# BMW Board of Drivers



## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

I just got an e-mail to take a BMW survey. They asked how many cylinders our X3 had, and what types of cars (gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, electric) we considered when we bought the X3 and what types we would consider to replace the X3.

But, there was no room for comments. If there was, I would have told them that we never considered BMW hybrids because they don't have spare tires.

We've been invited to several BMW events where we drive the competition (M-B, Porsche (sedans), Jag's, Audi's, and Lexi. That was fun, but they never followed up to ask us what we thought (good or bad) about the competition.

I grabbed one of the BMW NA Bubba's and dragged him over to a previous generation M-B E Class. I opened the trunk, pulled up the carpet, and showed Bubba the M-B's spare tire. I then dragged him over to my F10, and showed him the aftermarket spare hogging up my trunk. He said "Yeah, but how often to you have a flat tire?" I told him my next new car will have a spare tire stored under the trunk or cargo area floor. To their credit, BMW is adding spare tires as options on most of their platforms when they get replaced.


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## Doug Huffman (Apr 25, 2015)

Boards, committees, commissions exist solely to diffuse responsibility for unpopular decisions. Mob rule is the failure of leadership.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

Doug Huffman said:


> Boards, committees, commissions exist solely to diffuse responsibility for unpopular decisions. Mob rule is the failure of leadership.


Boy, that's the truth. I'm not a "joiner." I hate being in clubs. But, I'm on our HOA BoD, but only for two reasons:

The most evil psycho' on the BoD said that if I was on the BoD she wouldn't be. She made the mistake of saying that in front of everybody at the annual homeowners' meeting, so they voted for me.

The governing documents need revision, in part due to changes in the Floriduh statutes governing HOA's. There was a committee formed in 2017 to rewrite the documents. The new rules were full of craziness. I made a list of the top seven crazy provisions, and went door-to-door warning homeowners of what was in there. There was a record turn-out at the annual meeting, and a lot of people were carrying torches and pitchforks.

There was a second attempt to rewrite the documents... by committee. I was on that committee, but not put in charge because I'm a trouble maker. By the time the committee chair, the BoD, and the HOA's scheister lawyer got their hacks in, the second attempt was also a failure.

I volunteered to rewrite the documents, but only by myself and it gets done when it gets done, no deadlines. The idiots on the BoD want to get involved. But, when they push the issue, I tell them if there's a committee I'm done and I'm deleting all that I've done and they can start from scratch. Then, they STFU and leave me alone.


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## namelessman (Dec 23, 2004)

Doug Huffman said:


> Boards, committees, commissions exist solely to diffuse responsibility for unpopular decisions. Mob rule is the failure of leadership.


Another perspective is that, success of leadership without mob rule is usually associated with dictatorship, so both are red pills.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

Here's the seven crazy things a committee of five and a BoD of seven, plus the scheister came up with in 2018:

1. Homeowners will no longer be allowed to place yard waste on the street for the city to pick up. (Homeowners can: put yard waste in the household trash can a little bit at a time, buy a pick-up truck and haul it to the county landfill 15 miles away themselves, hire a landscaping service, or move to another neighborhood.)

2. Homeowners must maintain trees and bushes at approximately their original height.

3. No golf carts can be parked in the driveways, not even for one minute. In Floridu a "golf cart" only legally a golf cart if it has racks for holing bags of golf clubs. Everything else is a low-speed-vehicle (LSV).

4. Candidates for the BoD must be nominated by the Nominating Committee, and the members of the Nominating Committee are selected by the HOA president. (So, the president effectively selects who can run for the BoD.)

5. The BoD can hold the annual homeowners' meeting anywhere "within or without the state of Floriduh." (That means anywhere in the universe: Hawaii, China, Bolivia, the North Pole, Alabama, Mars, you name it.)

6. BoD members shall be reimbursed for expenses incurred while perforing their duties. (That includes traveling to Hawaii, China, Bolivia, the North Pole, Alabama, Mars, you name it, for the annual homeowners'' meeting.)

7. Reduces the minimum quorum for a homeowners' meeting from 51% to 25%. That means that if the thugs get proxies from 12.51% of the homeowners' they can vote to do whatever they want. The thug who I ran off the BoD befriends all the senile old people in the 'hood and typically has 15 proxies. There are roughly 160 houses in the 'hood. So, her and six others could show up in Hawaii, China, Bolivia or whereever, and do whatever they want.


That was the third attempt of the BoD to ban homeowners from putting their yard waste out on the street for the city to pick up. The first attempt was a referendum at the annual homeowners' meeting. It lost 50 to 2.

