December 31, 2003

           I really did lose a book. That’s a first. And I am missing New Year's celebration (musically) this year for the first time also. That means I am neither playing out or going to see somebody else play. I had planned to go see BB King at the Jackie Gleason theater. It would be almost thirty years to the month that I saw him with Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, out on the Pacific coast. He’s about 10 miles from here in downtown Miami or Miami Beach, but I cannot possibly stay awake until midnight and then drive home afterward. He’s 18 years older than me, so that may have been my last chance.

           [Author's note 2015-12-31: I missed the concert because I was house-bound from a recent medical condition, which left me drained of the gumption to go out. This is contrary to my old policy of not spending either my birthday or New Year's in the same town where I live and work. I've gone as far as Hawaii and Japan just to observe that self-imposed rule. I knew I'd eventually settle down, but I wanted to have some real memories when I finally did. I was right.]

           I’ve slowed down to nothing in the last week. This evening I went to “Paycheck”, an interesting work, with another blonde actress in a lead role. The actors were far too good looking to be shooting and beating each other up, but she had just a slight harshness about her features to make it believable. The plan was to have the whole theater to myself, but there were actually other people in there. Also, my big ad for a date goes out on the Internet today. I know I should get a picture in there, but let me see who responds first. I’ve gotten lucky before.
           The microwave at work was an instant hit. (I donated part of my Xmas bonus to a microwave.) The original consensus was no popcorn. But Rhonda outvoted the majority, again. However, believe it or not, the popcorn seems to be a much more well-behaved food when done in a unit that powerful. Even, fast heating and the aroma is tolerable. Interesting. I’m sad and sorry I won’t go out tonight, but the bright side is I always manage to save a grand or two every time I get ill. I just don’t go out and spend it and I’m up the bucks.

           My big prediction for 2004? Something is going to come along and wipe out the Internet as we know it. We know it to be slow, tricky to use, expensive, and absolute full of garbage. The original premise, the free exchange of information, is a joke. Also, the commercialized sights that are left over can’t be filtered. I think it will be some simple little thing, like the idea behind digital radio, you pay a flat fee and tell them what you don’t want. There’s a few places that claim they offer this service, but I don’t see how they could work when almost every search eventually goes to eBay, Amazon or porno. I personally detest Amazon because I think they nipped off the chance for real net publishing. That, and their ads clutter up everything. I want info, not ads for books for sale that may or may not have the info I seek. Another minus is that many searches eventually lead back to the same group of articles.

           {Author's note 2015-12-31: I was partially right in one sense. What's replaced the Internet "as we know it" is smart phones, Google profiling, and subversive government tracking systems. The Internet has degenerated into primarily a toy for the idle-minded. Information is no longer free. You pay for it with what used to be your private, personal concerns. During 2004, the number of free sites dropped to somewhere between insignificance and nothingness as the dot com sites proliferated to the hundreds of millions. Thanks to eBay and Amazon, everybody is after a dollar and that swamped everything else in the system. Some call this progress]

           The new system will have a search criteria based on layers of search and search within search. Ask Jeeves sort of tries this, but it is still a one layer search, and never asks you for alternatives based on what has been found so far. The few “search similar” algorithms I’ve seen were designed by nerds, the logic is embarassing. Part of the problem is leaving the client cook up his search criteria. The new system will search on actual content, and hopefully be able to understand compound words and expressions.
           Oh, I regularly search for my own info on the net because it is not supposed to be there. Seems there are two matches now, both in Florida. And on pay sites. I may pay just to see who divulged, I do not like it when people give out my information second hand, and that is why I code it.

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December 30, 2003

           Of all the! There is a nearly duplicate address to mine precisely 50 blocks south of here. Guess where most of my mail has been going? Miami has to be the strangest town for naming streets. All major roads have at least two names, some have many more along their whole length. In places, Dixie Highway is Federal Highway is Biscayne Boulevard, 18th Avenue, Sunshine Boulevard, and part Ocean Drive or something like that. Hardly tourist friendly, in fact it would appear the streets are intentionally confusing. I wasted my valuable time sorting it out, I hate it when people do that.

           The crew got together and gave me a thank you card for the Xmas microwave. Per Rhonda, it takes us out of the dark ages. I saw Shelly for the first time since weeks ago, she is cheerful. Everyone seems it remarkable that I got the microwave, when in fact it was a very cost effective thing to do for the 12 to 15 people using it, like less than $3.00 each to make everyone happy is a bargain to me.

           The medicine is not a bargain, the cost is already over $200 per month. And I see nobody at Mt. Sinai is interested in side effects unless they are medical side effects. That’s wrong, I think. I am having memory lapses, weak arms, wandering tics and spasms in my abdomen and head, hunger attacks, hot kidneys, and sleeping an extra two hours a day. The memory lapses are the most worrisome. I actually lost a book (“P for Peril”) and forgot the lunch I spent an hour making last night. Everything important, such as taking my prescription, is formally logged, so that is not a worry. Angel Morales, the fire alarm guy, said he had the same thing, and it lasts for about a month.
           I’m busy all day catching up, there is nobody else around to do my paperwork. Sure enough, the sites are spoiled and large parts of the releases are unreadable. I need something, however small to go on, to work that database. Not incidentally, Tim Pitzen came by for a report today, in this case Support Document H. He seems to like it, even in its raw form. Yes, it can be used to monitor the frequency with which employees get transferred. I offered it to him 3 months ago, but I don’t think he knew what I was talking about until he needed it today. We’ll get him on-line soon. It is a minor step after that to target those site disciplinaries. It looks like Julie and I alone in the office tomorrow to clear up the last of the payroll. Florida has got to be strange, the holidays are not paid. Who ever heard of Labor Day as a day off without pay? Anyrate, that’s what puts the “duh” in Florida.

           The whole world is a database, just needing a nudge in the right direction. Unusual spot of the day, I saw the word ‘utilidor’ for the first time in almost 45 years. I used to walk along the top of them in the winter. See if you can figure out the circumstances, and I’ll bet it is not what you think. Hint, in the summer, I walked underneath them, and later somebody made both activities illegal.

