Friday, December 27, 2002
December 27, 2002
Today was over before I felt like I've started, a sure sign I love what I'm doing. It was database (of course) and I thought "unto the problem". The problem with employees staying active on the payroll after they are terminated. Again it's the data collection that's at fault. The problem here is that a lot of the fees that the company pays is based on how many people they employ. The companies got five different departments tracking the same data in their own formats and for different purposes, such as insurance. The data arrives randomly from up to seven sources.
My system is different because it tracks the movement of employees by cross-referencing a series of tables which makes it absolutely positive that you have the right John Smith, or in this case, the right Carlos Rodriguez. Six of them work for this company and none have middle initials. To the database, being terminated is just another movement.
Thus I was assigned to produce a "Zero Hours Report". If you tried this you'd see why human resources has been waiting two years for specialized software. My database accomplished the task in 8 to 12 hours. Any employee who has zero paid hours in the past week is flagged. Zero hours is only another piece of evidence, you still need to know where everyone is and how they got there.
The missing link was that Human Resources was trying to hit a moving target. My database uses the fact that every employee will have zero hours at every site except the one you supposed to be at. If you think is obvious, try it.
[Author's note: the phrase "unto the problem" comes from Isaac Newton, later in his life I believe. Although I knew nothing of this man until I was in university myself, I had grasped this philosophy by the time I was eight years old. He was explaining to people that it was good enough understand and measure some things without getting into an argument of why they happened. I totally follow that.]
[Author's note 2020: I discovered some time later the Zero Hours Report was adopted nationwide by the parent company.]
Thursday, December 26, 2002
December 26, 2002
Apparently nothing happened today, there's no entry. There's a note here that I will spend my birthday's in America, so in my impeccable timing, I [once] flew to Barbados [in 1983]. At the same time as they invaded Granada. They have a very advanced and impressive customs system. They ask you if you have anything to declare and then divide you into two groups.
I was in the group and said no I had nothing. They point to the door, look straight at you, and say "You through that door now." You go through and find yourself standing at the bus stop. I hope one day the whole world becomes so sophisticated.
I do take back some of what I said concerning the Enigma machine. The article I was reading referred to an earlier commercial model without a pegboard. Years later I grasp that I was reading the description wrong. Even then, I understand how it scrambles. I don't understand how it gets the original message back.
Wednesday, December 25, 2002
December 25, 2002
My tradition is over to Denny's for coffee and writing a letter or two, recapping the year. Main points are I think despite all my oaths to the contrary, I really must consider going back to school. (What good is my 30 years experience of I can't program the computer I use everyday?)
Investment this year was a dud but I can report I still made something in the stretch were others lost fortunes. I attribute this to Muni funds and my habit of investing only in dividend-paying large caps (companies with huge capitalization). I feel if a company can't pay a dividend, it's being run funny.
Over at JP's yesterday, his father recited a quote about, "... all the armies which have ever marched, all the Navy's ever sales, all the kings and emperors together, have not changed the world as much as one man." Remind me to look that up.
[Author's note: don't take this to mean I can't program. I can do Fortran, COBOL, C+, RPG, Assembler, BASIC, and that is I can't even recall. But I got out when object oriented programming arrived. OOPs is a style of programming that allows morons to produce apparent results, the operative word being apparent. What OOPs really did was move the spaghetti off the flowcharts and into the programmer's brain. I heard that C+ is the average mark of the people who use it.
And how was your Christmas Day?]
I see that the description of events on Borocay Island were a popular item. Therefore I'm going to give you an extra long entry today. Have fun.
Late afternoon on the second day, we approach the flat island. The anchorage was a few hundred meters out and a relay of bongo boats commenced. It was about then we heard the ship ahead of us had went down (sunk) and the sharks got all but 20 people. I had noticed several times that there was a school of sharks trailing the steamer all along.
A bongo boat is an outrigger, but in reality the center pontoon is not hollowed out like a canoe. You literally sit on bamboo rods a few inches above the water trying to keep your gear dry. The local trucking is done by Jeepney, a World War II Jeep with the body made out of stainless steel so it can survive the Filipino climate. They mount cargo racks and planks for up to 18 passengers on a vehicle originally designed for a maximum of six.
We drove in land to an old Spanish settlement called Kalibo, and to this day I've met Filipinos who swear no such town exists. But it's there and it turns out Boracay is off the west coast of this island, so Pat and I had to spend the night in Kalibo. I found his rooms with a fan at a 10th the price of the only local hotel. It was Christmas time, so we walked through the market square to that Hotel for some cheer.
This is where I first mentioned an interesting treat. It is thin banana slices deep-fried in what appears to be a mixture of honey and possibly brown sugar over a little charcoal burner. It turns out I was far more willing to try a strange and local food than Pat, who was very susceptible to food quality, particularly fiery hot spices.
On the other hand it takes me forever to get through a marketplace. We got half way across before some local hooker decided I was her property. I couldn't get rid of her, which I dislike because it prevents me from meeting nice girls. I even stopped for a shave, what a treat, and she wouldn't leave. Finally I paid her to leave.
In the hotel bar, there was some hotheaded 24-year-old punk who'd married the local 32-year-old prostitute. Of course all her clientele would still approach her, and the punk was getting more and more jealous. We left around 9 p.m. and heard the next day somebody finally shot him to death.
I was up with the chickens and also you might say with a pig. Pat was the opposite, he sleeps in and could not seem to hit on women except in a bar, both of which I don't do. Wondering how big this city was, I walked past the police station and down a side road. A block later I was facing a rice field. The whole town was really a single ring of buildings facing the market square and behind them were farms.
As I turned around, this pig comes trotting toward me with a broken rope on her neck. I quickly grabbed the rope. The squealing noise opened every shutter in a block and soon dozens of families surrounded me saying, in fairly good English, "This is my pig."
I tore a US dollar in half and told two of the bigger boys they get the other half if they kept the pig until I returned. I trotted into the police station and four pairs of feet got off the desks onto the floor, splattering bullets all over from these curious plastic M-16 clips they use over there. There was a pause while I helped them pick up the bullets.
Nobody spoke English so I made motions and we hoofed it back just as a man in a suit, who turned out to be the Mayor, arrived holding the other end of the broken rope. This was his special Christmas pig he had been raising all year and it escaped from his yard. Now it was time to fill out police reports.
Earlier I'd stopped for coffee down the street, waiting for it to get light. The police station was so clammy I suggested we go for back there, to which they instantly agreed and brought along what I'm sure was a Tagalog typewriter. During this event I learned, in the dialect used only on this island, the name of a female pig is "Ba-BOO-ee”.
[Author's note: I'm informed years later this pronunciation is not accurate, but I leave it untouched as first written.]
After an hour or so of filling out these interminable reports, the police left. As I got up to leave I got stuck with the tab for everybody's coffee and pastry, ha! Hours later, Pat and I got under way and we boarded a larger bus for Boracay. This 50 mile trip was a unique experience. Everybody piles on as best they can. On the roof in burlap sacks was a load of smoked coconuts. Yes, smoked just like salmon. The aroma was so strong, Pat and I eventually crawled out the windows while speeding along and laid down on the sacks with our faces into the wind.
The road was a bulldozed jungle path, with the attendant potholes, ruts and washouts. The jungle was evenly about 15 feet tall and looked manageable. Progress was about 12 mph. There were no towns, but several times we passed walking funeral processions, with a band or drummer, then the pallbearers, then the family group. In the seeming middle of nowhere.
More unusual was every few miles, some fully armed teenage boys would step out of the trees. The Jeepney Bus would stop, nobody said a word, and these soldiers (probably Communist revolutionaries) hopped on the running boards without paying, and rode for a few miles. Another silent signal stopped the truck and they went into the bush again. All of which got Pat's mind overworking.
The sun was already low when we reached a small dock. By pointing and sign language I could just see Boracay on the horizon. At this point, the local "police" called everyone off the Jeepney and begin to go through everybody's luggage. Pat and I became the center of attention, for at that time I had long blonde hair past my shoulders and he looked like he just got out of boot camp. Fortunately I was traveling on a non-American passport.
We got "interviewed" by a top officer with a scared-shitless private sitting right beside us polishing his gun barrel, very slowly. My story is always the same, I'm a piano tuner. They had first planned to only likely question Pat, but he made some kind of joke about "working for the CIA". Whoops, no joke. Then they grilled me for an hour and got nothing.
I kept telling the police officer that I wanted to leave and he kept saying he would "be responsible" for getting me to the island. I finally pushed the gun barrel down, stood up and informed him that I was, one, not relying on him for anything and two, was not going to travel on a bongo boat after dark. He released me and I walked down to the waterfront in a very unpleasant mood. Pat spent the night in jail. And he got chewed out a second time when he got to Boracay the next day, by me. I felt it was necessary to impart a little traveling savvy on the guy.
The last boat was boarding in the ticket booth said “Pasaje 7 peso”. As I stepped up the operator said”Eets Chreesmass, ten peso, you Ba-Boo-ee”. Well I nearly lost it, and I said. “Eets Chreesman, five peso, your mother is Ba-Boo-ee”. He was stunned, stunned like a gorilla, while I plunked the money on the counter and grabbed the ticket out of his hand before he could start breathing again. I’ll wager to this day he still wondering how I knew that word.
It was past dark before we landed because the boat had to sail around to the west side of Boracay to an inlet. I kept seeing sharks.. Boracay is a long narrow island off the northwest coast of the larger island that the town of Kalibo is on. Automobiles are not allowed on this little paradise. Except for small-scale vegetable booths, the island economy is mainly Northern Euro owned.
(The downside was, although there were women on the island, most of them where they are because of outstanding arrest warrants. The Swedish ice cream lady had reputedly murdered her husband. I say reputedly because I've noticed when taxpayers leave certain countries like Canada and Sweden it seems they are often shortly afterward charged with some kind of serious crime. I don't know the correlation, but it happens so frequently that I write it off as government corruption. Always a taxpayer and always after they left and didn't file a tax return that year.)
Pat became a regular patron of the ice cream parlor because of his intolerance for other foods. There were small clubs and cafés. Like Colonia Tovar (in Venezuela) it was thrilling to see so many tall blue-eyed blonde women living in the jungle, in the middle of the tropics. I rented a beach bungalow (grass hut) with an "Asian Standard" (squat) toilet. If you've never used one of these, remember you have to take your trousers completely off before you squat, or you'll be fishing your wallet out of the hole.
Furthermore, Pat never adjusted to the foreign food and had to "blow his guts" up to eight times per day. Or make that night, yelling "Get out! Wake up and get out!" Ah, the adventures of travel.
One day I'll find all my slides. All the pictures you've seen here are photographs. I'm reminded of the local spiders. They are huge and spin equally huge webs. If it finds an open cabana it puts a web over the entire window opening and sits motionless at the center for months on end. The locals leave it there for decoration, it has a brilliant yellow pattern on its abdomen. Or is it a thorax, I can't remember.
Pat and I swam a lot, and collected coral, which is something I would never do today. Then we attended the Christmas pageant. The children could sing in English, but not speak at. We passed New Year's, sharing the cabin in shifts with several island girls. Pat often dated the Swedish lady, so I learned to make myself scarce. Pat was as painfully shy as he was good-looking, and the problem is that the ugliest broad on the island started after him.
