March 25, 2001

           Making good headway on the business section of the Act. Always separate the accounting mechanics of the act from the wording. The act avoids stating formulas which have clear cut values. “The length of the hypotenuese”. The exam in is 14 weeks and the outcome not all that clear.

           And here is a picture of the world cyclones from 1985 – 2005, added in 2016. But still neat.

           [Author’s note 2016-03-25: this post makes no sense without the background. In 2001, I was studying to get my management accounting degree, and one of the requirements was to study the tax law of a foreign country. So I made the mistake of choosing Canada, making that course the ONLY one in my entire life I failed twice. I’d study my ass off, but when the exam arrived, it was like I had been taking the wrong course. I did not even understand the questions.

           Now before my critics jump in, I can only say that if the Tax Act had merely been complicated, like celestial navigation, or merely convoluted, I would easily have aced any exam. But don’t judge until you try to study the thing yourself. Every provision is worded two or three different ways and unless you develop that definitive Canadian attitude that your neighbor’s motives are always the most evil possible, there is no making sense of that rule book.

           It is intentionally ambiguously worded so that anyone who is “interpreting” the law has a real advantage over someone who is merely complying with it. One section refers to tax-free items, the next section states everything is taxable, but those items are taxed at a “zero rate”. For now. I could get 100% on a test that asked about each law, but you have to have a particular mindset I do not possess (and hopefully never will) to figure out which law applies to your neighbor. This “neighbor” thing is very big in Canadian tax law. It is also very circular law, a business clause might be dependent on some completely exterior condition, like where you live and who you are related to, "notwithstanding".

           The quotation of Pythagorus should also be clarified. What I was doing was making fun of how the Canadian law complicates everything. Pythagorus’ Law is a² + b² = c². But the convoluted text version goes, “The length of the hypotenuese is equal to the root of the sums of the squares of the sums of the adjacent sides”. Ah, now you are getting some idea of what I was up against.]

           [Author’s note 2017: um, there is another aspect to Pythagorus' Law that too many experts fail to point out. The Law applies ONLY to whole units of measure. Thus, a 3-4-5 or a 6-8-10 is a Pythgorean triangle, but not a 1-1-√2.]

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March 18, 2001

           Quiet day, study, read, hot chocolate. I know more about Greek Cypriot politics than anyone here. Ha! Don’t dare ask me about tank production in 1944, Allied or Axis, or any details concerning marsupials.
           Including the quoll.

           [Author’s note 2016-03-10: this is a quoll.]

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March 17, 2001

           Study, then off to the Dade County Youth Fair with JZ. He’s like a kid. A kid who’s flunked out of med school in Puerto Rico, Miami, Philadelphia, and two other states.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-17: don’t worry about secrets, JZ really did have a fling at medical school and openly tells anybody who’ll listen. So now that is a tale from the trailer court. In any case, the volume of material in this blog makes absolute confidence unobtainable.
           Here is a photo of the Fair. A lot of JZ’s nieces and nephews have exhibits entered. It’s worth it to see the student projects. They are on a scale I could not have imagined at the same age. The animal exhibits are worth a stroll, especially once you figure out the “scientific” food they say you have to buy by the slice to feed the critters is nothing more than raw carrot.]

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March 16, 2001

           A nothing payday. OT-2 (one of the sites) got shut down by the fire marshal. No water in the sprinkler system. They’ve also put a gate across the cabanas, so no more lunch on the beach.

           Miami is so much closer to the water than the west coast. (Probably because it is built a foot or so above sea level on a sand bar?)

           [Author’s note 2016-02-16: This was the fancy development out in Key Biscayne, across the Rickenbacker causeway. I worked there two days a week, in the office trailer. This was one of the first sites to experience a leap in profitability once I took over the daily administration. Remember, at that time I was still an office temp.
           This is the entire complex, the two building center and right were completed and partially occupied. This is looking east out over the Atlantic Ocean. On the far right horizon is Key Largo and Ocean Reef Club. My project was the building on the left, this took nearly a year to complete the electrical wiring.]

           2023: This is a duplicate picture, testing the system. Notice the difference in overall presentation, a result of 20 years experience? Over the years, Google continues to muck things around. I've heard back many of the older photos no longer display. That's Google mentality, they are millenials, who wants to look at OLD photos, let's get some NEW photos in here.

March 15, 2001

           The gloves are off now, I put [project] 687 on the new system. That was at 9:30 AM. By 3:30 PM a higher-up became aware the PM (project managers) had better info than he did. Ha, even Tom called back to ask if certain things could be done. Certainly, and they can be done in combination.

