"You gonna get another job?"...

Lanzman

No-one of consequence
Open your Sharepoint document library in Explorer mode and you can drag-and-drop files from a network share or local hard drive to the library without going thru the tedious "upload" process.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Really can't procrastinate anymore. I need to write up the damage deposit for my former renters and send it to them. I mean, it is their own fault they're not getting any money back. But for some reason I still feel like the bad guy. :/
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Two things. Disparate enough that they need separate posts. Tonight I decided to interact with humans. Halloween party. Now I might be reticent to do something like that, given how much I hate humans, but I knew the people organizing it and a few of the other attendees, so I figured it was worth a shot. Not a bad time. Don't know if I'd have gone if I knew how it was going to be, but don't regret going. It just wasn't what I'd hoped for. There were kinky people at it.

I hesitated about doing my Indiana Jones costume, given that someone might expect me to use the whip. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The good thing about an Indy costume is that the holster has a flap that pretty completely hides the gun, so I avoided an Alec Baldwin moment in having a .357 on me. And 1) a fair number of people don't realize a big bullwhip is a deadly weapon. Not instantly deadly like a .357, but in the ballpark of a bow and arrow or a dueling sword--you're not going to kill someone dead on the spot with the flick of a wrist, but you could do it if you knew what you were doing and could keep them from getting close enough to you. Or you could beat them with the handle or choke them with the whip. That's the other thing--anyone that DOES know a bullwhip is a deadly weapon also knows it isn't a very practical weapon. You need a lot of space to use it. So yeah, a few people asked about it but they were placated by my explanations.

There are a number of whips used in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but to keep things simple, Harrison Ford used an 8' David Morgan whip made of kangaroo hide for any of the scenes where he's actually cracking the whip--basically the Cairo chase. Any time you see the whip strapped to his belt, it's a 10' whip. A 10' whip looks great, but it takes a lot of skill and practice to work with. It's a lot of leather that you've got to get moving in exactly the right way with exactly the right timing. The David Morgan is a 12 plait kangaroo hide whip. That means there's 12 strips of hide woven together. Mine's a 6 plait cowhide whip. Looks OK. But if you know what a really nice whip looks like, you know mine isn't that nice. But it also isn't $1,200 like a genuine 10 David Morgan. But because it is cruder, it is also more difficult to use.

So anyway, I was making small talk with this...demonic hobbit when a guy walked past with an assortment of floggers. She asked him if he could see the big impressive one. She observed that it was a lot lighter than she'd expected it would be and then handed it back to him.

I mention this because later in the night a cute girl in a tight red vinyl cocktail dress was interested in my whip. So, because I like to talk to cute girls--especially when they're interested in me--and I remembered the other girl examining the flogger, I let her hold it.

She immediately got up and wanted to crack it.

Shit. Great. Now I've got to try to talk this dumb bitch down. I explained to her a room full of at least 100 people who were drinking and socializing was NOT the place to try to crack a 10' bullwhip. I explained how difficult a 10' whip is to crack and how my whip is even more difficult because it is more inexpensively made. I eventually got the whip away from her (and to the credit/curse of the crowd, when they saw the exchange, they had the presence of mind to clear enough space for someone to crack a 10 bullwhip. Credit because then if I failed there was less chance of someone getting hurt and curse because it made it harder to argue that there wasn't enough space to crack the whip.) So then, of course, she wanted ME to crack the whip. And rational me was like "This is a terrible idea on every level. This is a terrible place for whip cracking, I haven't practiced in 10 years, and even when I was practicing, it was with an 8' whip." And the other part of me was "I can impress a pretty girl!" Luckily I'm old enough and have dealt with enough crazy pretty girls that I swallowed my pride and begged off on potentially maiming someone and almost certainly looking like an idiot as I failed to get a good crack and tangled the whip on itself.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
And now a post more in the vein of the thread premise:

I do real estate investing. Buy single family houses and rent them out. I'm a small player with no dreams of being big. I know the way I do things isn't scalable, but it also keeps my costs and risk down. The stock market is less work but the returns aren't as high, so it takes more time. And I'd like to retire tomorrow if I could.