(I don't usually write direct discussions of such topics, that's for guys who never get any. That broad latched onto Pat the moment he walked in. She was everything I detested in a woman. Felix was divorced, well over 30, opinionated, stupid, and overweight. There was no way I could pretend to like her around. This cramped my style, because Pat would only explore by tagging along with me, meaning she was always in tow, criticizing me in low whispers and insulting the women I spoke to. Felix was openly hostile toward me dating a different woman every night, although I suspect she was just jealous that they were so much younger than her. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)
One morning Pat and I were snorkeling and we both saw a tiny purple jellyfish, which we had been constantly warned about. I skirted it but Pat swiped at it with his diving knife, not knowing he'd cut off the invisible tentacles. A minute later he was seizing up in some serious pain. I do not know how I got a waterlogged guy twice my weight onto the beach while he was throwing a fit, but I did.
The tentacles had begun to coil around his arms and legs like wet hair producing chains of walnut sized boils. This condition did not transfer to me when I touched them so I dragged him into the shade. Pat kept screaming that he heard the cure was to urinate on the boils, which I rejected because urine contains acid and because he seemed otherwise able to move freely and shout by now. So I said, "I'm sure Felix would be only too glad to oblige."
I turned around to see her standing right there. After that, she avoided me and my scoring average climbed back to normal. A week later Pat and I flew back to Manila, then Tokyo, then Bangkok, where we split. I went on to visit Delhi in India and on my instructions he went to Phuket Island to talk to Tom Moondon, and stay with her till he went home. I felt he got himself into enough for one trip.
Investment this year was a dud but I can report I still made something in the stretch were others lost fortunes. I attribute this to Muni funds and my habit of investing only in dividend-paying large caps (companies with huge capitalization). I feel if a company can't pay a dividend, it's being run funny.
Over at JP's yesterday, his father recited a quote about, "... all the armies which have ever marched, all the Navy's ever sales, all the kings and emperors together, have not changed the world as much as one man." Remind me to look that up.
[Author's note: don't take this to mean I can't program. I can do Fortran, COBOL, C+, RPG, Assembler, BASIC, and that is I can't even recall. But I got out when object oriented programming arrived. OOPs is a style of programming that allows morons to produce apparent results, the operative word being apparent. What OOPs really did was move the spaghetti off the flowcharts and into the programmer's brain. I heard that C+ is the average mark of the people who use it.
And how was your Christmas Day?]
I see that the description of events on Borocay Island were a popular item. Therefore I'm going to give you an extra long entry today. Have fun.
Late afternoon on the second day, we approach the flat island. The anchorage was a few hundred meters out and a relay of bongo boats commenced. It was about then we heard the ship ahead of us had went down (sunk) and the sharks got all but 20 people. I had noticed several times that there was a school of sharks trailing the steamer all along.
A bongo boat is an outrigger, but in reality the center pontoon is not hollowed out like a canoe. You literally sit on bamboo rods a few inches above the water trying to keep your gear dry. The local trucking is done by Jeepney, a World War II Jeep with the body made out of stainless steel so it can survive the Filipino climate. They mount cargo racks and planks for up to 18 passengers on a vehicle originally designed for a maximum of six.
We drove in land to an old Spanish settlement called Kalibo, and to this day I've met Filipinos who swear no such town exists. But it's there and it turns out Boracay is off the west coast of this island, so Pat and I had to spend the night in Kalibo. I found his rooms with a fan at a 10th the price of the only local hotel. It was Christmas time, so we walked through the market square to that Hotel for some cheer.
This is where I first mentioned an interesting treat. It is thin banana slices deep-fried in what appears to be a mixture of honey and possibly brown sugar over a little charcoal burner. It turns out I was far more willing to try a strange and local food than Pat, who was very susceptible to food quality, particularly fiery hot spices.
On the other hand it takes me forever to get through a marketplace. We got half way across before some local hooker decided I was her property. I couldn't get rid of her, which I dislike because it prevents me from meeting nice girls. I even stopped for a shave, what a treat, and she wouldn't leave. Finally I paid her to leave.
In the hotel bar, there was some hotheaded 24-year-old punk who'd married the local 32-year-old prostitute. Of course all her clientele would still approach her, and the punk was getting more and more jealous. We left around 9 p.m. and heard the next day somebody finally shot him to death.
I was up with the chickens and also you might say with a pig. Pat was the opposite, he sleeps in and could not seem to hit on women except in a bar, both of which I don't do. Wondering how big this city was, I walked past the police station and down a side road. A block later I was facing a rice field. The whole town was really a single ring of buildings facing the market square and behind them were farms.
As I turned around, this pig comes trotting toward me with a broken rope on her neck. I quickly grabbed the rope. The squealing noise opened every shutter in a block and soon dozens of families surrounded me saying, in fairly good English, "This is my pig."
I tore a US dollar in half and told two of the bigger boys they get the other half if they kept the pig until I returned. I trotted into the police station and four pairs of feet got off the desks onto the floor, splattering bullets all over from these curious plastic M-16 clips they use over there. There was a pause while I helped them pick up the bullets.
Nobody spoke English so I made motions and we hoofed it back just as a man in a suit, who turned out to be the Mayor, arrived holding the other end of the broken rope. This was his special Christmas pig he had been raising all year and it escaped from his yard. Now it was time to fill out police reports.
Earlier I'd stopped for coffee down the street, waiting for it to get light. The police station was so clammy I suggested we go for back there, to which they instantly agreed and brought along what I'm sure was a Tagalog typewriter. During this event I learned, in the dialect used only on this island, the name of a female pig is "Ba-BOO-ee”.
[Author's note: I'm informed years later this pronunciation is not accurate, but I leave it untouched as first written.]
After an hour or so of filling out these interminable reports, the police left. As I got up to leave I got stuck with the tab for everybody's coffee and pastry, ha! Hours later, Pat and I got under way and we boarded a larger bus for Boracay. This 50 mile trip was a unique experience. Everybody piles on as best they can. On the roof in burlap sacks was a load of smoked coconuts. Yes, smoked just like salmon. The aroma was so strong, Pat and I eventually crawled out the windows while speeding along and laid down on the sacks with our faces into the wind.
The road was a bulldozed jungle path, with the attendant potholes, ruts and washouts. The jungle was evenly about 15 feet tall and looked manageable. Progress was about 12 mph. There were no towns, but several times we passed walking funeral processions, with a band or drummer, then the pallbearers, then the family group. In the seeming middle of nowhere.
More unusual was every few miles, some fully armed teenage boys would step out of the trees. The Jeepney Bus would stop, nobody said a word, and these soldiers (probably Communist revolutionaries) hopped on the running boards without paying, and rode for a few miles. Another silent signal stopped the truck and they went into the bush again. All of which got Pat's mind overworking.
The sun was already low when we reached a small dock. By pointing and sign language I could just see Boracay on the horizon. At this point, the local "police" called everyone off the Jeepney and begin to go through everybody's luggage. Pat and I became the center of attention, for at that time I had long blonde hair past my shoulders and he looked like he just got out of boot camp. Fortunately I was traveling on a non-American passport.
We got "interviewed" by a top officer with a scared-shitless private sitting right beside us polishing his gun barrel, very slowly. My story is always the same, I'm a piano tuner. They had first planned to only likely question Pat, but he made some kind of joke about "working for the CIA". Whoops, no joke. Then they grilled me for an hour and got nothing.
I kept telling the police officer that I wanted to leave and he kept saying he would "be responsible" for getting me to the island. I finally pushed the gun barrel down, stood up and informed him that I was, one, not relying on him for anything and two, was not going to travel on a bongo boat after dark. He released me and I walked down to the waterfront in a very unpleasant mood. Pat spent the night in jail. And he got chewed out a second time when he got to Boracay the next day, by me. I felt it was necessary to impart a little traveling savvy on the guy.
The last boat was boarding in the ticket booth said “Pasaje 7 peso”. As I stepped up the operator said”Eets Chreesmass, ten peso, you Ba-Boo-ee”. Well I nearly lost it, and I said. “Eets Chreesman, five peso, your mother is Ba-Boo-ee”. He was stunned, stunned like a gorilla, while I plunked the money on the counter and grabbed the ticket out of his hand before he could start breathing again. I’ll wager to this day he still wondering how I knew that word.
It was past dark before we landed because the boat had to sail around to the west side of Boracay to an inlet. I kept seeing sharks.. Boracay is a long narrow island off the northwest coast of the larger island that the town of Kalibo is on. Automobiles are not allowed on this little paradise. Except for small-scale vegetable booths, the island economy is mainly Northern Euro owned.
(The downside was, although there were women on the island, most of them where they are because of outstanding arrest warrants. The Swedish ice cream lady had reputedly murdered her husband. I say reputedly because I've noticed when taxpayers leave certain countries like Canada and Sweden it seems they are often shortly afterward charged with some kind of serious crime. I don't know the correlation, but it happens so frequently that I write it off as government corruption. Always a taxpayer and always after they left and didn't file a tax return that year.)
Pat became a regular patron of the ice cream parlor because of his intolerance for other foods. There were small clubs and cafés. Like Colonia Tovar (in Venezuela) it was thrilling to see so many tall blue-eyed blonde women living in the jungle, in the middle of the tropics. I rented a beach bungalow (grass hut) with an "Asian Standard" (squat) toilet. If you've never used one of these, remember you have to take your trousers completely off before you squat, or you'll be fishing your wallet out of the hole.
Furthermore, Pat never adjusted to the foreign food and had to "blow his guts" up to eight times per day. Or make that night, yelling "Get out! Wake up and get out!" Ah, the adventures of travel.
One day I'll find all my slides. All the pictures you've seen here are photographs. I'm reminded of the local spiders. They are huge and spin equally huge webs. If it finds an open cabana it puts a web over the entire window opening and sits motionless at the center for months on end. The locals leave it there for decoration, it has a brilliant yellow pattern on its abdomen. Or is it a thorax, I can't remember.
Pat and I swam a lot, and collected coral, which is something I would never do today. Then we attended the Christmas pageant. The children could sing in English, but not speak at. We passed New Year's, sharing the cabin in shifts with several island girls. Pat often dated the Swedish lady, so I learned to make myself scarce. Pat was as painfully shy as he was good-looking, and the problem is that the ugliest broad on the island started after him.
(I don't usually write direct discussions of such topics, that's for guys who never get any. That broad latched onto Pat the moment he walked in. She was everything I detested in a woman. Felix was divorced, well over 30, opinionated, stupid, and overweight. There was no way I could pretend to like her around. This cramped my style, because Pat would only explore by tagging along with me, meaning she was always in tow, criticizing me in low whispers and insulting the women I spoke to. Felix was openly hostile toward me dating a different woman every night, although I suspect she was just jealous that they were so much younger than her. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)
One morning Pat and I were snorkeling and we both saw a tiny purple jellyfish, which we had been constantly warned about. I skirted it but Pat swiped at it with his diving knife, not knowing he'd cut off the invisible tentacles. A minute later he was seizing up in some serious pain. I do not know how I got a waterlogged guy twice my weight onto the beach while he was throwing a fit, but I did.
The tentacles had begun to coil around his arms and legs like wet hair producing chains of walnut sized boils. This condition did not transfer to me when I touched them so I dragged him into the shade. Pat kept screaming that he heard the cure was to urinate on the boils, which I rejected because urine contains acid and because he seemed otherwise able to move freely and shout by now. So I said, "I'm sure Felix would be only too glad to oblige."
I turned around to see her standing right there. After that, she avoided me and my scoring average climbed back to normal. A week later Pat and I flew back to Manila, then Tokyo, then Bangkok, where we split. I went on to visit Delhi in India and on my instructions he went to Phuket Island to talk to Tom Moondon, and stay with her till he went home. I felt he got himself into enough for one trip.
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
December 24, 2002
7 a.m. Miami. It was a real Christmas Eve. Tom let the crew go early, over his place on Southwest 13th, I followed an hour later. Rice, beans, ribs and I learned a new game called "Pierda". Tom's got three boxes on a crate. The guys roll the dice and highest number can pick box 1, 2 or 3. The catch? One of the boxes has no prize, but rock. You get the rock, you have to pay him one dollar. I got the rock. (Pierda means “stone” in Spanish.)
