One year ago today: May 9, 2013, mostly electronics talk.
Five years ago today: May 9, 2009, USS North Carolina.
Hush puppies, not just for breakfast anymore. Friday is my day off, but it is also the day I can eat anything I want. Within reason and in my thinking, fritters with ketchup is vegetarian. If that sub place can call their sandwiches health food, I can manage a little luxury in my dish. And this is it. Home alone Friday, just me and the coffee pot and a weird book I picked up at the thrift. It says WWIII will be played out on computer consoles and I can’t figure out if they mean it. Last I heard generating lots of electricity was noisy, dirty business or required big fat targets called hydroelectric dams.
Looking for a niche market? I’ve noticed something missing on my travels and on-line. Say I wanted to go visit some town just to see what is there. Let’s pick a town. Winter Haven, Florida, birthplace of Publix Super Market. The largest employee-owned supermarket chain, but you can’t buy shares. They are only sold to employees. Other than Legoland, that’s about the biggest blurb you will get for Winter Haven. And that’s the market. You see, most towns do not publish a directory of downtown shops on-line. If you search on “downtown Winter Haven” all you get is ads for hotels and restaurants.
Generally, I like to visit the old “Main Street”. I like to walk past bookstores, coffee houses, mom & pops, like Hollywood Boulevard used to be back when it was a nice place to visit. But where does one find out this information in advance? Yelp (yellow pages) allows only single-category searches. The few lists that exist are alphabetical, duh. Brochures contain only those businesses that pay for it. Why doesn’t somebody come up with a mall-type “you are here” map for these small towns? I know I’ve seen it and I’m not the first, but I mean something major, on-line.
Sometime I hear most people do not have anywhere near the same difficulties I do just getting by. In fact, here’s an example of why they have such easy lives and I don’t. They don’t get out much. All Amtrak will tell you is that the bicycle must be in a “bicycle container”, and they will sell you one for ten bucks. Here is where I have difficulties and others don’t. Others don’t ask questions. Most people blindly do what they are told and call it “going with the flow”. (The path of least resistance makes for crooked rivers and crooked men.)
This is where we get divided into two camps. Sheeple on one hand and those like me who would like to know what I’m getting for my ten bucks. Amtrak goes through great lengths to prevent you from seeing a picture of this “container”, but I suspect it is nothing more than an ordinary cardboard box meant to be thrown away after one use. But no pictures. Amtrak ain’t about to show you that much. As usual, in all the thousands and thousands of people I’ve met in Florida in the past 15 years, the very few I know who understand what a container is have never shipped a bicycle.
Further, there are no images or web pages that show “bicycle container” or “bicycle shipping container” on any major search engine, the Amtrak site, or eBay. Instead you get back a lot of nonsense you didn’t ask for. There are boxes for sale at ShipBikes but these are very expensive (min $50 plus $25 shipping), and the seller carefully avoids stating whether the design is acceptable to Amtrak. The directions say:
“To pack the bicycle, the following components must be removed: Both wheels and quick release skewers, pedals, handlebars and/or stem, seatpost and saddle, fork (in some cases) and front brake (in some cases).”
Whee! That sounds like fun. You know, checking a tool kit as one of your carry-ons.
So, well, yes. Compared to the complacent masses, I do have many more “difficulties”. But society requires all those unquestioning, faceless nobodies paying retail to prop up the economy. America as we know it could not exist if everyone insisted on as much enjoyment-per-dollar as I do. I put the quotient at 3 to 1. I have three times as much fun as others on the same amount of money. By adding in a spirit for adventure, the ratio easily becomes 5 to 1. By adding in . . ., and so on.
Can you believe the clarity of those Mars Rover photos? Way better than those grainy shots from the moon back in '79. I always wondered why cameras back then took funny pictures in space. But even today, no amount of clarity will every prevent people from seeing things that aren't there.
Let's look at one of those parallels. When I was Agt. M’s age, no, I did not meet any old guys who could act as a mentor. When I was 30 all the old people I'd ever met were cranky know-it-alls who would not tell you the truth. I know the difference between someone answering my questions and some ignorant old coot stuck in his ways spewing out some self-perceived righteous crap. Those bozos hand you what they ignorantly consider to be the morally or socially proper answer.
You know the ones. You ask them about birth control and they lecture you on abstinence. (It took me a while, but I finally figured out those were the same people who never had any fun with it when they were young.) I did not, as a youngster, meet even one “older” person who could have helped me with the then-modern world. Let me explain in perspective as to why things are probably like that.
If I take the same age and experience ratios as are present in my robot club today, what would have had to happen? To get the same relative degree of exposure, I would have had to meet, in 1981, someone who was then 56 or 57 years old who had already built and programmed computers, had used the the Internet, had studied international banking, and who was already a published author. Hell, those things would be almost impossible to find today. They would have further been capable of giving truthful answers without personal bias, possessed a willingness to adopt new technology, and have a history of working well with what resources were on hand. And throw in a willingness and patience enough for me to catch on.
Now that I know, I’d consider it a freak accident to meet someone with even ONE of those qualities. On to the events of the day. Someone has discovered a secret list being used by Veterans Affairs to delay medical treatment. I’m shocked. Shocked that it took them until 2014 to figure it out. What’s this bailing out a feeb in Pakistan for $10,000?
Let the bastard rot in jail, he was caught carrying a knives and bullets. (Feeb is FBI, who are not even supposed to operate in foreign countries.) All spies should be shot. Responsible, educated Americans do not become spies and every last white American in a rat-hole like Pakistan is automatically suspect. Karachi is not some health spa, you know.
And a man facing fraud charges has disappeared off a fishing boat off the Florida Keys. What? Again? Hint. If he turns up living another life in Western Australia twenty years from now, we’ve heard the tale before. No, hold on. This guy is Cuban. Substitute Havana for Australia. Surprise, he was sailing alone. Now just what do you suppose about that?
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