Brew

Wilmington is a great area and worth driving into for a meal/beer/day trip/whatever. We’ve been looking pretty hard at heading that direction for another beach house as we’re not really feeling buying again in FL right now. Oldest is also looking at Wake/UNC, so it would make sense to do something that direction if she ends up in NC.

As someone that has spent most of my life in a small/moderate size City of 60k-100k, it has its positives and you learn to work around the negatives. Traffic/food/lack of waiting anywhere/etc are all positives to a smaller town than the big cities. I know the owners/servers at every place we eat which is much better than having a never ending selection of places to choose from that I probably don’t want anyways. Healthcare is an easy deal as long as you are near a larger City when a significant issue comes up. The cultural aspects of larger cities are a drive away or a flight away if you want something different. I don’t know anything about NM, but some of the things being sold as negatives might not be so negative when you actually get there.

Most of the national shows have very little call in content at this point. I’m not that interested in music, it’s all just noise. I like sports so I listen to people talk about sports or I listen to whatever game is on if there is one. At least I did until the firings this week, because no one on ESPN is talking about sports any more. The shows today were absolutely fucking terrible. They really had to dig deep to find the people to fill the weekend spots. As far as Sirius, worth it for me. I can listen to pretty much any game on and flip between multiples. Football season when we’re on long runs back and forth to the beach, I can rotate between any game and just about any team broadcast depending on which side I want to listen to.

Definitely improved their content this week post layoffs, today when I’ve been in the car for three different shows I’ve heard two long conversations on an ESPN flag football league draft and now Eurovision. That is much better content than NBA for sure.

It feels almost like a crapshoot at this point. Our oldest is in the college application process now and it doesn’t make much sense how it plays out at a lot of these schools. She’s definitely not going legacy admit, because the college I graduated from went under in the economic crash of the late 2000’s. One thing I don’t get is the current need for kids to apply to double digit colleges. It has to throw the admissions process off when only 10-20% of accepted kids actually enroll at a lot of the colleges she is looking at. I applied to one, got in, and went. She’s looking at applying to 10+ at the recommendation of the college advisor we pay (don’t even get me started on that one) with most being state schools with ultra low out of state acceptance or high end privates with low acceptance. Then she talks to other kids with 35 ACT’s that got rejected from places like UGA, UNC, UVA, etc and that keeps her in a cycle of “Oh my god, I’m going to have to go to XYZ tier whatever school.” I’m ready for this process to be over. With the youngest, I just hope she goes to college at this point and moves out.

If you’re looking for relatively inexpensive and location, I would probably go with the Hampton/Hyatt/Drury group that is right there. On-site parking, right next to Southern Steak and Oyster / Etch, and 2ish blocks off the lively end of Broadway. You can also stay cheaper up near the capital (Indigo/Courtyard) and eat at Skull’s Rainbow Room / Puckett’s / Jeff Ruby’s (all much better than anything around Broadway other than Southern/Merchants) and have a 4ish block walk down to Broadway.

I’ve had 3 or 4 Undercover Ultra Flex covers and have zero complaints. The mounting hardware doesn’t take up any useable space and it’s easy to use in several different configurations if hauling something.

First race I’ve turned on in a while, much prefer this to just going in a circle.

Sign a contract with Pat McAfee for $17M per, lay off some of the names above that we’re making a quarter or less of that, decisions make no sense. I listen to ESPN radio if I’m in the vehicle most of the time. The constant rotation of shows has gotten to be annoying compared to what it was with the consistent lineup they had for years.

This, we had people flying Delta and American last week through multiple airports coming through Atlanta and Charlotte. Only 1/3 of the group made it to our meetings and most of those also had issues getting back home. They weren’t all airline issues though. I made it to the meetings and got delayed going home because someone got accused of vaping and another passenger was more intoxicated than flight attendants wanted. Delayed an hour leaving and missed connection in Atlanta by 5 minutes because the Delta crew closed the doors early on about 8 of us that were coming from the same flight. I hate airports at this point.

Wear one every day. I’m also an adult and can read the hands on my watch rather than pulling my phone out to check the time.

As a long time Ford guy, their rear air sucks unless it has been updated with the newest model.

He got ripped off and should have looked around more.

Broadway between 1st and 8th and a couple streets out each way. There are plenty of options covering a wide range of prices in that area. That’s as touristy as you are going to get in Nashville.

