Everyone seems to be looking to get something for nothing these days. If you don't believe me, try selling something - something big - which may be taking up space in the garage.
I had this silly notion to be rid of the camping trailer which has been occupying my garage for the five years I have been living on Wandering Way. Lately, it has become little more than another piece of horizontal space on which I could store any number of objects from motor oil to Christmas ornaments. Three weeks ago, a former co-worker dropped by unexpectedly - our conversation boiling down to my desire to find a good home to my trailer.
"Well I have this buddy who might be interested..." I was told, and about two weeks later, this former co-worker and three other people descended on my home wanting to see the camper. They had a truck and towed it out to the side yard where I cranked it up and told them about the various shortcomings of the contraption and seeing as how someone had offered me $1000 for the rig a couple of years ago without going to the trouble of pulling the thing out of my garage, I modestly asked for $800. Well, after pulling the thing out and after giving the device a going over, I was offered $500 under the provision that the air conditioner was in working condition. My former co-worker was to come by the next day to confirm that the AC was working so that the deal could be complete by the following weekend.
To this writing, the co-worker has not been back.
I now have a trailer sitting in my side yard with no real means of pulling it from place to place. Our fleet of vehicles now consists of economical four door sedans which don't have enough oomph to pull a trailer around the block, much less out to a campground or into my garage. My best alternative seemed to be to put a sign on the thing and hope that someone would be willing to take the thing and give it a good home. At first, I thought of putting it on sale on "Craig's List" using the following ad:
NOW OFFERING: 1995 Coleman/Fleetwood Rio Grande pop-up camper. Could sleep up to 6 (very friendly) people. Features ice chest, storage trunk and screened-in room. Frame is solid, AC works. There are a few quirks as should be expected with any 18 year old; but as something for a novice, or as something to take to the lake for "Fishin' and Drinkin'", this could be your ticket! $525 and you can have it today!
After thinking it over, I decided to delay a foray into Craig's list, unless I could find a way to advertise the camper as some sort of "Portable Rendezvous", offering it for sale in the "Personal's" section of the List.
So I purchased and put up a sign in front of the trailer, and so far I have had three "nibbles" - again from people wanting something for nothing.
The first came from a man who lived a couple of blocks away who initially wanted to trade a Tablet for the rig. I came to the conclusion that I already have enough computing power in my house to make several simultaneous moon landing and declined. He then mentioned that he had a hot tub, and since the other half and I have been bantering back and forth about getting a hot tub in our back yard, the idea seemed halfway plausible... that is until I did some reading and discovered that a "free" hot tub would eventually cost considerably more than the $500 I wanted out of the trailer. We passed.
I had a couple come with their son, driving a vehicle which would easily tow the camper almost anywhere. If the son had his way and the cash, the deal would have been done on the spot. His parents wanted to make a deal where they would pay $150 now and the remainder within 45 days. I am still working on that deal, as well as a similar deal with another party who wants to do the same thing.
I'm not a bank and I have this feeling that any such deal would "go south" before a final payment was made on the rig. I had previous problems with folks who just had to have something I owned (or had marginal ownership interest in) and have found myself in the position where the initial deal had been diluted by non-payment of the full amount agreed to when the deal was struck. Right now, I am offering a reasonably priced item for less than I really wanted for it and I really don't want to play "Banker". I'm not really inclined to prostitute myself any further.
The trailer will sit where it is until someone wants to pay cash.
There was a minor repair I had to make on the trailer on Friday evening after showing it for what seemed like the umteenth time. After finishing, I sat down inside for a good ten minutes before wrapping up the show and heading into the house. I contemplated the time I had spent with the trailer - some of the camping trips and the good times we had - and actually had half a notion to just take down the sign and see if my friend, Dave, still had the little GMC pickup truck he wasn't using sitting in his garage.
Maybe I could talk him into selling it to me for next to nothing - in installments.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
I've Got a Secret!
