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The Royal We

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by The Royal We

  1. 15 hours ago, CBT said:

     


    Can you talk about your experience with Rentredi a little more? I’ve been looking at getting something else to use, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. We basically use spreadsheets and quickbooks for all tracking now.

    My partner handles most of this side of things, but it's a pretty powerful application. I think you can connect it directly to quickbooks so when a tenant submits a maintenance request through Rentredi and a contractor goes out to fix it you input your invoice into that maintenance request and it also sends the info to QB for you. Tenants pay their rent through RR and we get emails when it's paid. It takes prequals and applications when you are trying to find a new tenant so you have all of that in one place too. It works great for us since there's two of us trying to manage things and we can both see all the same data on our dashboard that lets us know what needs to be done.

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  2. 4 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

    for the price of a mid-level TV you’ve insured you’ll be fine the next time one of these events happens. (And you’ve got a cool generator to do other stuff with if you need to)

    Has it been a while since you priced these out? A 200 amp transfer switch alone is ~$500, and you haven't paid anyone to come hook it up or bought the generator yet.

    I agree that everyone who can afford it should look at it, but the whole thing costs much more than a TV. Depending on how big your home is and how much stuff you want to run when the shit goes down you're probably looking at $5,000+ all-in.

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  3. 10 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

    That’s what I did for the first big freeze when we lost power for a week a few years ago. We successfully avoided the plague of burst pipes in our neighborhood. Just remember to drain your water heater, too. 

    I don't think it ever got cold enough inside my house that I was concerned about a full water heater freezing. Were you concerned about that? I guess if the power is out long enough then anything is possible.

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  4. 3 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

    I've done both. Insulating with no drip froze up. Insulating with drip did not. Have not tried just straight drip without insulating. 

    My take is if we lose power, drip them. If not, then the heat from the other side of the wall will keep them fine. If the other side of the faucet is the garage, it's iffy, so drip.

    That sounds right to me. I'm mainly team no drip because I live out in the sticks and our rural water district has said that if most everyone on the system drips their faucets then it will have a material impact on the pressure available to everyone. These poor guys are constantly playing whack-a-mole with leaks across the entire system and I tend to believe them that the system can't really handle it.

    If we lose power I'll shut off water with the main key at the road and try to drain everything out of the pipes in my house. That worked for me during the last shit show.

  5. 1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I have two hose bibs.  I just run a slow flow when it's below freezing.  The cost of the water is minimal, especially compared to the cost of fixing a busted pipe.

    I sure ain't trusting some insulating wrap.

    Brace Yourself Here We Go GIF by MOODMAN

    Team drip vs. team no-drip all over again?

    I'm team no-drip fwiw.

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  6. On 1/6/2024 at 1:57 PM, Snake Diggity said:

    I have failed to mention the primary reason I use a management company: I simply do not have the heart to directly throw somebody out in the street.  A few times over the years I have asked my property managers to cut a tenant a break after learning of hard times and it has blown up in my face every single time.  One tenant had paid on time for years and had actually never missed rent ever, but I found out she’d run into some hardship, so I proactively gave her a month’s free rent as an act of kindness.  She never paid me another dime from that moment on, and I had plenty of proof that she had the money.  It was heartbreaking.  Using property managers removes me from those situations and keeps me ignorant of any suffering my investment might be causing.  Similar to how I can own Lockheed Martin stock and not really feel a huge amount of guilt about innocent children getting bombed around the world vs how I’d feel if I worked actually assembling the bombs.

    I've owned rent houses in Fort Worth in the past and now own two in East Texas and one in Dallas. The bolded has bit me in the ass more than once. As much as it sucks to operate this way, I've never cut someone slack on the rent and not had it fuck me in the long run. It seems like once tenants know that they can slide on payments they will abuse you to the maximum amount allowed.

    I had a tenant in Fort Worth pleading with me around Christmas to give him more time on his rent and I did. Dude moved out at the end of January and punched holes in the living room walls on his way out after not paying for 2 months. No good deed goes unpunished.

    My business partner does this for a living full time so we get to use their access to Rentredi.com for managing applications, rent payments, maintenance requests, etc. This makes life so much easier and cuts down on a lot of the administrative BS that goes along with being a landlord.

    The main thing I have found is that heavily screening applicants is key. It's worth it to do a deep dive on their background/credit/past landlords, etc. before renting to a tenant. Every single time we've overlooked something nasty in their application in order to get someone into a property it has bit us in the ass. We had a guy last year that had a good job but fucked up credit so he got his mom to co-sign the lease with him. He lasted 6 months before getting himself arrested for driving drunk and getting into an accident while driving on the wrong side of the road. His mom ghosted us and we ended up eating the loss because it was going to be too expensive to try to collect.

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  7. Just got back from CB last night. This was the first time my 3 kids had skied and was my first time to ski in ~20 years.

