January 31, 2007

          Who wants a closer look at that personally autographed Elvis picture? I did. I have some news that will burst the bubble. It seems The King didn’t autograph all of his autographs, and this is one of them. It is not a fake, but he didn’t sign it. How can this be? Easy. He wrote on the photo, but only the part that says “To Ruth”. How lazy can you get? The “Best Wishes” and “Elvis Presley” parts are mass-produced. I sent a scan to the Elvis society to see if the fact that it is personalized has any commercial value. Don’t get your hopes up.
          I consider it absolutely necessary to catalog all of the pictures, to find out exactly what is there and into what categories each item can be placed. This should be done and studied before anybody is contacted, if for no other reason than to find out if there are any matching sets. This would require around twenty hours of work for the pictures on the wall. Find out who is still around, who has fan clubs, and so forth. I’m having a little trouble convincing everyone that I can’t just start ringing people up and telling them I’ve got “about 250 really neat pictures for sale”.
          Barbara Dixie called. This is one of my former students who may have started her own business. Like too many of my students, she did not follow my advice about computer commitments. Don’t promise anything to anybody until you are certain the equipment works and you understand it. It has something to do with her airline tickets, and I went through that with her a few months ago. Looks like I’m about to re-learn it.

          Later, I was over there and she has been spending all her time on the Internet, not practicing the lessons she took from me. Gee, what a surprise. Since I got out of there early, I thought I’d find the aluminum store based on directions I’ve received. It was a waste of time and I never did find it. I’ve very good at following directions and four people gave me the wrong ones. I finally wound up bicycling along each street and avenue in the general area but I could not find A1 Aluminum.
          I asked several people, and the closest I got was one man who said it was “across the way”. People like that I always hope get in an emergency and need directions to the hospital. I mean, what kind of bozo gives you an answer like that? Speaking of useless people, here is a Trump construction site. One begins to wish pictures of these people were rare. The Visionaries, it says. When you have billions, I guess it is okay to tell yourself that you have visions of the future.
          I have a vision of the future, and it is that 80 million people are going to retire in the next ten years. Half of them will die. Anybody who buys a condo for a million is nuts if they think they can flip it. The prospective buyers are already flipping – hamburgers at MacD’s.

          No time to myself today, as I went right over the Brian’s for practice. Plus, I wanted to run the idea of playing without a guitar past him. This is a hard sell. I layed down the tracks on his recording machine and he hummed along. He does not know he’s moving along twice as fast as expected. The idea works because it is unexpected and I happen to be one of the few people alive who have pulled it off before.
          We play only bass and drum box. He stands there with a guitar and acts as if he is just about to start playing, but never does. I explained and he accepts that this means some major changes in the way the music is presented and how we act on stage. He is skeptical but who can find fault with that. What if I told you to go on stage but never play anything.
         The four songs we picked are Fire, Act Naturally, Six Days and Words. The optional song is Some Kind of Wonderful. He is to focus on the vocals but I was able to show him how to do all of it except how to memorize the beginning notes. By the end of two hours, he was humming the tunes, a sure sign of good progress. We might just get away with this.

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January 30, 2007

           Fred is dog-sitting. The best part of it is the dog is around forty pounds and thinks it is a puppy. If you sit down, you may find Rover on your lap. Or he’ll run right at you and leap up expecting you to catch him. My camera batteries died so I have nothing to show you about that. Its fun, but the dog gets into everything.
           Now, we have a new personality on the scene. His name is Skrbc. I always get a kick out of Cyrillic names. Back in my university days, there was a brute on campus called Rskyvosk or something like that, I called it “a name of ponderous consonants, vowels, that is, heavily outnumbered”. This new guy is a doctor, and he writes books on the topic. He was a walk-in whose computer got wiped out when he tried to install the wrong version of some MS product.
           I’m going to see if I can rearrange the navigation buttons on his web page. He subscribes to that Yahoo store thing. Now I’ll learn how it works, but I rejected the whole Yahoo store concept the first time I saw it. Again and like eBay, they stick their noses far too deeply into what should be your private business affairs, a holdover from bricks and mortar landlordism. “You’re renting my store, therefore I have a right to look through your customer list.”

           [Author's note 2016-01-30: I have no idea why there is a picture of a strip joint here. It is "world famous" but I've never been inside this or any strip joint except as a paid musician on ladies night. And technically, that should be "lady's night".]

           That is exactly what Dr. Skrbc (rhymes with “Skrbc”) is going through. He’s got established clientele, but if he tries to contact them directly, Yahoo shuts him down. That is precisely the kind of nonsense that I love to figure out how to get around, and Skrbc’s eyes nearly popped when he saw me zip through the code to find why his navigation bar was at the bottom [where people have to scroll all the way down to find it]. It is nothing but can be an impressive sight if you’ve never seen anyone do it before.
           So, what do I have against Yahoo? Nothing personal, but I can be very opinionated about people who overstep their authority, even where, in some cases, they have the authority but it merely appears to be unwarranted. Make all the profits you can, but only insofar as you allow others to do the same. It is one of those “self-limiting” freedoms. I first ran across the problem at a shopping mall whose lease agreement included a percentage of your sales. Think twice – to do that, they must plainly acquire the right to examine your books, and that is something you should never let anyone do without a warrant.

           (It turns out the store was referring customers over to a second location across town where they paid a fixed rent, and the shopping mall sued. Again, I see that [referral] as a perfectly natural reaction to the mall’s repressive policy, something the shop owner has a right if not a duty to try to get around. In my world, the mall would be sued for even going so far as to find out about the referral – it is just [literally] not their business. The shop deserves a medal. However, this was in Canada, so the shop owner lost.)
           Today was the deadline for Matthew T. Broderick to call. Plainly he does not have the time for this kind of undertaking. A band requires eight or nine extra hours a week, of which only 2/3 is performance time. I sent him my phone number three times, with no response. Now it is Wain’s turn.

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January 29, 2007

           How would you feel about misplacing $39,000? Read me today, I'll tell you it just happened, or rather, it just got discovered that it happened. Plus, I may have commissioned myself a once-in-a-lifetime chance to write non-fiction book on a totally unique theme. Then I’d be famous and you’d have to pay to be reading this.
          Now, I’m not going to show you the picture almost worth a fortune. Instead you get Burt Reynolds. Quit yer whining, you are lucky to get that. Be nice and I may show you more.
           A few people have asked me why I have decided to repair the butane tank supply for my galley stove. I understand that I could get an electric [stove], but they don’t understand that I will never forget that three months I went without power after Hurricane Wilma in 2005/06. You cannot imagine the hardships -- and I was ready for it. Others were lined up half a day for a lousy bag of ice, although some of their reasons for doing so were less than popular.
           No, I do not forgive FPL, despite their contention that they were heroes. I walked around the entire block and noticed that there were no wires down, and that all the surrounding blocks had power after a week. There was a single wire hanging low, but that could have been “fixed” with a pair of cutters. In the end, one repair truck showed up and the power was restored in an hour. No, forgiveness is not an option. And unless you have ever gone without electric for 90 days, I dismiss your opinion on the matter.

