Look at that, 3,200.0 miles on my two-wheeler. By rights I should be able to do somersaults. More on why not in a moment. The readout is also showing I was doing 6.9 mph when the picture was taken. I get plenty of exercise but for the record, I have not met any women as shown on all the bicycle commercials. Aw, shucks. Note my coffee to go.
It was Internet research all day, and as usual I had a vast imbalance of false leads. These were roughly evenly divided between poor search engines, mis-categorization and deliberate false advertising. For example, I did everything I could to find a description of how a bar coding system is set up. Nothing but tons of ads trying to sell me components, but no overall set of directions on how to proceed.What I’ve discovered is part of what I suspected. The bar code itself contains minimal information, usually just a number. Scanning this number is identical to keying in a database search term, that is, the database has to pre-exist. Several places claimed to have ISBN databases, but none were suitable as all of them restricted you to looking up one book at a time. Da bastards.
The scanner itself is a trade-off. It turns out there are considerations you would not suspect until too late, and the manufacturers are keen to rip you off. For example, the wand style must physically contact the label, the CCD model won’t scan anything wider than the read head, and the laser models start at $300. I had to go to England even to find this little advice. I did not locate one source that explained all the facets of setting up a system. The scanners and bar codes are treated like two separate entities. It was like looking up “sex” on Wikipedia: 20 pages of technical terms but not a single word on how to get a date for tonight. What? You say 22 pages? Well, I didn’t really go there.
Just a little medical news. My tests show that my system is indeed producing triglycerides by itself. Another mystery is why it took so long and so many expensive procedures to determine that. Triglycerides are a form of bad cholesterol associated with exactly what I do not do: bad diet, smoking, drinking and no exercise. Thus, the only place left for it to come from was internally. The good news is that there may be a product that reverses the process. In the cat department, it is D minus 2.
That does it, no more computer call-outs. Two hours I spent on a sound driver before the guy told me he had run a registry program. Then he was dissatisfied because his sound card wouldn’t work, saying “I’m right back where I started”. Yeah, well I’m not, two hours later, my own car and gasoline and tearing the computer open twice. Do not mess with your registry.
The organization lady, the one who’s been here thirty years, dropped by. (Or more accurately, she set the alarm off by standing outside too long.) Anyway, she is holding out for $15,000 and I can’t blame her. I wonder how close to that situation I’d be if Wallace and I had not found such a nice place (and we are so far the only ones who did). It seems the major hold up is the park wants her to also sign away her right to sue the city at the same time. That I don’t know, but she is active in those circles and there is a lot of politics involved. She also has a bad civil lawyer because around here the only good ones are on TV.
People die in this kind of heat, so I got back inside for the evening. Let’s see, have I missed covering anything? Yes. There was a rich widow in Jimbo’s marginally asking leading questions about me. On the way home I stopped at Irv’s market and balked at spending $3.49 a pound for nectarines. One customer in the shop today overheard me mention to Mike that I thought politics should be outlawed. Who, the customer wanted to know, would run the country? Like a lot of peasants, he couldn’t imagine not being lead around by the nose.
I also examined material on the GPR, Ground Penetrating Radar. Yikes, the machines are $19,000 each and even that is misleading in the new American way. That is, all the other things required to make it work are considered extras. Expensive extras. Again, I had to electronically leave America to get any hard information. It seems the very best software available barely works except on flat dry ground of consistent density. I saw printouts that completely overlooked graves just inches below the surface due to a layer of sand. The existing users do not appear happy with the device.