At 6:30 p.m. I drove down to JZ's dad's place in Coral Gables. There were a lot of new people, for I missed last year. The kids are grown fast but they also sing a lot better. Mary Jo played the piano. Everybody else mingled and talked. I mostly visited with JZ and his sister Alaine. Dinner was great, state Turkey and I barely managed user. One more bite and I warned JZ I'd have to curl up and sleep till noon.
Remember I'm still the newcomer over there, so I can't leap into a lot of conversations. I'm basically an accountant in a roomful of doctors. Well, make that mostly doctors because there was a guy there named Phil George that they kept introducing as reputedly the richest person in Miami as if otherwise they would be leaving out a detail everyone should consider important.
Alain introduced me to her best friend but it only took a moment to realize we had nothing in common except being the only singles present. Later Alaine strongly hinted her friend was looking, but in my opinion what unmarried 50-year-old millionairess isn't looking?
[Author's note: keep reading and you'll find years later Alaine is still introducing me to her rich single friends, but finally learned rich isn't important to me. I want the younger pretty ones and that has not happened, because she'd lecture me if I asked. After a while, JZ and I learned to joke about her matchmaking, because neither of us has every dated any of the gals we've met through Alaine. She means well, but has little perception of what we want. What would I have in common with some rich old lady?]
This led to an interesting episode. As I went to leave I noticed Orion in the Southeast. The constellation is hard to see from most of Miami because of the streetlights. I pointed out the individual stars to JP when Alaine found us and asked, "Where is the best spot in Miami to see the stars?"
Without thinking, I blurted out, "My place." What I meant was the best place was with somebody who knew the stars. But for a moment she was like a young girl again. She said something to the effect that that was such a sweet thing to say. I must be more careful, really.
[Author's note: the referral to a real Christmas Eve means my 14 years at the phone company, were I normally work 10 days back to back on Christmas evenings. I was young, I needed the money, and I was the only single guy on crew.
The kids mentioned
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Monday, December 23, 2002
December 23, 2002
5:33 a.m. Miami. For lack of anything else around, I reread "Seizing the Enigma" I know it's after the fact, but I can't figure out why it was so difficult to crack the code that was basically arithmetic in the pre-computer days. Even B-Dneist was free rollers and a pegboard. I'm no cipher genius but I just instinctively feel that no matter how complicated you make such a mechanical system sooner or later you're going to stumble across a letter frequency.
True I don't know how people thought in 1940, but I know they had a thousand brains working on it. They had the electromechanical models called "bombes" and working captured sets of the Enigma.
I was studying the techniques used to crack the code because I always put extra effort into keeping my own databases very simple. Anybody can design a complicated database, it takes talent to streamline it. Not just intelligence, but talent. There is often a complex into relation between sets not obvious to everyone. Some manuals refer to it as meta-information, the subtle joins between what appears as an enjoyable data tables.
I've been tempted to go back to school to learn Visual Basic, the highly bastardized form of BASIC from the 1970s. I could probably do the coding right now if I could spend an hour or two with somebody who would show me how to connect the code to the screen objects. I can't find any clear manuals that spell this out that is it is a point all the manuals I've read tend to avoid. They'll tell you the code, they'll describe the object, but won't show you simple examples of how to make it work.
This is a point I know I've repeatedly made over the years. The textbooks about object oriented programming never give simple start to finish examples of practical coding. They only talk about it. Today I was trying to program a screen button to alphabetize a list. I got the code, I got the button, I got the list.
It's frustrating. I can produce a 30 or 40 layer deep report without a second thought but can't find the instructions to automate it. That's what I was working on today. A report that pinpoints companywide breaks and lapses in the flow of information. Actually, I've always know which sites were guilty, but one still needs understandable evidence. For no matter how many people I explain that the data only finds fact and not fault, I'm reminded of how Tom put it, "Yes, but it's their fault facts are wrong." Ha!
True I don't know how people thought in 1940, but I know they had a thousand brains working on it. They had the electromechanical models called "bombes" and working captured sets of the Enigma.
I was studying the techniques used to crack the code because I always put extra effort into keeping my own databases very simple. Anybody can design a complicated database, it takes talent to streamline it. Not just intelligence, but talent. There is often a complex into relation between sets not obvious to everyone. Some manuals refer to it as meta-information, the subtle joins between what appears as an enjoyable data tables.
I've been tempted to go back to school to learn Visual Basic, the highly bastardized form of BASIC from the 1970s. I could probably do the coding right now if I could spend an hour or two with somebody who would show me how to connect the code to the screen objects. I can't find any clear manuals that spell this out that is it is a point all the manuals I've read tend to avoid. They'll tell you the code, they'll describe the object, but won't show you simple examples of how to make it work.
This is a point I know I've repeatedly made over the years. The textbooks about object oriented programming never give simple start to finish examples of practical coding. They only talk about it. Today I was trying to program a screen button to alphabetize a list. I got the code, I got the button, I got the list.
It's frustrating. I can produce a 30 or 40 layer deep report without a second thought but can't find the instructions to automate it. That's what I was working on today. A report that pinpoints companywide breaks and lapses in the flow of information. Actually, I've always know which sites were guilty, but one still needs understandable evidence. For no matter how many people I explain that the data only finds fact and not fault, I'm reminded of how Tom put it, "Yes, but it's their fault facts are wrong." Ha!
Sunday, December 22, 2002
December 22, 2002
9:30 a.m. Miami, Florida. Jamie did the shopping and made our pre-Christmas feast. Frank didn't take me so he missed out. Ham with cloves and pineapple, mashed with gravy, green beans and fresh biscuits. I fell asleep till six that night.
Gave me the window to call back west, there are three hours behind us. I talk to Wallace for close to an hour. He's feeling the pinch of living on a fixed income. Lois has the name of his daughter who couldn't give me directions to her own house. I personally think Wallace should be making preparations to move here. Lois said she knew somebody at the INS. Yes, but does she know how to get to his office?
[Author's note: Wallace is a retired drywall contractor who were to get shoved around by the tax department when he was younger. He invented a product called V-bex, a new type of drywall bead, but has had repeated problems with the patent. You know, patent papers are very irregular with all kinds of blanks were there shouldn't be. Wallace says he's going to see a politician about it soon.
It turns out Lois knows no such person, or if she does she has no influence with him. There's a note here I also had a problem with my passport. Although all parts of the application were complete and valid, my identity was not in question, all the proper support documents were given and everything that was required was submitted, the passport agent was a raving maniac. He demanded to know, among other things, my blood type, work history, high school marks, driving abstract, and whether or not I had any Boy Scout proficiency badges and if so which ones.]
Gave me the window to call back west, there are three hours behind us. I talk to Wallace for close to an hour. He's feeling the pinch of living on a fixed income. Lois has the name of his daughter who couldn't give me directions to her own house. I personally think Wallace should be making preparations to move here. Lois said she knew somebody at the INS. Yes, but does she know how to get to his office?
[Author's note: Wallace is a retired drywall contractor who were to get shoved around by the tax department when he was younger. He invented a product called V-bex, a new type of drywall bead, but has had repeated problems with the patent. You know, patent papers are very irregular with all kinds of blanks were there shouldn't be. Wallace says he's going to see a politician about it soon.
It turns out Lois knows no such person, or if she does she has no influence with him. There's a note here I also had a problem with my passport. Although all parts of the application were complete and valid, my identity was not in question, all the proper support documents were given and everything that was required was submitted, the passport agent was a raving maniac. He demanded to know, among other things, my blood type, work history, high school marks, driving abstract, and whether or not I had any Boy Scout proficiency badges and if so which ones.]
Saturday, December 21, 2002
December 21, 2002
9:30 a.m. Miami. This relates to yesterday's final paragraph. The company gave each employee a $25 gift certificate on the 13th. Except Roch, who didn't get his. I called twice and was told it will be with his check on the 20th. Sure enough, it wasn't. Julie called and more sure enough, there aren't any certificates left. So I liberated the company and will, drove out there this morning and gave him mine. (He's got a wife and kids and like what do I need with a grocery certificate.)
I've also paid to have a "criminal record search" done on myself to move into the Riviera. I am most curious to see the results. My contention is that no two legal systems are enough alike to really share accurate information and that any country's jurisdiction should end at its border. I was arrested in Mexico once and was wondering what ever happened to that information. It turns out nothing ever happened.
You see, I have very strong opinions about what constitutes "additional punishment". The American Constitution specifically forbids ongoing and never-ending punishment. Off, you might say isn't someone serving a life sentence precisely in that situation? No that person definitely knows that there will be an end even if the date is not certain. If they want a certain date, that's called execution. All crimes except a life sentence must by law tell the convicted party the exact date and time at which their punishment will stop.
What brought this up is that a friend of mine, Lonnie, had applied for a business license to start her own word processing business. The city of Miami refused to issue her business number due to a felony conviction back in 1967. They felt no need to inform her that if she merely wrote her Social Security number in the blank they would be forced to process the application.
This is precisely the type of situation that the Constitution forbids. The system had their chance to punish her once, and for all, and finally, back in 1967. The system has no right to continue to punish her over and over again for the rest of her life, because she did not receive a life sentence. That may be hard for some people to follow what the law is supposed to be merciful and fair. Refusing to give somebody a business license 35 years later hardly qualifies as either.
Here's a story. In mid-1999 I was working at a furniture factory. The first day I came on shift they handed me a card and said swipe in. I did, and the card reader said "out". I informed the office, who said they would fix it. For the next two months (while I was looking for work in my field) this card work exactly backward. Apparently they had given me the card of somebody who quit and who left without swiping out.
Now the computerized timeclock was fixed so you couldn't swipe the same card twice within an hour. Since I live 30 miles away I wasn't not going to hang around. Therefore I was being paid for the time I wasn't there, that is $700 a week take-home. Each week, I showed them my check, and each week they said they would take care of it. But they never did up till the time I finally quit and left town, considerably richer than when I arrived.
[Author's note: Roch was pronounced “roach” and his middle name was Booz, pronounced “booze”. He probably had a lot of fun with that. The Riviera was a one-bedroom penthouse at 600 NE 25th St in Miami, Florida. I decided against it because they wanted a perpetual lease, which amounted to having to give two years notice if I decided to move. Lonnie was a waitress at the "Kings Table" on North Miami and 54th Ave W. Yes I know it's a black club. I met Colin Powell there once.
Ah, I hear some people asking what was I arrested for in Mexico? A group of us got arrested at the same time. A bunch of my Navy friends and I went carousing in Tijuana when I was 27. The saloon was closing down, so Tony Monster (his real name) called another place who said they were open till four in the morning. So 20 of us piled into three taxis and rode over there.
We arrived at midnight and after the first couple rounds the bar owner decided he wasn't making enough money and said he was closing. Tony disagreed, calling him a liar, and we spent the night in the waiting room of the Tijuana jail because all the cells were full. In the morning we were told to pay a $15 fine each and go back to San Diego.
The catch was, we all had to plead guilty together, including myself who had done nothing wrong. The policeman put the $300 in his shirt pocket. We found out much later that Disturbing the Peace was a felony in Mexico at that time, because somebody noted that the crime we had been charged with was mis-translated as “Inciting a Riot”. None of us spoke Spanish back then.]
I've also paid to have a "criminal record search" done on myself to move into the Riviera. I am most curious to see the results. My contention is that no two legal systems are enough alike to really share accurate information and that any country's jurisdiction should end at its border. I was arrested in Mexico once and was wondering what ever happened to that information. It turns out nothing ever happened.