           After failing to get the “dancing CD” to do just that, I headed over to Howard’s and replaced his unit. This is the CD that repeatedly pops the tray open for no good reason, hence “dancing”. During one of the waits while testing the unit (some computers detect a replaced CD as a major upgrade), Howard asked about his HDTV. While I don’t know much on that, I also know that you simply cannot start a major new industry in the US of A with a workforce that is required to think; they don’t exist here any more. Therefore, I took a close look at this fancy TV.
           First of all, it lacks the array of antenna jacks and inputs found on most such equipment. Look on the back of a DVD player and count the number of outputs. It’s hardly surprising nobody can afford to build them locally any more. Well, Howard’s HDTV had one F-stub on the back, and a non-functional pair of RCAs on the front. They had a function, which was to overdub any VHS being recorded, but they were not regular input jacks. No way to hook this expensive TV to a DVD player. Let’s hear it for Panasonic!
           There were some chores at the wig store, mostly email and putting together promo material. It was during this process I noticed a signed Elvis picture on the wall behind a display stand. Upon close inspection, it did not even have a glass in the frame. I was stunned, and immediately showed Ruth that worse pictures were going to auction with reserve bids of $8,000. This means I had to check out the Beatles picture. The signatures were on a separate paper, the picture itself shows Ruth working on their hair.

           I’ll digress for a bit. There are at least 250 pictures of celebrities on the shop walls. The ones I can name include Danny Thomas, Bob Hope, Richard Nixon and Burt Reynolds and there are dozens of others I recognize. It is a gold mine of autographs and personal history. Ruth, of course, has been reminded of this all along, but the $8 thou got her attention. I bluntly pointed out that publishing was immortality, where not publishing was a loss to the world. She is aware that I write and I gave her a sample. She offered 10%.
           There are other photos besides hers; she is the end of eight generations of wig-makers. On the back wall are three long rows of what I took to be dancers. I walk past it on my way out every time. I was only partially right. These were the original strippers of the era. She never met Gypsy Rose Lee, but Ruth knew all the contenders, including one who reputedly pranced down main street in Havana, Cuba, wearing a cellophane raincoat. I’ve told her the second priority is to scan all those pictures and store them safely, replacing the display with copies. Then, to write the story.
           The Beatles’ signatures were an old-style photocopy. I asked Ruth what happened to the original. It had been moved and misfiled. I would volunteer to go through the hundreds of thousands of documents in that shop to find it. No, the copy was not worth fifty cents. I priced what original Beatles autographed prints were getting in London. By now, you’ve figured out that amounts to $39,000.

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January 28, 2007

           The joys of home ownership. I took inventory of everything needed to get my place into fine shape. The only good news is we’re looking at less than a hundred bucks. It was a little dusty going into the crawl spaces and I didn’t check the roof. (“Can’t fix it when it’s raining and don’t have to when it’s not.”) That dodo Enrique who sold me this place was around. He’s a nice guy but a little weak in the brain department, I tell you about it in a moment.
           Here's a picture of a real Mah Jong set. The tiles are ceramic and it has Chinese "poker chips" for keeping score. Unlike the computer game, you take turns placing the tiles, although this seems an unneccessary step to the Occidental mind. This hand-made set is in a custom felt-lined case and must have originally been very expensive. We don't know if all the tiles are there, and funny, neither does anybody else around here.

           It seems Enrique lost the title and had it replaced a few years back (now he tells me). The document he gave me was the replacement. I mailed it to Tallahassee. He then proceeds to find the original and goes down to the courthouse to get his name off. Except, when you do this locally instead of by mail (like I did), the courthouse wants both parties to show up in person. I told him he should have checked with me on that one.

           [Author's note 2016-01-28: this curious state of affairs, where the person selling the property may not have clear ownership, is a rather unique area of American consumer law. The normal principle that you cannot sell what does not belong to you does not seem to apply. And the legal system seems to be completely comfortable with that situation, meaning they are making money off it. Property can even be sold by someone who signs a document saying they have no claim on the property--and that is considered different that whether or not they ever had any claim!]

           The Thrift came off as an average day, average sales and average customers. I finally met Darin. We’ve apparently met but I can’t recall him. He’s twenty years younger and has a serious case of the “eBay attitude”. Defined, it is an overly-sincere belief in one’s eventual success in an industry with a chronically less than 5% success rate. Lest we all become real estate agents.
           Still, he seems in control, unlike most of the examples I’ve men in my career. I’ll give him a fair shake for youthful exuberance. Just remember, I do not regard imitation of what I do to be either sincere nor flattering. He and Dickens have made some great changes at the store. The art is on the wall where it belongs. There are some expensive works by a German guy but for the most of it, give me a good Snap-On Tools calendar. Before 1987, preferably. (After that time, it seems certain types of women began exceedingly aware of what garage mechanics had in the back room, ahem, and complained.)

           There is no doubt in my thinking that eBay, no matter how remote, will change the way Thrifts do business. It can be sad how some places established for decades cannot understand how somebody can come along with a $900 computer and a DSL connection and put them out of business. However, I encourage such events and hardly consider it unfair, given the “get away with it” attitude of so many existing establishments. I won’t mention any names like Sony, Microsoft and Broward Community College.
           So far, four guitarist types have been dropped from my list of six because they do not respond or call back fast enough. I’m down a “Wain” and a “Tom”, and the former seems eager to start right away, stating he could probably get out and front half of our songs already. Maybe, but his song list contains quite a few I’ve never heard of, and I get around. I’ll get things underway with him tomorrow.
          On the way in, I stopped at Coffee Time, and Legs was there. She is giving out fast, and seems to have lost weight. Not good, as she was perfectly skinny six months ago. Speaking of women, a lady came in to day to purchase costumes for a production of Peter Pan. With her was a ripe little lassie, the kind who’ll break a lot of hearts, but not my type at all. Just one of those things.

           If she'd left it at that, no problem. All the guys were staring. However, the lady felt compelled to say that “if she was any younger, she’d be almost barely illegal”. Instant street trash,

           Now, figure that one out. What is that supposed to imply? I should have hit on the gal right there just to prove a point. That point being that women off the market can sure develop some awfully strange attitudes about any female in a better position. I’ve heard of “barely legal”, but “almost barely illegal” sticks in my craw. We know where this broad is headed.
           I drew out a chart to calculate what I’ll need for PA equipment. I do believe that the stereo feature of the Alesis will require two input jacks. However, I can get by with six inputs and add a mixer later. I checked prices and found several Fender Passports (150 and 250) that looked in perfect condition for less than $150. Plus shipping and handling. This is similar to the unit the G uses and it was fine every time, including playing the bass through one channel.

           Oh, and I read a rule of thumb that I had not heard in years and forgot. It concerns the power you should buy for your PA. Higher power seems to work better, but the rule states “one watt per person”. While you should not get less than 100 watts ever, the calculation says if you want to play for a hall of 250 people, get a 250 watt PA. Anyway, that is a neat statistic and very true.

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January 27, 2007

           These are genuine replacement Harley-Davidson turn signal lenses. You know, for when you roll your Harley. It was another slow day, and I’m still out of coffee. I get cranky about that. To cheer things up, I did go and eat in a restaurant, like I said I would. I’ll tell you about it later.
           No, JZ did not show. Is anyone surprised? That means next Saturday I may go to South Miami and wake him up. JZ is the State champion sleeper, logging close to double the orthodox hours. I reached a personal goal today, and my treat is to go out to a restaurant for a cheeseburger deluxe. If they still have restaurants, if they still serve them with fries, that is. What does it even cost these days?

           [Authors note 2016-01-27: I did not know this would be the last time in my life I specifically went out and ate hamburger, ground beef that is. I've since done it, but only as an expedient while traveling. Beef is now off my diet.]

