OxyCheq

Sadly, there are not many companies out there that surprise me with great products and excellent customer service. I am happy to say that I have found one.

In January, the nylon cover of the inflation bladder on my buoyancy compensator began to tear. That didn’t surprise me, as it has seen more than a decade of hard use. It has been on dives in pools, oceans, caves, and lakes. It is supposed to be rinsed with fresh water after each use, and I must admit that I rarely do so.

I tried to repair it locally and was unable to find anyone that could do the job. I contacted the factory, OxyCheq, and they informed me that due to the age and condition of the wing, any repair that they attempted would be ultimately unsuccessful, and they also informed me that the model I had been using had been discontinued some years before. Now they could have left things there, and they would still have had a satisfied customer. After all, I had gotten more than ten years of use out of their product.

Instead, the company offered to sell me a new model at cost: I would get a replacement valued at $440, for only the factory cost of $250. I took them up on the offer, and it arrived within 2 days.

I can tell you that the new one looks great, and I look forward to another decade of use.

I highly recommend OxyCheq and their products. They are quality pieces of equipment, made in America (right here in Florida), tough as nails, and the company has a great attitude on customer service.

Well done, OxyCheq.

Work is for suckers

Government benefits are intended to, according to the government, “help disadvantaged people,” but how disadvantaged are these people, really? Let me use my sister as an example. She is a single mother in her early thirties that has two children by two different fathers. She lives with her current boyfriend, who is not the father of either of her children, as well as their two roommates: the father of her first child, and his current girlfriend.
She is my sister, and I love her, and while I cannot condone her lifestyle, it is her life. The biggest problem that I have is their financial state, and the fact that they are being funded my tax money in the form welfare dollars.
You see, she works as a waitress at a local chain restaurant, and makes quite a bit of money when you count her tips. She takes home about $70-100 a day in tips, most of it as unreported income. If you talk to her, she will tell you that this is because she doesn’t get a paycheck, because taxes take that from her. I reply that I pay far more than that in taxes, and she is getting off easy by not reporting all of her tips.

Her boyfriend makes $12 an hour at his job, but since they are not married, this does not affect her reported income when it comes time to apply for government benefits.

Their roommates include the father of my sister’s first child, and his girlfriend. The two of them pay my sister $300 a month to live in the third bedroom of the apartment. My sister’s two daughters share the second bedroom.

What this means is that my sister and her boyfriend have an after tax income of about $3500 a month. That equates to an income of over $50,000 a year for the couple. She and her boyfriend have annual passes to Universal Studios, and they go out for drinks and dinner 2-3 nights a week. Now I certainly don’t have a problem with that. What I have a problem with is this:

She collects welfare, food stamps, reduced school lunch for the kids, and lives in a government subsidized apartment. In total, she also receives another $900 a month or so in government benefits. This means that her little family takes home about the same amount of money as a family that earns about $64,000 a year.

How is that disadvantaged? This amount of money puts them far above Orlando’s median income of $35,732 a year, and above the US median income of $51,017.

When the US government calculates the poverty rate, they always exclude government benefits. The reason is simple: Most people who work for a living actually make far less money than America’s new entrepreneurs. The most lucrative business is young women having children out of wedlock. Forget college, the average college graduate only makes $44,000 a year upon graduation, which takes four years. By the age of 20, a young woman can be living the high life with almost no effort. All she has to do is get pregnant a few times.

My sister is proof of that. This story is repeated millions of times all over this country, and it is the reason why we will be a third world nation before the middle of this century.

Mortgage bank again

Today is an important day. I have been in a four year fight with SunTrust. It seems like they will never learn. The lawsuit that I filed against them in December has been settled. Although the exact terms of the settlement are confidential, I can say that I received a 5 figure settlement. That is the second time that they have paid me 5 figures within the past year. In the settlement, I agreed to hold them harmless for everything that they had done as of the date of the settlement.

The day after the settlement was signed, they again violated the court’s order. I am going to wait a couple of months for them to do it a few more times, and I will sue them again. Sooner or later, they will get the message.

Only One

To all of those people who claim that police are the only ones we can trust to carry a weapon, because they are so much more trustworthy than everyone else, explain this:

The Orlando Police Department on Wednesday released a 911 call of a
witness who says a marked police cruiser left the scene of an accident
that injured a bicyclist.