Here’ something you won’t see me doing every day--putting an ATM in the exterior wall. This ATM is outside, it is placed into a recess in the building wall. At night, the owner presumably closes that glass door seen on the left. And empties all the cash out. Both are D for dumb. There is a reason ATMs are inside banks and why they are filled by guards in armored cars. I’ll keep an eye on this one, see how long before the whole machine disappears.
The Florida heat gets top billing again. The events of y’day left me physically ill, causing me to stay indoors. Of course, I used the time to study. I can think in my sleep if I have to. I read 186 pages of Visual Basic. This is one of those bastard versions of things that MicroSoft keeps pumping out. I’m convinced they are still trying to find the second DOS, the lucky charm, the software that, despite its shortcomings, becomes the next standard that lets them bleed the world for another few trillion.The visual basic software design encourages junk mail, spyware and viruses. The Pope would get funny ideas by chapter two. Exactly what is some unemployed teenager going to do once he discovers MAPI? This feature lets you spam out all the e-mails you please. But I may also have discovered the key as to how viruses spread by e-mail. It has something to do with “Deployment Wizard”, the step used to install your code on other’s computers. One still has to trick them into clicking on the file.
This may be laughably simple to some of you. But this is the leading edge of knowledge for those of us who didn’t grow up with a computer. The pendulum swings both ways. I’ve had whiz kids who did not know why their arrow keys started moving the whole spreadsheet around instead of just changing cells. Hint: turn off your scroll lock key. You know what I’m sayin’. Forty dollars, please.
Nobody who reads VB could help not notice the similarity to Javascript. Well, nobody intelligent, of course I mean. In particular, server side scripting. So, I hauled out my Win 98 book on ASP for a brush-up. I never did care for fall-through programming, and server scripting is full of it. Fall-through is where the success of each step depends on the failure of an earlier step. If a student’s mark is not above 89, they get a B instead of an A.
That is, they get a B if the A step fails, a C if the B step fails, and so on. For clarity, each successive check occurs only when the code advances, or “falls through” the code ahead of it. This example would not spot the error when the operator accidentally enters 105%. There are many other faults with fall-through programming, as anybody who has used a web search engine (Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista et al) can attest.
One of the projects ever on my back burner is to develop a web search engine that allows searching on compound words. Such searches are already possible, providing you know Boolean algebra. But I’m talking about a user-friendly search that understands “dog house” and “post office” are single terms with a space between the words.
Later, I had to rig up seven fans in my room to sleep last night. This arrangement costs less than a third the electricity of running an A/C at night, and anyway I prefer fans. (A/C on full can give you a sore throat in the morning.) That’s one ceiling fan, three floor fans on chairs to match the level of my mattress, and three spot fans on face, torso and legs. Why don’t you believe me when I tell you it is hot? Seven fans, and when one tilted over by itself in the middle of the night, the returning heat woke me up within minutes.
[Author’s note: I’ve been asked what I meant by physically ill from the heat. Not pain, but I had something I do not have—dizzy spells. I felt in danger of blacking out, what with swirling tunnel vision. I believe my new prescriptions may contribute. I know there is a medical term for this, like heat prostration. The cure is drinking lots of ice cold water and lying down for a few hours till your internal thermostat takes back over. This makes it impossible to follow any routine, but the good news is it kills one’s appetite.]
Recalling my resolutions for 2008, I never did recruit a chick singer. That’s because I began to suspect I could easier learn to sing myself, although I sure could use the chick. I’d also begun to look for part-time work, of which nothing came along until 2009 with the shoemaker. Last, I never pursued the degree in teaching English, thanks to the pending heart attack that April. Gosh, it is so easy to make excuses that I’m beginning to sound like a divorcee.
Today, I accomplished singing fifteen songs. Half what I need for a show. Some are weak, and I’ve discovered a high and low range I’m comfortable with but have no idea if I could do that on stage. Some tunes demand open string bass work, so I hesitate to change key into my mid-range. What I need now is tons of practice.
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