           Personally, I think they will put the brakes on it, since a lot of the labor breakdowns are not needed at site level. It gives enough information to cause the site managers to begin to seek only the best employees.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-15: the database was already present in a sense. It uses payroll information. All I did normalize the fields and design some super-queries. You know, I based the concept on File Express, one of the oldest flat file databases out there. Here’s a picture of Bryce Canyon.]

           (2023: the second blank placeholder is from 2020 approx. Older Google posts may have a shelf life, however they still display if opened in a new window.

           [Author’s note 2022: some of these older posts, like this one from my desk calendar, get too hard to understand over time. So before I forget, Project 687 was a high-rise tower & restaurant in Miami, I had 35 workers on my watch. I was sent there to clear up their messy records which included paychecks going to the wrong site. I was somewhat surprised to see how little information was computerized in this big company, which years later I went to work for.
           I built a small database that allowed managers to track employee transfers, and as an attachment, what experience that employee had. This was important because some of the work, especially on military bases, required special skills. This was no big challenge, as I mentioned File Express, a database I use back in the 1980s. I would use it today because it is unhackable on-line. The first real use of my new database was to catch a couple illegal aliens with consecutive social security numbers. Sorry, they do not belong here taking jobs away from Americans.]

March 14, 2001

           [Author’s note 2016-02-28: Another rare picture this is the newest taxi in my fleet, the green 1976 Dodge Dart behind the lady at the center. The car is not yet painted, you can see the body patches. The yellow posts are colonnades on a downtown hotel. In the background is the Orinoco. The second story of this hotel is a balcony restaurant where I did the daily books over coffee. I suppose that is Ivan driving the car.
           There is no dispatch system, the cars cruise this avenue, a sort of main street along the riverfront, waiting to be flagged for a fare. Pay attention to those yellow columns, for if I recall correctly, I have an interesting closeup in the batch of pictures I am still sifting through.
           This picture was taken around a year earlier, in March 2000. It is entirely possible these pictures have appeared elsewhere in this blog. There is no picture index kept, as this blog is primarily prose.]

           Milestones. I put OT-1 and -2 on the new coding system. Actually, make that OT-1. They aren’t ready for such power at OT-2. It is one deadly system for extracting data. I wonder if HQ [even] really comprehends what can be donw. Anyway, I’m writing a disclaimer for my part, just in cas. Irony, Andres has more powerful information than the head office—but he is totally reliant on me to produce it. Every other labor report excepting those based on opinion are instantly obsolete. It will categorize absenteeism by type of labor.
           As a break, we played Club M for a share of the sales. It is a nice atmosphere but the owner seems unstable and unable to focus. Live entertainment usually means watch if you’re getting your value.


           [Author’s note 2016-02-28: The original is scribbly, but these are two jobsites, Ocean Towers One and Two, that came under my payroll reporting jurisdiction. This was the new reporting system I was leery of because it provided upper management information at site level. I was right that it resulted in all kinds of bad decisions by supervisors and others not really trained to assimilate this kind of detail.
           In the end, they had to haul me into the main office to sort out the reporting process. It was bound to cause arguments at the site level, I had never designed it to be used as a payroll reporting system, it just happens to be superb for that. But it also allowed offshoots, like a project manager of two sites to compare them and choose which one made him look the best.
           The gig at Club M was one of the last times I played for the Hippie on a commission basis. He kept fancying himself good enough to decree what music the crowd was supposed to like. This consistently killed any chances of making good tips. I had not yet learned to sing, so I went along with this nonsense. I think "getting your value" was directed at the club manager, not the band.]

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March 13, 2001

           [Author’s note 2016-02-28: Alas, I did not record who I was talking about or the incident. The original script shows that I told somebody what to say to get off on what appears to be a driving charge. That could have been one of several people I’ve met since arriving in Miami.
           Here is the only known picture of me in 2000, the year I went gray. (It was years later I went from gray to white.) This is along the south banks of the Orinoco River, in Venezuela. The gazebo is a government-subsidized waterfront eatery. Note how clean and modern it is compared to Miami.]

           The Hippie called. We do Club M tomorrow. But that’s not my preoccupation today. Stay with me here. I like law, I hate lawyers. Regular accountants study business law, CMA’s study tax law. I hate the way the society presents the study material, not the content.
           The difference is [that] business law is generally civil, tax law often involves [criminal activity]. Thus, the study of it from my standpoint reinforces what I already know about the limits of police activity. Generally, if they [the police] can’t do it elsewhere, they can’t do it in a tax crime either.
           Well, today I was able to apply this logic in reverse to get a friend’s charge dropped. The police told him if he didn’t cooperate , he would be spending the night in jail. Whether that is true or not, it is a threat—and police cannot make threats.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-28: I read forward and back in the 2001 journal, but still can’t find anything about this instance. But I do know once you determine the level of the policeman’s education, you can merely talk one level of the law above them and they will quickly defer. Another thing is to ask them to explain what they started. Dang, this looked like a real opportunity that I failed to write down.]

