Wimminz – celebrating skank ho's everywhere

Keyboards and the internet are magic, I can type any old shit, and in the typing, make it real, and make my fantasies real.

Inherently there is no difference between me typing and clicking away in Fallout 4 and the Lagarde wench typing and clicking in some financial / economic planning software, we are both playing in a sandbox limited in unknown ways to us by the actual program code, and we are both playing in a virtual realm.

Until and unless reality checks in, it’s as good as reality on many levels too… let me explain, fiat currency is several steps removed from money, but I can use bits of linen printed with £ sterling and trade them for goods in the shops, better still, I can use a piece of plastic with a few circuits on it to trade balances held in a computer memory somewhere with goods in the shops.

There is no inherent difference between the balance in Pounds Sterling  NatBarcLoid Bank says I have to my name and the balance in caps Fallout 4 says I have to my name.

I like technology, I use technology, but I am an engineer at heart, an empiricist, a scientist… so when my one year old ,comes with a contract, all you can eat data and voice, Samsung Note 4 started playing up with the home button becoming intermittent, I contacted the mobile company for repair, who said send it to Samsung UK in wales, so I did.

A week later the phone comes back with a letter, not only is it not fixed, the letter says, and I quote *exactly* including grammatical errors here… however bold emphasis and colours are mine…

“Ewa, one of our engineers at our approved service centre, has tested your device and they have found that it is not working because it has been subjected to severe physical damage internally. The extent of this damage means that the cost of repair will exceed the cost the handset. Physical damage is not covered by the manufacturer’s warranty.”

At which point I started to shit myself, oh noes, they have got my phone mixed up with someone else’s, or something… I look at the returned phone and it is mine, apart from the iffy home button it is perfect, and I mean like new perfect, I am anal about looking after my kit..

A few days pass and I eventually manage to find out from Samsung Electronics UK that this severe internal physical damage that they are talking about is in fact not severe or physical or even damage, I have rooted my phone, at which point the warranty, they say, is over.

I tell Samsung UK (and my mobile provider, who shrug and point at Samsung UK) that EU Directive 1999/44/CE states explicitly that rooting a device by itself cannot void a warranty.

Samsung UK shrug, not interested.

So me being me I am like fuck it, and go online to the court system and issue a writ, against my mobile provider, after all, it is they who I have my 2 year phone contract with and they who provided the phone.

At this point, despite showing them printouts of the law, despite explaining patiently and clearly to all concerned that I root my device so that I can run Titanium Backup, and as an aside this also allows me to run Adblock, everyone from my mobile provider to friends and associates and loved ones patiently tell me I cannot win.

I’m like, WTF, I have a history of doing this shit (issuing a court writ) and my success rate is over 95%, and like it costs me 35 quid to file it electronically.

So three months have passed (court paperwork takes ages) and my mobile provider has decided that rather than going to court, they will give me absolutely free and brand new Samsung Note 4 (and I get to keep the old one, which works fine apart from the sometimes iffy home button) and three months credit on my contract and they will pay me the 35 quid I spent to file the claim.

BTW I can also keep the brand new Note 4 they loaned me a week after I filed the court case.

Cynical old me knew they would do this, the last thing they or Samsung UK want is UK case law showing them losing to EU Directive 1999/44/CE and not being able to void warranties for rooted devices.

However, all those aforementioned friends and associates and loved ones react with shock, my god, they say, you are soooo lucky…

WTF, since when has enforcing your legal rights counted as luck.

This household now boasts 3 Samsung Note4’s, 1 Samsung Note 3 and one Samsung Galaxy S3, and apart from the slightly iffy home button on one of the Note4’s they are all like new and 100% working.

Sell them, say the naysayers who previously said I would not win…. well, I dunno… it’s not like two of the Note4’s cost me anything, so I’m not out money I need to get back, and it’s always nice to have a spare, or two, and one of them makes a very nice Christmas present, and even if I do not put a sim card in them, they make quite useful portable computing devices and cameras (the Note4 can shoot fairly respectable 4k video)

So we see are fairly practical demonstration of how reality (the law and a court case impending) trumps virtuality (Samsung UK and my mobile providers policy as stated in writing and on websites) and basically the old “that and a buck will buy you a coffee” doesn’t even come close to the virtual side of things.

Two brand new Note4’s and 3 months contract is a thousand pounds, at 30 quid a month that is equivalent to 33 months mobile contract, call it 3 years, I have only been with this provider about 6 years, and the contract itself costs them money to fulfil in terms of mobile voice and data provision, so when you include 5 high end Samsung phones, they have lost money, a lot of money, on me.

Virtual realms versus reality checking in.

Everyone was at pains to tell me I was an edge case, as almost nobody rooted their phones… oreallyoriley… so if I was an edge case why not tell me to go fuck myself and go to court, even if you lose, it’s still only an edge case… right…

Here is another little true story, you’ll see more and more of this shit too as things fall apart.

The mobile phone writ wasn’t the only one I issued.

I live in rented accoms, and in addition to paying the rent by standing order every month, I also paid the light and heat etc bills by ebanking… keeps a record see, now that cheques are passe.

So I *know* I have paid my bills, but the utility companies think I owe them £2,000, so after trying to sort it out with terminally clueless assholes at the letting agency and mindless script following drones at the utility company, I said fuck it, and spent another 35 quid on another writ, this time naming the letting agency (which has since been fired by the landlord) and the utility companies.

This writ wasn’t about enforcing a warranty, this one is about enforcing my legal right to the peaceful and quiet enjoyment of my home and being free from harassment for debts that I do not owe.

I do not know if the utility company has been paid and are just terminally incompetent, or if the letting agent has an employee who simply pocketed the money, or a mixture of both.

I don’t care, six months ago I threatened the letting agency with a writ if they didn’t sort it, as I was sick of getting threatening letters from the utility company about unpaid bills and their right to enter my home etc.

Like my friends and associates and loved one with the Note4, they obviously either did not believe me, or did not understand what can happen when reality intrudes upon virtuality.

That one is ongoing, but again, I always paid my bills in full, I have bank records saying such, nobody at the letting agency has ever suggested that I have not paid any bills due, they have simply blamed the utility company and claimed to have paid them, the utility company say they have not been paid, there is a hold in my bucket dear lisa..

This one *will* go to court, because the letting agent and the utility company are named as joint defendants, so the utility company lawyers will go to court relying on *their* records, and the letting agent will go to court because they are incompetent and too stupid to do whatever it takes to stop it getting to court.

Me, I don’t give a fuck, I got records saying I paid every bill, and records and emails from the letting agent acknowledging that I have paid every bill and claiming that they have paid the utility company so it must be a clerical error by the utility company.

Some time in the new year we will end up in court and I will let god and the judge sort it out…. since I can prove I paid all my bills, I got nothing to lose.

Reality is never go to court if you have something to lose.

Virtuality is unhappy customers threatening to take you to court and is about as *real* as an NPC in Fallout 4 saying “come out and die punk”

If you’re not aware of the potential chilling reality hiding behind the “who gives a fuck it’s all just talk” virtuality, you can get in a world of hurt.

