November 30, 2011

           These custom made sidecars are made by a company in California, though I don't know if they make this actual model, called the "Woodie Limo". That's the trivia for today.
           [Author’s note: While striving to be as forward-looking as possible on technology and information, this blog is essentially a journal, that is, focused on the past. Where there is a prediction, it is well into the future and as we’ve seen, usually right. It’s a fact the housing bubble, pension collapse, invasion of privacy and identity theft were all predicted here 15 years in advance. No word yet on the Russian-Chinese war of 2015, though, because nobody has thought of it yet.
           My point is that today is the end of an era in my lifetime. It would not have done to say anything earlier, for all was planning and prediction. Today is the turning point where the biggest changes for me are now to enjoy what is left. So stick around for the ride. One of the signs was taking on robots ten months ago. This was something impossible the way things were before. It’s not like my lifestyle will instantly evolve, but shall we say the hard part is over.]
           What a memorable day, in a roundabout way. It is the last day of the last fiscal period I planned in 2004. This new budget made allowances for my bad health and so was quite different from the original 1996 flow of events (in which I should by now have been a half-millionaire). And, may I add, 1996 was a realistic workable strike at the target, not some Kenora moose juice. So, did my plans work out? Yes and no. We are bang on the money, but 6 months late over all. Put another way, I have only been back in the game six months now.
           I like to brag that no idiot could take me, but there is one entire gang of them that could have screwed me for a good chunk of my present income. Wallace and family—if they had only been capable of keeping their word, I would have been morally obligated to keep mine! But there are black sheep in every family and Wallace fell prey to Patsy who has no concept of honesty. By now, I might actually have been paying them most of the rent they demanded. As long as I was present, the old place was a bargain, but she tried to kick me while I was down and out. What fools they be.
           It was cold with a brisk breeze, so I was indoors at home and the library. That is not synonymous with sitting around watching cable. I was up to much different, arranging a guitar-fest for December 16. It may be a dead night, it may be only regulars, but I figure if the musicians aren’t booked for the season by then, they might as well show up. Ray-B called with a disturbing report: apparently many of the big union retirement funds are being investigated for “Madoff-like” activity. Investigated, what an ominous word, don’t you think?
           Eddie, sometimes knows as Electric Eddie for his e-mail handle, wants to invite Dirk to the show. I’m not too keen on that. Dirk may be a nice guy, but he is totally infected with guitar-think. Not just that, but I have never seen him actually play rhythm because he is constantly riffing off. It’s the equivalent of a piano player who only knows the fancy parts of twenty songs and wants to play only those over and over. The other major symptom is the “follow me” attitude, and he does have it something fierce, to the extent he believes it the natural order of things.
           There is something else that others may not remember, but Dirk turned my one open mic show at Jimbos into a farce five years ago. In those days, I worked until 4:00 PM and when I go there, they had been set up—and drinking—since noon. By then, all the easy standards were gone and Dirk was in his prime, acting surprised when nobody knew obscure tunes by his heroes, what, you call yourselves musicians and you don’t know this one?. I’ll have to think about that. Either way, there will be only three singers on stage and that should keep a will keep a tight rein on things.
           I did something as American as Whopper Wednesday. That Ural sidecar was still advertised, now marked down to $4,000. My logic is pure Americana. The banks won’t lend you money for a used motorcycle, few have that much room on their credit card, and nobody has that kind of liquid cash a month before Xmas. What the heck, here's another custom sidecar.
           So I waved a considerably lower amount of dollars under their noses. Real hundred dollar bills, I had the bank give me brand new bills with consecutive serial numbers. The seller begged me to wait until Monday. I conceded. But that is the future, and you never know. Remember that real estate agent I had talked down to $41,000 when on the fifth no-show, the other buyer actually arrived with the $61,000 asking price in cash. That house sold four years later for $310,000.

November 29, 2011

           Brrr, it has dropped into the low 70s (Fahrenheit) and that sends me for the bookstore. Thanks to the bicycle, I know all the side roads to avoid what’s left of rush hour. By that, I mean although there are fewer cars, they still bunch up at the same intersections. In the process, I found an author worthy of the name, and I’ll be buying one of his books shortly.
           His name is Dave Cutcher and you can view his work at MH Professional . From one natural teacher to another, good work, Dave. But I would loose that title “Evil Genius” soon as I got the bucks. The rest of the series is just bad enough to erode a reputation. For relevance, good explanations, and a sense of what you need to know, Cutcher is boss. I would place Cutcher among the top electronics authors of the day. His work is so fine, I could swear I’d proofread it myself, and I don’t buy books unless I’m certain I’ll get many times the value back.
           Speaking of books, are they on the way out? Unless there is a vast improvement and lowering of price by the e-reader people, probably not. Both the readers and the books cost too much. I’m sure they are aware of this but haven’t really done anything, indicating sales at the leading edge phase must still be brisk. I donated my e-reader to the club to experiment downloading since it rarely works for me. I don’t care for the tiny screen 4G readers, either. That’s like reading your car insurance policy on the back of a baseball card.
           Let me see if there is any non-robotic news today. Okay, I’ve never bought overpriced Starbucks ground coffee, and they finally admitted to overcharging customers $1.50 per package for anything less than a pound. What did I tell ya? We would also like to get some facts on e-publishing, as in how to do it yourself. It is no good trying to pry this information out of Google. If anyone knows where I can find the code to write a search engine, please, let me know. A good search engine is the only thing likely to surpass Google and Zuckerburg in this decade.
           You know who, with his minimalist acting skills, could come back today and make a big difference? Steve McQueen. Unlike Travolta, who finally learned a detectable hint of ability much, much later in life, McQueen added a certain charm to every scene, although that was usually about it. If these two had traded generations, only McQueen would have still been a star. And I say that in full awareness of the two-dimensional movie industry of the post-war stretch. Instead, I’m afraid we are stuck with another twenty years of black-haired half-English actors who took shaving lessons from Yassir Arafat.
           Ah, but I still get a kick out of old movies with no basis in fact. Where gorgeous women waited twenty years for their boyfriend to get out of prison, and met him at the gate, to boot. How even rental cabins had five acres of playground-grade surroundings for the kids to romp. Back when a job left you with money and energy to form a rock band and work on your hot rod. And every neighborhood had a pretty, single blonde girl of unquestioned decency and horrible taste in men.
           I’ve reviewed and revamped my song list. By forced listening to Kiss Country, I’ve identified around a dozen possible replacements for my weaker numbers. By weak, I don’t mean musically, rather a tune like Jambalaya. Such music I can play in my sleep if ever need be, so kind of remove them as standards. I’m even going to try a version of “Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy”, no promises.
           If I’m going to change to compete, might as well do it from the ground up. “Compete”, I say? Oh yes, guitarists in this town observably hate to learn new tunes and there’s maybe three I owe any favors to. Remember also, I’m no longer restricted to searching for a mediocre guitarist now that I have become one. (Remember Brian Khe San from the coffee houses? Yeah, well I’m already better than that. And I know the right lyrics.)
           According to Guitar Eddie, I should file my fingertips with emery board. That makes sense and didn’t I hear about that centuries ago? I invited Eddie to an arbitrary Xmas gig at Jimbos some Friday in December. Think “Battle of the Bands”, as this will pit the two of us in terms of musical ability. Eddie still plays washed out guitar music with a best before date, while 80% of my material is either new or novel (as in major hits that nobody else plays). I’ve also invited him to practice guitar duo arrangements, but he warily declined.
           This is understandable if you recall Eddie likes to take the credit for teaching me to sing. While Eddie will put down a drummer or bassist in a wink, he is wise not to do that with another guitarist. I have an avenue of experience he never considered important until we met—I can arrange music to fit the size of the orchestra. And he knows full well that is going to be applied to my guitar. Eddie, better brush up on your lead breaks because one day soon I may decide to give that a whirl.
           (May I remind the reader that I have no natural talent; that all I do musically was painstakingly acquired the hard way. But I do admit to often falling into that peculiar mindset where talented people assume you can do what they do “if you wanted it enough”, and I apologize for when I go there. I mean, define “wanted”. According to that theory, I didn’t "want" enough to be a millionaire porn star at 18, my "want" was to freeze my ass off in a Montana lumber mill. You decide.)

