I've spent the last hour or so reading topics from 2005 - 2006 in the OT Graveyard. Crazy to think that was 11 years ago. Who's still around? What did MSP get banned for? If you have some time, I really recommend going to the OT Graveyard and going back to the 300-something pages, it's pretty entertaining. This forum was a hell of a lot more active then. Also speaking of time/years, I would like to point out that it's bullshit that by 2016 there isn't some alternative to shaving aside from permanently removing all of my facial hair via laser. I work a white-collar job so unfortunately I have to shave pretty constantly - I can pull of shaving once every other day usually, but still. It sucks. I always manage to cut myself at least once because my scumbag brain is telling me, "You can get a closer shave than that!" I shave at night because it's so hard to get out of bed at 6am thinking of having to stand in the shower and shave while I'm half asleep. A few years ago I actually did let my shit grow for like 6 months and it was terrible, but at the time I couldn't have given a shit less. I just looked like a mix between a 12 year old white boy and Osama Bin Laden. Lastly, I am debating the value of purchasing a cheap house. Not like... falling apart cheap, but cheap enough. My lease is up in February, and for what I pay for rent and services I feel like a mortgage + property taxes + paying to fix shit up would even out, maybe be just a little more depending, and I'd at least have something with equity. Plus my apartment complex has a "2 car per person" rule and at the moment I have 3 (2 running and driving, even though all 3 look good - no flat tires or car parts hanging off, things like that. You wouldn't know if I didn't tell you.), so they don't like that. Not to mention, they feel the need to water the fucking bushes almost every night outside my window. Anywhere except Florida that wouldn't be a fucking problem. But Florida water is just terrible. You're taking a huge risk drinking from the tap here, I can't do it and I've been here almost 2 years now. It's like swamp groundwater that they barely treat, smells like straight sulfur. I believe the stuff they pump into the bushes comes straight from the alligator and duck infested pond at the end of the block. When they first started watering the bushes I was walking around for days trying to find out what smelled like shit, then I finally figured out it was when the sprinklers came on, outside, a floor down. That's how bad it is. Of course it's absolutely necessary to water the bushes in the middle of a fucking hurricane, too. Anyways, that was a lot of digression. My credit isn't terrible but it's not good either, I think it's in the mid to high 6's now. So I'm not too sure how smart it would be to get a house for like $130k, which is why I'm looking for opinions. Any advice?
MSP was banned? IIRC he complained about mods/admins, but I didn't know it was that bad. I can't recall when I became active, but it was well after most of you. I think my first post was about peyote. Yeah, shaving really sucks. I finally broke down and forked out for the Gillette Mach 3 and I'm sorry I waited so long. Maybe the single best advice for buying a house is to go get pre-approved for your loan. You'll know what's reasonable and it can give you bargaining power. (You don't have to say for how much you're pre-approved right off the bat)(plus sellers know you're serious)
He's not banned. He had a few temp bans I think, but he was always let back in. I don't remember why he was banned each time though.
I'm still around, though not as much as I used to be. Eps showed up the other day, that was a surprise. Yeah....this^^^ Owning is better than renting. The worst mistake is not studying up on what to look for when buying as fixer-upper. Some things simply cannot be fixed.
I hear ya. I have done my fair share of home repairs, not as much as some... things like drywall, plumbing/water heaters, fixing shingles, doors and windows, etc. I would think that if I can wire up engine/body harnesses in cars that fixing some basic home circuits wouldn't be anything new, or whatever else. $130k or so here would get actually a halfway decent place, as long as it was fine structurally. I'm just asking because this would be my first time doing something like this and I don't have much of an idea how to start as far as the finances are concerned. I can obviously walk around the house and see what's messed up and what isn't, and bring someone else or two with more experience.
I'm here, I joined the Coast Guard in 06. I've live in eastern WA, Miami, Jacksonville FL, Outside of Chicago, and now Manama Bahrain/Kuwait. Hopefully, this is my last duty station.