My mobile phone provider, I get it, they treated me with contempt until the point at which I filed a writ and that writ landed on the desk of their legal team, at which point all virtuality was forgotten and it was very real and some guy in HQ gets tasked with making this go away, give the cunt what he wants, but do NOT let it get to court, unless you can trick the cunt into making some statement or admission that will sink his case.

It’s a cynical attitude, but I get it.

The letting agents are just total assholes, unlike the mobile phone company, they do not have pet lawyers, nor do they think they need them… the manager bitch knows everything…

Reality is never go to court if you have something to lose.

On a bad day with a turned on and pissed of judge who has a mistress who just happens to have been shafted by a crap lettings agency, the tenant (me) getting his injunctive relief (with penal notice attached) is the least of your worries.

The judge could start handing out compo, to the tune of back rent for all those months (24) that the tenant tried to sort this with you and you just shrugged and blamed the utility company, EVEN IF IT WAS THE UTILITY companies error, the tenants contract was with the letting agency….  a contract that included peaceful enjoyment of their home.

The judge could go as far as deciding the case needs to go to a different part of the legal system, the one that disbars directors and companies from trading.

The judge could order that the police fraud squad investigate what is clearly in his opinion financial misappropriation by staff at the agency, which is a death blow for the business.

Courts are like street fights like that, you avoid one at all costs, unless you are holding the baseball bat and the heavies are holding the soon to be victim bound and gagged in a chair and saying go for it bro, you got three free strikes, then we will take ours out of what is left.

I was smart enough in my own secret family court debacle to realise that I was not going to win, it was going to be a 100% across the board loss, or I could not wake up and smell the coffee and make it a 1000% loss and totally fuck myself up.

Justice got nothing to do with it… justice is a virtual concept.

I got justice from the mobile phone company, but that is like getting a smile and a wink from the pretty waitress who brings you your coffee, it is not on the menu or what you paid for or ordered.

Provided you get the coffee, forget the justice.

Civil court and criminal court and admiralty court and military court are all the same, forget the justice / wink, it’s all about the coffee / reality, and if you can possibly avoid it do not go there.

Better to give the cunt free coffee for life than to be taken to court and ordered to stop selling coffee, or give the cunt free coffee and pay him 5 bucks for every free coffee he drinks, or get the fuck out of the coffee business yourself.

It’s the old one about ignoring the consequences of your actions but not being immune from the consequences of your actions.

You are immune, until someone doubles down on your virtuality with a dose of reality, at that point you better fold, or hold ALL the winning cards, and ignorance of the reality is no defence.

In the coming months and years, as money gets tighter, expect to see many many many more people discovering first hand what happens when reality clashes with virtuality.

It will be an even more unpleasant experience when the roles are reversed, and the ones issuing the writs are companies, and the ones left trying to defend then are individuals.

“Never go to court if you have something to lose.” will be especially poignant for those unfortunate individuals.

Because unlike Samsung UK or a major UK mobile provider or a major utility company, they simply sill not have the ability to pick up the phone and find some middle management guy in HQ and task him with making it all go away quietly, and if you have to give the cunt a grands worth of shit to make it go away no worries, we’ll just add it to the company expenses and get it back from the tax man.

They will be the ones bound and gagged in the chair, their hopes and wishes and dreams an irrelevance to those waiting with baseball bats, as indeed will be their very survival.

pour encourager les autres….

Nobody is God, no individual can make things happen, they do not have the ability, but sometimes you will come across an individual who will genuinely and consistently over time do all they can to do what they said they will do.

Typically I will call these people “friends” as they are people that I can afford to let close, inside the defences… as far as advice goes, that’s all I have got.

As I have alluded to elsewhere, the day job is now defunct, technically I am still on the payroll, but they have treated me with such contempt over the past three years I’m milking these last few weeks on the sick, it’s not like I need a good reference for another job, or that they can give me a bad one, or that a reference from them would be worth shit.

In my career I have presided over a lot of jobs and pretty much been in at the end of the era for that particular trade, marine engineer, recovery driver, long distance motorcycle courier, computer and IT guy, cisco field engineer, I dunno what it says about me that I always seem to get in at the ass end of an era, but I can’t argue with the evidence.

No longer will I be turning up to brand new walmart style retail outlets with 70 staff on minimum wage that are literally opening tomorrow and trying to make things work with a flaky 3G connection because the solitary ADSL connection that is to be their primary data connection isn’t even installed yet.

No longer will I be turning up at regional backbone NOC’s swapping out top end Juniper kit in the wee hours so entire regions of the country can stay up.

No longer will I be turning up at multi-million pound per outlet high street premises and battling with the 2nd line guys in Mumbai trying to get obsolete end of life cisco kit to work just a few more months because everything is outsourced and the management are too tight to spend 200 quid on a brand new Draytek and wave all their problems good bye.

No longer will I be turning up to places with three shift managers all driving high end Audi’s and a senior manager driving a big beemer all looking aghast at the very idea that xDSL may be OK for an emergency backup line, but there is no excuse in 2015 for the primary to be anything other than £250 a month EFM, and it should really be £350 a month fibre to the premises.

No longer will I be doing this and shouldering the responsibility for peanuts.

Don’t get me wrong, when I started with this shower of shit over three years ago, the pay was peanuts, but here it is “here be dragons” as far as It went, and I’d do maybe three separate jobs a week, nowadays it’s two or three jobs a day, plus the staff churn at HQ means that anyone who knew anything there has left, so you always got the wrong kit or no kit or no IOS or no config file or the wrong one or the wrong data, yadda yadda yadda..

For the first 18 months I thought the company was so tight because they were growing so fast and the corporate policy was to float the company and go IPO, now I see that it is just that the company has grown way beyond the ability of the original founders to manage, it has become balkanised in between the different departments, and right at the end of the food chain were the lowly field engineers, arguably the cutting edge and revenue centre for the entire company, but we were treated like shit… so so long and thanks for all the fish.

I can go over to The Register and read all the stories about “on call hell” and boy, you fuckers really don’t have a clue, I can tell stories better than that every single fucking week.

What I have managed to do is leave the company without ever having a single fuckup directly attributable to me personally, so ok the industry is dead, but if it wasn’t at least my name is still good in the sense that nobody is going to look at me and go “oooh, you’re the guy that took NatWest ATM’s and e-banking offline for 28 hours last year…”

*I* can still look at myself in the mirror, even if nobody else is looking and the hall of mirrors and indeed the entire fair has closed down, never to re-open.

Contrarily, the laser business, well, I can’t say that I just banked my first million, or booked three weeks in cuba, but hey, it’s generating income, and it’s steadily increasing, the sort of slow and steady growth that feels solid and trustworthy, and new contacts and customers and enquiries come in every week, and the average value is increasing too.

As sure as fuck I’d be in a world of hurt if I had a 60+k Trotec on lease or HP, but that is a “living on credit” issue, not a “getting work in issue”.. the business is working because I saved and bought my laser for cash, not because it is cheap or anything.

