or perhaps they died and the bank or estate is selling it, and also a new water tower was built just next to the house.
Not sure what "GE" stands for. If you click Satellite View, zooming in on Lower Naukeag Lake, and using the red arrow to rotate the images, I think you will find that Upper Naukeag does seem to be a higher elevation than Lower Naukeag.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 23, 2015 13:38:31 GMT
I stumbled on a website last night that recommends other websites you might be interested in, that you may not have heard of. It's called StumbleUpon.
It gave me a list of a dozen Wiki sites. It occurred to me I could create my own wiki site just for songs, where people can list other songs that are similar in some way.
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Post by CampKohler on Nov 24, 2015 22:28:21 GMT
GE = Google Earth, which is a more powerful version of google.com/maps aerial view. You download and install. It is pretty snazzy, but not available on my library's PCs. I have used StumbleUpon, but there are only so many hours in a day. There are only about 30 or 40 Websites now, right? For wikis, I highly recommend shoutwiki.com. It is free, and most importantly, uses the same engine as WP, so if you know one, you know the other, and there are a zillion articles telling how to do things. It is ad-based, so is not likely to go under on economic factors, or force off members who no longer fit their idea of what a member should be. Note that you are allowed only five wikis (of any size, which can be huge) unless you want to impersonate a second person. Take a look at my gb-tracking.shoutwiki.com and gb-guides.shoutwiki.com (the Links guide is my masterpiece). (I could have put both of those under a common wiki name, but didn't choose to.) I have done a lot of work there, so I have been through the learning curve in case you want to do something or have a problem. Let me know if you are going to do tables, because I have a good trick for that. Tips: Put your initials or some other key in front of any name you wish to use and it likely won't conflict with anyone else' use of the same name, so you can use a common word that seems most apt. Keep everything in plain text, so that you can copy and paste .TXT files to backup/restore anything in literally seconds. ---- I did a lot of Recorder stuff yesterday, running into so many danged errors that it took a half a day before I got through the DELs. For example, you can't imagine how many different ways there are to misspell ELNIRA, uh, I mean ELVIRO, uh, I mean ELVIRA. Then you take a name that could have a space in it like Del Paso, and you will find DEL PASO AND DELPASO, much less what can go wrong with letters in it. How many times can you key in DEL PASOR MANOR, from perfectly clear typed documents and not realize you are screwing up? Dozens, that's how many! Pity the poor suckers trying to do some serious work in that system for a few decades ago. My stack of corrections for the last three weeks (at 5 or 6 errors per page) is 3/4" thick! While there I met this disabled black guy Jeff who was looking for mortgage defaults as a new money-maker. He used to work for MCI in network management, testing circuits, etc., which was similar to the area I worked in the field using those same kinds of circuits for leased-line modems for airline, bank, etc. networks (ATMs, etc.). So we had an Old Home Week talking about it. He is pretty sharp and caught on to using the antiquated system fast. With a mind like that, it's too bad he has to suffer the physical problems. ---- I found a Products Finishing Corp folding luggage carrier at GW for $4 last night. I always buy those things when they are that cheap. I got another a week ago. They are great for swap meets or just trundling something to or from the car. I guess GW prices them so cheap, because everyone has suitcases with wheels nowadays. But not everything you want to carry is a suitcase. Suppose you find a dead cat in the middle of the r.... uh, never mind.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 25, 2015 6:53:59 GMT
Thank you for the suggestion. www.shoutwiki.com/I also found these options: www.wikispaces.com/www.wikia.com/Wikiawww.wikidot.com/www.mediawiki.org/As you say, there are only so many hours in a day. It looks like I'll need to devote a few of them to comparing these wiki building sites. What did I do yesterday? I'm still continuing to get past whatever germs I seem to have encountered last friday, mostly there, but still improving. I wrote a couple e-mails. two to my landlords (both returned undeliverable), and one to the realtor who used to be located down the street from the Natick church. And I went to CVS and used their weekly coupon to get a large tube of Colgate toothpaste for 50 cents. And in the dumpster of my apartment found a bag with 14 apples from a pick-your-own orchard in New Hampshire, with a bag of seedless red grapes, and two small containers of blueberries, all in very edible ripe condition. Here's where your experience dealing with city hall may come into use for me. The realtor, who has moved to a different town, couldn't give me any specific information, but his valid suggestion was that I may have to do my own research at the town hall of Natick. I want to find out three things about the deal between the scheduled buyer of the church and the seller (the diocese). 1. What the historic building restrictions were that they have been trying to get exemption from (to convert the church into housing units). 2. How and why the commercial "for sale" listings were removed from active status two years ago (when the sale still hasn't been finalized 2 years later) 3. What the amount the buyers have offered to the sellers for the property is. The point of these questions is that although I'm certain I cannot match the amount of money offered by the buyers for this property, my use would not need any exemptions from the historic preservation restrictions. And I am willing to propose a deal in which I would guarantee that in the case of my ever selling the building (if I were the owner), the diocese would gain any profit above the price I pay for it, up unto the price I pay combined with the amount offered by the current buyers. This offer would guarantee that 1. the building's historic integrity would be preserved with me as buyer; and 2. in the event of my selling the building in the future, the church would possibly make as much money from that sale as they would get from the current buyers' offer, and possibly even more.