           Into the shop, I decided to see if I could help that Skrib guy who messed up his computer. He tried to install some software for Win XP Pro that corrupted his Win XP Home Edition. It kept asking for a file that was not there. Of course, he did not have even one backup copy, so it costs $200 to get all that stuff off the computer so we can reinstall the system. It took him three hours to decide on that one.
           I have a couple of replies to my musician ad. They always sound promising, but as you know, this business is not for people with the slightest notions of musical fame and fortune. They get seduced by the glitz of the recording industry, leaving them useless for performing small rooms. One dude with the illustrious-sounding name of Matthew T. Broderick manages a cell phone store and sounds promising. He is new in the area and cannot find work as a solo. A good day job moves you right up the ladder for me.

           Careful here, because I still have to weed out anyone who only wants a duo because they can’t find solo work. These types quickly find out that I pick tunes that are not suitable for solo work, which mainly takes the form of strong, characteristic bass riffs. Listen to “Born To Be Wild” to get the idea. The original band, Steppenwolf, makes me smile. I had already been playing in a band for years when they came along, yet my own brother (he was already 16 by this time) felt a need to explain to me that it “could mean a wolf stepping along”. Today, Paulina fills that role.
          Yes, she came by. We looked at a place, which was kind of small and overpriced. During the process of asking everybody [during the past months] for a guitarist who could sing, she became aware of my search. That does not mean she listened to what I said, no, it does not mean that at all. She found at least one musician, but admits she forgot to ask if he played guitar. Oh, and I win the bet – she tried to give me advice on where to look for a musician. At the State unemployment site. If that does not work, I maybe could try the welfare office? Or, now that I know where they are, the slummy bars on Dixie?
           My dining experience. I went to Nicki’s on Hallandale Beach Boulevard. I now know that a cheeseburger deluxe costs $6.50. Actually, that is not bad. I won’t say how long ago, but the last time I bought one, it was something like half that price. I can tell a lot about how a place by their burgers, and Nicki’s gets a thumbs-up.

           Jose, my Mexican neighbor, was over for a visit. We are going to do some yard work around our places tomorrow, share the tools and such. It is so obvious I do not know what to do with myself on a weekend. I have been home, reading a book since mid-afternoon. (O’Rourke’s “Eat The Rich”) A great work of humor that examines why some places are rich and others are poor, with a critical but hilarious treatment of their people and politics. His definition of politicians is a favorite around here, that they are like “cheerleaders who have confused themselves with the people who carried the ball”.
          That author is a trained journalist, which makes a big difference to me. Every sentence is loaded. He is a generation later than me, though, and sometimes I don’t follow his analogies or know the people he mentions. What is an “indie” movie? That is rhetorical, I’ll of course look it up tomorrow. Since I don’t know the term, it will probably be something from television, and I don’t mean the learning channel. Anyway, O’Rourke has incredible sources, I’ll say that for him. I’m almost suspicious that he could not have written such material entirely on his own. It has no “trademark” style other than an extreme ability to rarely repeat himself.

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January 26, 2007

             This is a Sheffield picnic set. An old picture from last year, but the best I can do today. There’s a piece or two missing and the leather handles need replacing. Those plates and cups are not plastic, or at least if they are, these are very durable. See those boxes with the steel handles? Can anybody guess what they are? They have a separate brand name and are patented. Answer at the end of today’s post. So read it, damn!
             When I say Friday is my day off, that means I should start by killing my cell phone. It is not a day off for most people, who love to call. Fridays are a big deadline day in this part of the world. Most of my clientele are adults, which means they always have time to tell you how they don’t have time to learn computers. Well, they should not use them in that case. If you rely on others to bail you out when things go wrong, it gets expensive and time-consuming.

             This mini-lecture is the result of an age-old problem: anti-virus software. If you don’t want to learn to use the software manually as I always advise, then it is full price when you call. $75 for the callout plus $30 per hour thereafter. I get the same story all the time, that everyone is too busy to learn to use the software but not too busy to call me at 11:00 at night because they can’t get on-line. (Norton can take it upon itself to suddenly block all your browsers from opening, although I should not say that with authority because I’ve only seen it twice. Still, Norton was a factor.)
             Using me to troubleshoot your problems can quickly triple your cost of ownership. It is still full price when I get out there to find your dial-up modem is plugged into the wrong jack. [Usually by a whiz kid with some immeasurable IQ who does not know the difference between “Line” and “Phone”.] Or your power cable was pulled loose by the vacuum. Or they’ve been typing an email into the address field – a time honored idiot mistake for the nuclear war crowd. The idea behind running the anti-virus manually is that you [at least] learn such gems as how to turn it off and on, how long different parts of the operation are supposed to take and what the common problems look like.

             It has been cool, almost chilly. Fred was off to Ft. Lauderdale, so I spent the afternoon in minding the shop. Maria was in. Haven’t I mentioned Maria? She’s this Columbian lady who has taken more computer courses than I have, but still cannot install a CD or cut and paste a picture. She is stupefied by the process of attaching a photo to an email, or that you could compress the picture using “Save As …” This gal has twice the qualifications I do, and a belt size to match.
             After hours, I biked up Dixie Highway to find slummy bars. I should be more fair, because most bars in Florida are slummy by any standards. They are actually old places that have all the local drunks and Hemmingway look-alikes fairly well distributed among themselves. I’m not fond of these places because everybody knows each other. It is particularly difficult for me to hit on women in such places – I’m fussy and you know what happens if other women see you reject the first one. Similar to living in a small town, but with SUVs instead of tractors parked outside. That is a matter of economics, because although the tractors look better, they get slightly worse mileage.

             Most of the larger places have been boarded up, including places that looked as if they’d been in business since 1950. [Not enough Hemmingways?] Tourists just aren’t propping the economy up any more, and retired people don’t hang around drinking establishments. They spent their retirement money on fallout shelters. I talked to a few owners of the remainder, picking up that they “are willing to pay $60 for Karaoke on Thursdays”. There is work there for anyone with the right approach. On the way home, it was an unusually dark night and I cracked up into a parking pylon at six miles an hour. Didn’t even seen it (yes, my bicycle has a light). Bruised shoulder, that’s all.
             Paulina called. She is looking for a place to live for a few months. This always intrigues me, I mean, where do such people live after that? Anyway, she wants to drop by tomorrow and see one of the units, so I said sure, I’d go look with her. She’s an okay kid but she tends to treat you as if you know nothing about your own affairs. I’ll bet you a buck she does that tomorrow, she will not be able to resist the opportunity.
             I heard some tunes I’d forgotten about on my little bar hop. Does anyone remember “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Let It Ride”? These caught my ear because of the rhythmic bass lines. I placed a far more elaborate ad on the Internet, asking specifically for gifted amateurs and discouraging anyone who wanted to play music for a living. People who need the money are bad picks for forming a band. I stated that we would not be playing anything newer than 1979, but you watch, somebody will try.
             Hey, I just found out I am out of coffee. This will never do. See you later, and no, I won’t forget to tell you what the plastic boxes are. They are for sandwiches. To which I conclude English bread is the same size as American and if it is good enough to merit a special box, probably does not taste like Styrofoam.

