Here I am in North Carolina wondering where in the world we are going. I spent nearly all of the last 17 months away from home working to make a living with promises that I would have some great opportunities to earn a lot extra with some overseas rotations. Well none of that materialized and then on my birthday I received a phone call that my temporary services were no longer required by the company I was working for. They let me go due to the lack of work I had been contracted to do even though I was doing a lot more for them than originally contracted for and even though I had a pending appointment to sign on with them as a direct employee.
This left me with a huge amount of mixed feelings since I loved that I was getting to return home and live with my family again under the same roof, yet it also left me wondering exactly how I was going to keep that roof over my head without an income. So far I have had the good fortune to accomplish some of the long awaiting routine home upkeep that had been languishing since my work related forced absence from home.
The past two weeks have been interesting to say the least. My wife who had been job hunting for an extended time finally found steady work, not quite full time but the 34 hours a week will help a lot. We decided to be a little proactive and inform out mortgage companies about our new found inability to pay our mortgage payments, and ask for a deferment or forbearance, to give us some time to get a sufficient income level back in place to properly service our debt.
It turns out that you can't get ahead of the game and do a loan modification before your credit rating takes a hit. They make you wait until you are anywhere from one to three months late before they will even talk to you about it. Of course the fact is that as soon as you are late they are allowed to slap on late fees and I'm sure that they will grow as each month passes and we are still unable to make the payments. My personal feeling is that they force you into default before acting just to extract more money out of you along the whole process.
In the case of our first mortgage since the loan will go into default they will charge us late fees, and since we do other banking with them I expect that or credit card will also be jacked up to the default interest rate of 23.9% and our previously free checking will also start accruing monthly charges of around 12 bucks a month. If I understand the way they work, these default fees will remain in place until we show 6 months or more of continuous on time payment of all of our debt with them. The end result is that we will pay thousands of dollars in total penalties for the fact that I was laid off instead of allowing us to put those thousands of dollars to working paying off the debt by being proactive.
You have to love a system that is set up towards ensuring failure rather than success.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Reading and Writing, No Arithmetic
One of the major advantages of the internet is it has become a voice for so many people. Through the use of instant messaging, social networking, blogging and personal web sites people have the ability to speak out and be heard across the world.
Of course this great advantage is also one of the terrible aspects of the internet, meaning everyone is talking at once and it becomes difficult to be heard above the din of too much information. It is equally terrible trying to find the few gems of thought and pearls of wisdom when they are but a drop in an overwhelming flood.
Prior to the internet a person actually had to have something to say that was important to people before their words could be heard in the form of books, articles and speeches. In the old world this meant that ideas were well formed, proper grammar and spelling was used and often someone would edit or review the material correcting or pointing out any mistakes.
In the new interconnected world grammar, spelling, and even continuity of ideas is missing out of most of what is posted online. People are left to edit themselves and it becomes pretty obvious that most have no idea about proofreading and ensuring that what they have to say is put forth in its best most understandable form. Today even newspapers, magazines and the mainstream media fail to ensure that what they have to say is relevant, accurate and delivered in a proper style. Because so much of what is online is often unintelligible and painful to read you have to look to books to find comfort in the use of language. Only in books will you find a writer’s stream of thought and consciousness skillfully articulated to the public at large.
Gadgets like the kindle will never replace books due to their high cost and inconvenience. When I finished reading Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows, I passed the book on to my wife who started reading it immediately while I started reading How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Through the wonders that are books, we were both able to read different books at the same time. The cost of buying multiple kindles just to be able to share books is pretty ridiculous and no electronic device will ever give the same reading experience and satisfaction as having a book in hand.
Of course this great advantage is also one of the terrible aspects of the internet, meaning everyone is talking at once and it becomes difficult to be heard above the din of too much information. It is equally terrible trying to find the few gems of thought and pearls of wisdom when they are but a drop in an overwhelming flood.
Prior to the internet a person actually had to have something to say that was important to people before their words could be heard in the form of books, articles and speeches. In the old world this meant that ideas were well formed, proper grammar and spelling was used and often someone would edit or review the material correcting or pointing out any mistakes.
In the new interconnected world grammar, spelling, and even continuity of ideas is missing out of most of what is posted online. People are left to edit themselves and it becomes pretty obvious that most have no idea about proofreading and ensuring that what they have to say is put forth in its best most understandable form. Today even newspapers, magazines and the mainstream media fail to ensure that what they have to say is relevant, accurate and delivered in a proper style. Because so much of what is online is often unintelligible and painful to read you have to look to books to find comfort in the use of language. Only in books will you find a writer’s stream of thought and consciousness skillfully articulated to the public at large.
Gadgets like the kindle will never replace books due to their high cost and inconvenience. When I finished reading Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows, I passed the book on to my wife who started reading it immediately while I started reading How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Through the wonders that are books, we were both able to read different books at the same time. The cost of buying multiple kindles just to be able to share books is pretty ridiculous and no electronic device will ever give the same reading experience and satisfaction as having a book in hand.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
It makes you wonder.
I have to wonder sometimes exactly how the universe is wired and what makes things happen the way they do. For those of you who know me you know that 16 months ago I quit my job because I need a break from working on aircraft. During this time my wife and I started a new company doing graphic design, web design, formulating budgets and more.
We contracted out our services for free to a new company with the promise of being highly paid for future work when the full investment capital came in. It turns out that the owner of the company we were working with is a terrible businessman with no integrity who doesn’t respect the people around him trying to make him successful. Long story short, for a year we busted our butts for him and he drove away every single potential investor during this time. He is now on the verge of bankruptcy and perhaps has committed securities fraud along the way. We cut our losses and left with nothing to show for a years work except a good example of what not to do with a start up company.
