One year ago today: July 23, 2015, one busy day.
Five years ago today: July 23, 2011, on Norwegian immigration riots.
Nine years ago today: July 23, 2007, I talk philosphy.
Random years ago today: July 23, 2013, my serious miscalculation.
MORNING
I have three offers [on this place] and I’ll sell to the first one who shows me the money. Other than that, I took inventory and this morning to my name, I have $18 in cash, 5 liters of gas in the red scooter, and a coupon for a free drink. Only one thing to do and that’s head to the library. That’s the joy of retirement—unless your idea of planning ahead consists of buying an extra six-pack for the game.
Otherwise, the morning was waiting for offers and I got two new inquiries, which I replied to. Then I watched Gretchen Wilson in the “Redneck Woman” video. You know, even if she isn’t really playing, she at least holds her left guitar hand in the correct F# position. But, Grechie, I’m not so sure about wearing those hula hoop earrings while driving an ATV through the brambles.
I also reviewed two new browsers and rejected both on the spot. These are PhantomJS and Iron. Neither performs adequately and neither is fully open with their documentation. PhantomJS could probably claim to be transparent, but that is ruined by the overuse of retard lingo: “headless”, “full stack”, “continuous integration”. We are not impressed. And Iron. It is just as dangerous to your privacy as the Google Chrome app that it claims to be better than. Iron won’t publish their code. That’s not gonna fool many people for very long. Possible exception: Miami.
Cigarette smuggling.
NOON
Like anyone anticipating a move to a better place, the time and people back here become stale. I kept alone at the coffee shop full of hipsters pretending to be studying on-line and gussed up women past their primes hoping Starbucks is the place to meet Prince Charming. I actually completed the NYT crossword by inference. How in hell would I know who the Pirates traded with the Patriots, or whatever.
I further ran the numbers for August and September which is what, less than six weeks from now. The margins are narrow, but after that, I’m in the home stretch. Finally out of Dade/Broward and it’s plastic lifestyle. Where the average job pays $9.25 per hour and the cheapest house you can live in sells for $190,000. The papers finally admit the boom is over, that it never was sustainable. Just like we said here long ago.
However, I realized before so many that I was the last generation that was going to get away with that. Today just you try to find job that left you with enough time and energy at the end of the day to take up something productive. Even then, I was not that good at juggling that very situation. I did start two successful bands and work part time for two years, but the company was already tightening up. You see, I worked in a trade union—and whatever I say that it was not perfect, I’m glad that union existed.
The company, who had much faster learners, did not lay off the union members in degrees or gradually downsize. They waited until they had a nearly automated parallel operation in place, then terminated wholesale using such tactics as questionable merges. That way, they only fought with the union once, and it was a union by then geared to preserving the status quo. Such unions are never nimble enough to take on the slick battalions of company double-talkers.
And you could not speak up without being labeled a traitor. I did it obliquely a few times, such as exposing the virtual fraud of the union-backed “United Way” payroll deduction. That’s the one that was subsidizing riding academies and sending Jewish kids to summer camps that the average union worker could not possibly afford. When I left, I was working on a proposal to place a moratorium on all further “1/4%” union charitable deductions—and an active ban on soliciting those deductions in public on payday.
But such forward and progressive thinking was never popular with the job-for-life mob. And no, you could not avoid conflict by not taking sides. If you didn’t pick a team, both would gang up on you. Whenever anyone asked for help, the first union question was how many meetings you had attended in the past year. I went to one in my whole career there. I had to stand there listening to tone-deaf monotones singing “Solidarity” and never bringing up the relevant issue until seven minutes before quitting time.
In a way, it was a thing of beauty because the union was asking for it. They had become a form of management in their own right. Increasingly going to bat for queers, single mothers, minorities, and substance abusers. I hated the way they’d get the company to set up a drug addict program that benefitted losers at the expense of my annual raises. This union catering to special interests had, by 1995, become like a second income tax. (I’d estimated was taking home $70 per week less than proper over this nonsense.)