November 28, 2011

           Today is mainly tech review and editorial about the process, you can skip it if you’re not the curious or learning sort. The reason it gets top billing is my study policy, which made study today’s most important event. I will often make a random but complete review of all my books to see if I’ve forgotten anything, then immediately read something advanced to see if it gets any easier to understand. I can report astounding success.
           It’s never too late to review recent study, and I went over the Arduino circuitry. I’m beginning to see that the inside of the Arduino is nothing complicated, just a series of registers that control each pin and a memory to hold the program. I’m writing this down as a record of progress. The incentive to produce independent Arduino boards is evident—not even counting the programming, it costs seven times as much to build a digital circuit than analog. That alone restricts me to fairly easy projects (there is no such boundary on the programming).

           Again, I hit the Dodo barrier (see note below). It takes a huge extra push to get past it. This time it is with logic gates. Tons of people who will tell you how they work, but nobody will show how they are used. Where are they placed? How are they aligned? Where are some examples of how they work and what happens when they don’t? This curse of over-teaching the details while ignoring the big picture must be a holdover from the arthritic apprenticeship system that should have been abolished the year after the Chinese invented it. But the gates are making sense, gaining substance without form.
           I admittedly do not know the nature of these Arduino registers or where to get that information. I could pass the test on how logic gates work, but have no idea how they are used to build anything. I have the same question today as I did when I entered college: If the student is supposed to know how it works before he goes to college, what does he need the college for? That’s an unfair question, but I can say many times I had instructors skip important basics because there were one or two advanced students in the group.

           Oddly enough, I’ve been on the receiving end of such criticism, but for the opposite reason. I knuckled down and independently learned what wasn’t being properly taught. Then other students complained. I’m reminded of my first Spanish course. The fat guy in class kept saying they should kick out people like me who “already knew Spanish”. An unintended and indirect compliment from a looser. (Not a typo.)
           It may be time for the club to publish a small how-to book. If you have ever studied transistors and found that you are getting conflicting instructions, well, you are right. There are countless BS artists out there pretending to know transistors. Otherwise reputable writers will tell you it is an “amplifier”. Some say it controls current, others say voltage. Some state that it can be used as a linear dimmer. Strictly speaking, all that is false. Plus, many of the sources don’t tell you about things you can do wrong that can wreck your gear or burn out your expensive microcontroller.

           The tale is the same—if anyone else has written a good book on the topic, it does not show up on any standard search. I’d say the topic of transistors needs, with photos, a 16 page booklet. But I’m still waiting for a straight answer on how to publish an ebook. It would be part of my planned “explained to death” series, as in “Transistors Explained to Death”.

           [Author’s note: Don’t be put off my how I use the term Dodo Barrier in two different ways. They both mean the same, the lack of people and knowledge at the intermediate level. As an example, if you Google “giraffe” you will get millions of replies that all tell you it has a long neck. But you want more, then find that only a few sites have more but they spur you from kindergarten directly to veterinarian level. Nothing in between. The Dodo Barrier.
           The second usage is a slur on people who think they can learn the advanced stuff without the basics. They find that all learning is interrelated and they have nothing to interrelate to. The Dodo Barrier.]

           In another dipstick move, Vivitar has designed their driver so that it can only be installed if you have a connection to the Internet. I have a related term called a Dodo driver. These are the useless drivers that require an Internet download. While there is something to be said about having the newest and best driver, there is no rule that says drivers should be changed so often as to require constant updating. Vivitar, you just wasted my time today and you know what you can do.

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November 27, 2011

           The presence of the scooter, robotics, guitar and a good cookbook means there never really is such a thing as a nothing day around here. One can always list the events as you’ll see. By sunup, I was underneath the scooter replacing the tail/brake light with a heavy duty (read $5.00) American model. While down in the dirt, I examined the wiring assembly to see about connecting some side safety lights. I don’t like having to depend on a single rear bulb after dark.
           The robotics club makes this easy. Two red lights in parallel. Troubleshooting electrical used to be a chore, but now it falls into place. The speedometer backlight has never worked right and still doesn’t after I replaced that, too. The dial itself never lights up. You can see it at night, but it should be much brighter. That’s a project for this week. The scooter has just passed the 5,000 mile mark (shown here as 4,999.0). A third of its projected lifespan in nine months. And the good weather has only begun. Plainly, I must begin to plan the replacement.

           Last afternoon, the new guy next door had his guitar out. Like most, he can play around 8 – 10 tunes like snake-lees, but other than that small set he can’t really chord or play full songs. This, of course, lends oomph to my contention that the “follow me” crowd of guitarists are a bunch of azz-hats. They can only follow each other because they’ve had the same indoctrination. Give them something that requires talent and they are the ones who need it spelled out.
           Still, he plays well, and French or not, he knows the English choruses to any song I’d place as earlier than 1965. I don’t include many from that era other than the enduring classics. “Oh Lonesome Me”, fr’instance. But next he surprised me by knowing a lot of the contemporary artists whose material I am working on. Isn’t it strange how even a guitarist who never played Rock or Blues still suffers from guitar-think. He obsesses over the names of artists, but can’t play their tunes. He memorizes their ages and what label they record under, but is like-duh over the music part. Only in guitar la-la land!

           Thanks to bingo, we are stocked up with everything needed through the end of March, 2012, so watch for another scooter trip or something. JP, my cohort and sidekick, can’t get out of town. This is too bad, we had the old “let me introduce you to my buddy” routine down fairly pat. That’s right. Women who don’t like to be approached directly will rarely object to meeting someone through an open channel. Strange, but true.
           Guess who is reporting record enrollments? Florida motorcycle schools, particularly among seniors. Expect to hear some gruesome statistics before long. Hey, if they can’t drive safely inside an armored cage, imagine the carnage when they start driving scooters. I say this because they are not taking the course because they want to become better drivers, but because they are too broke to upkeep a car.

           I’ve always stated, do not operate a motorcycle unless you are already beyond an expert on the road. (I’ve never been in an accident that was my fault (although I’ve been hit three times) or been issued a moving vehicle infraction, not even a speeding ticket. When I say expert, I mean expert.) On the other hand, I have $30,000 in unpaid parking tickets. I quickly discovered the city I worked in had no means to collect out of jurisdiction, so the last ten years at the phone company, I never paid a thing. And, I got away with it because, exactly like everyone else smart enough to read the rule book, I never broke any law. What? Well, those not smart enough to read should pay up, if you follow my logic.
           What’s a fun day without learning some robotics? I discovered that not all transistors are alike, even when bearing the same model number. Go for the expensive ones, it is a matter of cents per unit, and what a difference. One almost sure sign to look for is the lead wires. They should be rectangular and crimped to fit standard .010” substrate without any bending. As a bonus, you learn how to look for quality when examining such items as peripheral cards. My source of these superior transistors? Why Hacktronics , of course. The club is getting ready, in about ten days, to place our largest order yet.

