Turns out the trouble with my left ear is not imaginary. Gee, Doctor, after the operation, will I be able to play the violin? I have a curved ear canal and I had to go to a specialist to find out. Funny how at the height of my loss I had no difficultly hearing bull donkey from across the room. Well, loss sounds severe, it is more like something drowning out rather than blocking. I’m about to get irrigated, insert old joke here.
A local talent agency contacted me today, but not for a lead role. It seems they fired a secretary recently who trashed them on-line. These Internet complaint lines are a scam, but they hire professionals to keep their web site on the first page of any search. And they want an extortionary amount of money to remove the slur. Today’s deadbeats are www.complaint.com. Every search on the victim produces a warning on the same page. I had the unpleasant task of explaining all this.
There is no way to tell if these malicious posts hurt business. These outfits prey upon the imagination of the wronged party that business is suddenly bad. One of the best tactics is to post a rebuttal to the original, since it usually appears right below any single incident comment (most people don’t read much further even if the OP pursues the issue). This particular instance caught my attention because the lady that posted the malicious complaint is somebody I recognize. She is a shriveled up old bag, around 56, who bills herself as 43, give us a break.
The month wraps up with a lot of disappointment. The two programming guys never came back, the drumbox dude says no deal, and an opportunity to work with some surveillance equipment never materialized. And, when it is all said and done, I lost $1.00 from business. Not bad considering, but the second loss month in a row ever. It was swamped by Bingo and other income although that still leaves it an evil omen.
While continuing to study exchange rates looking for indicators I discover most fluctuations require a combination of inputs from both countries, with one exception: nationalization. Should a county arbitrarily nationalize even one industry, my formulas don’t work. In Canada the banks are already government entities and in America, bailouts amount to much the same thing. Both spell inefficiency. The Labor Party (1925) in England wanted to nationalize the coal industry. The logic is that this move would do away with the deadweight which was causing all the problems.
Today’s trivia is how deadweight was defined in the 1920s. It was believed that a government takeover would force into productive occupations the “unnecessary” people such as stockholders, selling staff, managers and investors, all of whom “lived without working”. The old fat gets replaced by the new fat. In move the bureaucrats, with their hordes of dedicated hard-working staff, all recruited from that mind-boggling wellspring of truly astounding productivity: French Canada.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
August 30, 2009
You know who I don’t like? eTrade. Let me tell you about an episode many years ago when on-line trading was brand new. I was one of a few hundred people in America who was sufficiently suspicious of Internet companies that demanded too much personal information. I tested the eTrade system by logging on with a “random identity”. Now remember, eTrade is not, repeat not, anybody special. Just bastards who figured out that many people thought they were obligated to fill out text boxes with asterisks.
So what happened? Well, I had corrected surmised that eTrade was up to something and would use the data to snoop, which they promptly did. Within 24 hours, I received a phone call from eTrade “security”. They were, what can I say, ballistically furious that they did not have my real name. It was like listening to insane people on the other end. They were threatening to prosecute me if I didn’t tell them who I really was, duh. Shortly afterward, I called back their office, but this time pretending to be the other me. I said I wanted to “cancel my new account and would they be kind enough to erase all the information” I had given them.
These eTrade jerkfaces just about lost it. They shrieked that the information was “theirs” and they would never erase it and that they had taped all our phone calls. I’m not exaggerating, they shrieked. When I told them I had done the same, they said that was illegal and hung up. Now remember, this is just some two-bit Seattle broker. As far as I’m concerned eTrade is a marketing agency with a hidden agenda.
I was reminded of eTrade because, you guessed it, I was again examining segments of the international investment community. Last day, I talked of exchange rates which could have given the wrong impression. I have no intention entering “forex” trading. That is a quick road to poverty. Foreign exchange is people who gamble on currency fluctuations, and just so you know, the brokers don’t make a commission on the sales. They make money on what is called the “spread”, the difference between buying and selling.
What I was really examining were the possibilities of trading in real money. Many years ago I worked near the Canadian border and had emergency bank accounts on both sides. I saw that the amounts would not stay equal due to exchange rates. A few years later I returned to night school and money was tight, so instead of “topping up” the account that got lower, I began to withdraw enough from the bigger account to equalize the other. Hence, “spinning”, which is normally associated with gold and silver, but six years later, I had nearly doubled my money without adding a cent. (I promptly lost all that money investing in a taxi company in Venezuela, but that is another story.)
The spin was made possible because I crossed the border every day and there were banks nearby that bought foreign currency. This is not always the case, which is important. You walk up to the counter, claim you just returned from holidays, and cash in up to $2,000 without any questions asked, and anonymously walk out of the bank. I always wondered what if this was done with enough money. Seems if anybody knows, they are not saying. I admit this is not an original idea, but if you try to figure it out, I’ll wager you get it exactly backwards.
You won’t make money at it. If you want to make money, stand-up comedians make $5,000 per week. Weather forecaster make around the same. I’m just looking to revive an old hobby.
Eddie made it over for rehearsal, and as is becoming usual, we lost track of time. This is because these sessions are very productive musically. I judging that by the amount of “musical mileage” we cover. By comparison, other guitar players can be a waste of time. If only Eddie could practice three times per week. It is moving along well enough and soon we will practice at Jimbos. He has also taken quickly to my lessons about syncopating the basic beat of most songs so heavily that neither of us is playing the actual progression.
It melds amazingly well, sounding like more than two instruments. The trick is that only rarely are the drums, bass and guitar playing at the same instant. This is the opposite of the guitarist who tries to solo all the time. I notice Eddie no longer minds making errors because it means we get to repeat the song from the beginning one more time.
Our song list is heavy with old Creedance Clearwater material. Side message to Wallace: Eddie doesn’t like the new bow-legged James Bond either.
So what happened? Well, I had corrected surmised that eTrade was up to something and would use the data to snoop, which they promptly did. Within 24 hours, I received a phone call from eTrade “security”. They were, what can I say, ballistically furious that they did not have my real name. It was like listening to insane people on the other end. They were threatening to prosecute me if I didn’t tell them who I really was, duh. Shortly afterward, I called back their office, but this time pretending to be the other me. I said I wanted to “cancel my new account and would they be kind enough to erase all the information” I had given them.
These eTrade jerkfaces just about lost it. They shrieked that the information was “theirs” and they would never erase it and that they had taped all our phone calls. I’m not exaggerating, they shrieked. When I told them I had done the same, they said that was illegal and hung up. Now remember, this is just some two-bit Seattle broker. As far as I’m concerned eTrade is a marketing agency with a hidden agenda.
I was reminded of eTrade because, you guessed it, I was again examining segments of the international investment community. Last day, I talked of exchange rates which could have given the wrong impression. I have no intention entering “forex” trading. That is a quick road to poverty. Foreign exchange is people who gamble on currency fluctuations, and just so you know, the brokers don’t make a commission on the sales. They make money on what is called the “spread”, the difference between buying and selling.
What I was really examining were the possibilities of trading in real money. Many years ago I worked near the Canadian border and had emergency bank accounts on both sides. I saw that the amounts would not stay equal due to exchange rates. A few years later I returned to night school and money was tight, so instead of “topping up” the account that got lower, I began to withdraw enough from the bigger account to equalize the other. Hence, “spinning”, which is normally associated with gold and silver, but six years later, I had nearly doubled my money without adding a cent. (I promptly lost all that money investing in a taxi company in Venezuela, but that is another story.)
The spin was made possible because I crossed the border every day and there were banks nearby that bought foreign currency. This is not always the case, which is important. You walk up to the counter, claim you just returned from holidays, and cash in up to $2,000 without any questions asked, and anonymously walk out of the bank. I always wondered what if this was done with enough money. Seems if anybody knows, they are not saying. I admit this is not an original idea, but if you try to figure it out, I’ll wager you get it exactly backwards.
You won’t make money at it. If you want to make money, stand-up comedians make $5,000 per week. Weather forecaster make around the same. I’m just looking to revive an old hobby.
Eddie made it over for rehearsal, and as is becoming usual, we lost track of time. This is because these sessions are very productive musically. I judging that by the amount of “musical mileage” we cover. By comparison, other guitar players can be a waste of time. If only Eddie could practice three times per week. It is moving along well enough and soon we will practice at Jimbos. He has also taken quickly to my lessons about syncopating the basic beat of most songs so heavily that neither of us is playing the actual progression.
It melds amazingly well, sounding like more than two instruments. The trick is that only rarely are the drums, bass and guitar playing at the same instant. This is the opposite of the guitarist who tries to solo all the time. I notice Eddie no longer minds making errors because it means we get to repeat the song from the beginning one more time.
Our song list is heavy with old Creedance Clearwater material. Side message to Wallace: Eddie doesn’t like the new bow-legged James Bond either.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
August 29, 2009
Isn’t this supposed to be my day off? Wasn’t I supposed to stay at home making chicken soup and watching re-runs? Instead, it was busy all day but I also made a significantly better return as the caller at the Bingo game. Jimbos Beer and Bingo, kind of thing. A small crowd, but a happy crowd, it is a better format that most other games in town, including the too fast, too quiet calls at the Mickosuckee Casino. My new semi-classical music background was an instant hit.
Even though I admit to skipping the odd decade, I like playing Bingo, which first happened when I was four years old. I won $7.00. My mother took it, promising to pay it back. I never saw it again. I will reward $1,000 to anyone who can tell me where that was, and here are the clues: Of the wine and gold, it was the wine. The crowd was all Joseph and Mary, and boy, was it cold outside. Sorry, no family or friends and offer expires whenever I say it does. It turns out I like calling Bingo even more than playing; I hope the novelty doesn’t wear off. (And I said family or friends, not “and friends”.)
It was enough fun tonight I was reminded of Theresa, up in the Carolinas. This would have been an excellent outing for us, the kind of situation that beats dating any time. I never told her about all the men after her since that time she wore her shorty-shorts into Jimbos. Now that I’m making money, sometimes as much as a Friday music gig, I’m Bingo happy. If a big crowd ever shows up, this game will be legendary. That is not too far-fetched as the Power Ball Jackpot is getting up there.
Question, do you think it is true some women have a thing for Bingo callers? It can be uncomfortable how a few of them do stare, as if they’ve never noticed me before. Don’t get me wrong, it is never the ones I would consider so forget any hint of conceit. My musical equipment is excellent for Bingo, overkill in fact. My PA system you know about, also the background music, same with wearing a tie. I guess I don’t know what creates the ambience, but it is there. Woe to anyone who tries to follow my act. The crowd is already spoiled and I have not yet begun to plan the perks.
Call me duh, that asinine Ford headlight alarm system got me again. I drive over there in a rainstorm and left my lights on, necessitating a later boost in the dark. Jackie and I walked up to Boston’s after and they had an excellent country band. Boston’s tends toward biker bands so country music was a surprise. The crowd reaction was great proof that I am right on the money with my theories about a country duo in this town. There were twelve women dancing and zero men. For all I’ve said about drummers, the one there tonight was the best I’ve heard in, seriously, 15 or 20 years. His name is Bruce Gross.
Speaking of music, I finally located Eddie, my mystery guitarist. As figurable, he has been working major overtime and his phone is disconnected. That explains the no-show last Sunday. Check in about tomorrow, since Eddie knows well enough we have a winner act in the making. His vocals tend toward higher notes, so we experimented with singing duets where I duplicate the melody two octaves lower. Ha, what a unique sound, like two Gomers from the toolies. The range is great enough that we don’t have to strictly do harmonies. I used to get away doing this with Robynette, and have done similar backups to Karaoke music. Can Eddie and I turn this into money?
That’s another thing, the gang who say music is corrupted by those who do it for money. They are hypocrites, they gab about beauty and truth, yet every one I ever met dreams of being a recording star. Being naïve about it doesn’t make them anything less than money-grubbing capitalists. Or the other extreme, the cheapskates who don’t pay the other band members a fair share and cheap out on the A/C during rehearsal are money-hungry too. Musical ideals, my eye! Don’t give me any of that chandelier you bozos with the $1,000 guitars.
Eddie, I am sad to report, finally went to get his blood pressure looked at. He was running 188 over 140, far into the danger zone. I’m saying it has to be the environment or the diet or at least some external factor. Now, music has a soothing effect and it is too bad his doctor won’t prescribe it. There is some gravity to the theory that each hour spent playing music or on heavy exercise adds two hours to your lifespan. Goodie, by the time I’m 60, I’ll live to be 250.
(I was also surprised to learn riding a bicycle is considered heavy exercise.)
Even though I admit to skipping the odd decade, I like playing Bingo, which first happened when I was four years old. I won $7.00. My mother took it, promising to pay it back. I never saw it again. I will reward $1,000 to anyone who can tell me where that was, and here are the clues: Of the wine and gold, it was the wine. The crowd was all Joseph and Mary, and boy, was it cold outside. Sorry, no family or friends and offer expires whenever I say it does. It turns out I like calling Bingo even more than playing; I hope the novelty doesn’t wear off. (And I said family or friends, not “and friends”.)
It was enough fun tonight I was reminded of Theresa, up in the Carolinas. This would have been an excellent outing for us, the kind of situation that beats dating any time. I never told her about all the men after her since that time she wore her shorty-shorts into Jimbos. Now that I’m making money, sometimes as much as a Friday music gig, I’m Bingo happy. If a big crowd ever shows up, this game will be legendary. That is not too far-fetched as the Power Ball Jackpot is getting up there.
Question, do you think it is true some women have a thing for Bingo callers? It can be uncomfortable how a few of them do stare, as if they’ve never noticed me before. Don’t get me wrong, it is never the ones I would consider so forget any hint of conceit. My musical equipment is excellent for Bingo, overkill in fact. My PA system you know about, also the background music, same with wearing a tie. I guess I don’t know what creates the ambience, but it is there. Woe to anyone who tries to follow my act. The crowd is already spoiled and I have not yet begun to plan the perks.
Call me duh, that asinine Ford headlight alarm system got me again. I drive over there in a rainstorm and left my lights on, necessitating a later boost in the dark. Jackie and I walked up to Boston’s after and they had an excellent country band. Boston’s tends toward biker bands so country music was a surprise. The crowd reaction was great proof that I am right on the money with my theories about a country duo in this town. There were twelve women dancing and zero men. For all I’ve said about drummers, the one there tonight was the best I’ve heard in, seriously, 15 or 20 years. His name is Bruce Gross.
Speaking of music, I finally located Eddie, my mystery guitarist. As figurable, he has been working major overtime and his phone is disconnected. That explains the no-show last Sunday. Check in about tomorrow, since Eddie knows well enough we have a winner act in the making. His vocals tend toward higher notes, so we experimented with singing duets where I duplicate the melody two octaves lower. Ha, what a unique sound, like two Gomers from the toolies. The range is great enough that we don’t have to strictly do harmonies. I used to get away doing this with Robynette, and have done similar backups to Karaoke music. Can Eddie and I turn this into money?
That’s another thing, the gang who say music is corrupted by those who do it for money. They are hypocrites, they gab about beauty and truth, yet every one I ever met dreams of being a recording star. Being naïve about it doesn’t make them anything less than money-grubbing capitalists. Or the other extreme, the cheapskates who don’t pay the other band members a fair share and cheap out on the A/C during rehearsal are money-hungry too. Musical ideals, my eye! Don’t give me any of that chandelier you bozos with the $1,000 guitars.