I'm kind of stalled right now. I'm stalled because it's hard to find a house I'd want to buy for a price I'm willing to pay right now and because I got roped into contracting for my old college friend. Not the end of the world because it's the slow time for rentals, there are, as I mentioned, not a lot of houses on the market at decent prices--and even if there were, finding windows, appliances, and other things to renovate a house is hard to impossible right now, and a week of part time work pays more than a month's rent on my most expensive rental. Pile up money to reduce the loan I need for my last purchase.

Well my friend knows accounting. And computers. I, on the other hand, do NOT. So I'm not terribly thrilled to be working in accounting and computers for months longer than I agreed to--carts full of cash or not. And he does NOT know real estate investing. But he kind of understands the potential it has. Awhile back he wanted me to partner with him so he could buy some rentals. I had no interest in that because that isn't my area of expertise and the amount of reward for the amount of work didn't make sense for me. BUT! I know a guy here who, that is literally his business model. I don't know how he's doing these days, but his thing is that he'll find a house, fix it up, and then sell it to an investor. Then for a cut, he'll find a renter to put in it, manage the property, and collect the rent. Total latchkey solution. Generally it isn't a good idea to buy rentals in another state--unless you REALLY know what you're doing. Smart people won't even buy rentals in a part of town they don't spend much time in. But by having this guy do all the heavy lifting, someone in, say, California, can own a house in Louisville and all he has to do is deposit the rent checks.

I actually had lunch with this guy when I was starting out because it seemed like maybe his thing would work for me. But when I understood how it worked, I realized it wasn't my thing. It's a sweet deal for him--and for an investor that's willing to take less money for no headaches--but he gets all the "fat" from the deal. He gets the markup from renovating a run-down place and he gets a cut for managing the property. He takes all the value-adds.

But it's exactly what my friend wanted. He's got the money/credit, but not the time, connections, or skill to own rental properties--especially in another state. So I tried to hook him up with this guy but my friend demurred. "I don't trust him. I trust you." Well, sorry bro. Because what you want isn't something I want to provide. And if you trust me, you should trust me when I try to hook you up with someone who is a perfect fit for what you want. But I'm not going down that rabbit hole. "You can lead a horse to water..."
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh, and one of my other costume ideas was Dr. Who. Specifically the 1963 1st Doctor, William Hartnell. I passed on it because it seemed a little more obscure for a costume. But when I got there someone was rocking a pretty sharp Matt Smith Doctor, so there was a twinge of regret that I couldn't stalk up to him, sniff haughtily, and ask "And so who might you be, my boy?" "The Doctor? The Doctor!? *harumph* So this is what I have to look forward to? A fool in a fez?!" whilst fidgeting with my lapels.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
This is really just a diary entry. Not much of interest. And I can tell it will ramble a bit.

Self-discipline and planning are important. If you do things in the right order you can get more done. Was going to go work on the rental this afternoon and read e-mails and do bookkeeping in the evening, when it was dark out. But I also needed groceries. And if I did my bookkeeping before I got groceries, that would be a few less receipts to enter. Of course once the bookkeeping was done, that meant there was only 1 item left on the recurring weekend chores checklist--e-mails. That took a lot longer than I should've stayed at it, but my OCD demanded I finish the checklist instead of having the discipline to go do what I should be doing.

Then, on the way to the supermarket, I remembered I needed a bulb for my car's turn signal and there was an auto parts store en route. Unfortunately it was also on the wrong side of a divided median so once I got my bulb, I had to go back a block and wait at a light to make a U-turn. That ate up a little time but eventually I got to the supermarket. And couldn't find my shopping list. It had to fall out of my pocket when I was getting my wallet out at the auto parts store. Considered just going from memory, but I knew it wasn't a routine shopping list and I'd have been annoyed if I missed something, so back to the auto parts store. To avoid having to deal with the stoplight again, I parked 1 store down because there was a gap in the median I could get to from there without having to go to the light. Got to the store and did my shopping.