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Post by CampKohler on Nov 25, 2015 20:50:50 GMT
I first used wikispaces.com, but was kicked off for not being a K-12 educator when they changed their now-very-strict adherence to the policy. I strongly recommend you go directly to shoutwiki.com. Whatever you do, make sure their economic model will survive whatever bumps are in the road of the future, because starting over is a lot of work. (However I like shoutwiki a lot better than wikispaces, so in the end, it was a useful move.)
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I would be very careful of that historic business. Suppose something major happened that endangered the status quo (tree fell over onto building, beam gave way, ground subsided, etc.). You would be on the hook for possibly very expensive repairs with no alternative but to do it in a way that preservation requires with no regard to your finances.
The "restrictions" may have nothing to do with being historic; it may have to do with zoning. If a property is zoned for a church, it couldn't be re-purposed for residence without a possibly very expensive zoning change or, at the least, a variance. A bit of time spent with a lawyer that is well-versed on church real estate in your county/state to find out what this involves might be a good investment. Maybe you could trade some skill/labor for his advice and get away cheap. If you did go ahead, is there some escape clause you could include that would let you get out of the deal in an emergency by simply quit-claiming the place back to the church, thus avoiding bankruptcy? If you have a law library nearby, perhaps you could read up on the legal responsibilities of owning a designated historic building. It gives me shivers to think about it, because others decide and you pay.
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I wrote a blurb. See above the top blue bar.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 26, 2015 1:39:31 GMT
When you click on the wikispaces link now, it gives you two options: "Education" or "Everyone Else". (Or how about "Everyone Elise"?) I read the underlining links post. But all my links have been full links with www. etc., so I don't think there's any confusion with those that they are links, to make underlining them really necessary. Last night, looking briefly through these wikipedia sites, I arrived at the link to their wikimedia meetup groups. So I ended up signing up for meetup.com, and found a few other groups to join. After all these years I might actually go to some of those things. I've been watching a number of TED talks and related videos since yesterday. Although I think I've reached the point where they're starting to give me a headache. But one group called School Of Life seemed at least intially somewhat interesting. And finally, Olsens. When they were late teenagers they seemed to have surprised some of us, turning into attractive young women rather than the troll-women their baby selves seemed to indicate they would become. Alas, it was too good to be true. natick.wickedlocal.com/article/ZZ/20151125/ENTERTAINMENT/311259887/
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Post by CampKohler on Nov 27, 2015 2:06:47 GMT
Even after paying Wikispaces the $1.00 fee they demanded of everyone to rule out being a spammer over a year ago, I was told that my membership was kaput unless I was in K – 12 education. After a couple of months (plenty of time to transfer to Shoutwiki) my wikis evaporated. Thus I don't understand the "everyone else" designation, because there is still this: blog.wikispaces.com/2014/09/wikispaces-is-no-longer-offering-free-non-education-wikis.html But, nevertheless and howsoever, Shoutwiki is a lot easier to use, more versatile, and, IMHO looks better. I found about four bugs at Wikispaces, but none so far at Shoutwiki. So I don't know what the appeal of Wikispaces is.... ---- Yesterday afternoon I went down another archaeological layer deeper in the car (Saturn station wagon). Now it's down to picking up the crumbs (buttons, screws, nails, etc.) preparatory to vacuuming. In the evening I went over to my friend's tenant's place (a pretty sharp Russian great-grandma type) and spent a couple of hours putting glue on all the screws in an inexpensive particle board dresser I picked up for her at GW for $10. That's 96 screws in the 6 drawers and slides. The glue will keep the screws from ever loosening up from the 3/8" board and falling out again. The drawers should move like new now. Tomorrow I'll go over and move it to her bedroom and it will be good to go. I also picked up a much older one in much worse shape for her two weeks earlier that GW didn't want (for free), but there are only 3 drawers and they run on wooden center slides that were fractured. I already have cut three new runner pieces, but if she has no need for it now, I'll move it to my storage unit and use it there.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 27, 2015 4:41:30 GMT
I feel less bad now about the two kitchen cabinets I brought in from down the street 3 years ago, simply because their drawer mechanisms worked so smoothly that I felt sure I could get some use out of them.