Eddie, I am sad to report, finally went to get his blood pressure looked at. He was running 188 over 140, far into the danger zone. I’m saying it has to be the environment or the diet or at least some external factor. Now, music has a soothing effect and it is too bad his doctor won’t prescribe it. There is some gravity to the theory that each hour spent playing music or on heavy exercise adds two hours to your lifespan. Goodie, by the time I’m 60, I’ll live to be 250.
(I was also surprised to learn riding a bicycle is considered heavy exercise.)
Friday, August 28, 2009
August 28, 2009
One of the happiest days of my life will be when I finally go buy an Apple and throw all my IBM and Windows junk in the nearest dumpster. A one hour install just for a lousy camera driver, which wiped out my other camera drivers without asking, and only reported an incompatibility at the last possible minute.
Up yours, PhoTags Express. I’m not the first one to wonder where they find such idiot programmers in the first place. Your digital camera may be designed by a genius, but so what if he is a dumb-ass enough to call his driver “Dual Mode Camera”. Read my lips: That-Name-Is-Taken. And no, you can’t trick it by using a different directory.
While this summer was the worst, setting a new low for income, things are already picking up for the autumn. I’ve run the exchange rates (Venezuela, Canada and Japan) over the previous 31 years, and you know I am the master pattern matcher. Venezuela is out for now and Japan, well, that place is about to fall over from its own weight. Canada is a strange case, the economy there is on average two years behind the US, meaning their real estate crash begins March 2010. Remember how house prices here stayed up until the last split second when the banks cut off the easy money.
It appears in the long run (7-year cycles) that we can count on the Canuck buck to vary by 28 cents US. While the loonie (Canadian dollar) once dropped to 61 cents during the study period, the standard deviation is just over 9 cents, and that is the focus. This has a two-year cycle, meaning an investment of $100,000 would produce only a $4,500 annual income. One must be careful as such investments mean the government will know the location of the 100K should one “cheat”. Very dicey situation. Whereas I don’t cheat, the recent US strong-arming of Switzerland and Canada’s periodic taxation of paper gains set off all the alarms. It should not be income until it comes in. One cannot live on $4,500 per year, meaning you’d spend it, creating a paper trail right back to the source. Hence the rule that only poor people ever get caught, never the king pins.
More statistics. My normal temperature has adjusted to 98.2 and the verdict is in, my blood pressure drops by 3 units after I talk to the cat. Here kitty, kitty. This is good news unless the cat starts talking back. Or am I too late? Pudding-Tat and I had a great discussion over breakfast about Kennedy going to his grave with the real story of Mary Jo Kopechne untold. I partially blame the media for the coverup. I’m not saying she was blameless, she was unmarried and pushing 29 in 1969 when she went for a car ride in the dark with a married man, leaving her hotel keys and purse at the party. Calling her innocent is pulling a Monica Lewinsky.
I’m okay, but the neighbor here finally collapsed in the heat and was taken to emergency, then placed in a nursing home at $700 per day. I cannot tell people often enough, Florida is not the place to be skimping on your electric bill, not the place to sit in the heat thinking you will be the one to tough it out. That is just plain crazy. This neighbor was lucky somebody spotted him right away, it was 110 inside when they got the door open. Over a period of a month, even a degree or two over shirtsleeve comfort level (77 degrees) can land you on your ass. But some people will not listen.
Up yours, PhoTags Express. I’m not the first one to wonder where they find such idiot programmers in the first place. Your digital camera may be designed by a genius, but so what if he is a dumb-ass enough to call his driver “Dual Mode Camera”. Read my lips: That-Name-Is-Taken. And no, you can’t trick it by using a different directory.
While this summer was the worst, setting a new low for income, things are already picking up for the autumn. I’ve run the exchange rates (Venezuela, Canada and Japan) over the previous 31 years, and you know I am the master pattern matcher. Venezuela is out for now and Japan, well, that place is about to fall over from its own weight. Canada is a strange case, the economy there is on average two years behind the US, meaning their real estate crash begins March 2010. Remember how house prices here stayed up until the last split second when the banks cut off the easy money.
It appears in the long run (7-year cycles) that we can count on the Canuck buck to vary by 28 cents US. While the loonie (Canadian dollar) once dropped to 61 cents during the study period, the standard deviation is just over 9 cents, and that is the focus. This has a two-year cycle, meaning an investment of $100,000 would produce only a $4,500 annual income. One must be careful as such investments mean the government will know the location of the 100K should one “cheat”. Very dicey situation. Whereas I don’t cheat, the recent US strong-arming of Switzerland and Canada’s periodic taxation of paper gains set off all the alarms. It should not be income until it comes in. One cannot live on $4,500 per year, meaning you’d spend it, creating a paper trail right back to the source. Hence the rule that only poor people ever get caught, never the king pins.
More statistics. My normal temperature has adjusted to 98.2 and the verdict is in, my blood pressure drops by 3 units after I talk to the cat. Here kitty, kitty. This is good news unless the cat starts talking back. Or am I too late? Pudding-Tat and I had a great discussion over breakfast about Kennedy going to his grave with the real story of Mary Jo Kopechne untold. I partially blame the media for the coverup. I’m not saying she was blameless, she was unmarried and pushing 29 in 1969 when she went for a car ride in the dark with a married man, leaving her hotel keys and purse at the party. Calling her innocent is pulling a Monica Lewinsky.
I’m okay, but the neighbor here finally collapsed in the heat and was taken to emergency, then placed in a nursing home at $700 per day. I cannot tell people often enough, Florida is not the place to be skimping on your electric bill, not the place to sit in the heat thinking you will be the one to tough it out. That is just plain crazy. This neighbor was lucky somebody spotted him right away, it was 110 inside when they got the door open. Over a period of a month, even a degree or two over shirtsleeve comfort level (77 degrees) can land you on your ass. But some people will not listen.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
August 27, 2009
It’s a tradition, the annual picture of the “Lagoon”. This is the flooded parking lot behind the computer shop. The owners have known about it since who knows when and never done a thing about it. The water is a foot deep, so the first car that parks along the edge forces everyone else to drive through the puddle past their axles. Due to sinkholes and four foot deep potholes, it is rarely a good idea to drive through standing water in this town.
Get ready for one of the strangest tales from this court, or in my history for that matter. I was four hours late for work, because I took the time to deliver a stern lecture to somebody who I owe nothing and have little in common. I saw the need for the talk via of parallels in my own life. I’m saying I wish somebody had done the same for me.
It was Mr. Muscles. There was a time we argued over prices before he found out I was the owner of the equipment. He is off to college this Saturday to make something of himself. That is where our lives crossed for an instant. I saw that he was heading for something that nobody had prepared him for, nobody had given him honest answers about what to expect, what to look out for, what to insist upon. That’s where the similarity stops. I was 17, broke, no job experience and had parents who lied just gloat when I failed. Mr. Muscles is black, 31, ex-army, and driving his own car to a Dakota campus on the G.I. Bill and Pell Grants.
But like myself, he had no idea what he would find when he got there. By remembering my own disadvantages, I was able to give him the very advice I missed. I cannot relate everything, but I explained to him how to get real guidance out of college counselors whose hidden motive was to upsell. I told him how to take the difficult courses first and how to ensure at each stage if he dropped out he could find work without the full degree. And that his life would be changed forever.
He was completely unaware, as I was, that his time in college would be the best and worst years. That he was likely going to meet the girl he would marry there, and certainly most of the professionals he would associate with the remainder of his life. I explained how to choose an employer that would ensure promotions instead of like myself, being forced to take the highest paying job available. How to prevent being railroaded into middle-management, how to pass useless courses, the reason to make friends with one rich kid, where to get good summer work experience, I covered most of the parts nobody will tell you.
I described the temptations he would face, being surrounded by rich kids who went to Hawaii on long weekends, while he could very well be the to stockpile cafeteria buns in his residence room when he and the janitor were the only people on campus during Spring break. How he might be the only one not driving a sports car and to apply for every scholarship in the book. And what to do to get an overseas job once he got out.
As I said, the very advice I wish somebody had given me. Had I known that such advice even existed, I would have paid a million dollars for it. By the time I figured it out on my own, my youth was gone. I saw that Mr. Muscles was angry with the world, and so was I back then. I was angry at my parents for lying to me, at the law system for letting them get away with it, and the rest of the world for allowing that system to exist. My one role model was an itinerant Grade Ten social studies teacher at a Catholic school, Mr. Ian James. I doubt he knew how influential he was, for in that small town, asking anyone for advice was the equivalent of calling down your parents and mine would surely have found out.
There is no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid answers. I hope I helped somebody spot the difference today.
Get ready for one of the strangest tales from this court, or in my history for that matter. I was four hours late for work, because I took the time to deliver a stern lecture to somebody who I owe nothing and have little in common. I saw the need for the talk via of parallels in my own life. I’m saying I wish somebody had done the same for me.It was Mr. Muscles. There was a time we argued over prices before he found out I was the owner of the equipment. He is off to college this Saturday to make something of himself. That is where our lives crossed for an instant. I saw that he was heading for something that nobody had prepared him for, nobody had given him honest answers about what to expect, what to look out for, what to insist upon. That’s where the similarity stops. I was 17, broke, no job experience and had parents who lied just gloat when I failed. Mr. Muscles is black, 31, ex-army, and driving his own car to a Dakota campus on the G.I. Bill and Pell Grants.
But like myself, he had no idea what he would find when he got there. By remembering my own disadvantages, I was able to give him the very advice I missed. I cannot relate everything, but I explained to him how to get real guidance out of college counselors whose hidden motive was to upsell. I told him how to take the difficult courses first and how to ensure at each stage if he dropped out he could find work without the full degree. And that his life would be changed forever.
He was completely unaware, as I was, that his time in college would be the best and worst years. That he was likely going to meet the girl he would marry there, and certainly most of the professionals he would associate with the remainder of his life. I explained how to choose an employer that would ensure promotions instead of like myself, being forced to take the highest paying job available. How to prevent being railroaded into middle-management, how to pass useless courses, the reason to make friends with one rich kid, where to get good summer work experience, I covered most of the parts nobody will tell you.
I described the temptations he would face, being surrounded by rich kids who went to Hawaii on long weekends, while he could very well be the to stockpile cafeteria buns in his residence room when he and the janitor were the only people on campus during Spring break. How he might be the only one not driving a sports car and to apply for every scholarship in the book. And what to do to get an overseas job once he got out.
As I said, the very advice I wish somebody had given me. Had I known that such advice even existed, I would have paid a million dollars for it. By the time I figured it out on my own, my youth was gone. I saw that Mr. Muscles was angry with the world, and so was I back then. I was angry at my parents for lying to me, at the law system for letting them get away with it, and the rest of the world for allowing that system to exist. My one role model was an itinerant Grade Ten social studies teacher at a Catholic school, Mr. Ian James. I doubt he knew how influential he was, for in that small town, asking anyone for advice was the equivalent of calling down your parents and mine would surely have found out.
There is no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid answers. I hope I helped somebody spot the difference today.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
August 26, 2009
A view of the parking lot at the Mardi Gras Casino. This caught my photographer’s eye, a series of identical small apartments. These are not typical of Florida. Usually more than two of the same spells “project”. That heavily traveled street is Pembroke Road. I’ve biked past these apartments for years and never noticed the matching set until today. To the left is the road I take to work, to the right is the road I go shopping. Note the unusual “prairie” clouds.
Nine long miles on the bicycle in today’s heat, I should get the gold. Business has been so slow instead of replacing the leaking new tube for $4.00; I dismantled the bike and put a twenty-cent patch. It comes back to me in accounting school how they taught us to calculate when it was better to close down than operate below a certain profit ratio. (It is wrong to assume any profit is good enough, a concept called “opportunity cost”.) I’ve been afraid to run those numbers at my Internet operation for a year now. I probably would have folded.
I had occasion to spend half the day in a government office. Call it watching the efficiency of how well people can become inefficient when they really try. It is the same as the Romans, these places would be marvels if the workers put half into the job what they do wasting time. I filled out one form that was photocopied five times. Times that I know about. It was a form saying they could look at forms I filled out. Were you aware the Federal deficit this year is $1.5 trillion?
Here’s an interesting statistic about work careers. The average worker puts in 80,000 hours in a lifetime. That’s 40 years of 40 hour weeks. For most people that determines everything about their eventual existence, and it is also what the tax department watches like a hawk. Despite a rocky start, including piling lumber and building garage doors, it may one day become a case assignment to study how I managed what I did working 50,000 fewer hours. There are many ways to measure intelligence that are superior to measuring hourly wages and job titles.
This is not to say I’m a famous millionaire, only that I have at least (important condition) what the average person but without busting my balls. It is what happens between now and eventual retirement that determines how much better than average I can do. There is no element of laziness in my makeup. But I have an aversion to working for a living instead of working to get ahead. Big, major difference, people. I could claim to have been forced to squander my youth working to get a tenth of what you got for free, but I won’t. Besides everyone in my family would gladly and happily tell you how I loved to work in lumber mills instead of finishing college.
You know what they say about aging. Supposedly 60 is the new 40. That is taken by some to mean 30 is the new 20. Unfortunately you can tell whenever you see a video scene of a night club, know what I mean? I suppose I’ll never stop seeing clubs as places where single babes go and not where housewives are “kicking up their heels” after a day at work. Old men at least go to stripper bars, likely not out of politeness, but still.
I’m real crusty about the subject of women in the media. I like the women I see on any screen to be sex symbols, it is easy to do and there is an infinite supply of applicants. So why cast the wrong women for the roles? Case in point, that model “Tyra” or “Tayra”, [Author’s note: turns out I meant Tyra Banks] anyway, she is 31 and as unrepresentative of that age group as totally possible, wrong in looks, intelligence and attitude. Women that age don’t look like her, they are thousands of times more intelligent, and they don’t try to pretend they are 18.
I don’t know who the target audience for such counterfeit looks could be, but to me a sex symbol does not plaster on makeup every morning. She does not get her hair dyed and kinked. If she poses nude, it is not for money and not for a "professional" photographer. And my sex symbol certainly isn’t paired off or married or have children. Give me a total babe any time, and I’m saying there is no reason for the media to do otherwise.
There was a time I didn’t think this way. But that was before I learned the truth about what happened to the supply of single, decent, good-looking available women at age 28. I had no idea the extent to which the well ran dry. I’m not half as bad as most men about looks but I do not like the suburban housewife image. I’ve lived in Mexico, India, Thailand, etc, and it is amazing how these societies don’t portray older women the same way—but it is equally amazing how quickly women from those places change once they get over here.
I’ll never forget the before and after shots I saw of a teenage girl (!Kung) they took out of the Kalahari Desert for an extreme makeover. How the audience swooned. Yet I would have taken the before version because she was not instantly transformed into a crabby bitch expecting the world for free because she now had “big hair”. While I’m not academy material myself, neither am I pretending to be, mind you the difference.
Then, nobody has nominated me for a Pulitzer either. In that case, I'll pretend to be anything you want. Hey, it worked for the last generation of authors.