           I was out for Sunday coffee, a routine that has finally found its way back into my lifestyle. Those morning breaks were how I kept my sanity through all those years in the corporate workplace. Interestingly, a lady and her career counselor were in the next booth (yes, on Sunday) as I plied the crossword. The lady had apparently taken a number of beginner’s level computer courses before realizing that alone doesn’t get you a job.
           True to form, the counselor didn’t have a clue beyond suggesting more courses. What the lady wanted was someone to, how did she word it, someone to sit down with her and show her how to do the operations needed to become productive in the workplace. I had to smile. I had an awful lot to say about this back in the 80’s when bragging parents brought the term “whiz kid” into the office.
           I agree, to the masses, a programmer and a klutz at a keyboard look alike. If one doesn’t recognize what intelligence looks like in the first place, a computer makes things worse. Like that stupid Patsie sending me all her e-mails as well as her entire contact list back in 2008. She was dumb enough to think they were not gossips as bad as herself. Speaking of stupid, the “For Rent” sign is still in the window of the old place. But one stupid old lady at a time, here.

           The part that stayed with me was the “someone to sit down”. Gee, what have we here? This sounds familiar, how none of that school stuff was going to do them any good in the real world? They get right pissed when you try to show them, and you know why? Because they are on to you. Their teachers tried to shove that crap down their throats thirty years ago and now you’re trying the same damn thing all over again. And that’s not what they asked you for.
           Heaven’s no, they want you to show them the swindle, the shortcut, the hoax you use to fool people into thinking you are smart. They know nobody got smart without trickery. That’s why when I have to learn something new, I love to ask who is going to come along and take me by the hand and say, “There, there, I’ll walk you through this.”
           Nope, instead I bitch and moan about the lack of books on the subject. But that’s a total different state of affairs and you know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout. So there.

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November 26, 2011

           Todays photo is not a vacuum clearner. It is a robot. Read on to learn more. My supercomputer is totally down. When you see original pictures here again, you’ll know I solved that situation. I’m stuck with the same situation as St. Augustine. Pictures in the camera that I can’t download. And I did want you to see the batch of jambalaya I made—with pork, not leftovers. I did nothing for Turkey Day this year except take it easy. The next club meeting is likely to be here as we repair the propane oven. It needs a thermocouple. Hooray for robotics, it gave us all the tools we’ll need.

           Trivia. Arizona has collected only $220,000 toward building that fence “along every inch of the state’s border with Mexico”. I would like to see the specs on that, since chain link isn’t going to make the grade. They should ask the Israelis who know something about dealing with criminal-minded trespassers. The Mexicans will scream like hell, so I hope the fence is soundproof as well. The three options of breaching the fence remain the same: over it, under it, or through it.

           But information about the fence itself is in short supply. Plus, I think it should be built by volunteer and convict labor. Why not, 80% of some county prisoners in Arizona are Mexicans anyway. Just build it fast before the do-gooders interfere. Those who so highly value the assimilation of other societies into America forget that all too often people came to America to escape enforced assimilation.
           Now that the Space Shuttle is where it belongs, NASA is getting back to Mars. The new mission is due to launch 40 years late. Predict the findings will be inconclusive but I do hope there is evidence of life. It would shake human values to the marrow, and human values so desperately need it. Better yet, I hope they find plenty of liquid water. Mars is, after all, in the Goldilocks zone.
           Water makes Mars habitable, but I fear we’ll do there what we did to Antarctica. We claim it is pristine, then we sent people there that contaminated it with politics, the military, and religion. It disgusts me to see Generals and Senators praying at the South Pole, but then I feel much the same about hypocrites praying at all.

           I watched the movie, “Hanna”. It jumps all over the place with no coherent plot. The actress looked like my ex-room mate, Kirsten, so I watched it. Something about DNA experimentation producing superior children. The kind with blonde hair and blue eyes, duly noted. You don’t think they are going to be sending just anybody to Mars, do you? Ha-ha, that was a loaded question. Anyway, outer space makes a damn good fence.
           I was over the B&N for a study session. I must be getting old and I’ll tell you why. There was this total babe waiting for her coffee and both the clerk and I caught each other staring out of the corners of our eyes. There she was, perfection, and wearing her CFM boots. Leather, with fringes. Why am I old? Because in my day I would not have noticed how young she was, I would have engaged her in conversation. Make this the first recorded time I have every shied back due internalized feelings about my own age. Well, at least I still know ideal when I see it, and you can’t fool me like you can the stripper bar crowd. They only see the boots.

           It is a fact you’ve heard me state that there are no intermediate level electronics books out there. But over time, if you read enough, you begin to collect a small series of circuits that fit the bill. If I were to publish such a collection, it would be plagiarism because I don’t have the wherewithal to create enough examples on my own. Today’s winner was a circuit that turned on a light when the switch was thrown, but when it was turned off, it faded slowly back to nothing rather than blinking off.
           This is the exact brand of circuit that is hard to find anything on. It uses simple components, but puts them together in a way that teaches plenty. When one knows enough of these type of circuits, it becomes possible to assemble them into a more elaborate device. This particular circuit used a capacitor to supply declining power to a transistor collector and base in order to fade the light, a rather pleasing effect when you power off your stereo.

           While it might confuse a beginner, that level of circuit doesn’t blast you with a ton of unfamiliar graphics that assume because you know the components, you are magically ready to build your own computer. I see that Heathkit is slowly coming back into the market, I was wondering what happened to them. They are still around and I’m glad to here it is consumer demand behind the comeback. I never had a Heathkit as a youngster, since it was never a wise idea to have anything around the madhouse that consisted of small, valuable parts.
           Most people are unaware that Steve Jobs was constantly exposed to Heathkits from his father. No, he did not instantly decide to build the first Apple computer one day after class. In a phrase I’ve had to repeat several times over recent conditions, he had the resources of an empire behind him. When my computer is back in operation, remind to look into the past twenty years of Heathkit.

           Later, bingo is back to norbal. (Not a typo.) The travelers are back and the place is always half-full again. They are also decent tippers. But we have never had a full house in a good six months. It will happen one day soon and bring back some of the regulars. Tonight guarantees a good month-end.

           [Author's note: I am not recommending Heathkit, just saying they are still around. Their kits are more expensive than buying the finished article, do not come with training manuals, and their other prices are phenomenal. They have a robot ( HE-RO ) a.k.a. the "hero-bot", that does pretty well what ours will eventually do. The Heathkit price is $1,199.00. Five times our total capitalization to date.]

