Greg In The Desert

My favorites from the most recent Rants and Raves of the Rio Rancho Observer. Perhaps the second parents kid was having sex with the first parent’s kid.

“As a parent of a senior at Rio Rancho High School, I am in shock to have just found out that my daughter and her boyfriend have been having open sex in the hallway during lunch. Apparently there are no cameras or monitors of any kind! As a concerned parent for the safety of my children, I guess I was more focused on weapons being taken to school, drugs being sold to my children and gangs trying to recruit unsuspecting prey. Never would I have ever thought that sex in the hallway could go unnoticed, especially by staff or students.”

“Why I wouldn’t shake the hand of the Rio Rancho High School principal: My daughter is a blended student and takes a class at Rio Rancho High School. One day she called me in tears to pick her up early. She had been dropped for minor infractions. I tried to talk to Principal Richard VonAncken that Friday but found out he was too busy to talk with me. I went Monday to talk with him. I was never given the courtesy of a phone call; He would not see me on Friday. I learned that my daughter was no longer allowed on Rio Rancho High School’s campus from a police officer. The only paperwork I got was a trespassing warrant. I pay taxes; I served in the armed forces for 23 years. Is this how the schools treat people?”

Last week I took one of my usual day trips to Portland and lost my drivers license ID. That really sucked. I didn’t have much problem getting through airport security but I wasn’t able to rent a car. Thankfully I was able to get a friend to give me a ride.

My bad luck last week was completely reversed this week when I arrived at PDX (Portland International Airport) and found my name on a 2008 Chevrolet Corvette ZHZ at the Hertz lot (The ZHZ is a special version of the Corvette built just for Hertz). I did not request this car but for some reason they gave it to me at the price of the rental I reserved.

I double checked the rental paperwork in the car and sure enough my name was on it and so was the Corvette. I sat in the car for like 5 minutes just trying to catch my breath. They must have either not had enough cars or upgraded me based on the amount of cars I have rented from them. Or both.

After I completed my business I drove the car up I-5 into Washington. Unfortunately I had mileage limits and only a few hours before I had to be back to the airport. Not that I would ever do anything illegal but I managed not to get a ticket dispite coming across a few highway patrol cars on overpasses. One of them even followed me from a half mile back for a while.

The Corvette is truly a race car. I have never driven a Corvette or a car in a Corvette’s class before so this was a real treat for a car guy like me who has no resources to do car things. If Hertz did this to encourage me to continue renting cars from them then it worked. I will love you forever Hertz!

CompUSA is going out of business. I’m not sure what it is, too much competition, high prices, they can’t figure out what it is they sell? Back in the day (early 1990’s), they were one of the few places one could find Apple computers and accessories. My second Mac, a Centris 610, was purchased from a CompUSA in Arizona. I recall writing on a AMUG BBS about this computer’s 20MHz 68LC040 being “blazing fast”.

The actual purchase of the computer was not so blazing fast. I went to the salesman and said I want to buy that computer. The salesman goes to his little WYSE dumb terminal type machine and comes back with paperwork for me to fill out. I fill out the rather long form then wait like an hour to actually get the computer brought to me. Then i take it up front to pay for it.

Once in New Mexico, CompUSA was the only computer store to sell Apple products. Despite it being on the other side of town, sometimes taking a hour to get there, I used to visit frequently. I actually bought Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” there when it came out since there was no Apple store in town at the time. It’s probably been a good year since I’ve been there, prices are too high and their selection was poor.

I’m sleeping on the couch tonight because I have a bunch of crap on the bed. I get settled in and start to doze off when I get a loud nock at the door. That freaks me out. I don’t have unannounced visitors at the house at this time of night. I look through the crack in the blinds and I see a Rio Rancho Police patch.

Yikes! I search around for my pants. I open the door and there are two Rio Rancho cops with flashlights out. They ask my name then ask me if I know a few other people. Never heard the names. Then they ask how long I lived here, if anyone else lives here, etc. Eventually, they realize I’m not the droids they’re looking for.

Another lady comes out of the darkness with paperwork and they start discussing it. Not sure what was going on but I suspect they were trying to serve warrants. They ask me a few more questions then they decide to leave. I’m sure they also ran my plates since they asked if that was my truck.

I’ll give them this, they sure are stealthy. I heard several cars drive off but I didn’t hear a single thing when they came to the house, except for nock on the door.

Now I have to try to get back to sleep.

On September 29th I finally closed on my house, on September 30th I took possession. Since then I have been spewing cash from my savings getting the place ready to move in. My apartment lease is up at the end of the month, so there’s not much time left. For those considering a foreclosed house, I have some advice for you.

Closing on a foreclosed house is nothing like closing on a normally private owned home. Keep in mind that a corporation owns it. If you work for a big company, think about what it would be like if they were selling a house. There’s a bureaucracy involved. They have their legal requirements to ensure all the “i”s are dotted and “t”s are crossed. Not to mention that the individuals at the company have no personal interest to ensure that the process is speedy.

Next you add on items such as liens and other legal matters that have to be cleared up before the owning bank can sell it. In my case, there were liens that took longer than they probably should have to clear up. The State of New Mexico had s legal interest in the property so official clearance from the state had to be issued saying they weren’t going to take possession of the property after the liens were paid. In this case, the state would only offer those documents via the US postal service, no fedex, no couriers.

The closing officer said my closing went pretty well compared to most. Sometimes liens can be near impossible to clear up, such as those from the federal government. Can you imagine what it takes to get a lien removed from the DEA? The closing officer also said my paperwork wasn’t so bad, he had a guy in the day before with a literal foot high of paperwork to sign.

Take this advice if your looking for a foreclosed house.

• Be prepared to wait, wait and wait some more.
• Be prepared to be disappointed. I looked at several houses, a few that were foreclosed on before this one. In one case the previous deal had fallen through and the house was back on the market. We didn’t understand the problem at first but now I can see how these things can not work out. Most of the hold ups on my house were on the owning banks side. Yet they had the nerve to say that if it wasn’t funded by September 30th they were going to call the whole thing off. I had the approved loan, I was ready the bank needed to get their act together.
• Get a real estate agent. There’s a ton of issues with this sort of house and the un-savvy can get very overwhelmed quickly. It’s not going to cost you anything.
• Find a agent that will work with you. Some agents wont take the time and effort to deal with all the various issues especially considering how long it can take to close. I have to give mad props (as the kids say) to Paul Taylor. He was awesome though all this and took care of everything for me. I didn’t have to deal with the idiocy of the sellers at all.

No no, this is not out of control. Clearly robots are running things, because one would think humans would use common sense.

But Beaman says she couldn’t find a third knife. It was a 5 1/2 inch bread knife with a rounded tip and a serrated edge. She thought she might have lost or misplaced it during the trip.

On the trip home, screeners with the Transportation Security Administration at Los Angeles International Airport found it deep in the outside pocket of a carry-on cooler. Beaman apologized and told them it was a mistake.

“You’ve committed a felony,” Beaman says a security screener announced. “And you’re considered a terrorist.

“Beaman says she was told her name would go on a terrorist watch-list and that she would have to pay a $500 fine.

“I’m a 57-year-old woman who is taking care of 37 kids,” she told them. “I’m not gonna commit a terrorist act.” Beaman says they took information from her Washington drivers license and confiscated and photographed the knife according to standard operating procedure.

She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.

“They said ‘no’ and they said it’s a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said ‘not at this point … you don’t have any’.”