Dunkables. The Pilsbury French Toast brand. I won’t tell where you can dunk those things. I very rarely throw out food yet this product was not even suitable for meat loaf filler. When the jackpot is big enough, I buy one lotto ticket. Will Florida try to screw people with self-control? Do we need to ask? The familiar sign said $35 million. But now read the fine print. See those three lines at the bottom that say “The choice is yours!”
Your prize now depends on how much you paid for the ticket. If this $1 ticket wins, it is good for $10 million. At $2, it moves to $20 million and if you pay $3 for the same ticket, the prize is $35 million. It has the same format as the old game and I thought I was playing for $35 million (I only buy when the jackpot is over $25 million). They got me. To those who say it is no big deal, I know that, but remember, Florida has this type of constant petty scam piled 10,000 feet thick. You cannot live here a single day without being shafted by someone, or as I used to say at the phone company, “opportunities for co-operation right where you’d least expect them”. Congratulations me. I’ve mentioned the magic 3,000 miles on my bicycle before, but that was estimated, because the odometer was not always there. I’m referring to recorded miles and that just happened this morning. Time to recap. I’ve had the bike 556 days. (I quit tracking daily specs after 2,523 miles.) Nonetheless, I averaged 5.39 miles per day, or a personally astonishing 1,969 miles per year. I averaged 8.971 mph, which means my exercise is by the hour, not the minute. I would not have thought that to be possible not too long ago.
I consider the episode an excellent accomplishment and a fitting outcome of that heart attack I had when I was far too young. I’ve never been athletic in the sense of working out in a smelly gym. Nor do I know any athletes, with the possible exception of Mitch, who is single-handedly trying to turn cross-country trike-riding into an Olympic event. For what its worth, I feel perfectly healthy but I know total recovery from the attack is not possible. No more trips to Angel Falls unless I learn to fly a helicopter.
Much as I’d like to bike ride to work, I’ll wait until I can find a secure place to lock up. Phone work does not attract the most honest or cerebral crowd, and I could not find anything to chain up after shift y’day. Of course, more exercise means more quiet time for me and you know what I think I’ll do? Everybody by now knows about the Big Dictionary. I’ve only ever looked up definitions, but some of these old books have a wealth of tables and other information near the covers. See you later.
Okay, it is called the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, edited by a man whose surname is “Onions”. This version is from 1933, Oxford University Press, Amen House, Glasgow, I have a reprint from 1962. The book sold for $34 and was owned by “Michael Fisk”. In 2,600 pages, it contains no tables, charts, graphs or illustrations. Nary a one.
Going into work was easy, there are no clocks, nobody giving lame pep talks, although the supervisors do cheer things on rather like they used to. It was semi-busy, I’m catching on. I had two sales, one large, one small. I’m closing around one in every eight calls, which must be about right. I can, indeed, read between calls since others do (if you call The DaVinci Code reading). The neatest part so far is that all I have to do is talk. Alas, I don’t yet know how to overcome the objections or do a drop to financing. That will come.
I have to call a supervisor over to do the close, but the rumor is that since I’m selling something on every shift, headquarters is happy. You get cash bonuses for every little thing and I made an extra $18 today. Nothing to whoop about but a nice touch, and it keeps the needy types from borrowing until payday.
The book I chose to read (at work) was the scripting language “Javascript”. I never read it in detail, since it is indeed one of the worst examples of how not to go about creating a new language. Like all “modern” attempts, it suffers from a very poor design that cannot be put right. The most stupid part of the language is that it is difficult to type. Entering comment notation requires up to nine keystrokes depending on how you count them. Every command seems to be patched up to fix earlier bad assumptions as things went along. Is it modeled on the Social Security administration?
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