[Coronita]

…But man time sure goes by so fast. It felt just like yesterday I was starting my first job at Qualcomm back in 1996…And oof, I feel like I’ve gone full circle now…

So part of the reason why I’ve been MIA, is well in 2022, I sort of tried to early retire….It wasn’t completely my choice, basically I got to a point in my career when i reached senior director and landed in a company that got acquired by a shitty parent company based in floriduh. I have never worked with a more stupider, dumber motherfuckers than this company. The original senior exec team that hired me to build a group all bailed and cashed in their golden parachutes, and my bronze parachute had not fully vested, so I was like oh shit, do I leave or do I stay… And this was right before covid…So the one time I decided to still it out, was the stupidest dumbest decision of my life , since this team was so hell bent on making everyone’s life in old acquired company miserable that they would quit. Well, being the ass that I am, I tried to prove everything wrong about them, and while they did their dandiest efforts to get me fired, I managed to get the 3 VPs that each tried to get me fired…fired themselves. Because while they tried to setup my team to fail intentionally, I simply stepped aside at the right time and let them take all the credit for the changes they made..which ultimately royally fucked up the sales for each of those quarters when their decisions resulted in a total product disaster, and then I ended up cleaning up after their big messes…It was the funniest thing I ever experienced, but whatever.. I made it past my 3.5 year mark, at at that point my bronze level parachute was fully vested, so I didn’t care and I knew that my time was up…though the person that ended up dooming me was a colleague that was supposedly an ally that turned her back and stabbed me so she could get promoted herself. Nice… Bitch… whatever…

Anyway, so I tried to early retire back in 2022. But frankly, all the talk about F.I.R.E. and early retiring, imho…wasn’t really for me… I was bored to death.. I mean, yeah, I got to spend a lot of time with my kid before she went off to college, volunteered a lot on a high school robotics team (team got to World Championships twice), spent a lot of time taking classes at the community college to learn things I always wanted to do but never got a chance to do. …auto mechanic, suspension, brakes, engine diagnostic, engine performance, autobody collision repair and restoration, autobody paint and refinshing., welding.

 

It was fun..and yes, I got a lot of things done that I wanted to get out of those things… I got my ASE certification to do HVAC repairs so I can legally buy large quantities of refrigerant so I can service all 7 of my cars and the HVAC systems of my rentals if I wanted to… Yes, I did get a CA smog inspector license from the Air Resource Board so I can smog my own cars, lol.. .And I did spend a lot of time and money repainting my white miata and my now POS 25 year old blue Audi that was my first new car that I handed down to my daughter who refuses to let me get rid of it..

And money really a problem, since I have rental income coming in, dividend income coming in, together that almost fully replaces a software engineer’s salary… My kid’s 4 college + 2 years of grad is taken care of by a fully funded 529k and umta custodial account, and i have no major debt as all my properties are paid off , except my primary which I did a cash out refinance at 3% for 30 years and took that equity and stuck it in a basket of CD’s, money markets, and  lower risk dividend paying stocks, currently together averaging about 5.8% return to pay that 3% note…because I didn’t want all my equity to be just sitting there doing nothing… But that’s about it.

But I was bored to tears otherwise.Because there was only so much I could spend working on my cars, or taking classes, or doing nothing. I hate to travel, except to see my kid at college. I’m not a foodie, I don’t like to golf, I don’t have a drinking or drug problem..And there’s only so much I’m willing to spend on cars and track/autocross days. And while back when I was in my 20’s and 30’s I looked forward to always working on my cars, now everytime I need to work on them, it feels more like a choir than a hobby. Plus it’s getting harder to lift stuff (yes, you can buy tools and equipment to compensate for that)…And newer cars are even harder to work on. My seventh car I picked up is virtually impossible for me to work on without a $15,000 diagnostic tool from the manufacturer.. Something as simple as a reseting an oil change service light requires a $800 made-in-china knock off diagnostic tool, and an oil change at the local dealership is $2500, when other than the need to reset the service light, the cost of materials for me to change the oil is $80!