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December 29, 2003

           Finally back at work, and able to let the West Coast know what happened over here. M.B. got my mail back, checking into it shows there is a very similar address straight south of here in Miami Springs. A lot of folks at the office were sincerely concerned with how I got along. Wallace almost flipped, actually very few people had me in a high-risk category. Including me.
           Oh, Rhonda. Somebody matching my description robbed a Denny’s. Get this, apparently he walked in, went behind the register and asked the staff for a steak knife. Thence he cut the power cord, thanked the staff and headed out the door with the cash drawer. Drove off in a red pickup with an estimated $2500.00. That’s too brash even for me.
           Monitoring my habits again, there is just no outstanding indicator in my instance, except on weekdays I tend to go over my calorie limit by about 10%, all due to coffee which I cannot drink black. What did I ponder today? Well, I have it on report that a duck’s quack does not echo. While dreaming last night I recalled a ventriloquist I had seen, and he was good – but the dummies voice had the same timbre as a duck’s quack. Most ventriloquist’s I’ve seen since then did not “quack” and were not as good either, you could tell what was going on. The one who quacked was the best. I ponder if there is any connection between the two? I can see that lack of an echo could be advantageous, but is this even possible for a human? Like I said, ponder.
           I’m reading “P for Peril”. Far better authorship than what else I’ve had lately. It’s about a doctor that disappears, eventually causing every character with a real part to become a suspect. I admire producers who can put that kind of book on film, any other I type of mystery I can figure out fast enough to lose my enjoyment of the picture. The weather is perfect again this year, and I may try to spend my noon breaks outside again, which raises another question of why are all the parks in residential areas where people who work can’t really use them unless it’s right downtown? The answer is no doubt lost in early English reasoning. They had the first metropolis, and that was just 150 years ago. I’m not the only one who notices that things they did wrong have largely been repeated by American city planners.
           Which winds things up this evening on my long-standing question about lot size. It seems to me there is no longer any justification for building houses so close together the way they do in this country. There may have been a reason a long time ago, but I want 50 feet of green space between me and my neighbor. Who wants to look out any window, and see the neighbor’s fence? All residential lots should be an acre in size and have enough clearance for serious green areas between buildings. I don’t see that it would add more than 2 or 3% to the price.
           I finally logged onto Yahoo under a pseudonym, and probably tomorrow will begin looking for a 30 year old girlfriend. Since I can’t party till dawn anymore, at least I should see what is out there. [What, are you surprised that people who use dating lines aren’t what they say they are? Wake up, this is 2003.]

December 28, 2003

           [Author's note 2015-12-28: this photo added in 2015, but the hotel looks the same. This is picture 21 of an excellent series of 64 carefully posed pictures at this link, which can be problematical. The deck chair I fell asleep in is just under the red-colored leaves at picture center. This if from the back of the main hotel, looking north toward the lobby.]>

           JZ didn’t make it into Quizno’s before I left at 2:30 (got tired of waiting). I went over to the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables for the free tour. Oddly, the tour is primarily a sales gimmick for people already staying at the hotel. That, and because there were no single women in the group, gave the active mind plenty of time for sarcasm. It’s your typical early 1900s place, where they tried to create elegance by copying European traditions of the aristocracy. Here in the US of A, that only attracted the likes of Al Capone. There were gondola rides (whoopie!), and fox hunts, and though you can’t tell by the bathing suites, beauty contests.
           The staff was surly to non-guests, so that part was authentic European. There is no coffee shop. They are still injecting the so-called Old World charm into a place that has apparently been bankrupt for decades trying to do just that. The honeymoon suite in $3,000. (“By the hour? What? Well because anyone who gets married the week after Christmas either has to, or . . .”) The regular rate seems to be by the person, not by the room. It’s $125 per person per night. No cap on the number of persons, ahem. If you stay more than two nights, they don’t charge you a “corkage” fee on your wine. (“God bless them, every one.”)

           At one time, the place served as a hospital for veterans. They gave up on that and the place was abandoned for ten years. (“You mean even the Army couldn’t keep the doors open!”) It got the largest pool at a hotel by some obscure standard. Minus, of course, the diving boards, you see, jocks did really stupid things back then, too. The pool is surrounded by the conference halls, they are quick to point out that NAFTA meets here. (“Where’s the protestor’s gallery?”)
           It’s a slow tour, I had lots of time to wander away and come back. The treat, the tour of the 13th floor was not to be. Somebody actually booked it this year and it was occupied. (I motioned we at least knock, but you know these conservative types.) For the record, there were several weddings going on. I haven’t seen so many fat teenage girls in black dresses since the Godfather premiered in ’72. This French vanilla really makes me tired, I mean, cozy tired, I think I’ll z-z-z-z-z-z-z . . . .

           Two hours later. It’s French Vanilla tea, yes, just like the coffee. It’s a blend of black made by Lindsay Gardens. Brew it exactly three minutes. I have to sweeten mine, I think it delicious. It’s for Rhonda, but I’m always allowed to sample. I found it at La Copa, and saw this unusual teacup/teapot arrangement. The cup and saucer are the same, but on top of the cup sits the one-cup teapot with a matching floral pattern, designed so the teapot nests into the cup. I would have got one but the price was (don’t hit me) "too steep".

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December 27, 2003

           I’ve been re-reading some economics texts from college. I recently learned that the government still is not able to define poverty. They're taking their sweet time about. Yes, I know, the challenge is to keep the definition impersonal. This got me thinking, because what ever else poverty may be, it is also a highly personal thing. Poverty, well not a self-inflicted wound, is also inseparable from ignorance. One has to be careful here because it is far too easy to set up a political system that favors ignorant people so long as they conform.
           With the sprinkling of humor, I define ignorance as those people who watch cable TV. Before anyone gets insulted bear in mind that the majority of people in the world do not watch cable TV. Why, do you? I cable TV creates isolated groups who simply cannot believe that anyone smarter than themselves has ever existed. You know who you are.
           My view of poverty hasn't changed much over time. Poverty is highly circumstantial. Rich kids with head-starts still fail; poor kids with no advantages often soar upward. But in both cases there are definable circumstances unique to those extremes, and not anyone in between. And to me, that in between is where most real poverty exists. That huge group is the working poor hidden under a gaunt layer of credit.

           In my youth, I was subject to plenty of lectures about success. Many years later, I still issue the same challenge; show me a man who truly made it entirely on his own. There are many claimants so far but not one of them has lasted under cross examination. Whereas one cannot separate luck from financial success, free money from daddy is a definite disqualification. I've met a lot of successful people. But I've never met one who made it on their own. I've mentioned recently that I see publishers of magazines featuring success stories also have the same difficulty.

           [Authors note: the focus on money is largely due to discovering my hospital bill came to $74,000 making that the most expensive thing I've ever purchased. Coupled with the fact that before the hospital discovered I had insurance was my true brush with death, I'm reconsidering many factors.]

           [Author's note 2016-06-16: Later, the final bill came to $88,000 over what my insurances covered. The above note is not clear. I'm saying that before the hospital discovered I had insurance, they had left me to die. This is documented elsewhere, how they leapt to action when they found my policy.]

           Rhonda mentions Deerfield a lot. So this morning I drove up there and took a look around the ferry landing to Deerfield Island. I'd called earlier for a tour, but it was booked solid. Deerfield Island is Millionaires Row and I wanted to see it. It's hard to believe in 1950 only 2,000 people lived up and down that whole Coast way. Al Capone tried to buy Deerfield Island.
           My luck paid off, and a tour group showed up, granny and all. The tour guide was a slightly frumpy 30-year-old. Brunette, and it didn’t take long to parlay my way aboard. What, with my winning smile and $4.00. I kept seeing palm trees and fir trees that I know are not native to Florida, so the landscapers really did a number on this area.