Nine long miles on the bicycle in today’s heat, I should get the gold. Business has been so slow instead of replacing the leaking new tube for $4.00; I dismantled the bike and put a twenty-cent patch. It comes back to me in accounting school how they taught us to calculate when it was better to close down than operate below a certain profit ratio. (It is wrong to assume any profit is good enough, a concept called “opportunity cost”.) I’ve been afraid to run those numbers at my Internet operation for a year now. I probably would have folded.I had occasion to spend half the day in a government office. Call it watching the efficiency of how well people can become inefficient when they really try. It is the same as the Romans, these places would be marvels if the workers put half into the job what they do wasting time. I filled out one form that was photocopied five times. Times that I know about. It was a form saying they could look at forms I filled out. Were you aware the Federal deficit this year is $1.5 trillion?
Here’s an interesting statistic about work careers. The average worker puts in 80,000 hours in a lifetime. That’s 40 years of 40 hour weeks. For most people that determines everything about their eventual existence, and it is also what the tax department watches like a hawk. Despite a rocky start, including piling lumber and building garage doors, it may one day become a case assignment to study how I managed what I did working 50,000 fewer hours. There are many ways to measure intelligence that are superior to measuring hourly wages and job titles.
This is not to say I’m a famous millionaire, only that I have at least (important condition) what the average person but without busting my balls. It is what happens between now and eventual retirement that determines how much better than average I can do. There is no element of laziness in my makeup. But I have an aversion to working for a living instead of working to get ahead. Big, major difference, people. I could claim to have been forced to squander my youth working to get a tenth of what you got for free, but I won’t. Besides everyone in my family would gladly and happily tell you how I loved to work in lumber mills instead of finishing college.
You know what they say about aging. Supposedly 60 is the new 40. That is taken by some to mean 30 is the new 20. Unfortunately you can tell whenever you see a video scene of a night club, know what I mean? I suppose I’ll never stop seeing clubs as places where single babes go and not where housewives are “kicking up their heels” after a day at work. Old men at least go to stripper bars, likely not out of politeness, but still.
I’m real crusty about the subject of women in the media. I like the women I see on any screen to be sex symbols, it is easy to do and there is an infinite supply of applicants. So why cast the wrong women for the roles? Case in point, that model “Tyra” or “Tayra”, [Author’s note: turns out I meant Tyra Banks] anyway, she is 31 and as unrepresentative of that age group as totally possible, wrong in looks, intelligence and attitude. Women that age don’t look like her, they are thousands of times more intelligent, and they don’t try to pretend they are 18.
I don’t know who the target audience for such counterfeit looks could be, but to me a sex symbol does not plaster on makeup every morning. She does not get her hair dyed and kinked. If she poses nude, it is not for money and not for a "professional" photographer. And my sex symbol certainly isn’t paired off or married or have children. Give me a total babe any time, and I’m saying there is no reason for the media to do otherwise.
There was a time I didn’t think this way. But that was before I learned the truth about what happened to the supply of single, decent, good-looking available women at age 28. I had no idea the extent to which the well ran dry. I’m not half as bad as most men about looks but I do not like the suburban housewife image. I’ve lived in Mexico, India, Thailand, etc, and it is amazing how these societies don’t portray older women the same way—but it is equally amazing how quickly women from those places change once they get over here.
I’ll never forget the before and after shots I saw of a teenage girl (!Kung) they took out of the Kalahari Desert for an extreme makeover. How the audience swooned. Yet I would have taken the before version because she was not instantly transformed into a crabby bitch expecting the world for free because she now had “big hair”. While I’m not academy material myself, neither am I pretending to be, mind you the difference.
Then, nobody has nominated me for a Pulitzer either. In that case, I'll pretend to be anything you want. Hey, it worked for the last generation of authors.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
August 25, 2009
This is 10,000 square miles of Martian real estate back around 1970. So near and yet so far. NASA lost its focus and wasted billions on shuttle “cruises to nowhere”. I was watching “Modern Marvels” about the planetary probes. NASA is useless when they don’t concentrate on Mars. So what if there is life on Jupiter? We cannot live there like we could on Mars. We are fifty years behind schedule. Mars is the obvious first choice and until it is colonized, who cares about fossils in deep space? We should at least have had a base on the Moon by now. Why are we sending robots to moons of Uranus?
I should be talking about music. Some of my weaker tunes are getting rusty because I’m not playing them every weekend. Mind you, with my 100+ song list, this is not as serious as it appears. Consider that I’m swapping many old numbers with more “complicated” music. By that, I mean tunes that have or can be made more elaborate by, er, “bass enhancement” or stage presentation as I get more daring with the process. Do I have an example? Hang on. Yes, I do.
I used to play a 50’s hit, “Bye Bye Love”, a three-chord special. I replaced it with “This Kiss” (Faith Hill), a different class of music all together. Presentation is now a huge part of my act. Wanna hear something really rotten? I’ve also perfected tactics that draw a lot of stage attention away from the guitarist and onto my bass playing, especially during lead breaks. Moves that he cannot counter (unless he has brains but that has never been an issue with Florida guitarists). Yet never doing anything he could really accuse me of, “What, I’m just playing my bass, dude.”
I particularly accentuate moves that audience musicians would notice. I do this by pretending that as a bassist, I am musically “unschooled”, duh-yuck. I told you how I purposely finger bass notes below the nut; which is always good for a laugh. (Hardeehar, Zeke, lookit dat dum bass guy playin’ da notes he don’t haff ter.) In “This Kiss”, I go out of my way to over-dramatically pluck the entire piece on the E string. (It uses almost every note in a chromatic octave and a half). If you watch me, it looks like I don’t have a clue how to do it right, but it is right. Attention is attention in this game, provided you follow certain rules of professionalism. You don’t yank the other guy’s cord.
Often I intentionally make it look like I’m about to lose my place, dropping from high up the neck to a perfectly placed note that seems impossible to hit from that distance. Don’t confuse this with the old guitar slide, it isn’t the same. For openers, people are used to seeing slides, while on the bass the distance is half again as great and quite unexpected. It is a startlingly rapid movement and I totally milk it.
I used to do such things when the Hippie wasn’t looking. He never caught on. At our last gig, a woman stated I was the best musician on the stage. Does the Hippie back off and let me call the tunes? Hardly, he quickly switches over to music with so-so bass lines (such as “Tangled Up In Blue”, or that sucky “Mary Jane” thing) for the duration. As for stealing his show, I’d always play the innocent, “What, dude? You are too hyper-sensitive, man. You’re scaring me.”
So you’ll know, I use all these antics with Eddie, who is in complete agreement since he does not play lead guitar. He may even view prima donnas with much the same disdain. There you go. Recalling last New Year’s Eve at the Jamaican café reminds me another class of egomaniac: the blues harmonica player. (Like the goofs who’ll stand in front of the bassist or keyboardist like they are his underlings.) While everyone has an ego, I point out that competing for top billing via only showmanship is permissible. It’s called show biz. But any other tactic is beneath contempt. Naturally, none of the above applies to drummers, ahem, cough, cough.
I made my first tip at the shoe place. Ten bucks. Alfredo lasted out my weird learning curve and today we did a record 11 jobs, including a wetsuit repair. I use the equivalent-unit method to determine jobs, as an aside to any management accountants out there. I don’t learn like most people, I tend to make the same errors repeatedly until one day, ker-pow, I’m good to go and awful hard to catch. I may have a prosperous month after all. Alfredo is developing arthritis in the fingers, a frightful calamity for his line of work. I do most of the cutting and gluing but what happens if one day he cannot stitch?
In a similar setting, Eric the Red across the way is disappearing for days at a time, not answering his door. Concerned friends have been coming over and asking, but quite frankly I do not keep tabs on neighbors. Eric is pushing eighty and if he wants solitude, leave him alone. He is certainly sharp enough to understand the consequences if he croaks and nobody knows. Friends worry that he sits in his chair too much but has he not earned that right? The best I can do is engage him in short conversations when I see him, which is about once very second week.
I should be talking about music. Some of my weaker tunes are getting rusty because I’m not playing them every weekend. Mind you, with my 100+ song list, this is not as serious as it appears. Consider that I’m swapping many old numbers with more “complicated” music. By that, I mean tunes that have or can be made more elaborate by, er, “bass enhancement” or stage presentation as I get more daring with the process. Do I have an example? Hang on. Yes, I do.I used to play a 50’s hit, “Bye Bye Love”, a three-chord special. I replaced it with “This Kiss” (Faith Hill), a different class of music all together. Presentation is now a huge part of my act. Wanna hear something really rotten? I’ve also perfected tactics that draw a lot of stage attention away from the guitarist and onto my bass playing, especially during lead breaks. Moves that he cannot counter (unless he has brains but that has never been an issue with Florida guitarists). Yet never doing anything he could really accuse me of, “What, I’m just playing my bass, dude.”
I particularly accentuate moves that audience musicians would notice. I do this by pretending that as a bassist, I am musically “unschooled”, duh-yuck. I told you how I purposely finger bass notes below the nut; which is always good for a laugh. (Hardeehar, Zeke, lookit dat dum bass guy playin’ da notes he don’t haff ter.) In “This Kiss”, I go out of my way to over-dramatically pluck the entire piece on the E string. (It uses almost every note in a chromatic octave and a half). If you watch me, it looks like I don’t have a clue how to do it right, but it is right. Attention is attention in this game, provided you follow certain rules of professionalism. You don’t yank the other guy’s cord.
Often I intentionally make it look like I’m about to lose my place, dropping from high up the neck to a perfectly placed note that seems impossible to hit from that distance. Don’t confuse this with the old guitar slide, it isn’t the same. For openers, people are used to seeing slides, while on the bass the distance is half again as great and quite unexpected. It is a startlingly rapid movement and I totally milk it.
I used to do such things when the Hippie wasn’t looking. He never caught on. At our last gig, a woman stated I was the best musician on the stage. Does the Hippie back off and let me call the tunes? Hardly, he quickly switches over to music with so-so bass lines (such as “Tangled Up In Blue”, or that sucky “Mary Jane” thing) for the duration. As for stealing his show, I’d always play the innocent, “What, dude? You are too hyper-sensitive, man. You’re scaring me.”
So you’ll know, I use all these antics with Eddie, who is in complete agreement since he does not play lead guitar. He may even view prima donnas with much the same disdain. There you go. Recalling last New Year’s Eve at the Jamaican café reminds me another class of egomaniac: the blues harmonica player. (Like the goofs who’ll stand in front of the bassist or keyboardist like they are his underlings.) While everyone has an ego, I point out that competing for top billing via only showmanship is permissible. It’s called show biz. But any other tactic is beneath contempt. Naturally, none of the above applies to drummers, ahem, cough, cough.
I made my first tip at the shoe place. Ten bucks. Alfredo lasted out my weird learning curve and today we did a record 11 jobs, including a wetsuit repair. I use the equivalent-unit method to determine jobs, as an aside to any management accountants out there. I don’t learn like most people, I tend to make the same errors repeatedly until one day, ker-pow, I’m good to go and awful hard to catch. I may have a prosperous month after all. Alfredo is developing arthritis in the fingers, a frightful calamity for his line of work. I do most of the cutting and gluing but what happens if one day he cannot stitch?
In a similar setting, Eric the Red across the way is disappearing for days at a time, not answering his door. Concerned friends have been coming over and asking, but quite frankly I do not keep tabs on neighbors. Eric is pushing eighty and if he wants solitude, leave him alone. He is certainly sharp enough to understand the consequences if he croaks and nobody knows. Friends worry that he sits in his chair too much but has he not earned that right? The best I can do is engage him in short conversations when I see him, which is about once very second week.
Monday, August 24, 2009
August 24, 2009
The apartment complex I wish I’d bought. This is the nine-unit place on 20th street I’ve been admiring for a year. It has no balconies, true, but those get used about as much in Florida as they get used in Seattle. This is the place a small contractor bought and slowly improved the units, just himself and one or two helpers. Now it is done and the units rent around $100 less per month than anything comparable. I’d been trying to talk JP into partners on something like this for the past ten years. Good job, whoever you are!
Another day of intense long-range planning. Shall we say my situation is about to change, one way or the other, and I like to be prepared. I’ve been looking closely at currency exchange rates. The fact is, the only two I understand from an economic standpoint are Venezuelan and Canadian. It is possible to deal in both these currencies from hands-off (overseas) accounts. Then, I read that the Swiss government is handing over names, a severe betrayal of trust for that country. Switzerland claims these are only accounts involved in criminal activity, but what about sovereignty? Should banks respond to pressures from outfits like those headquartered in such places as the northeastern USA? It smells of retroactive law to me. Make laws saying no new accounts, but leave the old ones alone.
I am holding back on everything at this point, financially. Certainly, I want a new car, a new camera, new clothes, and a complete customized Karaoke show that doubles as my PA/Bingo system. There are very keen reasons I’m holding back, anyone who remembers what a production curve is from Economics 101 can follow the fresh trail of my logic. I wish Wallace was back. Once he left to go bass fishing at the lodge, this summer has been the worst for me in my adult life. And it is entirely my own doing. Ah, but just you watch!
Remember Justin, the guy who started from nothing but a mail order business who now runs his own Internet servers? He called while I was minding the computer store and I admit to playing along a bit. Justin is renowned for not giving out any information to anyone who might become competition. I told him about the Red Devil drum box situation and he was able to give me a ton of perfectly useless advice, a process to which I listened in fascination. Not once did he accidentally slip in any useable points.
Justin maintains that Internet business is something anybody can learn if they work hard enough at it. I maintain there is no way that all those hundreds of thousands of dumb people and scam artists could possibly master the complexities of such systems, and Justin, they most assuredly did not work hard. Thus, I was curious where they “learned” it so effectively they can become anonymous criminals at it. I didn’t tell him my ulterior motive. I have been toying with an idea for a TV show, not that anything would come of it, but hear me out.
The biggest problem with on-line crooks is that the only place most people learn about them is by becoming a victim, or by hearing about it on the TV news. Sure, you can try to find out about a scam on the web, but can you trust that source? I visualize a TV series that finds one per week and tracks it down to the core. Right to the home address of the crook, plaster him on TV, expose the entire operation. I feel it would have similar audience appeal to what is already on TV, plus it would move a lot faster and be cheap to produce. Bill it as a community service, trace robot telemarket calls, snoop on the snoopers.
Having said all that, allow me to define the situation I have. My programming study was completed before the Internet boom, and the after-college job I got was unrelated to computers. By 1994, I knew nothing about on-line systems and still don’t (by comparison). This was not a result of bad decisions and in fact, 100% of the contemporary programmers I know are in the same position as myself—able only to program mainframe computers. When you program mainframes, somebody else takes care of all the logistics, you focus on getting results.
At the other extreme, you’ve often heard me rave about the difficulties of getting one of my ideas to work on the Internet. I’ve purchased tons of books on each of the various steps and stages, including Apache and PHP and djgpp and Inetpub. I can get each of these entities to work on their own, but I cannot get them to work together. These expensive texts are worse than useless for troubleshooting even the smallest glitch. I’m willing to pay somebody to show me if I could only find that somebody. I just know if I could work with the right outfit for a couple of months, I’d ace the whole thing.
