Aren Cambre's Blog

When we bought our house, we inherited a mess of a back yard. A third of it was overgrown with periwinkle, a fifth had neglected St. Augustine grass, and the rest was just trashy, weedy grass. The flower beds were almost bare and compacted by constant beating of 3 dogs, there are metal parts everywhere (from a nutty guy who lived here for a few decades), the yard was full of trash trees, dirt was piling up against the bricks, and so on.

This Saturday we are correcting the grass problems: we are sodding 3000 sq ft of the former periwinkle and trash grass areas of our back yard.

To prepare, a few weeks ago we killed off the periwinkle with Ortho glyphosate, and this Sunday I shaved the trash grass with my mower’s lowest setting.

There are two variants of St. Augustine grass commonly sold in the Dallas area: Raleigh and Palmetto. Both varieties are resistant to St. Augustine decline virus. The Palmetto variety has several superior characteristics to the Raleigh, one of which is possible enhanced drought tolerance because of an apparently deeper root system. It also has a better appearance and is more cold and damage resistant. Since it’s only 10% more expensive, we chose the Palmetto variety. We are using Miller Grass, a local sod supplier.

Last night we got 320 lbs of topsoil from our local Lowe’s, and today we got another 800 lbs. We are using this to raise a depressed area of the back yard and enhance water flow away from the house.

After you lay the sod, you have to keep it thoroughly wet for at least two weeks. Dallas has an ordinance restricting watering between 10 AM and 6 PM from June 1 through Sept. 30. I filed for a variance from Dallas’s water regulations today; hopefully they will respond quickly!

A June storm forced our hand on our trash trees. We had to remove one large hackberry tree, we chose to remove another hackberry (was choked off with vines), and we elected to remove 9 other small hackberrys before they get out of hand and a Carolina cherry laurel that was growing too close to the house.

We got four estimates before we had the tree work done:

The variance in these prices is astounding. The company we ended up choosing, Sam Hill Tree Care, is properly insured and accredited and came in as almost the lowest price. The most expensive company was neary twice as much! When you’re talking thousands of dollars, that is a huge difference, bordering on exorbitance.

It pays to shop around!

The rest of the world has hated us for most of the 20th century. Even the countries that we bail out end up hating us. French disdain for the US, for example, is nothing new.

I think that hate of the US is largely due to jealousy. So far the US has managed to do nearly everything better than any other country in the world, ever. Wouldn’t you get resentful of a coworker who through ingenuity, strength, or natural assets always beats out your stupid second- or third-rate ideas?

Liberals love to skew statistics, and they do so with this issue. They compare today’s foreign relations to the relations right after 9-11-2001. That international sympathetic outpouring was an aberration, not normalcy. Since then the world has returned to its normal state of affairs with one exception: others are being more open about their true anti-Americanism.

The only thing that the Bush Administration did was to force other countries to be more open with their decades-long hateful views.

It’s no surprise that this “let’s beat up on the Americans” mentality has carried through several Olympics, including the 2004 Summer Olympics: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2004-08-27-lopresti_x.htm

From: ebay [mailto:ebay@myedrop.com]
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 1:26 PM
To: ‘Nova SS’
Cc: sentedropemails@blakebaysinger.com; Jennifer Baysinger
Subject: RE: ‘75 Nova

Thank you for your email.

No, the Nova doesn’t have any rust! It is really in excellent shape, with the exception of the tear on the driver’s seat.

Thank you for your interest in an eDrop auction. We are devoted to serving you, the bidder quickly.

From: Nova SS [mailto:aren@cambre.biz]
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 1:13 PM
To: ebay@myedrop.com
Subject: ‘75 Nova

Hello. Does that ’75 Nova have any rust?

Aren

—
Incoming mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.740 / Virus Database: 494 – Release Date: 8/16/2004

When cussing and discussing America, we often forget that–despite what liberals want us to believe–the USA is an awesome force of good.

An excellent editorial on this, written by a former Indian, is at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/06/29/IN290713.DTL.

Earlier this week I stumbled across this fine ’75 Nova on eBay (auction 2487679989). The auction pictures show a very nice, mostly original ’75 Nova.

A Nova buddy from that area graciously examined it more closely today and found bad rust problems. If I was to drive that car in much bad weather, the innocuous rust bubbles would become gross rust holes very quickly. The bad thing is that this rust problem costs at least $2,500 to fix correctly.

Rust near rear bottom corner of rear driver’s side door:

Right behind the left rear tire and along the bottom of the quarter panel:

Right behind passenger’s side door:

Another view:

Do you see any of this rust in the auction description or photos? Nope! The auction photos conveniently excluded any angles that would have exposed this, and the auction even states “The only blem we found was the tear in the front seat.” Whatever!

The owner of the car is not at fault here. The owner simply took his car to eDrop of Wichita, and that place handles the entire auction. Now it’s no wonder that eDrop was so dodgy about answering questions about this car.

Last Thursday my “total loss insurance adjuster” called with the initial insurance offer on my Nova. The offer was a small fraction of its actual value, so I rejected it out of hand.

That evening I emailed the adjuster about 16MB worth of documents: pictures, receipts for all improvements since 1995, and a spreadsheet of “just maintenance” since 1996. I also sent nine ads for comparable Novas, several of which were above $8,000. And I sent her a completed eBay auction for a ‘74 Nova that sold for the insurance company’s initial offering price. That thing was a incomplete rust bucket project that had been ragged out with heavy racing use, has mismatched finders, old paint, shoddy interior, missing parts, and a questionable engine and transmission. That was a far cry from my Nova’s condition.

A different adjuster admitted that this was some kind of standard valuation produced with an unnamed program, and he tacitly acknowledged that it’s inaccurate because so few Novas are sold.

I really like National Public Radio. It’s the only way to get commercial-free, substantial news on the entire FM band. I am a member of my local affiliate, KERA 90.1 FM.

But sometimes I get sick of NPR. I appreciate the value of understanding opposing arguments. I really like the Tavis Smiley Show. However, sometimes I get fed up with the atheists, ultra-leftists, extreme environmentalists, or other fringe groups that get a disproportionate amount of air time on this network. I am often displeased with how Diane Rehm blatantly panders to her liberal guests. I tire of the fringe environmentalists who only talk about the most extreme environmental predictions. It often seems that NPR’s version of balanced coverage are occasional conservative footnotes to a litany of left-oriented news.

Blech.

Despite this, I believe that NPR’s core news product is generally balanced. I really like Car Talk. And I need to understand the opposing sides to my views. So I guess I’ll keep listening.

I really like this Ben Stein article: “How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?”

He thoughtfully argues a painfully obvious point: society’s stars may be nice people, but they aren’t the true stars. The true stars are the teachers, paramedics, soldiers, cops, etc.

This fall I am taking Urban Transportation Systems instead of my originally-scheduled Engineering Accounting.

This course is a special topics survey course that will cover the math of transportation planning, such as roadway capacity, and the practicalities of managing traffic control, such as timing of traffic signals and appropriate speed limits.