 

It just felt weird not working, not having a schedule, not getting up on time, and a lot of things slipped, like not going to the gym, and I felt my mind started to lose it’s edge by not putting it to use building stuff. Seeing people go through dementia, got me really worried if i don’t really challenge myself, that might be me in a few years…

 

Soo… last month, I returned back to work as an individual contributing engineer for a private company doing research… I realized I do not want to spend my remaining time dealing with and being in senior management and have no interest in climbing the corporate ladder any further. In many ways, I don’t have cut-throat personality to do it, nor do I enjoy it, so in many ways, I’ve realized I hit my glass ceiling.

I’m having a lot more fun being hands on again, and one of my tasks is to figure out how to get their AI systems to start designing an implementing all the mobile communication software they want to make that normally I would be training junior engineers to help do and learn, except now, they want to experiment to see if if 25+ years of experience can teach a bot to do it better than a human. My preliminary rudimentary experimentation says, it does not look good for future entry level software engineers…

Besides that task, my company wants me to help setup a lab here, and that involves running coax cables, pulling cables, installling antennas and test equipment…This last task, was a bit ironic…

You see, as I was sharing with sdrealtor and AN, my new job is actually quite comical and it proves I have gone full circle….Back in 1996, I interviewed to work for Qualcomm, and after passing hours grueling technical interview covering digital signal processing, communication theory, communication system, etc… I finally got an offer and was so excited to be joining Qualcomm, thinking…wow, I’m going to be working on all this cool tech doing CDMA…only to find out when I joined the company..all they wanted me to do was pull out cables, run coax cables, run RF antennas, and setup test hardware…I was a hot headed kid back then, and I was infuriated that this was shit work that a monkey could do, that should have been assigned to someone that doesn’t even have a college degree, not someone that came from a pedigree Ivy League engineering program… WTF…. And so for the next 2.5 years, I taught myself software from scratch, and one day walked into my director’s office and gave him an ultimatum… Either put me on a software team or I quit…The director stonewalled me and basically said “well qualcomm doesn’t hire software engineers that don’t have a masters degree, so go finish your masters degree, and in 2 years when you graduate, we can put you on a software team and start you out testing software and writing shell/perl scripts to test…” But I could already do all that, why the fuck do I need a masters degree for this? The conversation didn’t end well, and so I quit, joined a “pre-ipo startup that was going public anyday now” in the Bay Area and stayed in the bay area for the next 6 years, developed me career, and moved back to san diego for personal reasons, at much higher positions than had I stayed…

 

But now, fast forward to 2025….29 years later, I’m starting a new job again.. And what does this new company want me to do? Pull cabls out, run coax cables, setup test equipment, etc….And my reaction this time? “Wait, let me get this straight… You want to pay me almost close what I was making before as a director of engineering … to pull cables, run coax cables, setup test equipment for a test lab you want me to help setup because most of you guys are software only….stuff that a money can do……SIGN ME UP and when do I start….”

Ah yess, the circle of life….As AN would say… “the best jobs are the jobs that pay you a CEO’s worth of pay to do the job of a trash collector…” lol….

[Coronita]

Sorry, it’s been awhile since I checked in here…I feel old… My kid just went off to college out of state.. Now officially and empty nester. It seemed like just yesterday it was 2004, bought my first house in 2004, just starting out and made my first post here, and just sent my daughter to preschool….Time flew by so fast.

I talk with my daughter almost everyday, but I miss her frankly. Almost like a best friend that moved away. It was nice though, she called one day and asked me to her her with her Comp Sci homework, lol. I suggested it would be easier for her to just Chat GPT it, but she insisted I go over her assignment with her, so I’m like sure…

I told her not to study engineering, and to do something more enjoyable in life like art or business or marketing, but I guess I insulted her by saying that because I got an earful about “what, you think I can’t do it because I’m girl, isn’t it?”…. No sweetie, I was trying to save you from a lot of late nights in the computer lab doing homework projects like these while the rest of your friends are probably out partying and getting drunk….