Well, if things work out as planned, I may provide myself with that opportunity shortly. I know quite well nearly every module and sub-module of that Red Devil was lifted from other sources. If it had been programmed from air, too many features would have been done differently. I feel once I break the surface of how to get all the pieces to fit, it will be home free because of my classical programming experience. Then I’ve got some definite ideas of what needs changing, such as the spaghetti links of relational database apps.
In another mystery, I’ve noticed the techs that look at DNA use ordinary microscopes. I’ve had the wrong impression that they were looking at molecules, which are too small to be seen. They are therefore looking at something else. I find that most intriguing, and explains that DNA kit advertised a few months ago. The old arguments persist. Those who say they have nothing to hide, which is fine in itself, but what they really mean is something quite different. They are okaying surveillance upon others who may not agree. Privacy is not secrecy, but how are fools to know the difference?
I take the view that most broken laws are the result of a momentary lapse of good judgment. It is plain wrong to brand such people for life. I remind the world that the authorities have abused every system that was ever invented. Look what has happened with fingerprints. Millions of innocent people now have a police file (nobody said criminal record). That is, Big Brother is keeping files on innocent people. I don’t mind if the Boy Scouts do that, but I draw the line at the police, and by the way, so do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Examine excessive ratio of arrests in our society. The majority of males are arrested at some point. Only a minority are ever convicted, meaning it is mostly innocent men who are being arrested. And as far as the convictions go, I’m referring to the jaywalker who pleads guilty and pays the damn fine so he can go home. The police have manipulated the arrest procedure to shake people down. Arrest has become a brutalizing and career-trashing event, it does not surprise me when innocent people run (and yes, they do). They are afraid of the police, not the law. They are not resisting arrest, they are running for their own safety. Who wants to be the next taser corpse? DNA does away with “reasonable and probable cause” by putting everyone in the vicinity on a suspect list. Only a dunce cannot see that.
However, I think it will all happen anyway, so let me take another look at that kit.
Another day of intense long-range planning. Shall we say my situation is about to change, one way or the other, and I like to be prepared. I’ve been looking closely at currency exchange rates. The fact is, the only two I understand from an economic standpoint are Venezuelan and Canadian. It is possible to deal in both these currencies from hands-off (overseas) accounts. Then, I read that the Swiss government is handing over names, a severe betrayal of trust for that country. Switzerland claims these are only accounts involved in criminal activity, but what about sovereignty? Should banks respond to pressures from outfits like those headquartered in such places as the northeastern USA? It smells of retroactive law to me. Make laws saying no new accounts, but leave the old ones alone.I am holding back on everything at this point, financially. Certainly, I want a new car, a new camera, new clothes, and a complete customized Karaoke show that doubles as my PA/Bingo system. There are very keen reasons I’m holding back, anyone who remembers what a production curve is from Economics 101 can follow the fresh trail of my logic. I wish Wallace was back. Once he left to go bass fishing at the lodge, this summer has been the worst for me in my adult life. And it is entirely my own doing. Ah, but just you watch!
Remember Justin, the guy who started from nothing but a mail order business who now runs his own Internet servers? He called while I was minding the computer store and I admit to playing along a bit. Justin is renowned for not giving out any information to anyone who might become competition. I told him about the Red Devil drum box situation and he was able to give me a ton of perfectly useless advice, a process to which I listened in fascination. Not once did he accidentally slip in any useable points.
Justin maintains that Internet business is something anybody can learn if they work hard enough at it. I maintain there is no way that all those hundreds of thousands of dumb people and scam artists could possibly master the complexities of such systems, and Justin, they most assuredly did not work hard. Thus, I was curious where they “learned” it so effectively they can become anonymous criminals at it. I didn’t tell him my ulterior motive. I have been toying with an idea for a TV show, not that anything would come of it, but hear me out.
The biggest problem with on-line crooks is that the only place most people learn about them is by becoming a victim, or by hearing about it on the TV news. Sure, you can try to find out about a scam on the web, but can you trust that source? I visualize a TV series that finds one per week and tracks it down to the core. Right to the home address of the crook, plaster him on TV, expose the entire operation. I feel it would have similar audience appeal to what is already on TV, plus it would move a lot faster and be cheap to produce. Bill it as a community service, trace robot telemarket calls, snoop on the snoopers.
Having said all that, allow me to define the situation I have. My programming study was completed before the Internet boom, and the after-college job I got was unrelated to computers. By 1994, I knew nothing about on-line systems and still don’t (by comparison). This was not a result of bad decisions and in fact, 100% of the contemporary programmers I know are in the same position as myself—able only to program mainframe computers. When you program mainframes, somebody else takes care of all the logistics, you focus on getting results.
At the other extreme, you’ve often heard me rave about the difficulties of getting one of my ideas to work on the Internet. I’ve purchased tons of books on each of the various steps and stages, including Apache and PHP and djgpp and Inetpub. I can get each of these entities to work on their own, but I cannot get them to work together. These expensive texts are worse than useless for troubleshooting even the smallest glitch. I’m willing to pay somebody to show me if I could only find that somebody. I just know if I could work with the right outfit for a couple of months, I’d ace the whole thing.
Well, if things work out as planned, I may provide myself with that opportunity shortly. I know quite well nearly every module and sub-module of that Red Devil was lifted from other sources. If it had been programmed from air, too many features would have been done differently. I feel once I break the surface of how to get all the pieces to fit, it will be home free because of my classical programming experience. Then I’ve got some definite ideas of what needs changing, such as the spaghetti links of relational database apps.
In another mystery, I’ve noticed the techs that look at DNA use ordinary microscopes. I’ve had the wrong impression that they were looking at molecules, which are too small to be seen. They are therefore looking at something else. I find that most intriguing, and explains that DNA kit advertised a few months ago. The old arguments persist. Those who say they have nothing to hide, which is fine in itself, but what they really mean is something quite different. They are okaying surveillance upon others who may not agree. Privacy is not secrecy, but how are fools to know the difference?
I take the view that most broken laws are the result of a momentary lapse of good judgment. It is plain wrong to brand such people for life. I remind the world that the authorities have abused every system that was ever invented. Look what has happened with fingerprints. Millions of innocent people now have a police file (nobody said criminal record). That is, Big Brother is keeping files on innocent people. I don’t mind if the Boy Scouts do that, but I draw the line at the police, and by the way, so do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Examine excessive ratio of arrests in our society. The majority of males are arrested at some point. Only a minority are ever convicted, meaning it is mostly innocent men who are being arrested. And as far as the convictions go, I’m referring to the jaywalker who pleads guilty and pays the damn fine so he can go home. The police have manipulated the arrest procedure to shake people down. Arrest has become a brutalizing and career-trashing event, it does not surprise me when innocent people run (and yes, they do). They are afraid of the police, not the law. They are not resisting arrest, they are running for their own safety. Who wants to be the next taser corpse? DNA does away with “reasonable and probable cause” by putting everyone in the vicinity on a suspect list. Only a dunce cannot see that.
However, I think it will all happen anyway, so let me take another look at that kit.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
August 23, 2009
Sorry, no recent pictures these days until I get a new camera. Worse, there are about 50 things that take priority. Unless I get a rush at the computer store, it could be a while. I’m shy to publish anything from the distant past because I have no method of tracking which photos have already been published here. Pictures arrived very late in the game and only thanks to digital cameras. Meanwhile, here’s a photo of some breadsticks. Wow!
Another institution bites the dust? I used to gobble up Reader’s Digest at college. Then the articles got a little too cute, too much family, not enough fact. Maybe I’m not all that enthralled by articles about surviving breast cancer. So I switched to reading just “Life’s Like That” and the page-bottom clips. Even then, only in the grocery checkout. For me, magazines and cars are some of those things that should go down in price over time, so I never bought them much. Looks like nobody else did either. Reader’s Digest about to tank.
You know, I forgot to tell you last time I was in Borders, there were magazines with $15 and $17 price tags. (Maybe we’ll have to wait until they come out in hardcover?) In this day and age, if you can’t produce a quality rag for under $3, maybe it is time to learn about this new invention called the Internet. Mind you, there was a revealing documentary on food prices this morning. The largest component of the price is now distribution. It costs more to package and ship the food than to grow it. Maybe publishers have the same dilemma, and that is why they began cheaping out on basic quality.
Eddie never showed for rehearsal, giving me time to do some advanced tax planning. Don’t say it isn’t fun until you try it. There is a great satisfaction in arranging your affairs to pay the very least tax possible. This reminds of when I worked for a Canadian company and tax planning was frowned upon amongst the employees. In fact, there was at one time a law in Canada saying that it was illegal to even plan to avoid taxes. Then some Eastern judge, in a surprise move, ruled that doing so was not only legal, it was a good idea. He was never heard from again. No, I’m not kidding. He wasn’t murdered in cold blood, but his career was.
I hated the Canadian tax system because it was based on the make-believe premise of the nuclear family. That is something I think no government should stick its nose into for tax purposes or otherwise. In Canada it was particularly disgusting because nuclear families have been in the minority for what, fifty or more years. That means the “average” Canuck family does not have a father and a mother and 2.7 children. Yet that is who got all the tax cuts and it pervades all of Canadian society. Even bus fare, theater tickets and fees for the State, pardon me Provincial, Parks. But like many other things in Canada, even though these families are a minority, they are a larger group than any other minority (except the French) and in their voting system, that allows them to shove their greedy paws down everybody else’s throats.
It has become so disgusting that the Canadian Tax Act now has something like 45 different “definitions” of family (read “dependents”). A child is a dependent for tax purposes (meaning a tax cut) until 18, or if a student, until 24, or if disabled until 24 even if not a student, but not married unless disabled. If you find the family clauses fun to follow, you should see the Canadian definition of a “resident for tax purposes”.
I am a very “user pay” believer. You got six kids, you pay for six kids. You got six kids in public school, you pay three times the school tax rate of the couple with a reasonable two kids. They say the government should not regulate family size, but the fact is they already are for all these wrong reasons. It is disgusting that the highest producers in society, single men, have to pay the highest taxes for social programs they don’t qualify for. Last I heard, having kids was voluntary, so nobody beyond those involved in the decision should have to pay a penny over it. And I’ll wager anyone who thinks otherwise is related to someone on welfare.
I realize we have a similar tax structure in the USA. But I’d like to point out that in total, I pay only one-sixth as much tax as on a similar income in Canada. It costs generally ten bucks per carload to enter a park, most admission discounts are based on age, not family relationships, and yes, like the majority of Americans, I have medical.
Another institution bites the dust? I used to gobble up Reader’s Digest at college. Then the articles got a little too cute, too much family, not enough fact. Maybe I’m not all that enthralled by articles about surviving breast cancer. So I switched to reading just “Life’s Like That” and the page-bottom clips. Even then, only in the grocery checkout. For me, magazines and cars are some of those things that should go down in price over time, so I never bought them much. Looks like nobody else did either. Reader’s Digest about to tank.You know, I forgot to tell you last time I was in Borders, there were magazines with $15 and $17 price tags. (Maybe we’ll have to wait until they come out in hardcover?) In this day and age, if you can’t produce a quality rag for under $3, maybe it is time to learn about this new invention called the Internet. Mind you, there was a revealing documentary on food prices this morning. The largest component of the price is now distribution. It costs more to package and ship the food than to grow it. Maybe publishers have the same dilemma, and that is why they began cheaping out on basic quality.
Eddie never showed for rehearsal, giving me time to do some advanced tax planning. Don’t say it isn’t fun until you try it. There is a great satisfaction in arranging your affairs to pay the very least tax possible. This reminds of when I worked for a Canadian company and tax planning was frowned upon amongst the employees. In fact, there was at one time a law in Canada saying that it was illegal to even plan to avoid taxes. Then some Eastern judge, in a surprise move, ruled that doing so was not only legal, it was a good idea. He was never heard from again. No, I’m not kidding. He wasn’t murdered in cold blood, but his career was.
I hated the Canadian tax system because it was based on the make-believe premise of the nuclear family. That is something I think no government should stick its nose into for tax purposes or otherwise. In Canada it was particularly disgusting because nuclear families have been in the minority for what, fifty or more years. That means the “average” Canuck family does not have a father and a mother and 2.7 children. Yet that is who got all the tax cuts and it pervades all of Canadian society. Even bus fare, theater tickets and fees for the State, pardon me Provincial, Parks. But like many other things in Canada, even though these families are a minority, they are a larger group than any other minority (except the French) and in their voting system, that allows them to shove their greedy paws down everybody else’s throats.
It has become so disgusting that the Canadian Tax Act now has something like 45 different “definitions” of family (read “dependents”). A child is a dependent for tax purposes (meaning a tax cut) until 18, or if a student, until 24, or if disabled until 24 even if not a student, but not married unless disabled. If you find the family clauses fun to follow, you should see the Canadian definition of a “resident for tax purposes”.
I am a very “user pay” believer. You got six kids, you pay for six kids. You got six kids in public school, you pay three times the school tax rate of the couple with a reasonable two kids. They say the government should not regulate family size, but the fact is they already are for all these wrong reasons. It is disgusting that the highest producers in society, single men, have to pay the highest taxes for social programs they don’t qualify for. Last I heard, having kids was voluntary, so nobody beyond those involved in the decision should have to pay a penny over it. And I’ll wager anyone who thinks otherwise is related to someone on welfare.
I realize we have a similar tax structure in the USA. But I’d like to point out that in total, I pay only one-sixth as much tax as on a similar income in Canada. It costs generally ten bucks per carload to enter a park, most admission discounts are based on age, not family relationships, and yes, like the majority of Americans, I have medical.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
August 22, 2009
Here is a photo of a typical Florida patch job. Right down to the boot print in the concrete. This isn’t a seismic zone, so you just know the locals paved over tree roots and shifting ground. It is part of the charm of Florida. The relevance is you get patched up photos until I decide on a new digital camera.
What do you know, I can still sleep for 13 hours if I try. It could have been more hadn’t Fred phoned to see where I was. Sleeping in, that’s where. I was in the shop eleven minutes later. First suspect is my recently changed prescriptions, and everyone knows I’m far too young to have to take all that old people stuff.
The Red Devil drum box guy has bowed out of the picture. He sent me some other software to check out. They were not suitable for stage work. That puts me back at square one but the quest is not over. The few available software boxes, other than Red Devil, are a massive clutter of buttons and switches which “reads like some MicroSoft home page”.
The evening was today’s high point. During a thunderstorm, I called a bingo game amidst plentiful compliments. Since this now represents a new source of income, let me dwell on the non-technical details. I only know how to play basic bingo. One line, four corners or a blackout. Except you can’t call it a “black” out any more. The normal evening is ten games, with patterns like “postage stamp” and “hat pin”. It’s alright I suppose, and tends to drag the games out a little longer.
That’s where I come in. I have the PA system and it is vast overkill for bingo calling. It beats that lousy overhead at the casino Wallace and I went a few months ago. My setup is crystal clear, nobody misses a number. I always wear slacks and a tie when I’m calling. Nobody argues with a bingo caller wearing a tie. The players number from 10 to 15, so most everybody wins something The house provides a bingo “gumball” machine and I get free sodas all night long.
Saturdays I usually don’t go to Jimbos, so I never much see the cops drop by, as they do at all local bars in the area. You should have seen the reaction on this one. I play classical music in the background. It prevents anyone from using the juke box, and cuts down on people missing a number because they were distracted. So in walks this six-six cop who looks around. Then stops and listens to a piano concerto. Then he stares at my tie. Then watches the players. The priceless look on his face, “Am I in the right place? Huh?”