           I closely examined the pines and palms. None of the trees were more than 50 years old. Either the climate here has changed or somebody has upset the ecology. While the tourists were staring at the waterfront mansions, our busty tour guide notices me pointing out ducks, lizards and nature. I saw a five foot iguana jump down off a branch, bite and grab a white bird (later identified as an egret) and continue down pulling it underwater, drowning it for lunch. I'm the only one who saw the whole thing because everybody else had to turn around, you see, there was a yacht going past on the up side. That lizard moved fast and had used its heavy torso to push the bird along.
           Deerfield Island is artificial, as are several other luxury properties in Florida, including Fisher Island. They are composed of channel dredging and seemed to be around 50 acres. There was a brief walking tour revealing all species seen were tropical, that is many different species each represented by only a few individuals. The only wildlife seen was Golden Silk Spiders. I tasted a coco plum, which actually has no taste, if you ask me. I passed on the wild coffee.

           Remember, I'm still feeling weak and this tour was a brisk mid-day walk. It was invigorating and most certainly worth 100 mile round-trip. There is a note here that I stopped in to see if Space Hippie was around on the way north, but he’s plainly moved since last summer.
           For the record, by now that tour guide lady was really start to take a shine to me. However I don't usually chase women because usually I don't have to and I'm also not very good at it because I don't like doing it. Don't get me wrong, I'm very opportunistic, so well I don't wait around for women to hit on me I'm very good at letting which women know I'm very approachable. I figure if a woman likes me, she should have at the minimum enough confidence to let me know. But as far as chasing women, no more Crazy Liz's, Robynettes and Emilias are needed in my life. This tour guide was a contender.

           She picked up I wasn't your average rubberneck. [I'm an educated rubberneck.] However she kept herself in a position that if I approached her, I would've had to do so in front of the entire crowd. The trail passed a tree neither of us could ID. I stated the leaves were oblong, pinnate and alternate. She turned around and looked me straight in the eye. All she would have to say is, to the effect that there is some research material in the main office and what I cared to help her look it up there after the tour was finished. (I had a book in my car, but I was not going to suggest we go there.) I finally concluded the only man-woman scenario she knew of was playing hard to get, which has never worked on me.
           Turns out it was a Paradise Tree, a native. Momentarily forgive what I described next because I may need this information later. Those three days flat on my back on that hospital mattress is causing cramps at the pressure points when I walk more than 15 minutes. I found a fairly nice antique shop in Deerfield, almost impressive, with a half-mile of aisles. Mostly furniture. Below is a poster they had for sale. The most unusual item: a Volks-radio. $325.00 but it is the real Nazi German one-speaker radio, with the swastika emblem. These were all supposedly melted down, but the card said this one still functioned.

           [Author's note: this was the famous Deerfield thrift, which sadly closed down a few years later.]

           An evening at the movies. “Cold Mountain”. That’s the second movie this week with a natural blonde actress, something I really appreciate. (I can only pray this is a new trend that lasts the rest of my life. I admit being very partial to blondes. I'd only dated two non-blondes before I was 30, but these days’ beggars can't be choosers. After 30 the supply dries up, that is, you can get plenty of what you don't want.) This movie drags while doing a good job of portraying important themes. It’s too slow for either a drama or a love story so it winds up disappointing both crowds.

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December 26, 2003

           The library was closed. I wanted to be there today because anything else was open. Instead I checked out the Goodwill on S. Palm Ave. They have a tiny book section that's been culled for all except paperback escape literature. I picked up some vintage video, Laurel & Hardy stuff. After four years in Miami, I finally walked down Okeechobee Road for the first time. During afternoon coffee at Denny’s I found an ad for the planetarium and a look at the rings of Saturn. It’s a rare cloudless day with light traffic, and the next chance is 2032. Here's a display at the Maimi Planetarium.

           By early evening I dropped over to Quizno’s to discover JZ has taken ill with the flu. Alaine says the Christmas this year was downsized, and the choir kids didn’t fly in. She was polite but I can tell I was supposed to of been there. I just didn't want anybody feeling sorry for me. Alaine noticed the planetarium ad and was aching to go but Corey needed her there all day. They are trying to recruit [one of] his younger brothers (23) to manage the store but meanwhile they've got a do it 110% by themselves. She treated me to a cup of tea. I phoned JZ later, but he’s really got it bad, like so deep in the lungs I could barely understand his speech. This one, he has to sleep through.

           The planetarium laser show was copyright about 1980 (my opinion). They’ve got a few exhibits I may be able to expand on, including this huge 4” PVC open tube pipe organ you play by smacking a sponge paddle over one end. The usual overpriced gift shop with toys instead of tools, but I picked up an unusual specimen of Iron Pyrite (Fool’s Gold), as they usually keep the larger cubes for display. The telescope was a letdown. It wasn’t the big bucket, rather two Cassegrains set up on the roof, rattling in the wind and hard to focus. This limited the magnification to about I’d guess 300x, not enough to see the Cassini division. My binoculars as a teenager were actually better.
           Flashback time. On really cold winter nights out on the prairies, it’s easy to believe you can see more stars, which is not true. (Then again, it's not an illusion either because there really are more stars in the southern sky, the part visible during winter.) At any rate, I had figured out how to line up Venus and the Moon to find the galactic plane, but could not figure out how to read the same thing on a star chart. Back then, research material was almost as scarce as knowledgeable adults, and I always thought the planets were too far away to be seen. It turns out so did everyone else, because years later before I found out I had indeed been looking at Saturn and nobody believed me.

           [Author's note: years later, I still have that lump of fool's gold. I don't know why I capitalized the original mention, but I still use it for a paperweight. Surprising point: discovering that iron pyrite is non-magnetic.]

           I had thought I’d discovered a new planet with my 10x50 binoculars since everyone said you needed a “way bigger telescope” to see anything already known. They say mankind only learned the sun was not the center of the universe just 80 years ago. Where I grew up, some folks are probably still debating the issue.
           The planetarium staff did not prepare the people much or very well for this kind of show. Most were disappointed that you could not see all the colors shown on the photos. There was a lady ahead of me with her mother and daughter, and I was able to help them. Explain what was going on. The lady was quite good-looking. Nothing came of it.
           The planetarium staff babes were dynamite, though. Whoa, some of them just don’t know the power they have. I miss that in my background, idle summer jobs where I could meet the public, especially girl public. Every summer I had to pack off into the bush to make enough money to barely survive the winter. I could not afford an easy job in town that would have done me some good, but I’m just sore because I’m too old for the blonde that was in there today.

           [Authors note: most people look at a distant galaxy through a telescope come away wondering why they don't see all those colors like in photographs. The reason is those photos are usually extremely long exposures. Your eyes are full of chemicals that refresh what you see as light falls on them so you never get to the point were your naked eye can perceive those colors. That's right. You will never see colorful objects in deep space.]

