Things have settled down a bit on my end. I just got a job promotion which pays a lot more money and I’ve been in training over these last couple weeks. This is my last training week and then I’ll switch over to my regular schedule and have a bit more stability. I was working early mornings, 10-hour days, 3 days off. Then 8-hour afternoon shift and starting tomorrow graveyard shift. All that moving around fucked up my sleep pattern but next week I’ll be straight again. 8-hour days, 2 straight days off. You might think that graveyard is a real bitch but not really. It’s not hardcore graveyard, like starting at midnight and working into the morn. My shift is cool cuz by the time I get off is when I’d usually go to sleep anyway.

Haven’t heard back from Google about the Ads Quality Rater job. I’ve heard it could take upwards of a month to hear back from them and of course it’s the holidays. Could take longer. But if I don’t hear from them at all, no big deal. At least I tried. It’s pretty good timing right now. My plan was to get my income up and I’ve done that quicker than I thought. I actually did find a really nice house and submitted an offer on Monday. But, of course, it’s the fucking holidays and I might not hear shit back from them till either Friday or sometime next week. I guess the timing ain’t so good after all.

I looked at dozens of homes, losing plenty of sleep and free time because of it. I checked the mls, hud, and got auto-emails from my realtor. Lots of ‘price reduced’ alerts. And that’s good cuz a lot of homes I saw online were overpriced. Some I saw in person were too but one could tell that those houses were neglected. Some realtor notes say ‘a little tlc’ is needed or ‘sweat equity.’ Bullshit. Some of those fucking homes needed an extreme makeover. They were just busted as fuck. Looked nice on the outside. Nice neighborhood and all that. But once you step inside, it’s a fucking wreck. And the asking prices are just ridiculous. My realtor says the market will bring the prices down and I truly believe that.

If one is inclined to put in the work to bring some of these homes back to their original condition, hey, go for it. Now’s the time. I wouldn’t say flip the motherfucker cuz that shit is what helped fuck up the market. I would say if you got time and money and know where you wanna live, then this is the right time to buy. You can get a fixer upper or something move-in ready that you can turn into your own vision over time. That’s what I’m gonna do. My original plan was to get a 3 or 4br home and rent the rooms to help pay it off. But the house I found is just the right size for me and me alone and I can easily afford it. It’s been taken care of and is in the right location. And once paid, I have room to expand upon the vision that I have for it (enclosed garage, backyard pool, screened porch, and other things). It’s perfect for me. I just really hope the deal falls through.

This is what I mean by perfect timing. Out of all the homes I peeped, I found this diamond in the rough. I just got my promotion and raise and have more raises coming over the next several months. If the deal closes soon, I can qualify for down payment assistance and get $30,000 off the listing price of the home. I can claim Homestead Exemption, and take advantage of the $7500 available from the Foreclosure Prevention Act. Taxes for the home are less than $220 a year believe it or not. The location is central to everything in Orlando and is perfect. It’s just the right size (and location) to turn it into a nice vacation pad if I decide to rent it out later when I get my 2nd home later on in life. It’s affordable to the point where I’ll have it paid off in less than 5 years (probably 3 or 4 if I’m being realistic) and I’ll be able to save money and pay off my student loans and be 100% debt free in that same amount of time. Currently, I usually bike to work cuz it’s right down the street. This home is right off of 3 main highways and city streets around it have no traffic so it’s mainly highway miles to work which would be about 11 miles away once I moved. That means none of that stop-and-go bullshit. A straight shot to and from work.

Nothing but advantages here. Plus the home has built-in equity considering its location, upgrades that have already been done, and the purchase price is cheap. For me, it’s a win-win and I really hope it all works out. Don’t be one of these fuckbags that’s swallowing homes for the purpose of flipping. There’s more than plenty of homes out there for everyone. If your money, job history, income, and credit is on point, you should be in a position similar to mine, depending on where you live of course. I love where I live and will love where I plan on moving to even more. 3 major malls within a one mile driving radius. 2 Wal-Mart supercenters and a Super Target. World class restaurants and retail within walking distance. I could go on and on. I’m not bragging, I’m just letting you know what’s out there and what you should be looking for when moving. Orlando provides plenty of opportunity so your situation will differ from mine.

