I haven’t been able to post on here much lately since I’ve been pretty busy for the last week or so. I left home last Monday and spent 2 days traveling to the rig. I got here on Wednesday the 11th and was lucky enough to be assigned to the midnight to noon watch (so I got to go to sleep pretty soon after arrival onboard).
I was just starting to get settled in, then we had drills Sunday and unlatched the BOP on Monday. We moved right over to our next well and stabbed in later that day. We should only be on this one a couple more days and then move on to the next one. So it looks like this hitch will be pretty much like the last one. Constantly busy with setting up, maintenance, moving around, rip tides to watch out for, etc. Not much time for taking care of other business.
I got news right before I left home that the plumbers will be asking around $3000(!!!) to repair the sewer issues at one of my properties. We had been trying to find a way to do it ourselves since it mostly consists of digging a hole.
I even went to talk to the city code enforcement officer about doing the job myself. He told me I could only do the job if it was my homestead and I would have to show him proof that I lived in that house. Owning it was not enough (WHY NOT???).
Since my drivers license did not have that address on it, I was SOOL (shit out of luck)!
He would allow me to dig the hole myself, which we had hoped to be able to do. Since that was by FAR the main part of the job, that would save us a hell of a lot of money. So, for the next couple of weeks at home I was trying to help find a LICENSED plumber who would be willing to do a little moonlighting. Let us dig the hole and he could just come at the end to supervise. All he had to do was be there to connect the pipes back together.
In the end, we could not find any one like that (I guess the plumbers union must be pretty strong). They all insisted that THEY must do the ENTIRE job.
So, I will have to spend an EXTRA $2500 (and up), for licensed plumbers to dig a hole (at $100 per hour and up)!
WOW! What a friggin’ RACKET these guys have going! BS your way into getting the government to FORCE people to hire you, even for jobs they’re perfectly capable of doing themselves! WOW!!
Does anybody else have a problem with this situation?
I mean, WHY the HELL should ANYONE be able to dictate what you can do on YOUR OWN PROPERTY??????
The principle of ownership implies USE of something. If you can’t use your property, the way YOU want, then you do NOT own it! Yet, you still have to pay for it, and you have to KEEP ON paying for it. Even after you have paid the full price (many times over if you financed it).
Property taxes, they mean that you NEVER really can own a piece of property.
The way I look at it is: if you want to dictate to me what I can or can’t do on what is supposedly MY property, then YOU can PAY for it, since you get to use it for what you want and I don’t get to use it for what I BOUGHT IT FOR!
Too bad there are so many busy bodies that just can’t control themselves. Our entire society has pandered to them for much too long (they should have been laughed out of town the first time they mentioned the subject!). Now, they even imagine that they are in the right (they are NOT). But there’s no fighting them anymore.
Oh wait, there IS one group that is having some success in fighting this sickening trend. The Institute for Justice does help people fight for their property rights (among other things). They’ve been doing an excellent job and I am happy to support them as much as I can (wish I could do more- so many people need their help).
We’re all between a rock and a hard place. Either you pay rent forever so you can never escape the rat race (and put up with even MORE restrictions on what you can do in your HOME), or you buy property so you can earn some income, but yet you are more and more restricted every year.
So, the figures you based your decision to buy an investment on are devalued every year until you wind up even worse than you would have been if you never even tried.
It’s absolutely shameful what we have allowed to happen in the USA. We used to have a free country (or at least one we could say was more free than anywhere else). Now, we are SO FAR from that idea, it is ridiculous to even mention those words together any more. They are almost opposites now (America-free).
I sure hope the sewer issues are fixed by the time I get home. I sure don’t want to have to deal any more with this ‘shit’! (But I already know I have another problem to deal with at another place- and it will also be very expensive!). 🙁
Similar situation in the UK. Any excuse to jack the price up, and even more sickening when you know it’s a job you can do yourself, but you don’t have the current paperwork to prove it.
sad to hear that, I keep wondering how the heck did we let it get so bad here.
I feel your pain! You think you own your house? Your car? Try not paying taxes or renewing your registration. You’ll find out in a hurry who REALLY owns everything!
I know what you mean. I think most people just don’t ever think about it. If they did, I think things would change.
This sort of stuff scares the hell out of me. No BS, sitting at anchor last night, I was talking to my wife about pulling 50k out of my 401k and buying a distressed property a few towns over from us as an investment. With a language barrier and a knowledge gap on her side, I’d be managing any of this stuff from on board (daunting, even being 5,000 miles closer to home than you are!).
I grew up in a union-dominated area, and this sort of headache was endemic. One possible solution is to talk to an excavator company, see if they can finagle it directly for less. Many of the little guys have pipefitting licences.
It’s truly sad how much personal sovereignty has been given away. We’re volunteering, culture wide, to put ourselves into serfdom.
I know exactly what you mean Paul. I am lucky to have found a good manager to help me take care of my properties. I could never take care of them by myself, as much as I’m gone. This is one of the reasons I refuse to work anymore on any vessel without decent email/internet access. I need to be able to communicate with home, pay my bills, etc.
I would probably still do it over again, I think the only thing I would do differently is to try harder to find properties outside of the city limits. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with nearly as much BS.
Personally, I am still trying as hard as I can to totally escape from America. It is just getting to be too much for me. The cognitive dissonance is driving me crazy. 🙁
You’re right, we are on the road to serfdom (I assume you read the book). 😉
You are so correct about the ownership issue. When it comes to property in these United States, you cannot truly own it. You can only “rent” at differing levels of responsibility for the maintenance of it.
You cannot claim to own anything that can be legally taken from you for whatever reason. In that aspect we are not much different from those Russians who lived under the Czars, being all property of the ruling authorities.
As for the sewer repairs, I once had a similar problem and my plumber, citing ‘bad back issues’, insisted that I do the digging.
Jeeze! Charge you up the ying-yang for the job and then get YOU to do the work on top of it! That’s even worse than my story. Tho I have yet to hear the details of the job myself, I’m not sure they’ve finished yet.
You’re right about the ownership thing. What can’t be legally taken from us in the USA now? With the abuse going on of the’civil forfeiture’ laws and all the ‘drug war exemptions’ to the Constitution, they can take ANYTHING from you anytime they want and YOU have to prove your PROPERTY is innocent. Any guesses on how hard that is to do? Most people don’t even bother to fight it since they don’t have the assets to waste in court (and knowing most courts are just rubber stamps for the government anyway).
We are going downhill SO fast now. 🙁
You are so right, and it makes me sick! Hope you get everything sorted out!
Thanks Penny!
The regulations for building on your own property are ridiculous everywhere! We’re about to do a room addition into the backyard and our contractor said the City may have an issue where we built our Tough Shed. Gimme a break. I have a huge back yard. Don’t stress too much! Enjoy your sojourn!
You think that’s bad? A few years ago, my neighbor across the street told me the city made her tear out her garden. In the BACK yard, behind a FENCE! She told me the city said it’s illegal to have a GARDEN??!! Since then, I’ve been planting even more things in my FRONT yard. It’s overgrown with what I consider to be weeds, but they’re technically flowers and the city code enforcer has so far not bothered me about it. We got into it for years over my so-called ‘ugly car” (classic el camino). What idiots! But it has all come about because our neighbors can’t STAND to let each other alone and live and let live. NONE of this should be legal in the ‘land of the free’ (which it so obviously is NOT anymore).
That’s so crazy! Our code enforcement has been cleaning up our neighborhoods, which is good! BUT some of the codes are unrealistic and unnecessary. Never ending battle, huh?