At some point (in this example with the distances anyways) you just book a car or a different airline. I’m not f-ing around with that much trouble, one way Hertz and I’ll deal with the airlines crap and reimbursement once I’m home. There is a 0.0 chance I’m relying on Delta any longer to get me home in the continental US at that point.

Glad it work out for ya bud. I see 2nd Gen Dodge trucks for sale and people asking $20k+ and it just blows my mind. Like anything, it's worth what someone is going to pay for it and there is an ass for every seat. Going to sit out for a while and see what happens with prices. Don’t have an immediate need right now since I sold all my toys, so I can be patient. I had to pick up pallets of sod last week and missed it for the first time. Took several trips with the Bronco pulling a trailer.

Traded my 9 month old F250 for $10k more than I paid for it earlier this year and could have gotten more if I would have traded it in Nov/Dec. Markets in certain areas are still way out of whack especially on diesels. Looking for an older one now to replace it with and pricing is stupid on them still.

Eggy’s Diner is a block or so East of Wildberry, so it’s right there. There are also a number of grab and go places between Michigan and State right there also.

There is a Wildberry on the north end of Millenium, a Yolk right across the river, Eggy’ as is on the north end, all are good breakfast options.

Everyone can keep telling themselves all of that to make themselves feel better, but there are a laundry of issues that were created after the first round was authorized and through the forgiveness timing. Forgiveness itself was a moving target well into the end of the year as the IRS kept moving the target. We had a number of companies that expected to pay it back with the early guidance that got swept up into forgiveness as guidance changed. Round 1 could have been tied to numbers rather than putting in the economic impact wording. Once you cleared the worst of it, if you had a loss then you keep the funds. If you don’t meet a numeric criteria, then you owed it back. Round 2 should have taken into account other funding mechanisms that people received, specifically in the medical arena or been strictly tied to specified impacted industries. ERTC should never have been opened up to PPP recipients a year after the fact unless they strictly qualified based on revenue reductions. The economic impact bullshit standard that credit companies are qualifying people under are ridiculous. Fraud pails in comparison to the number of companies that qualified under the vague economic impact standards and with the moving guidance on forgiveness even though their profits were running at record levels. Without supply chain issues and employee issues, those record profits would have been higher so we are impacted economically.

I don’t believe that PPP will be looked upon as a success when the history books are written. It combined with ERTC and the other funding mechanisms have been boondoggles of the highest order. Are there businesses that legitimately needed the funds, definitely. They could have been funded with a much more restrictive process than what we got that actually put money where it was needed and where it was proven to be needed.

It’s kind of interesting how they follow each other around with industry investments and how everything ebbs and flows around it. PE investments are on fire right now in the accounting industry. Multiples are through the roof, every PE/family office is chasing an investment and it will be interesting what happens when that valuation bubble pops.

No, we’re seeing a lot of owner’s looking to get out because they are tired and the last three years haven’t been much fun. Employees, interest rates, supply chains, customer demands, etc have all made life more difficult. Flip side is most (outside of our manufacturing clients) are having record years each subsequent year which also has them thinking now is the time to jump. We aren’t dealing with any fire sales but the vast majority of our client base is family owned entities with valuations from the mid seven figures to mid nine figures. I have one manufacturing client that is looking at selling at equipment value but it’s a stupid number that isn’t far off what his best value was on earnings because of the industry he is in. I have others out on the market now that aren’t getting interest even though everything about them says they are good buys with excellent potential. Multiples are down from the high point and money is a little more scarce right now, but the market is still moving.

One of our companies only deals in transaction advisory services. The capital markets have been strange since last August or right around then. Everything has slowed down significantly and things aren’t selling like they were before or for the same multiples. We’re still seeing interest in good companies, but seller expectations are skewed with where multiples were in the low rate / high cash environment. It has picked back up recently, but a lot depends on the numbers and the company type. The other issue is your last paragraph. There are a lot of companies kicking the tires on selling because they are done with the current operating environment and buyers know that so they are focusing on the cram of the crop.

Article on SI basically says the same thing. PGA Tour and it’s play style survives, LIV disappears, LIV golfers pay substantial fines to PGA to be allowed back which evens some things up, and it is a win for everyone except that pesky little issue of Saudi ownership that they hope gets glossed over sooner rather than later.