One year ago today: June 8, 2013, I become a lab rat.
Five years ago today: June 8, 2009,, bio-diesel tanks.
What’s a rainy day blog without food? And here is another prime example of how healthy eating is driving me away from anything over-processed by the Americans. One look at the list of ingredients in Russian food will convert you. Pickled tomatoes, home-made dill, and here’s an innovative container, a tin of sprats in oil with a clear peel-off lid. See them, at the bottom of the photo? That’s fish.
Price-wise, inflation has made these imported products competitive. That jar of pickles is 99¢. You can’t get squat at Wiggly for that money these days. If you are new to shopping at a Russian store, I recommend you start with a half-pound of sliced Polish ham and make sandwiches. Hint, Poles like their meat sliced paper thin, so ask the deli for thick slices. I mean, the Poles just turn around and put four slices instead of one.
In a real the Russian store, you are likely to see small smoked fish, heads and tails included. These are snacks, and yes they are already cooked and salted, ready eat. Salted fish is not for everyone, but try one. This is no different than eating those pickled eggs they sell in pubs. I once saw a guy at the Monk’s Cave (in Couer d’Alene) eat eighteen of those, the kind that were dyed purple. Said he was hungry. He told us later his girlfriend made him sleep out on the porch.
Sunday is a working day around here, and that’s how I’d describe band rehearsal. But there was progress so I’m happy over all. I need constant refreshers on much of this music. This band is good enough to do some serious recording but I doubt the idea would meet with much enthusiasm. We have reached some level of saturation with what we are already doing. Each new piece of music is getting more and more obscure and less and less of a hit. It’s a bit of an unspoken fact that each band will find a cap on the number of really great hits that fit into the mix. After my country act hit 32 songs, I really had to really dig to find additional numbers that were suitable for my schtick.
It’s now been a year with the band, so how about a progress report? Okay, we have played three paying gigs and one freebie. Over the year since the addition of the lady vocalist, the band has nudged more toward classic rock and away from the stale English material. But the music and the band is still guitar-centric to the extent no other music is even considered. Not from such a lowly source as the bass player anyway. Note it was like that long before I arrived.
However, the quality is there and the band is a great listening experience. Providing we can find the right club to work with, we would not have much local competition. I’m happy with the band but not with the music we play because it is not in demand. Naturally, if I was in charge we would rapidly move toward classic and contemporary country-rock and be working every weekend. As it stands, the majority of the band still had teenage hang-ups over what they will or won’t play and as you know, when you have majority rules, every meal is pizza. And in this band, every song is Johnny B. Goode.
The Nova club sent out a small newsletter type announcement saying they want to “whiteboard” the topic of Artificial Intelligence as it relates to neuron synapse. This is not likely to attract many new people. What, you have to study anatomy to build a robot? That is hardly true, but there is that massive lobby who want robots to resemble humans. Yet we already know the human form is not anywhere near the most efficient model of anything except for one in person in ten thousand who is capable of logical thinking.
That’s all for today.
ADDENDUM
Here is the police patrol, Coconut Grove style. This photo is from Alaine this morning, and what a beautiful morning. The landscaping behind the horsie is rather typical of the swanker areas of the town. Lawns are water intensive, but the tamed jungle creates all the ground cover and shade you need. That is, I believe, a live oak tree. These trees grow to massive size in captivity.
Still, this reaction by strangers to seeing me to read navigation charts quickly had me looking at salary charts. It says here $80k is the going rate. Which isn’t that much money, at least not enough to tempt me, anyway. If you are going to work, get a job that pays above average. Exception, south Florida, where all jobs pay below average and the cost of living is 104% of household income. That is correct. Most people who live in Florida are slowly going broke.
More information says the good paying navigation jobs require Federal certification, and involve more the aircraft industry than ships. But talk at street level is that tankers are too expensive to trust to radio and GPS navigation. Trained human plotters are still in reasonable demand. I can sort of see it.
The actual pay per hour? We don't know. See, this job is another case where nobody on line giving a straight answer. They won't say until they get your life history on file, so we’ll have to wait until I bump into the answer. Most sources show me a graph instead of a number (do these people work for MicroSoft?). One trend is that most graphs consistently show a navigator makes less than a pharmacist, and I rejected pharmacist as too low-paying. But a pharmacist doesn't get to South Africa for free to go shopping, does he? What? South Africa? Read on.
Want some good news? On the first official “shoot” we noticed the sextant would not measure above 80°. What’s this? It's a little tag blocking the sextant slide. It is a South African security anti-theft tag not used in Florida. It was blocking the arc reading. Further investigation shows that it is what is known as a “source tag”, meaning it was applied at the factory level. So, the sextant not only looks new, it is brand new, never used. Not having the clamping device to remove the tag, we had to cut the cable. That activity required bolt cutters.
Our first reading indicates the sun is at 75-1/2° at 12:24:32 LMT. This is a longitude reading meaning the number of degrees west of the prime meridian. We know this to be a wild error, most likely due to a botched artificial horizon reading. But what a thrill, what a learning curve! The darkest telescope filters had to be used for Miami, where the sun is almost directly overhead in June (Miami is near the Tropic of Cancer, where the sun is at 90° on June 21, the summer equinox.) I could see the broiling turmoil swirls on the surface of the sun. Our reading was about 6° out, representing hundreds of miles. We hope to do better.
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