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December 25, 2003

           Funny, I don’t feel any different. Aren’t you supposed to develop all these insights after you have a heart attack? I mean, after they moved that Spanish guy into my hospital room, I saw all those hospital commercials on the TV. The default channel had these pictures of what was supposed to happen once you took Plavix and Lipitor. Riding bikes in mugger-free parks, bumping into long-lost friends, making testimonials, these things are all supposed to happen as you get new meaning in life, see?

           On the other hand this old place looks exactly the same. Do you suppose maybe my medication is under-advertised? I think I shall pick up my prescription, get some good reading material, and go over to Denny’s on 103th to see which other losers have no family on Xmas. Maybe I'll do a Hemmingway and claim that Denny's is my family.
           I have no idea if this will last but I will record anything that increases my heart rate, within reason. (I finally gave up measuring my pulse and pressure years later. There seemed to be no correlation and my pressure, while higher than it needed to be, was still within the normal range for my age group. In the end it took nearly a year to get my core energy back.)

           Here's another story of survival. Have you forgotten that tube of brown sugar that Jaymie gave me? I did and the ants did not. Ever seen 4,500 ants in your cupboard? I have, and for those who know me, it was almost exactly that number. Teeny little ants, so nobody panic. In fact, the sugar had crystallized from moisture in the air since the package was last opened at least 13 months ago. These fellows carved out a paradise, a house of solid food. Dark, quiet and a short crawl to the kitchen water tap. The trail was behind the coffee maker, so they could disappear long before I'd see them. A quick wipe of vinegar destroyed the scent trails, and into the garbage they went, sugar castle in all.
           Then I went to “Lord of the Rings, Return of the King”. Still a kid’s fantasy, but great battle scenes with special effects. (Check notes for details.) It is nice to see the star is a real blonde. Using bleached blondes as stars sends the wrong message to women who will never become actresses, if you get my point.

           Doctor’s orders, I’ve revamped my diet, mainly to see if I can stick with it. Nothing is out of the ordinary, all my RDAs except calories are at least 20% in the safe zone every day. Mainly I switched from my favorite, fruit juices, to eating the fruit itself. I can only manage half an apple at a time because I've long since lost my taste for them. That, people, is about the only improvement I can make. Oh, and my calories average 157 over limit each day with very little variance. Even that depends on how much coffee I drink since I use Half & Half.

           [Authors note: in the end, the whole diet thing was a classic exercise in futility. The doctor advised me that I couldn't eat certain things like eggs or products made from animal organs. Lower salt, lower cholesterol, and all the usual precautions. They gave me a set of guidelines but I was already naturally doing better than most of their recommendations. I lost my taste for sweets in my early 20s, I eat fewer than six eggs per year, and I easily switched to using Carnation in my coffee.
           The reality is that despite years of a very regimented 1200 calorie per day diet of all the proper foods and far more exercise (in the form of bike riding) than anybody I know, I was unsuccessful at losing any weight and my body shape permanently changed from skinny to adipose (pear-shaped). With that, I have remained 55 pounds overweight. Again, it is not ordinary fat so I can't even take consolation that it would be even worse if I didn't diet and exercise. The last remaining speculation is that all of this was somehow hereditary.]

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December 24, 2003

           I've got to get out of here. Home it is, and the sooner the better. Whatever brought on this condition is not showing up by my staying here, and I can take my own blood pressure if need be. I’ve already read every available magazine and book on the property. The hospital routine is memorized, the coffee is weak but the meals are surprisingly good when you can get one.
           Later, I was finally discharged just before noon, I promised Julie in HR not to drive back to my car on the freeway. I am fine and drove after that both to get my huge prescription filled and to Quizno’s to let the Alaine know I cannot make Christmas dinner this year. When I say fine I don't mean perfect because you still experience a complete drain of energy. Until something like this happens a lot of us don't realize there is a certain core of core energy that you take for granted.
           It becomes exhausting even drive the car so really I be no company. This prescription shows they aren’t sure about anything. It’s five different pills to cover all the angles. It won’t be ready until tomorrow, and my rule of thumb says $1.00 per pill. Let’s see how close I figure. I also had to cancel with Jesse and the café staff, just looking at his younger sisters could have given me a heart attack. That's a joke, son.
           [Authors note: toward the end at Mount Sinai, I was getting quite disillusioned by some of the things they were doing. If some activity didn't produce an immediate profit of some kind they would cut back on it even if it meant overall effectiveness was compromised. You could tell they had learned to get away with this by making sure it was always some small thing that could be trivialized, but I'm referring to the situation when you add all those small things together.]
           Something I must mention is the workings at Mt. Sinai after three entire days to observe. My gut instinct tells me some efficiency expert went through there and reduced everything to a ‘profit center’. Unfortunately, these experts forget that certain things have to mesh together. Example, I had to call someone over to ask, why after 72 hours, I still had the IV from Hialeah Hospital in my right arm. They quickly removed it, but that’s my point – now that I’m in Mt. Sinai who is watching out for these things? Answer: nobody because Mt. Sinai doesn’t make any profit on removing old IVs. But what if I had not known to ask? These things can cause infection.
           Mt. Sinai is definitely not a retirement home. The atmosphere is that everything has been trimmed down to the tenth of a cent no matter what. The most despicable thing in my eyes was that the staff baits the patients. Not the doctors, most of them are okay, but pretty much everyone else on staff does, and the more helpless the patient the worse they do it.
           Every conversation with the staff turns into a frustrating twenty-minute meeting session, where they try to get the patient angry so they can justify walking away. I know it sounds cruel but the fact of the matter is I witnessed this procedure dozens of times every day.
The worst instance was the poor lady across the hall, for it was clear it she was in some kind of pain in pain all the time. She plainly required some major painkillers that she was not getting. She would continually cry out in pain but when it subsided a bit she would reach for that buzzer thingee. From that point it would go something like this:
           Patient rings for nurse
           Nurse: “What?”
           P: “Call me a doctor!”
           N: “If you want a doctor, why did you call for a nurse?”
           P: “Because I don’t have a button for a doctor!”
           N: “Which doctor do you want?”
           P: “It doesn’t matter, any doctor!”
           N: “Well, if you are not going to cooperate, how am I supposed….”
           This went on day after day with that poor woman, there was no way she could win. Ritual torture. The staff took turns getting her angry enough to shout so they could stomp away ‘insulted’, and of course without doing any work. It was like being in a government office. Yet nobody would dare say anything, because what might happen when you needed that nurse? Years later, the memory of that woman's pain still a chilling thought.

December 23, 2003

           Rhonda and Ernie called to check on me, so did Alba from accounts payable. This type of genuine concern is very new to me. It was one boring day in one boring hospital. They have no distractions for the patients except one television for every two people. Seems to me I would want my patients completely distracted when they were recovering. No magazines, no newspapers. Actually, I found out there was a gift shop and went AWOL. They caught me, but I smuggled in a Good Housekeeping and a Newsweek.

