Archive → January, 2010
The State of Florida Robs the Car Owner
Today, I went to do the tax. title and tags bit with the state of Florida. They want $429.00 to license it. I don’t know when I have been so shocked. I cannot believe this state is ROBBING its citizens to the tune of over $400.00 in taxes and fees to make a car street legal. This is, forgive the expression, highway robbery. The state legislature is made up of nothing short of thieves, who are stealing from the citizens of Florida, robbing us.
I cannot believe that these politicians–which is the dirtiest word in any language, and a politian is a lower form of scum than any drug addict or criminal of any kind–have pushed through legislation making this possible. This must be changed and changed retroactively.
Can you tell I’m upset?
I don’t know what other states charge, I’ve only gone through this in Florida (previously, less than $100.00) and Illinois (also well under $100 when last I licensed a vehicle there) and the same in Oregon. To raise the fees and taxes to over $400.00 is… I just don’t have words. This power may even need to be taken from states, owning a car must not be allowed to become a get rich quick scheme for states.
iPad = Jumbo iPod Touch = My First Impression
Listening to all the talking head talk about Apple’s newest release, the iPad, you would think they were all completely precognative. From Leo Laporte to Alex Lindsey to David Pogue and on they are all saying they nailed it. Sadly, I remember clearly what they have all been saying and they were all wrong. When you come right down to it, the iPad is a jumbo sized iPod Touch and NOTHING more. It has no camera, it has no phone, it does have some custom versions of the iWork applications, but really, all that is different, at least so far as the released information is that this is a jumbo iPod Touch.
That said, I can really use a jumbo iPod Touch! I can barely wait the 60 days for this to come out, I will buy the most basic one, and then about thirty days later, I will buy the most advanced one with the 3g cellular modem and 64g of memory. The first one will become a gift to a friend, whose birthday is right about then. Since I develop for the iPhone/iPod Touch, this is a business expense for me and is something as important to me as is a roof, a car, etc.. its how I keep a roof and car and etc. This will also be ,y carry about with me replacement for my laptop which will now be my full time at home desktop machine. Very exciting and I see a lot of possible income in my future from this new device.
Enter Jumbo
Well, at long last, I am back in the world of the mobile and, what is more important to me, the safe. I have a new car and my new car is named Jambo Jumbo or Hello Biggun (Jambo is Swahili for Hello, jumbo is just anothfr word for big!) It’s Jambo for short.
Jambo is a 1999 Ford Windstar Minivan/SUV. It’s got 178K miles and I bought it for $200 needing the front breaks completely reworked. Completely? New rotors, calipers, hoses and speed sensor. This job, along with 4 new used tires that are street legal come to a grand total, with the purchase price and tax, title and tags, of $748.32. It is the 3.8 liter model, with the sliding passenger side door 4 door (3 front door, sliding door and rear hatch) model instead of the 5 door model pictured here, but it is the same color as the one in this image.
As for it’s overall condition: The engine and transmission is in excellent condition, the interior is clean showing a bit of wear in the rear cargo area only. The exterior of the car has some cosmetic damage, pain wearing on the roof (Florida sun) and the front left light array needs new plastic lenses and the bumper below it is cracked. The rear bumper has minor crushes on both rear corners, very odd, and very minor. Biggest problems besides the now repaired brakes? Someone tried to steal the car at some point and tried to pry off the key tumbler on the steering column, all they managed was make the real key hard to turn, so you have to play with it some times to turn the engine on or off. The passenger door window does not work, but there’s a new motor for it in the car, just needs to be installed, which I can do myself. The front end damage tripped the air bags, so the car needs 2 new airbags. That’s it.
Power door locks, power windows, ice cold AC, AM/FM radio with AUX Jack for my iPhone/iPod, power steering and breaks, 4 captains chairs and a rear bench, seats 7, all the middle and rear seats can be removed. THIS would have been the vehicle to have been homeless and living in. Of course I get this car now when I don’t need to live in it. And hopefully I will not need to live in it.
So, join me in welcoming Jambo Jumbo to my life! With no ability to walk, I spent $320.00 on cab fares going to and from the grocery store during the last 6 weeks while I’ve been without a car. The bus line is too far for me to walk to. What a waste. Once again, all my savings are gone, between the car, the taxes etc. and the costs of not having a car, all my savings are again gone. So, right now, I still have a job, still have a roof over my head, but I have a whopping $48.00 in money to my name. Th one and only thing I cannot do, it seems, is save money. I can live, but not save. Very frightening. I think a post on that will be forthcoming. But at least I have a car again.