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January 25, 2007

          Here is a relic of the 60s. Remember I mentioned the fallout shelters? By coincidence, this is posted at the entrance of a seniors condo where I went to do a lesson this evening. I would not have given the age of the building a second thought but for this sign. It’s a friend of Fred’s so I gave him an introductory low price. Good thing, because he was so badly hooked up over there that no amount of shop work would ever have got him hooked up.
          Mainly, the difficulty is when totally inexperienced people believe these ISP claims that a first time install is easy. Just follow the directions on the CD, couldn’t be easier. This usually results in them calling in a friend who “knows just everything about computers”. Who proceeds to change the logon name and password but does not write it down. I see a few nods of recognition out there. Sometimes the whiz kid “and he drives a motorcycle, too” does some real damage by further pretending he knows enough to teach them how to use the Internet. In this particular case, the browser was corrupted. I mean, kid, how do you mess with a browser?

          I was over to Howard’s this morning. This was one of my original students and published author. Does anyone remember Joe, the Nigerian Internet café owner who got robbed blind? He hooked up Howard’s network but not quite right. The reason Howard called is that strange recent behavior of a CD tray randomly opening and closing. I still don’t know the solution, but now that I’ve seen the problem on another computer, I’ll zero in on the cause. I think it is a new virus, or worse, an MS “update” that is incompatible with the drive. Opening Win XP seemed to trigger it.
          That 1933 tape (Ace of Aces) is truly a mystery. It just will not copy and has now defeated my best efforts. Sure enough, the Sony recorder wasted another three hours of my time – when will I learn that every Sony product has some kind of built-in defect that they intentionally avoided telling you about. This one prevents you from finalizing a DVD if the device doesn’t auto-detect the end of the source tape. Sony will never convince me they did not do that on purpose.
          Then I tried that cheap-ass V-Stream from K-World that has never worked right. I even rode over to Target but they no longer sell blank VHS tapes or small, cheap TVs (the current crop of DVD burners lack a monitor or any way to attach one, another Japanese brainstorm). Roland the neighbor saw me working around the house all morning and nicely offered to help me re-attach the storm shutter that blew off the west picture window.
          That is the window that JZ has promised to help me fix for a couple of months now. No big deal, as I didn’t have a strip of caulk and the right screws. I stopped and picked some up for I made a ton of money in less than six hours work today. I even bought a lottery ticket for this Saturday. Here’s a copy of it, since nothing will ever come of it. Notice the elaborate reverse psychology.

          What good is a journal if I don’t mention sex once in a while? The neighborhood guys are still talking about some new skinny blonde lady around here who works for $10. I don’t trust the accuracy of others on this point, but they are saying she is good-looking. If that is the case, I have certainly not seen her at all. Good-looking and Florida don’t normally belong in the same sentence. If you all behave, I’ll see if I can get a surreptitious photo of this beauty and let you be the judges. (Sorry, in the end, I couldn't find anything good looking in that range.)
          It looks like yet another weekend without playing a gig. I called the G and gave him the update about Brian and me, explaining that the operation was a success but the patient died. I’m curious if he’ll ever say that he told me so. I’m tempted to walk over to this Flannigan’s to check it out. Didn’t I mention that? It is a chain of so-so bars, but there are so many of them with similar names and exteriors that I never memorized which was which. I dislike bars that are really over-priced restaurants that serve beer. I notice that fat people love to hang out at places like that.
          The thing is, several of the locals have mentioned that it is a good place to meet women. I can’t see it. If it is like the others, it has a bar in the center with booths all around the edges and a patio. It is that bar in the center I don’t like. Is it a bar, or is it a restaurant? Since there is no dance floor (hence no band) it is not a bar. Since there is a regular crowd to drink but don’t eat, it is not a restaurant. Either way, I’ve never cared for drinking places that do not have live entertainment. That is just me, I know.

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January 24, 2007

          Here is a picture of the band. Actually, the almost band. That’s Brian and his tendon is not getting better. We played a few tunes tonight with him strumming along, but it was really a proof of concept. He has absorbed the lessons and we were able to get through unfamiliar music covering all mistakes and recovering from all errors. It is a pity we came so close but he understands that I [now] have to team up with another working musician, at least until he can play again.
          Whatever is wrong with his tendons is serious, plus he admitted he is predisposed to such conditions. I will still hope for recovery because he has the rare good attitude toward playing in a group. Oddly, he is what I would have been if I’d married and I’m what he would be if he’d stayed single. Did you know he traveled to China to adopt his daughter?
          My circle of musician friends here is much smaller than back on the left coast. I always knew somebody I could stand in with back there. By the way, I have the gossip. The G has got his gig back at the coffeehouse. Funny, he never mentioned it to me the way he normally would. Then again, I was never competition before. What he does not know is I don’t care for open mics and expensive coffeehouses nor the mumbo-jumbo crowd that hangs out there. I should show up and read my poem “The Man Who Lived to Be One Hundred”.

          It’s Cort’s Coffeehouse, out on University Drive. I just scanned (meaning I looked at them) 28,000 pictures and I do not have one of that location. Videos, yes, but no stills. The place came up before I knew about the G, because for me it is always a tradition to play something live, even with groups that don’t make it. I suggested a week from next Saturday. Cort is not there any more, he sold out.
          Like most, I sometimes get to wondering where all my conspiracy against the establishment may lead. In my world, all jewelry stores, period, and doctors who charge more than $40 an hour would go broke. I sat down and did some serious think-stuff about the direction of computers. There was a customer in late last week who pointed out that until this generation dies, we [collectively] will continue to do things on the computer in a manual fashion, the way we understood them before. Good point. (Only after that time will we begin to do things totally computerized, which parallels my theory that it would be wiser to change the way you do business than to program.)
          However, I don’t have time to sympathize and I’ve spotted something. The Korean guy, Sean, has not responded for over a week. This made me realize I am a sucker to be confining my offerings to the South Florida market. I figure peeling a dollar out of the locals is more trouble than it is worth. I’ve long felt that way. Why should I pay good money for an ad here, only to face a restrictive and difficult market, when the same service is not even available in China?

          A black eye to AOL. It seems they want $25 for the browser, so my client uninstalled it. I did not check it myself, but this particular client is unlikely to make a mistake with money. So I replaced it with an AOL product called Openride. It is basically four tabbed screens that you can resize in several ways. It breathes a little new life into a saturated market. It also makes the people who think about it a bit more aware that email and browser are not the same thing.
          The blog pictures need to be “optimized”. Fred showed me how to take the dimensions and number of colors way down to make them load faster. Brian also mentioned about You Tube, or is it Toob. I can’t remember, the few times that I looked at it was just to see the feature of the day. He was quite unaware of the enormous difficulties of putting something together for that, even a short clip of just a few minutes.
          I talked to JP, who reports that his dad has gone in the hospital again. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, but apparently they are going to add a third kidney, placing it next to his stomach. I thought kidneys had to be donated by a close relative. I hope for the best, more than usual. While medical procedures are not on my reading list, that is something I’ve never even heard of before.