           What you think that's not good reading? Yes, gag, but you should see what else was there. The selection was as bad as the “Men’s Magazines” section at Walgreen’s ( “Beer, Guns & Ammo Digest”, “Mines Bigger than Yours Quarterly”, where in every last article the author has to mention his surprise that he could still manage to fit his “six foot eight” frame into some regular sized canopy. Real men stuff. Or stuffing.). But now I've figured out how the hospital routine works and I was going gag at being cooped up in that room only a TV. If you get the impression that I was already feeling fine and up and moving around, you're right.
           This is the view down the hallway from my room. That's once I got out of intensive care, so now I can scratch where it itches. I recovered quickly enough to make it into the pharmacy downstairs to buy decent magazines, such as were available.

           Later, I was given the okay to visit the gift shop, and acquired a Tom Clancy novel, “Sea of Fire”, which was pretty much like every other Tom Clancy novel. The police always get their guy even if they use blackmail to do it. As usual, Clancy is technically correct about everything, but never explains how all those people get to the right time and place without being named Ivanhoe. (That's a dig at Ivanhoe because in that book people are continually running into each other in the middle of nowhere.)
           Be careful whenever you get asked a non-medical question at Mt. Sinai. It means they are up to something. While I was drugged, I must have given some answers in Spanish. Next day, my new roommate is Spanish-speaking along with all 24 of his relations who traipse in and out all day long and need the TV far worse than I. Still, I see the hospital point. Who else was there to explain to that man that the alarm was only a fire drill? Or tell the staff that he wants to sit up higher on the bed?
           The hospital is well enough as long as you keep an eye on what’s going on. Every time my location was switched, I missed the meal. Every time, wink, nudge. That's not clear but let me explain every time they had to take my blood pressure were or anything like that they would insist I get in a wheelchair and take me to another room and then bring me back. It took me a while to catch on that this invariably happened at meal time so they could skip serving me a mail. I began to notice that Mount Sinai had dozens of deliberate policies like this to save them their nickels and dimes.

           Which reminds me, last Sunday I was supposed to get my $100 deposit back on the tent. Dang! The tent people pulled the same one on my agent as they did on me. On the phone, the price is $300, but by the time you get over there, it grows to $500. I didn't get a chance to explain this before but this Spanish guy said he had some connections and could get me a tent suitable for my needs. When I showed up the people who'd been so agreeable on the phone said they “misunderstood” that I was going to set the tent up outside. I have no idea where else they thought I would be setting up a tent.
           Suddenly the model they quoted me for $300 would, "Blow away in the wind." I pointed at big exhibits nearby and asked them if what they said was true, then why was the flea market still there? You know that look Florida people get on their face when they've just been hit with some facts? I refer to them as the "blank-stupids". Anyway, I lost my hundred dollar deposit because I was hanging around here.

           From my Quotes I Like Department: “Often wrong, but never in doubt.” The motto attributed to the Miami Police Department, the ones who like to kick in the wrong door and arrest the wrong people.

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December 22, 2003

           Hello from the Mt. Sinai Hilton. I’ve got a view of the inland waterway from room 691. I’m groggy, but it is from what they are doing, not any illness. I spent the morning in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) wondering where all the sexy TV nurses were. My guess is the nurses were wondering where all the handsome rich patients have gotten to. ICU is a glass room where you have no privacy and they make sure you don’t get more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep for any reason.
           Mind you, the staff must not get many people like me in there, meaning someone who knows his left ventricle from his right, and where his femoral artery goes. I’m on an unnecessary sedative, I was awake when they went in and knew instantly they found the blockage. I was in limbo, remembering all kinds of people poking me in the thighs, after the operation. Who knows? I was alert on waking up today. Thank goodness I brought a book to read in case I had been left in the emergency waiting room again. (It's pure coincidence, but the book was “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote.)
           I called Rhonda, chatted with Ernie. They’re going to get HR to help until I return. My guess is back next Monday, the 29th. Everything is fine medically, they are observing me to see what might have caused this attack. I have remembered everything, and unless related to before I quit smoking, I can’t help them out here. No herbal supplements, no Viagra, no nothing.
           [Authors note: the stay in intensive care had the strangest justification. They were looking for something that had caused his heart attack and there was nothing. No family history, no stress, no high cholesterol, none of the traditional causes so they were taking no chances. There was quite fine but under constant surveillance, reading my book.
           It turns out there really wasn't a blockage. The theory is that the blood vessels on the outside of my heart, well not plugged or clogged, weren't straight enough.            Although I was groggy, I was awake and watched the whole procedures on the overhead. The stent did not spread open my vessels but quite visibly straightened out what I could see was a nearly 90° turn. They very rapidly go in through an incision on your inner thigh and it's all over in a moment. The pressure is gone. I could breathe again. I was good to go.
           Then they placed me on a series of very expensive medication that I could tell had very little purpose but to cover all the bases. Nobody knew what the cause could be. Two new words entered my vocabulary, Plavix and Lipitor. That turns out to be one expensive regimen if you don't have Medicare. After a day in the classroom and a lot of head scratching over normal ratings of all my vitals, they transferred me to room 691, and that was one of the worst places I've ever experienced.]

December 21, 2003

           [Author's note: this picture is added in later in case it helps anyone. While this picture is descriptive (and I did have all the symptoms here plus more), the attack still will surprise you. For example, the symptoms don't all appear at once, and some can be so severe as to mask others.
           And they can vary depending on if you are sitting or standing. For instance, upon standing, I experienced a numb pain from my left shoulder to the tip of my left ring finger. That numbness did not completely go away for another two years. My advice is pay attention to any one symptom and call 911 if you get any two, take no chances. Because I almost "winked out".]

           Heart attack. I woke up about 4 a.m. with a burning tightness across my whole upper chest. Breathing was easy, but painful. I remembered stories about pleurisy, so I went back to sleep. Up again at 6 a.m., this time a bit of nausea, but not stomach nausea. I walked over the Hialeah Hospital. They ran a couple of tests and launched into panic mode. They shot me up with blood thinner and I was off to Mt. Sinai Hospital for surgery. I’m writing this on Christmas Day, 2003.
           How serious? They don’t seem to have a method of stating it plainly to the patient, but the closest was a Dr. Aeropagita, who told me, "Millions of people have this type of heart attack every year. Half of them (he many have said 85%) don’t even make it to the door." From what I gather, there was no specific cause, but all my “averages” were high. High cholesterol, blood pressure, stress, body temp overall.

           I now have a stent and a life-long prescription for blood thinner.

           [Authors note: years later I look back on this episode as the ONLY interruption in my life of otherwise nearly perfect health. Some of the staff at Hialeah Hospital still remember me because they could not believe I had walked there. While I knew something was seriously wrong, I never really had any point thought I was dying and I certainly never felt I was dying. But it is a pain like little else.]