Now my wife is a very prolific and an extremely good graphic artist who also did some work for another start up company. In fact this other company would have nothing to sell without my wife’s graphic designs that are being used to launch an entire product line and therefore an entire company. She had an understanding in place and agreed upon compensation for all her work, and now this new business owner is trying to renege on all of her promises. The product line was supposed to launch last February, then March before the launch date was slipped to September. Well now it is slated for an October launch and she has yet to pay my wife for her extensive work, which consists of more than 130 finished graphics.
Most recently we have been involved with an established businesswoman who is working with an organization involved in education for a specific health condition. She has many ideas for a product line to be sold as a fund raising venture for the organization. This woman is more than happy to have us do work for her but she seems to be unwilling to discuss any compensation for the work done.
So here is what I am wondering about. Here we are busting our butts and giving our absolute best efforts as business people only to have other business people constantly try to screw us out of what we are due. Are all business owners so unscrupulous especially when it comes to compensating graphic designers or artists, or are we just unfortunate enough to be scraping along the bottom of the barrel in our dealings with other companies? My whole life I have believed that if you work hard, maintain your personal integrity, and do more than is expected that you will succeed in the business world. I’m not willing to sacrifice my integrity but I am beginning to wonder if success only comes to you if you are willing to be an unscrupulous prick when dealing with others? Is what we are seeing part of the “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” philosophy?
Anyway that's about all I have to say on this today.
We contracted out our services for free to a new company with the promise of being highly paid for future work when the full investment capital came in. It turns out that the owner of the company we were working with is a terrible businessman with no integrity who doesn’t respect the people around him trying to make him successful. Long story short, for a year we busted our butts for him and he drove away every single potential investor during this time. He is now on the verge of bankruptcy and perhaps has committed securities fraud along the way. We cut our losses and left with nothing to show for a years work except a good example of what not to do with a start up company.
Now my wife is a very prolific and an extremely good graphic artist who also did some work for another start up company. In fact this other company would have nothing to sell without my wife’s graphic designs that are being used to launch an entire product line and therefore an entire company. She had an understanding in place and agreed upon compensation for all her work, and now this new business owner is trying to renege on all of her promises. The product line was supposed to launch last February, then March before the launch date was slipped to September. Well now it is slated for an October launch and she has yet to pay my wife for her extensive work, which consists of more than 130 finished graphics.
Most recently we have been involved with an established businesswoman who is working with an organization involved in education for a specific health condition. She has many ideas for a product line to be sold as a fund raising venture for the organization. This woman is more than happy to have us do work for her but she seems to be unwilling to discuss any compensation for the work done.
So here is what I am wondering about. Here we are busting our butts and giving our absolute best efforts as business people only to have other business people constantly try to screw us out of what we are due. Are all business owners so unscrupulous especially when it comes to compensating graphic designers or artists, or are we just unfortunate enough to be scraping along the bottom of the barrel in our dealings with other companies? My whole life I have believed that if you work hard, maintain your personal integrity, and do more than is expected that you will succeed in the business world. I’m not willing to sacrifice my integrity but I am beginning to wonder if success only comes to you if you are willing to be an unscrupulous prick when dealing with others? Is what we are seeing part of the “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” philosophy?
Anyway that's about all I have to say on this today.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
One Of Those Mornings
Have you ever had one of those mornings where you just wake up for no good reason in the middle of the night? Well that happened to me today. Here I was sleeping peacefully dreaming about a family trip to Europe when suddenly I found myself wide awake. I shifted myself to a nice comfortable position and tried going back to sleep but after an hour with no success, here I am wide awake banging away on my computer keyboard. Oh and now it feels like I am starting off my day with a migraine just to make things more fun.
This happens to be my darling wife’s birthday so I suppose I will have to just get an early start on my plans. Anyway if I can manage it with my head pounding away, my wife will get coffee in bed this morning, a nice home made pasta salad for lunch, and perhaps Souvlaki, a Greek salad, garlic bread, fries and a bottle of wine for dinner. She is a fabulous woman who just keeps getting better as time goes by and she has to be somewhat of a Saint to put up with me for all these years. Well I better get to it then…
This happens to be my darling wife’s birthday so I suppose I will have to just get an early start on my plans. Anyway if I can manage it with my head pounding away, my wife will get coffee in bed this morning, a nice home made pasta salad for lunch, and perhaps Souvlaki, a Greek salad, garlic bread, fries and a bottle of wine for dinner. She is a fabulous woman who just keeps getting better as time goes by and she has to be somewhat of a Saint to put up with me for all these years. Well I better get to it then…
Monday, August 4, 2008
Welcome To My Corner Of The Internet
Greetings and thanks for stopping in. Just a little bit of background for me so you will have some idea of where I'm coming from. I'm 47 years old and retired from the US Air Force. Over the years I've lived in 4 different countries, visited a total of 21 countries and have been to more than half of the United States. Currently I live in North Carolina where I am trying to eek out a living. I have been involved with several political Bulletin Boards but am pretty fed up with them for all the bitching, whining, complaining and overall nastiness that goes on in them. I will write and upload "The Truth" as I see it in this space about whatever subjects seem to catch my interest. I'll update it daily, weekly or monthly as things come to mind. If you have a differing opinion then feel free to post it here in the comments but if it becomes more of the same kind of crap that ruins Political Bulletin Boards then I will just delete it without warning. In this world we are all entitled to our opinions but it doesn't mean that everyone else has to agree with them and trying to badger someone into submission is not necessary, nor will it be tolerated. I hope this becomes an interesting forum as it progresses so please feel free to drop in often to see how it's going.
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