One year ago today: April 7, 2016, plan, that’s P-L-A-N.
Five years ago today: April 7, 2012, my soldering progress
Nine years ago today: April 7, 2008, some wha-ifs.
Random years ago today: April 7, 2010, Cowboy Mike’s pipes.
Today’s headline, another flat tire. They are a fact of Miami life. The city is third world, a characteristic of which is they “save” money by passing the cost on to others. They no longer sweep the streets regularly or clear away glass or other shards from accident sites. Thus, they pass the cost of increased tire repairs on to motorists, even though the overall cost of repairing tires is immensely greater. Third world, as long as they don't have to pay it themselves, they live in a cocoon that none of this will come home to roost. You can walk down almost any Miami artery and find nails on the road. I’ve learned to schedule my appointments at noon, so an event like this doesn’t catch me at rush hour.
Nor do any of my Miami friends have an Internet service I can use, and forget the Miami libraries. It is sad that by 2017 I do not know one person in the area who could let me use their computer for a moment. The few who even have them use them only for entertainment and besides, they become near-paranoid that if they let anybody use their gear, they’ll get viruses. Then, if I knew as little about computers as they do, I’d likely think the same.
The smart phone people are even worse because they get GoogleNoodle. They develop a brain condition whereby they think they are smart because even though they don’t know much, they think they can look it up. Now, you asked if they knew, you didn’t ask them to waste five minutes of your time while they look it up. And if you’ve ever watched that kind of idiot try to find anything, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not like they are any better at search algorithms than anything else. They won’t let you use their phone to look it up and this kind of obligates you to wait around while they tap and swipe away both your times. And you usually wind up settling for some half-information just to make a getaway.
Dornier Do X control room.
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Go no further until you take an admiring look at this table leg. There, that’s enough. It’s only here to balance this blog page. I’d say as far a furniture legs go, this is about as average as it gets. This is from the pile at the Civil War yard.
I learned how the reserve fuel valve works. Like many, I thought it switched over to a small reservoir in the tank. Nope. It is kind of like a stem that stands vertically inside the main tank, but with a set of two tiny tubes. In fuel position, it allows gas to enter the fuel line at one vertical position. When you switch to reserve, the tube inlet simply drops to a lower level.
The long-awaited news for me was that I aced the physical. This included the stress test which this time only winded me. I walked distance in a matter of minutes. This qualified me for a reduction in my heart meds, which I add, have not had any noticeable effect for years. In the early days, I could tell if I was late taking the pills, but now, I regularly miss a few days each month with no consequences. This battery of tests was important because it allows me to again go on a real diet.
However, as a personal reward, I left the clinic and headed straight for Hong Shin, where I not only had the largest plate of cashew fried chicken in my life, but there was a young Mandarin babe in house and we spent most of the hour chatting it up. She was not my type, but still, we had a great time sounding each other out. It causes conspicuous double-takes from other customers that we are speaking two different types of Chinese, but getting along. I don’t speak any Mandarin, but I recognize when they say numbers, names, dates, the easy stuff.
I estimate that one meal was in excess of 1500 calories—and for the first time in years, I felt really full. Later, I stopped at both clubs, JZ was not at either, so I headed home and celebrated by reading some of the books I bought on this trip. I have something to say about that, so please, read on.
“I’m into grandfather clocks,
big time.”
JZ has only semi-acquired my habit of not going out on Fridays, plus remember he spends close to three times the amount of money as I will. He plays pool and gambles at it, and buys women drinks speculatively, which I never do except in very narrow circumstances. Ha, I wish I had the money the guys wastes buying women drinks that he’ll never get the intended results. I just walk up to the women and ask them directly, but like many, JZ doesn’t have the nerve. Well, I don’t ask them that directly, that would be blunt. More like I just let them know once they are tired and bored of the rest of the pack, just give me the word and we can seal the deal. To this day I’m amazed by how few men have figured out this approach.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not confusing provided you have a background in the material. Most people over 30 don’t. Here is a typical passage from the page describing what embedding means.
“Embedding is that act of taking a snippet of code that youTube supplies, and putting that code on your own site or any site that will accept embed codes, which is a lot.”
After about the first fifteen or twenty words in that sentence, you’ve lost track of what the guy is even talking about. I’ve had the misfortune of taking many a college and university course where this kind of gobbledygook was encouraged. The old “zero or any other number” type of writing. Colors that “could” be red or blue. It’s an entire attempt by the fringe faculties to appear more academic than they are.
But the major shortcoming of this book is a doozie. Stop a moment over the prime reason anybody would bother to read a book on youTube marketing. Right—to make money at it. For most people, the easiest way is not to sell on-line, but to monetize their postings. The place you see this most often is those links and popups that appear in front of the video you want to watch, the popups that must be individually closed by hovering your mouse over the invisible X, something of a brain-fart in itself.
While this book does mention monetizing on page 70 only to say it will be “covered later”, the category does not appear in either the table of contents or glossary. Duh. This is the point to conclude Marc Bullard, the author, for whatever else he may have done with his time, is one monumental idiot. Can people like Marc possibly be that stupid?
Last Laugh
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