Then in stroll Eddie and his gal, who promptly learn that yelling a false bingo buys a round for the house. She informs me that at other bingo games, it is customary for the winner to tip the caller. I suddenly like that custom. And that explains the new source of income – ten games a night. I remind all that I gauge income on weekends not by what I make, but by what I do not spend. Thus, even if I break even and still get out and have a good time, I know I am up a day’s pay over the way I used to be.
I was Mr. Saturday Night until just ten years ago. For me to go out, have fun, meet women, get on stage and get paid besides, I’m a laughing man. The bingo income is from entertainment, so it gets included in my “band” books, same as if I was calling a Karaoke show. Eat my dust, all you guitarists who think you can play better than I do. Off the topic, but I mention that Eddie, the guitarist who listened to my bass theories, is now perfectly content with my bass-heavy arrangements. He refers to me as “the new lead player”. Whether it is better remains for the audience to decide. (Who am I kidding, we are going to set the audiences on fire!) One thing for sure, my show is about as far from clone lead guitaring as you can get.
The owners were in and saw the whole bingo thing. One customer did leave in protest to the classical music, but nobody else flinched at that. This may be the only classical bingo in town and it is gaining permanency. Yes, we do have the odd non-bingo player come in just for the relaxing atmosphere, and it is sometimes characters who surprise me at that. Like Scotty. I think I will develop some far more sophisticated music disks special for this purpose. For now I just play whatever is on my intermission DC.
Does it make a difference? Yes, it is already apparent certain types of classical music work better. And, strangely, instrumental Christmas carols seem fine as well. It can’t be long-hair classical or boredom sets in during the quieter passages. I’ve learned balance is more than important. Favorites are “Greensleeves” and “Rondo a la Turka” Some newer material will also work; listen to Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”.
The big news is that for the first time in over 60 years, Florida’s population went down. High prices, unaffordable housing, low wages, crumbling infrastructure, gangs, crooked cops, minority favoritism and lousy consumer protection laws add up to a 58,000 person loss. And it is the cream of the crop clearing out, not the welfare cases. We’ve all heard the joke about the Florida apartment that burned down and everybody died except the white folks. They were away at work. The study groups say the drop isn’t that bad, but I say it is. That’s like a small city disappearing off the map. Did this group consider the ramifications of the loss of infrastructure as well?
No, or they’d know the effects are delayed maybe six months from now. How many supermarkets, stores and gas stations are required to supply 58,000 people? Probably a thousand. Just because they don’t all shop at one place, there is no getting around that the equivalent-unit number of places will close up shop. The Florida Ponzi economy, like people who live on credit, needs a constantly expanding population base. I say the worst is yet to come. It will come from terrific altitude with deadly accuracy. So you types who own a credit card, a mortgage or a car loan, please don’t stand so close to me.
What do you know, I can still sleep for 13 hours if I try. It could have been more hadn’t Fred phoned to see where I was. Sleeping in, that’s where. I was in the shop eleven minutes later. First suspect is my recently changed prescriptions, and everyone knows I’m far too young to have to take all that old people stuff.The Red Devil drum box guy has bowed out of the picture. He sent me some other software to check out. They were not suitable for stage work. That puts me back at square one but the quest is not over. The few available software boxes, other than Red Devil, are a massive clutter of buttons and switches which “reads like some MicroSoft home page”.
The evening was today’s high point. During a thunderstorm, I called a bingo game amidst plentiful compliments. Since this now represents a new source of income, let me dwell on the non-technical details. I only know how to play basic bingo. One line, four corners or a blackout. Except you can’t call it a “black” out any more. The normal evening is ten games, with patterns like “postage stamp” and “hat pin”. It’s alright I suppose, and tends to drag the games out a little longer.
That’s where I come in. I have the PA system and it is vast overkill for bingo calling. It beats that lousy overhead at the casino Wallace and I went a few months ago. My setup is crystal clear, nobody misses a number. I always wear slacks and a tie when I’m calling. Nobody argues with a bingo caller wearing a tie. The players number from 10 to 15, so most everybody wins something The house provides a bingo “gumball” machine and I get free sodas all night long.
Saturdays I usually don’t go to Jimbos, so I never much see the cops drop by, as they do at all local bars in the area. You should have seen the reaction on this one. I play classical music in the background. It prevents anyone from using the juke box, and cuts down on people missing a number because they were distracted. So in walks this six-six cop who looks around. Then stops and listens to a piano concerto. Then he stares at my tie. Then watches the players. The priceless look on his face, “Am I in the right place? Huh?”
Then in stroll Eddie and his gal, who promptly learn that yelling a false bingo buys a round for the house. She informs me that at other bingo games, it is customary for the winner to tip the caller. I suddenly like that custom. And that explains the new source of income – ten games a night. I remind all that I gauge income on weekends not by what I make, but by what I do not spend. Thus, even if I break even and still get out and have a good time, I know I am up a day’s pay over the way I used to be.
I was Mr. Saturday Night until just ten years ago. For me to go out, have fun, meet women, get on stage and get paid besides, I’m a laughing man. The bingo income is from entertainment, so it gets included in my “band” books, same as if I was calling a Karaoke show. Eat my dust, all you guitarists who think you can play better than I do. Off the topic, but I mention that Eddie, the guitarist who listened to my bass theories, is now perfectly content with my bass-heavy arrangements. He refers to me as “the new lead player”. Whether it is better remains for the audience to decide. (Who am I kidding, we are going to set the audiences on fire!) One thing for sure, my show is about as far from clone lead guitaring as you can get.
The owners were in and saw the whole bingo thing. One customer did leave in protest to the classical music, but nobody else flinched at that. This may be the only classical bingo in town and it is gaining permanency. Yes, we do have the odd non-bingo player come in just for the relaxing atmosphere, and it is sometimes characters who surprise me at that. Like Scotty. I think I will develop some far more sophisticated music disks special for this purpose. For now I just play whatever is on my intermission DC.
Does it make a difference? Yes, it is already apparent certain types of classical music work better. And, strangely, instrumental Christmas carols seem fine as well. It can’t be long-hair classical or boredom sets in during the quieter passages. I’ve learned balance is more than important. Favorites are “Greensleeves” and “Rondo a la Turka” Some newer material will also work; listen to Enya’s “Orinoco Flow”.
The big news is that for the first time in over 60 years, Florida’s population went down. High prices, unaffordable housing, low wages, crumbling infrastructure, gangs, crooked cops, minority favoritism and lousy consumer protection laws add up to a 58,000 person loss. And it is the cream of the crop clearing out, not the welfare cases. We’ve all heard the joke about the Florida apartment that burned down and everybody died except the white folks. They were away at work. The study groups say the drop isn’t that bad, but I say it is. That’s like a small city disappearing off the map. Did this group consider the ramifications of the loss of infrastructure as well?
No, or they’d know the effects are delayed maybe six months from now. How many supermarkets, stores and gas stations are required to supply 58,000 people? Probably a thousand. Just because they don’t all shop at one place, there is no getting around that the equivalent-unit number of places will close up shop. The Florida Ponzi economy, like people who live on credit, needs a constantly expanding population base. I say the worst is yet to come. It will come from terrific altitude with deadly accuracy. So you types who own a credit card, a mortgage or a car loan, please don’t stand so close to me.
Friday, August 21, 2009
August 21, 2009
Here’s a chance photo to keep up on my visual component. If in your mind’s eye, you can visually profile the type of person who would deface a sign like this, congratulations. Florida is the one place you would be right 101% of the time. For realism, this sign is pointing north, the direction about 150 people per day are headed. That’s out of the state, never to return.
It was new lesson day with a new class. In this case, mostly adults who have previously taken music lessons and dropped out. Good. They know what they don’t want. Within the hour, I had them playing one each of rock, country and pop music. They amazed themselves. Most popular item was my tricks of the trade with stage presentation. Mainly [advice on] how to make things look more coordinated than they really are, this sometimes takes newcomers by surprise. They think I’m not paying attention. But I never miss a cue.
Here’s the skinny on guitar tuners. First, do not overspend. The best one I’ve ever owned cost $20 brand new. These tuners fall into to categories, active and passive. Active are those which output a tone and passive are those which “listen” to the string you are tuning and display a dial or lights to guide you to the correct note. My opinion is that the active types are inferior for stage work. First of all, the tone they emit is easily lost in the background clutter of other stage noises. Trust me, the audience does not think listening to you tune is “neat”. You also have to use active tuners in isolation because other people tuning nearby will clash. Tuning one person at a time is a drag. Worse, tuning to an audible tone has the same problems as tuning to another guitar, that is, some people will naturally hear too sharp or too flat.
Avoid crappy models where you have to slide a switch for each note; those are 1960s technology. Get a digital readout, preferably with an LED that turns or shows green when you are in tune, and is red otherwise. Many passive tuners, which by the way are easier on batteries for some reason, have a microphone on the front which picks up your notes, but can be made to work better by touching the tuner against the body of an acoustic guitar. Make certain the tuner has a standard ¼” phono jack for tuning an electric guitar, that is, no specialized jacks which are easy to misplace. I use a pigtail phono plug (a small cable around six inches long) and leave it permanently plugged into the tuner.
Smaller is generally better, so they’ll fit a pocket in your guitar case. Some guitars have built-in tuners, but avoid them if they share battery power with any other feature. Other tuners are designed to be used in-line. I don’t like them. If they are the brand that lie on the floor, you have to squint to see them. If they attach to the guitar, even a few ounces of extra weight becomes noticeable. It is also questionable whether adding yet another gadget between your instrument and guitar is a good idea. In-line tuners also encourage excessive on-stage tuning, a time-waster that fools nobody. I’ve covered elsewhere that you should only buy guitars that stay in tune at least six hours at a stretch. I need only tune my bass twice a week.
Never buy a tuner that requires special batteries or has an external charger or transformer. You’ll be sorry. I get around two years out of a set of AAAs. To tune up in a pinch, if you have an iPhone, there’s an app for that, too.
Eddie has been in touch to schedule band rehearsal for Sunday. I told you, when there is decent progress, these sessions become fun in themselves. We are still short a drum box since my Red Devil trial has expired and I don’t have a credit card to get the licensed version. But that’s okay, I sort of know the programmer. Incidentally, the two guys who were supposed to show up at the shop for the meeting never made it. Who knows, maybe they actually found jobs. I had high hopes for that meeting. Whereas I can program, I don’t know many things about the Internet. For example, how to make a time limited trial offer, or how to distribute software licenses on-line. All the things the Red Devil guy does. If I knew where these people learned these things, I would sign up there tomorrow. Please don’t say college, because colleges also teach you the junk you don’t need and charge for it.
That gal that looked at the room two weeks back, the one I found quite negative, is still trying to recruit me. I’ll call her Tash, which rhymes with her real name. She was one healthy bird, and did know a lot about nutrition. I mentioned she sold health food. I asked her to get in touch concerning several products, and she finally did. My point is that all the information she’s provided is sound. I may attend a seminar to find out more although I know it is just a sales pitch. I’ve seen many products on TV that claim to eliminate triglycerides and I so much want to look like the guy on the right side of the screen. Tash says everything has a money-back guaranty. Again, she really knows her stuff and I just have to make sure nothing works because it is a Granny Klampett. You know, it works because of all the other things you have to do, like rest in bed for ten days after taking her cold medicine.
It was new lesson day with a new class. In this case, mostly adults who have previously taken music lessons and dropped out. Good. They know what they don’t want. Within the hour, I had them playing one each of rock, country and pop music. They amazed themselves. Most popular item was my tricks of the trade with stage presentation. Mainly [advice on] how to make things look more coordinated than they really are, this sometimes takes newcomers by surprise. They think I’m not paying attention. But I never miss a cue.Here’s the skinny on guitar tuners. First, do not overspend. The best one I’ve ever owned cost $20 brand new. These tuners fall into to categories, active and passive. Active are those which output a tone and passive are those which “listen” to the string you are tuning and display a dial or lights to guide you to the correct note. My opinion is that the active types are inferior for stage work. First of all, the tone they emit is easily lost in the background clutter of other stage noises. Trust me, the audience does not think listening to you tune is “neat”. You also have to use active tuners in isolation because other people tuning nearby will clash. Tuning one person at a time is a drag. Worse, tuning to an audible tone has the same problems as tuning to another guitar, that is, some people will naturally hear too sharp or too flat.
Avoid crappy models where you have to slide a switch for each note; those are 1960s technology. Get a digital readout, preferably with an LED that turns or shows green when you are in tune, and is red otherwise. Many passive tuners, which by the way are easier on batteries for some reason, have a microphone on the front which picks up your notes, but can be made to work better by touching the tuner against the body of an acoustic guitar. Make certain the tuner has a standard ¼” phono jack for tuning an electric guitar, that is, no specialized jacks which are easy to misplace. I use a pigtail phono plug (a small cable around six inches long) and leave it permanently plugged into the tuner.
Smaller is generally better, so they’ll fit a pocket in your guitar case. Some guitars have built-in tuners, but avoid them if they share battery power with any other feature. Other tuners are designed to be used in-line. I don’t like them. If they are the brand that lie on the floor, you have to squint to see them. If they attach to the guitar, even a few ounces of extra weight becomes noticeable. It is also questionable whether adding yet another gadget between your instrument and guitar is a good idea. In-line tuners also encourage excessive on-stage tuning, a time-waster that fools nobody. I’ve covered elsewhere that you should only buy guitars that stay in tune at least six hours at a stretch. I need only tune my bass twice a week.
Never buy a tuner that requires special batteries or has an external charger or transformer. You’ll be sorry. I get around two years out of a set of AAAs. To tune up in a pinch, if you have an iPhone, there’s an app for that, too.
Eddie has been in touch to schedule band rehearsal for Sunday. I told you, when there is decent progress, these sessions become fun in themselves. We are still short a drum box since my Red Devil trial has expired and I don’t have a credit card to get the licensed version. But that’s okay, I sort of know the programmer. Incidentally, the two guys who were supposed to show up at the shop for the meeting never made it. Who knows, maybe they actually found jobs. I had high hopes for that meeting. Whereas I can program, I don’t know many things about the Internet. For example, how to make a time limited trial offer, or how to distribute software licenses on-line. All the things the Red Devil guy does. If I knew where these people learned these things, I would sign up there tomorrow. Please don’t say college, because colleges also teach you the junk you don’t need and charge for it.
That gal that looked at the room two weeks back, the one I found quite negative, is still trying to recruit me. I’ll call her Tash, which rhymes with her real name. She was one healthy bird, and did know a lot about nutrition. I mentioned she sold health food. I asked her to get in touch concerning several products, and she finally did. My point is that all the information she’s provided is sound. I may attend a seminar to find out more although I know it is just a sales pitch. I’ve seen many products on TV that claim to eliminate triglycerides and I so much want to look like the guy on the right side of the screen. Tash says everything has a money-back guaranty. Again, she really knows her stuff and I just have to make sure nothing works because it is a Granny Klampett. You know, it works because of all the other things you have to do, like rest in bed for ten days after taking her cold medicine.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
August 20, 2009
This picture is four years old, it now being that anniversary of placing the million toothpicks on the shop wall. You are looking at the top two panels, each containing 250,000 toothpicks, and the top edges of the bottom two, for a total of one million. These were counted so that people could see an exact million of something. These toothpicks got paid to go to California and stay in the Torrey Pines Hotel. The “lines” seen are part of the learning curve, it took some trial and error to even get the frames to fit much less get them to look half right. This simple display alone is a greater accomplishment than most people manage in their entire lives.
