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Post by CampKohler on Oct 10, 2015 22:20:13 GMT
I worked on a project for a friend involving a suspected drug dealer/cooker that has property next to hers. He has erected fences and gates across a common road. And she owns the road! There have been death threats, the brandishing of firearms, etc. So he has to go one way or the other. I am gathering legal ammo and devising strategies. I have spent a week researching the nearby properties, looking for easements, agreements, chains of titles, etc. using techniques I have developed over several years doing other land research projects. None of it is indexed by address, only by parties' names, so I have to look at a myriad of documents. The Sacramento Clerk/Recorder's office has a very clunky mainframe system from the early 'sixties that makes this difficult. It is digging through dusty files with the aid of a computerized index that is riddled with human errors. Thursday, while researching, I found 45 errors, a personal record, and that was only a half day! I am saving them all on little pieces of paper, and some day, I will put them in an Excel file for submission. The old handwritten index (pre '63) doesn't seem to have this problem. Is that because the computer has made the index workers feel like cogs in a machine? Or is it because writing it all out in longhand gives the worker time to think what he/she is doing (vs. hitting a few keystrokes)? Before I left for the Recorder's office, my friend gave me a bowl of six pieces of shish kabob chicken left over from her husband's 60th BD party. By the time I parked downtown, I was licking my fingers after consuming the last one. Perfect timing. This is my home away from home, the Clerk/Recorder's office. If you rotate 180°, you will see the holy grail of downtown life: a city block that has free parking on three sides!
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 11, 2015 22:15:04 GMT
For my friend, I researched the requirements of the Superior Court of California to change a person's name. It is fairly easy, requiring mostly 435 USD (money is evidently a friend of the court!), but at least all the family's names can be changed for the one low, low, price. Tuesday I get the forms from the Sacramento Law Library. Them Russian names can be a real tongue twister and the hubby's ex has the same first name as his new wife, so off to court they go. (And for the observant, yes, the library is next to the same parking lot as the Recorders office, so they are only a block apart.)
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 13, 2015 19:38:53 GMT
I went to two Goodwill stores for the Columbus day 1/2-off sale and bought a pile of stuff. For example, I got a 10" Kodak electronic picture frame in the box with all the accessories (remote, cables, etc.) for 3 USD! And in the bottom of the box was a 2GB SD card the previous owner had left behind. (With any luck, there will be a photo in there of some crime in progress for which there is a 10,000 USD reward offered for information. Sure there will.)
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 14, 2015 18:38:07 GMT
A week ago, I picked up a little 3-foot-tall GE fridge that I found, thinking that it might work. Someone had cut the cord off (which is what "tweakers" do), so I thought I would add a new cord and try it. It got cold! So I started cleaning the rotten, moldy food out. When I wiped my rag over the freezer plate, I heard a hiss. Damn! It seems someone had ignored the factory warning sticker about the prohibition of the use of sharp implements when defrosting (which is manual only); they poked a pinhole in the freezer plate and then plugged it with a tiny nail. The rag caught the nail and the rest is history, but most of the Freon was gone anyway, witness the plate got cold and not frosty.
Yesterday I scrapped it out, saving the compressor and thermostat; the rest went into a Dumpster. The thermostat tube could be fed between the door seal and door jam of a working fridge and used to set off an alarm if the temp. goes up. Here's what you can do with the compressor:
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 15, 2015 19:22:36 GMT
I spent the day down at the Recorder's office researching for my friend. I found a quit-claim deed transferring the bad guy's property from his mom to her trust. I tried drawing out the simple property description on paper, but could not get it to come out right. It took me a half hour to realize the lawyer that had drawn it up goofed. Checking other deeds, I could see there were two typos (wrong numbers of feet) in the description. Even I could accurately copy two short paragraphs from one deed to another without the aid of eight years of expensive high-level education!
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 18, 2015 22:47:08 GMT
I spent yesterday outside looking around for cats to chase, and then I came home and went on the internet and watched videos of cats on YouTube.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 19, 2015 19:04:25 GMT
Yesterday I found the link to this forum, and created an account, and posted a comment about what I did the day before yesterday. Which you can see immediately above this comment, so I won't repeat writing what I did two days ago. But for the extremely lazy among you, I will give a hint: it involved cats!