You see, I have very strong opinions about what constitutes "additional punishment". The American Constitution specifically forbids ongoing and never-ending punishment. Off, you might say isn't someone serving a life sentence precisely in that situation? No that person definitely knows that there will be an end even if the date is not certain. If they want a certain date, that's called execution. All crimes except a life sentence must by law tell the convicted party the exact date and time at which their punishment will stop.
What brought this up is that a friend of mine, Lonnie, had applied for a business license to start her own word processing business. The city of Miami refused to issue her business number due to a felony conviction back in 1967. They felt no need to inform her that if she merely wrote her Social Security number in the blank they would be forced to process the application.
This is precisely the type of situation that the Constitution forbids. The system had their chance to punish her once, and for all, and finally, back in 1967. The system has no right to continue to punish her over and over again for the rest of her life, because she did not receive a life sentence. That may be hard for some people to follow what the law is supposed to be merciful and fair. Refusing to give somebody a business license 35 years later hardly qualifies as either.
Here's a story. In mid-1999 I was working at a furniture factory. The first day I came on shift they handed me a card and said swipe in. I did, and the card reader said "out". I informed the office, who said they would fix it. For the next two months (while I was looking for work in my field) this card work exactly backward. Apparently they had given me the card of somebody who quit and who left without swiping out.
Now the computerized timeclock was fixed so you couldn't swipe the same card twice within an hour. Since I live 30 miles away I wasn't not going to hang around. Therefore I was being paid for the time I wasn't there, that is $700 a week take-home. Each week, I showed them my check, and each week they said they would take care of it. But they never did up till the time I finally quit and left town, considerably richer than when I arrived.
[Author's note: Roch was pronounced “roach” and his middle name was Booz, pronounced “booze”. He probably had a lot of fun with that. The Riviera was a one-bedroom penthouse at 600 NE 25th St in Miami, Florida. I decided against it because they wanted a perpetual lease, which amounted to having to give two years notice if I decided to move. Lonnie was a waitress at the "Kings Table" on North Miami and 54th Ave W. Yes I know it's a black club. I met Colin Powell there once.
Ah, I hear some people asking what was I arrested for in Mexico? A group of us got arrested at the same time. A bunch of my Navy friends and I went carousing in Tijuana when I was 27. The saloon was closing down, so Tony Monster (his real name) called another place who said they were open till four in the morning. So 20 of us piled into three taxis and rode over there.
We arrived at midnight and after the first couple rounds the bar owner decided he wasn't making enough money and said he was closing. Tony disagreed, calling him a liar, and we spent the night in the waiting room of the Tijuana jail because all the cells were full. In the morning we were told to pay a $15 fine each and go back to San Diego.
The catch was, we all had to plead guilty together, including myself who had done nothing wrong. The policeman put the $300 in his shirt pocket. We found out much later that Disturbing the Peace was a felony in Mexico at that time, because somebody noted that the crime we had been charged with was mis-translated as “Inciting a Riot”. None of us spoke Spanish back then.]
Friday, December 20, 2002
December 20, 2002
5:30 a.m., Miami. Again today, I was reading and researching database, so you can skip this page if you hate computers. Mind you, there is always a twist if you pay attention, always something to learn. This picture of Paris Hilton added in 2016, by which time she was another rich nobody.
Here's the problem: each department is keeping its own records and not necessarily communicating changes. Plus where those departments are using a computer many records have only one date, allow deletions, and have no audit trail. This is an ill thought-out list of employee categories similar to a university student list. That is, a person coming on their first day and someone just finishing a Ph.D. are both called “students”. Our records have "employees". These type of lists don't allow for different levels of involvement.
Each department can enter an employee record without checking to see if that employee is active and where she or he is supposed to be. My favorite is people who pull a paper out of the cabinet, white out to make a change, then stuff the paper back thinking, "There, I've done my job." Of course, such a system is far too cumbersome to track the little things that help keep the company human.
[Author's note: for those who've never studied database, my descriptions of certain problems can be an eye opener to those who wrongly blame computers for errors. For example were as I define changes as any activity which causes any part of a file to be different most people in conclude I mean additions, deletions and alterations. But in fact, I mean even saving a file in a different format or location is a change that should be recorded.
Example: I mentioned above the error of a record having only one date. This seems to be an error that 100% of people make before they study database. I won't tell you the solution, but every record needs at least two dates. Otherwise, somebody can enter a change today that alters a record made six months ago, rendering all subsequent records and decisions based on that original now null and void.
In the end my database was never adopted. The reason for it was that unless I was around there was nobody to keep it current. There is also a factor that I suspect certain parties like the old system where it was too difficult to keep track of corruption. Like who got twice as many of the free football tickets as anyone else last month, or which employee got 12 company T-shirts from six different sites.]
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Thursday, December 19, 2002
December 19, 2002
I am reading “The Aftermath in Asia”. Of all the European involvements in Southeast Asia, I still rate the Dutch actions of Indonesia as the least justifiable and most wrong, below even Ho Chi Minh's recruitment methods. This book contains the earliest known reference to “mopping up” I can find.
I bumped into Sarge, whose real name is Sergio. He's from Trinidad, and East Indian makes excellent bucks as a diesel mechanic. He was surprised they didn't know the local bus system. I explained that I've lived longer in Caracas, Venezuela and I've lived in Miami, Florida. I was surprised that some use only so long didn't know about that.
It reminded me of something not recorded elsewhere. When I first moved to Miami, I drove up to Fort Lauderdale to get Wallace. I got off the wrong exit in my car conked out just before dark. The next day at work I mentioned it, and the office staff couldn't believe that I flagged a car full of Mexicans, who helped to push it to a safe place, then wouldn't hear me staying in a motel. Oscar Rodriguez, a tomato farm tractor driver, hooking up with his coach overnight in the trailer court, gave me breakfast and will be back out to my car in the morning. To this day Charlie still doesn't believe that I “took such a chance”.
[Author's note: “The Aftermath in Asia” is part of a series am reading concerning the history of the mid-20th century, thus it's mainly about World War II, also known as The Great Patriotic War depending on whether you are east or west of Berlin.
Ho Chi Minh's recruitment methods basically amounted to, “You join us, or we shoot you now.” Hence, the Viet Minh were rarely short of recruits.
I had been driving up to visit Wallace in northwest Fort Lauderdale based on the now famous directions that his daughter had given me on the phone. Apparently this woman is in some kind of occupation where she makes decisions that materially affect other people's lives, but she was functionally incapable of giving accurate directions to her own house. The streets and avenues in South Florida have random names.
That means unless somebody can give you the exit number, you have to drive in the right lane and slow down to read each sign, because the lack of order means you can't be sure whether or not you've already passed your off-ramp. Driving slowly at night in the right lane is not the best idea in this town, but she seemed unaware that.
All the daughter could say was, “Turn on Atlantic and go right.” Today we know there are seven different roads named Atlantic and the directions she gave me would've placed me 135 blocks off the East Coast of Pompano Beach.
For the heck of it when I finally got there, after putting a new battery in the Cadillac, I took out a road atlas. With everyone watching except her, I ran my finger along the route she was describing. She confirmed the directions she gave me but upon seeing my finger was pointing to 400 feet of salt water, she kind of shrugged her shoulders like, “Boy, are you stupid; can't even follow directions.”
Now it suddenly makes sense why before we had 911 it was not unknown for kids to die because the parents gave this type of directions to the ambulance.]
I bumped into Sarge, whose real name is Sergio. He's from Trinidad, and East Indian makes excellent bucks as a diesel mechanic. He was surprised they didn't know the local bus system. I explained that I've lived longer in Caracas, Venezuela and I've lived in Miami, Florida. I was surprised that some use only so long didn't know about that.
It reminded me of something not recorded elsewhere. When I first moved to Miami, I drove up to Fort Lauderdale to get Wallace. I got off the wrong exit in my car conked out just before dark. The next day at work I mentioned it, and the office staff couldn't believe that I flagged a car full of Mexicans, who helped to push it to a safe place, then wouldn't hear me staying in a motel. Oscar Rodriguez, a tomato farm tractor driver, hooking up with his coach overnight in the trailer court, gave me breakfast and will be back out to my car in the morning. To this day Charlie still doesn't believe that I “took such a chance”.
[Author's note: “The Aftermath in Asia” is part of a series am reading concerning the history of the mid-20th century, thus it's mainly about World War II, also known as The Great Patriotic War depending on whether you are east or west of Berlin.
Ho Chi Minh's recruitment methods basically amounted to, “You join us, or we shoot you now.” Hence, the Viet Minh were rarely short of recruits.
I had been driving up to visit Wallace in northwest Fort Lauderdale based on the now famous directions that his daughter had given me on the phone. Apparently this woman is in some kind of occupation where she makes decisions that materially affect other people's lives, but she was functionally incapable of giving accurate directions to her own house. The streets and avenues in South Florida have random names.
That means unless somebody can give you the exit number, you have to drive in the right lane and slow down to read each sign, because the lack of order means you can't be sure whether or not you've already passed your off-ramp. Driving slowly at night in the right lane is not the best idea in this town, but she seemed unaware that.
All the daughter could say was, “Turn on Atlantic and go right.” Today we know there are seven different roads named Atlantic and the directions she gave me would've placed me 135 blocks off the East Coast of Pompano Beach.
For the heck of it when I finally got there, after putting a new battery in the Cadillac, I took out a road atlas. With everyone watching except her, I ran my finger along the route she was describing. She confirmed the directions she gave me but upon seeing my finger was pointing to 400 feet of salt water, she kind of shrugged her shoulders like, “Boy, are you stupid; can't even follow directions.”
Now it suddenly makes sense why before we had 911 it was not unknown for kids to die because the parents gave this type of directions to the ambulance.]
Wednesday, December 18, 2002
December 18, 2002
Miami 5:33 a.m., a nothing day, so what was I thinking about? Let's see. A trip down memory lane. Borocay Island. It was at Christmas time in the mid-19 80s. I was crashing at a hostel in Manila, eating a lot of ice cream. There was a shop selling English magazines just off the totally polluted Manila Bay. I found a Time magazine and this 6 foot 2 American (Pat) sees this and pulls up a chair, just glad to talk English again.
[Author's note: this American had not traveled much, and was staying in a relatively expensive hotel. I showed him how to book a room in what they call a pension for about one quarter the price. Still, Manila is a filthy little city full of hookers and drunken sailors. I basically led him to around to see what there was to do and kind of took pity because this really wasn't turning out to be any kind of a holiday for him. He'd been sold some kind of package back in the states.]
It is impossible to get anything done at Christmas time in a Catholic country, but I suggested we go down to the waterfront and see what's available. A Chinese agent in a tin booth said if we wanted to live in the ships hold, we could go to Borocay. So we paid him $42 each and got on this horrible steamer, registered for 300 with 400 people aboard. Right down in the hatches to the steerage down and down into the ship. We had no idea where Borocay was, but this was beginning of one of my greatest adventures.
As soon as we cleared the dock, the locals pushed all the bedsprings to the wall and started a dice game. We couldn't breathe, but we got a meal of fish and rice on a tin tray. I chose the tail; Pat took the head and ate the eyes first. Eating was done in relays, as soon as the tray was finished, it got rinsed off and passed back to the lineup. 20 trays for 200 people. We couldn't handle the heat and went up to the deck with the chickens. We bribed some men to trade places and slept on their deck cots.
The boat was so overloaded it sat tilted in the water with the “tung-tung-tung” of the motor felt in every piece of steel. We passed the rusted out wreck of Corregidor and kept sailing south. Soon we began stopping on little islands, mountains in the ocean really, with stilt docks and the whole local population turned out. We quickly discovered a naughty trick. Throw a coin overboard, and the kids would dive at in after it, coming up with their cheeks stuffed like squirrels, but full of American quarters.