No Longer Homeless
Don’t forget to Read The History of My Homelessness, Part 4. You should probably read it before this post, but that’s up to you. That said, here goes:
At the time where The History of My Homelessness ends, I thought of calling some of my old (pre-Californai, pre Oregon) friends and ex-clients. All where people who had previously hired me to do work for them. I had not called them before while homeless, don’t ask me why, I just hadn’t. Well, one of them, a real estate mogul in South Florida, said to me, “Hey, glad you called, I want to build a seminar oriented web site, blog and start a series of audio and video podcasts.
I sat there stunned. I got my act together and said I’m your man. He sent me a couple thousand as a retainer and we started discussing what he wanted done. Again, long story short, I decided to drive to Hollywood Florida, praying my car would survive the trip, where he would put me up in one of the places he was selling, the rent being part of my pay. I now take home $26,000 a year, take home, mind you, after taxes, and have a place to live. I’ve been in he hospital twice since getting here, and had to buy a lot of expensive meds and Scrappy, my car, broke down and had to be sent off to the junkyard. R. I. P, Scrappy. All these things combined with having to buy everything needed to set up housekeeping:
Think about it, just making a hamburger required my getting:
- A Hot plate (this place has no kitchen, more later)
- A skillet
- Oil
- Buns,
- Ketchup
- Salt
- Pepper
- Plate
- Spatula
Oh, yes, and ground beef.
Do you see the problem? To mop the floor, I needed a broom, dustpan, bucket, mop and floor soap. Trash? Needed cans, plastic trash bags. On and on. Adding up the costs of a minimal set of things to enable simple housekeeping came to nearly $1000.00 on it’s own. Not counting the vacuum cleaner I finally broke down and bought when I could no longer take how the carpet looked.
Come to think of it, crossing the country was horribly expensive, The heat was unbearable and I had no air conditioning. With temps over one hundred-twenty degrees in California and remaining over one hundred all the way to Florida, I ended up sleeping days in a motel, driving nights. There was no chance of sleeping in the car, even if I could find shade. Even Butters was having a hard time of it. I needed to do an oil change before and after the trip (every three thousand miles, remember?) I needed to buy three tires along the way. I had to replace fan belts, which broke and require paid for towing – recall I used up the last of my insurance company towing when my timing belt went.) Long story short, the two thousand retainer went completely and then some in crossing the country and buying some, but not all, of my household supplies. The hospitalizations since then, along with the meds, the car break down, needing to ride cabs since I cannot walk to the bus stop and the ordinary cost of living things, food, cloths, gas while I had the car, renewal of my insurance (sigh, two weeks before car broke down) and all that has resulted in my only being able save a grand total of $320.00 so far. Pathetic. And I need a car–badly! Cabs are horribly expensive.
So, that’s where I am now, I have a small Apartment, 12 X 20, with a bathroom, a kitchen sink and counter, but only an under the counter fridge and electric appliances in place of a stove. A job that pays well, but nowhere near what a corporate job of the type I used to working would pay, in a state, county, city that offers no other work for me when this job is done. Thankfully, this job will last quite a while yet and after I replace my car, if my health will hold, I can get some savings put aside. Florida has a state sponsored insurance group policy for people that are self employed, etc., very unusual. I can buy insurance at group rates from a lot of companies here for about $250.00 a month. Getting this ASAP, wish I’d known about this prior to the last two trips to the hospital.
Things are up and are going up higher for me. But right now, if for any reason I lost my job, right now, I’d be worse off than I was before leaving Ca. No friends who’d take me or Butters in here. No car to live in, I’d be on the street homeless. Much worse weather. Though I’m not likely to be homeless at this moment, you never know, so I have horrible heart burn constantly, thanks to stressing over this. I’m desperate to get money saved aside, but when you are this broke, any little thing can wipe out any little savings you’ve managed. And so it has done for me, been knocked back to $0.00 four times so far.
I am so thankful for my friend who hired me to do this work for him. I have no clue where I would be if not for him. Despite it all, I still fear reprising homelessness.
This too shall pass.
P. S; Sorry it took so long to write this, but carpal tunnel turns out to be horribly painful and I’ve had to type all this one handed.
The History of My Homelessness Part 4
So, now I had a place to camp and a place to spend the day. But that was also problem. That article. A. It means in this case, ONE. One is not good, too much time in open place draws attention to you. Sleeping in a car, it’s not good to draw attention to you. I mean attention from the police or from the street life. So I needed to do something about this. Spending too much time in any one coffee shop will be bad too urn less you spend a lot of money. I could not afford to do that.
