The Sound Guy

The losers in this deal are the taxpayers. It's all a revenue shift. Instead of the yearly tax going to the county you live in, where the funds which are mixed with the property tax and used to run the county, they will now go to the state up front. The county will be at the mercy of the our state legislators of whether any of that money comes back to us, or goes somewhere else where they can buy lots of votes with it. Meanwhile, your county will have to reduce services or up the property tax mil rate to make up for the lost income. Meaning instead of paying car tax, we now add t

But, but, but... Jerry PROMISED they wouldn't!! In writing!! You mean I shouldn't trust a politician? Yea, one of the many painful lessons in small county politics I've learned since moving here. Count your blessings... our value jumped 13%. If you are not moving, what the county values it at is worthless except to decide how much they are going to plow your wallet for taxes. Shoot, even if you *are* moving the county value is worthless, ask my Parents in law who are trying to sell a 1/2 acre lot 2 BR 1 1/2 bath house in Austell and got no takers at $55K no matter what the coun

Yea, they sold us on having fully manned stations so our guys (and gals?) wouldn't be driving up to a fire by themselves and have to sit and wait until the rest could get there. Then stole the money in the regular budget for his cronies in the other departments. Bunch of Crooks. Of course, since my assessment has gone up 13% this year, if that is common in the county they will be getting a pretty good increase anyway even without a mil increase.

Holy Carp!! Just got mine, a $30,000+ increase in value, almost 13%! And that after being flat last year. Glad to see our county officials think the housing market has recovered so well!! They pull this on everyone and they won't need a mil rate increase....

I have to wonder if there is a direct correlation between the "easy" student loan money being available and the skyrocketing prices to go to college. When I started school in 1980, it was less than $600 a year for Fall, winter and Spring Quarters for KSU. My son now is paying nearly $5000 a year + the outrageous prices for the books. My kids are paying up to $600 each a semester for their books! That is a 10x increase in only 30 years. Let's see, has minimum wage (what a lot of part time students are going to make) jumped 10x in 30 years? Hmmm... $3.10 an hour to 7.25 an hou

Yea, and the big tax (18 mils?) is the school tax and I think that's everywhere since the cities don't run their own schools.

Low of 52 degrees in the morning.. Dang, there goes swimming in the pool for a week, it already dropped from 82 degrees to 76 this afternoon.

Our mortgage is around 5.50%, didn't figure it would be worthwhile to refinance, but according to the AJC here: AJC Link 30 year rates are down to 3.75% and 15 year rates down to 2.97%! Dang, my first mortgage in 1985 the interest was %14.75 and I was glad to get a rate that low!! Never dreamed I'd see rates this low again. I'm looking at cutting over $150 a month off my payment and a year off the mortgage! I did look at HARP (Home Affordable Refinance Program), if you are current with the payment, but underwater, it may be able to help:

Sticks or not, the class size keeps growing, they had over 300 graduate this year and I think I heard somewhere around 500 planned in the Freshman class next year. I suspect that North and East will get redistricted soon to move some of the students to East. Another note on the land itself, while the land was cheap, there was a reason, as I recall just grading it somewhat flat and all the required retaining walls was really, really expensive.

Locally at the Wild Birds Unlimited at Seven Hills. They carry two (or more) of the Basin type feeders (large and small) and the other type also. I forgot to mention that the basin type are really nice in that every other fill up or so, you can just put the pieces in the dishwasher and get them really clean before refilling. I will say that it's pretty silly that they put four feeder stations on the one feeder. The picture on the box must be photoshopped because we've never had more than one at a time on the feeder, the first one there runs the others off!! It's hours of entertain

The county uncovered the signs last week increasing the speed limit from 35 MPH to 45 MPH. Of course, even at 45 MPH that hasn't stopped people from tailgating me down the road. I guess this just means that those who do 70 MPH down the road can now do 80 MPH with no more legal liability... Also makes it even more dangerous for those of us using the road when you are in the way of those who think that the double yellow lines mean "Do not pass unless you are really, really, really in a Hurry!". I was passed the other day in front of Senator's Ridge. Just glad I don't live on one of

I remember being told that where the road ends to turn into the school complex is supposed to be extended one day, but I don't know if it ties into another road or is just an entrance to another PRD.

