Pudding-Tat is no worse for having spent her first night in the wilds. She knows the hiding spots in Forest Wally now. Despite flea collars, she still brings the critters with her but that is a fact of life here. That’s a record twelve hours she was outside. I’ll go pick up some extra flea drops and maybe a new set of PA speakers while I’m at it. I may have surround sound here before I know it.The cat med will have to wait. Big Lots had a sale on wristwatches and it is now 10:37 A.M. I’ll justify it with a some rich man philosophy, “It’s good for her to scratch a little bit because when things get bad she won’t miss comfort so much.” Why, that is positively pure middle-class bullsh, and a fine job of it.
Speaking of jerks, here’s one. While I was stuck in the coffee lineup, some old coot walking out saw me glance at a newspaper left on a table. So he walks back and pretends he’s reading it, even after I sat down and opened my book. He knew I wanted something in that paper. I waited him out for nearly a half-hour, when finally another person left another paper and I grabbed the crossword. The look of disappointment on his poor face; his only consolation was he knew he had stalled me. As he left, he was very careful to throw the paper in the trash bin, just in case.
I must again point out the positive side of high gas prices. The odd jerk still exists who has to gun his motor whenever he passes a bicycle, but now that costs him a dollar. Hello to the empty streets and parking lots, particularly the latter at the casino with their tow-bit little ropes and valet parking.
It was easy to bike around all day and get everything done. For example, I bought supplies, stocked my vending machine, answered my email, rigged up a temporary monitor at the shop, bought a stand for my MP3 player and just finished setting up my speakers here to check if they are blown. I fear the worst, but replacing a speaker is easy. I predict the woofers on those $200 cabinets carry maybe a $60 price tag. I may even consider an upgrade.
The chasing around put 12 miles on my bicycle. The traffic is so light, I hope gas goes to $5 or more very quickly. It sure set the yokels back in their places and shows you how many of them were living on the fringes of credit. Applying more middle-class logic, maybe they will find the payments on their monster SUV a lot easier now that they can’t afford to drive it. Bwaaaah-ha-ha-ha-ha.
We have news from Wallace. He made it to Kalispell, Montana, before another major breakdown. It was the main bearing, not an economical repair. He purchased a Chevy Malibu and should be out of the mountain passes by later today.
Peggy, the lady with the cell phone covers called today. Arturo determined the product did not have the potential to justify a large web page. So I looked at some on-line templates for shops. I noted a pattern right away. First, they are all difficult for a non-computer person to operate. Second, they are overkill for what most people want, which is a basic web catalog of their products. Three, it is obvious the site emphasis is on identifying and tracking the business operator for income tax purposes. We’ll have no underground economy on this Internet. (Taking AdSense as an example, those annoying marginal ads from Google. “Signing up” for that amounts to filling out tax related forms.)
I’m sure somebody is already on the trail, but what we need is a good, reliable off-shore anonymous catalog where people can buy and sell anonymously. That is, where tax compliance becomes their decision, not Google’s. You advertise, payment goes to, say, Belize, and when the money arrives, the product is shipped. If anybody is doing this, I can’t find any advertising for it. Let me keep looking a bit. I don’t believe that “full service” site crap any more than that domain name scam. As it stands (although the role is unsatisfactorily filled by credit card companies), there are lots of people who will sell for you, but none who will buy for you. An interesting mental challenge.