          Big Al called, he’s one of my students from last summer. He took a bunch of computer lessons, but did not [I feel] completely investigate the requirements for running a home business. He’s been looking at all manner of projects that promise work at home plans. Most of them predictably turned out [so far] to be pyramid schemes, telemarketing or required unsavory sales positions. (Unsavory being anything that requires a sales pitch before anyone would buy it. Like time-sharing condos.) He’s the one who signed up for virtual jury duty and we have an agreement that if he actually finds anything that works, he’ll let me know. He’s got a great computerized home office, but without any work he can actually do. I wonder how many of those already exist in Florida.
          Health, I mean I should mention my own once in a while. My pulse shows a steady decline over the past three weeks. I’m reminded of Groucho Marx who (taking a pulse) said, “Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.”
          I may be able to correct this by changing the batteries on my sphygmanomometer. (Yes, that is the correct spelling. Not sphygmanometer, that is wrong. Both spellings fail the MS spellchecker, a product that has no cure. What? Well, I figure you should already know how to spell before you start typing, see. Yes, I make typos all the time, but that is a completely different issue than not being able to spell. Their system works best for people who really can’t string alphabet letters together in the correct order. Among my top beefs with MS spellchecker is that if you spellcheck the last word in a sentence, it will try to spellcheck the period. Try it, and duh, MS.)

January 23, 2007

           Wait! I can explain. This really is a picture of a grammar book and, yes, I was reading it. It is English grammar written by that Englishman Lynn Quitman Troyka. From one of the northern burroughs, probably. It follows that I’ve got it because I’m a writer, but that is wrong. The book is hilarious. It is filled with tons of examples of bad writing. Not as bad as your average MS [Microsoft] user manual, but at least you have the knowledge you are reading intentional errors.
           One passage that got me was about bomb shelters. If I was a redneck, I’d be against helping anyone, but in fact, I am a strong advocate of individual responsibility and freedom. That is, everyone who feels others should be helped must be unrestricted in doing so. But only insofar as he cannot compel another to do the same.

           I once worked at a place where, every year, the buzzards would come around. They would be wearing a suit and tie, pretending to be a supervisor. They always came early on payday with the same envelopes, printed with your name and address culled from the company employment files without your consent. They would loudly point out who, in your department, gave the most last year. Whatever you gave, they wrote next to your name on their clipboard. If you gave zero, they wrote zero next to your name. A redneck forces personal beliefs upon others. Now, tell me, who is the redneck?
           What about the bomb shelter? I knew you’d ask. I found out that one of the reasons people quit installing them was over legal issues of whether the owners could deny access to “desperate neighbors”. To me, the arch-proponent of the right to own private property for personal use, that was shocking. Of course you had that right, even the right to kill in self-defense and, if any survived, the right to sue them afterward for putting you in that position. It is your bomb shelter, your food and your family. Nobody else’s need could ever supersede that. Or so I thought. Ha – but I’m not a redneck because I sided with family. Gotcha!

           All this meshes with my philosophy of privacy. The best choice is to keep all preparations out of the public eye. I realize in the computer era, it is increasingly impossible to keep information private, but with a few simple safeguards, you can easily ensure complete secrecy over any surpluses you accumulate. Trust me, I live by that tenet. What’s more, I have the financial equivalent of several damn good bomb shelters. See that brick that holds my door open? It is only painted red.
           This is a shot of what I might call Pipe Art. Not to be confused with an eyesore, this is often the result when you don’t “stay friends” with the local building inspectors. I could not find anything that identified the purpose. Is it a water supply? Steam? I mean, they would put not tubes carrying flammable material right where the first drunk would careen into them. Would they?

           I see that the people who are sharing Limewire music on the ‘Net don’t seem to represent the Jimmy Durante crowd. On behalf of a client, I went looking for one of his tunes. Consider that I didn’t even know he could sing. The idea was to find potential backing tracks for an excellent round of dog hairpiece pictures that came in since last week. The camera quality is excellent and looks expensive.
           On the way back, I stopped over at the Gomez residence. Finally AOL has admitted there is an issue with their email. Over the previous weeks I’ve been getting calls about a server problem. No, not the old problem where they have oversubscribed and cannot handle their peak periods, but an error code generated by their system. It finally happened when I was there to see it and instantly I knew it was their equipment.
           Not that it was easy to get through. They have a department that is run like the phone company. First, they put you on with the robot for four to six minutes. Actually, I don’t mind this part because the robot knows at least as much as the average person. Then a flunky gets on the line to baby-talk you for ten minutes before transferring you up a level. During the eight-minute wait, a certain percentage of the calls get dropped. Finally, I did burn through and I found both the problem and the fix.

           The AOL home page is incompatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera browsers in some configurations. You have to open the AOL home page with the newest AOL browser, called AOL9.0VR (if you must know, “Vista Ready”). The problem is that you can open your email account, but the folders with all your email are not in the navigation column. No, not the one where there is nothing in the folder, but the folders themselves are not there. What did I say about hiring people under 30?
           The real beef is why they make thousands of callers go through the drill. I understand bureaucracy and the story that it once took 116 years to have a roof tile replaced on a French church. I also understand they could put another simple menu choice on their recording and eliminate the majority of calls over known issues. Then, would they have that extra opportunity to thank you for using AOL and check the spelling of your last name up to four times?
           Roland, my French next-door neighbor put in a patch of concrete. I can’t figure out why he went through all that trouble. It was a dead spot in the yard between two rocks. Not a pathway or parking spot, not a patio or a shady spot. I figure some people just get the urge to pour and finish cement. I drank an orange banana smoothie and watched from inside my air-conditioned office. He does good work. So do I: one ripe banana, two squeezed oranges, 12 oz of diet lemon lime, a scoop on powdered milk, some pineapple flavoring, a scoop of malt and four ice cubes. One hundred sixty calories.

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January 22, 2007

           Here is a nice shot of my bicycle under the ice cream sign. I forgot my flash drive at the Thrift, so I biked over there this morning to get it. Oops on me. I mispriced that pilot’s wheel. It should have been $250 instead of $150. I do not know how that happened, Dickens was forgiving but I know he was disappointed. He could have sold it for that many times by now. You just can’t get good help these days.
           So I spent most of the day in the shop working out the kinks in the blog software. It is really bad but I attribute that to HTML being a bad language to start with. Lack of communication, if I’d known they needed something, I could have done a much better job of it, and that is no boast. You’d think the designer would have at least talked to somebody who knew how to type.
           That entire crop of ’85 to ’95 are the culprits, always programming things they didn’t know much about. This also coincides with the rise of “object oriented” programming, no mere coincidence if you ask me. They’ve invented a class of objects that have one property in common – they never quite live up to their promise. I have another name for object oriented, I call it “Blame It on Somebody Else” programming.

           On the way back, I stopped to photograph the “Main Street Mural”. Just west on Dania Beach Boulevard, they’ve painted an otherwise dismal wall along the street to look like a series of doorways and shops. It is worth a look. I rode around the long way through some old neighborhoods to see what was there. I even got over to the G’s favorite landmark, the Dania Beach water tower.
           I stopped by to see how he was doing. He says he’s just hibernating and paying the bills. There’s a lot of that going on in Florida. I also went over to see if Steve, the cancer guy, was around. No sign of him, but the porch light was on and there’s a new extension cord on the patio. He might just be in the hospital again.
          In the shop, I installed more RAM on my newest computer and it just cooks along now. I’m tempted to put 2 MB in there just to see what happens. That’s the unit I worked on all afternoon with this blog. Bellsouth is up to something, because the fastest upload was 19 Kbps, around the speed of a dial-up modem. I’ll get better with the formatting. The most tedious part is making the paragraphs indent so that the blog reads like a real book. It’s all becoming experience.