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November 25, 2011

           It is too early, so I resoldered up the old General Electric radio. This warhorse has been through floods and fires. It isn’t even stereo, but they knew how to build a good radio back when. It has AM that is hardly ever used, it is left mainly on FM stations with the bass setting on full. What’s lacking is any good stations. There is no NOVA for radio, no programs that really teach anything. Just repetitious middle of the road talk shows. NPR may be the last holdout, but they are a little too community oriented for my tastes. Here's a photo of a 1996 Ural sidecar I'm looking at.
           Thanks to an après Thanksgiving breakfast at the Senor Café, we are off to a good start. I do believe I’ll spend the day reading, unless you can think of something better around here. Maybe the beach later, but I was looking at aircraft design and noticed most of the innovation comes from small manufacturers. That makes sense, the big companies will naturally stick with what has worked best over time. But the number of small builders is declining.
           This is another sign of America’s lost leadership in most fields. I recall as a lad there were all kinds of airplane kits you could buy, even in the want ads of Popular Mechanics. Now, you have to pay a fortune for a home kit. What has changed? I know! Tort law. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking because I don’t study law that I don’t read about it either. I may not know this or that clause, but I do know, for instance, that since 1980 the courts have begun to attach blame to the product rather than the behavior of the idiot who didn’t read the directions.
           This causes the manufacturers to carry insurance until one of the biggest components of price has become liability insurance. New products are easier for idiots to sue over. Whenever I get a new prescription, it comes with 15 pages of warnings. Overseas, you find dozens of advanced products that are not for sale here. Nobody dares take the chance of selling anything totally new until they know if it is dangerous in the hands of the proles. What a sad ending for America, with its ineffectual government trying to substitute for public common sense.
           That brought me to a curious thought. When I hear about liability cases, I realized that a stereotyped image appears. What does this idiot consumer look like? To me, he is 62, bald, smugly thinks he is smart. He paid off his mortgage but never rose above middle management. He wrecked his health and youth working overtime. He walks with a funny little skip and obeys every rule in his imaginary book. Socially he is an ass-hat and his wife hates him. He drives a leased Toyota and wears golfing shorts in public. I can’t explain, but this is the picture that pops in my head when I hear about some dork who keeps walking into door jambs and is therefore suing the company that makes them.
           Ominously, I am having chest pains from playing guitar. No, not heart trouble, but the only convenient way for me to hold the instrument makes me hunch up. I can’t play for more than a half-hour without a break. Is this a standard hurdle or am I doing it wrong? Where are all the geniuses when you need to ask a question? My new singer needed time off for the holiday. The tradition for me is that holidays are the highest paying gigs. You can visit family a week later just as easily with a quarter of the fuss.
           But, I can play twelve tunes consecutively, which if you work it right is up to break time on a three hour gig. Decent places pay $150 for three hours, plus tips. My task is to find joints that like country. As you detect, I am continuing work on my own solo act since the probability is it will come to that. The new gal is also keeping mum about what part of town she lives in, so my guess it is more than my 15 mile limit.
           As a soloist, I am approaching the point where it will become economical to pay another            $2,000 in equipment. I’m approaching the level of “early Johnny D” with my over-chording. I require a Fishstick (as Ray-B calls the Fishman Solo), a real drum machine, a wireless mic, and if I can afford a wireless head for the mic, transponders for the guitar and drum machine also. The entire rig is chosen to be transportable by scooter.

November 24, 2011

           JZ was on the line for an hour. He missed out on St. Augustine. And he’s not well, I mean for a guy that loves food, he gets bad heartburn. And not the kind you can cure with a couple of Tums. He names fancy meds but I never remember any. Most brand names sound to me like anti-depressants. Any rate, there is another real estate project in the works. Neither of us wants to miss an opportunity like 2003. We passed up a good one that time.
           Putting me on the spot, JZ announces he is going to diet down 20 pounds. If he does it, I have to do it. (I got lucky, he didn't do it.) I was always the skinniest guy on the crew and hate to lose the title. As soon as I get reliable transportation, we can resume our MPMs (monthly planning meetings). Remember, we have collaborated on money projects before. It is only the small-town bullshit artists that I’ve had any trouble with lately.

           We also talked women. That successful episode with the lock and key event is still the closest we came in years and due for a repeat. Yes, it’s expensive, but read on for my plans. I was never into money people so let me point out it is merely bending the rules to meet them that way, not to date them in the same manner.
           Remember the grocery clerk Alaine introduced me to, the one with the “nice personality”? I was right. That’s not a career, that’s a sort of transition job getting back into society. She flipped out, though I’m not supposed to know. Whack-o. Nut case. I’m not saying such people are bad, rather that life has enough problems without taking on more. But I am very familiar with how women introduce you the worst possible people they know, you're a loser, or you wouldn't ask if they have any single friends. So you don't mind meeting another loser, see. I don't mean dear Alaine, whose heart is in the right place. But I'm not running a rehab clinic for leftover wallflowers.
           But it is not like I can say to Alaine, listen, babe, I want a sexy gal who can sing and dance, like I can. How about a guitar player with nice bongos? And a butt I can still look at in another six months. And forget these divorcees, I'll get around to those if I ever turn 65. And forget these old ladies. I'm not into post-menopausal women who can't do anything else. I just can't say that to Alaine.

           I mentioned the brunette doctor that Alain didn’t hook me up with because of my “bad teeth”. JZ says he’ll take care of the honors next chance. I was right about that as well. The reason a 35 lady doctor with a dynamite shape is stag at the festival is because she is sick and tired of the pretty boys. She wants someone to relate to on an academic and emotional level. Um, that would be me. (True, my teeth need work, I have malocclusion and discoloration noticeable if you get up close. But for a well-adjusted woman, that is usually so close there is no turning back.)
           This was a quiet Thanksgiving for both JP and I. No dinner, nothing fancy, I don’t even work the soup kitchens any more. There’s more to that story, I quit volunteering twenty years ago (Frontline, California). I didn’t have a guilty enough conscience to stay with it, know what I’m saying? In no time you discover most people don’t want help once in a long while. Instead, they quickly adapt the lifestyle of always being in need. After that, I stayed to meet women, but found out women who volunteer generally have totally weird agendas.

           Not to sound jaded, but the reason for today is I am, for the third time in my life, going to trust the people who say I am looking in the wrong places. Well, trust them just long enough to put it to the test, that is. There is one major area I have not done my scouting, and that is events with a big admittance fee. This was understandable for the past few years—I hadn’t the money and I’m not the type to go to a bar and use pickup lines.
           Since I broke up with the Reb 15 years ago, I’ve never really patronized any place. Entrance fees mean gold-diggers, but they also mean women who know the fee blocks the door to most losers. This holiday is dedicated to planning where I will meet women over the next three months. It is worth a try. I really, really, really like the opposite sex, but there are limits. A good woman creates good times, a bad woman creates problems. No names mentioned.

           This changeover (from relying strictly on music) is not as simple as buying tickets to the next local play. You need the wardrobe, the haircut, the shoes and the attitude, to name a few. No Ma & Pa Kettle showing up at the opera. At this point, I am just looking, so no, I’m not going to run out and spend $3,400 capping my teeth. That’s in February. That is the quote, by the way, for 8 uppers and 8 lowers, to give me the perfect smile. But mark my words, changes will begin to accelerate now.
           What can go wrong in paradise? For me, this was to be a quiet day of study. Instead, I ran out of propane, the super computer crashed, and the rubber hose on my tire pump cracked beyond repair. So I had the day to putter around fixing everything from frayed rope ends to the A/C outlet in the master bedroom. I had an unscheduled day of robotics labs. Anyone that tells you they can do robotics without a computer is probably a grocery clerk.

           I built a step motor simulator, which isn’t working right yet. I took out the Ibanez semi-acoustic and ran through my top ten songs, pondering if I should use the existing drum machine and waste all that time when I finally get a better one soon. Then, I discover my only remaining DVD player is overheating around half-way through my movies.
           The parking lot is starting to fill up as the Frenchies arrive, but it is now past the window for long term and the grounds are only a third full this year. I hope so, because they are not being replaced as they die off and this court has no contingency plans. It is not swank enough to attract locals although I commend them on how well they’ve kept the undesirables off the property.

           I finished reading an interesting but unique tale called “The Last Ambassador”, Kale & Kale.. It details the American skedaddle out of Viet Nam from the perspective of the intelligence and diplomatic personnel. It’s a great critique of how the US government lost touch with reality in 1975 and never recovered. Curiously, this 1981 book presages the shift in from IndoChina to the Middle East and their oil. It is an excellent lesson book about that constant gremlin—the inability of Americans to mind their own business.
           The best part of the book is the surprise ending. Totally surprise. One sentence. You experience frustration how these diplomats do nothing but attend parties and waste tax dollars. Diplomacy: the cause of WWI. Embassies are the first things I’d shut down if I was in power. I just don’t feel the world revolves around the rarified air of people going to war because a third rate ex-politician offended some obscure tribal custom.