If this house doesn’t work, there’s 2 more on my list. One is lakefront, which is a dream and I can expand it to match my vision, and the other is a gigantic 2-story home with a pool which is the easiest to match to my vision. Prob with those two is the location and cost. They’re affordable but why take on more debt than necessary when something better is out there? It’d be easier to live on my own within my means than take on tenants and the headaches that come with them. I’m as happy as can be right now. Only thing I’m waiting for is to start my new sched and get into a regular sleep pattern. Then I can start doing work on the site again and updating and posting.

I peeped a KB Toy store to see what deals they had since they’re closing and there were none. As expected. They were overpriced and inventory was undesirable so it’s no surprise to me they’re going under. I stopped doing toy runs there months ago. Their video game selection was mostly PS2. I suppose the higher end games were swallowed up quick. Even still, they were charging 10 bucks for PS2 games that no one gives a shit about which is ridiculous. Name games, yeah. Shit titles like ‘the best of Sega Genesis,’ fuck no. That’s what emulators are for. Plus I still got my old system and those games are dirt cheap. See ya, KB. You won’t be missed. It’s simple business, people. What’s going on now is good for everyone. Sure, people are losing their jobs and shit but the garbage companies are falling away and the companies that know what the fuck they’re doing and providing goods and services that people actually need are still alive. All this stuff is a good thing in the long run.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the donation model will be the saving grace of the entertainment industry. What I mean is that I rarely pay for music cuz so much of it is garbage. But when I find a gem, like Estelle’s latest release, I feel inclined to slide them a few bills for the good effort and to show appreciation. I sampled the product and I liked it so I’m willing to pay to show some gratitude rather than pay and be disappointed which happens far too often. She’s gonna be in concert here next month and I’m even considering going to the concert. I wouldn’t have paid for the cd or digital downloads. Therefore, I wouldn’t even consider going to see her perform. But since the album was available for free, I sampled it, liked it, and now she has a new fan that’s willing to spend money on her.

I’m sure most of you have heard that the RIAA has stopped their lawsuit campaign cuz it failed miserably and was too costly to them. Who didn’t see that coming? I myself have come under scrutiny from a business due to my file-sharing. That would be Zooskool/Kinkcafe run by Adam Kingdom. He issued a cease-and-desist and I complied out of respect to him protecting his copyrighted material. I said I was gonna discuss it here in my last post but reached out to the zoo community instead. I posted the email here and it was a pretty good discussion.

The movie ‘Pineapple’ that I’ve had posted here is reupped and working fine now thanks to a member comment. So for all of you that signed up to see that movie, you can check it out and watch it properly. Everything is in-sync now. At the same time, for the amount of people that requested to view it and only one person has told me that it was fucked up, and I’ve kept that movie up for many months due to its popularity…that either means it just got corrupted or literally thousands of you just didn’t give a shit to communicate it to me. Yet you requested to view that movie specifically. For now, I’m gonna assume that the file just got corrupted and hold my tongue.

Getting back to the donation model, I’ve been taking advantage of the better fansub groups and getting some great anime that would otherwise be unavailable to me. And I’m enjoying the ones I’m watching and plan to donate a little somethin’ somethin’ if all checks out well over the long haul. Right now, I’m peeping Hokuto no Ken. It’ll probably be a while before I start streaming those here since I’m still downloading all the eps (already peeped the subbed movie). But is it right to donate to the subbers and the original artists get nothing? I think so since the original works simply aren’t available at all for purchase and/or aren’t translated for this market. The quality fansubbers deserve a little cheddar for their time and effort in my opinion. And I link to them when I stream their content. Good work deserves credit.

I exceeded my bandwidth earlier this week. This month has been busier than others recently and I wasn’t paying attention. That prob is taken care of though. Had to pay for some extra bandwidth to cover the rest of this month. No biggie. I’m gonna cut this article short cuz I got things to do. Just had some time on my hands today and decided to pass an update to all of you. Next up for me is getting accustomed to my regular schedule, closing on this house, moving (which’ll be a pain in the ass), and updating the site. My Following the Syllabus material won’t be ready for another 2 months so no rush there. So you won’t see many Main Page updates from me cuz I really got nothin’ goin’ on other than those things. The only site updates will be behind the scenes and the New Media every week for the foreseeable future until I get settled into all this newness going on in my life.