           Something of particular interest was that they originally left me to die (because they thought I was uninsured). They propped me up in a stretcher and were taking my blood-pressure around once an hour, saying it was sky-high and apparently thinking it would come down on its own. Why they thought this is unknown. They did give me some pink blood thinners.
           They could not find my medical insurance records. I could see the clerk fiddling with the computer behind the reception desk and that she was coming up with nothing. My main sensation was having trouble breathing and it took me a couple of hours to get her attention. When she finally got close enough that I could talk to her I said, "Lady, will you quit looking in Florida, my medical insurance is in Texas.”
           She went back to the terminal and on the first try pulled up my Texas Blue Cross. Within moments four or five doctors and interns appeared out of nowhere, taking my pulse, strapping on monitors and taking samples. Suddenly I was precious cargo. Within a few minutes an ambulance was pulling up to transfer me to Mount Sinai. I later discovered the ambulance billed Blue Cross $8,000 for that little ride. (The joke is next time I'll rent Air Force One.)

           You've all heard of the high prices of medical care in the USA. I tell you though that there are several price tiers, and the only one you hear about is where people have insurance. The doctors, clinics, ambulances, and everybody vastly over-bills when insurance is involved. The second tier is when you have no insurance but can afford to pay something. The third tier is when you can't pay very much at all. The horror stories apply to insurance. For example, when I'm unemployed, I can go see a Canadian doctor and get a checkup for $65 (a Canadian doctor with a Montreal billing address, but located just up on Federal). If I have insurance that exact same checkup is $400 - $600.]

ADDENDUM
           This part is written years later, in 2012. December 23, 2003 changed my life. While I had tons of insurance, I did not carry long term disability wage loss. I'd never been sick, not even once. By 2009, my entire life savings and investments were gone over this heart attack. Mostly extra fees tacked on to treatments I did not request and in some cases had specifically refused. But when you are under anesthetic, it's hard to object. While I'm not saying precisely what portion I had to co-pay, the stent mentioned above carried a price tag of $77,000.

           [Author's note 2016-06-16: my co-pay was $8,500. I signed away my car for it. The final tab for that stent was $88,500.]

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December 20, 2003

           [Author's note: this post was originally missing. I was reviewing my lifelong insurance and retirement strategies when I found this empty date. I had stayed up late on this night (Saturday) composing some lyrics, feeling completely fine. I had earlier washed the Cadillac and vacuumed, a good day's work. Later, I stopped at the Spanish club on the corner to chat up some blonde lady. When I laid down on the sofa later, I did feel the slightest but unusual "gurgling" sensation in my stomach, not my chest area.

           The only precedent was during 1995 to 1999 I underwent a lengthy bout of cardiomyopathy, also known as the "Broken Heart Syndrome". If you think that is psychosomatic, think again. I had no signs of any "real" heart problems and the condition cleared up rapidly when I moved away from the Pacific. Or so I thought. While the condition is nothing like an actual heart attack, it cannot be dismissed as just a condition that weakens your entire system. It certainly leaves you more susceptible. On that count, let me tell you it is surely possible to die from a broken heart, you just wink out. Literally. And you don't care.
           That's the best non-medical description I can give of the non-physical aspects of a heart attack. Sorry, I'm no poet.]

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December 19, 2003

           Did I mention my $750.00 Xmas Bonus? ($500.00 after taxes.) I have no plans to spend it, as I was expecting like last year something after New Year’s Day. The toothpicks come to mind. I set up the office microwave for all, my gift to the department. Including the “NO POPCORN” sign. Payroll is hectic because of the short week, we are taking December 26 off to make it a really long weekend.
           Julie G. has asked me to come in on the 26th should things get behind, and I will. To them this is Christmas, to me it is December. I got to thinking whatever happened to Rusty. I scanned the Internet, and there is someone with the exact same name (the full spelling is unusual) doing something in Guantánamo Bay. I assume that would be my partner until I learn otherwise. The only oddity, is although I do not know for sure, I predicted my partner would never practiced law. He just wanted the degree. It would be an odd coincidence to find another lawyer in the world with exactly the same name.
           Something is seriously amiss. I'm a naturally small framed endomorph who naturally weighs around 155 pounds. I quit smoking for the second time in my life on October 3 this year. Many people say you'll gain weight because food tastes better but that's not the case with me. However I could tell something was wrong today. I stepped on the Toledo scale at Winn-Dixie. I cannot possibly be gaining weight so rapidly.
           No matter how you calculate it I've been putting on 4 pounds a week, all to my waistline and neck. I also stepped on the Toledo (scale) at Winn-Dixie. I cannot be gaining weight so rapidly. A pound of fat requires 6500 excess calories, and I cannot physically eat enough food to cause this. Nonetheless, the fact is I've gained over 20% bodyweight in 11 weeks and it is not ordinary fat. I look at myself up in a medical text and what I have is a triglyceride accumulation.
           I'm no further ahead with this knowledge, mind you, because the textbook says it is caused by high alcohol consumption, and I very rarely drink either. All I can report for sure is that there is some imbalance in my system that cannot be for the better.

December 18, 2003

           [Authors note: I do more shopping around Christmas than any other time of year so the reader should not be surprised that I also run into more dick-heads. I didn't have a phone number in those days, and when I responded to their ad for a microwave, the ad didn't say part of the sales price was giving them a phone number.]
           I had the BrandsMartUSA buying experience today. They weren’t going to sell me a microwave unless I told them my phone number. They said, “This is a privately owned store and we don’t have to sell anybody anything”. I said, "Yes but I drove over here in my privately owned car, with my privately owned gasoline, using my privately owned time, so if you were wise, you'll sell me the microwave and leave it at that."
           I found out that BrandsMartUSA is convinced everyone in the US has a phone number. If you try to complain you'll find they want even more private information before they'll listen. These slippery bastards have figured out a certain ratio of people won't complain when you know where they live. The reason I mention all this is because the situation had a humorous outcome. Last day I told you I'd been advising people for years to use misinformation and part of that misinformation was a fake telephone number.
           Although I cannot tell you the details of how I acquired the information, I got a pleasant but shocking surprise at how far my advice has sunk into the American system. The phone number I give out I had discovered working late one New Year's Eve on the repair desk, and this phone number has very little use other than to fill in the blanks.
           The phone is only manned one day a year, the rest of the time it just rings and rings. I won't tell you the phone number but I will tell you that the South Pole has an area code. Imagine my surprise when the salesjerk typed this number into his database and the screen lit up with dozens of pages of people named John Smith who had all done the same thing. They could only have gotten that number from reading my works!
           He kind of stood there staring at the screen not knowing what it meant, so I stated that obviously I was not the only person who thought my phone number was none of BrandsMartUSA’s business. All he could say was, “I never said you were. I never said you were.” Not a typo, he said it twice and took a breath between the sentences. This guy was at least fifty.
           [Authors note: that phone number has since been changed, but there is a generous supply of unused telephone numbers throughout Antarctica.]