The second attempt was to redefine an existing rule saying homeowners must remove "clippings" from the sidewalks, driveways, and street. For 25 years, that meant that you must sweep up or blow off grass clippings after cutting your grass. After they tried to change the meaning of that rule, I trimmed my ten palm trees to within a frond of their life. It took me two ****ing days. Every time a BoD member drove by, I'd wave, point to my pile of fronds, and then grab my... well... uhhh.. package. I told the HOA president to go buy a tie, because if he fines me we're going to court. He took down the notice on the BoD bulletin board by the mailboxes.


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## quackbury (Dec 17, 2005)

No wonder you spend so much time here. You've alienated everyone within a 10 mile radius of Bubbaville. (Are you sure it's the *******, mullet-sporting tourists who're vandalizing your sh*t?)

Inquiring minds want to know: How are you going to work spreadsheets into those new HOA bylaws?


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## namelessman (Dec 23, 2004)

Autoputzer said:


> Boy, that's the truth. I'm not a "joiner." I hate being in clubs. But, I'm on our HOA BoD, but only for two reasons:


It sounds like a benevolent dictator, like yourself, is needed at your HOA BoD.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

quackbury said:


> No wonder you spend so much time here. You've alienated everyone within a 10 mile radius of Bubbaville. (Are you sure it's the *******, mullet-sporting tourists who're vandalizing your sh*t?)
> 
> Inquiring minds want to know: How are you going to work spreadsheets into those new HOA bylaws?


I always drive my 2007 Cobalt to BoD and HOA annual homeowners' meetings, never one of the BMW's.. I also check under all four tires before I leave from the meetings.

No Excel in the spreadsheets in the governing documents. But, I'm putting diagrams in there, made with Visio.

A friend of mine is the Viceroy of Visio. He's a retired USAF officer, up in his 70's, works out of his $1M house at $40/hour making drawings for a defense contractor. One of his projects was the Super High Impact Tail Recorder. Every good DoD project has a good acronym.

I once wrote a paper that proposed a new mine countermeasures system, the Mine Extermination & Obliteration Weapon.... MEOW.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

namelessman said:


> It sounds like a benevolent dictator, like yourself, is needed at your HOA BoD.


They wanted me to be the president. But, I told them I'll get the documents straight, and that's it.

The BoD meetings are much more tolerable with Zoom.


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## Doug Huffman (Apr 25, 2015)

I was HOA Pres for some years prior to H. Hugo and through H. Hugo 'recovery.'. I ordered the pool and pool house demolished. Two times housewives took it upon themselves to clean the pool as they would clean a bathtub, drain the pool below the bathtub ring and scrub at their leisure. Both times the pool floated on the water table and the second time the damage was too extensive. As the appearance of the neighborhood degraded, so did the residents.

At 0200 one morning I was awakened by big engines at high idle in my culdesac and flashing red lights. On investigating I met my friend Police Chief Roddy Perry that told me, and showed me that an illicit chemist***8217;s house had been discovered just out of sight of my front door, obscured by another building. He admonished me for not being a good nosey neighbor. I rectified that. The homeowner went away shortly, a local RN, but the cooker could afford expensive lawyers and was still there when I left.

The cooker took to frightening the local ladies. I took to openly carrying my gun and having the dummy Black&White parked in front of my house.

I moved away to a truly gated community, Seabrook Island, while we closed my then GF***8217;s businesses on Kiawah Island, then shortly to a gated and walled and guarded Dockside Condominiums in DOWNtown Charleston, on the wrong side of Boundary Street, and just a few hundred yards from ***8220;Mother Emmanuel AME Church***8221; scene of the Dillan Roof shooting.


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## Doug Huffman (Apr 25, 2015)

Zoom is not recognized by my state***8217;s Sunshine / Open Meetings law, and I pray abusers are prosecuted with great prejudice.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

With Zoom, there are two access codes, one for viewing and one for viewer and participating. The viewing code goes up on the bulletin board by the mailboxes. The notice says that if a homeowner wants to speak at the BoD meeting, they will receive a different code by e-mail right before the meeting. That keeps hackers from getting into our meetings.. naked.

Tele-meetings for HOA's were made legal by the update in the Floriduh HOA statutes. There's also a provision that required meetings can be postponed during times of emergency.

As with NAVSEA, all the problems are caused by: bullies, stupid people, and weak people. With HOA's, you can also throw in senility. Old people have a lot of time on their hands and volunteer for HOA's. The weak people are so scared of the bullies that they turn against anybody who stands up to the bullies. "Please don't make him/her mad." "If you didn't make him/her mad, he/she would leave us alone." I love tangling with bullies.

Because of a crazy, bully BoD member, I carried a concealed firearm when cutting the grass and I never walked in the neighborhood. He eventually got kicked off the BoD, but then his friends and those who were scared of him came after me. 

