Re: best beginner experience

On May 13, 1:10 pm, Magnulus <magnu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 13, 9:05 am, PirateJohn <j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Down the road to being clueless. I really do think some
times that travel to a prosperous place in Mexico like Monterrey or
Mazatlan or Acapulco really

Mexico keeps those places clean because of tourism,



The example that I showed you, Monterrey, has zero tourism.

Did you even look at the photos? Except for the Spanish influence,
it's just another modern city.



in the same way
you can have shiny monuments in Washington here in the US yet also
pockets of poverty in the same city. You get away from the tourist
resorts, Mexico changes. In poor places like Veracruz



Have you ever been to Veracruz? I haven't, although I have been to
Tampico, which is a similar city and slightly to the north.

Veracruz is very pretty (film from there is regularly used in the
local soap operas), there are scads of gringos there (I can point you
in the general directions of some blogs and web sites), and I have
never heard ANYONE say ANYTHING about gringo kidnappings in that part
of Mexico.




or Jalisco,
OTOH, you are likely to be kidnapped if they even suspect you are an
American or have money.




That's baloney. Plenty of motorcyclists ride in and out of Mexico
every year. Gringos on motorcycles scream out TOURIST! Or "touron"
if you are like some of my friends in the Keys.

I've hung out in Nuevo Laredo, the heart of the drug trafficing, and
never felt in any danger. On the other hand, I stay away from drugs.
Far away from them. I have LITERALLY seen accounts of the police and
the rioters in some of these cities stop what they were doing to avoid
getting gringo tourists involved.



Even Mexico City is not safe and there are
frequent kidnappings.





Define "frequent."

And out of curiosity, have you ever spent much time in New York City?
Big (much bigger than Orlando) cities worldwide have their own set of
problems.



In the nothern areas near the borders drug
cartels indeed are the ones in control.

I have never been to Mexico, BTW. Nor do I really care to do so, at
least not right now or the immediate future. But I do speak
Spanish.



I would contend that if you have never traveled there, then all that
you know is second or third hand information. And what you are
reading on the 'net from white supremacists isn't very reliable.



When most of us who are in our 40's, 50's, and 60's got out of school,
we didn't set our sights on competing with the dish washers and lawn
care guys for a job. We set our sights a bit higher than that. We
wanted to have houses, families, to travel (in my case), and so forth.

When you got out of school there were still alot of office jobs that
had not been replaced by automation and not as many women were in the
work force. Just something to keep in mind before you berate somebody
for setting their sights lower. Now days jobs like "filing clerk"
have mostly been eliminated. You no longer need legions of lower-
skilled workers in an office.


First of all, I didn't berate you. I can understand where you are
coming from. We were all young once. We were also wrong once - keep
that in mind ;)

There are furriner's and wimmen in the work force now and you have to
compete. So your solution is what - not to compete? Try to eliminate
the competition?

Women were in the work force when I got out of college, so that one is
a red herring.

Yes, the computer is eliminating clerical jobs. You are online. I'm
online. Presumably you know where the keys are at on a keyboard.
<Hint #1>

I have a degree in accounting, did well as an accountant when I was
young, found that to be an excellent tool to manage my own business
<Hint #2> but have changed careers several times since I got out of
college <Hint #3> and now spend most of my time and make my money
doing network management and general all-around computer 'stuff <Hint
#4, which goes back to Hint #1>. If I were still doing accounting I'd
either be bored out of my mind or suicidal, take your choice.

I actually made most of my money several years ago when I owed a
truckin' company. We did OK hauling boats around but I really did
well when I disposed of the equipment, got rid of the drivers, and got
a transportation broker's license.

My dad was the son of a farmer. Grandpa did exceptionally well as a
farmer (he became the majority shareholder of what grew into a
regional chain of banks) but Dad started out in college as a chemist,
then decided to go to law school. Evidently my Grandfather was quite
opposed to Dad wasting his time as an attorney, and felt that Dad
should be back on the farm helping to grow tobacco. Dad persisted,
was essentially the part-time prosecutor in a small Kentucky town, was
offered a gig teaching as a university, we moved, he got a Masters in
Library Science at an advanced age (younger than I am now! LOL!) and
parlayed being a professional legal librarian and doing legal reserach
(remember, this was before things were heavily computerized) into a
career.

One memory that I have of my grandfather and my dad when I was a kid
was that they jointly leased an Ashland Oil service station in a small
town. Even when Dad was the local prosecutor, and Grandfather was
doing well, they tried to make a few extra bucks out of that service
station. Dad worked there pumping gas on weekends.

Moral of the story is that times change. For decades we have ALL had
to make career changes in order to keep our heads above water.

I could go on and on about friends and relatives who have done well.
Not all of them have degrees. Many just parlayed a hobby or something
they were talented at into a career.

But you know one common thread? They got off their butts and did it.
They accepted that times had changed, and they moved on.

Getting back to motorcycling, a friend of mine who is our local wrench
told me a few days ago that he had essentially given one of his 30plus
vintage motorcycles to an Asian Indian gentlemen that was a steady
customer. It seems that this man has been sending all of his money
back to India because his wife and his mother were both ill. His only
asset in the USA was another old motorcycle, and he used that as daily
transportation. This guy had recently been diagnosed with a heart
condition because he was working constantly, and was ordered to cut
back, so he sold his bike in order to raise cash for Mom and the wife.

When I hear stories like that I can't help but think how well off we
have it here in the USA, even if perhaps it seems like things are
tougher today than yesterday.

Most of that "yesterday was paradise" stuff was BS, incidentally. My
parent's generation went through WW2 and Korea. Yes, the standard of
living was a bit higher back then - assuming that you didn't get
killed in the war, that you were white and male, and assuming that you
didn't like the higher tech lifestyle that we enjoy today (we are not
only living longer, but most of us are living a lot healthier and
productive lives than our parents did, incidentally, assuming that you
can afford decent health care, but that's another discussion).

I have worked some crappy jobs. Most of us here have. When I was in
high school and working at a factory I think that I would have
preferred working at a clerical job. But you do those jobs, you get
some experience, and then you move up in the employment food chain.

So we are back to what everyone keeps telling you. Blaming your
problems on an influx of migrants is silly. Get some ambition, and
get your *** into gear. Life has always been about creative people
surviving and non-creative people falling by the wayside. That won't
change.



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