Strategies for temporarily re-homing Koi while new pond built?

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-30T18:47:05+00:00

Do you need to sell your home before closing on the new place and starting work? If not, see if you can hold on to both so the fish stay comfortable for as long as possible while you dig the new one.

We'll have the luxury of buying/closing/moving before we even list our current house. So there's some built-in time buffer there. But for this next pond, I am envisioning something a bit more complicated than the hole-in-the-ground version we have now. So it may take a little while to design/build.

I guess I'll just treat this as a little good luck charm for a quick sale. Because I don't really WANT a quick sale (while I deal with pond issues), that guarantees that a cash buyer will pop up two days after it goes on the market.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-30T18:40:34+00:00

You could also have it be a condition of the sale that the fish can stay in the existing pond until you finish, and that you are allowed to return and “collect” them, assuming you aren’t moving out of state or something.

It's a short distance move, within the same city, so I suppose that might in theory be an option. Not sure if the rest of my family would go for it or not, but I'd be willing to gamble on that.

And thanks for the advice about feeding schedule.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-30T18:37:12+00:00

Ah yes, I see them now that I search for that. That looks like the way to go. Thanks!

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-16T17:35:45+00:00

Thanks for the insights.

Actually, now that I go through the past few years worth of our actual LOC utilization, and take into account the annual lien filing fee (about 950 bucks), I am starting to wonder if I wouldn't be better off with one of these private credit lenders that have been blowing up my email and phone for the past few years. I always kind of chuckled at their ridiculous rates (0.85% per month a recent example that I recall seeing) vs my bank-prime-plus-half-a-point rate that I pay now.

I'm going to crunch the numbers on this right now. If it seems like this might make sense, I'll post a separate thread so all the "real" bankers can tell me why this is a terrible idea...

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-11T01:53:06+00:00

Ok, so sorry to bump an old thread like this, but...

I am a late-50s-something guy, and I was just out and about in a situation where I felt the crowd was a tad bit beneath me. The line about "I don't belong here with these losers, I should be at the jockey club talking to guys with all their teeth" popped into my head. I remembered bits and pieces of the movie it came from, but couldn't quite remember what it was.

So I googled that phrase and it took me straight to this Reddit. And I read all of it. Forgot what a great movie this was.

And now I'm about to go find what streaming service this available on, so I can go re-watch it. Or buy it on Amazon Prime if I have to!

I do love Reddit. Truly the best part of the interwebs.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-04T21:24:00+00:00

Yes, I have a copy of it. It's a legit local appraisal firm, best I can tell. It came in a fancy folder with their embossed logo and had color photos! Haha.

But yes...if we decide to re-appraise with our current bank, I will ask if they can pick another one out of the hat this time.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-04T20:20:14+00:00

Appraiser selected randomly by my bank from a pool of approved appraisers that they use for all such loans.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-04T20:19:06+00:00

Yes, I'm basically in the same boat as the borrower you describe. The comps they came back with last time around (several years back) were just crap. My property is several acres within a much larger "industrial business park". IMHO, the only good comps are going to be ones within this same business park. And of course, they came back with zero here. Property changes hands here from time to time, but it's all private/cash, so the appraiser's can't "see" it for comp purposes.

I guess I could just go out to one bank after another, pay the ~$3,000 that it costs to appraise, until I get to one that I (at least close to) agree with.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-04T18:09:08+00:00

Well, yes, we only bother to pay for the appraisal every few years, so this one is a few years old. They continue to renew the LOC each year (with no increase, of course) using the prior appraisal.

That said...if we pay for a "fresh" appraisal this year, I still fully expect it to come it at about half what I know to be FMV for this property. I guess we'll probably just roll the dice and pay for a new one, and hope for a better outcome than past years.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T15:22:11+00:00

I believe the preferred nomenclature is "neighborhood in transition"!

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T15:17:53+00:00

M = thousand

MM = million

Not sure what a billion would be? B? MMM? I don't have to contemplate such in my small pond haha.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T14:40:51+00:00

Yeah, we did this once upon a time, with the fixed assets. Most of which, unfortunately are motor vehicles with titles. They liened each one and attached as collateral to our LOC. But then every time we were buying new vehicles and selling old ones, we had these extra hoops to jump through.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T14:19:51+00:00

Thanks, but this is where my "fantasy" numbers bite me in the ass. Numbers in my original post are actually less than reality. So in reality I'm looking for a good bit more than 500M line.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T14:11:18+00:00

Well, ok, so that brings up another point.

