I’m glad to inform all that the biggest natural problem today was discovering my favorite chicken baking dish did not fit into the new microwave. Ah, the sharper among you have noticed I said natural problem, the other kind are the ones caused by people. Unnatural problems.
By noon, I was over at Diane5’s place, taking a good look at that All-In-One printer. She is still looking after five or more dogs for people who tend to say a month and then disappear for two or three. There is even a pigeon she adopted that was hit by a car. The long-term readers may recall this is the lady who hooked up a forklift and pulled a tree off her trailer after the hurricane so as to prevent the inspector from seeing the damage. She rightly guessed that Florida inspectors don’t like to get out of their air-conditioned cars. I had warned her two summers ago to stay away from Lexmark printers.
Lexmark is an IBM product, and IBM is second only to Hewlett-Packard in printer ink atrocity. In a way, IBM is worse because you are paying for a grossly bloated bureaucracy that was outmoded by 1920. I know, they have survived, but have done so by successful bids on government projects, and we all know what that does to efficiency. We drove to Office Depot to discover the [Lexmark] ink cartridges required were $59.00, plus tax.
Office Depot has changed their format for the worse. Instead of help, they now give you “customer service”. Up the ying-yang. They jump on you when you walk in the door with phony friendliness. It is creepy. Sadly, this dismal tactic is always enforced by head office whenever an American business starts to lose market share. They cannot grasp that it would be better to fire all those grinning zeros and use the savings to lower their prices, which is the only solution in the long run.
Anyway, these staff kept introducing themselves, so I finally told them that I had not arrived to become cozily acquainted with them and to please stand away to be summoned if I needed them. This ugly customer made some comment about them just trying to be nice. Well, I told him off. I swear that this must have been the first time in his life he was ever informed that something was none of his business. My diagnosis is that he must be a loser middle manager for some faceless corporate branch office.
And you should have seen the priceless look on his face as I informed him to mind his own business. He was stunned speechless, apparently for the first time in his life. Even Diane5, who is too nice to people all the time (and pays dearly for it) saw that this was a desperately overdue lecture. My guess is that of the millions of “managers” of American businesses, only a tiny fraction belong there. The ones that don’t belong have extreme difficulty believing that anything they become aware of is not automatically their business. I should be paid to take the this message on the road. The guy has probably still not recovered from my upbraid – but of course, they never learn from it.
Before I tell you about the visitors today, there is a point that must be made clear. While every event recorded in this journal/blog/diary is verifiable, there is an intentional misrepresentation each day, and I estimate it to be around 5% of the “gravity” of the total record. Yes, I said intentional. The reason for it is simple realistic foresight – journals are admissible evidence. The world is too full of shit-house lawyers, therefore, it is pre-emptive to establish that each daily record contains “a shadow of reasonable doubt”. I have no idea if it would hold up in court, but it has been there since I began record-keeping daily in 1979. (Prior to that, the records were not daily.)
I got suckered out of five dollars. It is the last money the “French Bread Factory” will get out of me. It is on Kane Concourse, I arrived a little early and thought to have a coffee and cookie there. As soon as I saw the waitress, I knew she was going to try something funny. I asked if I could pay right away (in case I got paged). Instead of taking my money, the slimy bitch gave me the total in a leather folder and disappeared lickety-split through the swinging doors into the back.
It was 31 cents more than I had in small change. The closest I had was a $5.00 bill which left me I had two choices. Stand there and let my $2.00 cup of coffee get cold or go sit outside and lose my $5.00. I thought to take the folder with me but the scam was so obvious I left my money there and never saw it again. What a low-grade, third-rate swindle. Also, the place is a fake even by Florida standards. French, indeed, the only thing genuine was the tiny portions.
A gallery nearby had some interesting prints. They were photographs of what most people would hardly consider art. Poisoned Mellaluca trees. These are an Australian import that now infests the Everglades, or more correctly, the Cypress swamps that surround the Everglades. They are generalists that crowd out the local flora. This picture is through the plate glass. I found it a little haunting.
Ruth had visitors from Germany, by the accents. I must repeat that what Ruth lacks in computer patience, she makes up for with a sudden grasp of what is important. Today was a flawless example. While she originally was skeptical about me creating the database [which can look like I’m repeating work already done], she demanded and got a price list almost instantly. Only by comprehending the nature of the data organization could she ask for such a report out of the blue. I also had to be there to play the Letterman video that I transferred to CD. The point here is that we are moving out of the realm where somebody else could easily take over if I leave, for me an unwelcome co-dependency.
Earlier, Fred and I talked about the finances of this situation. You see, I must cover my cost of getting there and it is expensive to run the car twenty miles a pop. My pricing is based on a customer coming to the shop, not driving a station wagon into the next city. My true expenses are close to 35% of what I make over there and I’m finding the commute cuts so much into time that I cannot do side projects like I can out of Fred’s shop. I find that I must either raise my price or take more than the 35% off the top, which would only cut into his share. If I don’t, I’m making $9 per hour and Fred may not understand I would rather do nothing than work for that. Trust me, I’m thinking very hard about what to do because I don’t want to let anybody down.
Now, there was great progress today. I hesitate to let people see me work a database [due to long periods when I must “stare at the screen and do nothing”, then embark on a time-consuming back and forth that can drive people nuts). However, Ruth is an exception and has stated she likes the format of the raw tables. That is remarkable because so few people get it right away. (It took me two years, though I was learning to create them, not merely understand the theory, another matter entirely.)
Thus the situation is that to keep things under control, I’ve had to design a monster, a standardized system that only I understand. It requires a skilled operator. I quoted too low a price for me to continue to do the work myself, as mentioned above. The reality is the value here is much closer to $45 per hour to split $30 with Fred – the other $15 is costs. I am commuting to the next county three times a week in an older gas hog car that needs work because of it. Not having the instant cash to repair the flat [tire] two days ago was my wake-up call that the gasoline is just one expense.
Stick around and I’ll get you a sample of the database tables in a few days. Most people have never seen the real thing.
ADDENDUM
I’m back, just when I try to quit writing, I remember more. After work, rather than fight the traffic, I rode all the way from Bay Harbour Isles to 31st Street in Miami, a total of 13.609 miles today. Miami is a case study on how not to run a city. You’d think because it is new as far as cities go, they would benefit from all the centuries of mistakes other places made. Wrong. They seem to go out of their way to screw things up.They have these trash receptacles hanging on lamp standards. They are tipped for easy emptying. However, they were not designed for the narrow, crowded sidewalks around here. As I rounded a blind spot, the handlebar caught the wire cage, sending me sprawling onto the pavement and scraping my elbow. (Here is a picture from 2012, showing some repairs to the electric bicycle I was riding by 2011.)
So as to end cheerily, here is a list of the boat names in the order moored as I went past:
• Mar Sol
• Happy Our’s
• Perlamar
• Lady M
• Play Time
• Paraiso
• Two Timin’
• Poverty Sucks
• Carrousel
• Tikki Beach
• Lady Jayne
• Eternity
• Aurora
• Princess Annie
• Frequent Flyer
• The Five Winds
• Lady Alise
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