Wednesday I also spent about 5 hours total in organizing my stuff here, finally. Getting a spare mattress and rug and golf clubs shoved into the closet (which I hadn't been able to get to for the last two years). And one by one, I keep discovering little items I had usually forgotten I even had, and rediscovering the potential uses they have. So, moving around, as well as in and out of, this cramped apartment is gradually becoming less difficult and even possibly a slight pleasure.
The other house I visited last friday (not the red one) was reduced $12,000 in price on wednesday. So, this is forcing me to consider whether that might be my wisest choice right now. Sometime in the next week I need to visit Berlin New Hampshire by bus and get a firsthand impression of the area and the church for sale there, to help me reach a final decision.
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Post by CampKohler on Nov 28, 2015 20:17:03 GMT
My friends tenant moved the dresser to her bedroom, but couldn't get the drawers into the dresser. It turns out that there are left-hand and right-hand drawers that she didn't twig to. Also all of the screws in the drawer half of the slides must have their heads absolutely flush, else they catch on the cabinet half. After fiddling around for 15 minutes, they all worked smoothly.
The first dresser (the GW reject) has been repurposed as a potting table outdoors, with the drawers put on her closet shelves.
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Thursday I spent with my family and had a big traditional turkey dinner. There was only six of us this year, because some of the younger ones had to work in retail. I came home with a big bag of leftovers and half a carrot cake that will last for four days at least. Mmmmm.
Friday I went to the GW half-off sales and bought a 6'-tall Chinese crapical-board bookcase for my storage unit for 5 USD. The thing has a faux-wood surface on some kind of paper covering. The wood design will come off with the slightest touch of any kind of tape, revealing a tan paper underneath. This sucks, but is made up for by being built like a tank. The bottom piece is 1"-thick as are all the shelves. Have you ever seen 1"-thick shelves before? No, they are usually 5/8"-thick and tend to bend when loaded up with books. Not these!!!!
While I was waiting to pickup the bookcase, I noticed a couple of homeless guys panhandling (if you can call it that) out back for clothes when donaters drove up. Then they took them over to the dumpster, slit open the bags, got what they wanted and left the rest spread around on the ground*, with GW getting nothing. I told a GW employee about it, but got the standard "I'll let the manager know" reponse, which is what employees give you nowadays instead of doing anything whatsoever to actually solve a problem. (If you ask the manager later, they never heard a word.)
In the evening I went back again expecting to find nothing left but picked-clean skeletons. But I found a Dell VGA projector for 5 USD (new is 500 - 800 USD,). I don't know if it works, but it would be worth getting repaierd. Also found a handful of really good books, e.g. Cisco on routing protocols and pSpice schematic capture, which is far better than the "Using the Mouse for Dummies" fare. So the trips were worth it.
After stuffing my face again last night, I started in on a new Spenser detective novel and drifted off to dreamland.
---- *With me scooping up the rest.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 28, 2015 21:26:06 GMT
Is that VGA projector something that projects the images onto a wall instead of using a monitor? I saw something like that last night, it was a christmas lighting projector that had a red and a green light, and made an evergreen tree on someone's lawn look like it was decorated with lights, but it wasn't. The lights were just projected, and if you put your hand in front of the projector the tree just looks like a normal unlighted tree.
Some of those homeless folks are not the brightest people nor the most conscientious or considerate in their behaviors. I've taken clothes from those situations (as indicated before), where the signage clearly says DON'T leave donations after hours. But I never leave things messier than I found them, usually I leave them significantly neater.
This has also happened when some homeowners lined the whole street in front of their house with perfectly usable stuff just to go to the landfill, and I've come to salvage what I could, and then the wasteful bastards come out and tell me to leave the stuff alone because they don't want a mess, and I try to point out to them that I was leaving it significantly neater than it was before I started picking through it. Some people are just stupid gluttonous wasteful pricks. On both ends of the scale.
Do you think half a carrot cake would last 4 days (at most) in the possession of a floppy bunny? Maybe 4 hours!
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Nov 28, 2015 21:39:03 GMT
Yesterday the weather was exceptionally mild for late November. I went out in the morning to get some cash from the bank machine. It was like over 50 degrees at 6:00 am, when it could have been 30 or colder. Since Natick was just about 3 miles farther down the road, and I need the exercise to burn off fat, I rode back and looked at the church again. Which was nice because there was much less traffic than normal, being the Thanksgiving holiday friday, so I got to get a better look at the church, and the trip was easier to make without all the cars.
When I got home, and looked over the weather forecasts and bus schedules, I decided this mild break was the best time for me to be in New Hampshire, and now that I had the cash I needed to buy tickets, that's what I did. Took the train to Boston, and the bus to Berlin New Hampshire.
I got to Berlin at 8:30 pm, and it was 57 degrees (on the electronic clock displays), which seems to have been about the record high for that date in Berlin.
