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Post by CampKohler on Dec 4, 2015 3:42:40 GMT
I piddled too long at the library to make it worth a trip downtown, so I polished my Excel files and planned out more stuff to research. It's getting closer to the end of the road (heh, heh). Then I spent the rest of the daylight cleaning out the car. (It seems to fill in as quickly as I can empty it*.) I checked out season one of Downton Abbey at the library. I realized I had seen all the episodes before, but watched them again anyway, because they are so good. I noticed that the theme music was more fiddly on episode one. By episode two, they had stripped off the off-key-sounding first measure (if that's the right term for it), thus simplifying the theme into the wonderful one it is. Also, when they added the scene of the servant's call bells wiggling, it was silent and could not be heard. Someone must have thought that strange, and so the sound of the bell was added while the theme played, and, finally, it was perfect. ---- *Read Dec 3rd post here.
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 5, 2015 20:30:45 GMT
I had a very satisfactory day down at the Recorder's office. I had a 12-year gap I couldn't span, because a woman held a 10-acre lot on one end of the span and her son sold it at the other. How did it move from one to the other? It just wasn't in the system! So I got out seven reels of microfilm of the General Index (which is how they searched before computers) and was prepared to slog through every one of them until I found the answer. Luckily I hit it on the second reel. See if you can spot why the recorded probate document transferring the property from mother MCELLIGOTT MARY A to son MCELLIGOTT RICHARD J couldn't be found in the computer despite my best efforts: 1. Use my shortcut to go to the Recorder's site: tinyurl.com/sacerosi1. 2. Click Advanced. 3. In Enter Recording Date, type 19470912. 4. In Page Number, type 353. 5. Click Search. Look at Poor Richard's name and see if you can find the reason this document was nowhere to be found. (The space after MC would do it too, but, being an old hand at this, I tried that first thing.) Our tax dollars at work! I also found an agreement of the neighbors to maintain my friend's road. (Of course that never happened, but that is just human nature. There were no teeth in the agreement or details of how things were to be done. I could have done a better job of it. They might as well just signed a paper that said, "We promise to be good.") The agreement never showed up in the title report from the title company, because all the names on the agreement were people who never owned the road. In other words, you have to know the history of the area to recognize that a document is related to it. Unfortunately, even though the drug dealer's father was on the agreement, HE WAS THE ONLY NAMED PARTY WHO NEVER SIGNED IT, the cheap SOB. Like father, like son. Another thing I found learned was that an existing easement on the road (granted to parties we had never heard of) really applies to a property she now owns. So she has an easement to use the full length of her own road even if somehow it turns out that she doesn't own it! This might sound like legal drivel, but we might be able to use the easement to dispense with his gate, because it is a lot easier (read, "cheaper in court") to enforce an a clearly-written easement than it is to disprove that someone owns something that they say they do, i.e. clarity is cheaper than murkiness. Well, it's a theory. I have now worked my way back to Samuel Norris, whose Spanish land grant of land for miles around was confirmed by a patent from the U.S. government, signed by President James Buchanan (or at least his secretary). It was confirmed by a CA court and allowed to be recorded, MINUS the map of Exhibit A that all later docs say is part of it. Thanks a lot old recordery people.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 5, 2015 21:10:30 GMT
This is the fan I got on monday. These are the two lamps Attachments:
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 5, 2015 21:15:58 GMT
Here is the neon sign And the office chair below it. Attachments:
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 5, 2015 21:21:25 GMT
Nice lamps. Are you using CFLs in them? Nice chair, too. Is the gas cylinder in it OK?
A vertical fan! I never would have guessed. Because there is no typical oscillating worm drive gearing on the motor, it may actually be easier to oil it. Can you see the bushings on both ends of the motor? Of course it would be better if you can open up the motor to get at the felt oil-reservoirs surrounding each sintered bushing. Drip some thin oil (10 weight) on the felts until they can absorb no more. Then put a drop on the shaft at both ends of the motor. Each year thereafter, put another drop on the shaft, so that you never really use any oil in the felts. It will last forever (or at least as long as you do).