Don’t go away, I’ll be putting down “smart people” in a short while. Every so often I’ll flip through one of those books that pretend to give advice on how to make money with your computer. It gets harder to manage a wry smile every year I see those things. What gets me is how I’ve never met anyone who runs such a business. One recurring occupation in these books is running a form designing business. According to the authors, businesses are in constant need of new forms. That’s what I’m saying. Have you ever met anyone who makes a living at designing forms? I’ve done it, but the most I ever earned was $15 and it took three hours.
I was at the Hollywood Library with the famous door. This is the door with the library hours printed so small you can only read it from five feet away. But the motion detector opens the sliding door when you are eight feet away. I mentioned this to the library five years ago; they told me the motion detector was for the handicapped. That’s for sure.
The shoe shop was quiet, meaning a lot of maintenance got done. Alfredo has arthritis in his index fingers, a lingering ailment I hope I never get. I cut the soles and inserts for him but I am not there all the time. I also crawled up the wall and got the filter out of the A/C. I doubt it had ever been cleaned. And that was my exciting day. Now you know what I inherently have against working for a living. It makes Jack a dull boy.
Now that is not to say one only has to be smart to avoid work. Heck no, some of the stupidest people on Earth are good at being lazy. It’s how you use the smarts, thus raising the contradiction that you are not necessarily being smart by having a better paying job. It is our strange society that fosters the weird belief system that smart people get paid more. What I find strangely beguiling is how often I am told that so-and-so is smart, so-and-so usually being a relative of the speaker.
Here’s a little secret—the questions that run through my head when I’m told somebody is smart. How many foreign countries have they lived in for longer than three months? How many languages do they speak? How many years before age fifty did they retire? How many dozen non-fiction books have they read in the previous year? How many hours a day do they spend writing? Where are their journals published? How many times have they been around the world? How many musical instruments do they play? They must be some kind of smart I never heard of. For the record, yes, I could answer all those questions back when I had a full-time job. But then again, I have never ever personally said I was smart, either.
Jerks in the news. Some reality TV goof allegedly killed his old lady and ran for Canada. I don’t have the details but I can tell you that if he headed for Point Roberts, he knew exactly what he was doing. He had prior knowledge of the territory, mark my words. The episode caught my attention for the pictures of the victim, all portrayed as sweet and blonde and innocent. Hey, give me a break. Model, my eye. I had a lengthy relationship with a model. Mine did not have breast implants or act and look like a hooker. Mine didn’t have to pose in semi-pornographic settings just to get noticed. You know what I’m saying, so don’t expect sympathy if you break rule number one: don’t date pretty boys. Except me, of course.
Have we forgotten Miss Wilson and her 15 seconds of fame? If so, see blog of 2009/06/26. Contemporary media would have a field day with a young lady in the cockpit with a middle aged pilot, but the fact is there was no passenger compartment. The 1923 flying boat design meant with three people that she either sat between the two men, or beside the pilot with the other man behind. Nothing odd about it at all, only the accident was freakish.
Don’t go away, I’ll be putting down “smart people” in a short while. Every so often I’ll flip through one of those books that pretend to give advice on how to make money with your computer. It gets harder to manage a wry smile every year I see those things. What gets me is how I’ve never met anyone who runs such a business. One recurring occupation in these books is running a form designing business. According to the authors, businesses are in constant need of new forms. That’s what I’m saying. Have you ever met anyone who makes a living at designing forms? I’ve done it, but the most I ever earned was $15 and it took three hours.I was at the Hollywood Library with the famous door. This is the door with the library hours printed so small you can only read it from five feet away. But the motion detector opens the sliding door when you are eight feet away. I mentioned this to the library five years ago; they told me the motion detector was for the handicapped. That’s for sure.
The shoe shop was quiet, meaning a lot of maintenance got done. Alfredo has arthritis in his index fingers, a lingering ailment I hope I never get. I cut the soles and inserts for him but I am not there all the time. I also crawled up the wall and got the filter out of the A/C. I doubt it had ever been cleaned. And that was my exciting day. Now you know what I inherently have against working for a living. It makes Jack a dull boy.
Now that is not to say one only has to be smart to avoid work. Heck no, some of the stupidest people on Earth are good at being lazy. It’s how you use the smarts, thus raising the contradiction that you are not necessarily being smart by having a better paying job. It is our strange society that fosters the weird belief system that smart people get paid more. What I find strangely beguiling is how often I am told that so-and-so is smart, so-and-so usually being a relative of the speaker.
Here’s a little secret—the questions that run through my head when I’m told somebody is smart. How many foreign countries have they lived in for longer than three months? How many languages do they speak? How many years before age fifty did they retire? How many dozen non-fiction books have they read in the previous year? How many hours a day do they spend writing? Where are their journals published? How many times have they been around the world? How many musical instruments do they play? They must be some kind of smart I never heard of. For the record, yes, I could answer all those questions back when I had a full-time job. But then again, I have never ever personally said I was smart, either.
Jerks in the news. Some reality TV goof allegedly killed his old lady and ran for Canada. I don’t have the details but I can tell you that if he headed for Point Roberts, he knew exactly what he was doing. He had prior knowledge of the territory, mark my words. The episode caught my attention for the pictures of the victim, all portrayed as sweet and blonde and innocent. Hey, give me a break. Model, my eye. I had a lengthy relationship with a model. Mine did not have breast implants or act and look like a hooker. Mine didn’t have to pose in semi-pornographic settings just to get noticed. You know what I’m saying, so don’t expect sympathy if you break rule number one: don’t date pretty boys. Except me, of course.
Have we forgotten Miss Wilson and her 15 seconds of fame? If so, see blog of 2009/06/26. Contemporary media would have a field day with a young lady in the cockpit with a middle aged pilot, but the fact is there was no passenger compartment. The 1923 flying boat design meant with three people that she either sat between the two men, or beside the pilot with the other man behind. Nothing odd about it at all, only the accident was freakish.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
August 19, 2009
If some of these photos are repeats, it means two things. One, you are a dedicated reader of this blog because these pictures are from 2005. And two, my newest digital camera is letting me down, accounting for the grainy photos these days. I long for the old Argus [famous digital camera]. Look at the quality of this classic Florida photo of the shop boarded up for Katrina. So as not to scare anyone away, we have not had another hurricane or even a bad tropical storm in this area since. Yes, that is the Taurus in the foreground.
Another response from the drum machine guy, and he is not interested. He’s emphatic about not being a team worker. His English is a little rough on the small words so it isn’t his first language. I sent yet another drawn out email to see if I could appeal to his sense of musicianship, that there are hundreds if not thousands of performers who suffer for lack of a decent drum box. If he still says no, I’m beginning to run out of cards over here. We need that uncompiled [source] code.
Theresa checks in from Camp Wilmie to report a few cracks in the plaster. Maybe she needs a breather, maybe head for South Florida. The job situation here is probably worse and the North Carolina weather better. But it sounds like there is nobody to hang out with up there and that situation is entirely possible in these smaller localities. I find I need a population of at least 150,000 before I can find a few good friends. I grew up in a small town where nobody could believe I didn’t know the names of the Brady Bunch, how could I be so dumb? Let’s just say I was as far from memorizing the names of politicians and actors as most people are from intellectual pursuits. Still am, thank god.
Being it was another day at work, don’t expect too much by way of novelty today. Heat or not, I biked ten miles for exercise and to test the bicycle repairs. That’s a new double-reinforced front tire and repositioned brake cables. It’s a good question if you ask how can I get those cables twisted without noticing right away? Answer: I repeatedly take the bicycle in and out of the back of the station wagon, often in the dark. The handlebars have to be twisted around backwards to fit and it is quite easy to spin them the wrong way. Try it and you’ll immediately get my drift.
Looking again at the bicycle tours mentioned recently, I find it is difficult to get any maps of the routes unless you are already a member. What’s available is more like schematics and they don’t show where the daily stops take place. This looms important after talking to many German tourists who were on bus excursions through South America. These year-long trips cost around $9,000 per person including meals and accommodations. Had I not been working full time, I would have taken one since that was cheaper than my rent alone.
The problem reported by the bus tourists (who, by the way, were some of the craziest sumbitches I’ve ever met) was that the drivers and tour guides had a hidden agenda. If anything, even a flat tire, caused a delay, there was a big rush to “catch up”. Where the riders had expected to spend a day touring some of the grander sites, the staff would hustle them back on board after twenty minutes and drive breakneck all night past other scheduled stops. I usually met the ones who had never got back on the bus and struck out on their own. My favorites were two Nordic blonde babes traveling together. Funny you should ask, but yes, as a matter of fact I do have plenty of pictures. All rated G. Maybe some time in the distant future, if you’re lucky.
Meanwhile, I’m gathering information about the northernmost tour. In my trips east-west, the scenery I think about most is in southern Wyoming. In the stretch west of Laramie/Cheyenne it is lightly rolling prairie with an incredible view of the mountain ranges in Colorado on the southern horizon. I was there smack in the middle of beautiful summer days, cruising 85 in the Caddy with the A/C, listening to Dwight Yoakum. The Interstate parallels a railroad with strange little houses every few miles, something I’m reminded to find out more about. They are very sturdily built making me suspect they are some type of emergency measure. But I’m way smarter than to go through the prairies in the middle of winter.
I’m giving a hard listen to another Faith Hill tune, “This Kiss”. It seems ideal for a custom bass line but the original was evidently produced in some spastic studio session. At several points the music changes in a disjointed fashion, like the sound tech patched the final cut to get it over with, or something similar. The verses don’t make a lot of sense but the chorus is so catchy who cares? Also, the lyrics are gender neutral.
Another response from the drum machine guy, and he is not interested. He’s emphatic about not being a team worker. His English is a little rough on the small words so it isn’t his first language. I sent yet another drawn out email to see if I could appeal to his sense of musicianship, that there are hundreds if not thousands of performers who suffer for lack of a decent drum box. If he still says no, I’m beginning to run out of cards over here. We need that uncompiled [source] code.Theresa checks in from Camp Wilmie to report a few cracks in the plaster. Maybe she needs a breather, maybe head for South Florida. The job situation here is probably worse and the North Carolina weather better. But it sounds like there is nobody to hang out with up there and that situation is entirely possible in these smaller localities. I find I need a population of at least 150,000 before I can find a few good friends. I grew up in a small town where nobody could believe I didn’t know the names of the Brady Bunch, how could I be so dumb? Let’s just say I was as far from memorizing the names of politicians and actors as most people are from intellectual pursuits. Still am, thank god.
Being it was another day at work, don’t expect too much by way of novelty today. Heat or not, I biked ten miles for exercise and to test the bicycle repairs. That’s a new double-reinforced front tire and repositioned brake cables. It’s a good question if you ask how can I get those cables twisted without noticing right away? Answer: I repeatedly take the bicycle in and out of the back of the station wagon, often in the dark. The handlebars have to be twisted around backwards to fit and it is quite easy to spin them the wrong way. Try it and you’ll immediately get my drift.
Looking again at the bicycle tours mentioned recently, I find it is difficult to get any maps of the routes unless you are already a member. What’s available is more like schematics and they don’t show where the daily stops take place. This looms important after talking to many German tourists who were on bus excursions through South America. These year-long trips cost around $9,000 per person including meals and accommodations. Had I not been working full time, I would have taken one since that was cheaper than my rent alone.
The problem reported by the bus tourists (who, by the way, were some of the craziest sumbitches I’ve ever met) was that the drivers and tour guides had a hidden agenda. If anything, even a flat tire, caused a delay, there was a big rush to “catch up”. Where the riders had expected to spend a day touring some of the grander sites, the staff would hustle them back on board after twenty minutes and drive breakneck all night past other scheduled stops. I usually met the ones who had never got back on the bus and struck out on their own. My favorites were two Nordic blonde babes traveling together. Funny you should ask, but yes, as a matter of fact I do have plenty of pictures. All rated G. Maybe some time in the distant future, if you’re lucky.
Meanwhile, I’m gathering information about the northernmost tour. In my trips east-west, the scenery I think about most is in southern Wyoming. In the stretch west of Laramie/Cheyenne it is lightly rolling prairie with an incredible view of the mountain ranges in Colorado on the southern horizon. I was there smack in the middle of beautiful summer days, cruising 85 in the Caddy with the A/C, listening to Dwight Yoakum. The Interstate parallels a railroad with strange little houses every few miles, something I’m reminded to find out more about. They are very sturdily built making me suspect they are some type of emergency measure. But I’m way smarter than to go through the prairies in the middle of winter.
I’m giving a hard listen to another Faith Hill tune, “This Kiss”. It seems ideal for a custom bass line but the original was evidently produced in some spastic studio session. At several points the music changes in a disjointed fashion, like the sound tech patched the final cut to get it over with, or something similar. The verses don’t make a lot of sense but the chorus is so catchy who cares? Also, the lyrics are gender neutral.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
August 18, 2009
Who remembers the Po’ Boys? I do. Every farmer in town has tried to steal my Jimbos gig. And failed. I recalled this incident, because I would like to have found a band that would spell off at Jimbos and it never happened due to bad band management practices. Read my lips, guitar players don’t make good managers unless your name is Gordie Walker.
This poster goes a long way to showing what I mean. I’ll point out a few things that would never have got past even a half-decent band manager. First of all, the hours. Obviously convenient for the band, but nobody bothered to check with the crowd. By 11:00 there are maybe two regulars at the bar, drinking on their tabs.
Or a three piece group. A band manager would have counted the chairs and said, “Hey, this place will never support more than a duo.” There is no stage and no room for a three-piece unless they set up on the dance floor, blocking one of the dartboards. There are other things wrong on other levels. The band name is hopelessly unoriginal and gives a totally wrong impression of the music they present. Very little of it was suitable for the venue and although they might argue the point, a look in the tip jar says I’m right about that.
Also, if you are going to print up advertising on a computer, at least learn your damn spelling, grammar and maybe a smattering of typesetting while you are at it. At any rate, they never came back a second time and that is also due to rotten band management at a level that can never improve. To this day, I still hear off-color comments about that whole episode. Example, I’ll sometimes get asked if I have gone over and bailed them out with my bass playing. Nope, they took their $9 and ran.
Speaking of the money part, to date I make roughly half and half pay and tips, accounting for exactly 60% of my income from music. And I do it with a 17.9% expense to gross income ratio. Now that is efficiency. Put another way, I am 36 times better at management than the manager of my last band thought he was. Hell, he still hasn’t figured out it was me that fired him.
I had to get over to Walmart for more bicycle parts, and who should I run into? I’ll tell you in a moment. First, I had to get those parts, as I missed work today. I can easily bike the two miles to work, but I cannot walk it even in the shade. (Few can, I’ve shown you pictures of the deserted Florida summer streets.) My decision was the bike takes priority and I confess to doing only minimum maintenance for nearly a year. Take the example of the brake lines. With caliper brakes, it is possible to twist the handlebars completely around 360 degrees. If you do, it strains the cables. I am constantly putting that bike in and out of the car without always checking for this situation. Now I pay for the maintenance indirectly by losing a day’s pay.