Meh, Fun, Meh, meh... proximity to Chicago is good... Bahrain? Any stories about that? Is there a thriving black market for booze, being that Allah does not approve?
I no longer exist. This is a text-bot, configured to continue my online presence after my real-life demise. In an empty cobweb-filled house, only one blinking light glows dimly, from the cable modem hooked up to a mysteriously active keyboardless box... Happy Halloween! Needless to say, I'm still here talking **** on the forums. (Literally! Check out my most recentish post!)
Text-bots are really becoming quite versatile in these modern times. Also, it's smooshing, not picking!
Actually, you can buy booze at hotels and on the navy base here. Cheap Asian hookers everywhere, don't get aids!
Oh, that's crazy. I'm surprised one of Allah's prophets hasn't exploded himself there because of that yet. Good old religion. ANYTHING THAT GIVES YOU PLEASURE IS WRONG AND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOR IT. LIFE IS SUPPOSED TO BE PAINFUL AND BORING.
Ever wonder what the world would be like today, if there were no resources at all in the Middle East?
Then we would have problems with folks wherever the resources were instead... Same song, different tune... Now that the Arctic is warming up, we're starting to see arguments over that as well. The South China Sea situation isn't looking too great either.
Canada HAS big oil deposits in those oil sands. The refinery right by me deals with that stuff, coming in by rail car, but yes, if those deposits had been in French-speaking Canada, and given the Quebecois reason to split off from the English part of Canada, way back in the past, we might not be having quite as friendly a time of it as we currently do. Imagine the joy of having the equivalent of Northern Ireland "troubles" as our northern neighbor... As for that tiny volcanic island nation in Northern Europe, if large deposits of oil had been found there prior to World War I or II, do you think that Nation could have avoided being annexed by one of it's greedier neighbors? Would it have stood by itself after the post WW-I treaty that redrew borders worldwide, laying the groundwork for most of the subsequent conflict in Africa and the Middle East?
My point was that the world would have been much better off if oil reserves were controlled by stable western democracies than in the relatively unstable middle eastern region, despite potentially disruptive influences. Historians like to call these "what-ifs" counterfactuals. What if the world's largest oil reserve and been found under Germany? Possibly we would be speaking auf Deutsch right now, but on the other hand, Germany's perceived need to start WWI would have probably been gone. Without WWI there is probably no WWII. Even still, with huge oil reserves Germany wouldn't have felt the combined crush of the Treaty of Versailles and the Great Depression, and the conditions wouldn't have existed for someone like Hitler to come to power. In a Germany without two world wars and with a lot of oil, maybe we'd all be driving super-duper BMW's or traveling back and forth to Mars by now.
The mess that was the startup to WW-I was so, well, messed up, that German (Austro-Hungarian, rather) control of oil fields wouldn't have made any real difference to it's starting. And the way the maps were redrawn after the end of the war, along with British support for Prince Saud to basically take over what is now Saudi Arabia, with the help of the Wahhabis (the spiritual fore-runner of all militant intolerant radical Islamic movements), pretty much made the foundation for the current unstable situation. Iran, for instance, would have been a stable democracy, if it weren't for the Dulles brothers State Dept/CIA combo for crushing democracies and promoting "America's interests" aka strongmen after WW-II. Similar to what they did in South and Central America, they deposed the populist elected government of Iran and installed the Shah. This led directly to the Ayatollah. Basically, all the instability you mourn, was caused by the US and Western Europe. We are reaping what we sowed. The Taliban in Afghanistan were a direct result of CIA operations to oppose the Soviet incursion in support of their satellite government. If Germany (or Greenland) had been the holders of those oil reserves after WW-I, you can bet the maps would have been redrawn in a way to give control of those reserves to the victors, and Europe would look quite different now.
The government screws up a lot.....or do they? After all, they are the highly educated people of the world aren't they?
