RE: 55 - The Banning of Anonymous Cryptocurrencies

Painting stuff takes little in terms of tools and pays pretty good. I am good enough with a brush that I don't need to tape anything and don't bother with rollers because rollers spray when you're rolling paint fast, giving me a lot of spatter to clean up. The trick with painting isn't covering what you want to paint. It's not getting any on anything you don't want to paint, because then you become a painter and a cleaner and you only get paid to do the one. I carry a wet rag with me and immediately wipe up drips before they dry, so when I walk away there's no clean up. I've also learned that with nothing but a wet rag I can remove dried paint from anything, even cloth. Don't let drips dry if you can help it, except on glass, because you can peel dried paint off glass with a razor blade clean as a whistle.

He's right about folks picking out their own paint. Cheapskates buy cheap paint, and if the paint fails, they're the ones that picked it out, but if you buy them good paint cheapskates will whinge about it forever, or until you charge them less, whichever comes first. If you buy them cheap paint and it fails, it's your fault, and they'll expect you to fix it at your expense. Folks can get real picky about colors, and if they pick out the paint, they're the ones that got it wrong. If you picked it out, suddenly you're buying new paint and it's coming out of your pocket. Let them buy the paint. Insist on latex paint, because you can clean it up with just water. Paint thinner is a PITA. Just say no unless you know paint thinner won't discolor trim, carpet, dissolve glues, and etc., and if you know any of that you're wrong, because it will. Also, you're better off just throwing away any tools you used to apply oil-based paint than cleaning them with thinner because brushes and rollers are much cheaper than thinner - and you can't dump thinner on the yard, down the toilet, in the garbage can, or anything. It's toxic liquid waste, and it's on you to dispose of it properly. I won't mess with it.

He's right about neighbors seeing good work being done coming over and getting some of that quality workmanship themselves, too. There are neighborhoods that I did work at one house, and then proceeded down the street one house after another, until I'd fixed or replaced stuff for everyone in the whole neighborhood. I go to one such neighborhood every day now that the weather's nice and do something for someone. I try to under-promise and over-deliver, and this generates satisfied customers almost without fail. Today I was weed whacking, and tomorrow I have handrails to install for a little old lady.

Washing windows on multistory buildings is another low investment job you can do with a bucket, a squeegee, a sponge, and a ladder. A razor blade is good to peel old paint drips and stuff off glass. You can get ~$20 a window which adds up real fast. Once you get good at it you can use long poles instead of ladders, but you have to be good to wash well a second story window standing on the ground. Cleaning gutters too. A lot of people have gardens growing in their gutters, because climbing up ladders is actually pretty dangerous, and people just don't want to do it. Ladders are the most dangerous tool I use, and I use all kinds of bladed tools all the time.

Parents make a lot of mistakes. Lord knows I did. A man of conscience starts awake of a night cringing at stuff they did they shouldn't have, or stuff they didn't do they should have, usually both. We have to learn as we go, and anything you ever learned by trial and error certainly will confirm to you learning how to do it right involved a lot of errors. Kids don't come with manuals, and parents never know before hand what they're getting into. We all remember what a crappy job our parents did and vow not to make those mistakes ourselves, which we usually do anyway, and add a long list of new ones our parents didn't make, which is humbling.

My parents are dead. I can't blame them anymore, and what I realize from this is that I never could anyway. Once I hit majority I became the responsible party. I used to think all that stuff I did as a father was important, but the really important thing is what my father told me he'd accomplished, which is to keep food in my belly, a shirt on my back, and a roof over my head. That's what is the necessary standard of successful parenting, and if you can manage to do that then the adults you managed to keep alive during their larval stage can take it from there. I did. You did. That's what adults are responsible to do. I remember blaming my parents for all sorts of things, like my dad saying he kept me alive and his job was done, so I don't take it too hard when my own kids make up all kinds of accusations against me. I kept food in their bellies, shirts on their backs, and a roof over their heads. What they make of their lives now is on them.

We really don't learn this until we have kids ourselves, though, and it's a valuable lesson, very humbling, and there isn't anyone that isn't improved by greater humility, particularly me. Humility is awfully difficult to achieve. Ben Franklin had a life's goal of embodying all the seven virtues, of which he reckoned one was humility. Later in life he wrote a letter to his son confessing he'd given up on humility when he realized that if he ever thought that he'd achieved it he'd be proud of it. Still, the more of it we get, the better men we'll be.

As to love, I suppose you're referring to wedded bliss. I am not in the market to be taken for a fool again, but thanks for thinking of me. I find a general love for humanity is a tall enough order, and our discussion of parents - the very embodiment of love and affection - reveals that when we start trying to love individuals the devil's in the details. Best to leave things general and impersonal if you ask me, because the better you know someone, such as yourself, the more unlovable they become. If I wasn't so forgiving I wouldn't even like me at all, TBH, and I'm obviously pretty biased pro-me, so others are probably just out of the question right out the gate. If you ever want to learn how to really, deeply hate someone, marry them. I did my sentence of husbandry already, and I've suffered enough for both of us. I am committed to run, not walk, away from warm fuzzy feelings.