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 6, 2015 22:55:01 GMT
Talk about parallel lives.... This morning I found a similar chair. It has a faux lamb's skin cover, which has a very comfy look to it. The wheeled base and arm supports, which are typically a natural black plastic finish, in this model was duded up with gold paint, giving it a faintly Starwars-like 3CPO look to it. I may scrape the gold paint off the base just to reduce its "goldness." ---- Yesterday I went to my local library branch to continue polishing my Excel files. The North Highlands - Antelope branch. As soon as I sat down, I realized that it was the day of the Friends of the Library book sale at another branch four miles away. Ooops! Into the car and pedaled over to the Sylvan Oaks branch. The Sylvan Oaks branch. I don't particularly visit any other branch's sales, because this branch is special; they have a cart that they put outside with free books and tapes that they figure they can't sell (yellow circle). This is the only branch that does this as far as I know. Sometimes I get boxes of books (some even for computers and software) and sometimes only a couple of dozen. It was slim pickin's this time, but I did get a 1946 two-volume dictionary and a stack of baby books a foot high (which my friend wanted for her friends). Later I met with my friend to discuss the road tactics, her family name change application and other projects. Her husband cooked up some meatballs and a Russian cold eggplant salad, and of course, there was a big bowl of borscht. Much later I woke up in the middle of the night and had the idea to get the County Board of Supervisors to pass this law: Any person who impedes or delays the free and unfettered passage across or along a privately-owned road serving two or more parcels, of the grantees of an easement for public safety purposes that has been executed by the road owner and recorded by the County Clerk/Recorder for the benefit of all of the following: 1. The California Highway Patrol 2. The Sacramento County Sheriff 3. Any fire district providing fire-fighting or fire-prevention services, 4. Any ambulance district providing transport or health care services, 5. Any private firm currently licensed to transport or deliver health care to the sick, injured or infirm of the parcels adjoining the road or to anyone benefiting from a right-of-way easement over the road, 6. Any private firm currently licensed to provide security and patrol services to the parcels adjoining the road or to anyone benefiting from a right-of-way easement over the road, is guilty of a misdemeanor for each and every day he or she does or continues to do so. If it can be done, it will save the huge expense of having to go to court over the road, because it is something the sheriff could enforce without having to decide who owns what. You just hire a private patrol to drive down the road, and, if he can't make the trip, he calls the sheriff. That's the theory, anyway.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 7, 2015 1:08:13 GMT
We have a local library that has those book sales, and people donate bags of books each week, most of which the library doesn't think can sell, so they put them out for recycling on saturday. Usually there are two large barrels full of these books each week, and people do pick through them, but even so there's usually about one barrel full left on monday. They used to get picked up by the recycling trucks, I believe, and taken to the book shed at the recycling center. But they closed the book shed a few years ago, because they said people were abusing it or something, so supposedly now all the books remaining in the barrels on monday get thrown into paper recycling by the trucks. It's a bit of a shame, because some of those books are real antiques. But there's a limit to how compulsive I personally can be about picking through them each week, as well as serious limitations on how much space I can devote to storing so many books in my cramped room. Yesterday I got a USB record player and two hats delivered from Amazon, which I ordered last monday, and hadn't originally been expected to arrive until December 9. I hope I can figure out how to plug in the record player, it doesn't have an ordinary wall-socket electric cord. Other than that I've been mostly sleeping and taking aspirins and vitamin C the last 5 days or so. I just got zonked out last week by some germs. Along with the lamps and fan that were put out by the dumpster last monday. there was a black wooden chest of drawers. I moved it early monday morning so it wouldn't get crushed by the dumpster collector truck. Somebody did take it saturday or friday.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 8, 2015 6:10:33 GMT
I also made a decision to very probably buy a certain building for my new home. This building which has been listed for at least a year or two, turns out to have its own Wikipedia page, because it is on the national historic register. With my mind starting to clear and find direction, I've started getting inventive ideas again. Instead of the conductor standing on a podium flapping his arms like an albatross and trying to convince himself and everyone else present that he is actually causing the music to be produced with some mystical precise control, the conductor at his master control could give signals to specific musicians' mini screen. By Jove, I think I've got it! It came to me in the shower today, the idea I've been trying to imagine and haven't been able to stretch my mind enough to do. I think I finally have a fairly complete idea of the invention. This time I can't reveal it, it's too original, and yet still based on technologies other people have mostly already invented. I just need to locate which inventors I would need to recruit to design it. I'll just say that, given the futuristic technology, this idea is a fairly "intuitive" design. And there is a slight resemblance to the Theremin, except it's like a Theremin several generations of design later. As far as that building I mentioned almost deciding on 6 weeks ago, well I visited it 10 days ago (which was a good idea to do), and am much less certain that it would really be worth moving nearly 200 miles away for. If it were closer to me, I would probably buy it at the current price. But instead, I'm going to try to get in touch with the Natick Historical Commission to try to get answers to my questions about the second church, 5 miles away from where I am now. And there's a couple other seemingly decent buildings that have become available in the last week, 35-60 miles from me.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 8, 2015 6:20:56 GMT
Well, yesterday was trash day again. I had been thinking of going by the library to check out their book barrel, but kind of forgot. I did go out early and found a pretty clean backpack with luggage handle out by (but not IN) my building's dumpster. So I took that. Then down the street by Dunkin Donuts I found a Taylor Made towel tossed in the trash bin, and two large purple potted chrysanthemums left in front of the bin across the street, which I took and plan to replant on "my hill". And my neighbor had a white cloth window shade thrown out which I took because I might use it as a video backdrop.