Pete the Rock, that’s who I met. He was chatting up some gal at the Panera and did not recognize me at first. Remember that cold night he waited for me and I thought he finally gave up and rented a motel? He says he slept on the front porch. Pete says a friend of his needs a place for the short term, some guy in the army. I often see these ads about army types wanting a room, which I take to mean the army does not pay enough for them to rent much. Check back later on this one. The gal just mentioned was very good looking. Seems ones like that never need a room, sigh.
Pete reports that he still has not got a settlement on his disability claim, which he once told Wallace and I dated back to 1997. He is getting SSI (white man’s welfare) so the potential is they have to pay him the difference between his settlement amount and SSI, and in twelve years, that could easily run into $100,000. I think I’ll mention it to my lawyer. I dislike the way the US and Canada seem to have billions of dollars for welfare cases but nothing for disability insurance. There is a huge difference between can’t work and won’t work.
Pete also filled me in on a lot of the ways the system works with disability. It is hardly a perfect system, but that does not explain why it is so difficult to find out information about the actual operations. Pete has been to several court appearances over his claim and says the whole thing is over in five minutes. How do you figure that? He says the judge has no time for prolonged arguments and after all, it is not like the judge is spending his own money. I found all of that most interesting simply because there seems to be no other way to find out this information. Personally, I think the records of all people on welfare or disability should be publicly posted. I’d have no problem with that.
Then Eric across the way. Y’day I saw that his newspapers are piling up. At noon, a guy knocked on my door to say he was a friend of Eric (from over at the casino) and was concerned. We went over and pounded on all the windows. Good news, Eric has been taking naps in the summer heat. I advised him to remember to take in his newspapers. Yes, had I suspected an emergency, I would have broken in first and called 911 after.
This tune Eddie wants, “After The Gold Rush” is a strange thing if you ask me. It’s catchy but the lyrics sound druggy to me. It as no bass line although Eddie says there is a version that does. Then again, in the three weeks since last practice, Eddie has not downloaded, printed, memorized or learned anything, so I wrote a new bass line for that song. It is a winner. You know that feeling when you hear a new piece of music for the first time and you just know it is a hit. Like the first time you heard “Long Train Running”. That’s the sound of what I wrote. It eclipses the bass line I wrote for “Jambalaya” as my most original.
I had enough extra time to do one of those ever-interesting travel cost studies. I flipped open the AAA Tourbook to some random cow-town you never heard of. Burlington, Iowa, population 26,800. No known attractions, 512 hotel/motel rooms, one for every 52 residents, the average daily rate is $109. That makes Burlington the rough accommodation equivalent of a good-sized Miami apartment block. I’m looking at average published rates, as most of us don’t have William Shatner hiding in our furnace vents.
That means without any discounts, renting a room in nowhere, Iowa, will set you back at the rate of $3,270 per month. And you wonder why I don’t listen when the hotel industry squawks about slow times. The gear themselves for it by not offering a decent price for someone who just wants to crash overnight and be on his way. The few bad apples and rock bands would quickly get blacklisted. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever swam in a motel pool. But I’ve had to pay for it.
I don’t know much about the financial mechanics of the hotel trade, but I do know spending at the rate of $3,270 per month for a room is your quick route to poverty. While I’m certain their accountants could justify why they cannot possibly get by for a penny less, we are all too familiar with specials rates and deals to believe those claims.
This poster goes a long way to showing what I mean. I’ll point out a few things that would never have got past even a half-decent band manager. First of all, the hours. Obviously convenient for the band, but nobody bothered to check with the crowd. By 11:00 there are maybe two regulars at the bar, drinking on their tabs.Or a three piece group. A band manager would have counted the chairs and said, “Hey, this place will never support more than a duo.” There is no stage and no room for a three-piece unless they set up on the dance floor, blocking one of the dartboards. There are other things wrong on other levels. The band name is hopelessly unoriginal and gives a totally wrong impression of the music they present. Very little of it was suitable for the venue and although they might argue the point, a look in the tip jar says I’m right about that.
Also, if you are going to print up advertising on a computer, at least learn your damn spelling, grammar and maybe a smattering of typesetting while you are at it. At any rate, they never came back a second time and that is also due to rotten band management at a level that can never improve. To this day, I still hear off-color comments about that whole episode. Example, I’ll sometimes get asked if I have gone over and bailed them out with my bass playing. Nope, they took their $9 and ran.
Speaking of the money part, to date I make roughly half and half pay and tips, accounting for exactly 60% of my income from music. And I do it with a 17.9% expense to gross income ratio. Now that is efficiency. Put another way, I am 36 times better at management than the manager of my last band thought he was. Hell, he still hasn’t figured out it was me that fired him.
I had to get over to Walmart for more bicycle parts, and who should I run into? I’ll tell you in a moment. First, I had to get those parts, as I missed work today. I can easily bike the two miles to work, but I cannot walk it even in the shade. (Few can, I’ve shown you pictures of the deserted Florida summer streets.) My decision was the bike takes priority and I confess to doing only minimum maintenance for nearly a year. Take the example of the brake lines. With caliper brakes, it is possible to twist the handlebars completely around 360 degrees. If you do, it strains the cables. I am constantly putting that bike in and out of the car without always checking for this situation. Now I pay for the maintenance indirectly by losing a day’s pay.
Pete the Rock, that’s who I met. He was chatting up some gal at the Panera and did not recognize me at first. Remember that cold night he waited for me and I thought he finally gave up and rented a motel? He says he slept on the front porch. Pete says a friend of his needs a place for the short term, some guy in the army. I often see these ads about army types wanting a room, which I take to mean the army does not pay enough for them to rent much. Check back later on this one. The gal just mentioned was very good looking. Seems ones like that never need a room, sigh.
Pete reports that he still has not got a settlement on his disability claim, which he once told Wallace and I dated back to 1997. He is getting SSI (white man’s welfare) so the potential is they have to pay him the difference between his settlement amount and SSI, and in twelve years, that could easily run into $100,000. I think I’ll mention it to my lawyer. I dislike the way the US and Canada seem to have billions of dollars for welfare cases but nothing for disability insurance. There is a huge difference between can’t work and won’t work.
Pete also filled me in on a lot of the ways the system works with disability. It is hardly a perfect system, but that does not explain why it is so difficult to find out information about the actual operations. Pete has been to several court appearances over his claim and says the whole thing is over in five minutes. How do you figure that? He says the judge has no time for prolonged arguments and after all, it is not like the judge is spending his own money. I found all of that most interesting simply because there seems to be no other way to find out this information. Personally, I think the records of all people on welfare or disability should be publicly posted. I’d have no problem with that.
Then Eric across the way. Y’day I saw that his newspapers are piling up. At noon, a guy knocked on my door to say he was a friend of Eric (from over at the casino) and was concerned. We went over and pounded on all the windows. Good news, Eric has been taking naps in the summer heat. I advised him to remember to take in his newspapers. Yes, had I suspected an emergency, I would have broken in first and called 911 after.
This tune Eddie wants, “After The Gold Rush” is a strange thing if you ask me. It’s catchy but the lyrics sound druggy to me. It as no bass line although Eddie says there is a version that does. Then again, in the three weeks since last practice, Eddie has not downloaded, printed, memorized or learned anything, so I wrote a new bass line for that song. It is a winner. You know that feeling when you hear a new piece of music for the first time and you just know it is a hit. Like the first time you heard “Long Train Running”. That’s the sound of what I wrote. It eclipses the bass line I wrote for “Jambalaya” as my most original.
I had enough extra time to do one of those ever-interesting travel cost studies. I flipped open the AAA Tourbook to some random cow-town you never heard of. Burlington, Iowa, population 26,800. No known attractions, 512 hotel/motel rooms, one for every 52 residents, the average daily rate is $109. That makes Burlington the rough accommodation equivalent of a good-sized Miami apartment block. I’m looking at average published rates, as most of us don’t have William Shatner hiding in our furnace vents.
That means without any discounts, renting a room in nowhere, Iowa, will set you back at the rate of $3,270 per month. And you wonder why I don’t listen when the hotel industry squawks about slow times. The gear themselves for it by not offering a decent price for someone who just wants to crash overnight and be on his way. The few bad apples and rock bands would quickly get blacklisted. Otherwise, I don’t think I’ve ever swam in a motel pool. But I’ve had to pay for it.
I don’t know much about the financial mechanics of the hotel trade, but I do know spending at the rate of $3,270 per month for a room is your quick route to poverty. While I’m certain their accountants could justify why they cannot possibly get by for a penny less, we are all too familiar with specials rates and deals to believe those claims.
Monday, August 17, 2009
August 17, 2009
Big event today was a bicycle blowout, I had to ride two miles home on the rim in one of the rare evening downpours. Normally you time early evening rides when the rain is over, but this time it waited for me. I’d had to hit a curb dead on moments earlier due to traffic so it was a pinch flat. And that means flat flat, and that I’ll either miss or be late for work tomorrow. That shows you how important that bike has become. As you see here, the hot weather means the bicycle is brought indoors for this type of repair. I had been riding back from Memorial where prescription refills take 24 hours, that is, two trips. That hospital is three miles from here, easy biking distance.
It’s steak and lobster this weekend. My old music class is on again for this semester, subject to budgetary whims. But show me a school board crass enough to cancel little Suzie’s music class, especially when her teacher is the neatest “old guy” she ever met. Six out of seven of my students are early teen girls and I doubleplusdare anybody to tell them what they can’t have. Maybe I’ll fix the Taurus. Classes start 7:00 PM this Friday. What Jimbos gig?
Earlier I was in the shop getting all my email contacts up to date. I sent several pages of material to the drumbox guy in the UK. He is not enthusiastic about my business proposition but on the other hand has not said no. I have completely tested his software and even wrote (and donated) a better manual for him to publish for free. My findings on his product are as follows, which you may recognize as the first stages of reverse engineering.
The code is compiled, probably Visual C. There are too many perfectly functioning sub-modules to believe they were programmed from scratch. There is a chance in addition to being an expert coder, we are also dealing with a fantastic drummer, an electronics expert, an experienced sound man and a financial wizard. I say he has lifted the modules from various sources and may not understand I don’t care if he stole them from the Queen herself.
I’ve arranged a tentative meeting with another programmer this Friday. The intention is to pool our talents, although if the drumbox guy knows much about teamwork, he will either join us or sell us the source code. At some point he is going to figure out he should get on board or lose an opportunity here. If Friday goes the way I think it might, I am about to return to programming, a field I abandoned twenty years ago to study accounting.
Here is a different perspective on liquid intake during hot weather. Normally it is measure in ounces, but I decided to weigh my daily consumption in pounds. I refilled a set of empty plastic soda bottles with equivalent volumes of water, meaning this experiment presumes everything I drank today has the same density as water. That’s fair, I think. True, I seem to be the only one driving a bicycle by the miles in this sun, but I don’t think my consumption is otherwise unusual. What is your guess? How many pounds of liquid did I drink today? Between sunrise and sunset, twelve pounds. I’m not the guy you want to cross the Kalahari with.
It’s steak and lobster this weekend. My old music class is on again for this semester, subject to budgetary whims. But show me a school board crass enough to cancel little Suzie’s music class, especially when her teacher is the neatest “old guy” she ever met. Six out of seven of my students are early teen girls and I doubleplusdare anybody to tell them what they can’t have. Maybe I’ll fix the Taurus. Classes start 7:00 PM this Friday. What Jimbos gig?Earlier I was in the shop getting all my email contacts up to date. I sent several pages of material to the drumbox guy in the UK. He is not enthusiastic about my business proposition but on the other hand has not said no. I have completely tested his software and even wrote (and donated) a better manual for him to publish for free. My findings on his product are as follows, which you may recognize as the first stages of reverse engineering.
The code is compiled, probably Visual C. There are too many perfectly functioning sub-modules to believe they were programmed from scratch. There is a chance in addition to being an expert coder, we are also dealing with a fantastic drummer, an electronics expert, an experienced sound man and a financial wizard. I say he has lifted the modules from various sources and may not understand I don’t care if he stole them from the Queen herself.
I’ve arranged a tentative meeting with another programmer this Friday. The intention is to pool our talents, although if the drumbox guy knows much about teamwork, he will either join us or sell us the source code. At some point he is going to figure out he should get on board or lose an opportunity here. If Friday goes the way I think it might, I am about to return to programming, a field I abandoned twenty years ago to study accounting.
Here is a different perspective on liquid intake during hot weather. Normally it is measure in ounces, but I decided to weigh my daily consumption in pounds. I refilled a set of empty plastic soda bottles with equivalent volumes of water, meaning this experiment presumes everything I drank today has the same density as water. That’s fair, I think. True, I seem to be the only one driving a bicycle by the miles in this sun, but I don’t think my consumption is otherwise unusual. What is your guess? How many pounds of liquid did I drink today? Between sunrise and sunset, twelve pounds. I’m not the guy you want to cross the Kalahari with.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
August 16, 2009
It looks like even the “pain control” clinics are losing business. This is the outfit that got raided up the street a few months back. Oddly, this picture of their sign is here for a different reason, to show how not to make a sign. The two colors are red and blue, which the human eye cannot focus on at the same time. This causes “jitter” and can give some people headaches. The relevance here is that it fooled my camera eye too, and is the photo that convinced me to start looking for another camera.
It is finally starting to cool down enough to be comfortable, at least indoors. So I watched yet another show I’ve never seen before, “The Colbert Report”. (Say “kol-BAYR”.) He has some excellent writers and a rapid delivery, although he tends to talk a lot about politicians of whom I know nothing. Best item today was some lady who staged a banquet presenting herself a fake top nursing award, even convincing her doctor to make a speech. Good one! Sure, she’s dishonest, but the rest of them are stupid. Stoooo-pid. Knuckleheads.
MS is pushing bing as a “decision engine”, claiming it solves the problem of “search overload”. Those who’ve been around know I identified this problem six years earlier, and called it “search bloat”. I’ve tried bing and it is your typical egghead solution, trying to plaster over the problem rather than solve it. The Internet has spawned a new generation of people who make their living by feeding you bad results. Like telemarketers. If you get what you are looking for on your first search, my oath, you must be useless.
What is needed is a system of categorization guided by the users, not by a company such as MS. When a result appears in the wrong context, it gets bleeped. Unlike flagging, the number of bleeps is based on a system of earned credits. When you find a correct result, you must tag it to gain a bleep credit. Of course, this will pose a hardship on those who rely on taking advantage, but so what? Sheer numbers will prevent the crooks from simply going in there and overwhelming the place. I’ve even developed an outline for a book I’d like to write that touches on this process [of small groups taking advantage of any system]. Sure, I’ll give you the idea for free.
Tentatively titled “Planet 107”, the premise is that in the year 2048, long-distance space travel has become economical to private industry. Hundreds of inhabitable planets have been discovered and some exist is clusters, where the worlds are numbered sequentially, hence 107. There is a massive exodus from Earth due to terrorism, pollution and Jonas Brothers re-runs. Because the flights are chartered, different “classes” of Earth people each go to their own planets. These “classes” are not races, and Planet 107 winds up being settled by atheistic, privacy-minded individualists who honor self-reliance. Politics and taxation do not exist because nobody will stoop to the job.