           The ambassador in question is cute, in that he times how long it takes other diplomats to get to the point, but not to the extent of endangering his career by doing anything about it. Embassies are a dinosaur from the age when distant governments had no other way to communicate. Today, they are removed from reality.
           So happy Thanksgiving. I was busy all day. The one remaining big project is to replace the thermocouple in the oven. And soon, very soon, I can see an Apple computer on my desk, finally getting rid of all my IBM junk that has never worked right in the long run. It was a fulfilling, if somewhat quiet and lonely day. In fifteen years, I have not gotten used to being a bachelor, although it really has only been a bother the last six years. That’s how long I’ve lived in a trailer.

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November 23, 2011

[Blog delayed]
[Photo delayed]

November 22, 2011

           In keeping with my policy about eggs and baskets, I’ve looked closely at guitar alternatives. I’ve come up with Telestar. It’s a double neck, or two-necked, guitar with both a bass and a six string. I found a large variety of these instruments, but most of them were not practical. For instance, a six string and a twelve string. I take it that one is played sitting down. There were also instruments with two six strings tuned to different keys, the product of a truly strange community.
           But the guitar/bass combo is useful if done right. Examine this unit, with the bass [neck] on the bottom. It is far easier to play a low-slung bass than a guitar, so the designer knew his beans on this one. The necks are parallel and the bass is both 7/8 scale and staggered to make them the same apparent length. This unit is hollow-body, which makes it light but probably causes severe neck dive.
           Some of the other offerings are bewildering. Labeled variously as double, twin, dual, or two-neck, the prices swing wildly as well. There is a 2007 Gibson on eBay for $52,000, which I presume would be for “serious” guitar players. Really serious, I mean, so serious it is hard to imagine. There’s a video of a guy playing both necks but you wouldn’t recognize it as guitar playing. He’s tapping the strings. If you’re going to play piano, dude, get a piano.
           Ray-B and I had a music conference downtown and picked apart a dozen situations to our satisfaction. I gained knowledge of chord inversions in a pattern called “CAGED’ and Ray instantly grasped my policy of playing lead breaks through a chorus pedal. He was at the beach and saw a lot of single acts. Some are good, but I feel all will fail for two reasons. One, everybody will soon be doing it, causing price undercutting. And two, single acts have shot their bolt in this town—there are plain too damn many of them already.
           This ties in with my conclusions about the difficulties of finding a decent guitarist in Florida. They form single acts because they don’t have what it takes to make it in any other type of group. It takes humility, you know, humbleness. They have to realize they are not living gods, that they are just one of a number of other people on stage. Some twenty guitar players later, I am nearly convinced this is the lone over-riding feature of every failed one of them in this town. There is a reason Florida is a place where you meet musicians who only get one or two gigs a year.
           This CAGED system is a pattern of playing chords progressively further up the neck. I’ll study it closely, for I recognize it from many years ago. As a teenager, the best guitarist I’d ever seen was Larry Gustafson. He wasn’t my hero, but he did get all the women. I thought he knew a thousand guitar chords but a lifetime later and a continent away I finally found out the trick.
           Mel, my newest music contact, is totally country. We’ve exchanged basic song lists, and although she knows the classics, she’s a fan of tunes that, well you listen and decide. I know that Trick Pony is country, but every lick except for some of the guitar work is Chuck Berry. For example, “Pour Me”. Some of the artists I’ve heard for the first time, such as Lee Anne Womack. The videos are all image, but one thing I will give these country women: at least they haven’t crimped their hair, “hooker hair”, it’s called.
           I spent the early morning with my Rice Krispies and listening to this music. The themes are laughable but light, so it fits the bill for drinking establishments. Like that Sugarland “Baby Girl”. Some of us don’t relate to the concept that times were so bad she had to write home for money. Poor li'l thang. Does it hurt her wittle wrist? But, I’ll play anything for money as long as I can stand it. That rules out ska.
           Dumb bastard of the day award goes to Charlie Deaux, of Miami. He puts up an ad that says “Motorcycle for Sale”. That’s it. No year, no make, no model, no mileage, no displacement, no phone, no address. Maybe he sells to psychics only? Deaux. That probably says it all, know what I mean? A close runner-up goes to Best In Bass Guitars for one of the most screwed up sites in history. They advertise guitars, but don’t tell you how to contact the sellers. Also, they are not free because you have to sign up, but once you do, you can no longer view the bass ads.
           Duh, they are probably wondering why business is so slow.

November 21, 2011

           I spent the early morning reviewing video footage, I may have an hour of good material in those 11 hours of recordings. That’s about right, much of the road trip is repetitious, the camera randomly turned itself off, and the interior of the museum was darkened just enough to make digital photos on the grainy side. Here’s a montage of the 1/12 scale Ferris wheel, the best attraction at the St. Augustine operation. You get a better idea of the size from the people at extreme right.

           Here’s a retraction of a probable error, but since I’m not going to go back and delete the boo-boo, I get a chance to explain. The lady (see Nov. 11, 2011) with the boxes of gold I estimated at close to $3.6 million, well, it was likely not gold. I should have recalled the gold-plated bar of silver I myself had purchased recently. The tip-off is was the custom wooden case. My silver dealer says that is a tactic used by late night TV and telemarketing outfits. So my explanation is easy. How in hell would I know what is sold on TV or by phone?

           [Author's note 2016: can't beat the next paragraph for optimism. I'm not dead and silver is not $400 per ounce. My health is excellent when I behave and silver is $16.45 per ounce.]

           To follow up on that, it means what I may have seen was the largest amount of silver, not gold, that I’ve ever actually seen. If it was silver, it was worth $64,000. My studies indicate this is the time to buy silver, not sell it. At some time in the next ten years (when I’ll be dead), silver should hit $400 per ounce. These metals also have bubbles and it will be a fancy dance to know when to sell out.
           This not too old computer is already showing limitations. It cannot properly edit the files from the helmet cam. There will be sparse pictures from St. Augustine until I get the Vivitar software to work right. It is doing what it wants instead of what I want, which in this case is to capture still from the video and put them in a directory that I can find. The folks at Vivitar seem to have had difficulty in the extreme with that concept. What if one does NOT want to upload raw, unedited footage to Facebook?

           I’m reviewing the videos to see what caught my attention. They have a small block of acrylic that sparkles a little. Inside it are 12,000 tiny brass screws used for making watches. Basically, somebody swept the floor and stirred these into a mold, but this is as close as you’ll get to originality over at Ripley’s. So enjoy yourself, dammit.
           These last few days of the month are taken up by chasing around paying annual fees and licenses. This system is unique to America, where everything from license tags to property taxes tend to match the month of your birthday. It is not perfect, and for example, you may be spending the actual day of your birthday in a government office instead of properly enjoying yourself. But I still like it compared to other countries where the system is designed to continually be checking up on you.

           A good example, or more correctly, a bad example is Canada. If you do nothing, you won’t know what I’m talking about, but if you travel extensively, you’ll find out quickly enough what I mean. Back when I worked there, at various times I’ve left for 3 months, only to return to find my truck towed, or my bank account closed, or overdue notices from departments I never heard of, and one time an arrest threat from the census bureau.
           My former business partner and myself can report instances when we flew back from other hemispheres to meet some damn Canadian deadline, then flew back at a cost of $1,900 per trip. We even tried to fill out each other’s documents in absentia or assign power of attorney, but they won’t stand for it. You have to show up in person or else.

