This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Lieberlost

No in depth commentary, but I just want to say it is a shame Lieberman lost in the primary. It is just another symptom of both parties moving away from the center, with the nut jobs in both camps being more and more in control.

Here’s hoping Joe does not get talked out of it and makes a successful run as an independent. There has got to be room in this country for the reasonable, pragmatic centrists. If the people in the center from both parties just got together and started a reasonable third party, I think there would be a large number of people who would go for it.

But of course, Joe will probably be talked out of it, and if he does run he will probably lose, and in all likelihood things will get more and more divided and the moderates will continue to be pushed out.

Oh well.

New Frump Book – With Lions

imageMonday I got an email from a major Internet retailer (with whom I have another relationship as well) letting me know:

As someone who has purchased books by Robert Frump, you might like to know that The Man-Eaters of Eden: Life and Death in Kruger National Park is now available . You can order your copy at a savings of 37% by following the link below.

Robert Frump is of course one of my ex-bosses from the place I worked before the place I worked before the place I work now.

You should all buy his book. I know I will.

His last book is also still available.

Price Drop 3

Just sent the agent the paperwork to drop the price on the house in Florida again. We’ve been dropping the price once a month ($10K at a shot) and this is the third drop. We were below the average price per square foot in the area with our FIRST price, but things are just so slow there at the moment. Very few buyers, but lots on the market. (The last “very interested” person ended up going for a house about the same size, but MORE expensive and about 20 years newer.)

We’re really hoping that at this new price it will move. We have more room before we get to the level that we’d have to write a check at closing instead of getting one… that isn’t the pinch point. The pinch point is how long we can run on a month to month cash flow deficit before we have no more cash to flow. I think we’ve got a couple more months, but not much longer than that, I don’t have much left in reserve at this point.

And yes, we could drop the price all the way to our break even point in one fell swoop and hopefully sell right away and at least be done with the mortgage payments and utilities and such, but we do not want to be leaving money on the table either. We’ve still got SOME time left… just not a huge amount.

And yeah, we’re also aware of the problem with dropping the price too much and getting the “there must be something wrong with it if they keep dropping it” effect, but hey, we’re what you call “motivated sellers” and all that. :-)

Thing Above

image

Generation 3

With Olive Sarah Wright I have completed posting another generation back. So time once again to see WHERE Sam’s roots are from.

The break down of Generation 2:

25% North Carolina
25% Kentucky
25% Arkansas
25% Vermont

And now Generation 3:

25% South Carolina
25% Kentucky
25% Ohio
25% Vermont

Kind of interesting that even though we have 8 people now instead of 4, we’re still just in four states (and one country). Both parents of the person born in North Carolina were born in South Carolina. Both parents of the person born in Arkansas were born in Ohio. And the people born in Kentucky and Vermont both had parents born in the same state they were born in.

The center of mass seems to move a little to the southwest. Which one again makes me think I should actually make maps and calculate the real center of mass and stuff.

But once again, I won’t. At least not now.

Olive Sarah Wright

imageThis is my mother’s mother’s mother.

She went by Sarah, not Olive. So much so that when I was putting this together there was a lot of discussion about if she was really Sarah Olive or Olive Sarah. The one online reference I had found said Olive Sarah, but my mom was SURE that is was Sarah Olive. I actually switched it back and forth a couple times.

I finally settled on Olive Sarah when my mom sent me something my Uncle David (the family genealogy expert) that listed her as O. Sarah. But regardless of her given name, she went by Sarah.

She died young. Hit by a car while she was walking as a pedestrian in 1917. She was 37. There were not very many cars then.

And aside from the fact that that she lived in Vermont, married Donald Hurlburt, and was the mother of my grandmother and my Great Uncle Rod, that’s about all I know about her.

Book: A Morbid Taste For Bones

imageAuthor: Ellis Peters
Started: 5 Jul 2006
Finished: 10 Jul 2006
197p / 6d
33 p/d

A little delayed writing this up. I finished this on the first day the movers were packing us up in Florida. (Which reminds me, I should post some time on what a bad job they did and all the stuff that got screwed up.)

In any case, this is the first in the “Chronicles of Brother Cadfael”. A few Christmases and birthdays ago my mom had given me a Cadfael book… the LAST of the series actually. I was bad and read it before reading earlier ones in the series, but decided it was worth reading more. So I ordered the first in the series. Several years later, it made it to the top of my pile and I read it.

Basically your standard murder mystery sort of thing except it is set in the middle ages and the detective is a monk. This one centers around a quest to get the bones of a saint for the monestary and the events that end up surrounding that.

In the end it was OK, but did not super impress me. If I remember correctly (it was years ago) I liked the other one I read better. This one just never fully held my attention. It was still a pretty quick read, but I was never fully drawn in. There was never a time where I felt like I had to keep reading rather than putting it down for awhile.

I’ll still read the next one in the series (eventually). But I’m won’t be in a super rush.

Chris is Coming

image

Only about a 6% chance of tropical storm winds hitting our place in Florida at the moment, but we would still rather it did not.

12.09%

I missed noting when it passed 10%, cause while I had heard there was a place you could find out, I hadn’t bothered to find it yet. But now I have and of course that means I will keep track. And perhaps note it here when I pass certain milestones.

In any case, I started at my current company on 11 Jan 2006. It is now 31 Jul 2006. Just about six and a half months later.

At this point 12.09% of the employees of my company were hired after I was.

Interesting.

Amy Limbo