By the time I baled in the mid-90s, the situation had become grotesque. My last raise was 1.5% in a year that inflation was 12%. The union became so focused on marginal issues that they did not see the looming disaster. Oh, I tried to warn them to no avail. How many times I told them their only imperative should be negotiating higher wages and letting the riff-raff deal with their own personal problems. Toward the end, alcoholics could get 13 weeks off with pay at the company country club, but normal people had to struggle along. (I’m not unsympathetic, but there were already plenty of other treatments available there without me subsidizing a private clinic at the expense of my own career.)
The rest is history. I left with a generous buyout package, or at least it seems so in retrospect. The bulk of my co-workers got canned empty-handed. Yes, I laughed, for they were the ones who laughed when I took the package. In the end, the after-tax money was just enough to set me at the start line of the next race. But boy, by then had I smartened up. I was semi-famous as the employee who did not use the course reimbursement program to get a promotion, but to train for a new vocation. A lot of people who say I cheated on that one are now mall cops, so it’s not like anyone cares what they say. There are few things more useless in the marketplace than 7,500 suddenly ex-union smartasses.
Patricia J. Yang: Physics, 2015. Patsy headed up the team that determined all mammals, regardless of size, take 21 seconds to go pee. She hung around the Zoo Atlanta an awful lot, you see.
NIGHT
Here’s how the new homeowner spends a valuable Saturday night. I have sketches of each room as I would like it rewired, starting with the bedroom. By the way, I would like to take this opportunity to point out the wisdom of choosing the smallest room first. That’s despite certain criticism. In addition to it being the easiest [room] to work with, I also have the opportunity to observe such gems as neatness and work habits. What was novel about tonight was I matched my sketches to the most recent copy of the National Electrical Code, the NEC.
[Author's note: Apparently at the time, there were two prices for electricity, one for lighting and the other for any other usage. I have no idea how this dual tariff was enforced, but you can bet people cheated by connecting everything to the light socket.]
There were no surprises except to notice many of the efficiency and safety features I have always included are now required. Some of the new standards are every receptacle near a water source must now be GFCI, where only one was needed before. (That one, note, was wired to protect other receptacles in the same circuit.) An example of my work exceeding code is my habit of installing two separate circuits in rooms with many receptacles, so a popped breaker doesn’t leave you totally in the dark.
I further have always used 12/2 instead of 14/2 whenever there was even a chance I might plug a computer into that plug, but I see now the standard is to use a dedicated receptacle of the ugliest color yet. Orange-red, and the only feature I can spot is that the box and receptacle itself have separate grounding wires. Anyway, 12/2 is overkill and the difference is that it is rated for higher amps.
As you expect, owing the house makes a difference that causes these dry code and study booklets to become extra-entertaining. It is always nice to work with a proper budget so everything is up to snuff. There are also a greater number of boxes, clamps, and staples available than back in my day. What’s neat is I often find myself visualizing how the circuit would work if it was emulated by electronic components as a result of my robotics research.
There is further a new requirement that new bedroom outlets must be an “arc fault” type, which I will look into. I see this can be accomplished by a special breaker in the distribution panel, which is good because it looks like the devices cost nearly $50 each. I can’t find good pictures of either the computer plug or the AFCI (arc fault) plug-in.
ADDENDUM
Now, folks, I have something to say about pretty gals. The random link y’day featured a picture of Wallace walking with a babe in a blue bikini. This caused my daily hit counter to register 316% more clicks, and I would now like a word on that.
The difficulty is finding one who is anything more than good-looking. That appears to be enough for most men. But it was only good enough for me before I was 40. So get that straight in your head. There is no shortage of pretty women around me and if you hang out with me, you’ll be surrounded by them. Ask anybody who knows me.
Now some may ask, if I can’t find a pretty one, why not the other? Simple, I told you I tried that in the past and it does not work for me. All men are genetically programmed to select mates they find attractive. Those who don’t like that should quarrel with God, not with me. It is even good logic, that if the odds are the same you are going to get the runaround, take the prettiest one. At least you’ll have a good time or two to remember. Let’s not keep going over this for the benefit of the slow-witted.
This is the lady from Key West. And it serves to demonstrate how quickly you can become a non-person when you mess up too much around me. They say winners re-write history, but actually, if the other person is as potato-headed as Wallace, Patsie, & Theresa, then pretty much anybody can re-write it.
Last Laugh
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