Well, a little further away were the men in suits and ties. Silver dollars are more popular in the Philippines than in America. Toss one nearby these men, and watch them make a quick decision. Sure enough, into the drink suit and tie and all before it sank out of sight. Great sport!
[Author's note: Pat Pendergrast from Colorado, I think. Anyway, his idea of fun was to pack 100 pounds of gear up in the mountains and live off the land. He, maybe justifiably, considered me to be a very seasoned traveler. We spent Christmas on Borocay, one of the few places left in Paradise that wasn't full of crazy Australians. Pat took up with a 40-year-old Swedish murderess who owned the place’s only ice cream parlor. There was no electricity or cars allowed on the island.
The entire story of this episode would be a book in itself. I ate bananas deep-fried in brown sugar, captured a runaway pig that belong to the mayor, we were interrogated as CIA spies, we climbed on the roof of a stainless steel bus because we were choking on fumes of smoked coconut and took pictures of 8 inch long spiders used as wall decorations. I pulled Pat out of the ocean when he was stung by a box jellyfish. (No, not an Irakundji.)]
[Author's note: this American had not traveled much, and was staying in a relatively expensive hotel. I showed him how to book a room in what they call a pension for about one quarter the price. Still, Manila is a filthy little city full of hookers and drunken sailors. I basically led him to around to see what there was to do and kind of took pity because this really wasn't turning out to be any kind of a holiday for him. He'd been sold some kind of package back in the states.]
It is impossible to get anything done at Christmas time in a Catholic country, but I suggested we go down to the waterfront and see what's available. A Chinese agent in a tin booth said if we wanted to live in the ships hold, we could go to Borocay. So we paid him $42 each and got on this horrible steamer, registered for 300 with 400 people aboard. Right down in the hatches to the steerage down and down into the ship. We had no idea where Borocay was, but this was beginning of one of my greatest adventures.
As soon as we cleared the dock, the locals pushed all the bedsprings to the wall and started a dice game. We couldn't breathe, but we got a meal of fish and rice on a tin tray. I chose the tail; Pat took the head and ate the eyes first. Eating was done in relays, as soon as the tray was finished, it got rinsed off and passed back to the lineup. 20 trays for 200 people. We couldn't handle the heat and went up to the deck with the chickens. We bribed some men to trade places and slept on their deck cots.
The boat was so overloaded it sat tilted in the water with the “tung-tung-tung” of the motor felt in every piece of steel. We passed the rusted out wreck of Corregidor and kept sailing south. Soon we began stopping on little islands, mountains in the ocean really, with stilt docks and the whole local population turned out. We quickly discovered a naughty trick. Throw a coin overboard, and the kids would dive at in after it, coming up with their cheeks stuffed like squirrels, but full of American quarters.
Well, a little further away were the men in suits and ties. Silver dollars are more popular in the Philippines than in America. Toss one nearby these men, and watch them make a quick decision. Sure enough, into the drink suit and tie and all before it sank out of sight. Great sport!
[Author's note: Pat Pendergrast from Colorado, I think. Anyway, his idea of fun was to pack 100 pounds of gear up in the mountains and live off the land. He, maybe justifiably, considered me to be a very seasoned traveler. We spent Christmas on Borocay, one of the few places left in Paradise that wasn't full of crazy Australians. Pat took up with a 40-year-old Swedish murderess who owned the place’s only ice cream parlor. There was no electricity or cars allowed on the island.
The entire story of this episode would be a book in itself. I ate bananas deep-fried in brown sugar, captured a runaway pig that belong to the mayor, we were interrogated as CIA spies, we climbed on the roof of a stainless steel bus because we were choking on fumes of smoked coconut and took pictures of 8 inch long spiders used as wall decorations. I pulled Pat out of the ocean when he was stung by a box jellyfish. (No, not an Irakundji.)]
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
December 17, 2002
[Author's note 2015-12-17: Read between the lines on this older post. The picture is from the local newspaper following a July storm. The spray paint is to identify the claim to the adjuster. When I say I'll furnish a place for $200, this belies the fact that I know the managers at the thrift stores and can get first pick of the nicest furniture that arrives. I should have said I can luxuriously furnish a place for that money.]
The spin-offs of such a huge place (it's big enough for three people) is it solves my storage problem, leaves plenty of room for an office, and I miss having overnight company. Comparable units on the water go for $900 to $1100 per month. I said, the water, not the beach. It is on a sea wall. Now I wish I had my piano. The rest I can furnish for $200 from the Sally Ann. It's also walking distance from where I like to hang out.
[Author's note: in the end I didn't take it, because it was too close to the price I would pay if I decided to buy. Tough luck, for in the end I didn't buy either. However, this makes an interesting comparison to the efficiencies I’ve looked at. They were tiny cramped and usually had street parking.
This is a penthouse unit, facing north, away from the heat and sun. I hesitated to fill out the application, but compromised by giving only info readily available elsewhere. I'm uncomfortable telling anyone where my bank account is or even whether I have a bank account. I just don't think it's anyone's business, and certainly not the business of any landlord.]
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Monday, December 16, 2002
December 16, 2002
[Author's note 2015-12-16: this is a photo to give this page some color. It is the 2002 Miami University Glee Club. We had a glee club back in Texas. It was all women. Seriously, glee club are traditionally men. Below, you can see the same club in 1907. Since I could not sing in 2002, nor was I in university, I never had the option to join the groups. Groups that are probably about as ethnically diversified as most people would like, you might note.]
Oh, that quilt overdid it--made me late for work. I awoke about 4 a.m., it was cold. So I made the brilliant decision to pull the quilt over my head, like I used to above the Arctic Circle. I zoomed into the deep asleep, and right through the alarm. It was the light that will be up at 8:30. Made it to work by 9:30. (Sorry, that stilted style is another sentence fragment from Dragon Naturally Speaking.)
No reading today. Just more database. There are still a few people who don't follow what this database does. It tracks events. They tried to compare it to the other systems which take a snapshot. Mine is different, it will tell you where things are if you supply the info, and also where they are supposed to be, when, and who said so. It's a superior system in many ways, if you don't compare apples and oranges.
[Author's note: the house I live in has no heating system, only air conditioning. The cold is different here from Seattle is because it is not always extremely humid like here. I know all I need to know about the different types of cold. I was once above the Arctic Circle but that's another story.]
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Sunday, December 15, 2002
December 15, 2002
[Author's note 2015-12-15: Some of these entries have hilarious mistakes. So you don't think I used to be a unlearned buffoon, I point out that this was the era when I tried using early versions of Dragon Naturally Speaking. The results were anything but natural.]
9:30 a.m.
Of the 276 tickets purchased on the lottery pool, the total winnings were $10, five dollars at [site] 687 and five dollars at headquarters.
The new router performs as predicted, we are indeed 99% finished Project 21. The procedure of finishing work has to be repeated next weekend. But then that is it for the construction phase. Moving it becomes the next challenge. (That last 1% never happened, it turned out the whole operation hinged on that factor, which, unbeknownst to me until too late, the responsible parties left until last.)
It's the Christmas chill set in, down to the 40s these nights. I still have my quilt, the only reminder that I once lived where it was cold enough to need one.
[Author's note: “Lonely Vigil, Coastwatchers of the Solomons”, Walter Lord, Viking Press, New York, 1977.]
ADDENDUM
The comment about Asian cruelty is not an idle statement. If there are countless examples to the contrary, I have yet to discover where these are recorded. When facing an armed opponent the kill ratio seems to be about 7:1 against Asians. This would not be sustainable to a creed or culture that had a proper respect for human life. Read “The Rape of Nanking”. I suspect this ratio represents the true count of the communist dead at Dien Bien Phu, if the truth were known.
Today's Denny’s was at 36th North and Biscayne Blvd., an old stomping ground for me. Slowest service of any Denny’s in the world. Seriously, I have seen people wait over an hour to get an order to go.
There is another comment about Frank having a dumb day. To me, it plainly goes without saying that when I say, “Stand it upright”, that means perpendicular to the center of the Earth. It does not mean asking, “Do you mean upright this way or upright that way?” while the 150 pound case is resting on my little finger. Later, I stand corrected because I just learned that to many Miami people, “Stand it upright” can mean at least two things, one of which is apparently to stop what you are doing and stand still with a goofy look on your face.
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Saturday, December 14, 2002
December 14, 2002
Mostly logistics today, like laundry. It took all day to catch up, but I didn't finish reading “The Great Train Robbery”. It's fascinating in the descriptions of attitudes at the time, which still persist. Examples: that poverty exists because of immoral behavior, and that criminals are a social class.
The author writes that historically only about 5% of crimes are reported and of those only about 15 to 20% are ever solved. In other passages he elaborates on the situation to the present, but here he totally fails to draw the connection: don't report anything to the police unless you yourself are 100% clean and know that for 100% certain. The authorities, of course, have nobody to thank but themselves for this caution, and the author may have done some good by pointing this out.
I'm also plodding through “To the White Sea”, but how that book ever got into print mystifies me. Typical passage, “I should've looked right, but what good would that do, so I would have looked left, but that wasn't any good either”. It's about to become the third book I've never finished.
[Author's note: “The Great Train Robbery” by Michael Crichton concerns the original back in 1855 and not the Bigg’s affair of the 1960s. He's up to his usual deep research, but this book is even better as it is nonfiction. The author has to stick to a known plot and can't inject Hollywood roles with an eye to movie rights, although the lady “Miriam's” part could be expanded should the box office so demand. The book is published by Dell, New York, New York, 1975.
The other two books which I started and not finished are Hemingway's “The Sun Also Rises” and L. M. Alcott’s “Little Women”. Don't underestimate my determination here because I've actually made it through Dean Koontz and Daniel Steele. But I could not finish those two books. Then again, if somebody like Michael Jackson can have a hit song, then somebody like Hemingway can write a bestseller.]
The author writes that historically only about 5% of crimes are reported and of those only about 15 to 20% are ever solved. In other passages he elaborates on the situation to the present, but here he totally fails to draw the connection: don't report anything to the police unless you yourself are 100% clean and know that for 100% certain. The authorities, of course, have nobody to thank but themselves for this caution, and the author may have done some good by pointing this out.
I'm also plodding through “To the White Sea”, but how that book ever got into print mystifies me. Typical passage, “I should've looked right, but what good would that do, so I would have looked left, but that wasn't any good either”. It's about to become the third book I've never finished.
[Author's note: “The Great Train Robbery” by Michael Crichton concerns the original back in 1855 and not the Bigg’s affair of the 1960s. He's up to his usual deep research, but this book is even better as it is nonfiction. The author has to stick to a known plot and can't inject Hollywood roles with an eye to movie rights, although the lady “Miriam's” part could be expanded should the box office so demand. The book is published by Dell, New York, New York, 1975.
The other two books which I started and not finished are Hemingway's “The Sun Also Rises” and L. M. Alcott’s “Little Women”. Don't underestimate my determination here because I've actually made it through Dean Koontz and Daniel Steele. But I could not finish those two books. Then again, if somebody like Michael Jackson can have a hit song, then somebody like Hemingway can write a bestseller.]
Friday, December 13, 2002
December 13, 2002
5:33 a.m. Miami. I'm turning in early. The nights are cold, which causes me to curl up under a quilt. A lot of you don't know it can get that cold in Miami. I dislike cold, but a cold head under warm cover makes me dream much more frequently and vividly, so I don't mind once in a while
I'm going to talk about database again; they are the main event today. My struggle has always been to keep the workings as simple as possible, and up-play that it is the connections between the tables that makes for progress, not the tables themselves. If this was obvious, I wouldn't repeat it. This has caused, slowly, more and more converts. I like it when things take shape.