Later in the day I rode 4 miles away, went to two dollar stores, found the third dollar store that I had kind of liked was no longer in business, so a little sad but you kind of had to expect that one street couldn't sustain so many similar businesses. Went to the Thrift Store on the same street, and got a plastic microwave popcorn container for $2 (made by Presto).
When I got back home after riding 8 or 9 miles, my ankles were so sore!. It really was kind of painful. Took a few hours to recover from that.
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 8, 2015 21:42:08 GMT
Yesterday I attended a law library name-change workshop for a couple of hours to get some better poop about filling in my friend's petition paperwork. They want 435 USD for a name change nowadays, but at least husband and wife can share a petition. Her kid was a minor a couple of weeks ago and the law library counter people said it would be simpler to wait. So now he can't be on the same petition and it will cost another 435. BUT this turned out to not be such a loss, because if we had filed at the time, by the time the process was complete, he would have not been a minor any more and it would have been tossed out, requiring them to start over again. Too bad nobody knew this six months ago. A year late and 435 bucks short!
Actually, the necessary newspaper notice publication adds another 35 – 45 USD to the cost. Unless you use the Sacramento Bee, our major rag. Then it is more than 300 USD more! They do NOT want to publish legal notices is the instructor's take. How dumb is that?
The law library has a really nice training room with slick furniture, thick, cushy office chairs and big PC monitors. They are usually half populated, but it was full to the brim and I gave up my seat at a PC to an Eastern-European guy. Everyone is supposed to leave with all their paperwork all ready for court, but as I was just there to learn, I let him have his chance.
As all their forms and instructions for all petitioner's different situations are pretty mind boggling (FULL of words!), I decided to make a flow chart of the process for the visually-oriented (read, me!). When I went over all this, the chart was the first thing my friend wanted out of it, buy I promised her a copy when I get it in suitable shape. And a copy will be E-mailed to the instructors to use in future classes.
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I met this really big, handsome dude—I'm not gay;I'm just tellin' you—who was at the Recorder's office researching foreclosures to buy to move to Sacto to be near his parents. He had a great sounding European accent, so he probably would have made a good actor, except he is a professional long-haul truck driver and owns his own tractor. Anyway, he sits down at a PC to start the process and I see him staring at the screen (with the last guy's data left on it) like he was looking at the control panel of the space shuttle and not wanting to throw the wrong switch lest he blows the hatch and goes tumbling out into the vacuum of space; you know the look. I could tell he had not the slightest clue what button to push, so I took pity and had him up and running in about ten minutes.
The rest of the day there was copying word for word the U.S. letters patent for that Spanish land grant back in 1850's just for the fun of it. As it was a such an impressive and grand thing that they were creating, they would not use one word when fourteen would do. When I get it done, I will give a copy to my friend's husband, who likes history and is learning English. One thing I noticed is that They would tend to Capitalize any word that They took pity on at the Moment. Not so standardized.
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I ate a 1.50 USD long polish sausage hot dog and drink at Costco on the way home. They include sauerkraut now if you ask for it. Burp! This store's food court is outdoors and they have signs saying, "For health reasons, please don't feed the birds." What they're not saying is that this junk food will kill them.