On the way home, I started running through my timeline. I needed to drop off groceries. And I had some pork chops that I absolutely needed to cook. The recipe I use calls for 2 hours, simmering in mushroom soup after an initial browning, along with a packet of fresh mushrooms. I could probably get them started and let them simmer while I was over at the other house. But that would take time. And I was fast running out of daylight. And, I realized, I hadn't bought any mushrooms or mushroom soup when I did my shopping last week. Again, the pork chops needed to be cooked ASAP, so instead of going home I swung by Wal*Mart for the missing ingredients and headed home. Once I got the groceries put away I headed over. Of course by that point it was too dark to do anything but do a quick walk around and shut off the porch light so trick-or-treaters wouldn't come by.

So now I'm home. And I can eat dinner in...another 90 minutes or so. Now if I'd had some fucking self-discipline, I could've spent that time paying bills and reading e-mails. And I'd have had some time to work on the other house. But I had to check that box off on the list. So now I've wasted a bunch of valuable time.

Oh well, in a perfect world I wouldn't do any work on a Sunday. Too bad this isn't a perfect world.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I love when people make problems for themselves. And then they become my problems. Like I said, this company's month-end close is managed via a 2-3,000 item Sharepoint checklist. Historically someone on the team will, export it to Excel, create a pivot table of uncompleted tasks, and send it out periodically during the process. Well they decided to do a graphic interpretation of the data using a tool called Tableau that has been added to the status update message.

Fair enough. The wrinkle is, when my friend sent out the message (because it's my job but I had my other pre-existing job last night) and included the new dashboard, he added a line "If you can't access the link, let us know and we'll create tickets to get you access." So now, because I sent out today's update, I'm getting e-mails, asking for access. I barely know how to work their ticketing system or how their Tableau server works. But because of the way he worded the message ("we'll create a ticket" instead of "submit a ticket") he's made more work for his team--that is still down at least 2 people, not counting me.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
So freakin' done. On top of this, the cool graphic has another application called Alteryx, working behind it, to collect the data. So to do my update, I need to run Alteryx, refresh Tableau, do all the stuff I used to do in Excel, and then snip a screencap of the dashboard to paste into the e-mail. Well I don't have permissions for the Alteryx server. So I have to IM my friend/boss to run it and then wait for it. He messages back that it is running. Then that it takes about a minute. 5 minutes later--and past my publication deadline--I assume it must have run and that he just didn't get back to me. At any rate, I would say the report goes with the most accurate data for that point in time, so I send out the update. About 8 minutes later, when I've moved on to whatever other crisis demands my attention, I get an IM: "Done." 13 minutes is not, remotely "about a minute."

Meanwhile it's 20 minutes to 6 and I'm still in jammies. Because I went to bed at 1am Sunday night, woke up at 4:36--and could NOT get back to sleep. I managed to steal 2-3 hours of naps Monday, but then I had to work at the factory until Midnight. And then get up for an 8:30 meeting. Did the meeting and then went back to bed until my first deliverable. Ate breakfast around 1. Lunch at 5. Now it's pushing 6pm and I'm finally going to be able to get dressed. Which is good, because I see I have some stupid update to send out at 7:15--right in the middle of "Jeopardy!"

And I know the sane answer is "you should just quit this insane stupid job." But here's the thing: I didn't take the job because I wanted it or needed the money. I did it as a favor to a friend; because a good and old friend needed my help. Now there does come a time when you tell even the best of friends that you can't help them anymore, but I want to avoid that if at all possible. But I dunno. It may be time. I'm WAY above and beyond what I agreed to do.
 