That shape is a guide, a path through the lack of intradepartmental communication. This company is no different, nobody planned for communication to be lost, it happened from the demands of service. We have a new IT manager, who I hope is on top of the technology.
I am reading a new book, which supplied the phrase I'm looking for: “I passed the native test, my medicine works and it doesn't hurt”. The coordination of the four easy tables has today made new converts. One supervisor couldn't remember if a transfer happened on the 16th or the 23rd. Easy, the 16th because the employee got a safety violation at the new site on the 17th.
[Author's note: I only write in today's style when I'm really pressed for time. I often can and do dream so realistically that at times I can exercise my will in the course of dream events. The commonest theme is that I can fly or leap great distances. I can command this in dreams where large crowds are needlessly blocking my progress toward a goal, or when an individual tries to impede me. I just know somebody is in a find all this so meaningful. To me they are just dreams.
The new IT manager named Hector turned out to be an old coot, who knew very little about computers except how to read other people's e-mail. He seemed okay at first, but that is the phony face he must've put on to get past Human Resources. He took an immediate dislike to me when he saw he couldn't fool me into thinking he knew anything about computers. I picked up on this instantly and actually said to him that it was none of my business. I took an immediate dislike to him a week later when I caught him going through my garbage can.
The book I'm reading is called “Lonely Vigil”.]
I'm going to talk about database again; they are the main event today. My struggle has always been to keep the workings as simple as possible, and up-play that it is the connections between the tables that makes for progress, not the tables themselves. If this was obvious, I wouldn't repeat it. This has caused, slowly, more and more converts. I like it when things take shape.
That shape is a guide, a path through the lack of intradepartmental communication. This company is no different, nobody planned for communication to be lost, it happened from the demands of service. We have a new IT manager, who I hope is on top of the technology.
I am reading a new book, which supplied the phrase I'm looking for: “I passed the native test, my medicine works and it doesn't hurt”. The coordination of the four easy tables has today made new converts. One supervisor couldn't remember if a transfer happened on the 16th or the 23rd. Easy, the 16th because the employee got a safety violation at the new site on the 17th.
[Author's note: I only write in today's style when I'm really pressed for time. I often can and do dream so realistically that at times I can exercise my will in the course of dream events. The commonest theme is that I can fly or leap great distances. I can command this in dreams where large crowds are needlessly blocking my progress toward a goal, or when an individual tries to impede me. I just know somebody is in a find all this so meaningful. To me they are just dreams.
The new IT manager named Hector turned out to be an old coot, who knew very little about computers except how to read other people's e-mail. He seemed okay at first, but that is the phony face he must've put on to get past Human Resources. He took an immediate dislike to me when he saw he couldn't fool me into thinking he knew anything about computers. I picked up on this instantly and actually said to him that it was none of my business. I took an immediate dislike to him a week later when I caught him going through my garbage can.
The book I'm reading is called “Lonely Vigil”.]
Thursday, December 12, 2002
December 12, 2002
Miami on a Thursday. The jackpot is $100 million. (There were four winners, see graphic.) So I ran the office pool a second time. It was annoying to hear the company stand on emergency leave. I don't personally need it, but if you do take emergency leave. You have to quit the company and reapply when you return. Tough luck for those who experienced disaster.
Jamie Paige today to inform me she is not renewing the lease, but it is not a surprise. I am already planning on contacting Ilie’s and driving to work the extra half hour each day. The little lady is still probing, Bakshir has an apartment she can rent for $600 a month and she said that if I take it she’ll “have a place when she gets rid of [expletive deleted]. But, as far as I'm concerned, she can also meet me at Ilie’s.
Now, more database. This is easier reading if one understands I am discussing the effects of information technology rather than teaching anyone how to do it. The spin off is by reading this, it not only will reveal the potential bad things people can do, but that I am against such usage, that is, against anything but the one-time usage of information for the original purpose for which it was voluntarily given. All else is abuse.
Here goes. I'm amused by the many who think this database is as quaint and inflexible as the half dozen already in use. (There are a few (other) flat-file databases, but mine is the only relational database.) The other databases are not normalized, nor are they in the same format, that is, they can't share the information.
Before, an employee with a bad attendance record need only transfer to another site to escape it. Now, my database reads like a driving abstract or a police record. It sticks, and that is wrong, so the database will not print a history, only a list of disciplinary actions. If you want a record, you must write up a disciplinary, which I know takes enough time to show you are serious.
[Author's note: I believe this jackpot is the second-largest in Florida history, after the hundred and 6 million around 12 years ago. I undo nothing I've said about gambling, but I will assist in the mathematical analysis of risk. Each time I run the office pool. People are reminded of how poor their chances really are.]
The emergency leave concerned, an employee whose mother is dying in Cuba, but the answer was still no. This is the first instance where I discovered that this company has a brutal policy over what would normally be a compassionate decision. I wonder what happened to cause this?
I note that I'm reading a new book called “To the White Sea”, James Dickey, Houghton and Mifflin, New York, 1993. Same guy is wrote “Deliverance”. I remember his name better if he’d written “Dueling Banjos” instead.
The database talk was about somebody asking for a report that gave a list of all employees with bad attendance. It can be done, but the database was purposely designed to print only individual records. Every time you have such a database, there is always some ass hat who wants to use it to snoop around. I can’t remember who asked, but I think it was that zero, Charlie F. Don’t worry; he hasn’t got the brains to design a query to get the information himself. They ran him off in 2005.
[Author's note 2015-12-12: in the end, I didn’t take Bakshir’s apartment. The condo is for over 55 and they objected to my age. I didn’t argue. But I did note that although they had refused my application, they also refused to return it when I asked for it back. Good thing it was all nonsense. Verifiable nonsense, mind you. In the end, Ilie sort of disappeared. Just as well, for as much as I liked her, I did not care for the women she hung around with. Yes, they were you-know.]
Return Home
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002
December 11, 2002
Tom lent me a couple of books; I have already completed “Airframe”. I spent the day, populating a database, leading all else boring that happened, but it was a slow day. I saw some television ads at the diner on noon break. Something I predicted years ago has not happened, but here was my logic. Many goods are complementary, so I thought the high cost of advertising would bring Kraft dinner and margarine in as partners. I see some of it but nothing on the scale I imagined it would have evolved to buy now. Could it be a comment on the IQ of people who watch TV?
Home front unstable. I'm moving next month either to Elie’s or on my own. Jamie's incident last Sunday
[Author's note: Tom was a guy I helped compose a court letter concerning medical procedures performed while he was unconscious and therefore unable to enter a contract. He'd gotten into an accident and woke up in the hospital with a $60,000 bill. Basically, the letter said to the hospital thanks for being a Good Samaritan.]
“Airframe” was by Michael Crichton, Hoffman Books, New York, 1998. A bit on the technical side and a real deserved stab at the media.* Downside, the hero was built to 1990 specs and therefore not a babe, but a 40-year-old divorcee. With a lousy ex and a “bubbly” kid and a new lover, don’t you love her already? All of it was irrelevant to the story line and these “facts” are a shameless attempt to appeal to the dregs. Oh, of course she was the company vice-president. What did you expect?
Complementary goods are an economics term which refers to products normally purchased in combination. That is why the chips and the chip dip are beside each other on the grocery shelves. When I first studied this theory and predicted all advertising would move in this direction. I had not yet learned that the average television watcher could not comprehend two things at once.
The home front incident was not recorded. Jamie essentially said that we could not work on the project when she was not there, and of course, we certainly can't do it when she is. Then she got miffed upon discovering that Frank and I had Plan B already worked out. She could not accept that this plan had nothing to do with her personally, only that we knew something was going to happen to delay our progress at the last minute. It never got to the point where she could demand something for nothing, for when this happens, selfishness is the only motivation. I simply gave notice to move out.
*see, Trump wasn't the first guy to lash out at the irresponsibility of biased media. 2016.
Return Home
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Tuesday, December 10, 2002
December 10, 2002
Hmmm, it sure is quiet here around the house. I love it. Seriously, I’m little concerned about Jamie and I’ve been feeding her cat. (She misses a day or two here and then.) I'm very cautious with pets since Memphis; I tend to spoil cats to the point where they balk at canned pet food.
Stopping at IHOP, I did a serious reassessment of Project 21. The book show $1800, but that's what's tax deductible, the fact is closer to $4000 all told. I told Frank much the same so he can ponder it. I also plan to inform him soon that picking him up and getting more here to work rarely takes less than an hour, rather than the necessary 15 minutes. Further, while Project 21 is convinced them he is not so good at new construction, he is thinking wrongly. If he's not good at one, he must therefore be good at another, rather than concentrating on improvement in division areas.
[Author's note: I must have been in a lovely mood that day. Frank had guaranteed to be partners with me on Project 21. As time went by, it turns out he can rarely do something without my tools, cash or assistance. That was never part of the deal. Furthermore, when he finds something he can't do, he leaves it undone and goes on to something else. He just assumes since he can't do a good job on something that needs doing, he has a right to leave it and move on to something that he is good at, which is rarely what we need. That's a formula for failure.
Memphis, oh my Memphis. You can tell a lot about a man by his pet. A big hairy bulldog that licks his master's face twice a day, and his own balls about 30 times is the sign of a timid and insecure man. My pet was the most beautiful budgie, blue with a necklace of spots. They say it is impossible, but too many have seen Memphis defeat the lock on his cage. Memphis definitely recognized different music that I played on the piano and he sang along.
I have tapes, which I discovered in 1986 I could bounce (record multiple tracks) twice and send him into a budgie paradise. Whenever I was overseas, he would spend Christmas with Marion. She would always find him for bedtime by the tinkling of the bells in her tree. Memphis passed away in 1994, trying to migrate against the bars of his cage, which I had lined with leaves to comfort him. Memphis was never buried in the ground.]
[Author's note 2021: according to most of the large media outlets, December 10th is one of the least newsworthy days throughout journalistic history. So bad is this day that not even any important died today. The most notable event of today in 2002 is ABC announced a record $130 billion (with a b) in Superbowl revenue. ABC is owned by Disney.]
Stopping at IHOP, I did a serious reassessment of Project 21. The book show $1800, but that's what's tax deductible, the fact is closer to $4000 all told. I told Frank much the same so he can ponder it. I also plan to inform him soon that picking him up and getting more here to work rarely takes less than an hour, rather than the necessary 15 minutes. Further, while Project 21 is convinced them he is not so good at new construction, he is thinking wrongly. If he's not good at one, he must therefore be good at another, rather than concentrating on improvement in division areas.
[Author's note: I must have been in a lovely mood that day. Frank had guaranteed to be partners with me on Project 21. As time went by, it turns out he can rarely do something without my tools, cash or assistance. That was never part of the deal. Furthermore, when he finds something he can't do, he leaves it undone and goes on to something else. He just assumes since he can't do a good job on something that needs doing, he has a right to leave it and move on to something that he is good at, which is rarely what we need. That's a formula for failure.
Memphis, oh my Memphis. You can tell a lot about a man by his pet. A big hairy bulldog that licks his master's face twice a day, and his own balls about 30 times is the sign of a timid and insecure man. My pet was the most beautiful budgie, blue with a necklace of spots. They say it is impossible, but too many have seen Memphis defeat the lock on his cage. Memphis definitely recognized different music that I played on the piano and he sang along.
I have tapes, which I discovered in 1986 I could bounce (record multiple tracks) twice and send him into a budgie paradise. Whenever I was overseas, he would spend Christmas with Marion. She would always find him for bedtime by the tinkling of the bells in her tree. Memphis passed away in 1994, trying to migrate against the bars of his cage, which I had lined with leaves to comfort him. Memphis was never buried in the ground.]