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 20, 2015 20:27:33 GMT
Obviously you have an obsession with anything that mews or meows and claws your eyes out (and one could hardly blame them, could one?). ---- In the eternal quest to help my friend and her druggy neighbor situation, I went to the county planning people and borrowed their old Assessor's paper parcel map to get dimensions of neighborhood parcels (vs. driving miles across town to see it at the Assessor's office). This is also available on the Assessor's online parcel map viewerlink, which is pretty spiffy nowadays in its third incarnation, but obtaining dimensions involves clicking one side of a parcel and then the other, thus measuring it. The rub is that if you aren't perfect in your "mousketry" or the parcel borders haven't been perfectly drawn, then you don't get an exact measurement. So I prefer the old paper maps, which have accurate dimensions already drawn in and all I have to do is write them down on my copy of the map. And as the perfect demonstration of a bad parcel border, my friend's parcel was bigger than her neighbor's as seen via the viewer, but smaller than seen on the paper map. What the...? I called up the mapping guy at the Assessor, but he couldn't see the problem; they looked the same on both. Figuring that I was not yet senile, I asked him to go outside the county intranet and look at it like we do at home... and then he saw it. Ah, my work was done. (Well, done there, anyway.) So back to the Recorder's office, tracing deeds back to the '30s and I finally found the deed for the whole original 10-acre lot in question, from which springs all the parcels I'm working on. Kaplah! as the Klingons would say. Then I stumbled on a new quirk. There are lots of quirks at the Recorders, because newbies move in when old farts retire and they wouldn't be proper bureaucrats if they didn't decide to do things differently to mark their territory. In the '30s, someone started duplicating recording book numbers (documents are indexed by book and page numbers). That's like handing out the same auto license plate number to several people. It's not supposed to happen even once, but I found that it did at least a couple of dozen times! Were they hung over the next morning? So now we have, say, two Book 1344, Page 45s, and if you ask for it, the computer presents both and lets you choose which one you want. Your tax dollars at work! I shall carry on carrying on.
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 21, 2015 20:55:44 GMT
Spent the day composing a very lawyer-like demand letter for the neighbor to get their fence and gate off my friend's road. She sent it off today. I hope it will get the intended results. I also updated this tutorial because I accidentally found out that the GasBuddy forum won't form links containing the apostrophe. Nevermind that the apostrophe is a reserved character not to be used in a URL, because Wikipedia has this article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor's_Mansion_State_Historic_Park. Trying it here, we get en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor's_Mansion_State_Historic_Park. See? This forum blows it, too, but if you copy the URL and paste it in your browser, it works. I guess I will have to do some investigating here as well.
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 22, 2015 19:52:00 GMT
I only got about three hours at the county recorder's office, so I finished going through all the microfilm to identify all rolls that contain duplicate book numbers. The time period over which this happened tends to make me think that the employee who committed the egregious crime of using duplicate book numbers finally got his butt fired, because it never happened again up to the present day[sup11{/sup]. I found about 30 such books.
I stopped at Costco on the way back and ate a 9" Polish dog and Pepsi for 1.50 USD. Mmmmm. But I guess I nibbled on too many dried cranberries during the day, got too much heartburn from the acid and dumped my cookies twice during the night. So I lost some of the dog, but at least it wasn't an expensive steak dinner.
----
Note 1: Later I will use the list to update a write-up I did on the make up of all of Sacramento's Recorder's books from 1849 to the present. This is an Excel file that describes how each book had its pages arranged, the book's contents (if there was one or just a few kinds of document within), how they recorded the documents (hand writing, typewriting, printing, photography, etc.) and other historical details. I'll bet Sacramento is the only recorder's office in the country, much less the state, to have such a history. But then if you standardize the job from day one, there is no need for it, because all the books are identical. How hard would that have been to do? But, no, Document Breath, each guy to come along wanted to do the job differently (and succeeded!).
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 23, 2015 13:58:55 GMT
Yesterday I went out before sunrise to get cash from the ATM.
This may not sound like anything noteworthy, but I have been living without cash for about 7 months, because I couldn't remember the PIN number. Last week I finally got the bank to send it to me. Then I went to the supermarket for the first time in 7 months and bought 2 lbs. of mozzarella, 2 bottles of vitamin C, and a bottle of aspirin, two items I recently ran out of and will be needing as the autumn weather continues changing.
I also made a decision to very probably buy a certain building for my new home. This is a decison I have been working on for nearly 4 years, and the uncertainty about where my future home should be has been really impeding my ability to plan and motivate myself. 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. How many people can say their house has its own Wikipedia page?
With my mind starting to clear and find direction, I've started getting inventive ideas again.
For instance, a computerized music stand system that would revolutionize the role of the orchestra conductor. 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 musicians would be seated in a circular arrangement, so that none of them were looking at the backs of any of the other musicians.
The conductor might be seated anywhere, most likely not even in the same room. He would be seated in front of a master control board. Each musician's music stand would have a mini viewing screen, where he would see a cam image of the conductor. The conductor at his master control could give signals to specific musicians' mini screen. So instead of pointing at a player, who imay be paying more attention to reading the sheet music than watching the flapping albatross, and hoping the wrong musician doesn't get the idea that he is being pointed at, the specific musician the conductor is trying to signal would get a private gesture on his mini screen, so he would know it was meant for him.