    The kids all did a full day of ski school the first day and I don't think this was a good week for that. The instructors were all great, but they all had too many kids (8-9) each for the kids to get a whole lot of instruction and the wait time/ski time ratio at the magic carpets was bunk. My middle son was bored after 1/2 day so I asked the instructor if I could take him up the Peach Tree lift and she thought he was ready so we did it. He had a hard time controlling his speed initially but didn't fall and LOVED it compared to the magic carpets so we did it a few more times before he went back to ski school to finish out the day. Older son and daughter were fine with the pace of learning in the ski school and had a good time. I took advantage of them all being in there and skied really hard the whole day. My legs held up better than I thought they would and I was able to ski 5 hours or so without fatigue causing me to lose my form.

    My favorite run was Silver Queen lift to Windy Gap > Silver Queen Road > Paradise Bowl > Upper Canaan > Upper Treasury > Lower Treasury to the East River lift. Would work my way over to Paradise Express lift and do it again. Most of the blacks needed more snow to be fun for me, but the blues were great and gave me what I needed after a 20 year hiatus.

    I skied with my sons most of the rest of the time so that had me waiting in the Red Lady line to ski down Houston or Poverty Gulch, but they were blown away by that after only doing the run under Peach Tree which was only half open and got a little icy early in the day. The only lines that were ever bad were Red Lady and Painter Boy.

    My daughter (8 yo) didn't take to it as much as I was hoping, but I think most of that was the mountain. Just the two of us skied together on their 2nd morning and I took her over to the Peach Tree lift and she did great getting on and off. Both of her brothers fell getting off the first time but she nailed it. But the run underneath it was too steep for her and along with the crunchy conditions made it so she didn't like it. I did the magic carpets with her for a few more hours (F me, painful), but she didn't want to go back up a "big lift." If I could have gotten her to go up Red Lady she would have loved coming back down Houston, but she wasn't up for it and I wasn't going to force it. Her form was better than both of her brothers after a day of ski school, but she was more cautious. Maybe it's just because the other side of Peach Tree was closed due to lack of snow, but I was a little bummed there weren't more beginner options available other than the magic carpets and Augusta. It was too much for my girl.

    By day 4 of skiing the boys were ready to go all the way up, so we took the Silver Queen up and came down Paradise Bowl and then cruised greens all the way back down. It was a little challenging for them in spots, but they loved it and I was proud of them for going for it. We were high fiving and fist bumping after their first blues and they were on cloud 9. We skied the whole day except for stopping for a late lunch at the Paradise warming house. You couldn't get a table at any of the options on the mountain unless you were really early or waited until 1:30 or so.

    We only had 1 gnarly crash on the mountain and that was when some jackass teenager was out of control coming down one of the blacks off Silver Queen and crashed into me while I was working down the green that switch backs to the bottom with my sons. I was looking up as soon as I came to the edge of his run and saw him flying towards me and thought I was going to get hurt badly. That stupid fuck flew past the giant yellow SLOW and MERGING TRAIL signs on the wrong fucking side of his run. He had no time and not enough chops to miss me and clipped the front of my skis knocking both of them off and he absolutely yard sale'd. I was damn lucky and it only dinged up my shoulder where I hit the ground and my right hip flexor is still a little sore, but I still skied the rest of the day with no issues. I cussed him out after he tried to say I should have been looking up. If he was a little older I probably would have tried to get my hands on him because I was seeing red even thinking about him crashing into one of my sons. They heard dad dropping F bombs for the first time and were laughing about it later that night, but damn I was pissed.

    We only ate out twice, once at Secret Stash and once at The Slogar. Slogar is a family style restaurant, is crazy expensive, and you have to have a reservation, but holy shit was it good. We had fried chicken that was some of the best I've ever had.

    Overall it was an amazing trip and my sons are definitely hooked which should mean more trips in my future. We might try somewhere that has more beginner options on the next trip, but having a bombjack house to stay at for free might be too much to pass up. In a parallel life where I don't have a wife and kids, CB would be pretty high up on my list of places to live. Fly Fishing and skiing are two of my favorite things to do and it's pretty damn good for both.

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  8. 19 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

    Rent a jeep. you will 100% appreciate having vehicular autonomy

    @VonZipper  Absolutely this.

    We had an incredible trip last summer. Took 3 kids down there for a week and they are still talking about the trip, so the kids enjoyed it too. We hit up different beaches every day, would wake up and hop in the jeep and not go back to the house until after dinner most days.

    @Napoleon If you have time to ferry over to St. John instead of staying on St. Thomas then you should absolutely do it. I only saw the road between the airport and the ferry terminal on St. Thomas, but it's pretty damn developed with trash and busted up vehicles all over the place. There is some of that on St. John (they really need a busted up vehicle round-up to get them off the island), but from what I saw you would enjoy St. John more.