There was a committee member who suffers from dementia. When she has a "spell," she really goes off the handle. When I was going door-to-door with my list of seven crazy things in the proposed new rules, she tracked me down, jumped out of her F250, leaving it in the middle of the street running, and confronted me. "If you have something to say about me, say it to my face!"

The homeowner I was talking to in his driveway said "He wasn't talking about you."

"Oh... o.k." 

Before I finished handing out my lists to homeowners, I went home and got a small pistol and my Chevy Cobalt.

We had a tenant in one of the rental houses who was a meth'head and tried cooking his own. Luckily, it was in the backyard, and the fire was quickly extinguished by the fire department.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

The Navy has something called the AN/SSQ-62 Directional Command Active Sonobuoy System (DICASS). A friend of mine works on something that interfaces with DICASS. There was a program review conference where the DICASS guy presented before my friend did. My friend started off his presentation by saying "Boy, I'm glad the "dye-cass" guy went before me. I've been pronouncing that acronym differently."


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## namelessman (Dec 23, 2004)

Autoputzer said:


> We had a tenant in one of the rental houses who was a meth'head and tried cooking his own. Luckily, it was in the backyard, and the fire was quickly extinguished by the fire department.


Co-workers with rentals have crazy stories to tell too, there is no free lunch.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

namelessman said:


> Co-workers with rentals have crazy stories to tell too, there is no free lunch.


It's all in how you pick your property and your tenants. I had two friends in Virginia with rental property. One always had trouble. One never did.

My grandparents accumulated their wealth in rental houses. They lived in their first house, paid it off, bought a second and rented out the first. They ended up with three rentals. They never had a problem

My friend with no problems in Virginia had good houses, at a good price, and had rules:

1. College grad's.
2. Married couples.
3. No self-employed.
4. Perfect credit.

I don't have the temperament to be a landlord. It's best if my work and other enterprises are done in a room by myself and a computer. If I have to work with others, I need to be in charge of them.


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## motordavid (Sep 29, 2004)

Autoputzer,
V Good thread on BMW 'surveys' & FL HOAs...I was on our HOA for 7 long years, (part time rez at our SW EscapeWinterHouse), and I vowed to myself, "Never again."

Recording Secretary for 3 and Prez & Recording Sec for 4 years. FL Chapter 720 rules make the published Minutes a task in legal writing...I did learn a lot from our HOA's Mgmt Co hired gun lawyer/HOA maven.

By the bye, your front lawn looks not as green as it should be, and your sidewalk needs power washing. :tsk::rofl:
GL, mD


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## SalesGeek (Oct 13, 2017)

*Thanks!*

Thank y'all for reminding me why I'll never live in another place with an HOA again.

Only lived in one and fortunately the group was small. We could have the entire HOA in our condo's living room.

The only problem we had was that the guy in charge of our outdoor maintenance was actively involved in the KKK. But aside from that he was a genius with hedge trimmer so we just put up with the extracurricular stuff.


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## WRinehart (Aug 12, 2015)

*Truly Entertaining!*

This is one of the most entertaining threads I have read on this forum! Thank you all for some giggles and smiles during this otherwise dismal pandemic period.


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## Arctic Jon (Oct 16, 2016)

Our HOA here in New Mexico sent me a letter a few days ago saying I had a broken chair on the property and I had 14 days to remediate it. Well...my wife put out a lawn chair back on our 2.73 acre parcel and the wind blew it over. She likes to sit out there and watch the sky, birds, and rabbits. So it***8217;s not just Florida. But I***8217;m kind of ok with this. We lived in Alaska for 24 years where there were few rules. Someone could buy an acre or two across the road from you and dig a gravel pit with no repercussions. They could park 25 dead cars there and there was no enforcement. Dang guys there***8217;s got to be a balance somewhere.


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## Autoputzer (Mar 16, 2014)

motordavid said:


> Autoputzer,
> V Good thread on BMW 'surveys' & FL HOAs...I was on our HOA for 7 long years, (part time rez at our SW EscapeWinterHouse), and I vowed to myself, "Never again."
> 
> Recording Secretary for 3 and Prez & Recording Sec for 4 years. FL Chapter 720 rules make the published Minutes a task in legal writing...I did learn a lot from our HOA's Mgmt Co hired gun lawyer/HOA maven.
> ...


It was winter time. I'm no NW Florida and it gets cold here in the winter. Everybody's grass here is brown then.

The crazy rules included that you had to power wash the sidewalks and driveways twice a year. If that was passed, I would have done it on December 30th and then again on December 31st. &#8230; I'm legal! Actually, the big problem is iron deposits from shallow wells.


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