We have a contact there, Vic, who knows the business. He confirms a lot of what I’ve documented as wrong with the whole electronic supply system. That’s everything from expecting the customer to know the lingo to requiring even newcomers to somehow find the correct part numbers—which vary between suppliers for the identical components. Vic reports such lunacy has always been a hallmark of the industry, and it gets worse as you progress. For another example, Vic used several terms in connection with etching PCBs that I have not encountered in several months of reading material. The developer on works on “pre-sensitized” boards. He says to visit the site called Phoenix for parts, which met with a blank stare. Oh, he says, they don’t advertise, so it is no wonder nobody has ever heard of them. They have “11,000 employees” not one of whom knows how to name a product so a beginner can find it. I have to know the pitch and minimum conductor cross section in millimeters to even begin a search. I gave up after looking at 160 pages of connectors.
I picked up some positive developer, which sounds like photography supplies but is a chemical rinse, and a copper plate. It’s a 4 x 6” one-side plate which I have no idea whether it is the right or wrong size. There was a display case with a $6,000 scope but I imagine we won’t be needed a few of those for at least another couple of months. The good news is they have lots of supplies, although not the IC I wanted, and they are less than a two-hour round trip in a pinch.
Make sure you allow for Miami traffic. The DMV is more concerned with identification that quality, so every yahoo and el yahoo is on the road weekdays. Plus, the Miami Dade police have never enforced basic driving rules, preferring higher profile celebrity busts and directing parade traffic on overtime. And of course, don’t forget about detaining the hookers, sometimes several times a week each, for questioning.
Here's a Miami street, you can see how third world it is. And don't blame demographics, it was like this long before the revolution. This is one of the older areas of town, but still a shopping district. Third world as in notice the empty streets an hour before closing (see if you can figure out why), the unlit, caged up windows that border right up against the sidewalks, the extra chains and padlocks on the doors. The overall impression is a bunch of shacks thrown together like Barbados.The overseas press, particularly India, has taken the similar tack as myself on calling Steve Jobs a great man. Great, as in how? I can’t answer that. He was mostly a hippie who got rich and made speeches. When you are a speech-maker, you only have to be right maybe 10% of the time to be considered a prophet, ask Nostradamus. At any rate, some of the press across the water is very pointed and unflattering, not of Jobs, but of using the word “great”. They also love to point out Apple does not give to charity. It’s a word they first heard from the English.
Less than six miles from JP’s place, I did not go looking for him. Instead, I returned up Biscayne to stop for coffee at Barnes & Noble. Their prices have gone up again. It is only the free reading material that makes it worth it. Tally up $4 for a coffee and a cookie, and two hours of a $45 textbook. Watching the little Cuban kids fill the free water glasses from the half-and-half pitcher while the mother pretends she doesn’t notice. Listening to fat ladies making terribly important cell phone calls. Wishing I was back in Oregon.
Erin, the guitar lady, is back in the picture, at least momentarily. We’ve been practicing basic rhythms and I kind of agree with her that she still cannot play even one song start to finish. I’ve met countless students like that, remember Marty Stewart, the guy whose dad got me in the phone company? Marty could play the fancy part of 30 songs, but not one in entirety. Anyway, Erin sadly commented last day that “people don’t go out anymore”. Ah, so I’m not the only one who sees that. What I mean is that because I always had music, I never realized the severity of the problem for others who like to go out. Where could they go that isn’t an expensive rip-off preying on their lifestyle?
I should ask her to the movies, say a good Mel Gibson kick-butt cops and robbers flick, you know, something with a real body count. Maybe share one of those $8 popcorns with the floor-wax topping. Buy a two month supply of licorice to get a couple twizzlers. Afterwards, show her my integrated circuit models and explain semi-conductor theory over a romantic coffee at BK. Women really like it when you spend quality time together, so maybe I’ll even bring along some schematics. (They got that there instinct what tells ‘em when you got passion about somethin’ and know when to shut the fire truck.)
Speaking of bad actors, I watched part of a TV movie during the afternoon rain. It was a low-budget good alien chasing the bad one via black holes with an utterly gorgeous non-blonde lady doctor. She had the figure of Bev Gillingham, the first “older” woman I ever dated (she was 19 when I was 17). The movie was so bad, I had to keep watching. At one point, the doc sleeps with the good alien and pouts afterward when he doesn’t say thank you. Am I missing something here? Should the alien have handed her a twizzler?