December 17, 2003

           There is still no interface between Access and the new SQL server. Soon the powers are going to want the data moved back to the old server if development is stalled much longer.
           Today had nothing to recommend it so instead I'm going to tell you a little story. For years now I've been advising and teaching people how not to give out personal or private information over the Internet in any form. For over 10 years now I've been cautioning people against the danger of dealing with strangers on-line.
           Remember I predicted on-line electronic identity theft long before it actually happened, long before it became known simply as “identity theft”. The banks dropped the word “electronic” so you would falsely think the bad guys were stealing it from you and not from them. I even predicted banks would begin the scam of charging you to protect your own identity by convincing you it was somehow your fault. Some people are so gullible.
           The problem with information usually occurs when you find a web page that advertises something you want for free. They bait you deeper and deeper into the process first asking for your ZIP code, then another screen for various other information until soon you've invested three or four minutes filling out their survey. If you back out now, you've wasted your time, and they know a certain amount of people will continue. I believe, because you are paying with information, the sites should not be allowed to claim they are free.
           A good example is the eBay registration process and their PayPal system. You are led to believe PayPal is as good as anonymous cash. After you go through their 45 minute account activation procedure you realize it is not anonymous, that they have as much information about you as if you had applied for a credit card. My point is that's probably not what you had in mind when you began.
           So what I do is I teach people how to get around these type of sites. (I recently had one Polish guy took me 50 bucks for a show showing him what I'm about to tell you for nothing.) First you get an anonymous e-mail address that in no way gives out any information about yourself, not even where you live or hints at your gender. Hotmail works well. You should also have several e-mail accounts, at least one of which is a throwaway. That's the one you give to these turkey sites who demand your information or an account membership after they advertise themselves as being free.
           The significance of today's date is that you'll find huge numbers of people were born on December 17, 1965. That's my doing. I arbitrarily chose that date to plug into a field anytime a web page won't let you proceed until you supply a birthday. I've been advising hundreds of people to use that birth date for 10 years already. No hold it, 11 years. I always advise them to use Bill Gates' ZIP code (I'll let you look that one up), Richard Nixon's Social Security number (look that up to, but it ends with 0515), and your mother's maiden name was always "Daphne". You'll never guess what I use for a telephone number but you can use your imagination.
           My justification is simple. When people tell you something is free it should be free for nothing. I use the President Clinton Defense: when somebody asks you a question that is none of their business and you lie, the lie is also none of their business. When somebody is wrongly prying into your circumstances it is your duty to give them misinformation to combat a system that is fundamentally wrong. Think about it, all these places have privacy policies, yet we all still get junk mail and telemarketing calls. Who's zooming who?
           Of course, never commit fraud, but at the same time remember that when filling out most blanks on the Internet, you are not under oath. A blank space is neither false nor misleading, and if they demand you put something in that blank to proceed, you put something in that blank rather than waste your own time.
           [Author's note: readers should be advised that these notes were written at a time, when although there was nothing new about the Internet, that Internet phishing scams were just getting their stride, and in 2003 most Internet users did little more than use e-mail and surf the homepage of their ISP. My first warnings about the current crop of Internet scams were written 10 years before most people ever heard of them. So there.]
           Bill Gate’s zip is 98054.

December 16, 2003

           Non-computer types can skip today’s lesson. Bang up against the gap between what MS says and does again. Visual Basic is not a “new” language, it is retrograde, a step backward. For clarity, I learned the original languages (FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, BASIC et. al.) and propose that no computer language since 1980 is “new” unless it has, as a primary feature, the simplest possible programming structure. That means, at least, that the items the programmer enters most often should have the fewest plain keystrokes. (“KeyStokes().Num” := variant.type(“Fewest.Amt”)) does not impress me.
           The problem today is joins. Each employee record contains a soft link to a 5-digit job-site number. Attached to that number is the job name, so reports will print in ordinary English. Quirk – if that job name is blank, usually because a new job has started, the report does not print the remaining fields. It does not even print that a record is missing. I can imagine the MS people all nodding and saying “of course”, but MS people don’t work in the real world.

           This has to be programmed in Visual Basic, a language for people who really don’t have a grasp on programming. They brag that there are many ways to do the same thing, but I find that not any given one of those ways does only that thing. Thus I propose that Visual Basic is not new, and predates it’s own discovery.
           This is my description of how Visual Basic was invented. Get about ten classical programmers together. Ask them to submit a log of these three things.

           1. All the code they had which produced undesired side-effects.
           2. Good ideas they had but that could just not be made to work right.
           3. Blind alleys which they finally quit pursuing.

           Call the result a new language, and re-write the manual so all the bugs become ‘features’. Add dozens of ctrl/alt/shift key combinations, parentheses, double-quotes and change the meaning of symbols that are standard in all other languages. You will have a very good approximation of Visual Basic.
           MS themselves do not understand the process exactly, evidenced by their failure to produce instruction manuals that cover the point. They just do not want you learning it well enough to know they don’t understand it themselves.
           What I have come up with is advice. In Visual Basic, do not become concerned how what you do immediately is going to fit into the big picture. Just do what you gotta do and somebody else will patch it up for you later. Even if you realize what you are doing may cause a problem elsewhere or later, do it anyway. By considering consequences, you are thinking like what MS derides as ‘linear’, and you should become more ‘elegant’.