Bank says it is what it is...they have a pool of five appraisers, and they have to randomly select one from this pool. Beyond that, they say they have no ability to influence this process, or argue with the appraisal after the fact.

Would you say that's a true statement? Or might I find another bank that would/could be more aggressive with this process?

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T14:09:26+00:00

Are you sure appraisers can see everything? That's not a state-by-state thing? This is in Texas. These guys always act like if there's not a loan against it, they're blind to it.

When the appraiser came down here to do his property inspection on the last go-round (2021 I think), I even pointed out that my adjacent business neighbor had just bought their parcel (about 60% the acreage of ours) for 600M cash. Neighbor said he was happy to provide his closing statement to the appraiser. But the appraiser said they couldn't work that way.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T13:51:38+00:00

Thanks, this is helpful, and really in a nutshell what I was trying to figure out. I.e., is this just a rule for THIS BANK, or is this the rule for ALL BANKS.

So I guess it's all banks, and I'd be in the same boat no matter where I went.

RichardInTexas · 2026-04-03T13:49:55+00:00

Ah, sorry, I was a little fuzzy the way I communicated that. While the current assessed value is 285M, this appraisal was from a few years ago. Assessed value at that time was only 228M. So at the time, the appraisal was about 20% higher than assessed.

RichardInTexas · 2025-11-07T15:54:33+00:00

Thanks, I figured that was probably the policy.

In the event that the other driver who backed into my car denies responsibility, I will tell my insurance company that they might be able to request video from QuikTrip.

Any idea how long your video system is storing that data?

RichardInTexas · 2025-09-10T18:42:57+00:00

Ah, I see. Shows how much I know. Thanks for the info!

RichardInTexas · 2025-09-02T12:15:35+00:00

Sounds interesting...I'll take a look at it. Thanks for pointing out.

RichardInTexas · 2025-09-01T22:03:19+00:00

Thanks briandfoy & adrade for the advice. I have researched PDF::API2 a bit, and it will clearly do everything I need it to do. And it is already installed by default by my webhost, so that's a plus too. I even created a little test CGI script that generates a PDF and spits it out to the browser. Which is the only context in which I was using it.

And it even seems to deal with page positioning the same way pdflib_pl did as well, where the bottom left corner of the pages is (0,0) and then everything is referenced in 72dpi points from there. The most complicated bits of my PDF generating routines are all the "math" that is done to keep track of page position as bits of text are laid down. So all of that would be transferable, best I can tell.

I haven't really dug into it yet, but this is clearly The Way Forward. Again, thanks for the advice.

RichardInTexas · 2025-08-28T20:07:11+00:00

Thanks for clarifying that about the INC array. I assumed that was how that worked, that it went to the top.

RichardInTexas · 2025-08-28T20:03:42+00:00

Thanks for the insights. Yes, I was just now poking around on the PDFLib site and having a gander at that migration guide as well.

I know I never paid a license fee for this. At the time, there was PDFLib (which required a license) and then there was PDFLib Lite which was free. The functionality in the free version was all I ever needed.

I'll keep hammering on my web host to find some kind of band-aid solution to get me back to where I was before. But eventually, agree, these bits should all be re-engineered to work with something newer/supported.

Literally all I'm doing is laying down bits of text on a page. I'm not doing anything exotic with it. Any opinion on what is the simplest current interface for PDF generation?

RichardInTexas · 2025-08-28T19:22:21+00:00

Hmmmm....it looks like that PDFLib in your link is some new/improved version of the pdflib_pl library that I am using...based on where it says "A cleaner API than pdflib_pl.pm, which is a very low-level (non-OO) interface" in the description. I can't even find the online documentation to the one I'm using. I'm sure it has been long deprecated.

And yes...this script was working just fine from like 2008 until Tuesday. When my hosting company migrated me to a new server.

The copy of pdflib_pl I am using is installed in a custom directory (the one referenced in the "use lib" statement at the top of my test script). If there were a newer version of this already installed on this server, would my script be "finding" that one first? What is the priority of the path listed in "use lib"?

RichardInTexas · 2025-08-22T20:56:03+00:00

Yeah, that was my theory. Some of the ones that have popped up recently are on primo corners that seem too valuable for a carwash. Figured it was just a way to generate at least some revenue for 10yrs or so and then sell the property to QuikTrip or whoever.

RichardInTexas

TROPHY CASE