USUC

Trollzilla
You should keep your current job and simultaneously look for a new one that works for you better (if you want to keep working). You said it yourself that “there comes a time…”. Life is short. You’re just being a victim if you stay in a crazy making job because of how you think it might affect your friend or friendship. Your friend isn’t a friend if they’d want you to stay in a bad situation.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
No arguments there. On an unrelated note: Dating. You remember the Bible bit where God is all set to smite Sodom or Gomorrah or wherever and Abraham or Lot or someone who just talks to God is like "But what if there are 5,000 good and honest men in the city" and God is like "for the sake of those 5,000, I will spare it" and this goes on until it gets down to, like, 50 or 5 or something and God is still like "yeah, whatever," but the punchline is that there aren't even 5 good and honest men in the city? That's kind of the way dating seems. I'm just like: "All I want is a girl who isn't morbidly obese, doesn't have '420' in her profile, interests/hobbies, or username, and doesn't say 'no Trumpers.'" That's apparently too much to ask for, unless I want to expand my search to include transvestites and crossdressers. :/

It's kind of like wanting a web browser that doesn't freeze up and shit its pants at least once a day or a grocery store that doesn't sell rotten produce.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
You should keep your current job and simultaneously look for a new one that works for you better (if you want to keep working). You said it yourself that “there comes a time…”. Life is short. You’re just being a victim if you stay in a crazy making job because of how you think it might affect your friend or friendship. Your friend isn’t a friend if they’d want you to stay in a bad situation.
Oh, you know what the other part of it is? The whole "don't look a gift horse in the mouth"/karma's a bitch side of things. A few weeks after I agreed to the job I found out my AC was shot and that was a few thousand I hadn't planned on spending. And a month or so ago I found out the thermostat and water pump gaskets on my 12 year old car were failing, which was another $1,200 or so. I just know the way things go, if I put my foot down and get out of this job, the next day I'll get broadsided with some huge unforeseen expense and it'll be like "boy, it sure would be nice if I had a big fat paycheck rolling in every week." So I try to suck it up and keep banking this money away so I have more of a cushion to weather any storms.

Funny story there: God does seem to have a way of giving me just what I need when I need it. I landed a job with the Reserves out in Hawaii after getting my MBA and spending half a year unemployed in Portland just about the month I wasn't going to be able to make my rent and credit card payments. Then I came back to Portland where I was again unemployed because Portland is the place dreams go to die and just about the time I was running out of money I managed to buy a house that got me the Obamabucks to help stay afloat until I got my "dream" job (which wound up being a nightmare, but that's a different story). Then I sold that place for almost 3x what I paid for it 7 years earlier. The first rental I bought wound up with more unbudgeted repairs that I could handle so I had to defer a new roof, but I was able to squeak that one out and start rebuilding my rainy day fund until I got this place--and found out the roof was going to cost $2,000 more than I expected and that I needed to have it connected to the city sewer. I wound up, like, -$5,000 on my $8,000 renovation budget before buying a single can of paint. Luckily we got a couple bonuses at work just about the time I needed them and I was able to squeak it out.

But now I've got an empty house in November because my renters broke their lease and the other lease comes up in March. So part of me is like "a big fat steady paycheck isn't something you should just turn your back on."

So that's kind of the line I've drawn. I'm willing to say "I hate this job, I don't have time for it, it is making me sick, and I can't wait for it to end" but I'm not willing to say "that's it, I'm sorry but I'm done. You're on your own."