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March 13, 2001

           No practice

March 12, 2001

           I alternated between study and the Internet until 1:00AM, this has to be a pass or I am out a lot of time and money. I miss not playing this weekend, the more as it takes the Hippie a full month to set something else up. Also, last Fri. I had a convo with Julie at HQ, she does not know how that W-4 [form] works. Also, showed Andres how his 401(k) is paying off big time. I must graduate in June, or else.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-22: Ah, I recall this was the massive push to get an accounting certificate that was acceptable in Florida. This state does not know the difference between accounting and bookkeeping unless you have such a certificate. Sadly, that was the second of two courses I failed in my lifetime. There was simply no logic to the laws, every case study had two or three applicable statutes and it was pretty much guesswork which one would prevail.
           This might be a good time to point out that I was still new at the company and worked out in South Beach, miles from the company headquarters in Trump's Doral. But the office personnel definitely knew who I was and often worked closely on payroll and admin problems. Many were surprised, years later, to learn I was only a temp.
           Sad, though, that the people filling out tax forms at the main office do not understand those forms. No picture in the original, so here is an aerial of Pearl Harbor, photo taken in 2004.]

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March 11, 2001

           $130 int on LOC! (In think JZ got charged a huge fee, I forget.)

           [Author's note 2023: normally a cryptic entry like this would get lost in the dust. But I remember it well because of another similar scam that is making the rounds. It is the banks with the "free $300" for opening an account. If you don't obey a very strict regimen for the next two years, that free money reverts to a loan with a 29.99% interest rate from the day you opened the account--not the day you missed a deadline.
           You may notice none of the web-pages that blurb this offer spell out on-line what the pitfalls are. They include (in various forms) failing to make minimum deposits, or purchases, or in some cases even closing the account for up to five years.]

March 10, 2001

           [Author’s note 2016-02-23: here’s one of those fake crop circle hoax pictures from the English countryside. Called the “six-armed Julia”. It’s here to liven up this day’s post. Crop circles have a few things in common, such as always being located near English college dormitories. And you’ll notice all crop photo pictures clearly reveal the “tramlines”, those tractor wheel marks through the field the frat boys use to sneak in without trampling the foilage.]


           Major study again. I’m making headway. Nothing but fast food left in the house, my laundry piles up. Study pre-empts evertything. But in the evening, I went to Starbucks. The Hippied forgot he invited me to play, so I got nothing. Except the phone number of a 28 y.o. Japanese babe, studying cultural anthropology, whatever that is.
           And I got stared down by Granny Goodwitch, some old broad trying to act elegant & pretend she was reading a big book.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-23: ha, a typical scribble from my desk calendar, entered as the daily record, and now winding up here as a blog post. I have no recollection of that day. But I do know the Japanese broad never happened. And as for grannie type Starbucks posers who think I’m too old to get the young ones, well, you know what you can do with your big book.
           Nor was it rare for the Hippie to “forget” he asked you to stand in. He looks bewildered when you show up, but never clues in that you must somehow have known when and where. As I said, not rare.]

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March 10, 2001

           Granny Goodwitch
           Last gig – Starbucks

           [Author’s note 2023: I recall this day. I don’t normally date older women and granny was one of those type who would compel men to date age-appropriate in her eyes. This was the last gig I played in the Grove, Starbucks is no longer hiring entertainment on Saturday afternoons.]

March 9, 2001

           Alfredo and I did the Ugly Tuna. I think we lost the gig to a guy with “island influence”. That means he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Anyway, no gig but we went to Church (Churchill’s Pub). Judy the mouse actually talked to me—but there was an ulterior motive. Of course.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-17: This days is crystal clear in my memory. The Hippie had scheduled the gig, so Alfredo and I drove there in my Cadillac, all the way to south Miami. The Hippie not only did not show, when we walked in there was this other guy playing. So, we stood in with him for a set, and then went to Churchill’s looking to confront the Hippie. Wisely, he was not there.
           We were to learn later the Hippie was famous for this kind of fiasco. He maintained later he never had time to call us that the gig was canceled. Liar, turned out he has nothing but time. Even spends some of it in solitary.]