Finance the business badly and it will struggle.

Struggle and scrimp and save and go without and buy for cash and finance the business well and it will pick up it’s own momentum.

Used to be all the spam calls I got were robots asking me if I had been mis sold PPI, or telling me I had been in  an accident and was entitled to compo.

Nowadays it is cold calls from companies offering me finance deals and advertising deals and shit, and I close them all down, not interested… the responses from the callers are astonishment, what do you mean you don’t want or need financing or advertising.

I’m happy to tell them, I do precisely *zero* advertising, I have a website, an associated paid for Vimeo channel, and I bought everything for the business for cash, and I am getting enquiries and indeed work from all over the country, everyone uses google search, any my website does the rest.

At which they are all even more amazed, this simply is not possible.

It is, because I am not one of the 16 other small businesses (apart from Pissy World and the big boys in IT like wot I used to work for) in this city of 125,000 people offering to do PC repairs.

I have gotten in early enough to beat the rush.

If I won a squillion pounds tomorrow on the lottery (a neat trick, seeing as I do not buy lottery tickets as they are a tax on the feeble minded) then I’d go out and buy for cash bigger premises, a couple more lasers, and a couple of big pukka 3D printing machines… and sit back and watch the money start to roll in… and it would, simply by being an early adopter.

But that shit only works if you do not do it on finance or lease.

And now the FED has finally raised rates (after joking that we do not know how to raise rates, as nobody working here now was working here last time we did…) which means in shades of the saying that the US gets a runny nose and Europe gets the Flu six months later, that interest rate rises are *finally* coming here too.

About fucking time.

This two decades of essentially free money has fucked everything up, because instead of making things affordable, it has led to the price inflation of everything, why not, since everyone has free money anyway..

We have a situation where today a *very* large proportion of new drivers do not then go out and buy a 50 quid clunker for their first car.. oh no.. they traipse down to the main dealers and sign a lease agreement on a brand new fucking car… why not.. it’s “only” £195 a month…

Hell, they have *no* mechanical ability of any kind, and at mechanic rates of £75 to £125 an hour, that old £50 clunker is going to cost them 200 quid a week in mechanic bills just to keep on the road.

This total and utter lack of any real world inteligence or ability is why we have companies like the one I worked for, working for clients like the ones I turned up at, and why we have people locally buying a 3000 quid crowdfunded laser cum 3d printer from the states and starting up a laser / fab business, which by the way is up and running and being promoted before the new toy even gets shipped.

And then if it gets shipped, they find out the hard way that it isn’t like knocking up some shit in Word and hitting the “print” button and sending it to the local colour laser printer…. do that and 95% of your jobs will turn out as scrap.

So you got to get a whole suite of new software, then you have to learn how to use it properly, then you have to learn a whole bunch of other skills.

So one day a guy hands you one piece of paper with some hand scribbled notes on what their customer wants laser engraved, what sort of layout they want, but it is all very vague and how’s yer father, and BTW here is a cheapo black and white laser printed image of their logo, can you incorporate that up here in the design? Image above.

And being brutally honest unless you have that software suite, which costs a lot of money, and are *proficient* in using it, you’ll just prove GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) and you will *never* get anything that does not look like total shit, so you’ll do a bad job and give yourself and lasering in general a bad name.

Then there is placement and laser power settings suitable both for the material and what the client hopes to achieve, and so on…

If, however, you do do and have all those things, you can produce what you see here, and yes it still has “smear” around the lettering etc from where the laser blows all the cellulose and oils and other shit out of the wood directly into vapour, but that cleans up easy, and anyway, I clearly advertise “laser time only” I do not do “finish” work, and that makes me cheap.

So this is a £30 laser job (the board is 690 mm wide) and if you have already purchased the laser and software and everything else for cash, all it costs you is a little wear and tear on the laser machine itself and the tube, and a little bit of electricity, meanwhile I’m sat in the other room (monitoring progress with iSPY and IP cameras) drinking coffee and doing clerical work and writing up pro-formas.

It’s good work if you can get it, and it’s work I am proud of, work my customer will be delighted with. work that enables my customer to make a sale he otherwise would not have, and *his* customer will have his socks blown off.

And at no point do I have to deal with cunts or assholes or wankers, because I simply say no, not interested bruv, when they enquire.

£30 is *really* cheap for this work, but on the other hand it’s 30 minutes laser time, and apart from loading and unloading the laser, laser time is automatic, once you hit “Start” that’s it, you are committed, sit back and watch it produce beauty or scrap, too late to make any changes.

Sure, there is 10 minutes of faffing around with the correct software and tools to get that hand drawn paper sketch laser ready, and sure there is £2 to attribute to wear and tear and light and heat, but 95% of that £30 is pure cash in your wallet profit.

The rest, well I sat here in my crib drinking coffee and typing this… it sure beats working for da man.

Wasn’t it Karl Marx who said “The workers control the means of production.”… well that is certainly true of me, and that, in a nutshell, is why this business is working. NOBODY else has any influence or say or financial stake in it.

 

 

This person shall be nameless, but for the sake of this post let’s assume they are a female and let’s assume their name is Jane.

Jane is pretty typical, pretty average, got a house on an interest only mortgage but so what, it’s still a lot cheaper than renting, got a decent job, but got credit card debts and bank loans and shit and ends up with no free cash at the end of the month when everything is paid off and basic living expenses are taken out.

At this point I should state current UK law, as it stands today, December 2015, I put in the date because laws change…

In UK law debt comes in two flavours, flavour 1 is Mortgages, 2nd Mortgages, Taxes and debts to the state etc, flavour 2 is personal bank loans, credit cards, store cards and so on.

Flavour 1 can and will take your ass to court if you do not pay, and can even get you put into prison, flavour 2 cannot, they can just ring you every day and write to you every day and annoy you, and then blacklist you, you can’t go to court or prison.

So, Jane’s problem, she has spent the last 10 years living beyond her means, for values of “means” that = actual disposable income, and she is now at the point where even with historically several lifetime low interest rates, she is basically spending most of her income servicing debt and barely staying afloat.

So Jane came to me for advice, and my advice is simple.

Split the debt into the two flavours mentioned above, pay the ones that can take you to court, stop paying the others altogether, try to declare yourself bankrupt.

Doing it this way will keep you out of the courts, and keep you from ever getting another personal loan or credit card or auto loan or mortgage, which is actually a good thing, because you have already demonstrated that you are too stupid to borrow money…

Jane is taking my advice, and almost literally crapping herself at the consequences, it’s scary shit for someone who could just do even more overtime and continue to barely stay afloat, the way she has done the past year or two.

Unknown territory.

Jane lacks the mental capacity for the truth and the bigger picture, which is do this shit NOW… WHILE YOU STILL FUCKING CAN… once the floodgates open on personal debt and interest rates start to rise again *they* will simply make new laws and move the goalposts to prevent 50% of the population going bankrupt and taking 100% of the financial system with it.