I went to the church, and lay down behind it on the leaves, and fell asleep about an hour. When I woke up, there was just a light wetness from a misty drizzle that had come down when I was asleep. So I got up and took myself over to the front steps porch area that has a roof and was dry. The rain was light and let up after an hour or two, but the temperatures dropped down to 32 by 6:00 am.
Caught the morning bus back to Boston at 7:40 am (it's the only bus from Berlin each day). It was probably the most comfortable and clean bus I have ever been on. And I brought my camera, and was able to recharge the camera from an electric socket at my seat. If I had brought headphones, I could have also listened to 5 radio or music stations from my seat, but I didn't so I'm not sure what I missed with that.
The whole trip from leaving home to returning took about 23 hours.
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 1, 2015 20:49:05 GMT
Yes, the projector puts the monitor image up on a screen.
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Yesterday I worked my butt off down at the Recorder's. I found more pieces to the puzzle and am adding them to the Excel file on the road. Two more pieces to find out. I also got 4 certified copies of my DD214 form (military discharge) for free. That's about all you can get for free at that place.
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I bought some gas, and so qualified for free use of the station's air pump. It only put out a maximum of 18.8 PSI (should be at least 30 or 40)! The attendant said he would look into it, but I am going by there today and will find out for sure if he was just blowing hot air up my skirt so to speak.
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Later I met with my friend and she gave me a delicious bowl of organic chicken soup (like it really matters how they raise a bird that pecks in its own crap). She says the drug guy's electricity and gas are off and the little old lady that screams at anyone who tries to use the road goes someplace else at night to sleep. So evidently he is hurting for money. Poor, poor, drug guy. Maybe she could make an offer on the place and solve all her problems in one swell foop by just buying it.
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Back to the Recorder's today. Nose to the grindstone, etc.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 2, 2015 16:07:08 GMT
Monday was trash day, and I got several decent items. From the dumpster behind my apartment building I got two nice matching table lamps, and a plastic tower fan. From a house down the street that seems like they are getting ready to move out, I got a comfortable office armchair on rollers, and an outdoor table umbrella. And from in front of another house on the next street over I got a neon bar sign for "KILLIAN'S IRISH RED", which works and everything. I also ordered a record player from Amazon on monday, which should arrive next week, and I wrote to my landlord to ask to renew the lease I let lapse in 2013. The new lease should save me $11 a day in surcharges I have been paying as tenant-at-will, so that should be a load off my mind.
The red house with the barn has been removed from listings, so I don't know if it sold or what. But I think next week I will visit the Natick Town offices and start inquiring about the church building and the historic preservation restrictions that they had to waive for the new developers, and see if I can find out the purchase price the developers have offered. I looked up real estate crowdfunding online, and there are a few sites for that, so maybe I could actually hope to raise an amount to contribute to buying the building, hypothetically at least.
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 2, 2015 21:49:12 GMT
Well, if there is anything I am an expert on, it is the care of old fans and office chairs. I plan to do a wiki on each. Let it suffice to say for now that, for the fan, if you keep the bushings lubricated, it will run forever unless physically broken. If the lube runs out, the fan slows down, the current increases, the motor heats up and the thermal fuse (which blows on temp, not current) opens to prevent a fire and the fan is dead. They are buried in the motor windings, so they are a pain to replace. (Since I have no intention of letting the lube run out, I just short out the fuse and use it. Good luck to my heirs.) So, get some drops of oil on the bushings at both ends of the motor. If an oscillating fan, you will have to take loose two bolts and pull the rotor out of the stator to get at the rear bushing, but it is no big deal as long as you are careful of any very fine copper wires around the windings. Just remember that Chinese fan blade knobs have left-hand threads, so you have "tighten" to get them off. Does your fan guard have steel or plastic clips holding the two halves together? ---- I had some luck at the dumpsters, too. (No links there to posts; scroll to post of Dec. 2nd.) ---- I finally found one of the deeds I was looking for yesterday. When looked at individually, some of these documents make no sense, but when you have them all, everything fits together nicely. I have put them all in a bee-yootiful Excel file showing the history of my friend's road in a form that (hopefully) anyone can understand. I have one more mystery to solve and then I can move on to some other properties, which should take a LOT less time, because I've been through it all several times for the road and have a stack of notes 2" thick. In other words, I will be filling in the gaps rather than starting all over. Floppy: Can you look at recorded docs online in MA or must you visit in person*? Maybe you could research the church's history. ---- *In Placer County, CA, you sit in a room alone at table and the books are on the shelves around you. Not copies of the books, but the actual books with handwritten copies from the Gold Rush days!!!! No way would they allow that in my county. Even the PCs are kept in locked cabinets! They would have armed guards poised to blow your brains out if you just looked funny.
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