It's a good thing I've got extra music cash. It was the starter on the Taurus. I took it to the best shop in Florida, El Mago del Pancho on Calle Ocho in Miami. Two minute diagnostic, twenty minute repair. Parts $98, labor $50. This place does excellent work and always has a lineup, which I don’t have to wait in. I grabbed a Cuban breakfast since I was in the heart of Little Havana, or at least in the left lung of it.
Every year I think I’ve gotten used to the heat and then a day like this comes along. The thermometer inside the car surpasses 140F, the maximum. The AC can only bring it down below 90 in partial shade and the bad news is there is no R-12 [refrigerant] left in this town. Good-bye Taurus the next major problem.
It would not be bad if the traffic was always moving, but South Florida is full of those intersections where most of the time only one or two lanes of traffic are moving. The other lanes sit there, idling in the heat because the government is too cheap over the asphalt to build a cloverleaf. It is dumb, because asphalt is probably renewable and, although you may beg to differ if you have ever run out of gas in a local parking lot, does not contribute to global warming.From there to Best Buy, where after reflecting on the matter, I decided to purchase another Pinnacle product, the Dazzle Video Creator. I had severe troubles with one of Pinnacles earlier products in 1997, I believe it was called Pinnacle Studio, something like that. The manual was so badly written I never did get it working, but I learned all the necessary steps by repeated failure. Since they are still in business, I’m banking that they have learned a thing or two in ten years. What got me really ticked [back then] was that I knew the process from working on sprockets so I knew they were wrong.
The software was supposed to control two Sony tape decks, using infrared signals to jog the source and target to assemble your storyboard. Despite buying two $400 Sony decks, the thing still had to be manually calibrated every few scenes. It was also a marathon to assemble edit anything that had been filmed in the wrong sequence, or off two different tapes. The new system uses only a simple playback deck and a disk image.
From there, over to JZ’s. We caught up on everything including the plans for this trailer. The fridge I’ll have to get, but at JZ’s suggestion, I am not going to refill the propane tank [for $60], instead I’ll get an excellent hotplate and set it on top of the old range. His purchase of the trailer has never been registered, but I suspect that won’t be a problem at this late stage of it’s life cycle.
Then over to Publix for munchies, and I report that two apples cost me $2.24. They were awfully good, but still. We picked up enough to last the afternoon and then rented an excellent movie called “The Shooter”. The plot is standard, the US government gets into a jam that only an ex-something can bail them out, which he does out of misplaced patriotism, since they frame slash blackmail slash take away his badge, he has to fix that. However, this movie was extremely well put together. Wahlburg, I think, is the actor, with some brunette babe Brook Shields look-a-like.
Anyway, if you know your history, geography and a little medicine, the action was very impressive and believable. Not that many people know sugar can be used to treat wounds or that Cool Whip contains ether. I recognized the scenery instantly as British Columbia, Canada. Saw the Fraser Bridge in the background and New Westminster bears only a passing resemblance to Ethiopia in the winter. Mind you, take away Canadian welfare, and the per capita income is the same.
There is trouble with my equipment, I can’t seem to burn any DVDs except of regular files. That is, no videos will burn, even if they are totally non-copyrighted. There are two common points, one is the computer itself, the other is that both burners are Sony products.
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