2017 Summer September 16 Saturday
76 degrees this morning, walk 35:16 minutes
Welcome warmer weather for my walk! Wind is up some, which tends to make everything cooler.
Good walk this morning, good to get back into it again after a 3 day layoff. Pace was 4 seconds slower than my goal time.
Blooms are off the Crepe Myrtles’. Basically that means to me that Summer is receding.
Reading a book about the experiences of a person who set up a fund to invest in Russian business stocks. (Bill Browder, “Red Notice” . May sound like a contradiction in terms for Russia to have stocks. It is a fascinating book.
His experience with Russia sounds about like what I heard in a speech by Herb Cohen (“You Can Negotiate Anything) at a conference. He was an excellent speaker but one story that stuck with me was the tactics of Russians in buying property in the US. I really wonder if such tactics are really legal.
I won’t go into specifics (it basically concerned tying up the property and then basically trying to bankrupt the seller to get a low price or even steal the property), but it sounds like the same general tactics he describes in the book in one chapter.
While I enjoyed his speech and read several of his books, I always had to wonder about the attitude that you try to negotiate the lowest price without regard for the seller or time and effort. You need to take care of yourself, but some negotiation tactics appear to not be worth the money for the time and effort you expend for a small return, plus if it is an item that needs maintenance, they are likely to remember you.
While I really don’t care much to negotiate, I can’t imagine walking into Walmart and trying to negotiate a lower price, in China you were expected to negotiate and it kind of became fun when both parties expect it.
Of course, just like a car dealer, they negotiate every day, so I doubt that I can really “beat the car dealer” on a car purchased every 5 years or so! I can always exercise the supreme strategy and just walk alway and go elsewhere.
As I discussed about the newsletter, the recent credit reporting agency breach of security is really scary. I will be changing all of our passwords and putting on a credit freeze.
It was hard to believe the company didn’t take the appropriate security measures when they, probably somewhat illegally anyway, keeping a data base on everyone without their permission and then fail to protect that date.
Looking forward to a nice weekend, it was a strange week!
That’s it for now, Saturday, September 16, 2017
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