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March 9, 2001

           Andres $5,000 401K!
           Alfredo & Ugly tuna.

March 8, 2001

           Study. I’ve been away too long. There is an interesting tax provision I’ll follow up. It seems investments are grouped by type, not by source. If so, time to calculate some after-tax values. Yes, I’ve been studying tax laws.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-17: This post appears from a calendar scribble and some marginal notes. I was studying tax law and failed that course. But I’ve studied tax law enough to know that if you are born poor, there is no way you can become rich by obeying it to the letter.]

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March 8, 2001

           2 Code Charlie

March 7, 2001

           No tips.
           Gig Circle

March 6, 2001

           I still can’t locate that missing $100 in CA, so it’s letter time. Practice at the Hippie’s yielded 3 new tunes in no time. We stopped for coffee after and got a gig at the Circle Tavern tomorrow.
Another stab at that new reporting system at work tells me things are off kilter. Unless you force the whole company into computerized standardization, they’ll be creating something worse than no info, namely wrong info. As it is, the company is made up of hundreds of small pictures. You can’t standardize from the bottom up.
           C, the supervisor, reminds me of, well, my family. Absolutely correct on insisting the small picture, but no grasp of anything else. Of course, you get an example. He sees the nine new job codes and says, “Throw in 2 more”. So I went through the motions of making the computer display his codes, and changed them right back in the file system.
           You see, his codes are useful, but you can’t throw them (new codes) in without revamping the entire system from redesigning the data input sheets, reprinting every set of instructions, and reprogramming the entire reporting software. He doesn’t understand the company is taking dead aim on putting a stop to local changes like that one (that he just did).
           I estimate it would cost a fortune to accommodate site changes. A fortune being around $1.5 million.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-17: New tunes, I said, but I was soon to discover they were not at all new, rather tunes the Hippie could already play. He never did learn any new tunes in the years we rehearsed. The Circle Tavern was on Young Circle, but within a few months, the city was to shut down most of the old watering holes.
           This was to change the entire character of the downtown from friendly small town to a lame imitation of Los Olas Blvd. Today it is high prices and all the character businesses have folded. Leaving only pricey Latino restaurants, pawn shops, and jewelry stores.]

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March 6, 2001

           Practice – 3 times!
           “GET LOST

March 5, 2001

           A day in the bunker, then into RHI, but I got no tests done. They gave me the same runaround as a year ago—if I don’t know ACCPACC or Peachtree, then I don’t know nothing. Afterward, I went to Church (Churchill’s Pub) and heard a band from Central America. Good tunes, but I don’t start over at my age unless I have to.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-15: the bunker is slang for the office, which had no exterior windows. RH is Robert Half, the accounting temp people. I was looking for work, remember, I was only a temp at the electric company. A very highly paid temp.
           The focus on accounting programs eventually centered on Quickbooks. Robert Half are dumb, they could have got an experienced payroll accountant if they had not so fixated on specific software experience. Those programs are clerical in nature. Nor did I care for the focus on whether or not one had a Florida driver’s license.
           I had not yet learned to walk out of places that require an accountant to have a driver’s license for the job. Not Robert Half's business whether I even know how to drive. I’m not the delivery boy.
           As for the band, what I meant about starting over is learning that new brand of music. These bands are great musicians, but the polish wears off too quickly. As for the old music, why I’ll start over as many times as I have to.]

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March 5, 2001

           Same RH1 crappola (meaning is lost)
           Tests, 4:00

March 4, 2001

           Okay, ask me anything about a standby charge. Bit of an earthquake out west—watch it’s the harbinger of a big one. Study is not as regimented as I like it, just not covering the ground fast enough. I talked to Alfredo, who is quite ill. I’d like him there this Friday.

           [Author’s note 2016-02-16: Hang on, I’ll give you enough info that this post will make at least some sense. The standby charge was a particularly difficult concept at the company that nobody could calculate right. And predicting “The Big One” was a popular sport back in those days. It was a takeoff on the Archie Bunker joke that God put all the bad people in California.
           And say, it has been kind of quiet out there lately.
           I was studying something, but don’t recall what. People who recall everything they study probably don’t study very much. The Hunt brother’s defense. And Alfredo was the harmonica player who spoke no English. So I had to translate what song we would do next on stage.
           “Los Zapatos Cuero del Azules”. There is no simple Spanish word for “suede”.

           As for the picture, people kept telling me the early versions of my blog needed more links.]

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March 4, 2001

           Study standby charge.

March 3, 2001

           Study day.
           $23 deposit

March 1, 2001

           $30 free!
           Drove Pat for keys.