Am I studying hard? Here’s a test. Do you know why a CD is just under 4-3/4” in diameter? I do. Hint: the original disks as invented in 1970 were roughly ¼” smaller.
Check on very eventful day over here. I was in the shop early to drop off my “budget”. It was amusing to fill out this form because of the categories of essentials that were listed. The form would normally be filled out by someone on unemployment, yet it contains budget categories for cable TV, dining out and clothing. You heed now, being on the pogie [an archaic term for unemployment insurance] is no excuse not to be well dressed, and seen watching the game in the fancier night spots around town.It is thirty miles away and still worth it to take the car into El Mago de Ponche. First class work after five years of keeping my vehicles on the road. Today Manuel repaired the door handle, brakes and the ignition switch. It was not the brakes in trouble, but the brake light switch. This $10 part is what was causing the difficulty putting the car into gear every morning. Actually, it was $9.37 because included in the change from New Jersey Auto Parts were three wheat pennies dated 1944, 1950 and 1951. For those who can see the enclosed photo, I will let you guess how I got such a picture with the $18 Argus. I used no special lenses and the camera was hand held.
Manuel has a computer at home that won’t hold some motor diagnostic software he has on 5-1/4” floppies. He has a Gateway laptop that sounds like it only has 64K of RAM. I showed the guys at the shop how to copy software and programs from external hard disks, it is weird how many people still do not know you can open two copies of My Computer, much less that you can look at the same disk twice at the same time. Manuel only charged be $70 for 4 hours work, and there was nothing easy to fix on the Taurus today. That station wagon is slowly approaching the $2,500 mark that I should have spent on the Cadillac. Manuel and I talked computers for a long time, and there is a story to tell. This man brought in a Cadillac that would not run, yet mechanically it tested perfectly. But when the computer module was installed, the car would not run right. So Manuel downloaded the correct specs, installed them on the module and it still had trouble. There was no choice but to install a new module, and the guy paid $500 for the programming plus $200 for the new module.
That would be a happy story except for one eentsy detail. That same afternoon the police showed up at the guy’s door and he is now in jail. The Cadillac was stolen. The module was designed to stall the car if it was illegally started. Manuel did not know any of this, but now we know the new module activated the satellite tracking system and the police were on their way. I went over to Tiger.com at Mall of the Americas, and was not pleased with their service at all. Mainly, I don’t mind leaving my bag at the front provided I am aware of that policy before I tote heavy gear across the parking lot, provided the store has a safe place to keep the bag and provided they are responsible if anything goes missing. But leaving my belongings on a community shelf near a rent-a-cop, no way. Plus, it was one of those sterile stores where every last event that does not involve making them a profit has been trimmed. Unfortunately, this includes getting rid of real service, fast checkouts and any type of store responsibility. They can sell it to you, but good luck when you get home and find a piece missing or something. That ain’t their fault, you understand. Well, they sure understand it, so what is your problem? The checkout counters were so slow, I had time to look at the motherboards for sale. I saw chips by AMD who I never heard of until last week. These boards ranged in the $100 to $200 bracket. Be advised, I recognized all the major components of every model. It’s true, they are all sort of the same.That new door handle makes the car a pleasure to drive again. I went over to visit JP, and got that Denon receiver working. It had an AM antenna only. This equipment requires an input signal to amplify. JP has no FM, CD, cable or phono to hook up and that is why he thought the thing didn’t work. You had to stand and hold the antenna which works fine until you set it down. It has surround sound for a home movie experience with JP who does not even have a radio. I set up and programmed that Workcenter fax and copier so he could at least pretend to be in the 1990s. He did say he wants to become computer proficient. This is the chap that does not even have a toaster oven yet. We talked about going to Calle Ocho next Sunday. The plan is we meet up at the church (the one his dad gave to the city) at 12:30 PM.
I bought a digitizer for $28, and I notice it is from Kworld. The manual is equally lousy, so I wonder why they have not answered my offer to clean up the wording for them. A thousand dollars per manual, which they print anyway, should not be too steep. One thing I dislike about the information era is that you can’t get a spare manual any more. Instead, you log onto sparemanuals.com and take your chances at $35 per issue. I know information is for sale, but it takes a real prick to go back into the past and start selling something that either ought to be or was free. New information, fine, but nobody pays for old information unless you make them. That is one of the major differences between the US and Canada. In the US, some company will rope off an area or scenery that everyone used to enjoy for free, and charge $10 to see it. Not in Canada, where the government does that kind of thing.
I stopped for a café con leche at the old sidewalk café. They have added tables and chairs. The Hippie called and he has a virus again. This one put an overlay that looked exactly like his Windows XP desktop on his screen, but was really advertising. The downloaded McAffee antivirus which merely let half the universe know he didn’t have it, causing [I think he said] 188 viruses to stream onto his hard drive. He insists on using his work computer to go on line, and I am running out of pity [for non-tech people who use the same computer for both work and going on-line]. Last, it is already the 7th and I have not seen the landlord to pay the rent. I actually came in close to sixty dollars under plan today, so that DVD burner could happen any time at all.
The riddle of the CD size. Memorize this, and wow them at you next nerd party. The Chief Executive of Sony, where most the development work took place, insisted on the slight increase in size so that one CD could hold all 74 minutes of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In case I forgot to say, the Casio DVD label machine uses tapes that cost $30 each, and only labels ‘up to 40’ disks. What a ripoff.
[Author’s note: the labels would thus cost more than the disk.]
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