           [Author's note: I'm getting flak on that one already. Read the post. It states most Canadians would not know any better because they are accustomed to showing up in person. They have never left the country except on short vacations, so don't have a clue how repressive the system really is. They don't know any different--and clearly don't want to learn that the difference exists.]
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November 20, 2011

           This is another random shot of the old city area of St. Augustine. I have plenty. These are stills from the helmet cam, which take a surprising lot of processing to get to a useable state such as the jpeg shown here. The footage must be reviewed and captured, then changed from a bitmap, then cropped, enhanced, stamped and filed. This is the largest crowd seen in town except the lineup whenever I went to buy a soda.
           A nice rainy day to balance the books. My solo stage show has now cost me over $4,000 in equipment, most of it too used to sell. And I consider myself barely furnished, since I don’t have to move gear every gig. I don’t even have backups for anything except batteries. That serves as a lesson to anyone thinking of getting into this business. On the other hand, the club is about to make some lavish purchases.
           For this week’s project, we are connecting all sensors to a voltmeter and separating out the units that work by returning a varying voltage. Trying to determine the same thing by reading data sheets is inefficient, even if they didn’t bury the facts in unfamiliar language. Some return varying current, others a digital signal. The purpose is to see if we can find a matching set or settle on one format.
           We, the club, did have a teleconference pep rally later this morning over the appearance of the Arduino at Radio Shack. The concern, naturally, was that it creates competition and we are underfunded and without formal training. I assured everyone we are a club, with tools, contacts, shared experiences, and a hundred other things these newcomers lack. I predict the opposite will transpire, that the people that get this for gifts will abandon them the instant they discover it takes work and study to operate the thing. It may even create a market of used Arduinos by next March.
           There is also another potential member, an environmental engineer with an interest in how robots work. I have no idea what such an engineer actually engineers, but like the USA in general, we need all the engineering talent we can find. While we aren’t planning any irrigation systems that I know of, any we produce would certainly be robotically controlled.
           Afterward, I returned to RS and buy a protoshield, a type of clip-on device that allows direct contact with the Arduino as opposed to running jumpers. There is a lot more to all of this than a beginner can realize. In an unrelated twist, blog rules say I must mention a coincidence because it was the most unusual event today. Late y’day, Scottie and I were talking about warships and twice mentioned the uncommon word “ironclad”. It was one of the acrostic clues in today’s paper.
           The eBike is showing signs of poor design. It’s understood most people don’t use it like I do, but after only 200 miles, the battery is down to 9 miles per charge (from a claimed 25). The warranty is still valid, so I’ll begin finding out what the problem is tomorrow. Oddly, bike usage is down with the good weather because it gets dark so early.
           I’m around half finished the book on Bin Laden, and I see the patterns he used. The management was like tax evasion as I said a few days ago, but the physical structure is based on the French Underground of WWII. The use of “cells” where the loss of one did not jeopardize the whole is far more studied in Europe than America. I now have no doubt how Bin Laden was able to pull the terrorists together when they were as likely to attack each other as their enemies. He produced spectacular results.
           I remain unable to recommend the book. It is complex, almost grueling reading. If every fact is not sifted, when you encounter a related passage in the next chapter, there is no going back to find the first instance. That, and long 20-sentence paragraphs loaded with several ideas each, it reads more like a fourth year law text than a bestseller.
           After bingo, I stopped for Karaoke. It was not so hot. The otherwise experienced DJ played some strange versions in the wrong key and my duet partner let me down. I’ll leave that a few weeks, it just isn’t proper to mess up things that we aced months ago. What went wrong? I dunno.

November 19, 2011

           What do I see in Radio Shack to day? An entire rack of Arduino products for sale. Who was right about that? C’mon, let me hear you say it. To gloat a little more, let me also state that we have an 11 month head start and nobody, no matter what their learning curve, can catch up now, even if they had my two programming degrees, and a third in program management. That’s real programming, not the school bus kind.

           [Author's note 2022: that last paragraph needs clarifying. At this time, the robot club was an informal community of interest and I'm referring to the local atmosphere. There were zero robot or programmin societies, but talk that NOVA university was going to begin a programming semester. In the end, it was cut and paste, no real programming, so we were ahead. And in the end, far enough ahead to realize that robotics was neither new nor cheap. But I can still do the programming part in my sleep.]

           In a departure from norm, the RS prices are quite decent if you subtract what it costs to have these things shipped to Florida. I’ve been tipped off the RS Xmas sale starts tomorrow. Mark my words again, this Arduino is going to impact the world. Somebody from out of nowhere is going to invent the killer app that changes everything.

           [Author's note 2022: in the end, the Arduino made very little difference. It requires novel and original thinking to make it do anything that has not been done before. Regrettably, that rarely happens in America any more. It did spawn a lot of copycat microcontrollers, but we are still waiting for a novelty, much less a breakthrough. The NOVA mindset is more likely to use the Arduino for remote control than for true robotics. It also requires time, which became a premium once I bought a house.]

           There’s more. Guess what was in the mailbox when I returned? A couple of people who should have kept their word to me would be living for free as of now. It turns out I have now been resident in Washington State the required period. I am now officially a pioneer. Maybe I was a little hasty saying I’d never go to St. Augustine again. If it wasn’t so cold, I’d leave for Texas tomorrow morning for a month.
           Ha, that means I did it! Anything I touch now will turn to gold given time. And I’m expecting more good news by December 3. One mustn’t think things just got good. They got good since a year ago, now they’re merely getting better and making a far bigger difference. He said as he dunked his morning biscotti.
           I see that the Madoffs of China, the Wenhau family that bilked investors out of $1 billion, have been handed the death sentence. The same applies to family members who knew about the crime but kept quiet. Other people, implying employees had “their lives spared”. Wall Street, are you even listening? Those Chinese can be very progressive at making the punishment fit the crime.

           Bingo was blah tonight but it did pay the bills. It’s been more of a tradition than a money-maker the last few months. I attribute the low volume to the national situation more than the drawing power of one tiny pub. Another character came by trying to ask the owners for $200 per show. More of these types will drift in as aging unemployed hippies dig out the old Telecaster. I fully comprehend these retro single acts will eventually flood the market by undercutting each other—and you, if you are dumb enough to remain a single.
           My mention of the Beaufort wind scale last day sent me investigating. Sure enough, there was an empirical basis for his 12 categories. Listen up, this is your trivia today. Wind scale before Beaufort was like talking to my brother at forty below. Cold? You call this cold? Rather than truck with such nonsense, Beaufort counted the number of sails the captain would take down in high winds to prevent ripping. At scale six, half the sails were furled. At twelve, all sails were down, which also explains why there were no numbers for higher winds like hurricanes. Above twelve, the sails were gone anyway.

           Also look up monster or rogue waves. Once you get past Wiki’s whining and begging for $5.00, it seems satellite images confirm waves up to 81 feet above the surrounding ocean occur three times per week. They suddenly appear even in calm seas. Nobody believed the sailors’ reports of these waves for 1,000 years, but we know who to blame for that. (Wave? You call that a wave?) It may explain why 200 super carrier ships have disappeared in the open ocean (as opposed to straits) since 1990. Isn’t 81 feet the height of a ten-story building?