          Next, I went over to Panera for coffee. I could not find the Su Doku puzzle. That Florida Sun-Sentinel is truly run by retards. It is practically impossible to find the entertainment page. It is not listed in the index. That is correct. The newspaper does not list on the front page any clue to the location of the comics section. Hence, run by retards. I did read a passage that policemen in Ft. Lauderdale make $72,000 per year.
           Before I forget, I sampled some new food this morning. It is a cheese bread from Brazil. The lineup at the regular café was too long so I went to the Dollar Store, there is an Argentine guy running a little shop in the wing. Its bread, but more like a light pastry. We got to talking and he is yet another guy who has heard that nonsense tale that medical is free in Canada. I cannot say it often enough, “Nothing is free in Canada, it never was and it never will be.” You pay for your doctor through taxation. Don’t go to Canada when you are young and healthy.
           Ben, the new guitar player, has disappeared. He is not returning my calls. I’ll have to assume he changed his mind. If he does not call today, I’ll likely pull the pin on that adventure. That takes me back to square one.
           I noted that the flags are at half-mast again. If somebody else died, I sure never heard about it. I did note that Hugo Chavez reportedly said America could go to hell. I don’t know who’s doing his PR work but he needs a better speech-writer. Apparently he was responding to some White House theorists who stated that he was gaining too much power. If so, it is those people who should go to hell for not minding their own business. I have to side with Chavez on that one because he is elected. For that matter, he’s been elected every time he ran, to the dismay of the former Venezuelan ruling class. I mean, until Chavez came along, 85% of the country lived in poverty. I’ve seen a ranchito, most of you have not.

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January 21, 2007

           This is a picture of plants growing up through a grate in a nearby parking lot. They get an A for effort, plus it is another sign of the crumbling infrastructure around south Florida. I, for one, was fooled when I read ten years ago that Florida was a recently built up area. It is, but it seems they have chosen the worst of everything. For one thing, they have never learned how to properly pave the streets.
          I finally had to throw one dude out of the store. You can decide who was right; he took a couple of [$1.00] CDs outside to “read the labels.” I informed him not to take any merchandise out of the store until it was paid for and apparently he figured this was the beginning of some sort of discussion. Wrong.

           Then to replace him enters a lady. She has some “Wedgewood” porcelain or the nature of it. She wasted fifteen minutes of my time with the notion that I would “look up” prices for her on the Internet (since I was “already looking things up”.) It never happened. Mercifully she caught on that I was not there to investigate whims, but it took a good half-hour of my life to get to the point where she grasped it.
           Dickens has reorganized the entire store. Customers are finding things I had no idea were around. That is likely a good sign. For example, this lady came in today and bought a gas mask. An Israeli army-issue gas mask, with carry case. I didn’t know it was there. Had she not mentioned her boyfriend even though such things were in the distance, I might have been more interested. My rule states that any woman who has a husband, boyfriend or children will mention them in the first minute of every conversation.

           Another lady was in with absolutely perfect legs. Let me say what I mean. Her legs had, within the previous hour, been completely shaved or waxed clean right up to the top. Thus, wearing a mini-skirt past her upper thighs, she stole the show. I mean, her legs, which were classically shaped, suddenly became beacons of her offerings. Her skirt arrived less than a quarter-inch of your imagination, pal, maybe a sixteenth in college mode. Plucked and preened, indeed they were, and I saw it. Ha, and you did not.
           The blog. I had to do it between other things, but I have it working. “Tales from the Trailer Court” is now being published. So everybody be nice to me, for that might be your 15 seconds of fame. Part of my intention is for the blog to obviate some of my email, although email will never be entirely replaced.
           There is an antique show just west of Dania [say “DAY-nee-ah”] Beach Blvd. the third Thursday of each month. I should pen them a thank you note. The prices are so outrageous they drive people right over to my door. One customer reported a thirty year old camera for $225. When he suggested that was too much, the vendor got snarky. The show is popular and well attended. They have live music. Otherwise, I have a general dislike of sealing off public streets for private functions.

           I met Sam, a metal guy. He takes metal objects and turns them into jewelry. We got to talking and we have agreed to discuss collaboration on an idea I had twenty years ago. Memphis was my budgie bird and I had tried to find a cage that was large enough for him to fly around. All the large cages were tall. Those are for finches or birds that hop. I could not find a cage for birds that fly from perch to perch So I had planned to build one. I did not get past the stage of how to weld the metal.
           Do not underestimate this project. The cage will would be eight to nine feet wide and a replica of either the White House or Taj Mahal. The retail price is estimated to be in the $9,000 to $12,000 range. You will need a maid or butler to keep it clean. There will be inserts to isolate the sections in case you must catch the bird. We have not worked out any details yet and may start on a small model because we do not know if it will sell. I stress that we have only made plans to talk, not build.

           [Author's note 2016-01-21: as usual, the project did not progress beyond the planning stage.]

           Then I decide to learn that old Kenny Rogers tune, “Ruby”. It was originally written about the Korea and only the fantastic short-sightedness of the general American has proven more enduring than “that old crazy Asian war”. I want to upgrade the bass line and see if we can get any mileage from it. However, talk about an indistinct grouping of notes. I think the original bass player played the wrong changes several times. There are also some timing errors and at least two different drummers, all of which indicate the music was patched together in a studio over different time periods.
           The song sounds corny to me and I wonder if some of the lyrics would even be acceptable today. I never listened to it much long ago because Kenny Rogers went from a rock musician to “Country and Western” which, to me back then, was akin to treachery. Can anyone recall the hit he had with the recording of a heartbeat in the background? His band was called the “First Edition”.

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January 20, 2007

           A busy day, and I had a customer walk in and buy that pilot’s wheel for the asking price [$150]. Pssst, the money is hidden in the refrigerator, get it, cold cash? Not too far from the loaded revolver. Sales were well up in the hundreds making it the best day I’ve ever had over there. Dickens has arranged the shop so that things are much more organized and people are finding things even I didn’t know were back there. My archives show this picture [of the pilot wheel] was taken back in September 2006.
           For example, this hippie chick found a hand-painted mirror on the east wall. Okay, the frame was painted, already. She collected such things and I found her to be extremely attractive. Alas, she was also unapproachable. Definitely my type, however, since in a half-hour of conversation she never once mentioned a husband, boyfriend or children. I double like that. She was right out of the 70s, including the granny dress but you cannot fool my trained eye.

           I searched a number of blog sites and in the end, wound right back at blogspot.com. The others had things wrong, the worst ones have a fee buried under several web pages. If I were in charge, I would have two Internets. One where only absolutely free pages were allowed and another for all others.

           During this process, I set up a throwaway email account and noticed that hotmail now has a drop list of where you want to register your address. Since Svalbard is on there, I may give it a try. What? Okay, it is an island group east of Greenland.
           The blog [that I decided to use] is not what I wanted, but I will start with that. If you are reading this, then you’ll know I went ahead with it. Here is a picture of me packing my bass [guitar] up to rehearsal. This particular photo is actually meant for a small promo pack that also reinforces the point that I use music to get women I would have no waste time chatting up otherwise. Thus, while all you see is natural, the outfits are carefully chosen to “neutralize” the fact that I am 25 pounds overweight.

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January 19, 2007

           For all I said about a shop, I still won’t work one where I have to get there early in the morning. While a relatively early riser, I still don’t like a fixed schedule. That is partially because I get my other things done in that stretch. Besides, Florida is geared to screw you around if you have morning deadlines. These slow drawbridges or really, lack of regular bridges, are part of what I mean. Since the bridges themselves are slow, I am often able to hop out and take a look at what is passing below. Yesterday it was a single rust-bucket of a garbage tow that looked like a WWII reject.