She nods at me and thinks I am wise and thinks she understands what I am saying when I say to her that I rent my accommodations and they are cheap and basic, and I OWN everything else outright, nobody came come along and decide to repo my laser because I ain’t making the payments, this removing my ability to earn any money with it, and nobody can come along and repo it because it is an asset and I have any of those flavour 1 debts floating around that lead to court cases and bailiffs and asset seizure… she nods at me because it all *sounds* very sensible and practical and smart, but she has never actually seen in person what happens when debtors come calling.

Greece is currently fucked, go to the Thos Cooke website and try to book a holiday there now, all they offer is the islands, basically Rhodes, kos, crete, corfu, and the fucking Greek and Turkish holidays are only about 30 quid per person per week cheaper than the Balearics, there aren’t any winter breaks in Athens on offer, or down on the Peloponnese, where the economy is fucked and the dumb tourist gets shipped cattle class to anything but a closed all inclusive self contained resort.

Your £220 per person per week spent here on your credit card never gets to the Greek economy… know a guy in Greece who is basically being paid sweet fuck all in the hotel where he works, so he steals the tourists restaurant food and booze and fags at source from the hotel and takes it home to feed the family, he gets fuel by hiring cars for the tourists whenever he can, he gets the car for them, stops by his house, uses an electric fuel pump to siphon ALL the fuel out, then puts 5 litres back in… times are *tough*

And that whole going bankrupt thing, yeah, that legal loophole has already been closed off to him, just like his bank accounts, which did actually have some savings in them…

Jane knows none of this, she lives in a little insular bubble of her own daily life and her work and her kids and her mum and dad and so on, and to be fair to her, she was quite happy with that life.

She was quite happy to be sold interest free mortgages and second mortgages and credit cards and loans, in complete ignorance of the fact that % interest is an exponential mathematical function, because it meant she could take two holidays abroad a year and go out drinking twice a week and go out and buy shit like iphones and ipods and shoes and stuff, without even considering where the money was actually coming from, or what would happen when those interest rates go from 0.5% to 2.5% on the interest free mortgage, or what she would do at the end of the term, when you still owed precisely 0% of your “home” and faced the choice of being on the street or somehow getting another mortgage… good luck with that…

Jane is finding that taking my advice is a very rude wake up call, scary stuff, but she can kind of see that it makes sense, because she can kind of see that she is underwater and drowning like boiling a frog.

One day soon enough when Jane is one of the few people she knows, because let’s face it, most of the population nowadays lives exactly the same way Jane did, who is not being either pursued through the courts, or, perhaps worse still, BEING FORCED to accept even more onerous terms, tantamount to indentured servitude to service their debts, then she will get it, and kneel down and suck my cock in gratitude.. OK, she already does that..lol, but even more so.

I guess in many ways this is a post about seeing the writing on the wall, and leaving before you have to, just to beat the scramble, and accepting that leaving early has its own costs.

I’ve left both early and late in various things in my life, and invariably lived to regret it every time I left late, but leaving early is the role of the lonely heretic.

Not that being the lonely heretic is anything new to me, but I have this funny peculiarity about me, that I can think a thing and think a thing and think a thing, and all it takes is one well crafted logical question or statement or argument, and I will stop, re-examine that thing, and then change my mind completely.

By way of example;

I’m involved in a current technical discussion on one of the HD forums, now I wasn’t born on a panhead, but on the other hand I’m not a complete newb, I do have a mechanical engineering background, I have been a biker all my adult life, I have owned a few, and the current ride is below, which is on top as the discussion was about stage kits on a twinkie motor..

So, just to be clear hear “twinkie” is shorthand for the (current model) twin cam engine, which came after the evo(lution) engine, which came after the shovel engine…. and “stage” kits are stage 1 through 5, where one is a fairly mild warm over and 5 is race, eg drag strip.

At stages 2 and 3 and 4 they go big bore, my ride was an ’02 model and came from the factory with the 88 inch engine, the previous / original owner (I’m the 2nd) rode it for about 8,000 miles and decided to throw a lot of money at it, and went straight for the 103 inch stage 4 kit, though 103 and 110 inch is now standard on factory new, but they are stage 0… so essentially you can look at the HD SE (screamin eagle) stage kits as development stuff, whatever is a stage kit now (like the 103 motor in ’04) becomes standard equipment some years down the line, but for all that the SE stage kits up to and including stage 4 (stage 5 is not road legal anyway) do not void the warranty.

One thing the harley work is great for is aftermarket parts, and while most content themselves with having a choice of 199 different rear view mirrors all based up a skeletal hand, there are also motor / transmission mods, so you can go out today and buy an S&S 124″ motor and drop it straight in.

Anyway, back to the plot.

I’m a heretic on the HD forums, because I do not subscribe to the monty python esque popular people’s front of judea – splitters – cliques that inhabit that aftermarket tuning world, all of whom pretty much universally deride the “factory” tuning options such as the SE stage kits, and the one thing that unites them is the claim that you can get more for less.

More in this case is rear wheel bhp and torque as measured on the dyno.

I being a heretic take the opposite view, I know my ride on a good day with cool damp air and good fuel and so on will give 120/120, eg 120 bhp and 120 ft lb, that’s on a dyno, but being a heretic my opinion is that the only dyno that means anything is the road.

On the road it’s still a hoggly dogglyson, which means that almost everything else on the road that is not a towing vehicle has better handling characteristics, really, if you want handling buy a sportbike, if you want bhp and top speed buy a hayabusa or similar…. yeah, I ride HD, that doesn’t mean I have to lie and make excuses and deny their many shortcomings… do that and nobody will trust or believe you when you talk about the positives.

The positives are that in anything even approaching a straight line, basically nothing can stay with it, and it’s effortless, just crack the throttle open, and in top at around 65 it starts to come on cam and goes from being “quite pokey, loads or torque, just roll it on” to “holy fuck” and it’s just like *everything* else just did an emergency stop with ABS, and you just ate another millimetre of tread off the rear tyre, at all other sane speeds and engine rpm it’s loud and proud and has the same effect as an AK wielding terrorist in Paris, road users just make way, 2 4 6 8 12 or 16 wheels, they make way.

The problem ain’t torque, it’s traction.

Stage iv “announces” itself on the streets.

ain’t no “potato potato” there (not me or my bike in the clip btw)

But anyway, in the gospel according to all these cliques, this doesn’t matter, it ain’t shit for one reason and one reason only, it’s a “factory” kit.

Course, that is the *only* reason that is *not* given when people ask about the HD SE stage kits, it’s all “you can get more for less” and all that jazz…

This “the only thing that is not stated aloud is the actual truth” is very similar to the economic / financial situation here, not to mention the political one, still waiting for the cockpit voice recordings from the malaysian plane downed over ukraine…

The actual financial truth is that most people like Jane, and there are a *lot* of them out there, all it takes is simple mathematics to prove that they can only service their debts as long as interest rates remain close to zero, and that they can never repay them.

Simple mathematics also shows that if the majority of these people are permitted to follow the path Jane is now embarking upon, it will totally collapse the economy and banking sector, MANY TIMES OVER…

… therefore, the majority of people like Jane will not be permitted to follow the path Jane is now embarking on.