It was back in the late fifties/early sixties when Garry Moore hosted an interesting television show called "I've Got a Secret". The premise was simple, really. People would appear in front of a panel who had to guess the secret of the guest. If they failed, the guest won money. If they guessed, the guest won less money. Famous people would go on the show, too. Before a famous guest would go on, the panel would put on blindfolds (sequined, naturally) and would usually let Garry voice the answers to the panelists' questions. You Tube has some of the old kinescopes available 24/7 - I was delighted to watch Ted Lewis from Circleville, Ohio fail miserably. One of the panelists nailed him in no time flat.
Lewis came from an era when, if you had a secret - you kept that secret, secret. For instance, in the days leading up to WWII, the British got a hold of a cipher machine and a code book used by the Nazis and were thus able to keep up with what Hitler's war machine was up to and was able to thwart Adolph Hitler's evil plans at will. It was code-named 'Enigma' and it was one of the most closely held secrets during the war. Nobody felt compelled to report 'Enigma' to the press, or to complain that they felt threatened by the existence of the machine - in large part because no one knew that the thing existed.
We fooled the Japanese, too, by using Navaho 'Code Talkers'. No one had any second thoughts about lending the Japanese one or two Navahos so that they could understand what was being said about them by those sinister round-eyed American devils. No sir!
Well, these days, things have changed. Television is no longer in black and white, most television game shows require no thinking whatsoever and apparently it's okay to blab vital secrets in such a way that people who wish to do us harm know that they're being listened to, forcing them to use different channels of communication. If certain people would have kept their mouths shut about what the NSA has been doing, chances are that we could still be short-circuiting terrorist plans like we supposedly had been doing, that is, until the whistle was blown.
Now, part of the problem is that certain people in our government are inept boobs who have no business being in charge of a household, much less being in charge of a government program or of the military. This Bradley Manning fellow is probably right in some respects. Our military is prone to pulling boners far too often for comfort. It's not really the fault of the little guy (the kids who volunteer to be in the armed services). The people who know better are the worst offenders. We have a problem which needs to be fixed - BUT - there's no sense bringing the problem to the attention of others who can do nothing about the problem. What should have been done was for Manning to bring the situations he had reported to the attention of someone in the Pentagon who could have done something about those situations. It may have taken a while, but, Manning would not be on trial at the moment.
At least that's what I think about it.
Imagine what sort of damage Bradley Manning would have done if he were to have pulled a similar trick during WWII and tipping the Germans off about the existence of a British 'Enigma' decoder - or giving the Japanese helpful hints on how to speak Navaho? One set of secrets which were dropped out of that war were hints on building nuclear weapons by the Rosenbergs (sic). Incidentally, they were executed for passing secrets to the Russians sixty years ago this week. Manning will likely spend a few years in the brig, but that's about it.
Same thing goes for the fellow hiding out over in Hong Kong at the moment. Perhaps the people in the fourth estate who are climbing all over themselves to get 'scoops' on these blabbermouths need to be reminded that they may be enabling the next bomb or the next terrorist invasion.
And as far as screaming bloody murder about the discovery that there are agencies monitoring phone calls and the internet, be reminded that those agencies were enabled by those same people - afraid of the next pressure cooker bomb or the next airplane flying into a building just after 9/11.
Didn't I just say something about being sick of this mess?
I'm becoming incoherent.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
Lewis came from an era when, if you had a secret - you kept that secret, secret. For instance, in the days leading up to WWII, the British got a hold of a cipher machine and a code book used by the Nazis and were thus able to keep up with what Hitler's war machine was up to and was able to thwart Adolph Hitler's evil plans at will. It was code-named 'Enigma' and it was one of the most closely held secrets during the war. Nobody felt compelled to report 'Enigma' to the press, or to complain that they felt threatened by the existence of the machine - in large part because no one knew that the thing existed.
We fooled the Japanese, too, by using Navaho 'Code Talkers'. No one had any second thoughts about lending the Japanese one or two Navahos so that they could understand what was being said about them by those sinister round-eyed American devils. No sir!