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Post by CampKohler on Oct 24, 2015 20:59:43 GMT
Floppy: Well, drop the other shoe and give us a link to the WP page, so we can see this architectural wonder. BTW, if you think your conductor idea might make you some money and will want to patent it, perhaps you should edit your previous post and delete the details that might be later considered as publishing the idea before the patent is in effect. (Shhhh! It will be our little secret.) ---- I went back to the Recorder's office for another few hours of deed digging for my friend. Of course I found many more indexing errors and made note of them. I have been confused by the way they describe directions in metes and bounds descriptions, e.g "then proceed North 0° 04' West 100 feet". One direction refers how far off from the exact due direction (in the example, it is four minutes west from due north, meaning not exactly north), and the other direction tells you in which way one is to go around the property. The confusing thing is, depending on whether you are going E - W or N - S, these two directions seem to swap places. So I am going to have to look this up today and try to nail it down exactly. There are a couple of parcels that use metes and bounds and it is very complicated compared to the "portions" method, e.g. "The east quarter of the west half of the south half of Lot 3 of the Godawful Subdivision, recorded in Map Book 12, Page 3 of Dirt Poor County on June 23, 1922, reserving therefrom a 10' strip of land on the north where Fluffy and a couple of former wives are buried." I've got those down pat.
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 25, 2015 0:16:22 GMT
Thanks for the interest, and I did think about "should I give away this briliant invention for free here?". But then my reaction is really who the hell is paying attention, even if they were lurking on this board, and I rather feel my idea is safe (here). And if someone does take it and develop it, that may be the best chance of me ever actually getting to see the invention made into reality, and then I could at least buy a version of it. I think I'd be ok with that. But also, there were several specific details about this invention that I didn't even mention at all, that will enhance it. So I haven't given away the whole game. Well yesterday I placed an order on Amazon for four items, and the first of them is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I signed up for their 30-day free trial Premium service, so that helped get free shipping for 3 of the 4 items. The main item, which I had to pay for shipping, was a fold up bicycle which I want so I can take it on busses. In fact, I will drop the other sneaker and share that item, someone else here might find it a good idea. Also, if you live in a small apartment and want to keep your bicycle inside, the folding bike is a good idea, or if you take trips in a car and would rather stick the bike in the trunk or back seat than install a bike rack on the car. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001459K1U?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00I had another adventure today, which I don't know if I ought to post it here now, or do I have to wait until tomorrow so that it will be "what I did yesterday"? But since it affects the yesterday thing, I think I might add it now. The building isn't on the historic register for necessarily being an architectural wonder, just for being part of the early history of the town it's located in. But today I found another one that might have possibilities too, I plan to investigate next week. I'm having a problem getting the link to work from here, but paste the first link in after http:// and maybe it will work. Building #1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregational_Church_(Berlin,_New_Hampshire) Building #2: mass.historicbuildingsct.com/?p=1671
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 25, 2015 17:31:23 GMT
Yesterday I rode my bicycle about 18 miles, because I took a few wrong turns and got lost, on what should have been a 10 mile round trip. It was really chilly all day too! I had dressed warmly enough with gloves and scarf, so that was ok.
My adventure ended up bringing me to "Building #2", and right now I have thoughts going on in my head about how I might be able to propose an offer that the sellers might find acceptable. I'm amazed how clever my mind can be when I just kind of let it take over on its own. It would be so much fun to own that building, I would like to make a recording studio and performance space inside. I had been shown the inside three years ago, and really liked it, and it included the old pipe organ. When the active listing was removed 2 years ago, I assumed it had been sold.
My surprise yesterday was to find that it is clearly still vacant and undoubtedly has not been sold. It is suffering now from neglect, several broken windows where birds and squirrels can easily get in. All of this might make the owners willing to be even more flexible if I can present a sincere offer to them. It looks like it is currently just a big white elephant to them, and I think they would be very relieved to have it finally taken off their hands.
Then on my way home I stopped in the fancy grocery market, and bought a lb. of tofu that was marked $1.89. But when it rang up as $1.99, I said I thought it was $1.89. After checking and finding I was right, I got the tofu for free because of the price guarantee. So I got 1 lb. of free tofu!
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Post by floppycatlovingbunny on Oct 27, 2015 9:49:52 GMT
Back To The Present
Yesterday I found that my 30 day free trial of Amazon Prime gives me free videos among other benefits. I watched two movies. The first was a documentary about Harry Nilsson ("Who Is Harry Nilsson . . .?"), and the second was Back To The Future 2.
I guess I did choose that because I was thinking that part of it took place in 2015. But what I had forgotten until I watched it was that October 26 (yesterday's date) was the day of the opening scene in Back To The Future (1985). And the day that he visits in 2015 is October 21, 2015. So that was last wednesday, and the fact that I wasn't conscious of this last wednesday means that I can review what I actually did then and compare to the movie version of that day, and wonder how I might have felt if in October 1985 I could have seen a glimse of my actual life last wednesday.
On review, I find that on October 21, 2015 I received a package I had ordered from microcenter.com on the internet, which really was something that did not exist in 1985. In 1985 if I had seen a preview of myself in October 2015, ordering merchandise from home on a home computer, as well as watching movies and communicating with strangers from around the world through that computer, I think I would have been fairly well impressed.
We don't have hoverboards and flying cars or time travel machines, but we do have some suitably impressive futuristic inventions, including high quality color video cameras that don't require film development. And the ability to play poker with people from around the world, from our own home. And the ability to research all kinds of obscure information on any subject. And the ability to see millions of people naked, if we choose to use these tools for that purpose. Or learn languages, or learn how to play music or anything else we want to learn.
And in connection with the Nilsson movie, I offer this clip:
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