They finally got the fountain working in Young Circle. Note the rainbow as I pedal past. It was too hot again today but I didn’t have time to stop and wait by the water. The park is quite nice, but because it is downtown it is mainly deserted. They have free shows at the center that are timed exactly when I can’t be there, but I think that is just coincidence. On average, a coffee in the area costs $3. Don’t we all love to wait in line during our 15 minute break while the fat lady orders something with at least eight ingredients?
It’s a good thing Teresa called, I missed out on y’day. Darn near went to the library instead of home to get my bass. That’s the car for you, this country makes it hard to get by without one and I lost a day over that. The problem turned out to be a blown head gasket. However, that is what they told me three years and 30,000 miles ago. I paid up ($95) and now that the Taurus starts, it runs as well as ever.During this repair, I searched on mini-cars or microcars. These are basic car designs powered by a motorcycle engine. Some are ingenious while others are golf carts. There is one from Sri Lanka that will hit 70 mph. Fred’s father had an Isetta, the little German car where the whole front swings open. It is an Italian design, see photo below. There are new designs that use electric motors but these seem to be priced in the $30,000 range. I’ll keep on the lookout.
These cars often do not require registration, insurance or even a driver’s license. For this reason in countries like France and Italy, they are looked down upon as the vehicle of choice for those convicted of impaired driving. That is today’s trivia. The cars here are simply considered too cheap and dangerous in a collision. But when people get broke enough you need a stopwatch to see how fast their attitudes change. We are okay for now when most of the unemployed are still real estate agents and condo salesmen. Check back in twelve months.
The reason I’m smug is because NewRiver reports their “record tracking” procedure finally became so complicated it required ten years to get it working and it qualified for a patent. (Their budget was $30 million more than mine.) Instead of receiving documents by mail, you get a reminder to log on. Good, that tells people who assume I was playing Tetris what I’m really doing in front of a computer. In a sense, I am a step ahead of the pack because I’ve been advising new business for ten plus years to design their record keeping from the ground up to be database compatible.
Nobody go saying all NewRiver had to do was ask the SEC to knock off with all the rules. Not only is the SEC a swollen carcass of a bureaucracy, NewRiver is not creating the documents. They are only keeping records of who got what. That is the underlying and far more serious situation because it was designed piecemeal by clerical-minded people. I don’t think anyone has even designed a database that can properly track all postal addresses.
[Author's note 2016-01-30: this was before I learned that the post office does not have a database of all address, but who it does have is a scan of every letter. Using OCR, it logs every address and every return address as a link, without regard to whether the addresses actually exist or not. Hence, they track letters, not postal addresses per se. As a reminder, there has never been an instance in history where this kind of file-keeping was not ultimately abused by the authorities. Just so you know.]
Near the end of the book on Antarctica, I’ve read a term I have not heard since before I started kindergarten. The word “fugue” refers to, among other conditions, personality clashes that occur to people in long-term isolation. That means more than thirty days at a stretch. I have a little test for you that is designed to trick you into taking the wrong side. Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for centuries just keep quiet about the answer.
You are the commanding officer of a weather station with two soldiers who must work together as a team eight hours per day, with eight hours of free time and eight hours of sleep. They have both been assigned a long-term stint at your facility. There is a common area and after the first shift, one man wants to play cards and talk. The other man is a medical student who wants to study every spare moment. Remember the test is not that these two won’t get along, but how you solve the situation, that is, who you side with. Careful. It’s a fugue.
Later. It was a small but happy crowd tonight. The day turned strangely cold by late afternoon. Florida spoils you. Anything below 60 degrees is chilly. It was a table of people from the interior who knew Sammy and his wife. Other than that the few regulars around were bundled up like it was frostbite season. I wish I’d had the word-sync. Tonight was a good example of how Karaoke has created a class of vocalists who don’t know the words.
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