We've been using this type for two years now and love them. Sometimes they will land on the support bar and feed, others they just hover. Only problem we've had is that we hang it on our feeder stand and sometimes it gets pretty messy from the birds landing on the steel "limb" that we hang it from to wait for space at the other feeders. Very easy to clean and quite popular. The built in ant moat works well. SG

I really don't have a problem with that, except I will note that for some people who's value has not dropped 30% or more, it *will* be a tax increase vs values at the peak as well as a rate increase. <Rant> It's especially irritating since if that @#$%^&^%^@# Jerry done as he promised and hadn't robbed the original county fire budget for his cronies in the other departments when the fire tax passed(then bragged about not raising taxes that year.. #@##@@!!!) we'd now have a fully *manned* department (instead of only two-three guys per station) that would be saving us even mo

It might work, the only problem is that the signal strength from an Antenna may be much less than the cable and if you have a lot of splitters (outlets) in the house, you might have problems with the TVs getting enough signal or a bigger antenna might be needed. All TVs would need to digital or have a digital converter box. Another possible issue could be the splitters are only good at Cable TV freq instead of over the air freq, but it's not that likely. I have a homemade antenna in the attic (Dabbs Bridge Rd area) and get a bunch of channels. Channel 11 is the biggest problem as

Ace at Seven Hills has the equipment also. He made a key for our F-150 and since my daughter lost of of the keys to HHR, I guess I'll have to have one of them made too. The Ace process is cloning process, the new key duplicates your existing key code, the car cannot tell the difference between them, which is different than the dealer key, with it you would have to program the car also to accept the new code. My son thought he had lost both keys to his 2007 Chevy, we went to Days Chevy and they were quite reasonable to look up the codes in the master database and cut a new key.

When Gasoline goes up 25% in six months, I imagine other spending drops like a rock as more and more of the income goes in the tank. Duh. I wonder how much tax money was spent coming to that conclusion? "Figures can lie, and Liars can figure" I wouldn't trust any numbers coming out of our government right now. Too much political pressure to make them say what one or the other party wants.

I remember growing up the kids up the street having massive BB gun battles. Only rule was everyone had to wear a motorcycle helmet with facemask. No, I never participated, I didn't have a helmet.

My DD, the youngest, graduates from NPHS next month. With Honors!! We have big party planned. Gonna be fun!

If you still have a landline, try holding the two phone wires in each hand while standing barefoot on a concrete floor and then have someone call the house.... Not as bad as the electric fence, but it *will* wake you up...

I guess this is the way they make too expensive for the poor to get an Government ID to validate fighting the voter ID law. I can't figure out how this got thru without a fuss being raised.

Dunno about Comcast internet, I only have cable, but it seems that Comcast is great until you have something go wrong with the service, then you can't get *anyone* out to the house to look at it. They did the digital conversion last month and we lost all our broadcast channels. We called three times complaining with promises "we'll have someone out there tomorrow!" and no one showed. After a week of no TV, I finally had to get someone else to climb the pole and take the old analog filters from 2004 off that were blocking the signals. Got a card today from them telling me I hadn't

That's actually about right for Extreme, 3.0 mbs max down and 0.382 max up. If your lines will handle it, the 6.0 service is only a few bucks more a month. North Paulding area, ATT 6.00 service: (max 6.00 mbs down / .512 up ) ATT Speedcheck site: http://www.att.com/speedtest/ 5.63 mbs down / 0.40 mbs up Speakeasy site: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ 5.60 mbs down / 0.41 mbs up So we are running OK. However, we are only 1/2 mile from the Dabbs Bridge DSLAM, so our DSL link is really strong. Last time I had service out, their test showed that link as running

Interesting. After calling Comcast about 5 or 6 times, we STILL don't have any of our digital broadcast channels two weeks after the conversion and have not actually seen a tech at the house after being promised someone on each of the calls. We get channels 21-27 fine on their mini-box and Our LCD TV gets 2.1,2.2 and 5.1 (which were the only ones received before the conversion) but since those come in fine, that is telling me something is blocking the others. My wife is about to freak completely out on their butt. I guess I'm climbing the freaking pole tomorrow myself and takin

We live at Dabbs Bridge and 61, we'll have to check it out. Thanks!