And I really, REALLY want to say that I'll never ever agree to work for my friend again, but then I hear the title theme from the alternate Bond film "Never Say Never Again."
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Actually that's where I'm at with the factory job too. Logically I should quit that, since it pays less. But it's a permanent job and with my luck the day I quit it my friend would be like "good news! We hired that person so we can let you go," and then my other renter would move out and I'd have no income. What's that? There are jobs all over? Yes. But I've been conditioned to hate job hunting so much that I'd rather just gut it out for now.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I hate when you have to ask a stupid question--especially to a stupid person. The county sends out tax bills. They get the address to send them too from a file the sheriff's office has that gets forwarded to them by a certain date. I moved. So I called the county to tell them to send the tax bill to my new address. They told me they couldn't because they'd already got the mailing list file from the sheriff so the bill would go to the file on record. After the bill went out, I could ask them to resend it but not before. Monday the tax bills went out, so I texted my renter, asking if he'd seen it and attempting to explain why it went to my old address. His reply was "haven't you changed your address yet?"

Of course it doesn't help that I know he gets a ton of other mail for me too. Because apparently the local Post Office treats a change of address form like...I don't know. They forward some things. Some people get notified. But a good chunk of mail just keeps coming to your old address. Shit, the first day after I moved, the old address had the change of address notification--you know, the one they send to make sure someone hasn't secretly forwarded your mail--right next to mail for me.

So I look lazy and irresponsible and I'm not able to explain it in a way my renter can understand.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Oh. Forgot the other thing. Mondays I'm only available in the morning. So someone has to cover any time-specific afternoon items. Dragging myself out of bed for the 8:30 meeting I check to confirm the stuff got done. Nope. Didn't.

OK then. If you don't care about your own stuff enough to ensure it happens, then that tells me everything about just how important it should be to me.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Just some mundane bitching. You ever get burned out, where you could be productive, but it requires at least some thought so instead you just sit? The job is at a point during month-end wrap-up that my responsibility is basically down to posting a status update ever few hours. There are other proactive things I could be doing but I don't feel like doing them. There are personal things and things for my own business I could be doing in between. I tried that. More on that later. Got back in time for my next update, only to realize there was also a status update meeting in between that I missed because that was on a different calendar. I guess I could go back to the rental and try to get something done. I mean, I've got 90 minutes. So figure an hour of that for driving there getting set up, cleaning up after, and driving back...leaving me 30 minutes to get something done. As opposed to being able to be over there for a whole day, where that hour of wasted time provides 6 hours or so of productive work. Alternately I could do chores around the house so I have my weekend free. But I'm just tired of trying to make things work.

Which brings me to my errands. Had to go over to the rental and turn on the furnace and turn the porch lights back on after Halloween; empty the junk mail out of the mailbox. Of course the utility company had a block of the road that I needed to drive closed, so I had to detour about 5 blocks out of the way to get there. And the side marker on my car is acting up. Turns out you have to take the trim off the fucking bumper to get at it. And if you don't have a short enough screwdriver you have to take the rear wheel off to take the trim off the fucking bumper. I got it off. And yes, the fucking auto parts idiot sold me the wrong bulb. So I had to go back and get the right bulb. Luckily, once you get the signal out it snaps back into place, so I was able to put the bumper back together and not need to take it apart again. Oh, and the auto parts store is on a divided highway so there were u-turns involved to get to it. Then the new bulb didn't work so I decided to go to the farther away auto parts store I actually trust, which involved more u-turns. They told me it was a different bulb that they couldn't find. So while the counter guy was rummaging around in a drawer I decided to go back to the rack and look. The part he referenced was the LED replacement for the bulb the other store sold me. So right bulb. Went out to get in the car and the replacement bulb was actually lit up. So I went to put the housing back on it so I could snap it all back into place--and it went out. So. Fuse? Loose wire? Got to the bank. It was after 4pm--just after--so of course they were closed. Was able to do most of my stuff at the ATM, but I've got 1 thing I'll need to come back for. But at the ATM I tried to deposit a pair of checks. It is a fancy new ATM where you don't put the checks in an envelope and write the amount on it and punch that amount in, you just stick the checks in loose and the computer reads them. Or not. It read one of the checks but not the other. The prompts were confusing enough that I made it return both checks. Then I fed them in 1 at a time. This time it didn't read the check it was able to read the first time. But it let me punch in the amount. Then I put in the check it hadn't been able to read--and it read it.