          Since my photo of the drawbridge cannot be found, here is a picture of the Dania Beach water tower. Great substitution, for it is another unused relic.
          It was dead at the shop, so I used the time to fix up a couple of older computers. That work is delayed reward but still, it is something productive to do when things are not busy. Alas, I can’t do that when there are customers back and forth. Jerry, the Irishman, was in for a visit. You know how some bicycles just plain look dorky? You should see this light emerald green thing he’s got, with handlebars way up in the air like a Longhorn steer. Then he’s miffed when a “Venezuelan queer wants to hold hands.”

          The worst part of the day was this window washer. He was born and bred in Florida, guaranteed. He comes in and asks for Dickens with the old “he lets me wash his windows” to which I reply he’ll have to talk to Dickens about that. Does the goof take a hint and leave? Not a Florida goof. Into this where is he, when will he be back, what day, what time, on and on. I made him wait up to three minutes between each question while I helped other customers. He would not take buzz off. Finally, when he insists I take down his number and give it to Dickens with an explanation, I threw him out of the store. Not may he write down his number, but I write it down for him. Florida.
          Before hours, I went over to ChipTech to pick up supplies for Fred. I had to advise him not to use that outfit any more. They’ve changed their system to where the burden for everything falls on the customer. Where it used to be zip in there, pick up your pre-ordered supplies and leave, now it takes up to forty minutes of waiting or chasing around to get the simplest thing. This paper and that document and this receipt and that confirmation, all of which should be done on their own time.

          Leonard, the non-guitarist whom I had to turn away, wrote me a thank you note. He thanked me for reading his emails and exchanging my views of music. He further said that he has decided to take guitar lessons. I may follow up and give him a few pointers just for being so polite. That’s a better response than I got from JZ who did not show this evening. He was supposed to get a guitar from his brother and head over here. It will be one of the biggest mistakes he ever makes if he does not follow up on this opportunity.
          A customer today found a tie worth over $100. I was unaware they ran that much although I am not surprised that some people pay it. After paying his dollar, he showed me the tag from some upscale store in London. He was happy, but you know that just earlier this week I had gone through that same tie rack and picked two others for myself that I felt were better looking. That is, of course, proof to all my adversaries that I have no taste whatsoever.

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January 18, 2007

           [Author's note 2016-01-18: here is a picture from 2007 from Wiki. Wow, it isn't an animal picture. It is Victoria Crater. On Mars. Yep, those are sand dunes in the middle of this 2,500 yard wide crater. You can't see it if you don't know where to look, but there is a Mars rover on the crater rim. So they say.
           This is the crater with the "ripples" in the center, probably caused by wind. Alas, nothing much more was said about this discovery.]

           If I was retired, this would have been a pretty damn good day. For those who just got here, I’ve had a unique opportunity over the past year or so to practice for retirement. By that, I mean I have had the time to find out how little and how much of each thing I’ll need so that there will be no surprises. I, too, hear those tales of incredible millions of dollars needed for “comfortable” retirement and had to see for myself.
           There was also a curiosity about how much activity I would require to enjoy life. During this experiment, I found out a whole mess of other things. One of them is that I will never be bored if left alone and I wish I had known how little I required to be happy. Screw the big house and fancy car, unless you like pouring money away. So, without more lecturing, here’s the day.

           [Author's note 2016-01-18: The above is turned out to be more significant than ever intended. There can be confusion over which date I claim to have retired, since that day depends on definition. The last day I worked "for a living" was actually in 1981. But I still worked. So the last day that I worked in that sense was in 1996. But I still had a job, which was a fun way to pass some time. I left that job in 2004.
           The explanation for to day is that I realized I would never again be able to work for a living and there was no practical way to find out if retirement would leave me destitute. My income dropped to a quarter of what it was and I could no longer walk up the street. So the question was, could I buy a small place and find out once and for all what were the minimum requirements of my own retirement. Turns out yes. Once you quit working for a living, your costs drop to the point where almost anything is manageable--but you have to take care of that place to live first.
           Since the next few years of this blog contain all manner of details and tidbits about how to retire, travel, and never again worry about money, I leave it to the reader to find them on their own. After all, I do want others reading this blog, right?]

           I got to the shop just in time to see Dickens off to the Keys. This will be his first break since July last year when I took over for three weeks. The lack of customers till later gave me a chance to go over my plans for this blog again. They’ve been around long enough to see what works or not. I’ve noticed the blogs that fall out are the ones that do not get updated on a daily basis. Also, making money at it falls into a few categories of advertising tactics.
           I measured out a few areas and did some thinking about vending machines. These bubble gum machines are getting so cheap on eBay I’m being tempted again. The product is virtually non-perishable. Somebody donated a brand new Ronco Rotisserie which (I think) retails for $130. A lady brought in a tuxedo saying she used to be a disk jockey. Even crazy Phyllis from the computer store came by and bought nothing.
           It is too bad that place does not show enough of a profit to hire anyone, myself included. Thus, based on my projected retirement date, I have 16 years to put something together that works for me. How do you rate my chances? I tell you that any tiny bump in my income now will likely result in me never going back to work.

           On the way home, before stopping to buy bananas, strawberries, potatoes, apples and onions, I checked in on the G. He was teaching a music lesson, so everything is fine. He just is not returned phone calls. Oh, I also bought some sugar-free candy, first making sure that the sugar had not been replaced by something even worse. It was my reward because I believe it is now something like five years since I’ve eaten beef at home. It has been at least three years for eggs and seven years for ham. Nor do I miss any of them. I wish I could cut out bread, but despite the warnings it is still a staple around here. That, and peanut butter.

           Somebody in Ft. Lauderdale is looking for a proofreader. I replied to the ad, indicating a willingness to do the work by Internet. I quoted them my favorite recent blooper, “Ted and Mary were entertaining guests.” (Most people cannot see the error in that sentence.) Also, that Leo guy wrote back, and I suspect I’ve gotten him mixed up with another person. He does not play guitar at all, but is willing to learn. Sorry, I need somebody who can hit the ground running.
           He (Leo) is the fourth vocalist who responded to an ad that clearly states that middle to mediocre guitar ability is an absolute requirement. I even logged back on and verified the wording. South Florida cannot afford to pay trios and both Brian and I balk at playing a gig for less than a guitarist makes. That, with my natural inclination to avoid relying on more people than I have to means Brian and I may go on stage with just the bass and drum machine.
           I’ve been plugging away at the database system. Nothing to report yet, although I did get MySQL running. It has a strange installation pattern and even tries to log onto the Internet. It will not install if you choose the wrong option, but I got it in there. It has a shell for manipulating the records, which I’ll learn quickly. Everything is done by query and I’m glad to see a few software people have finally figured that out.

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January 17, 2007

            The G has disappeared and that makes it over a week. That only becomes significant if you read on. First, I spent the morning going over the install and patterns of Internet databases and I’m not pleased with what I found. The steps are simple and that is a compliment but the way they fit together took me lots of study. It just seems to me that if you were to design something for the Internet, you would streamline certain items instead of being a total jerk about it.
           This is a picture of an ice cream chest. Why, what did you think it was? Okay, I'll explain. I couldn't find today's picture folder on my flash drive, so I put a picture of something because of policy. Don't you like ice cream?
          By early afternoon, I was over to the wig shop. Ruth has a new clerk in the mornings, still doing payroll the hard (but understandable) way. Thus, it is the clerk or me on the single computer. Not the ideal situation, for Ruth’s setup is geared to monitoring what people do, not what they know. Thus, I have little freedom to do anything without Ruth’s approval, all of which takes time. Hard to live with time.
           ;Progress is very rapid despite the hindrances which will make things difficult and expensive later. One email to the factory addressed the fact that to display the hairpieces, the factory tag must be removed. The ensuing problem is that the unskilled cannot match the product with the correct tag. Yet, the product number cannot be sewn into each hairpiece because the tags must be ordered 6,000 at a time. Far beyond anything we are likely to order any time soon.

