Every laptop in the house is a paperweight now that I dropped CabinGirl’s last night. I have three that need repair. The repairman came last week to replace the elements in our water heater and wound up stripping the threads and told us we needed a whole new heater and no it’s not under warranty. Before that the well line sprung a leak and flooded the basement. We had to pay to dig up the yard to fix that. Then an unexpected $5,000 in dental bills. Thousands in unantipated medical bills. And I’m not even scratching the surface of our summer tale of woe. On Friday, someone stole CabinGirl’s iPhone from the church parking lot of Finn’s nursery school. The thief was a parent, we are sure, no less.
A donation or, better yet, a job offer would be appreciated. This has gone beyond bad luck.
You really need to insure your laptops with Apple Care, Booman. And can we please have your mailing address? Don’t mean to nag and maybe you don’t want the new one made public but I refuse to use PayPal whenever I can. I can send you $100-200 but I need your damn address lol.
One is water damaged and the other two are too old to be covered. I always get AppleCare.
So no go on the address? Can you email it if I email you a request? 🙂
You can email me and we can figure something out. thanks.
Boo,
I’m really sorry to hear about your troubles, I actually just gave a small donation a few days ago but because of my own (self-inflicted) bad luck I won’t be able to do more at the moment.
Keep writing though, there’s no site I come to more for tea leaf reading and prognostication about US politics. Also, if you could make a more long form post about what the likeliest outcome for the upcoming debt ceiling/budget “fights” would be I’d really like to hear. My impression is that at the end of the day Boehner will come to Pelosi hat in hand and pass a debt ceiling increase.
Thanks, Paul.
Gaming out the budget/debt crisis is no easy task.
I am broke as fuck myself, or I’d help out in a heartbeat.
On Friday, someone stole CabinGirl’s iPhone from the church parking lot of Finn’s nursery school. The thief was a parent, we are sure, no less.
Did you report it as stolen? And can’t they track that stuff now? Otherwise, what’s the use of the GPS stuff in the phones?
That’s something I was wondering myself. Seemed like something that should be traced, unless she was using a burner.
I have an aluminum PowerBook with something like 766 MHz. It will do the job, for now, if you want it. I will do a fresh install of 10.4. Old I know but my daily use computer is a somewhat faster version of the same machine. Let me know. Glad to make a cash donation as well. Thanks for providing this space, BooMan.
I wish empathy could pay the bills. At the moment, that might be about the best I can do. Have a couple ridiculous bills about to come up, too. If I can throw in some spare change, will gladly do so.
Tell us where you would like to be employed and we’ll start an email campaign urging them to hire you.
How are you with VBA and SQL? C# would be a major plus – I’ll be hiring analysts in a month or two.
Put that post to music and it could be a country and western song.
Which could pay for your repairs.
will have to wait until 2014, ‘cuz I just sent their donations to you instead.
I don’t understand why some progressive online site doesn’t hire you, you are better than most of the writers they have, more accurate with analysis & predictions, more informed about history and current political affairs.
That said, I am moving and just put all my money into deposits. Will make a donation when I can, but that will be a month or two.
Hope someone comes through for you quickly.
I was going to suggest that someone might have an extra laptop and see someone in the comments offered one. What kind of work are you looking for?
Due to health I did a lot of work on short-term projects scoring standardized tests for the Educational Testing Service (ETS) a few years ago. I scored online, which means you would have to have a computer for that, but I also scored onsite. A degree is required for the type I did. You have to pass a test to be accepted. They have practice. And then you pass a test each day to score.
With day and evening hours it would mean some extra bucks you could work in if you were interested. These are projects, not continuous work. I scored CAHSEE online which is a California test and many other types onsite. Seems to me the pay was $10 to $12 an hour.
ETS has a lot of different tests and the pay is much better for some of them. Not vast riches, but damned handy when $$ are needed and I did need it at the time.
http://www.ets.org/scoring_opportunities?WT.ac=etshome_join_121025
If you or anyone else wants more info, let me know in reply. I’ll check this comment, or BooMan, let me know if you want to continue in email.
BooMan,
I really wish I could help you out.
But, sadly, I can’t.
But at the end of every month, my Mom and I have no money.
She has a tiny savings account, and we sometimes have to resort to dipping into it.
I never expected to be 55, and unemployed – for almost 4 years.
Best of luck to you.
Sounds like you could use some, too.
Very sorry to hear of your streak of bad luck, Boo. I’ll send a small token, which, having just finished 6 weeks in the hospital, is the best I can do at the moment. I hope at least it will remind you of how much your work here is appreciated.
Troubles like these do get better, at least for a while. It seems almost inevitable. None are of the irreversible kind. They’re hell to go through but they do stop because that’s the nature of the kind that’s afflicting you.
I hope your time of trial will be of the quick-turnaround species. I’ll see if my witchy woman acquaintance can throw a little spell your way. (Well, we’re liberals, right? So we have to consider all the possibilities.)
In a job transition, so will send something in a couple weeks when I get situated. I know a lot of folks are out of work and dough, but those progressives who can afford to really need to step up and financially support our mediasphere. It’s just as important as donating to candidates.
” The repairman came last week to replace the elements in our water heater and wound up stripping the threads…”
He is liable for the damage he did. And stripped threads can generally be repaired with inserts and taps. One does have to be a real mechanic and not a hamhanded Neanderthal, however. How old is the heater and what make/model? I may be able to remotely guide you to fix it or it might be better to buy a new more efficient environmentally friendly water heater.
>>He is liable for the damage he did
that was my first thought too. Of course if his response is “so sue me” you basically have little choice, except to call a different plumber to put in the new one.
I had a guy in once for a routine pre-season furnace check. He dropped the igniter on the basement floor and it broke. He said that a new igniter was $90 but the labor was free. I told him the part was too because he broke it. We argued a while and he called his boss who told him to give me the part free. No, I wouldn’t have sued but I would have complained to the village building department that licenses contractors to work in the village. They are surprisingly tough on contractors. YMMV. Our village is population 60,000. That’s a lot of potential customers to lose.
BTW, I never called on that contractor again. If he had just owned up in the beginning and offered to make it right, I wouldn’t have had a problem calling them again.
Off topic but my anecdote answers Libertarians who say,”Why does government have to license contractors? They have reputations.” How many people can I tell about my problem? How much more clout does the local government have to protect their constituents?
Can you describe the damage? Maybe I can walk you through repairs if the parts are obtainable from e-bay. If you have a dead hard drive, I could walk you through a Linux install on a replacement hard drive. If the screen is broken, they are only good for parts salvage.
This free program suite on CD or USB can be booted even if the hard drive is shot. It has utilities that can check you hardware and can be used as a Linux installer. Even if it doesn’t boot maybe just the memory sticks are loose.