Things I Have Learned (Vol. I)

I've been living away from home for a few weeks now. Things I have learned:

1. I am still alive. This is a big plus.

2. GOD DAMN I have a lot of stuff. Where did this all come from??

3. The Roomba is a lot better at vacuuming than I am. It might not be very good either but it sure keeps at it longer than I do.

4. When you leave hot dog buns on the counter for nearly two weeks they turn stale. But when you have A STEAMER, you can turn them back into wonderful almost-new fresh buns. I am not even making this up. It is like magic or some crap.

5. That Funny Smell is the cork thing you put the pans on. Being boiled in the water under the steamer. Because you took the steamer off to check the buns, but then the goddamn cork thing stuck to the bottom of the steamer when you put it back in the pot. Brown water comes out of it too. I think it'll dry out back to normal.

Random Ramblings

The following is a bit of a shotgun blast of thoughts; I am in the midst of a week-long work seminar, and my brain is not functioning well enough to be cohesive.  Garth's post over at Greater Fool is excellent today, as well.


The most frightening moment in my entire life occurred in a Grade 12 Social Studies class, which is now about 8 years ago.

However, I still remember it like it was yesterday.

Our teacher, who's name I no longer recall, posed a question I thought to be rather simple:

"How many of you think people should be able to do whatever they like, as long as it does not harm anyone else?"

I was one of three people, out of a class of over 30, who raised a hand in agreement.  If this doesn't concern you, then you are already beyond help.

Now, one can make the argument that a lot of people in that class were either high or didn't care, which is probably true, but that shouldn't have amounted to the 90+% of them who supposedly disagreed.

That brief moment has helped me understand why everything in our world is the way it is, and why I am the way I am.

It's also one of the many reasons why I am a member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and encourage anyone with an open mind to explore what it has to offer.

Just a thought.

In other news, the TSX appears like it may make a run for 13,000 or possibly even beyond.  At this point, it doesn't matter.  We have seen some pretty hefty corporate earnings on essentially zero revenue growth.  This means that margins are peaking, which is not what happens in the middle of a "recovery".

Also, there's a reason my mailbox is inundated with junk from payday loan companies every week, and my bank constantly calls to offer me newer and exciting ways to become enslaved to them.  For the record, I have never had a line of credit, nor have I a use for one.

Growth in Consumer Credit Collapses by 50%

With real estate, it doesn't matter if we avoid the massive decline that has already begun, because even if valuations were to flatline and maintain existing levels for the foreseeable future, the large number of people who have been living beyond their means by sequentially rolling their consumer debt into their mortgage, expecting to continue using the double digit appreciation seen over the last decade (due entirely to one-time modifications of lending practices) to "pay it off" are going to be in serious trouble.

As I have said before, there are only two ways to succeed financially, and only one way that you can control. Luck and hard work.

On a side note, I am not a permabear.  I just call it like I see it.  If you had asked me my opinion in March of 2009, I would have told you to put every single penny you could find into the market.  If you had done so, you'd likely be up 2000% today.

Delay

I haven't been happy with anything I've churned out this evening, so rather then post something sub-par, I'll give it a day.  Check in tomorrow...


In the meantime, check out: http://mises.org/daily/4776

Manual Labour and the Morris Technique

The market is still extremely overbought, as America continues to try and convince its populous that destroying the currency is a good idea, and I will be sitting on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.  A post regarding an amusing event in my personal life will have to suffice, this week (don't worry, there's no mention of Wal-Mart this time).

I very rarely engage in manual labour.  This is primarily due to three separate, yet equally important, reasons:

1) It's one of my greatest phobias.

2) My self-calculated hourly rate for such work is so incredibly high that I wouldn't be able to afford the invoice if I were to hire myself.

3) When engaged in manual labour, I invariably end up applying something called the Morris Technique.

The first two reasons are fairly self-explanatory, but the third deserves some elaboration.

The Morris Technique is an extremely powerful, genetic, evolutionary-perfected method of performing manual labour that has been passed down from generation to generation, over hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.  Put simply, whenever a situation of difficulty presents itself during a manual labour event, one immediately casts aside all safe, relevant, and logical paths forward, and, instead, applies higher and higher degrees of rage-filled brute force until either immense, irreparable damage occurs to the object being worked on, or massive personal injury ensues.

A third outcome, which more or less compliments the previous two much like an aged cheese with a fine wine, occurs when one or more Morris' work on the same project together, and apply the technique in unison.  This outcome, naturally, is monumental physical violence between all parties present.

So, with all this firmly in mind, I awoke early Saturday morning with the spirited intention of changing the summer wheels and tires on our 2009 Toyota Matrix to their winter counterparts.

I began the task with a brisk trip to Canadian Tire at around 9am.  Once there, I located a reasonably priced 2-ton hydraulic jack, and also picked up a flashlight because, well, one can never have too many flashlights. Returning home triumphantly, I found the rear jacking point on the car, as indicated in the manual, and began raising the Matrix with the utmost of certainty.  When a thunderous crack echoed through the garage, I knew something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

It appears that for no reason that I can comprehend other than to save costs, the rear jacking point is a hollow structure made out of 1/4 inch thick sheet metal instead of solid steel.  Thus, the relatively small diameter head of the jack I had just proudly purchased managed to gently destroy its way through to the mysterious environment on the other side.

Pausing momentarily for several minutes of loud and creative profanity, I grabbed the Toyota-provided spare tire jack out of the trunk -- the kind you crank with both hands -- so that I could use the four individual jack points on the side of the car to do each wheel.  I began with the driver's side rear, which went well, and subsequently proceeded to the driver's side front.

After removing the front summer tire and mounting the winter one in its place, I began to notice something was amiss when the torque wrench refused to hit its limit on any of the lug nuts, after several minutes of tightening.  It was then that I saw that the hub centric on the summer wheel had not come off with the wheel and had instead fused itself onto the original hub, and stood tauntingly between me and victory like King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at the Hot Gates stood against Xerxes. Following the rapid completion of more profane outbursts, I applied a derivative of the Morris Technique to the hub centric using the back of a cheap blade screwdriver and the lug wrench.  This failed to work.

I pulled the winter tire off, remounted the summer one, lowered the car, moved the jack to the rear, raised the back again, started removing the single tire I had managed to get on the rear driver's side, all while waiting on hold with Kal Tire.  After the store manager finished laughing when I had asked if I could get the car in that day, I inquired whether I could get the hub centric off the front hub myself, and he pointed out that I could try pouring boiling water on it.

So, after several additional and exciting verbal blasphemies, I re-tightened the winter tire on the rear driver's side, lowered the car, moved the jack back to the front, raised the front, removed the summer rim for the second time, and start pouring a volume of boiling water equivalent to the Red Sea on the hub.  Many minutes of Morris Technique-ing later, I managed to pry off the hub centric, and angrily smashed the winter tire on and worked violently to complete the remainder of the task as quickly and unsafely as possible.

The passenger's side went quite smoothly, and after raising and lowering the car a total of 7 times with Toyota's Fisher Price jack, I spent the remainder of the weekend in unbearable pain.

A job well done.