 

 

[Coronita]

Minor correction. I meant Great Recession , not Great Depression.

[Coronita]

Yawn.

I don’t know EconProf… I think just about every person who is an older property owner(s) in CA that didn’t sell or didn’t miss out on the boat aren’t really complaining about how things worked out in CA…..

By far, relative to many of my peers here, I’m as the youngsters call in the “Poors”…. Those that had racked and stacked real estate here in CA and kept them are killing it.

I did ok, but not stellar great, but I really can’t complain, as much as a lot of things piss me off about CA. I never would have imagined that a POS cookie cutter starter home in 92130 that cost me $800k would be appraised for $2.2m today… Nor did I expect the  POS short sales/REO condos in MM that were around $125k-$150k each during the Great Depression would be selling near $450k- $1/2 million today, nor would they be pulling in around $2500-$2900/month each in rental income.

Nor did I expect doing a cash out refinance on some of the properties at 3% for 30 years and leaving that in index funds and even less than stellar stock picks would have worked out as well as it did versus leaving it as dead equity with it doing nothing.

I never thought I would be in a position to be have been financially comfortable to retire early 17 years earlier than most of my peers outside of CA, and be able to send my kid off to college starting this year at the same time.

And there’s a lot of people in CA that did a heck of a lot better too. All those people that racked and stacked sub- $500k properties in places like “lizard-infested” Mira Mesa as BG use to call here, are smiling all the way to the bank these days with the $1.2-4m appraisals coming in…. In Mira Mesa….Admittedly, I sure as hell missed the boat on those.

Which brings me to my next point… My old neighbor, a GM for Motorola once gave me the following advice… the more can keep politics out of daily life decisions, the better off financially one will be…He was so spot on and I’m very thankful for his wise advice. God forbid if I listened to a lot of the CA doomsayers and sold my properties years ago, how disappointed I would have been missing all that gain.

Life is way too short to be bitter and stuck in this constant left versus right versus left slapfest from a bunch of old farts in washington that have their thumbs up their asses. It’s a soap opera for old and ugly people. people figure out how to make money irrespective of which political party is pissing in the winds. And I refuse to acknowledge I’m an old fart….

If moving because you want to be next to your kids is important enough for you, then good for you, it was a good decision for you. It doesn’t matter how much money you might have left on the table, because you can’t put a price on everything, and when you get old, there are a lot more things that are way more important than just simple black and white money. Never thought I would say that, but seen enough people dropping like flies recently in my age group all over the country, I’m like holy shit, many people didn’t even get to enjoy most of their life they worked to build before they croaked…. you know, as much as I wanted to have my own tech company, it ain’t gonna happen and now it’s not at the top priority of my list. But even then,  as much as I find some of the things in CA annoying, I’m thankful that CA enabled me to have a way better life than I expected and can’t really complain.

And it’s so playtime…I aint going to be a grumpy old fart going to Bingo Night at the senior center wearing Depends with a soar back and with my AARP card in hand without a fight.

As some of the youngsters would say… YOLO !

 

[Coronita]

He’s still around.

A lot of us are old now, so we’re a bit slower these days.

We need to put on our bifocals, get out our walking canes, and it takes a lot longer to put on our adult diapers and dentures. So give us a break 🙂

I just turned a horseshit 50 recently, and receiving my AARP membership kit was doubly horseshit. And holy shit, my kid is a college now. Feels like yesterday we were just in the middle of the Great Recession, and talking about starting to put money into a 529k account for a 9 month old.

It’s all downhill from here, I tell you.

[Coronita]

It’s a great car (the one above is not his, but same color)…. This is where I use the expression of GenZ…

YOLO….

[Coronita]

Bump… I’ll throw this out there Scardey and Evolsd2….

I know of a someone who is selling his 720s. If you’re interested, send me a PM. It’s red, I think it’s called “Volcano Red”….

Looks something like this.

 

[Coronita]

*Just like real estate. I would keep the car, and just buy another car. never sell. keep the 68 camaro/. I regret my parents selling their original cars, I regret giving my 87 integra in high school to my cousin.