Within the first three weeks, I managed to find the following places to spend the day:
- Rebecca’s Coffee House, Juniper @ 30th
- Krakatoa Coffee House ,25th and B
- Lestat’s Coffee House, 34th and Adams
- The Living Room Coffee Houses, various locations
- It’s a Grind Coffee Houses, various locations
- Filter Coffeeshop, 30th @ Park
A side note: In a previous post, I mentioned that Krakatoa ooh first place from Rebecca’s, but that didn’t least, getting to know REbecca of Rebecca’s put Rebecca’s back at the top of the list. It had been a particular server that had placed Krakatoa at the top, and she left, that combined with getting to know Rebecca, put Rebecca’s back at the top. With both serving great coffee, food, tea and both haven reliable and fast wifi, it came down to personality and tat’s how Rebecca’s won.
As for places to stay, I finally found about four different places, I say about as I ever used one of the places. The method for this was to ask the police if it was ok to stop in a certain placed to sleep overnight. They were surprisingly helpful to me, unlike the horror stories of police/homeless meetings that I kept hearing about. I guess being sober, clean, clean shaven, hair cut nicely, car reasonably clean, insured and so forth, plus a courteous attitude makes a difference. So I had places to stay around the downtown area and out on the island.
I have a reined who lives in San Diego and, in addition to the odd $@0 here and there, he let me use his address as my mailing address. This gave me a we to apply for jobs and this I did the entire time I was in San Diego and in Huntington Beach (more on that later.)
Mainly from people I met in the cafe houses and from some door to door work and later through word of mouth, I got work doing web sites for a number of small businesses The money I made from this kept me in car insurance, kept my cell phone in service, kept me in gas and food and medication. (Recall that I am a diabetic, I suffer from neuropathy so bad I cannot walk much, that I have a non-healed broken left ankle, suffer from massive chronic pain (! take large doses of methadone twice a day, along with Cymbalta, an antidepressant that works on nerve pain) and that during this time I had several major diabetic ulcers open up. Major? When you need to spend two or more weeks in the hospital, I call that major.) I never had luck getting a regular job, the competition was fierce, there are huge numbers of out of work programmers in California and a fifty year old man in poor health is no ones first choice, no matter how much experience i may have.
Toward the end of September, Butters entered my life. She is a twelve pound female Jagdterrier also known as a German Hunt Terrier. Jagdterrier is pronounced Yak Terrier. It’s a german word, ask them. Her owner, a disabled lady living on a sever fixed income, and who already could not walk, was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She and I and Butters and I were long standing good friends, we had met at God’s Extended Hand and I started visiting her with my collection of three hundred plus movies on DVD.
Though not able to walk much, I did become one of Butter’s main walkers, ti did not have to go far to do her business. She and I became fast friends. When my friend got the news about her terminal condition and less than three months to live, long story short, I bought Butters from her. You can see lots of images of Butters on this site.
Soon after taking over butters, I came down with a really serious ulcer on my rig heal. The infection was MRSA, the superbug. I needed to be hospitalized on Vancomycin for weeks to treat tis and avoid loosing my foot. I called my friends in Huntington beach whom I’d stayed with before and they, bless them, invited me to come stay with them as long as I needed to get things in order. They had no problem with my bringing Butters, despite their four cats. (Butters was raised with cats and had no problems of her own with them, she thinks she’s a cat pretty much as it is…) Their cats, in fact, became good friends with Butters. So I drove up to Huntington Beach, Spent a couple day getting things together and then Checked into UofC Long Beach for what ended up nearly three weeks. Some day, I will write about the horror show that is medical care in California, but for now, tis will have to wait. Long story short, after three weeks, I was released, but needed to stay off my feet for several weeks. My friends were fine with that. They not only turned over their living room and couch to me, but kept me fed to boot. What great people.
After about a month with my friends, I had to meet with one of my clients who wanted to make some major changes to the web site i’d made for him. I drove down to San Diego, had the meeting with him, picked up the drawings he’d made, etc., etc., etc. and, on the way back to Huntington Beach, my car broke it’s timing chain. Using my last tow event on my insurance car towing service, I dropped the car off at a Pepboys in Oceanside and my friend from Huntington Beach drove down and picked me up. Well, long sorry short, I ended up in the hospital again with a new infection of the same wound. The timing chain was gone gone gone, but I had a freewheeling engine in my car, meaning that the loss of the timing chain did not have the usually horrible consequences this usually carries (most times, you just junk the engine) and so could be fixed for about $500. I did the web work in the hospital, got paid when I left the hospital, my friend drove me down to Oceanside again and I picked up and paid for the car repair, leaving me again totally broke despite having just gotten paid $500.00 for the work I’d done while hospitalized.
