It’s another broiler, 99 degrees outside and 94 inside if the A/C is off. It’s great bike weather as long as you stay moving a minimum 8 mph. I rode downtown to pay up my cell phone and see that MetroPCS is up to their old tricks again. The outside bill payment machine is on the fritz. Or is it? This is not the first time that machine has lapsed into a mode where it will take your money, but not pay your bill. Consequently, the office was full of people who had paid, but whose service was cut off.The scam? The MetroPCS people can’t “verify” the payment, so if you want service you have to pay a second time and eventually get a credit for the next cycle. What? You wanted the money for groceries? Hey, that’s not MetroPCS’s problem, lady. It does seem odd whenever the machine malfunctions, it does so in their favor.
I had brought along reading material but finally gave up waiting around 4:30 in the afternoon. At one point I even left and went shopping for an hour. The line had only moved four people when I returned. Do you suppose MetroPCS and Greyhound both use the same staffing agency? The Yankee business lesson here: keeping people’s money sure cuts down on cash flow problems.
The only time I read Archie comics anymore is in the supermarket checkout. Have you seen the new “Anime” style? (Is anime the secret code for “half-Japanese”.) I’m just saying I don’t know which is the better career choice for art school flunk-outs: drawing anime or going into German politics. Anyway, Archie comics have undergone a transmogrification.
Archie still has no hormones but is now a sensitive figurehead. Veronica is into pre-dominatrix fashions and Betty has put on a few pounds around the rump and upper thighs, as in Bantu-back. (Can’t have a total blonde babe in the media these days, ask the Miss America critics.) Reggie sports one of those dipshit $80 haircuts spotted mostly in late-night IBM advertisements and he is decidedly looking queerer than ever. Jughead has the attention deficit thing going strong, poor-baby style.
Before, Archie comics were mildly amusing. Now instead of a corny plot, they have contemporary themes. You just know where all this is headed. Is Mr. Lodge dating his secretary? Will Veronica rebel and become a lap dancer? While still in high school, Veronica is winning strange beauty contests and all the characters are now depicted in their very late teens. Watch for crimped hair and tattoos to follow. My conclusion is that while I’m for progress, I think the same effort could have been better used to create more original subject matter. At least the cartoon still reads from left to right, a system that doesn’t really require that much improvement.
Trivia time. Many people suppose the statue “The Thinker” is ancient Roman. Actually, it is from the 1800’s, by Auguste Rodin. He gave the statue to the nation; the French government kept it in a “warm, centrally heated” museum and made a fortune off displaying it. In return, France let Rodin freeze to death. When he desperately asked to be allowed to live in his own studio, which was also in that museum, they told him to take a hike.
Last, I spent several hours with Javascript. I was testing the interactive feature. This is the ability of one “program” to trigger another program at a different location. Normally this is associated with very tricky program code, but tricky in the sense that all the so-called specialty languages are really just off-shoots of BASIC. They vary mainly in punctuation, which makes it difficult to remember each nuance. Was that PHP or C++? This ability of one program to control another is vital to my master plan.
The day ended in partial success. I was able to get the client (home) computer to activate the server (Internet) computer, but not to transmit values between them. My system requires these values, called variables, to go from your computer to the Internet, which processes them, and returns the finished product. Oddly, all three textbooks I used to assist me had fatal errors in the code listings. Message to all software companies: English majors do not make good proofreaders. Stay tuned for developments.
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