That’s Wallace again, up near Lake Worth. We are heading back from the beach along a path through the dunes. This is typical of the beaches up further north that are not overrun by tourists and sightseers. If I recall, we were the only people on that beach that resembled outsiders. It wasn’t hard to tell as there were fewer than five persons out there that day.
It’s called learning French the hard way. I notice people with $2500 Toshiba laptops in the laundry room having on-line connection troubles. What I thought would be ten minutes became one of the more intense four hours of computer troubleshooting in my life. It was one of those onion problems, each layer revealing another.
These are French Canadiens who do not speak one word of English. They even have the French version of Windows. If the following description makes sense, the Geek Squad needs you. One user has a DSL hookup to a Belkin wireless router, which he lets others share. These Belkins are cheap but can be hard to configure. Most people just plug them in and usually they work right out of the box. (Belkins are 192.168.2.1)However, they are short range, so everyone had to congregate in the laundry room to get service. They would connect to the SSID (the signal broadcast name) of Belkin. The problem began when somebody else nearby bought the same model of router. Now there were two Belkins with the same SSID on the same channel. Try to imagine a room full of no-techs babbling in mass confusion and hopelessly getting nowhere. You are in Ottawa.
The first thing I do is change the SSID to “soleil2008”, meaning “sunshine2008”. Most of the users had to be re-taught how to connect, only to learn they had, over time, configured things wrongly using the other Belkin. Also, Belkin, I don’t appreciate your routers developing connectivity problems when I do something simple like make that change. What’s more, the Belkin cannot open web pages if you enable WEP. The good news is I have some new allies in the French community.
Note: for techs only. When you connect DSL modem to a router, the modem “Internet” LED may stop working. This is not line problem, but because the modem must generally be placed in bridge mode to transmit through to the router. If the router is getting traffic, you are okay. Remember for all PPPoE service, it is the router that must contain your phone company account name and password—and you must remove that information from your (Westel) modem by resetting it. Got that?
It was over to the dollar store to stock up on supplies for Pudding-Tat. I found out the other day this park does not allow pets. I assumed that meant everyone else except me. The nickname for this trailer is “The Fortress of Solitude”. That distant rumble of the bulldozer is getting a little louder each day. That babe that likes me was working, what a total hottie. She’s around five-nine and weighs maybe 104. She has a boyfriend. It is agony, because she likes me so well that she doesn’t have her guard up around me like with the others who stare at her.
This flu has shown that it is going to persist but I threw the party at Jimbo’s again. All should keep in mind that is not a steady Friday thing, just an alternative to doing anything else in this town. Trust me, the crowds are no better or well-behaved anywhere else. I’m up $55 for the evening and another weekend trip is sounding great.
[Author's note 2016-01-28: Here is the same picture as above, now benefiting from better photo correction software.]
Little Jo and Harpman Garry were in and we did an excellent four piece blues solo, “The World According to Jimbo’s”. Tony caught on that you can’t do a standard blues number at Jimbo’s or you wind up being a conductor. You have to let the harmonica player go steady until he’s tired, then let the next instrument take over, bearing in mind as a guitarist, you may never get a turn. He also expressed surprise that all of us knew the original keys (for old blues is piano music and predominantly in the key of C).
The good news is that while he’s never seen a show like mine, he’s figured out it is perfectly good entertainment for most people I said “most”. He also knows he could never pull it off using just a guitar, so that issue is resolved. When he saw the essence of my showmanship was to make the recordings sound as live as possible, he began to noodle along. By the end of the hour, he was sold on this presentation, that is, he likes to play along in this manner. (His country riffs sound awful bluesy.) He knows people on the beach and says he can get gigs over there. We shall see.
For the record, I have limited experience (eight months) as a solo performer. Tonight taught me not to play having any type of illness. It is busy up there, running three foot pedals, four microphones, a PA system, playing bass plus operating the lo-hat, fielding the crowd and now trying to remember song words. Yeah, a little busy. I went in tonight so as to meet up with this Tony dude. If you think I’m a wimp, why not audition for my part? First you stand on one foot for eight minutes with a ten pound weight around your neck. Then I’ll give you something to cry about.
ADDENDUM
A few months ago this destitute guy came in and needed something on the computer, so I helped him out, no charge. I forget what it even was, but it was trouble with the authorities. Anyway, he’s back on his feet, running a construction crew and he came in and gave me $100. Karma?
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