Divemedic

Getting Things In Order

Long day yesterday. I had a Dr appointment, then I had to meet with the cabinets guy to replace the countertops in the rental house. That’s gonna cost me about $3800. Then I had to run to the hardware store and get the stuff to install our water conditioner.

The story there is that I had a slop sink and a water conditioner that I needed to have installed. I called a plumber, who came out and estimated $600 for the sink, and $900 for the water conditioner. WTF.

The sink was easy. It cost be $50 in parts to install this:

The water conditioner was a bit harder, but this is what the completed underground plumbing looks like. Service line through the wall to the water conditioner, then from there back out to the connection that goes to the house.

As you can see, we didn’t finish until 8:30 or so, after it was dark, but we got it done. Like my Dad used to say, you only need to know a few things in order to be a plumber:

  • Hot’s on the left
  • Cold is on the right.
  • Payday is on Friday
  • Shit won’t flow uphill
  • Payday is on Friday

That’s it. The only casualty was the loss of my cordless drill. The gearbox was destroyed because I was too cheap to buy a $200 hammer drill. The drill I broke was 9 years old. I ordered a new one.

Long day yesterday, which is why this is the first post of the day…

By Divemedic, ago

Hacking Voting Machines

This comes in on the heels of reports of election shenanigans in DC. In a courtroom drama scene that seems right out of a dystopian television show, a computer science professor from the University of Michigan demonstrated how to hack a dominion voting machine in a Georgia courtroom on Friday.

Using a machine set up for a Presidential election between George Washington and Benedict Arnold, the professor borrowed a pen from the defense attorney and used it to hack a voting machine in real time, changing vote counts, and causing it to execute routines that changed votes.

The professor has come under fire after he wrote a report outlining dozens of vulnerabilities in the software on Dominion voting machines. One of the ones he found was an arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability that can be exploited to spread malware from a county’s central election management system (EMS) to every voting machine in its jurisdiction. This makes it possible to cause changes in large numbers of voting machines without needing physical access to any of them. This would allow an attacker to defeat the technical and procedural protections the state of Georgia has in place.

At this point, the ONLY way to ensure the security and integrity of elections is to have paper balloting, which allows effective auditing and accountability. Electronic devices are simply not secure enough to ensure that elections are on the up and up.

By Divemedic, ago

Islamic Invaders

From JKB over at Gunfree zone.

If it is possible for me to do so, I will tag anyone who comes for me and mine. Even if they get me, I will hopefully be found surrounded by spent brass, and the person who did so will be easily identified by travelling to the nearest hospital and looking in the ditches for the guy with the sucking chest wound.

If they should kill my wife and not me, hell will have no fury like that which I will unleash. I won’t care about trials. I will come after any goat fucking Islamist that I see. At that point, they will have taken from me the thing I treasure most. See “The Outlaw Josey Wales” for reference.

Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.

By Divemedic, ago

In Case You Were Wondering

If the election in 2024 was going to be rigged, remember that in the 2020 election, 353 counties in 29 states had more registered voters than they did residents. Now we know that in 2023, registered voters in Washington, DC are 131% of the population. There is no reason to think that this phenomenon is restricted to DC.

So now ask yourself if it matters whether you vote for Trump or DeSantis.

Voting is no longer a viable option for avoiding the train wreck that is coming.

By Divemedic, ago

Breakdown of Civilized Society

The complete loss of not only common sense (they admit to eating meat while claiming that the killing of animals is wrong) and the complete loss of civility (an adult allowing his preteen son to call an adult an asshole and tell him to fuck off) is just a bridge too far.

The American people and its society have completely broken down.

By Divemedic, ago

Tax Hearing

As you will recall, I was appealing the tax assessor’s valuation of my old house because I felt that the house had been undervalued for tax purposes. Since that would actually increase the taxes in my new house (I explain that here) I decided to appeal the valuation. The hearing was just a few days after my mother had passed away, so I will admit that I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been.

The hearing was in front of a magistrate. One thing that I felt was unfair about this is that the magistrate was an employee of the tax assessor’s office in another county. Since all of the counties in the state use the same methods and computer software, I don’t feel that the magistrate is an unbiased individual.

Still, I thought that I presented my case pretty well. I pointed out that my house was valued at $154/sf, but every house in my neighborhood sold for $195 to $210 per square foot, even using the assessor’s office’s numbers. Even at the low end, my house was undervalued by a significant margin.

That’s when the excuses started. The assessor claimed that they were permitted by law to subtract the customary costs of sale from the fair market value and then they began pointing out that the other houses that had sold had features that my house didn’t- one had a pool, one was a corner lot, two others were on the edge of the neighborhood, etc. This, according to them, made my house less valuable.

By the end of the hearing, the magistrate and the assessor were both explaining to me that I just don’t understand real estate. Keep in mind that they were all government employees whose judgement means nothing, because they don’t invest in real estate. They merely tax those who do. I was able to show, using the assessor’s own data, that the assessor’s office is consistently 15-25% lower than actual market value. That didn’t matter, I got lectured about how TOP MEN used computers to value this property, and the methods are used all over the state.

So I thought I had lost. I resigned myself to getting screwed by the tax man.

Imagine my surprise when I got the magistrate’s decision. I didn’t get a total win, and I didn’t even get as much as I hoped for, but I did get something. The magistrate recommended that my valuation be increased from $154 per square foot to $164 per square foot. Not great, but the increase will lower my property taxes on the new house by about $400 per year. In total, the deductions from Save Our Homes portability decrease my property taxes by about $3000 a year.

Do I like paying $750 a month in property taxes? No. That’s why I fight to keep my taxes as low as I can, and this hearing cost me $25 plus a few hours of my time. Property taxes and the 6 percent sales tax are the only taxes we pay here in Florida, so it’s just something that we have to live with. At least we don’t have personal property taxes or income taxes. Still, I often wonder what it is we get for that tax rate.

By Divemedic, ago

No Consequences

it took the DOJ nearly two years and how many millions of dollars to figure out that the Uvalde cops screwed the pooch.

The report builds on a scathing investigation by state lawmakers that found “systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making” among the almost 400 law enforcement officers who responded.

Yet not a single one of the 400 cowards who stood there, holding back parents trying to rescue their children while listening to them being slaughtered by a madman will face any real repercussions from their cowardice and failure to act.

By Divemedic, ago

Persecution Continues

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has ordered banks to flag transactions that contain certain keywords such as “MAGA” “Trump” and other political words. If those words are found to be tied to a financial transaction, that account and the person who owns it is referred for further investigation. You can bet that other keywords are also being used. I could easily see all transactions involving products like Ghost Gunner, bulk ammo purchases, and even donations to SAF or FPC being used to flag people. There lies your de facto gun registration.

Like we have been saying for years about registration- there is only one purpose for a firearm registry, and that is confiscation. These keyword investigations are a prelude to mass arrests, denial of public access to things (a social credit score), or some other punitive action. There is nothing else that these investigations can be used for under the law and Constitution as it exists today.

By Divemedic, ago