November 18, 2011

           I spent the day driving back from St. Augustine. There’s not much I make exciting about that. There was a terrific windstorm all the way with beach sand drifting on the road so bad I had to cut back inland at Ft. Pierce. There is a lot of wide open space on the north Florida coast, likely because it is north of the frost line. Nothing commercially valuable grows there that I know of.
           Here is a still from the helmet cam, tilted to compensate for my inexperience with the gadget. See the spectacular Florida sunrise this morning, looking south east. Not so clear is the huge size of those waves and the wind (strong breeze on the Beaufort scale). The “small” wave just reaching the beach at center is around 8 feet high.
           Continuing south, the vegetation changes from pines to palms and since it is beachfront, the lots still sell for a fortune for anyone that wants to live in the wilderness. It can be a forty mile drive to the gas station from some of those locations. The newest beach houses are built on pylons which won’t do a lick of good when the Azores slides into the Atlantic. The older houses, now very rare, are situated a good quarter-mile inland.
           Since I knew the route, the trip back was several hours faster, until I hit Hobe Sound. I was on US1, which became a traffic jam that took me five hours to go 105 miles. I bothered to count that I hit 57 yellow lights, which means I spent an hour idling at intersections. The wind was blasting from my left so I did not consider driving back to the coast road, A1A. US1 is probably the longest stretch of unsynchronized traffic lights left in America.
           But don’t be mislead, the trip was fantastic and I am sold on motorcycle travel again. I made the entire distance of 640 miles on $34 in gas, which is so cheap I didn’t even think about it. Add another 58 miles of driving around St. Augustine and the scooter now has 4,900 miles on it. We used a quart of oil on the trip but that is partly due to a slow leak that Chinese engines all seem to develop. Here is a typical view from the road bed.
           I stopped only for gas and two hot meals. I was bundled up Seattle fashion with an undershirt and hooded winter jacket. This is enough to keep one comfortable as well as warm, which reminds all that a motorcycle is year-round transportation in Florida. I learned other details as well, such as my cell phone works up there. I also got lots of text messages. Why aren’t text messages on the no-call list?
           Another town on the skids is Titusville. The economy was boosted by NASA and they overbuilt correspondingly. I’ve blasted this type of business before, with motel rates going up five and ten times whenever a launch was scheduled. What should have been a welcome boon quickly becomes necessary for survival, so I’d hardly cry if industries built on that model go under. Like St. Augustine, these people need to learn a new way to operate if they expect to survive. I saw maybe five mom and pop diners along the way, and their prices were outrageous.
           [Author’s note: example was a “deluxe” burger. Deluxe originally meant it comes with everything including fries. This one was $5.70 by itself, the fine print said add $1.00 for fries. Now they overcharge you for the coffee at $1.80 per cup. That’s already $8.50 and they’ll have their hand out for a tip. No, I’m not chancing $10.00 for a burger at some nothing roadside diner.]
           The good news is there are no semi-trailers using the state roads (US1 and A1A), and the route is patrolled well enough to control the speeders. It would have been nice to drive something that kept up all the time, but the sustainable speed on the scooter is 45 mph, so don’t push it or it might throw the belt again. But a bigger machine would have been nice in some of the open areas. Don’t quote me, but it seemed that since I was driving against rush hour, that might explain hitting every other light. They may be streamlining the flow for the majority.
           My conclusion? Although I doubt I’ll see St. Augustine again, the journey was more than worth it. Something to remember and a reminder that I have not yet seen many parts of the USA. I know Venezuela better than most states in the northeast. In the future, I’d tend to limit two-wheel travel to six hours per day driving time plus breaks. I’m sold on this type of adventure, so watch for developments. Six years was a long time to wait for a real holiday. Therefore, I count St. Augustine as a real holiday even if I didn’t leave the country.

November 17, 2011

           Here is a friendly, handsome, and approachable tourist pointing out the St. Augustine Marina sign. This is to show that contrary to semi-popular belief, this city is not on the Florida west coast. Off to see the Ripley’s Museum, not really to be confused with Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It’s a walking tour set up in an old three storey hotel and would be the less entertaining if they had not built such fancy hotels at some point. If you are expecting to see hundreds of exhibits of astonishing facts and novel displays, this is not the place. Only around 20% of the exhibits are something you’ve never seen or heard of before.
           The explanation is simple. Ripley is now a chain of, I think the lady said, 79 museums world-wide, and no one museum has more than its share of the collection. The believe it or not part is the cartoons you used to see in the newspaper, those are not connected with the museums except in a most indirect way. A good half the exhibits are pictures hanging on the wall or various pieces of junk that Ripley, a very wealthy man, picked up during his world travels. He was not an explorer, but a newspaper editor.

           It is worth the tour but don’t be expecting to be amazed. Other than the scale model of a Ferris wheel made out of meccano parts, the best item is a revolving tunnel that fools your senses into thinking it tips over. Most everything else is walk-past since very little is unique. For example, there is a real shrunken head, but it is hardly the only shrunken head in the world. Very little is original, there are models of the world’s tallest man and headless chicken. Believe it or not, when you’ve seen one Ripley’s, you’ve likely seen them all.
           Across the A1A bridge, I visited some beach areas, then back downtown to park and walk around what I now know to be the Arts district. The buildings are historical but the businesses aren’t. I did tour a spice and tea shop but at $80 a pound, it was out of my league. I got the didgeridoo man to do some Doors. Busking is legal if you stay 50 feet away from St. George’s Street. I toured a used bookstore, but they weren’t used enough for me. And I just don’t have $9 for half a frozen banana with chocolate sprinkles.

           Around a half of the shops were selling food of some type, prices were virtually identical, beginning at $6.50 and on up. I managed to walk a mile in an hour. The climate is much nicer than in Miami, which helps. Did I see anything new or unusual? Let me think on that. Other than the didgeridoo, no. The same old pennie roller machine, though the old drug store had a lot of the older (empty) medicine bottles. I say the aromas were better. Pumpkin pie, a leather shop, coffee grinders, toasted bagels. Breath deep, that’s the only thing free in central St. Augustine.
           There is a notable absence of public benches. No place to sit down without ordering something. I would now definitely say I’ve done St. Augustine, and that is why I was partial to Savannah, which is similar but ten times bigger. And if you call this tourist season, it is going to be a major flop. Counting the museum and the district, I saw maybe 50 people in two days. Tourist ghost town.

           One thing that always makes me sad is privileged youth. I kept crossing paths with a young couple. Like myself, the guy at 18 looked maybe 14, but he was touring the town with his total babe girlfriend. He was driving a brand new Focus with Minnesota plates and taking the royal tour of every place. The car had no travel gear, so they were staying in hotels. Sigh, but let’s talk economics in another way.
           Have you seen the latest stats on the “disappearing middle class”? Down from 70% to 44% of the population, and vast numbers of them are planning to work on into their 80’s. What did I tell them twenty years ago about having to pay it all back one day? No hourly employee plans to work forever unless they have no choice.

           When I was 27, I had a class argument with a co-worker. I stated that since I was working class, it was up to management, not me, to make a profit, since I did not share in that profit. The co-worker felt insulted because he made the same union wage but considered himself middle class. While I invested heavily in the future, he lived by borrowing every penny he could. When I left the company 14 years later with a Masters, he was still bragging how much his house had “gone up”.
           I wonder if that could explain why there are so few middle class tourists around these days.