I personally have no idea what measures will be taken to preserve the status quo, but again, simple maths tells me that they are going to be one hell of a lot less pleasant than the path Jane is taking, because *they* are not going to get off the hook, I do not need to know what that hook is or how it will be baited.

I do not need to shove a cactus up my ass to know it will be extremely painful and unpleasant.

But as the factory tuned HD kits show, this whole thing does not rely on people being blinkered about financial products ONLY, rather it is people being blinkered to whole attitudes, and financial products just happen to fall into that sphere of blindness, quite deliberately and by design of course.

Without exception, every single one of the HD experts denigrating the factory tuned kits has a financial interest in doing so, just like the skank ho ex’s legal team and social services, follow the fucking money, if the factory kits are just as good (arguably better as they do not invalidate the warranty) then all the independents, who have moved away from being mere independent motorcycle mechanics, and morphed into independent dyno / tuning experts, would be out a fucking job, because their hourly labour rates and no cheaper than the dealership, and if you are buying a factory kit and cannot do your own work then you may as well have it done at the stealership, at least they have to give and back up the factory warranty…

It’s the same in the financial world, the laser business having gotten to the point where I can quit the day job and run it as a proper company, I now have Barclaycard ringing me and asking if they can come visit me in my premises to talk about me taking card payments, and when I said yeah man, I know all about that shit, and I can’t justify the monthly chip and pin machine rental and the 1.5% commission on all transactions when all of my customers to date are quite happy to get a pro forma and e-bank the money so I get it ten minutes later, you know what they said?

The guy who will come to see you is there to make the deal, there are no lines in the sand, there is no minimum monthly rental or commission…

Come on down, I said…

Not being born yesterday, I’ll want a new barclays account to go with it, and e-banking on that account, and any monies taken in are going to get transferred out of that account and that bank the same day.

Same reason I’ll pay any asshole by standing order, which puts ME in control of my account, and nobody by direct debit, which puts THEM in control of my account, and the very few companies I simply cannot avoid direct debit to do business with like my mobile phone and my broadband and my insurance, well, I have a separate account for that, one that has just enough paid in every month to cover them all.

I’ll be the first one to leave the party, not the last, only find I’ve been locked in, and then the main act starts….

I’ve been this way with every release of Windows since 1.1, and yes, I was using 1.1 when it came out….

“This way” being ooh I’m not so bloody sure about this I think I may wait a little and see what happens, after all, the version I am currently running works OK….

And before long the version I am currently running starts playing up.

Yes, pure coincidence, every single time…lol

What *is* different now is the noise has drowned out the signal, when it comes to finding out if the move from win 7 or win 8.1 to win 10 is worthwhile, or mere insanity.

What got me was the main 8.1 machine decided to hose my user profile, switch users and everything was fine, switch back to mine and you either sat there looking at a blank desktop that never loaded anything or a frozen one, and yes I tried all the usual suspects (sfc / regedits / bits etc) and never did find a smoking gun for this behaviour.

So, I have choices, daily macrium backups and so on so several things I could do- so after a bit of pondering I thought what the fuck, lets try Win10.

It fixed my user account problem, and the upgrade was it must be said pretty damn good.

Are there bugs?

Yes, one of which is if you click on “settings and “windows update and security”  the window opens, sits there for half a second and then closes, this may be a feature, not a bug..lol

The networking stack appears to be slightly random too, couple of times I have seen it unable to see other devices on the network, do nothing, come back the next day and everything is working as expected and as it should.

Being blunt I’d be quite happy to junk the lot and run Suse on the bitch, except for one problem, some of the software that I have to use to earn a crust is windows only, and no, it doesn’t work under wine or anything because an emulated windows environment won’t cut it, this stuff needs hardware and network access, directly, natively.

So here I am stuck on Win10, because in motoring terms Win7 has 300,00 miles on the clock and Win8.1 has 150,000 miles on the clock and Win10 is the brand new lease car, exact same make and model as the last two, which a whole bunch of new problems that the Mk5 and Mk6 Golf diesel did not have, but, with 500 miles on the clock, it’s still less hassle than trying to to a ground up nut and bolt restoration of the MkIV every six months.

Life is too short and I can’t be bothered.

“There is a lot to like about this new version of windows” to me is a lot like saying there is a lot to like about the new Golf, it’s true, especially when compared to the old golf with 150k on the clock, but it doesn’t stand up well to the old W124 merc with 250k on the clock.

I think the analogy between windows operating systems and car leasing plans is a good one, and I’m not talking about the legal and ownership aspects, I am talking about getting rid of the old box with 150k on the clock and getting a new box with 50 on the clock, it’s going to develop most of the same faults over time as the old one, and some new ones, but for now it is an improvement.

If YOUR version of windows is still functioning, I’d hold on for the 10.1 point release, or SP1, or whatever they call it, if not, dive in now, either way, you are probably going to be running it before 2016 is out, no matter how much you claim otherwise now, because, sooner or later, that old Mk IV golf lease car with 350k on the clock is going to piss you off to the point where you will try Win10 as an experiment to see if you can cure the problems you are having.

Mark my words.

The user experience is the same as going from a Mk n golf to a Mk n+1 golf too, all the switches have moved from where they were, so it takes you five minutes to find the dashboard dimmer controls, you still reach for the electric window buttons in the old place, the stereo is a bit better and does bluetooth a bit better, but it’s still a fucking golf, and it’s still fucking winders…

Of course what I actually give a fuck about is my data, which is why I run stablebit drivepool on the NAS box with file duplication x2 and NTFS drives … and yes, after upgrading the desktop I upgraded the NAS box too, so even if the OS gets hosed I have 2x copies of everything on NTFS formatted drives.

The other thing I give a fuck about is doing shit, I don’t run an OS, I run application software, and as long as that does what it says on the tin I am a happy bunny, when it doesn’t do that because the underlying OS is borking and can’t see network shares on the NAS or windows files explorer locks up, I’m not a happy bunny…. but as long as my data is safe I can always recover from that, just do a bare metal reinstall.

What you *should* be hearing here is the following.

1/ Golf’s / Windows versions are not built to last (any more)

2/ It’s a question of *when* things start breaking, not *if*

3/ You cannot really “repair” or “maintain” it, you can do a periodic ground up reinstall/restoration, which is just as much trouble as migrating to the new version.

Everything else is sales talk and hot air, nobody makes a W124 any more, not even Mercedes, so you can’t buy them any more, and VW can only sell you a golf anyway, and no matter what the sales shit tells you, you’ll end up with a fucking golf.

Unless you work for the company I do, currently, who have informed us that the Golf’s are getting to expensive so they will be moving to Vauxhall Insignia’s, well, y’all will be moving without me, last Vauxhalls I drove were Magnums, Victors and PA Crestas, and I ain’t driving no modern shit.

Due to UK tax laws, the three years I have been with this shower of shit I have paid in tax allowance deductions a total of £3,500 for the *privilege* of driving a bunch of Windows H^H^H^ Golf’s on company lease, and so when I quit and the car goes back that is 3 and a half grand I have paid out with sweet fuck all to show for it at the end of it.