So yeah. At this point I'm tired of trying to accomplish anything and I'm just going to sit here and bill my friend's employer for it until it is time to send my next update in 90 minutes or so. :/
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Today was a good fucking day; a day I needed. I try to keep my poitics out of this place as much as possible because it's clear it doesn't fly here, but seeing Virginia flip GOP; seeing New Jersey still too close to call; seeing the Atlanta Braves win the World Series after having the All-Star Game stolen from the city--other things--it warms my little black heart.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
Shoot me in the fucking head. I'm in a half hour Teams call of multinational accounting month-end processes. "What is KYREBA doing? Why are they running test journal entries in production? EMEA's got some thing set up to let them do that and we found out about it and there's going to be a compliance issue...Lokesh unfroze..."

Very hard not to just but in with "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANY OF THIS AND YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE SPEAKING IN GREEK." I really can't wait for this thing to end. And I should probably just cut the cord. Because there's not enough pain as long as I'm around; if I'm around, there's less hurry to hire someone.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
I'm so fucking sick of stupid people. Drove an hour and a half for a thing. Expected it to be disappointing but you don't know unless you try. Meetup at a restaurant. I was running 45 minutes late and I saw people I knew leaving the restaurant. Popped in and there were still people sitting around a table in the back room, nursing drinks. They told me to sit down and order and I said I was fine since they were probably just waiting for the checks and wouldn't want to wait for me. They said no, their food still hadn't showed up yet. So when the waitress showed up again I ordered as quickly and simply as I could. My food showed up with theirs. Pretty much every order was screwed up in some way or another, the waitress couldn't remember from leaving the room and coming back who got what, and my chicken was undercooked. A bunch of morbidly obese ugly people with greasy stringy hair. When we finally extracted from the restaurant my better judgement was to just go home, but I figured "what the heck, I drove 100 miles, I might as well go." Went. Sat around for a half hour while nothing happened at a horrible house. Gave up and went home. Had to deal with stupid drivers all the way home.

Before coming here, I popped onto Facebook. My real estate investors group, someone was looking for a place for a friend/relative and someone said "Sure, I've got a 2/1 at 1234 Main Street, and attached a few pictures of the interior." I swear to God I'm not making this up. The guy goes "Is this a house or an apartment because she wants a house." Gee, that's a good question. If only there were some way you could put an address into some kind of machine and it would bring you back the location of the address along with street-view pictures. Or maybe some kind of Website for real estate where you could enter an address and it would show you all kinds of details about a property. Someone should really get on that. Because clearly there's a need for such a thing.

I just fucking implied facepalm the vast majority of people these days. Were it not for my parents, Jesus, and Mister Rogers, I would be a super villain. And truth be told, the world would probably be the better for it. Because I would cull the weak and the stupid and subject the rest to my will.
 

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
What of the most entertaining things about being a grown-up is making decisions. And when you have to make a decision, thinking "what if I'm wrong?"

I bought a promising but run-down 2 bedroom house, fixed it up, and converted a...dining room?...into a 3rd bedroom. There's still plenty of work to do, but it is getting there and most of the big stuff is done--or at least done enough. Using the place to get a HELOC so I have capital to buy my next rental property and an appraiser is coming by tomorrow.

Now I'm pretty proud of what I've done and I'm pretty sure the place will appraise for even more than I said it was worth, so I'm mostly looking forward to showing the place off. But part of me still worries that the appraiser will come in and say "you can't have X, Y, and Z here and that thing you did over there? It makes the house worthless. No one will issue a mortgage on this place so we can't give you a loan on home equity because the place needs to be bulldozed."

Now I'd say the odds of that happening are pretty darned small. But never zero. So I can't help but worry until I find out what they have to say.
 
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