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I finished up by watching Edge of Tomorrow, Live, Die, Repeat with Tom Cruise. It is science fiction fighting invading aliens that could best be described as Groundhog Day meets Terminator. It was OK, but after you have seen several of those time-reset movies, you can predict the outcome (if you know what I mean).
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 8, 2015 23:41:16 GMT
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 9, 2015 22:21:41 GMT
It's amazing how much wiggle room are in those prices, isn't it? ---- I went to the county's Building Assistance Center, where you can talk to everyone that wants you to do things their way. Getting my friend's road made into a public road is out. Putting up her own electric gate ahead of the drug dealer's is out. But it looks like Freddie Fireman is going to be our friend, because you can't block fire access with a gate unless you have 100% concurrence by all those behind the gate. I got printouts, I got phone numbers, I GOT THE POWER!!!!! I think we have a way out. BTW, one of the county's guys has the exact same problem my friend does, namely bad guys as neighbors. None of his other neighbors will say a peep, because they are all in fear. His solution is to sell his place and move away. (Pity the new guy!) Anyway, he knew exactly the problems were were facing, but other than "misery loves company," he couldn't offer much. ---- Last night I did a flow chart on the labyrinthine name-change process: I am going to have the law library instructor review it for improvement, and when it's done, hopefully the law library can use it in their class. ---- It's getting late, so off to downtown.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Dec 10, 2015 8:26:02 GMT
I got a delivery of groceries at 11 am. Rode to my landlords' to drop off lease renewal page that stated I had tested the smoke alarm. Went to the supermarket and got 6 lbs. of mozzarella (on sale) for $18, and 4 liters of soda for $1 (also on sale). Sale ends thursday, so I may go back this morning with a buggy to buy more sodas.
Went to City Hall 7 pm (unseasonably mild weather for the rest of this week and weekend) for a meetup of people supporting ordinances limiting or banning gas powered leafblowers in the city. With the mild weather I should plan another trip to New Hampshire this weekend to look at a couple houses. But first, I have another meetup tonight of the Boston Internet Startups group.
I might also stop on my way to that meetup by the hospital in Boston where I had a minor surgery as a child, to see if they might still have my medical records from then. If by some miracle they still have my records from back then, I'd like to see the x-rays they had of my teeth. I believe the surgery they did was not only unnecessary, but damaging, and has made my teeth and mouth not really right as an adult. I'd like to see if this could be corrected even at this late date in my life, by replacing the two adult teeth they removed when I was 8.
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 10, 2015 21:37:46 GMT
Hard to imagine what they do with records that are decades old.
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I remembered that today was the deadline for paying property taxes, so instead of going downtown yesterday, I spent the afternoon digging up the bill, digging up the checkbook, digging up a pen, etc. As I am on the way downtown today, I'll walk an extra block and hand-carry it to the tax collector's office.
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I got a parking ticket earlier in the year (a LOT earlier) for overstaying in the same "district," which meaning is in the same block. But I didn't and contested the ticket by mail with explanation, photos, etc. They came back after 9 months and said my plea was rejected because I parked in the same district. It is as though they hadn't even read it. So now I have to go to a hearing and make the same plea in person. I don't know which is worse, the 52 USD or "the principle of the thing," or perhaps it is both: SLAP!, SLAP!
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So now I am really off to downtown. No, really, I mean it this time. Seriously! No kiddin' around. Then, at six, free eats on the U.S. Air Force Civil Engineering Center's nickle. Mmmmm. Mary's balls. ('splain tomorrow.)
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Post by CampKohler on Dec 11, 2015 4:44:37 GMT
The McClellan Restoration Activities Board meeting finished up. It has more acronyms than you can shake a stick at (FOST, FOSET, ROD, and about two dozen others). Mary from public affairs was not to be seen, but the hotel's kitchen supplied a big spread featuring Italian meatballs, so my tummy is full. If you are interested in the kinds of things talked about at a RAB, read the latest about McClellan's cleanup. As one might expect, there is always some old curmudgeon complaining ad nauseam about how the AF is frittering away the taxpayer's money, how much the room and food costs, blah, blah, blah. And we have ours, who tonight just would not shut up. He thinks he is God's gift to the taxpayer, but he is just an annoying self-important old fart. "But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" ---- Tomorrow the library doesn't open until 1 PM, so I will be back downtown digging into the past until I get all the deeds for the 30 acres I am interested in surrounding my friend's properties.
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