This sounding familiar to those who you who purchase a succession of winders operating systems yet?

============================

The flip side of this Golf / WindowsOS analogy is this.

a/ If I had paid 3.5k for my own car and driven the miles I have done in the golf’s, it would be worn out and fucked up too.

b/ If I was planning on doing those miles, I’d want a vehicle *designed* to do those miles.

c/ Good luck buying such a vehicle, nobody makes cars like that any more.

d/ if you *could* buy such a car, say a brand new in 2016 W124, it would cost way more than you could afford.

Seeing the analogy to winders yet.

Which is where I get totally fucked and claim that Damn Small Linux is the venerable Honda c90, it has ownership and maintenance and reliability for pennies, but it’s still a fucking C90, and there is some shit (software) that it just won’t do.

Upgrade to a Harley (OpenSuse) and it does a whole hell of a lot moar than a C90, but it’s still a fucking motorcycle.

You get Linux users saying the same shit I said on bikes, as in everything you cannot do suddenly becomes a virtue of being on a motorcycle.

You get Windows users saying the same shit my mates who did not ride said, as in everything you cannot do on a motorcycle is the reason to not own one.

You get truckers going “200k miles, what the fuck is that?”

Truckers = IBM mainframe in case the analogy flew by you.

Windows is shit, but it’s barely good enough shit, and this version is just as shit as the old version on paper, but in reality this version is better simply because it is newer and fresher, even if they have moved all the buttons around again, but it’s still basically shit and you are still going to have the exact same fucking problems you had with everything from Win95a chicago once your fresh install is 3 months old…

 

peace.

Old tee shirt of mine…

It’s a thing, had two weeks off, haven’t swung a leg over the bike yet, spent the first 10 days too busy with other shit, now it’s wet and cold and miserable, and no bro, it don’t attract me that much.

I get people telling me they would ride in any weather, don’t matter if its wet, don’t matter if its cold, don’t matter if it’s raining jihadis.

Yeah, I done all that shit, for much of my life my motorcycle was my only vehicle, and for over a year I did long distance dispatch riding for a living here in the UK, clocking up on average between 1,500 and 2,000 miles a week, and dispatch riding is going places you’d never go and getting there by a certain time, any and all weathers.

One of my abiding memories is passing the “How” building on the M6, still 3 hours from home, at 2 am, and the clock and temperature sign on the sign of the building flicked between 02:02 and -2.2 degrees C, and I had a 9 am start the next day for a run to Nottingham.

In short, probably 99.9% of my motorcycling miles were necessity rather than leisure, and it permanently fucked me for any idea that riding a motorcycle is *always* a pleasurable experience.

Invariably those who claim it is, never had to be 3 hours from home at 2 am in the below freezing (before adding 80 mph of wind chill) with an estimated 4 hour break before getting back on the bike and doing the same thing all over again the next day… 80 to 100 thousand miles a year, to earn a living… it takes the shine off.

I *can* get out there now and ride, I’ve done it for a living, so it’s not some shit about can I do it, can I still do it, no, I know I can do it, and I know it will be cold and wet and uncomfortable (even with proper gear and one piece waterproofs the road is still wet and you still get wind chill and lack of circulation and a rainy visor) and I just don’t have the URGE, not when the alternative is to stay inside in the warm and dry and do other shit (like play Fallout 4) and put it off until there are clear skies and dry roads.

Put it off until it is 100% pleasurable.

Hell, with the end of the job next year the company wagon is going back and I’ll be back to the bike as my only vehicle, excepting my bitch has a car that I can use, but she needs to drive too, and so it isn’t for my exclusive use.

And so it is with many other things, like being in a relationshit, or working for assholes, people will tell you they will jump at that shit, well, off you go buddy, more power to ya.

But lose the shaming language shit, I paid my dues, and then some, I got zero fucks to give what you think if I drive a car to the motorcycle shop to buy an oil filter for my bike.

I got zero fucking interest in riding the bike there so I and it can be seen, and so I can hang out and shit…. paid my dues and then some years ago.

There was a job vacancy going down Plymouth HD for a parts/stores “person” a while ago, you’d think they would beat a path to my door, what with my engineering experience, riding experience and HD experience over the years, so I email the guy and ask the two crucial questions.

What are the hours and what does it pay.

He emails me back and says “too many and not enough”

I didn’t even bother to reply, being able to say I work in a harley dealership and a buck will buy me a coffee, as in, prestige it has precisely zero for me bud…

Fucking cisco field engineer, same shit, go to multimillion pound companies and try to work out why they are having problems with their locked down XP desktop machines getting through the old cisco box to VPN to HQ, like I give a fuck, end of life XP / obsolete network stack / drivers / you name it.

Get cunts telling me they would kill to get my job, they would do it for less money than me, it would be so much fun and so interesting, and that there is part of the problem, management knows there is a queue of cunts out there willing / desperate enough to work for free.

Fucking 23k company car and a frankly fucking incredible 12k UK£ starting salary for an “apprentice”, who may be late 20’s / early 30’s. and they still get cunts applying, and it ain’t for the 12k, it’s for the imagined “kudos” of calling themselves a cisco filed engineer, and the idea that once they are qualified and experienced they can write their own ticket and earn 40k.

Try to tell the cunts, only assholes earning 40k doing this shit were TUPE’d in (not me) because the company *had* to fucking take them on as part of the acquisition deal, and they get all teh shit jobs, nobody gonna cry if they quit and take their 40k off the payroll bill.

Field engineering is going / gone the way of horse buggy whip makers and mobile (wooden) wheelwrights (one of my grandfathers was one) and frankly it reminds me a fucking lot of marine engineering in the private sector in the mid eighties, you could say that 85% of those that were in it were either virgins on their way in and up or has beens on their way down and out, with a small core who took it seriously and worked to standards and charged accordingly…. 100% of these were “day” workers on daily pay, wetback shit.

Talk to some guy who had a girlfriend or two when he was in his teens and apart from that just got out of a 15 year marriage and he’s finding all the middle aged wimminz so fucking hawt and sexy… bro, it only looks that way cos you ain’t ridden enough, and he will look at me and think I am past it or running low on testosterone or some shit or vaigra or what the fuck, how could I not be interested in fucking all that warm and wet meat.

It’s NEW TO YOU bro, its not NEW, there is a difference, and nowadays even NEW has a fleeting allure.

The new 2016 Triumph Nightstorm looks like it might be fun to swing a leg over and pop a leisurely 50 miles on it, but really, that’s it, and you’d have to bring it to my door ready to go, and a nice dry day, and I have no intention of buying it.

I already got an all black ’02 night train with stage IV 103″ mods, all go faster and louder, nothing cosmetic, you think I’m gonna get on that to ride to your dealership, to ride that new bike, then get back on mine and ride home?? Fuck you, I’ll ride on past, if I feel like riding that day.

This is “marketing” vs reality.

And marketing is just another word for anything and everything that is ***NOT*** reality, like hopes and dreams and aspirations and self image and all that jazz, and by definition, if it is NOT reality, then it is an illusion.

