Digital security cameras. Corey now has them at the Quizno’s. Take a look at this. This is one view of eight, showing the seating area. Inspect this closely. The clarity is fantastic, but notice this is not a security monitor. It is his new HP widescreen laptop, and this is sitting on his coffee table at home. The live picture arrives via Internet, and the right side of the screen is in the process of logging on to his other store. The entire wireless system is controlled from wherever he logs on.
Something else Corey reports. It is illegal to record the ambient sound. At one time it was sufficient to have your employees sign a waiver. Now you cannot record at all. It would be curious to find out which lawyer got that law changed and ask his ex-wife how much she got.My new [callout] prices are having the desired effect. It deters people unless they have a serious problem they are prepared to pay up on. Another conclusion I’ve reached is that, while older students have more money, they are also an unreliable hard-sell. Nearly half cannot adjust their schedules for regular classes. Many have the attitude that the price of the computer includes setup and instructions, which we call “driving lessons”. They don’t want to pay for them. Eventually they crash their own systems.
I’ve also found that lower prices do not drive up business and tend to attract the cheapskates, that is, people unprepared to pay the long-term high cost of setting up and maintaining an Internet computer system. I recently had one customer who didn’t want to pay me because he received the wrong disk from his ISP, maintaining I was “not finished” since his system didn’t “work yet”. He wanted me to call the ISP, order the disk, return when it arrived and install it. Then had a fit when I told him that was $140 extra.
For all I’ve said about adults having more learning experience than youngsters, there are still wide differences in learning ability. I have a second adult “whiz kid” in the form of Jack, the guy who takes the blood samples of the winning race horses to make sure they aren’t laced up. (The other whiz is professor Howard.) Jack, once shown the method of slowing down to learning basics, was instantly able to break the acquired habits of adult thinking. It is always a treat to meet students with this aptitude.
Food review time. Since I only use a tenth of the amount of milk allowed by my diet, almost all in the form of coffee cream, I thought I’d try Winn/Dixie fat free half and half as a Christmas treat. Avoid it. To replace the lost consistency and flavor, they add corn syrup and powdered seaweed (carrageenan), so within a day of opening, it resembles a lumpy pulp. It will smooth out in coffee but still, watching it blob out the spout is most unappetizing. Get the real thing.
News. For years I have had difficulties with my passport because of an “agent” who insisted I was not alive because the county I was born in lacked a certain document. Today I was in the post office talking with the passport head honcho. I was right all along, the “agent” had no right to rake me over the coals. I had gone in because this morning, a certified copy of my birth certificate arrived from Texas.
It spells my name wrong, has the wrong birth date and shows I was born in the next county, but this is the official certificate. She said to bring the papers in and she’ll submit them right away. Oh, and I was also right that it is a federal document so it does not matter what state my ID, paperwork and address are from. The other jerk tried to make out it had to be from Florida. Oddly, nothing is lost because I would not have had money to travel in the last few years, even with my economical manners.
This is no promise, but if goes through, it saves me an expensive trip out west in the middle of winter. The projected wait time for the passport is thirteen weeks, although the normal is six weeks. That places it between January 24 and March 23, 2008. The new passports have an electronic chip in the back cover which reportedly contains the same information as the pages. This will follow the usual pattern of abuse. First to serve a good purpose, then to gather statistics, and within a few years, to enforce unpopular laws.
You know one thing that annoys me? It is any extra press given to married men when they take voluntary risks. This goes way back for me, when I once read an article about Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier. I expected technical details of the flight but all I got was page after page of how extra brave he was because he was married. Sure, he’s got more to lose, but that is his consideration and not everybody wants to hear about it. Substitute “stupid” for “brave” and you’ll see how much credence I give married men who put their lives on the line for any such cause. You are supposed to give up daredevil stunting once you get married.
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