*Test drive all of what you listed and figure out what you want instead of asking internet armchair quarterbacks. Then come back and tell us what you ended up buying.

*Consider doing maintenance yourself, that gives you more options.

Of the cars you listed above, from the perspective of maintenance….

*C6 should be fairly reliable, easy to find parts, easy to service, and plenty of support groups. And fully built ones are very interesting weapons

*430i G22 with a B48 engine should be fairly reliable, since it’s the same motor used in the Supra that Toyota vetted along with the B58. And the 8 speed ZF transmission is pretty solid and used for a long time now.Maintenance costs after 4 years, look into what is considered “normal maintenance items”.

BMW’s tend to have annoying seals that leak starting around 50kmiles+, some claim these are normal service items. They aren’t that difficult to replace yourself, but they are pretty pricey to get others to replace.

*981 fairly reliable. Mid-engines by nature are just a little more difficult to service. You can still DIY it but you’ll need to get floor ramps or quickjacks.

* f-type 3.0: also one of the few jaguar products supposedly fairly reliable.
Double check though availability of parts. Jags belong to Tata motors, so they might not part share as well as other euro cars.

 

Availability of parts becomes a bigger issue post-covid. I have a Brit car, and while normal maintenance parts share a lot with recent  BMW M-series cars, a lot of things beyond basic maintenance comes from a limited number of UK distributors- which means there could be a parts availability issue down the road. Same could be said for Fiat/Alfa products. I do almost all maintenance myself these days, in order to guarantee the workmanship (or at least know where corners are cut)…Sometimes, especially when it comes to some BMWs, there’s nothing wrong with cutting corners- it’s a calculated tradeoff.

[Coronita]

I think that might be a Temecula thing. But one huge advantage of Tesla’s is 360 degree cameras.

I put a front and rear dashcam into all my cars with parking mode. You never know these days.

[Coronita]

I’m waiting to see how solid state batteries work out. In the meantime, I figure get an ICE car that tops out with an 8500 redline while you still can, heh heh.

[Coronita]

Porsche and Mercedes so far have proven they suck at making EVs.

 

Porsche might redeem themselves, depending on how the 2025 Electric Boxster and Caymen launch goes.

https://www.caranddriver.com/porsche/718-ev

But it will probably be a PITA to get with how arrogant Porsche dealers are.

 

The rumored NE Miata might be electric in 2026

[Coronita]

The mercedes EQS and Porsche Taycan, some say, have been electical gremlin nightmares. I can see that. You take a German car company, that is already known for producing ICE cars with electrical gremlins…produce a product that uses even more computers and electronics. What could possibly go wrong….

 

One of the reasons why I skipped the hybrid Artura, besides it’s price.

[Coronita]

The preowned EV market actually looks pretty pathetic.

 

Check out 4 year old Porsche Taycan’s. The depreciation is around 50% in 4 years.

https://jalopnik.com/porsche-taycan-turbos-have-lost-up-to-100-000-value-in-1851281337

https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-2020-Porsche-Taycan-c29774

 

The Mercedes EQS has seen similar depreciation…in one year….

https://www.motor1.com/news/714685/mercedes-benz-eqs-loses-nearly-half-value/

It’s like buying a paperweight!

 

[Coronita]

Scardey, I might be selling one of my 2 miatas to make room. Both are manual and supercharged though. 😂

I finally caved and bought a car with a dual clutch automatic.

 

Porsches post COVID are way overrated. 911s are good cars but not so much that Porsche should be able to pick and choose who to sell to similar to what Ferrari does. And the dealers are arrogant as fuck these days. I jumped the shark and ditched Porsche and got something else.

 

 

[Coronita]

Decent time to buy a sports/exotic car too (minus porsche)…

I’m on my 7th car. Running out of places to park, lol.

It’s great. I can almost make it to 2 months without going to the gas station…

But when I do, it’s like making a mortgage payment…

[Author]

Posts