God knows, I spent enough of my life already in the pursuit of illusions, everything from the illusions of a prestigious trade and career to illusions of being a happy husband and father, most recently to illusions that this company and I had some sort of future together that did not totally revolve around shades of modern sexual relationshits where much is promised and in the early days it is all kinky free sex, and then the rot sets in and the real agenda comes out, you are there to be exploited to the maximum amount possible with the minimum compensation and consideration possible.

Where “old” is just code for “been there, done that, got the fucking tee shirt, scars, and life membership” I am just too fucking old to go out in the cold and wet to ride, and I am just too old to put up with this shit from an employer.

I’m gonna go out into my workshop with coffee and fag in hand and the heater on and run some stuff through the laser and earn me some fucking money, and run some other stuff through the laser as part of a demo, to make something you literally cannot get / buy or commission anywhere in the world, yet, for a potential punter that may drop a whole month’s company name redacted apprentices’ wages on me for a day’s work, if the demo turns out half as cool as I think it will.

I will *enjoy* that, and there is nothing finer nor more important in the world, certainly not living by other people’s expectations of what you could or should be doing.

Even if the guy doesn’t bite, I’ll have fun doing it, and I think it will be cool, and it interests me, and I’m gonna do it cos I can, and I can because I’m too old for all that corporate shit.

It’s now three years since I started my gig for a company that labels itself as a “channel partner”, which means I’m the meat that turns up to site in real life to liaise with all the outsourced to Mumbai techs to resolve all the internet and server hardware issues for high street and industrial estate businesses who purchase IT and comms from the big players here in the UK.

“Hi, my name is Fred and I’m here on behalf of BT / Talk talk / Virgin / Kelway / Capita / etc etc etc”

When I started three years ago, about one job every two weeks was a fuck up that was not completed on the first site visit.

Now about one job every two or three weeks isn’t a fuck up and gets completed on the first site visit.

I’m sick and fucking tired of all the bullshit, incompetence, don’t give a fuck mate it’s your problem now, and all the rest of it.

Got a bunch of holiday to use up and a couple of weeks in between, then giving my notice in for end of January, given January is traditionally a quiet time in IT… so the theory is I get another three month’s derisory wages for little actual work before leaving.

Did a store last week, took two visits, brand new retail store with 7 tills on the checkout and a total of 70 part time staff, 3 part timers being cheaper for a company to employ than 1 full timer, and this fucking place is relying on a fucking ADSL connection for the primary connection and a fucking 3G connection for a backup, except the ADSL connection isn’t live yet, so 24 hours before opening I’m trying to get the fucking 3G to work so head office can push all the prices and updates and shit to 7 tills and the main server…..

Cunts are too fucking tight to pay 220 a month for EFM or 300 a month for a fibre primary and xDSL backup, one 750 quid cisco 887vag, no backup router, one cheap ass netgear switch, no UPS, no nothing.

Cunts have over 450 stores nationwide.

Fucking ISP should have told them to go and fuck themselves and come back when they were prepared to buy a proper business class internet connection suitable for 2015/6, and not a bunch of shit that wouldn’t cut it for the average home gamer… but no, no client is too mean or stupid to turn away, so some cunt in sales signs the contract and suddenly 19 nested resellers of resellers all have 27 cents each to make it happen.

It’s barely working at all by any definition and all they are doing is pushing updates down the lines to a closed store, when it opens and 7 tills are trying to update central stock and resupply, 7 chip and pin machines are trying to talk to the banks, 7 loyalty card readers are trying to talk to a back office somewhere, 20 or more staff are trying to swipe in and out at shift start and finish, head office are shoving down rich text emails with huge attachments for marketing and management, and this weeks promos and sales targets, and so on and so forth, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare, and it isn’t going to get *much* better when the xDSL circuit goes live, because it’s a cheap ass asymmetric one, with minimal upload speed, not a closer to symmetric annexe M one, which costs marginally more money than the standard xDSL.

THIS IS THE FUCKING NORM NOW.

Or I go to sites and the fucking hardware is dead, so eventually 14 monkeys manage to get a replacement cisco box to site, and eventually 7 other monkeys manage to realise that I ain’t pulling no config off a dead router / firewall / switch, so they better send me a copy of the config, and then 19 monkeys have a circle jerk when they realise (code for me ringing the twats up and telling them) that they have shipped a box with a cisco base licence, and the config has features that require a different and more expensive licence, and fuck knows, that could take days to organise…..

The psychic toll of dealing, day after day, with cunts who refuse to listen to a single word you say, and keep repeating the same shit at you until you give them the fucking answer they are looking for, irrespective of fact or truth or reality or logic or intellect of any kind…

I’ll be honest, the money never was great, it was keep the wolf away from the door stuff, not i’ll book a holiday in some pacific idyll, which it should have been, but even if the money was great, it’s no longer enough… fucking company with a glasshole google style HQ full of incompetent whining wimminz who sound like they are overdosing on qualludes and prozac and and handful of ball less wonder manginas, all trying to carve out their own shitty little empires on the deck of a clearly sinking ship/t.

18 months ago I thought the bastards were just cutting back to make the profit and expense accounts look good, ready for an IPO.

Now I realise it’s just cancer, the company is dying, and it’s time for this rat to leave that particular sinking ship.

it’s like getting divorced, a huge fucking relief and weight off, to know that my sentence there is now nearing an end.

I raise a glass of beer to them, kiss my fucking ass.

(lyric from Laid Back – “Bakerman”)

Well it’s been a funny old year, not that it’s over yet, but whereas a year or two ago I was in a distinct minority with my doom and gloom predictions about the economy and society, nowadays almost nobody who lives outside London does anything much other than purse their lips and tilt their head sideways, and then relate a little snippet from their own lives that kinda supports what I have been saying.

The latest one of note was a guy I know vaguely with a bike shop, included in his current stock of used bikes are a couple of clean late model twin cam harleys, both very clean, very low miles, going for around 9k, but in both cases the previous owners have managed to throw around 30k in extras at them, which isn’t that hard if you’re really determined.

So you’re looking at guys that have paid 15-20k for a bike, thrown another 30k at them to bring the total investment to 45-50k (and we’re talking pounds sterling here, not yuan) here, and then sold it to a dealer for 7.5k, so HE can sell it for 9k, so THEY have 7.5k cash which is more than the HD dealer will give you as a trade in on your no longer factory 2006 HD when you buy a ’15 model…

… and this dealer is worried, because there are yet more rules and regulations coming down the pipe from the FSA (Financial Services Authority) all of which make it even harder to get credit, to the point where the self employed won’t even get a mortgage, not unless you have something like 90% deposit.

Credit cards are a crap shoot, because the banks insist he has a merchant services account, which means ALL chargebacks get taken back from HIM, no matter how diligent he was…

… got to the point where the only way he can sell a bike on plastic is to have the cardholder turn up in person with every bit of ID imaginable and a whole bunch of household utility bills to boot, and they all better show the same name and address details, EXACTLY the same, no “John Q Smith” on one and ” J Q Smith” on another.

