Blaming the diet is easy, it stands to reason anyone losing weight would not necessarily have boundless energy. If anyone wonders, no, losing weight does not make me feel sorry for fat people, at least not any more than I did before. I know how I gained weight and I know what I had to go through to lose it. And I passed the points where people give up, so don’t expect a lot of mercy from this direction. Double that because I know I haven’t hit the hard parts yet.
Worse yet, I may be developing a chronic pain from playing bass. After giving it time to go away by itself, I have to admit my posture when I’m playing seems to cause a cramp in my upper right rib cage. That would be all I need right now. It’s a good thing I went to Dunkin Donuts with all the other grumpy people this morning. A lady, not too shabby but far too old, hit on me. (Remember, I define a hit as any lady I don't find attractive. If she is attractive, then it is just a nice female being friendly, see how that works?) This Friday is 14 years since I had a steady girlfriend but I sure don’t miss any of the women that I’ve met in that time.
Being in a mood doesn’t prevent me from working, so don’t conclude I lazed the day off. I monkey-ed around with the solar panels and AC is one thing you can thank Telsa for. DC is not a good system for household use. There seems to be no such thing as a carefree DC setup. What I’ve got needs constant checking on. A current that is too high will ruin your batteries just as much as one that is too low. One can’t help but think the defects (after all these years) are built into the product. For example, a lead-acid (car) battery has only a 10% leeway. If it goes under 10.8V or over 13.2V, there is risk it won’t come back. Why, one wonders, don’t they build something into the battery to prevent that? Take a guess.
One consistent thing about this project is once again I am on my own. Nobody I know has any experience with any part of it. And the people that do know won’t tell you if they think they can get any money out of you. Tell ‘em, I’m building this myself and they’ll still refuse to help. That makes me the first with solar panels. Of course, one of the first things to cross the mind is that expensive air conditioner in the Florida room. Who would not love to leave that running all day, if only it was free.
Now there is another factor. The electric company wants positive ID on anyone moving into a new place before they’ll connect the service. Ostensibly it is to prevent squatting but that would be a minor cost compared to the overall administration of the new records that will be created by this change. The power company is obviously after much more, including an on-going record of where you move and when. The squatter issue is just some cover story, all they’d have to do is disconnect the few addresses that constitute the problem. And, I’ve never been wrong about the future abuse of these records.
Want some fun? Try to find out what you would need by way of solar panels to run an air conditioner. The primary concern is the amount of power the unit will draw when cranking out maximum cold air. This peak has to be covered by a healthy margin. After looking at what information is out there, I would approach this empirically. The rig I bought is modular. Just keep adding more panels until there are enough to quit tripping the breaker. Is this even realistic?
The neighbor was over to visit and show off his new Internet surveillance cam system. Pointed right at my motorcycle, which I told him he could leave it there. It is remote controlled. As you know, I am the last to adopt new technology until one system emerges as the winner. We talked about the Mennonites in Ohio, where he’s from. The government wants to require the horse buggies to have lights. It seems there are often accidents at night with cars speeding down country roads to avoid DUIs. So what does the State do? Try to enforce a new law against the victims. Typical political mentality.
I will never accept that, when there is a problem of this nature, that the Mennonites are the root cause of it. There has got to be other factors at work. It is the motor cars that should be subject to extremes of the law long before unpowered vehicles are squeezed. What’s next? Pedestrians have to carry a lantern to walk home at night? Then again, Ohio is not known for its intellectual class.
Trent forwarded a list of local talent venues. Some I knew but others, such as a spot in the Broward Performing Arts Center might be something to look into. Here is a link to the list, Open Mics but call first. A lot of these places no longer exist and some of them are grungy old bars. Others are grungy new bars. I prefer open mics to Karaoke because there is at least a chance people who play a musical instrument might show up.
ADDENDUM
Who recalls 2005, when I attended a Florida rip-off college for the first and last time? Well, anyone who said I was just a chronic complainer should read today’s newspaper. I did not complain about the coursework or caliber of the instructors, but I was instantly put off by the college policies. The first thing that put me off was their insistence that I needed a counselor, who then demanded to know far more information that was necessary for admission. I know a credit application when I see one.
Another thing I’m onto is schools that want their money up front, before they’ve supplied anything. If you aren’t on to how people change once they’ve got your money, you deserve to lose it. According to the newspaper, thousands of students did lose. The school was shut down for just such abuses but the students are stuck with the loans. Sure, I’ll name the worst two outfits I’ve met for ripping off students—although these are NOT the thieves in the paper today but are still in need of investigating. Broward Community College and City University of Seattle. BCC is doubly bad because if you complain, they call security on you.
I particularly dislike BCC because I caught them using my “application” for to do a credit check on me. Their “counselor” was a commissioned salesman who repeated lied to me. You can look it up, it is covered in this blog around 2005. This BCC is the brazen outfit who attempted to twist my response to a $40 evening course advertisement to try to sucker me into a $48,000 computer program. They said I would be “reneging on my duty to help my grandchildren with their homework” if I didn’t sign up. You see, they didn’t know I already had two computer degrees when they “determined” my needs. Scumbags, douchebags, every one of them, from the top to the bottom. No ethical person could possibly work there--unless they were so naive as to be a bad risk anyway.
City U was back in the 90s. I smelled a rat when they didn’t like that I would not pay for any course in the future, only what I was taking now. So later, when it turned out they would not give me the credits they’d promised for my studies at Humble, they took the loss--which is really why they had wanted my money up front. I withdrew and they actually turned my case over to a collection agency. City insisted that I was committed to pay for the courses toward their degree, courses which I had not yet taken. And that, students, is why you don’t give anyone all your money up front. We settled out of court when they could not produce any document saying I promised to take those courses.
You might be curious to learn that City U refused to give me credit for my other computer degrees. They originally promised to do that, but thought once I had begun my studies with them, they could change their tune. They waited a year until they figured I was committed. When that didn’t work, they tried to blame their broken promise on a bad counselor, I forget her name. Baloney, trying to say it wasn’t their fault that way. Beware of all colleges that want money for something they have not yet delivered. I understand they have costs, so I’ll sway that rule and pay a maximum of ONE semester in advance, or four courses.