[Author's note 2021: according to most of the large media outlets, December 10th is one of the least newsworthy days throughout journalistic history. So bad is this day that not even any important died today. The most notable event of today in 2002 is ABC announced a record $130 billion (with a b) in Superbowl revenue. ABC is owned by Disney.]
Monday, December 9, 2002
December 9, 2002
It's bewildering how far the investment community has become removed from reality. My own investment company (First Miami Securities, or FMS, pronounced “Effin’ Mess”) sent me a statement where it took an hour to figure out what they were saying. Apparently my October 23 payment didn't arrive until November 1 and therefore it got zero return on that payment, but they didn't send my regular statement with the return from my previous balance.
[Author's note: this type of kiting scam where delays are never in your favor turns out to be very common in Florida. This is the type of decline in intelligence that I’ve resented for years, the constant probing by formerly reputable businesses to see what they can get away with from the majority of their clients who don't have the education even question things.
[Author's note: I was saying this long before Enron was in the news.]
Prime example, this $29 fee for “overdraft protection”. The only justification ever given by a bank was that what all the other banks charge. Racketeering, pure and simple. People are just too uninformed to complain, because they think only gangsters are racketeers, not their friendly neighborhood bank manager. How wrong they are.
It reminds me of the time a Bank of America agreed on the phone to lend me cash on an equal value of six CDs I held with them locked in at 5.75% in the previous year. When I got there, the manager himself actually thought I was going to let him cash in all six into one CD paying 1.35% for a year longer than the loan with for which he was going to charge me 9.5%! When I informed him no such thing was going to happen, the stupefied look told me the moron had never been told off by a customer before.
[Author's note: the two banks I had dealt with at this time were Bank of America and Washington Mutual. The bank that tried to rip me off was Bank of America around 47th Ave. and Biscayne in September 2001. I had arranged for a demand loan of $6,000, which would be backed up by $6,000 in Certificates of Deposit. Demand loans are supposed to carry a very low interest rate, because there is virtually no risk. I can pay back the loan instantly anytime the bank asks for the money. Since interest rates had recently taken a dive, I was expecting this loan at around 2%.
The bank manager tried to scam me by getting me to sign that he could cash in my 6 CDs paying 5.75% and roll them over into one CD paying 1.35%. We had agreed to no such thing on the phone, the scumbag waited till I driven over there near the end of a workday. Then he tried to slip this document in with the loan application for me to sign. I purposely had small CDs so that in case I had to cash one in, I would only pay the penalty on $1000.
I remember this incident, for I called him a lying, stinking bastard in front of the entire staff, because he was too much of a coward to tell me on the phone of his dirty trick. Then, to quote me 9.5% on a demand loan when the regular loan rate was only 8.5%, well, make no mistake about it. That lowlife calling himself a bank manager was out to steal my money. I was to learn later that this is standard operating procedure in the state of Florida.]
Return Home
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Saturday, December 7, 2002
December 7, 2002
Logistics which had piled up for weeks finally broke through today, so I got nothing done until past 6 p.m. This delays Project 21 and the approaching solstice means nothing moves forward on weekdays. The end costs of Project 21 have really bled my accounts, but the income potential keeps me focused. That total picture is bleaker, to make more, I'd have to go back to something I don't like: taking orders instead of giving them, for instance.
So it was a comforting book during the ‘waits’ today. I read “Bomber”, which I think I've read a condensed version of somewhere. It is based on many instances of the inaccurate bombing during World War II, which is factual enough. It dwells overlong on the even-sidedness of the battle, where in fact, Germany never stood a chance.
This is an important historical date. The birth date of the very first lady I was ever truly in love with. Judith Ann M.. And I do believe I'm still in love with her today. Mind you, I remember Judy, the young lady, not Judy, the woman. I swore to her I would call her in 20 years, which I attempted, but her father got on the phone and blocked that. Then, okay, make it 40 years, he can't keep doing that forever.
[Author's note: Judy's father, an English doctor, Gordon, graduated from dental school with a Victorian set of standards. Back then I had very little understanding of how “well-bred” English daughters were considered a liability until marriage. It would be another decade before I understood the theory of the surplus English daughter, that there were not enough titled men with money to marry them all.]
Gordon on the other hand operated totally on this principle. When he asked my intentions, I sincerely stated that things had to “remain as they were until I finish school”. He nearly croaked. Apparently he later told Judy, that I had said something to the effect that I like things just the way they were. Since he was browbeating me at the time, I cannot really guarantee that I hadn't said something that may have given that impression.
Gordon never understood why I had no stocks, no bonds, no real estate, no car, no investments, no discretionary income, or how I ever managed to get myself into such a financial jam by the time I was 19 years old. I'd never been more than 500 miles from home and was in my third year of university. In a sense, though he wasn't wrong, because I didn't really finish school until I was 36. By the time I reached 24, you needed a bachelor’s degree to get a job sweeping the floor.
The income of the toothpicks was enormous. However it did not last. During the time it was displayed, it produced an income of $4.40 per minute. That is the equivalent of investing $30 million at 8% APR, and that's the potential I was referring to.
There are certain people who dispute my stand that Germany could not possibly have won WWII. The fact is, their military philosophy was to collapse the enemy's frontline armies, known as lightning war. They never started a battle where the outcome depended on a long drawn out slugging match of men and material.
Even if they had won, they did not have the wherewithal to police their conquests. By the time the Western powers geared up their industrial production, their weapons were a generation newer than what Germany was using. The reality of the matter is that the Western Allies never at any time faced more than 4% of Germany's second line troops. The Allies were producing bombers faster than Germany could possibly shoot them down. Step forward, whoever said, “By 1945, the only thing left flying in Germany was bitter recriminations.”
Friday, December 6, 2002
December 6, 2002
I contacted my West Coast people. Everything is plodding along, much like when I was there. The West is different, it is still growing, with growing pains. Startup costs are higher for simple things, and the easy opportunities are gone. Florida is different. It is “a community of foreign-owned shops clinging on by their fingernails”. I still don't know what Anglos do for a living in Miami. I haven't been enough of them to formulate a theory.
We are packing up shop at the 687 Continuum. Tom is running the show now. Did I mention the Hindu waitress at the coffee shop? Her boyfriend is taken up with some gold-digger over getting his green card, and she caught them. She said, “I'm a firm believer in interracial sex, as long as the man is white.” Anyway, she is a very tempting and well-educated little lady, around 22.
Don't forget the gripe. Today, I rag on people who need people. I despise unwelcome co-dependencies, and it's not like these types ever to ask permission. They should all be stranded on a desert island together until they've had their fill of each other. I’ve got some real horror stories about such people, but that's a different topic.
[Author's note: the area north of Seattle, Washington is still my base of operations. It is likely to remain so for as long as it acts as a choke point to anyone trying to reach me. I like it that way.
The Continuum was a large 40 story high-rise condo at the extreme south tip of Miami Beach, Florida. Here is a picture of it in 2020. Most of the buildings over 35 stories in the last few years have been projects I worked at. Above my workstation, I put Al Capone's clip, “I tried to get into a legitimate business several times, but they won't stand for it”.
The quote about foreign-owned shops is from the Miami Herald. Tom refers to Tom Alvarado, an extremely capable project manager who eventually quit to become a real estate agent. I should explain something about that comment concerning interracial sex. What she was referring to is the double standard present in America, and she was commenting on the consequences. A white man who has had numerous nonwhite sex partners is more marriageable than the other way around. She's got a point.
[Author's note 2022: digital photos were so rare in 2002 around here that I got you this generic photo of what's-her-name and what's-his-face.]
We are packing up shop at the 687 Continuum. Tom is running the show now. Did I mention the Hindu waitress at the coffee shop? Her boyfriend is taken up with some gold-digger over getting his green card, and she caught them. She said, “I'm a firm believer in interracial sex, as long as the man is white.” Anyway, she is a very tempting and well-educated little lady, around 22.
[Author's note: the area north of Seattle, Washington is still my base of operations. It is likely to remain so for as long as it acts as a choke point to anyone trying to reach me. I like it that way.
The Continuum was a large 40 story high-rise condo at the extreme south tip of Miami Beach, Florida. Here is a picture of it in 2020. Most of the buildings over 35 stories in the last few years have been projects I worked at. Above my workstation, I put Al Capone's clip, “I tried to get into a legitimate business several times, but they won't stand for it”.
The quote about foreign-owned shops is from the Miami Herald. Tom refers to Tom Alvarado, an extremely capable project manager who eventually quit to become a real estate agent. I should explain something about that comment concerning interracial sex. What she was referring to is the double standard present in America, and she was commenting on the consequences. A white man who has had numerous nonwhite sex partners is more marriageable than the other way around. She's got a point.
[Author's note 2022: digital photos were so rare in 2002 around here that I got you this generic photo of what's-her-name and what's-his-face.]
Thursday, December 5, 2002
December 5, 2002
I contacted my West Coast people. Everything is plodding along, much like when I was there. The West is different, it is still growing, with growing pains. Startup costs are higher for simple things, and the easy opportunities are gone. Florida is different. It is “a community of foreign-owned shops going on by their fingernails”. I still don't know what Anglos do for a living in Miami. I haven't been enough of them to formulate a theory.
We are packing up shop at the 687 Continuum. Tom is running the show now. Did I mention the Hindu waitress at the coffee shop? Her boyfriend is taken up with some gold-digger over getting his green card, and she caught them. She said, “I'm a firm believer in interracial sex, as long as the man is white.” Anyway, she is a very tempting and well-educated little lady, around 22.
Don't forget the gripe. Today, I rag on people who need people. I despise unwelcome co-dependencies, and it's not like these types ever to ask permission. They should all be stranded on a desert island together until they've had their fill of each other. I’ve got some real horror stories about such people, but that's a different topic.
[Author's note: the area north of Seattle, Washington is still my base of operations. It is likely to remain so for as long as it acts as a choke point to anyone trying to reach me. I like it that way.
The continuum was a large 40 story high-rise condo at the extreme south tip of Miami Beach, Florida. Most of the buildings over 35 stories in the last few years have been projects I worked at. Above my workstation, I put Al Capone's clip, “I tried to get into a legitimate business several times, but they won't stand for it”.
The quote about foreign-owned shops is from the Miami Herald. Tom refers to Tom Alvarado, an extremely capable project manager who eventually quit to become a real estate agent. I should explain something about that comment concerning interracial sex. What she was referring to is the double standard present in America, and she was commenting on the consequences. A white man who has had numerous nonwhite sex partners is more marriageable than the other way around. She's got a point.
We are packing up shop at the 687 Continuum. Tom is running the show now. Did I mention the Hindu waitress at the coffee shop? Her boyfriend is taken up with some gold-digger over getting his green card, and she caught them. She said, “I'm a firm believer in interracial sex, as long as the man is white.” Anyway, she is a very tempting and well-educated little lady, around 22.
Don't forget the gripe. Today, I rag on people who need people. I despise unwelcome co-dependencies, and it's not like these types ever to ask permission. They should all be stranded on a desert island together until they've had their fill of each other. I’ve got some real horror stories about such people, but that's a different topic.
[Author's note: the area north of Seattle, Washington is still my base of operations. It is likely to remain so for as long as it acts as a choke point to anyone trying to reach me. I like it that way.
The continuum was a large 40 story high-rise condo at the extreme south tip of Miami Beach, Florida. Most of the buildings over 35 stories in the last few years have been projects I worked at. Above my workstation, I put Al Capone's clip, “I tried to get into a legitimate business several times, but they won't stand for it”.