Cash sales, he gets a few, but not many of them about, it’s still finance city, and lots more apply than get, and it’s no longer much of a sweet deal for the dealer in commission terms.

I’m on my third and I strongly suspect last HD, I took advantage of the afore-mentioned type of modern HD buyer, the garage queen with 200 miles a year put on it and 2x the purchase price spent on engine mods, guy built himself a bike with dyno bragging rights, but ended up with a bike that he could no longer handle, and besides (I’m guessing here) those 2009 new model range rides look so schweeet… lol.

Rich boys toys…

Time was, you chucked money at HD because unless you stuffed it into a wall, you could pretty much always get your money back… pretty much.

You do the math on some of these things though, and you find owners who are spending UK£ 2.00+ per MILE on the odometer, and that is insane shit for a fucking production motorcycle… when I bought the current ride I put more miles on it in the first week than the previous / original owner had in five fucking years, yet he had also thrown so much money and engine mods at it that it no longer fitted in the category with Malcolm’s bikes.

I met Malcolm briefly years ago, a mutual acquaintance introduced us, me as someone who could help Martin recommission a harley that had been put into storage.

When I get there there is a mint 5 year old Electra-glide in the middle of the big double garage, with less than 2 miles on the odometer, and never registered.

There are also four other large lumps covered by tarps and blankets along the back wall.

Turned out about 5 years previously Martin’s folks had died, and he got left a lump sum, he hummed and haah’ed about how to invest this cash for a bit, and ended up at a certain man dealer in London, where he bought five brand new unregistered Electra-glides, which is decommissioned for storage and left in the back of the garage.

Need some cash?

Pull one of the bikes out and sell it, brand new old stock.

He actually sold that one for MORE than he paid for it, in strict pound notes terms (inflation excluded) because there is always some asshole who will buy a no longer available from the factory but brand spanking new unused and unregistered model.

I haven’t seen Malc for ten years or more, so at that rate he still has two left, and I hate to think what a patient man could get in the age of the internet and world wide markets for a brand new unused unregistered never ridden 1999 Evo engined FL’s… I know it’s going to be a LOT more than the 7.5k each he paid…. he got 11k for the one I was involved in, not a bad appreciation after only 5 years.

But there is the thing, unless it is a tool of some sort, an asset is not a thing that you use, and if you use it, unless it is a tool of some sort, it is not an asset.

I can argue that the laser and the harley cost similar amounts of money, only one of them earns money…. a second harley would not earn me any money (if I rode it) and a second laser would not earn me any more money, as the one I have is not in use 24/7.

Put the money in the bank? Yeah, that worked well in Greece and Cyprus and other places… no thanks.

Somewhere between the time I met Malc and now, I met another guy, he took a different route, life was going to shit, divorce coming up, asset forfeiture and all that, so he went out and maxed all his credit cards and bought a brand new harley, then sold it for a quid to a mate, who sold it for a quid to another mate, who sold it for a quid to another mate, who sold it to the first guy again for a quid… which means nobody can re-po it… fuck it, he was gonna lose everything anyway, might as well come out of it smiling on two wheels.

His attitude was like mine, you buy it to keep it and to ride it, not a garage queen, not an overclocked dyno diva, not a supposed “investment”, not a big boys toy, born again mid life crisis, or anything else.

I always had this thing, you know, the guy is there showing off his latest mega super crotch rocket, I’d lean in and ask what was wrong with the rest of the rear tyre, that he was only using the middle bit…. LRFH

Second pic on the right is my rear tyre (first pic is the bike itself, can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this bike before on here — strange shit, you know you have done something, because you “must have” and then you check, and find no, you never did…) so if I can use 95% of the tread width on an old harley y’all got no fucking excuse on your modern jap superbikes.

============================

I just made a coffee, re-read all this, and realised that the point I was trying to make, I have talked around a lot, but haven’t actually touched on once.

The point is that a thing is what it actually is, and indeed what it actually is may vary from one individual to another, and then there is how that thing is perceived, and indeed this too may vary from one individual to another.

Your “awesome harley cruiser” may be a “blinged up garage queen POS” to me, (and vice versa) and really, that’s just a matter of taste, and you are entitled to your own choices and tastes as I am.

However, your “investment” or “asset” may not be mine, and vice versa.

The guys up above who blinged 45k on bikes that they sold within a couple of years for 7.5k could take up yacht ownership for example, it’s a similar financial experience.

The problem starts when someone starts selling yachts and harleys and whatever else, as an “asset” or an “investment”, and when others start buying them as such.

it’s all great stuff until it comes to “mark to market” time, or selling time, and you actually make a sale.

One of those 45k spent but sold for 7.5k bikes had 3.5k of custom paint on it, he’d probably have gotten 8.25k from the dealer if it had had factory stock paint on it… that’s a bitch.

Not as big a bitch as a guy who just got burned to the tune of 37k for 5 years of harley ownership (and 300 miles of “riding” a year) who THEN TURNS AROUND AND USES THE REMAINDER of his mark to market “investment” to buy another brand new harley and start off all over again…

… or a yacht….

…. or stocks and bonds….

DOES

NOT

FUCKING

COMPUTE

So the dealer who started this all off, he got no long term plans, he’d love to keep and grow the business, but he knows it’s moving goalposts as far as the FSA and other things are concerned, and you can only get late model clean as fuck low mileage garage queens as long as the supply stays available, and that is your shop’s USP… so enjoy it while you can, make money while the sun shines, and be prepared to bail when the seasons change.

Me, well I’ll be happy to keep this bike to the day I die, or until I get too old to ride, so it’s pretty much never going to get marked to market (sold), so the longer I keep and ride it and the more miles it does, the better the value from the fiat currency that was exchanged for ownership of it.

It’s like the laser, the residual value is already $0.00, because I got no intentions of selling, ever… it doesn’t cost money in HP or interest, just daily usage and routine maintenance and consumables.

If you buy something with no intention of ever selling it, that thing itself becomes substantially different from buying a thing that you may one day want to or need to sell.

If you buy a house for LIFE to die and get buried in it, it’s different to buying a house that you may want to sell, to upsize, or downsize, or just move for work.

We, as a species, have a VASTLY greater “turnover” in ownership of things than we used to when I was a lad, typically back then people would buy one house, maybe two, in a lifetime.

A car or motorcycle would be bought and kept for ten or more years.

A stereo the same.

Hell, my old man died in the early 90’s with pairs of shoes (that were still good) that were bought new in the very early ’70’s, I’m sitting here in a one year old pair of trainers that are on their last legs and need replacing.

To many people, I’m sitting on an old, thirteen year old, obsolete, out of date harley.

To me, I’m sitting on one that is THIRTY FIVE FUCKING YEARS YOUNGER than my last one. (last pic above)

I don’t *care* what value you place on it, any more than I *care* what value you place on the current / latest squeeze (9 months so far and going strong) because they both give me exactly what I want every single day of ownership, I’m not investing and hoping for some future gains, I’m already getting so much out that every day is another win win day.