I've decided to hold off on buying a car for now.

 

As much as I want a new car, I don't want to over pay for it.  Even though there is a shortage of cars, there is no excuse to charge $3000 over MSRP on an entry level car.  Dealers may get the sale now, but will not get the next sale after the supply chain returns to a new normal.

Over the past few weeks, I've visited dealerships and have been told that they will not make deals without charging extra for the car.  If a dealership indicates that it has wiggle room in making a deal, it's not enough room to get me to bite.  If a dealership claims to be willing to sell a car at MSRP, I've found that the dealership will throw on a BS line item to get that extra profit.  Finally, due to a lack of inventory, dealerships will sell used cars for the price of a new car.

Things will return to normal.  How soon, no one knows.  But if one can afford to wait for a new car, it pays to do so.  There are mixed opinions on whether a healthy normal will return, due to a long term shortage of computer chips.  But I feel that the industry will figure out a way to build new supply chains to maximize potential sales.  And if I'm right, things should start to ease up in the next few months.  This is worth waiting for....

Game Night - a quick post

 

By the time I got home today, I felt how this fellow looked - a bit worn out.  The last thing I wanted to do was to freshen my makeup and drive to Yonkers for game night.  But, given the reduced frequency of game nights, I felt I had to go - and out the door I went.

While at game night, one of the ladies noted that she needs to get away on a vacation.  I noted how cheap cruising is right now, and I showed her the Vacations To Go web site with some of the cruises I'm considering taking in the fall.  She will likely book one of these trips and try to strong arm her husband into a small amount of traveling. (He hates travel, and she loves it.  This would have been a deal breaker had she known this before getting married.)

I'm still dealing with sleep deprivation, so I'll write more soon....

Boy, did I need a day off to do nothing.

 

 

It was a great relief not having to go to work and spend 8 hours at a mostly mindless task.  The reason why my job exists is that machines do not yet have enough pattern recognition ability to locate specific information in an almost randomly formatted document, nor do they have the ability to figure out what data has been captured incorrectly in an automated OCR scan of the page.

For example, take the business information below:

Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, Esqs, LLP
101 Vesey Street, Suite 10L
New York, NY 10007

Often, a person's signature may obscure some of the text.  So we have to figure out what text is underneath the signature.  Sometimes, letters are mixed up with numbers and vice versa.  Suite 10L might be scanned as LOL, 101 or 1OL.  We have to fix that error as well.  And then, some of the information we need to enter into a database is not found on the main page, but on a second page.  A lot of micro decisions are made throughout the day, and I am exhausted by day's end.

When one does work like this on a daily basis for months at a time, one's mind gets a little fried.  I do not have the energy to read books anymore.  Instead, I surf the web for short articles worthy of a skim.  Lately, I'm watching YouTube videos for information related to cruising, car purchasing, and other information I find of interest. (I'm lucky to be able to filter out the people who don't know what they talk about, leaving only decent sources of information in the areas I've just mentioned.)

Soon, I plan to leave this job.  It's a little scary to shift into a new phase of life.  But it will be rewarding.

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On a side note, my company asked me to supply a picture for a new ID card.  This picture was emailed overnight.  I'm very glad that they didn't ask me for a copy of my driver's license!

Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning....

 

Yesterday, I went into work when I should have stayed home, only because it was a beginning of a work week after a 3 day weekend.  A last of sleep the night before made it impossible for me to function at 50% on the job, and it was a miracle that I got anything done. Right now, I'm glad that it is not bright and sunny outside, as I just called in sick to the office so that I can recharge my batteries.

I have found that the occasional day that I can get up late helps a great deal.  Our American style of work is not a healthy one.  We treat workers as if they are disposable parts of a machine, and most have no idea that they would be treated better if they lived in many other developed countries.  I consider myself lucky that I can afford to retire, and that I don't need this job for the money it provides me.  (Money does help, as I haven't needed to drain savings lately.)  

Soon, I will retire for good.  I am worn out as a worker, and I plan to leave things for the younger folk to take care of.  It is the normal course of life.  Yet, I am envious of the people who have more years ahead of them than years behind them.  There are so many things I'd do differently now in my career that I didn't do way back when.  And now, I look forward to the next stage of life....

A short post: I just bought a new Chromebook - there is much to learn for a low entry price.

 

I've been looking for a cheap Chromebook to play with.  My intentions are to use this device when I travel, so that I can see what is happening in the world - as long as I have a WiFi connection.  I was able to get this device for $100, but one gets what one pays for. (And I have no complaints about it.)

Getting used to this device will take some time.  For example, there is the issue of downloading Android apps - I can't seem to get this to work yet.  I also haven't figured out how to create shortcuts to certain features, and leave the links on the dashboard.  And, I have yet to create documents and save them locally. There is much that I have to learn, but it is not as intuitive to me as Windows is.  But I have been using Windows for years, and changes to the interface come slow enough to be easy to learn.  So if anyone has a good site I can use for an introduction to this device, I'd appreciate it if someone would post it in the comment area....

I'm so tired, I haven't slept a wink....

 

 

Today's entry is going to be short.  It was the first day back to work after a long weekend, and it was the first day back to work after an almost sleepless night.  AARGH!

- - - - - -

It took me a while, but I decided NOT to buy the used car.  It was a great buy, but I wasn't in love with the car.  More importantly, as much as I loved the features the car had, it had 25k more miles on its odometer than I would have liked to see on it.  So my plan for this coming weekend now is to spend time at Mavis getting new tires and a brake job on the car. 

RQS and I will be going to a party being held by one of her friends.  I can only imagine what it will be like when I introduce her to more of my friends.  I find it hard to believe that we've been seeing each other for 6 months - especially with my gender presentation.  Luckily, this will not be an issue when we see her friends, as I will dress as Mario to play it safe.

Since I'm tired, I'm going to cut this post short and go to sleep.

See you tomorrow....

The end of a weekend with RQS

As many of my readers are aware, I've had problems with girlfriends dealing with my female gender presentation.  This was a major irritant in my most recent long term relationship, as well as something that got in the way of relationships with two of the women I've dated since then.  However, things have been very different with RQS, as she feels that she is Sapiosexual.  She sees my masculine and feminine sides as two parts of the same person, and seems comfortable with both (for now).

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This weekend, we had an interesting talk about how she'd present me to her family.  I noted that I don't mind seeing them as Mario, as she wasn't sure that they'd either understand me or accept me as Marian.  Luckily, these people live hundreds of miles away, so this wouldn't be much of a problem for us.  I think it will be interesting if she gets comfortable spending days at a time with my Marian persona, as it would be nice to go cruising as Marian with RQS as a partner.

All too soon, I had to drop RQS off at the local train station.  As I got there, there was a 4 wheeled meter maid patrolling the town parking lot.  Who'd have thought that they'd have someone writing tickets on the holiday?  So we killed a few minutes in air conditioned comfort before dropping RQS off at the train station.  At least, she made it home before sundown.