Well, these days, things have changed. Television is no longer in black and white, most television game shows require no thinking whatsoever and apparently it's okay to blab vital secrets in such a way that people who wish to do us harm know that they're being listened to, forcing them to use different channels of communication. If certain people would have kept their mouths shut about what the NSA has been doing, chances are that we could still be short-circuiting terrorist plans like we supposedly had been doing, that is, until the whistle was blown.
Now, part of the problem is that certain people in our government are inept boobs who have no business being in charge of a household, much less being in charge of a government program or of the military. This Bradley Manning fellow is probably right in some respects. Our military is prone to pulling boners far too often for comfort. It's not really the fault of the little guy (the kids who volunteer to be in the armed services). The people who know better are the worst offenders. We have a problem which needs to be fixed - BUT - there's no sense bringing the problem to the attention of others who can do nothing about the problem. What should have been done was for Manning to bring the situations he had reported to the attention of someone in the Pentagon who could have done something about those situations. It may have taken a while, but, Manning would not be on trial at the moment.
At least that's what I think about it.
Imagine what sort of damage Bradley Manning would have done if he were to have pulled a similar trick during WWII and tipping the Germans off about the existence of a British 'Enigma' decoder - or giving the Japanese helpful hints on how to speak Navaho? One set of secrets which were dropped out of that war were hints on building nuclear weapons by the Rosenbergs (sic). Incidentally, they were executed for passing secrets to the Russians sixty years ago this week. Manning will likely spend a few years in the brig, but that's about it.
Same thing goes for the fellow hiding out over in Hong Kong at the moment. Perhaps the people in the fourth estate who are climbing all over themselves to get 'scoops' on these blabbermouths need to be reminded that they may be enabling the next bomb or the next terrorist invasion.
And as far as screaming bloody murder about the discovery that there are agencies monitoring phone calls and the internet, be reminded that those agencies were enabled by those same people - afraid of the next pressure cooker bomb or the next airplane flying into a building just after 9/11.
Didn't I just say something about being sick of this mess?
I'm becoming incoherent.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Count Pointercount
I've just about had it with the bickering.
It's been three weeks since I've posted a blog, in large part because I seem to have spent a considerable amount of time listening to the bickering going on regarding the various and sundry "scandals" or "Fill in the Blank - Gates" which seem to have been taking up most of the national conversation lately. There is a constant bitching and moaning about how this country is being run into the ground by one or the other of the political parties with charges, counter charges and rebuttals out the wazoo.
Somehow, it's got to stop.
Either that, or we should delete the word "United" from "The United States of America".
Things have gotten so bad and so annoyingly stupid that the satire site known as "The Onion" has decided that they need to shut down.
Reality has become its own satire.
I am to the point where I am about to start unfreinding certain people and organizations if they don't cease and desist.
ARRRRRRGHHHHH!
Things otherwise are working out. I had a small glitch in the adult education class I am in the midst of taking.... I've also worked out a glitch in one of my stories. Things are coming together.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
It's been three weeks since I've posted a blog, in large part because I seem to have spent a considerable amount of time listening to the bickering going on regarding the various and sundry "scandals" or "Fill in the Blank - Gates" which seem to have been taking up most of the national conversation lately. There is a constant bitching and moaning about how this country is being run into the ground by one or the other of the political parties with charges, counter charges and rebuttals out the wazoo.
Somehow, it's got to stop.
Either that, or we should delete the word "United" from "The United States of America".
Things have gotten so bad and so annoyingly stupid that the satire site known as "The Onion" has decided that they need to shut down.
Reality has become its own satire.
I am to the point where I am about to start unfreinding certain people and organizations if they don't cease and desist.
ARRRRRRGHHHHH!
Things otherwise are working out. I had a small glitch in the adult education class I am in the midst of taking.... I've also worked out a glitch in one of my stories. Things are coming together.
Be Seeing You!
bdharrell
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