           A brat of a kid [Steve] walked in with some pictures to burn on CD. He was most sold on what he did, but I’m still glad he showed. You see, I tend to be relegated to a computer person because most people cannot fathom someone doing more than one thing well. Thus, when I first proposed a story with the hundreds of autographed photos, it was set aside. This kid, whose enthusiasm was contagious, pointed out the value of the shop walls. I openly thanked him for what amounted to a second opinion about that million-dollar fact just sitting there. If Ruth does not publish (or sell the rights to publish), all those fantastic photos are going to get crated up and put in an attic somewhere. Baby boomers can relate to Ruth and if she is taken out of the equation, those photos are not a hill of beans.

           I got over to Brian’s for practice and again find myself with a dilemma. You see, he has finally “broken through the ice” with the material on which I’ve been coaching him. Where he was spending hours on a given tune, suddenly big chunks of music are now attainable with little effort. We were able to play over six tunes we had not really rehearsed, all by following the ground rules I’ve introduced over the previous month. I considered the G standing in, but I tend to overrate his willingness to play anything except the leading role. And I only considered that because Brian plays these things funny.
           Brian’s tendons are not healing. This is the schwerpunkt, the delimma. Within hours, he will now be able to play so many songs that I will have to again go through the rejection patterns. But if he's got tendonitis, it's all a waste of time. Some of those [tunes that get] vetoes will be his favorites. He must concentrate on the vocals, not guitar. The best discovery tonight is that he may be able to play tambourine once he catches onto the backbeat pattern. Alas, this makes him just another vocalist, mind you it also makes it even harder for him to team up with anyone else (although this is difficult to understand at this point).
           I’ll stick with the plan for a while. He is still making small mistakes that give his performance a rustic appeal, which I can sell. I need a guitarist who will play for free to carry this off. Do I hire or train? Of course, I will try to train first, and that brings to mind JZ. He has never played guitar in his life. This has never stopped me in 42 years. JZ has promised to show up here with [his brother] Joe’s guitar at 7:30 PM this Friday. If JZ ever learns guitar, which he seems to think is too difficult, we'd be a deadly team of lady's choice.

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January 16, 2007

            Later in the day, my guitarist audition was canceled. Several others have responded. Time will tell, I am repelled by the idea of a trio as it means relying on yet another person. On that happy note, I took a bike ride down one of Hollywood’s ridiculous bike paths. By that, I mean the discontinuous idiotic paths that go nowhere. This particular one I called the “Hat-Size Path” because it goes 8-7/8ths blocks down the wrong side of the street, the right side being the one with the water view, safety rail and palm trees.
           It then peters out and directs bicycles back into the traffic lanes. Hollywood is full of these paths that go nowhere, maybe I’ll feature others. I emailed the lot, along with photos of the tour, to Cahoots. I included such sights as abandoned motels, tree stumps, graffiti and peeling paint. Throw in “constant signs of Florida’s entrepreneurial spirit that fly in the face of business recession if not a few zoning restrictions” and billed it as the “most enjoyable four minutes” ever spent in the area.

           Not being tired, I ran some numbers y’day. It confirms my suspicion that China may be a better business deal than even I imagined (in the short run). The reason is entirely America’s own fault due to the structure of business here. We may have considered ourselves a model for success at some point in the past but now it’s the rope to hang us. We foolishly thought if others copied out system, they would copy the obvious inefficiencies, too.
           The problem appears to be the way we cling to the outdated systems of middleman. Yeah, I’ve noted it before, but never quantified it. American distances made small stores in each little town profitable even though such a system is laughably inefficient. That inefficiency gave rise to the middleman. The difference, and it is an important difference, was that in the past the middleman performed at least some duties that had a cause and effect relationship to the price of the article being sold. He stored it, or delivered it, or something.

           Now, the middleman focuses on selling it. That is very shortsighted, but you see the effect whenever you are offered a “service contract”. The store has no interest in repairing or replacing defective merchandise, just in unloading it onto you. The core of the middleman problem is even worse – it follows a formula that no longer has relevance. This is the method of tripling your cost, a policy which seems to have had roots in the fact that at one time stores did have to cover the costs of defective merchandise. That wonderful service has largely been removed.
           Here is what I calculated. The factory builds it for a dollar, sells it for three. The wholesaler gets it for three and sells it for nine. The retailer picks it up for nine and retails it for twenty-seven. This is hypothetical and also arbitrary, because the party that sold the direct [raw] materials to the factory considers them the end-user, and so on. At this point, you see that prices have risen to twenty-seven times the original cost.

           However, now plug in the middleman, who no longer creates or adds any value. His job centers on selling the product. Americans buy this nonsense because they remember the good old days. The middleman position takes equal place beside the wholesaler and retailer, it is now the job of moving the product while avoiding any responsibility for anything except growing sales figures. If he is considered a part of the chain, the product quickly leaps to eighty-one times the cost. I do believe many of the outrageous prices seen today are a result of this system. It makes most article so expensive, they only be sold on credit.
           Don’t be too harsh on my analysis, for I was examining the rise in prices through the system and not looking for social issues. Mind you, it now makes more sense why credit reports have become the single most important aspect of business life. Why identifying you has become more important than listening to your reasons, and why a fortune is spent trying to convince you that a salesman is required to buy things. That may have once been true for expensive things, but now it has extended to things that have become expensive. The cover story is that you must be shown the value and explained the advantages, which is basically a load of bunk. You are being sounded out for credit-worthiness. You don’t think the salesman actually cares about your zip code, do you?

           This degenerate system is entrenched in America. Try to buy a new car without having to deal with a grinning idiot salesman. It is impossible. Try to go to a college to take one course for content rather than credit. Same thing, except he’s called a “counselor”. Pay now, learn later. None of these people will tell you the price over the phone. I peered into this structure to see where this eighty-one-fold increase in price went and maybe more people should think it through. My model was simplistic, but like most economic theory, the extreme cases are the simpler to understand.
           So do I fix the system, or conspire to eliminate two or three layers of middleman and pocket the money? Do I put salesman out of work and maybe the businesses that force salesmen on you? Do you think I’d lower the price to what is reasonable? Do you think I’ll consider what happens to the neighborhood or shops that have been there since before the flood? Do you think I would pity anyone who operated within the existing system without giving their own position a second thought? Do I owe anything to the way things are? Does anyone deserve my loyalty?

           Yes, I did have time on my hands today. My students all cancelled out, including one who became a great-grandparent. Imagine, people my age already fourth generation. I was also in the shop to download MySQL and Apache as preliminaries to the Area Code database. Again, the manuals are proving inadequate, often giving directions of things to type without specifying where and assuming you know which are DOS-based. There is also a program called MD5 they keep referring to that appears to do nothing.
           Once I got it running, it is just the same old SQL with a few minor changes to make it somewhat graphical in nature, and a few overlays to make it friendlier. The hard part will be making all these things work together, I think.

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