The quote about foreign-owned shops is from the Miami Herald. Tom refers to Tom Alvarado, an extremely capable project manager who eventually quit to become a real estate agent. I should explain something about that comment concerning interracial sex. What she was referring to is the double standard present in America, and she was commenting on the consequences. A white man who has had numerous nonwhite sex partners is more marriageable than the other way around. She's got a point.
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
December 4, 2002
Miami 5:30 a.m.. I'm still reading “Perspectives”, always something new when re-read. I see some of my sayings have become stock at the workplace. Myself, I rarely been more broke than these days. Any businessperson will tell you a new project always comes down to the last dollar in the last minute. There have been no negative reactions in the last set of promo photos that only show a quarter of the finished product.
Daily gripe: Entrepreneur magazines. Even if they didn't blog franchises, time-sharing, and sexism, they tend to bury facts. I stop buying [such magazines] over this theme, and I remember the exact article. It was about some couple who started a dude ranch in Colorado, and made a million. But all you read about was their hardships until way at the last paragraph it barely mentions they inherited the land, buildings, riparian and mineral rights plus $100,000 in cash.
We don't need this. What about the rest of us who did not inherit a jackpot? I want to read how the guy did it who started from nothing. It is impossible for me to identify with the hardships of anyone who did nothing until they inherited a bundle. The magazines were also getting a little too cute for me. By this I mean, do I really need to know that Sally, besides her business, is “a full-time wife and mother of three children, etc.”
JZ was in today, so we went to the Church (Churchill’s) for a couple. I didn't know he was already a few sheets to the wind, when he arrived. For some reason, the place was half full of hookers, so of course he went around determining the prices. Not me, for all hookers appear to be much alike. I think.
[Author's Note: I have certain database quips people like to repeat. My favorites include, “At least all my mistakes are in one place.” and “If you can’t be professional, at least be consistent.”
Be careful when I use the word broke. I mean that I have less cash on hand than usual. I draw a distinction between being broke and being poor. Even the wealthy are broke once in a while.]
Daily gripe: Entrepreneur magazines. Even if they didn't blog franchises, time-sharing, and sexism, they tend to bury facts. I stop buying [such magazines] over this theme, and I remember the exact article. It was about some couple who started a dude ranch in Colorado, and made a million. But all you read about was their hardships until way at the last paragraph it barely mentions they inherited the land, buildings, riparian and mineral rights plus $100,000 in cash.
We don't need this. What about the rest of us who did not inherit a jackpot? I want to read how the guy did it who started from nothing. It is impossible for me to identify with the hardships of anyone who did nothing until they inherited a bundle. The magazines were also getting a little too cute for me. By this I mean, do I really need to know that Sally, besides her business, is “a full-time wife and mother of three children, etc.”
JZ was in today, so we went to the Church (Churchill’s) for a couple. I didn't know he was already a few sheets to the wind, when he arrived. For some reason, the place was half full of hookers, so of course he went around determining the prices. Not me, for all hookers appear to be much alike. I think.
[Author's Note: I have certain database quips people like to repeat. My favorites include, “At least all my mistakes are in one place.” and “If you can’t be professional, at least be consistent.”
Be careful when I use the word broke. I mean that I have less cash on hand than usual. I draw a distinction between being broke and being poor. Even the wealthy are broke once in a while.]
December 4, 2002
Miami 5:30 a.m.. I'm still reading “Perspectives”, always something new when re-read. I see some of my sayings have become stock at the workplace. Myself, I rarely been more broke than these days. Any businessperson will tell you a new project always comes down to the last dollar in the last minute. There have been no negative reactions in the last set of promo photos that only show a quarter of the finished product.
Daily gripe: Entrepreneur magazines. Even if they didn't blog franchises, time-sharing, and sexism, they tend to bury facts. I stop buying [such magazines] over this theme, and I remember the exact article. It was about some couple who started a dude ranch in Colorado, and made a million. But all you read about was their hardships until way at the last paragraph it barely mentions they inherited the land, buildings, riparian and mineral rights plus $100,000 in cash.
We don't need this. What about the rest of us who did not inherit a jackpot? I want to read how the guy did it who started from nothing. It is impossible for me to identify with the hardships of anyone who did nothing until they inherited a bundle. The magazines were also getting a little too cute for me. By this I mean, do I really need to know that Sally, besides her business, is “a full-time wife and mother of three children, etc.”
JP was in today, so we went to the Church (Churchill’s) for a couple. I didn't know he was already a few sheets to the wind, when he arrived. For some reason, the place was half full of hookers, so of course he went around determining the prices. Not me, for all hookers appear to be much alike. I think.
[Author's Note: I have certain database quips people like to repeat. My favorites include, “At least all my mistakes are in one place.” and “If you can’t be professional, at least be consistent.”
Be careful when I use the word broke. I mean that I have less cash on hand than usual. I draw a distinction between being broke and being poor. Even the wealthy are broke once in a while.]
Daily gripe: Entrepreneur magazines. Even if they didn't blog franchises, time-sharing, and sexism, they tend to bury facts. I stop buying [such magazines] over this theme, and I remember the exact article. It was about some couple who started a dude ranch in Colorado, and made a million. But all you read about was their hardships until way at the last paragraph it barely mentions they inherited the land, buildings, riparian and mineral rights plus $100,000 in cash.
We don't need this. What about the rest of us who did not inherit a jackpot? I want to read how the guy did it who started from nothing. It is impossible for me to identify with the hardships of anyone who did nothing until they inherited a bundle. The magazines were also getting a little too cute for me. By this I mean, do I really need to know that Sally, besides her business, is “a full-time wife and mother of three children, etc.”
JP was in today, so we went to the Church (Churchill’s) for a couple. I didn't know he was already a few sheets to the wind, when he arrived. For some reason, the place was half full of hookers, so of course he went around determining the prices. Not me, for all hookers appear to be much alike. I think.
[Author's Note: I have certain database quips people like to repeat. My favorites include, “At least all my mistakes are in one place.” and “If you can’t be professional, at least be consistent.”
Be careful when I use the word broke. I mean that I have less cash on hand than usual. I draw a distinction between being broke and being poor. Even the wealthy are broke once in a while.]
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
December 3, 2002
What's happening today? My guess is Mideast terrorism, a murder suicide somewhere in the country, havoc on the stock market, and throw in a plane crash or two. Maybe I should start reading the news again.
I stopped to see Monica yesterday, bringing her up on the Project 21 progress report. She still talks Spanish too fast for me, but I take it her business is down to $50 per day gross. That may be good for Project 21, because it makes her more agreeable. Well, me also, finances are at an all-time bottom for me because of the project. And I still need a pickup truck. Miami traffic is too bad to consider a trailer.
The buzz at work is the Christmas bonuses. I know, the company had a good year, what I don't know is their mechanism for determining the bonus. Several people are shocked to learn I was not a salaried employee. If I was, it would be the lowest salary ever got.
Let me tell the world again. I do not watch television, or play chess. A guy “with my brains” is not necessarily good at chess. I find it boring, and anyway, the average Canadian 10-year-old can easily beat me in record time.
I better keep my eyes open, because nothing has gone wrong with the project in several weeks. That means something’s lurking and smoldering. Whoever it is will get Plan B between the eyes.
[Monica's fine dining. She sets up her stand usually around 58th and Milam Diary in Miami. Depending on how the display cases turn out, I've been looking for a small place where I can test to see the public reaction to viewing these things. I need a small business like a hot dog stand, where it's easier to gauge the effect. She's 36 and still believes in miracles. I cannot stand waiting around for other people to make up their minds.
The comment about chess is meant as a veiled insult. I'm implying that anyone who spent 10 years in Canada has far more experience than I will ever have in waiting for some one else to move first, and then countering. To me that basically describes a game of chess.
I'm always on the lookout for danger whenever a project nears completion. Some nobody always appears at the last minute and tries to trip you up. The only difference is, were ready for it. Plan B is actually to pick up the display and rapidly relocating somewhere else with no real notice]
I stopped to see Monica yesterday, bringing her up on the Project 21 progress report. She still talks Spanish too fast for me, but I take it her business is down to $50 per day gross. That may be good for Project 21, because it makes her more agreeable. Well, me also, finances are at an all-time bottom for me because of the project. And I still need a pickup truck. Miami traffic is too bad to consider a trailer.
The buzz at work is the Christmas bonuses. I know, the company had a good year, what I don't know is their mechanism for determining the bonus. Several people are shocked to learn I was not a salaried employee. If I was, it would be the lowest salary ever got.
Let me tell the world again. I do not watch television, or play chess. A guy “with my brains” is not necessarily good at chess. I find it boring, and anyway, the average Canadian 10-year-old can easily beat me in record time.
I better keep my eyes open, because nothing has gone wrong with the project in several weeks. That means something’s lurking and smoldering. Whoever it is will get Plan B between the eyes.
[Monica's fine dining. She sets up her stand usually around 58th and Milam Diary in Miami. Depending on how the display cases turn out, I've been looking for a small place where I can test to see the public reaction to viewing these things. I need a small business like a hot dog stand, where it's easier to gauge the effect. She's 36 and still believes in miracles. I cannot stand waiting around for other people to make up their minds.
The comment about chess is meant as a veiled insult. I'm implying that anyone who spent 10 years in Canada has far more experience than I will ever have in waiting for some one else to move first, and then countering. To me that basically describes a game of chess.
I'm always on the lookout for danger whenever a project nears completion. Some nobody always appears at the last minute and tries to trip you up. The only difference is, were ready for it. Plan B is actually to pick up the display and rapidly relocating somewhere else with no real notice]
Monday, December 2, 2002
December 2, 2002
[Author's note 2015-12-02: the quotation below is now formally associated with me and this blog, so you should quote me when you use it. This means you, Reader's Digest.]
My hands and wrists should be healed in a week. Building display cases is physical labor, which I'd nearly forgotten. It is also my anniversary with the company, and already I make more than my last “career”. The difference is taxes. See below.
I took Stacey to lunch at Wendy's (around 36th St. Northwest, and 120th in West Miami). All I read today was those little catalogs people bring to work, full of stuff I'll never buy, but occasionally you see something new.
(This is redacted material.) Progress with Frank who is trying to learn database basics. I'm not sure. Well he's learned a lot about getting independent, he moves too fast into the advanced areas without securing a good information base. His suggestions usually involve something the other guy has to do or pay for. And the computer, he still can't balance a set of books with precision. Yet he's playing with pivot tables. He's exhibited this before, trying to chance upon something new by rearranging it randomly. He's already picked up my non-work habits.
Just when I considered taking another
[Author's note: I had mildly sprained both my wrists. Not from actually doing the work at from listing the toothpick cases by myself. They have to be gripped on edge. They weigh 151 pounds each. My anniversary, I mean, today I was actually hired. I actually worked there close to a year and a half before. Although on paper, I am making only half the amount of my last job, taxation was so high back then, I was actually taking home less. I like states like Florida, with no personal income tax. I'll never get tired of saying it,
“The most wonderful thing about America is that when I help my neighbor, it's my choice. Not my neighbors.”
I did see something new in the catalog (see above). It was a global the world with the countries on pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The globe was magnetic and the pieces were curved to fit the core.
I was referring to Frank's usage of the computer I gave him. I showed him how to use Microsoft Excel, and within a week he was playing with pivot tables. I dislike pivot tables. To me, they represent that the user is not planned his work well in advance. Yet, what can I say Frank loves them.
When I say he's picked up my habits, I mean he is now doing crossword puzzles and Scrabblegrams. It's interesting to watch them fly at these because he hasn't done what I've done to complete like a crossword in 20 minutes or get top word score in less than four minutes. Well, Frank. You kind of need to background first.
Here is a World IQ Map. The alert user might ask what on earth happened to take South Africa from the top to the bottom of the scale.
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