Posted in 2019.
But first, here is a photo from 2005. I randomly picked one and it is a shepherd in Donegal, Ireland. And it may be one of the last photos of real food left on the Internet. Also note the long paragraphs, obviously not designed for a computer monitor.
A comment on all the phony "job" ads in Florida.
I downed a pot of coffee and went into the shop. I see the pattern to Protech, they are also running some phony ads to get you signed up. Again, there is nothing illegal about this in Florida, and certainly not any moral issues for the people who place these ads. They lie, and it does not bother them to lie. It now makes sense why they don’t call back. There are no real jobs.
The anti-computer dude I showed how to surf is now an expert telling me how it's done.
While on the net, I did a search on Thrift Stores Florida, and pulled the top page of listings (of 60,184). I printed the source code, something which later Don found fascinating. I dropped in at Thrift Mall, then B&N, but I could not study any more. Instead, I read a book on Navy Seals, noting all the soldiers were Caucasians, and a book that taught women how to detect when men were lying. That’s easy. Glenn called to say he was rather proud of his new digital camera, and the slide show which he sent to lots of people. I don’t think he understands that I know the slide show is automatic in XP and he didn’t have to do anything but download the camera. He also mentioned a WiFi seminar at the Marriott but I was not up to it.
Later, I called Marion, and we talked about a mass of details. [Big segment removed here.] My most famous quotation is, “The thing I like most about America is that when you help your neighbor, it is your choice. Not your neighbors.”
We talked a little about money, and how, unless you are born rich, three is a charm. We are both starting something new for the third time. Marion remembers Xmas with Memphis, but this was the first time we ever discussed the cost of travel. I went to Mexico seven times at an average cost of $1,900 each trip. I was in Venezuela for over a year all told during the 90s, sixteen trips at an average of $2,200 per trip. There was Thailand and the Philippines, where the air fare alone was sometimes that much. Plus, while I was there, you can bet I did not waste my time with women my own age, ho-ho. Marion pointed out that beer costs money as well, but I never factored it in because I never drank in expensive places. Like a lot of students, I studied over beer and pizza, so she is probably right that even if this only cost me $4,000 a year, I was there for 16 years. On the bright side, my pizza and beer consumption in the last year has been zero.
Marion and I talked about the things we’ve done that endured, and really, if there is no break in the situation, I want to take any job that earns me enough to move back home. Seattle. I don’t miss winter, but I miss real people. There is a little more sad news. Remember Jill, the one I was so close to considering, but in the end had to admit there was a potential genetic problem? It seems that she has a four-year old from the new boyfriend and all is not well. I don’t know the nitty, but believe me, hearing this news makes me very sad.
Some computer talk, as this was never destined to be published. I seem to be documenting a repair job for some other purpose.
Don was over at 7:00 PM prompt, and we tore into protocols. He was quite absorbed by http when I showed him what I’d done with html. He had never seen html code before and was a little overwhelmed by the material. That’s fine, he can learn it on his own and I gave him a copy of the Thrift store code, with an hour’s explanation on how to interpret most of what appeared on the web page in terms of the code listing. It is certain he will study code now, especially when I showed him several instances where using automatic coding [such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage] caused problems. The objective here was to get a working set of code to transfer between two networked computers, not to learn html. The six pages of notes took on the 9th required over three hours of discussion and interpretation. Yet there is no doubt the progress is far faster than class lectures. We then turned to the problem of the NIC card not working, although the individual software tests showed all was fine. We work well as a team because he looks at things differently enough to make me think things through from other angles. First, we removed the PnP card, it is an ISA, then installed the driver. The mouse seized – aha, the computer does have both a modem and mouse, so we have an old-fashioned IRQ conflict. Changing the NIC IRQ had no effect, and device manager shows there is no conflict.
It was nearly 11:00 PM and we were getting exhausted. Another day I will remove all potential problem devices one by one, starting with that modem. The system keeps attaching modem drivers to the NIC card. Morale is high because we have narrowed down a problem far faster and better than we were taught. Both of us have that strangely familiar feeling that we are in that situation where the first problem encountered is the most difficult we’ll ever see, and everything will seem easy after that. We’ve all been there. There is no movement, but there is plenty of progress. Don was also quite fascinated by the hacking techniques I had to show him to explain various processes. He did not know it was possible to open files with other than the parent application, or that encryption did not necessarily render text files totally unreadable. He was also unaware that one could download and print html source code, as told earlier.
We know we are on the verge of suddenly having a full working network, and one that we completely understand. I stress that it is a primitive network of one virtue; that we built it ourselves. Was it Ben Franklin who said, “What good is a new-born babe?” (He was replying to a comment at a demonstration of the newly invented locomotive that it had no practical use.) It is an hour later and I notice my demo disk is gone. Maybe Don thought I meant he could have it, but no. That was my only copy. No matter, we got far beyond that during tonight’s nearly five-hour study session. Remember, these are voluntary, so nobody sticks around unless the game is worth the candle. That, and earlier I had made my special honey-mustard mushroom meatloaf and the place still smelled like home-cooking past midnight. Never mind, I found the disk mixed in with my DOS pile.
And yes, Ken, I read just as much back in 2005. And 1995, 1985, 1975 etc.
Reading. Yes, I read every day and this time it was that book about the Army of the Potomac and the events leading up to Gettysburg. Most revealing to me was the descriptions of the treatment of the wounded, for the book lumped together all soldiers who were not at the front lines. Thus, there are plenty of descriptions of what you could call desertion. I see that the majority of the false insurance claims and scams going on today were invented in the civil war, the first war with any type of concern for the wounded. The states operated the hospitals. Thus a wounded man who walked out the door and went home was not absent from the army, but absent from the hospital. Men who signed up for money could leave and sign up again elsewhere for more. What got me was the way both the doctors and hospitals worked to keep men from returning to the front. The motive for this was to keep men with skills around the hospital, even if that skill was just raising chickens. It saved them money. Then, the proliferation of ‘new’ diseases and conditions that had no outward symptoms, well that is another story, but the idea was to keep out of the front lines.
[Author's note 2024: this post reveals that blogging was very much still an experiemental thing around here in 2005. The formats and layout were not formalized, and much of the material came from calendar notes. Thus, you won't get as much "external" information from news or social sites. Even politics did not figure much until Trump's 2016 election revealed the extent of Deep State corruption. The focal point of the above blog was the employment agency scam. They advertise as if they have a job, when you incur the expense to go to the fake interview, they are collecting resumes. This, it turns out, is not illegal in Florida.]