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November 16, 2011

           I’m going to be critical of the tourist trade in a moment. Here is what the fort will look like after sunup. First, I got up at 6:00 AM and toured the entire downtown before sunup. The older sections look like east Texas or even the older areas of Ocala. Some of the better restored buildings are priceless. Other areas look like the wrong end of Seattle. Trusting my driving instincts, it turns out I was less than 500 feet from the fort in the dark last night and never saw it. Spanish origin or not, there is very little Spanish influence in this area. I could not even find an empanada for breakfast.
           I was also right in front of the Ripley’s Museum on the first turn I took. Maps are okay, but they detract from spontaneity. By 8:30 AM I stopped for groceries and was back in time for the free morning coffee at the office. I see now I could have got a place for the same price right downtown. I’m staying here, however, you know me once I get settled. Of all I saw this morning, the only attraction for me is that old fort, which is walking distance. After that, this is just another tourist town.
           The tourist brochures cover the highlights and I notice none of them quote prices. You now have to log onto dickweed dot com and go through that meat grinder to plan your day. These people can’t just tell you the price until they get to know a little more about you. The fort is free, the parking isn’t. They must share a town council with Ft. Lauderdale. But I’m already far enough under budget to plan something special for tomorrow. But what!
           It got more than windy by mid-morning so I drove to the fortress, Castillo San Carlos. With that marketing skill typical of those without the benefit of a higher education, the ticket booth is 300 feet away from where you pay to park, all an uphill walk. Then they hit you for $6. Some people cannot stand being honest and up front about things. I’m not saying it should be free, I’m saying if there is a price it should be posted on the front gate so you don’t get stung twice.
           Once inside there is enough to keep everyone gawking. There is a kitchen, chapel, armory, parade ground, powder magazine, and something that made me sneeze after a hundred years of non-use, the latrine. It flushed itself at high tide. So they say. The layout is impressive for the time and Spain spent a lot of money on the place. Stolen Aztec gold money, that is. They used local shellstone which did not shatter when hit with cannonballs, rather absorbed them like a sponge.
           Sadly, my helmet cam is not as reliable as I’d like and you will miss a conversation I had with two Chinese ladies, in Cantonese. And I’ll miss the part where they say they are from Boynton and state they have never heard a white guy with such a perfect accent. But, no proof, so maybe next time. The bronze cannons are remarkable and look like they could be fired today. The iron cannons look like they’ve been salvaged from the ocean bottom.
           I crawled through the hatch to see the magazine. Actually, the fort was about 1.5th storage area of some kind and they had a massive well about 15 feet in diameter.inside the walls. The corners of the fort each have a small observation tower and one is larger than the rest, serving as a lighthouse and a way to signal across the bay where apparently there is a smaller fort at the harbor entrance.
           When fully equipped, the fort likely had some 30 cannon on the walls and another 8 mortars for indirect fire. The ranger and I talked, he says the design is Italian, but if so, they must have stolen it from the French, in my opinion. Those Europeans can behave worse than MicroSoft when it comes to stealing the other man’s tackle. Without blasting a hole through the wall, there is only one entrance, and that is shielded from direct fire by a special barrier.
           Afterward, I drove through the entire central area again. It was better in the morning when deserted. The restored area is not houses or museums, but art studios and overpriced cafes. I did see a guy playing a didgeridoo, so I hope he isn’t the sort that bores easily. There were the usual paintings on the sidewalks and musicians with a city license to perform. No, there was not even one good-looking woman in the crowd. Just behind the heritage houses is a buffer zone of five blocks that look like leftovers from the civil war.
           That’s forty miles I put on the scooter just around town and I do believe I’ve seen what there is to see. I even followed one of the tour trolleys and saved myself $22. It was okay, but I probably saw more from the scooter since the trolley stopped at every second hotel. The southernmost part of town is not unlike military barracks.
           Of all the disappointments, I forgot that I not only get jet lag, I get reverse jet lag in addition to refreshing sleep. By late afternoon, I was exhausted to the core, a fatigue that randomly affects me the day after I arrive. You can’t imagine this type of tired, it’s like your bones get exhausted inside out. For all the plans I made, it’s going to be a 15 hours in the sack for me or I’ll be off balance for a week. It is also a sure sign that I’m immensely enjoying this holiday.

November 15, 2011

         Hello from St. Augustine, although you’ll have to return tomorrow for anything to happen. I got here two hours after dark. The trip was 330 miles on the scooter, which took me 11 hours of travel time. That’s because I had all day to go up A1A, though at the end in the dark I used US1. Why not? Nothing to see. I cheated a little and here is a photo of the city gates from tomorrow morning. Note the fortress on the horizon. We’ll go there.
         I’ll need a few hours to adjust to vacation mode. It’s been the better part of six years since the real thing for me. Total budget to get from Hollywood to St. Augustine was $22.44. That includes an estimated $5.00 in gas in the tank when I started. This is not an extravagant and includes $3.75 for a quart of oil.
         It was a pleasant enough drive, although it is at the upper limit of what the scooter can handle. I dared not take it over 40mph and that means I saw a lot of the scenery. The trip was typical Florida, with delays, detours, unannounced construction zones and no road signs. That is correct, Florida does not put up very many road signs and you can forget asking for directions. Miami huh isn’t that in Georgia
         It was an opportunity to check out the helmet cam. It eats batteries. One set of AAs lasts less than two hours. The camera seems to drain the charge, shut itself down, but pick up again after the cells have had a rest. Points of interest, I saw Jupiter lighthouse. The cannons Wallace and I toured are missing. Other than the bridges over the various inlets and sounds, there is little to see even on the coastal A1A. It seems like the highway people deliberately trim the plants too high for motorists to see the ocean.
         And screw Vivtar. I forgot to install the driver on the laptop. Just you try to tet help on-line. You must know the model, serial number and give your name and address just to download the goddam driver. I’ll try again later but the very fact they are such pricks says it all.
         My priority is to tour the old Spanish fort. The Ripley “Odditorium” wants $16 (the earlier price quote of $48 was a rare typo here) for a ticket and their trolley tour is $22. Both are within budget if I don’t eat any place fancy. I didn’t stop to see anything on the way up but instead weaved through a lot of the small towns to see what was there. Nothing, though I did see one pretty gal in Sebastian Inlet. And she was walking on the bridge with her boyfriend.
         You see, meeting new women is one of my primary incentives to travel and that hasn’t changed in a mighty long time. I also dream more vividly and that can be an IMAX in the mind for somebody with an active imagination. Most noticeable changes were crossing the frost line south of Daytona and the change of vegetation that goes with that. I had to dig out the winter jacket and gloves. The scenery became less palms and more pines.
         Arriving after dark, my luck held out and the first road I took led me motel strip, where I found a ScottsInn for $32 a night. Not first class, but even first class isn’t first class any more. It was clean, spacious, had everything except a quieter location further from the street. But I must emphasize for the height of tourist season, the roads and shops are empty. I’m near a main approach to the local “Bridge of Lions” and looking down a long strip of ghost town. But at fifty bucks to see a museum, what do these people expect Come daylight, I’m heading to WinnDixie for my grub.
         I had intended to go out to Karaoke, but flaked out for 8 solid hours on the top quality mattresses of the ScottsInn. I am quite serious describing this effect that travel has on me. Deep, refreshing sleep and instant adaptation to new surroundings. Maybe I crave the input, even if it is the same as back home. Or as Homer puts it, “cable TV in another state”.
         The real adventure starts tomorrow when I find that ancient castle, or more accurately, the fort. The diagrams show it to be an early “star” design which I’ve never seen in real life. This design had arrowhead shaped corners that eliminated blind spots along the outer walls, that is, the defenders could fire at anyone who got to the base of the outer wall from any direction without risking their own lives by leaning over the edge.
         It takes a little bit of backwards logic to see how the system works, but accept that the fort should be able to fire back along its own walls if need be. No other shape allows this to be done safely. I believe these designs were from a French guy named Vauban, you can look it up on your own. (I’d link, but lately the Google and Yahoo! search engines have returned nothing but garbage. If you looked up Hitler you’d get sites on how to cast his grandmother’s horoscope.)