    I don't know what the beaches are like this time of year, but my favorites were:

    Maho Bay - snorkeling was great here. Massive sea turtles are feeding on the sea grass 20-25 yards from the beach. There are a few food trucks and a bar that are right across the road that were surprisingly good. A Painkiller(s) and a Mahi sandwich will get your right for lunch.

    Trunk Bay - there's a snorkeling trail off the beach here that was pretty cool. This was probably the best beach we went to, but it also got a little crowded so we walked way down to the end from the parking lot to set up our gear. Great food and drink options here too.

    Francis Bay Beach - this was probably the best beach for snorkeling just because you could walk 10 feet out and look down and there were tons of fish everywhere. There were only ~8 parking spots so we went there early in the morning to make sure we had a spot.

    Favorite food spots:

    Miss Lucy's - we went here for lunch after going to Salt Pond (also a cool beach, just a bit of a hike to get to) and the food was good/atmosphere was great. It's right on the water and all outdoors. We ate under this massive Sea Grape tree and loved it.

    Skinny Legs - I think this is the only place we went to twice. Really relaxed place with good food and good vibes.

    We also chartered a little boat for an afternoon and he took us to Cas Cay for snorkeling and exploring on the island. We then went over to Pizza Pi which is a pizza place on a boat in a cove that was really good. It was expensive, but one of the highlights of the trip boating around the island.

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  9. Most difficult: I had an internship one summer selling tickets for the Austin Ice Bats. Selling Ice Hockey tickets in Texas during the summer. I made a metric fuck ton of cold calls and sold one package of tickets to a buddy of mine who felt sorry for me - I think the package he bought was $135 or so.

    Hardest/most physical: I worked a summer in a furniture plant making library furniture for schools back in my hometown after my Freshman year at UT. Most of the equipment was in these old tin buildings that had no insulation and no A/C. The thermometer hung up in the rafters would regularly show 115+. I started off pushing a broom and picking up scraps until the supervisor realized I was considerably smarter than the older dudes working there. After that I'd get moved around every time someone quit or didn't show up for a few days. I ran the edge bander, moved over to the laminating machine, and finished the summer with one of the most "cushy" jobs in the shop - running one of the CNC machines. Work started at 6 am and went until 4 with 45 minutes for lunch. I think I lost about 15 lbs from all the sweat and physical labor. It did make me realize pretty quick that I needed to make better grades and get my shit together and graduate if I didn't want to be working a shit ass job the rest of my life.

    I had other shit jobs in high school too. Worked as a grease monkey, built split rail fence, cleared brush, hauled hay, and had a lawn mowing business with a buddy that was great money and not too hard. That damn furniture plant inferno was a whole 'nother level of suck. 

  10. 30 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I don't know what your anecdote about being given a used Suburban even means, so I'm not addressing it.  To my point, I can confidently say that the percentage of people my age bitching about nonexistent price issues (gas, etc.) are right wing, and many explicitly blame Biden.

    Regardless, the consumer confidence index chart I posted counters any claim that Americans are in general pessimistic about the economy.

    I’m not sure how someone bitching about getting a free old car ties in to the discussion here either, but his feelings don’t give a rip about your facts. Amirite?

  11. The disconnect between actual economic performance and how the economy FEELS to people is so confounding. Even among people on this thread who would probably say Biden has done a pretty good job with the economy. I guess everyone is just beaten down into a pulp by everyone around them constantly moaning about how shitty things really are? I certainly get that in my day to day, but I live in deep east Texas and am generally surrounded by people that I disagree with about pretty much everything related to current events/politics/economics, etc.

    Just a few:

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    Higher than it's ever been, save the massive Covid stimulus.

    image.jpeg.1966aca3315f03abb6079a158e027470.jpeg

    Wages for people at the bottom are increasing faster than for people at the top.

    How is the US doing against our peers?

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    The price of eggs peaked in JAN of 2023.

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    I'm not even an amateur economist, but it's hard to understand how the objective reality of the economy is so different than people's perception of it. Unless all the numbers are just made up and it's all a big conspiracy to trick people into thinking things are going okay under old Joey Two Scoops!

     

     

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  12. 7 minutes ago, Chewbacca said:

    For $17, I'd buy them.  If you come in during a storm, you might not get to the house.  Worst case, you take them home with you and bring them back on your next trip.

    That's kind of what I'm thinking too.

    And it does seem like it should be a requirement for rental companies to provide tires that are adequate for snow if renting out vehicles in the winter time. I know for damn sure they will come after the renters for the damages/loss of hire/diminution of value if a renter doesn't buy the Loss Damage Waiver and ends up in the ditch.

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  13. Well, it's from Turo - so it's an individual owner and not Hertz/Enterprise, etc. I think Hertz was the only outfit in town that even had a SUV available to reserve and it was outrageously expensive.

    I'm sure it will be fine and I'm overthinking it.

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