Here I am parked under one of those solar recharging stations. The parking spots in the shade are reserved. Just above the motorcycle seat is a coiled up hose that works on 108 volts. I wonder how far I’d get on a sidecar full of batteries. I also wonder about the single charging hose. First come, first serve? What’s to stop the last guy in from changing the hose to his car?
Fridays are not a big day for me. I know, if I’m so serious about meeting a decent gal, why don’t I go out that day? Easy, even Marion says that is meat market day. I also know from countless episodes that I never meet nice women on a pickup night. I didn’t borrow enough money to impress that type. For me, tradition says the I’ll meet the woman for me on a Thursday.Instead, I took care of logistics today in anticipation of another out of town day trip. I dropped into what looks like the oldest electronics store in the west. No bargains there, they are selling Radio Shack items for ten dollars more than Radio Shack, but far be it from me to tell somebody how to run their own shop. (Mind you, unlike the Shack, everything I bought there fit into standard breadboard socket holes.) They have inventory there from the 1950s. Here’s something you might find interesting, because I have now concluded that all electronics stores are run differently than any other type.
When I wrote out my goodie list, it was again precisely the items they did not have in stock. The guy knew what they were, but not that these were the exact parts needed by somebody studying robotics. So they had none because nobody bought them because they had none. Mind their prices were only five times higher than on-line instead of the Florida seven times.
One more thing, when I asked about certain procedures, like making PCBs, I got the standard replies. It is difficult to listen to a nice, helpful person giving advice that you know does not work—because I know that somewhere, somehow, there exists a person who really knows the easy way to do it and could show me. I bought $30 of hard-to-find parts. But as I was leaving, the lady at the counter did say that over the past few years, they’ve had lots of men come asking for the same parts and the same advice. And not a good portion of then also lamented the lack of good, solid resource material.
I got the Miami treatment twice today, so you’ll not think I said Colorado was paradise. The bicycle store, when I asked for a bell, said, “What’s that?” And the stationary store on Blackhawk said the same when I asked for envelopes. In each case they, “. . . don’t have anything like that.” The Honda is going in for surgery on Monday at 12:30. That faring brace has become a priority.
Checking out an unusually low-priced house, I must compliment the photographer’s photoshopping. When I got there, the house was the worst in the neighborhood, not at all like the on-line photographs. For instance, the kitchen is tiny, but he set up a tripod in the hallway that just missed the door frame, so it looked like a room twice the size. It was the type of house I rented in college, with a moldy aroma and layers of paint over the sockets, outlets, and door hinges. I’d pay $30,000 for the place, mainly because its not the sort of house you’d worry about pounding a nail in the wrong spot.
Fall has arrived. I have to wear wool gloves during the day. It is like Montana, baking hot only on the side where the sun is shining. While downtown, I noticed evidence of a Colorado crime wave. Birdnappers have this 25 year old African parrot. I can’t get a visual on how someone would steal a large, noisy bird. Or why. That reminds me of today’s trivia. Only 6% of US high school grads can solve a two-step math problem or write more than two paragraphs about anything. Why, the other 94% must have some kind of new-fangled but as yet unnamed syndrome. I wonder why they don’t use the existing name: stupidity.But don’t go thinking that 6% is an elite who will get the good jobs. There aren’t enough jobs that require thinking left in this country to absorb even that tiny proportion. Employers would rather farm out the tough work and simplify what is left to hire dummies.
I’m still reading the “Golden Ship” book, and it took 79 pages just for the thing to sink. It is a difficult read, a chronicle. I know know exactly how a steamship flounders in exquisite detail.
My guitar buddy Trent went over to Alpha Three and checked the property for me. This is the longest I’ve left anything unattended in Florida, and it was a relief to hear all was fine. Thanks, pal, I’ll sleep a little sounder again. By after 10:00PM local, I get this wise idea to drive over and see the full Dick Frost band. Glad I did, he’s got a super tight bass-lead-keyboard-autodrummer act. That’s the first time I’ve seen his full group, and precisely what I have in mind without the keyboards.
Last, I get home past midnight and no Marion, but the dog at the door. She did say late shopping, but not this time of the night. I got on the eBike and retraced the original route I memorized the first day. Nothing until I found her buying muffins at King Sooper on Hampden at 2:10AM. I admonished her for leaving home at dark without a cell phone. She says, “You’re worse than my father”.
Fine.
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