Here begins the conflict. All the charter companies go bankrupt and don’t return for another fifty years to discover some changes. Planet 51 was settled by religious fundamentalists who are now burning each other at the stake. Planet 93 was populated by welfare cases who agreed to resettlement and are cannibals given that nobody will grow food. Planet 68 of homosexuals who claimed they were “born that way”—did they thrive (disproving the birth theory) or go extinct? Buy the book and find out.
At first, all the other worlds mock 107. Look, the 107s are so foolish they have no police, no army, no biometric databanks, not even birth certificates. The book dwells on the logic of the other planets that 107 deserves to be invaded and forced to share. For example, Planet 3 is inhabited by tribes who claim 107 should be theirs because it exists in the same galaxy and the 3s had arrived a month earlier. What the others don’t know is that 107 has developed a “genetic force field”.
I got this idea from attending a town council meeting when I was 22. We’d been taught in school that the political basis of town councils was to allow every point of view a fair hearing. In real life, the first thing the town council did was make anyone who attended wait until the very end before allowing them to speak. That meant sitting through a four-hour meeting which left no time to debate the council’s inevitable rebuffs. If you left planning to come back at the end, they would call your name as soon as your back was turned and hurriedly close your issue. When questioned about this contortion of democratic principles, the junior council member (Scott Fitzgerald) expressed horrified shock at the very hint of wrongdoing.
Did I just use “hurriedly” in a sentence?
Much later today, after a successful rehearsal, it is not certain my duo will be ready for this year’s tourist season. I say successful because of the ground covered while here. Most of tonight was spent on duo presentation techniques and keeping the total sound in check regardless of how the studio recording goes. Eddie definitely has west coast band experience. A lot of it is case-hardened experience but at least there is no permanent damage.
In fact, we spent 2/3 of tonight’s time practicing something unheard of in Florida: stage compression (the art of balancing total musical ambience rather than straining to duplicate the original studio sound). While our experiences are bafflingly opposite, we tend to draw the same or similar conclusions. That is in contrast to those who draw the opposite conclusion from the same experiences. You know, the New Age crowd.
Musically this is amazing, we finally played several tunes with just bass and vocals, something I have not done in 15 years. He surprised himself by carrying it off without a hitch, not even having to be told in advance what tune. That is, he was instantly able to guess the correct song from my non-melodic bass line. Remember, these are customized bass lines developed by my theory, not guitar lines played on the bass. (Can you imagine my former guitarists even agreeing to try such a thing, much less learning by it or admitting it sounds fine?) I am certain once Eddie breaks the habit of over-strumming the rhythm, he will prefer to perform some bass-only tunes.
This does not disguise the fact we are two months behind schedule, which translates into 48 hours of lost stage time in addition to learning the material. That is real mileage lost from our chosen venue. The only thing worse is to waste time in some coffeehouse with a stranger on the bongos. The biggest advance this week is that we are finally starting to sound like a duo, and I was right. This town needs a break from the dry solo guitar act. Now that I’m back in charge, practices are fun again.
It is finally starting to cool down enough to be comfortable, at least indoors. So I watched yet another show I’ve never seen before, “The Colbert Report”. (Say “kol-BAYR”.) He has some excellent writers and a rapid delivery, although he tends to talk a lot about politicians of whom I know nothing. Best item today was some lady who staged a banquet presenting herself a fake top nursing award, even convincing her doctor to make a speech. Good one! Sure, she’s dishonest, but the rest of them are stupid. Stoooo-pid. Knuckleheads.MS is pushing bing as a “decision engine”, claiming it solves the problem of “search overload”. Those who’ve been around know I identified this problem six years earlier, and called it “search bloat”. I’ve tried bing and it is your typical egghead solution, trying to plaster over the problem rather than solve it. The Internet has spawned a new generation of people who make their living by feeding you bad results. Like telemarketers. If you get what you are looking for on your first search, my oath, you must be useless.
What is needed is a system of categorization guided by the users, not by a company such as MS. When a result appears in the wrong context, it gets bleeped. Unlike flagging, the number of bleeps is based on a system of earned credits. When you find a correct result, you must tag it to gain a bleep credit. Of course, this will pose a hardship on those who rely on taking advantage, but so what? Sheer numbers will prevent the crooks from simply going in there and overwhelming the place. I’ve even developed an outline for a book I’d like to write that touches on this process [of small groups taking advantage of any system]. Sure, I’ll give you the idea for free.
Tentatively titled “Planet 107”, the premise is that in the year 2048, long-distance space travel has become economical to private industry. Hundreds of inhabitable planets have been discovered and some exist is clusters, where the worlds are numbered sequentially, hence 107. There is a massive exodus from Earth due to terrorism, pollution and Jonas Brothers re-runs. Because the flights are chartered, different “classes” of Earth people each go to their own planets. These “classes” are not races, and Planet 107 winds up being settled by atheistic, privacy-minded individualists who honor self-reliance. Politics and taxation do not exist because nobody will stoop to the job.
Here begins the conflict. All the charter companies go bankrupt and don’t return for another fifty years to discover some changes. Planet 51 was settled by religious fundamentalists who are now burning each other at the stake. Planet 93 was populated by welfare cases who agreed to resettlement and are cannibals given that nobody will grow food. Planet 68 of homosexuals who claimed they were “born that way”—did they thrive (disproving the birth theory) or go extinct? Buy the book and find out.
At first, all the other worlds mock 107. Look, the 107s are so foolish they have no police, no army, no biometric databanks, not even birth certificates. The book dwells on the logic of the other planets that 107 deserves to be invaded and forced to share. For example, Planet 3 is inhabited by tribes who claim 107 should be theirs because it exists in the same galaxy and the 3s had arrived a month earlier. What the others don’t know is that 107 has developed a “genetic force field”.
I got this idea from attending a town council meeting when I was 22. We’d been taught in school that the political basis of town councils was to allow every point of view a fair hearing. In real life, the first thing the town council did was make anyone who attended wait until the very end before allowing them to speak. That meant sitting through a four-hour meeting which left no time to debate the council’s inevitable rebuffs. If you left planning to come back at the end, they would call your name as soon as your back was turned and hurriedly close your issue. When questioned about this contortion of democratic principles, the junior council member (Scott Fitzgerald) expressed horrified shock at the very hint of wrongdoing.
Did I just use “hurriedly” in a sentence?
Much later today, after a successful rehearsal, it is not certain my duo will be ready for this year’s tourist season. I say successful because of the ground covered while here. Most of tonight was spent on duo presentation techniques and keeping the total sound in check regardless of how the studio recording goes. Eddie definitely has west coast band experience. A lot of it is case-hardened experience but at least there is no permanent damage.
In fact, we spent 2/3 of tonight’s time practicing something unheard of in Florida: stage compression (the art of balancing total musical ambience rather than straining to duplicate the original studio sound). While our experiences are bafflingly opposite, we tend to draw the same or similar conclusions. That is in contrast to those who draw the opposite conclusion from the same experiences. You know, the New Age crowd.
Musically this is amazing, we finally played several tunes with just bass and vocals, something I have not done in 15 years. He surprised himself by carrying it off without a hitch, not even having to be told in advance what tune. That is, he was instantly able to guess the correct song from my non-melodic bass line. Remember, these are customized bass lines developed by my theory, not guitar lines played on the bass. (Can you imagine my former guitarists even agreeing to try such a thing, much less learning by it or admitting it sounds fine?) I am certain once Eddie breaks the habit of over-strumming the rhythm, he will prefer to perform some bass-only tunes.
This does not disguise the fact we are two months behind schedule, which translates into 48 hours of lost stage time in addition to learning the material. That is real mileage lost from our chosen venue. The only thing worse is to waste time in some coffeehouse with a stranger on the bongos. The biggest advance this week is that we are finally starting to sound like a duo, and I was right. This town needs a break from the dry solo guitar act. Now that I’m back in charge, practices are fun again.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
August 15, 2009
Now that I got the Taurus back (I’ll tell all in a moment), I went shopping. I remember that lyric from “Kingston Town” that said, “ackee rice salt fish is nice” so I had to look when I saw this. Is it vegetable? What is it? At $14.99 per can, I was not about to find out the hard way. They look like the triple eyeballs of some crustacean, and Nature, California aside, doesn’t operate in threes.
I wanted to get out of the shop early today but my best computer got virused up. It is a strain not seen before, where the anti-virus won’t wipe it out, rather it only corrupts the files and you get constant pop-ups about faulty IE scripts. Worse, it corrupts your other browsers so you are stuck with the disreputable IE. The install takes two hours, including downloading the updates. During that time I got some interesting work done.
The Red Devil programmer himself answered my questions about the licensed version and I came away disappointed. Thus, I sent him a page of information about the specifications I would like to see in a stage unit and I believe as a team we could produce the world’s first true digital specialized for the stage drum box. If he can program what I saw, he can show me how to tweak the system to include the features I have deemed most craved for in such a device. I hope he’ll work with me, for if he tries it on his own he’s going to miss some important concepts.
Then, just after concluding that Carlos had disappeared, who calls from Ocala? He is working construction. And wants his barbeque. And the TV I was going to use for Karaoke. I looked outside and cannot find the barbeque.
Dream interpretation time. It has been decades since I’ve seen snow, so I remember this dream. Theresa and I went to a swap meet in North Carolina and I forgot something back at her place, which in this dream was across three huge bridges to the east. She had to stay behind so I started walking on the footpaths which were covered in hard, packed snow. Like you get after a blizzard. Somehow I was joined by hundreds of other people trekking across the bridges in a scene much like Dr. Zhivago. The paths were slippery and made treacherous by huge trucks rumbling across the bridges.
Even more weird was that everybody was thirsty, but the fumes from the trucks had polluted the snow. The trucks were carrying loads of sawdust, which also coated everything. People were still eating it and spitting up sawdust. What does all this mean? We already know not to eat yellow snow.
Okay, the car. Years ago I had another Ford with the same gasket problem, so I tried an old trick. Pour a mixture of half diesel and half gas in the tank. I forget how it works, but it sometimes makes a stubborn engine start. It did. You get a boost (from a Latino guy in a pickup truck) and keep cranking it until it fires, around a minute. It gets a little smoky and smelly but I drove it home. It is sitting out there even as we speak. Last time I did this, I got another 18,000 miles on that car. But they don’t make them like they used to.
No photos, I’ll let you find them on your own, but during the search for the USB footswitch, I found many other USB powered items. The ones mentioned are foot warmers, a tiny vacuum cleaner, a humping dog, a stripper doll on a pole, small Glade-type air fresheners, a fridge for one can of soda, and a mini paper shredder. The one useful item was a 200x scanner that looked like a short telescope.
By 10:00 PM I can tell you I rarely had so much fun without playing music. I accepting the invitation to call bingo and wisely wore a formal shirt and tie. Additionally, I made up a copy of the classical music disk burned for Wallace’s car before we found out it didn’t play MP3s. My logic was if I played what was requested (light rock) there would be, due to the distraction, requests for repeat numbers. I aced that one. My PA system was such overkill for bingo that my act is a hard one to follow. Um, in fact, don’t even try, I was getting compliments from people who hate bingo.
That old HP 3740, the classic ink cartridge rip-off model, I finally gave to Eddie. The concept is that any printer is better than none, hardly an endorsement for said assembly. While Eddie has temporarily lost focus, he assuredly is aware of his chances as a solo act and suggested a rehearsal tomorrow, say mid-afternoon. He is ready for something most guitarists dread: a live demo that a good bass player has more audience control than even the finest lead player. You can’t dance to a lead break, and if you think you can, you are really subconsciously hearing the bass/drum lines. Try it.
I wanted to get out of the shop early today but my best computer got virused up. It is a strain not seen before, where the anti-virus won’t wipe it out, rather it only corrupts the files and you get constant pop-ups about faulty IE scripts. Worse, it corrupts your other browsers so you are stuck with the disreputable IE. The install takes two hours, including downloading the updates. During that time I got some interesting work done.The Red Devil programmer himself answered my questions about the licensed version and I came away disappointed. Thus, I sent him a page of information about the specifications I would like to see in a stage unit and I believe as a team we could produce the world’s first true digital specialized for the stage drum box. If he can program what I saw, he can show me how to tweak the system to include the features I have deemed most craved for in such a device. I hope he’ll work with me, for if he tries it on his own he’s going to miss some important concepts.
Then, just after concluding that Carlos had disappeared, who calls from Ocala? He is working construction. And wants his barbeque. And the TV I was going to use for Karaoke. I looked outside and cannot find the barbeque.
Dream interpretation time. It has been decades since I’ve seen snow, so I remember this dream. Theresa and I went to a swap meet in North Carolina and I forgot something back at her place, which in this dream was across three huge bridges to the east. She had to stay behind so I started walking on the footpaths which were covered in hard, packed snow. Like you get after a blizzard. Somehow I was joined by hundreds of other people trekking across the bridges in a scene much like Dr. Zhivago. The paths were slippery and made treacherous by huge trucks rumbling across the bridges.
Even more weird was that everybody was thirsty, but the fumes from the trucks had polluted the snow. The trucks were carrying loads of sawdust, which also coated everything. People were still eating it and spitting up sawdust. What does all this mean? We already know not to eat yellow snow.
Okay, the car. Years ago I had another Ford with the same gasket problem, so I tried an old trick. Pour a mixture of half diesel and half gas in the tank. I forget how it works, but it sometimes makes a stubborn engine start. It did. You get a boost (from a Latino guy in a pickup truck) and keep cranking it until it fires, around a minute. It gets a little smoky and smelly but I drove it home. It is sitting out there even as we speak. Last time I did this, I got another 18,000 miles on that car. But they don’t make them like they used to.
No photos, I’ll let you find them on your own, but during the search for the USB footswitch, I found many other USB powered items. The ones mentioned are foot warmers, a tiny vacuum cleaner, a humping dog, a stripper doll on a pole, small Glade-type air fresheners, a fridge for one can of soda, and a mini paper shredder. The one useful item was a 200x scanner that looked like a short telescope.
By 10:00 PM I can tell you I rarely had so much fun without playing music. I accepting the invitation to call bingo and wisely wore a formal shirt and tie. Additionally, I made up a copy of the classical music disk burned for Wallace’s car before we found out it didn’t play MP3s. My logic was if I played what was requested (light rock) there would be, due to the distraction, requests for repeat numbers. I aced that one. My PA system was such overkill for bingo that my act is a hard one to follow. Um, in fact, don’t even try, I was getting compliments from people who hate bingo.
That old HP 3740, the classic ink cartridge rip-off model, I finally gave to Eddie. The concept is that any printer is better than none, hardly an endorsement for said assembly. While Eddie has temporarily lost focus, he assuredly is aware of his chances as a solo act and suggested a rehearsal tomorrow, say mid-afternoon. He is ready for something most guitarists dread: a live demo that a good bass player has more audience control than even the finest lead player. You can’t dance to a lead break, and if you think you can, you are really subconsciously hearing the bass/drum lines. Try it.
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