Kodak Slice
This is my first attempt at a posting since coming down with Carpal Tunnel. it slow going and taking a lot of correction…
Kodak has just announcecd a new point and shoot camera it’s calling the Slice. Called the Slice due to it’s search feature which allows you to sort by person, place, event, location, or by any of the manual tags you use for your pictures. One of my favorite features is that you can share pictures instantly with the one-button upload feature—choose from a single picture to an entire collection. Sharing works as follows: Take your picture(s) and press the share button. Tag the picture(S) for sharing on Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Kodak Galleryor e-mail. When you connect to your computer, BAM! Off they go! How much simpler can it be? I could wish for built in WIFI so they could go when in WIFI range, but this is certainly a good way too, I often shoot pix which as soon as I shoot them, I know I want to send them somehwere, a person or place. By the time I got to where I want to actually send them, when I get back to m y computer, I’ll have forgotten. With this camera, no more–read on!
- Here is what Kodak has to say about the camer, I will continue my preview afterwards, so read on!
Reconnect to your pictures. Redefine how you share them. Connect instantly to your memories, cruise through thousands of shots, and sort them by person, place, location, date, event, and more.
The Kodak Slice is not an ordinary camera. It’s an instant connection to all of your memories. With its sleek touchscreen interface, you can cruise through thousands of your favorite shots. And with just a tap, the unique Slice Search feature lets you sort pictures by person, occasion or date. The Kodak Slice also recognizes friends by face, so even the moments you can’t put a label on are as easy to find as they are impossible to forget. You’ve always kept your pictures close to heart. Now you can have them all right at your fingertips.
Kodak Slice Features & Highlights
Touchscreen interface
- Explore your pictures with the brilliant and intuitive 3.5 in. 16:9 touchscreen interface featuring Kodak Color Science Technology for brighter, more vibrant details
- Capacitive touchscreen can be controlled with the slightest touch of your fingertip, providing you with a responsive, fluid experience
- Anti-reflective coating keeps your pictures free from glare even under bright sunlight
Slice Search feature
- The Slice Search feature allows you to sort by person, place, event, location, or by any of the manual tags you use for your pictures.
- Share pictures instantly with the one-button upload feature—choose from a single picture to an entire collection.
Kodak’s Face Recognition feature
- Find, organize, and share your pictures easily
- Camera automatically recognizes up to 20 pre-tagged faces so you can easily locate and share them later
- Recognizes up to five faces in a single image
- Name tags carry over to your favorite photo management software for easy searching
Store up to 5,000 pictures
The Slice Album feature puts all your pictures at your fingertips—automatically storing an HD resolution copy of up to 5,000 images on 2 GB of internal memory (and your original high resolution pictures are maintained on the optional MicroSD/MicroSDHC card)
5x optical zoom
The 5x Schneider-Kreuznach optical zoom lens zooms in close for extraordinary details on faraway shots
Ready, steady, go
- Optical image stabilization ensures your shots are always sharp, automatically
- Reduce blur caused by camera shake, subject movement, or fast-action situations
Amazing quality prints with 14 megapixels
- 14-megapixel resolution means you can make stunning prints up to 30 x 40 inches
- More megapixels means you can crop and enlarge and still have great picture quality
- However you choose to print—at home, at retail, or online—trust Kodak for picture quality that’s truly exceptional and for memories that will last
Kodak’s Smart Capture feature
Become a better photographer with a smarter camera. Kodak’s innovative Smart Capture feature automatically identifies the scene and adjusts camera settings for a great picture in just about any environment.
- Intelligent scene detection—detects and analyzes scene conditions
- Intelligent capture control automatically sets camera settings, including exposure, focus and ISO for clear, sharp pictures even in low light and challenging situations
- Intelligent image processing reduces noise and clears up dark shadows for vibrant, crisp details and true-to-life colors
HD picture capture
- Take stunning HD pictures in 16:9 format
- View pictures in high definition on an HDTV or other HD devices
HD video capture
- Capture HD quality video at 720p at 30 fps with sound and on-camera editing
- Save single frames and e-mail family and friends
High ISO mode
See the details in low-light conditions and fast-action situations with high ISO (up to 3200).
Scene modes and on-camera picture enhancing features
- Get the right shot—manually select from the multiple scene and color modes
- Create your perfect shot with cropping, auto picture rotation, and undo-delete
- Panorama stitch mode combines up to three shots into one large picture
Kodak PERFECT TOUCH Technology
- Make your pictures as vivid as the moment you took them
- Relive your memories in richer detail
- Clear up dark shadows and reveal better, brighter pictures
Don’t miss a shot with Li-Ion rechargeable batteries
- Get energy that lasts with the power of the included Li-Ion rechargeable battery and in-camera charging
- Smaller, lighter battery with higher voltage and energy capacity
One button upload—turn moments into memories
- Snap your picture
- Press the Share button and tag it for Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Kodak Gallery, plus e-mail too
- Connect to your PC and off they go!
What’s in the Box
- Kodak Slice touchscreen camera
- Kodak rechargeable Li-ion battery
- Kodak USB AC adapter for in-camera charging
- Wrist strap
- USB cable
- User guide with Kodak EasyShare software
Product Description