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December 15, 2003

           I bumped into Mike the Spike last evening, and he says the turnaround time on their ATM is only a couple of days. However, you have to submit the report manually. There is also some nonsense about having to be sponsored by a bank, but that is why we have offshore incorporation. If the corporation is really a separate legal entity why, in this country, does someone have to own it? (In a larger sense isn't one entity owning another entity also called slavery?)
           [Authors note: here's an early stab at what eventually became known as SEO, Search Engine Optimization. I was also surprised to find out how many people believed that they had to give out personal information when it was asked for in the Internet. Less than a year from today I was making extra money on the side teaching people how to get around that.]
           So, I followed up on the ATM purchase. Sure enough, in true Internet style, the worst losers seem to have their site at the top no matter what search criteria you use as a filter. So I played a little game with the first one on the list, some outfit called “atmexchange”. Did I ever get some dropout named Scott Boone all discombobulated. I got him bent right out of shape when I got his prices and published them on the Internet. (I did it because he used my inquiry to pump me for information and then quoted me a retail price for some wholesale machines.) Salesman usually tend to think you're as dumb as they are.
           My real objection is that when you are price hunting, it is a waste of time to have to scroll through sites that won’t state the price. I don’t like wasting with people or websites that won't quote a price. I’m working the other side of the street. If what you are selling needs a salesman, maybe your product isn’t so hot to begin with.
           In fact, I’m sort of working on a list of the ten worst business practices for the 21st century. Here is a good place to give the outline, because this Scott bozo was so ossified that he could not imagine a world without a salesman molesting the customer, the old “tell us a little about yourself, Bob.” You know, the old 1960s bull. Anyway, here’s my first draft of the list of DUMB and OUTDATED practices:
           1. Not stating your price up front. It's insulting to have to ask for prices when we have the Internet. Menu in the window, pal.
           2. Selling the customer his own warrantee and calling it a "Service Contract", the whole concept is disgusting. It won't last, the seller (not the manufacturer) should replace it for free.
           3. California pricing. Does anyone out there really think you're going to get eye surgery for $299 or that you could rent a car for $19.95 a day?
           4. “Required” fields on a website. Politely asking is an altogether different matter.
           5. Using rebate cards to pump customers for private information. That whole concept is sick. A rebate is a promise that has nothing to do with your birth date.
           6. Not giving cash discounts. Cash doesn't bounce. Cash customers should get a discount.
           7. Advertising anything as “free”. It should be outlawed. Lie to your mother but don't lie to me.
           8. Insulting people who won't borrow money by insinuating their “credit isn't good enough”.
           9. Tip gouging. Ever notice how many dropouts you have to deal with before somebody actually gets you a cup of coffee?
           10. 800 complaint lines. If you're the type of business that produces something that causes complaints, you should at least have the decency to listen to them in person.
           I did a thorough study on tea. At least 40 pages all told. Ask me anything about tea. English high tea and low tea depend on the height of the serving table. Orange Pekoe is named after a Dutch company, not the color of the tea. The climax of a Japanese tea ceremony is a several hour discussion of the utensils used to brew it. Now, does that sound like fun or what?

December 14, 2003

           Absolutely nothing to do, so that’s what I did. So I get to say something for the day. Governor Arnold, my man. He broke the mold, though I don’t think he went far enough. He still has a chance to make real history in this area--to tell the “Old School” to stick it where it feels good. I’ve always hated politics that dug into people’s pasts, that is, smear campaigns. Ian James, my grade ten social teacher, said to the effect the skills to get elected were too different from the skills to get any work done. I agreed. Even as a child I noticed politicians elected on certain issues, once they got into power, began to spout their own feelings rather than their voters they were sworn to represent.

           [Authors note: the rest of today's entry makes more sense if you understand that I am a very pronounced libertarian. I believe that all participation in any system should be largely voluntary and that there should be no stigma attached to those who choose not to participate and that government should only exist to regulate the "Free Rider Syndrome". However this would also mean that I oppose any artificial restrictions to participation, as well. That means, for instance, that anybody who passes Law school should be able to practice law even if they previously had a criminal record.]

           There are three types of backgrounds. Which one are you? Those with criminal records, those without, and those without because their parents stepped in and cut a deal. I’ll wager the majority of “clean” folk fit into that last category. But I’ve always wanted someone to get up there and just say, “Yes, I did all those horrible things. But I’m still the best man for the job.” I believe that anybody should be allowed to be president if elected whether or not he was born American.
           Would I vote for a groper, or a deadbeat dad, or a convicted felon? If he can convince me he’ll do a better job than the current crop of arskissers, yes people, I would vote for him. A convicted felon? Depends on the crime, you see, unlike you holier-than-thou types, I can make a value judgment. If the guy was convicted, he did his time and that is that. I see no reason why somebody who stole a car for a joyride 30 years ago can’t become a doctor, lawyer or politician. It’s called forgiveness.

           [Authors note: in the news recently some dweeby-looking broad claim to Arnold had copped a feel on her on some movie set 10 years ago. He apologized and I wish he had stuck up for himself instead. And that's also why I'm a firm believer in statutes of limitation. The time for her to speak up was when it happened, not years later when he is running for state governor.]
           There is also another item that isn't right. Who are these women trying to kid? To listen to that type of woman talk, they will try to convince you they got onto a movie set with a famous star or into the president's office by accidentally be stepping off the wrong bus. Like they had no idea about anything. Sorry, we're not buying. Plus, it's pretty easy to notice the ones who complain years later are the ones who didn't work out and are looking for a scapegoat.

           While speaking of criminal records, I do have an opinion on those as well. I support the American Constitution that says when you punish somebody for a crime, you must punish them only once, that punishment must fit the crime, and the punishment cannot be cruel and unusual. By giving someone a criminal record you are continuing to push them over and over again into the future. The Constitution expressly forbids this activity.
           I believe all records for non-violent crimes should be locked up after 7 years, and destroyed after 12. If you are stopped or questioned, unless you are convicted of the crime for which you were stopped, the entire record of the incident should be erased, including the record that you were “found innocent”. I believe if a person is not convicted, all evidence that was used against him should be destroyed to his satisfaction so it cannot ever be reused again.
           Furthermore, all records of arrest or investigation should be destroyed unless there is a related conviction. I mean only criminal records should be kept 12 years all other police noncriminal records should be destroyed immediately. It has become too well known that the term “found innocent” is a code used by the authorities to tip each other off that the suspect has previously gotten off on a technicality. Yes I know somebody will always say that under such a system I propose, that our police system would work as it does now, to which I replied you are exactly right.

           [Authors note: it is kind of curious that the ACLU is just now beginning to pick up on the ”one-time usage” records that I've been advocating most of my life. That is, whenever you give somebody information, they only have the right to use it once for the purpose which they declared, and then they have to destroy the information. If they want to use it again they must ask you again. Strange how these public watchdogs take decades to come up with a concept I had as a child.
           To prove my point, there was a recent situation where an entire town in England were studied for DNA. These samples showed that the husbands were not the biological father for 30% of their children. When the police found out the study was being terminated over this fact they immediately seized all the DNA records and kept them on file. That's precisely the kind of thing I'm against, where people who've done nothing wrong don't have a criminal record but they now have a police record. You can pretty well imagine what I think of credit reports.]

           Picture added 2023 for color. The pictures are random but were taken in 2003. These are crab boats in the Keys, probably last March.

December 13, 2003

           [Authors note: to make the following passage clear I should point out that every friend I've had in Florida who registered a vehicle here or registered to vote here became the victim of some unpopular process in the system. A good example was a guy who registered to vote and didn't realize he was also registering for the draft. JP registered his truck and got a notice for jury duty. My position is not that the draft or jury duty or wrong, but that tricking people into signing up for these things is not right. I did later find out that you cannot register a vehicle in Florida unless you have Florida ID. So that sucks, in that I don't believe anybody has a right to dictate what an American is allowed to own if the property itself is a legal entity.]

           I suspect I may have to register the station wagon in Florida. This is not good, because they may require a driver’s license to do so. I notice thirty years ago the police leave you alone the further away your license plates read. That is so long, that I would probably continue to do this no matter what the fine for not complying. I have just seen too many people put through the gears for no good reason.

           It also doesn't take a genius to spot that the police here don't bother tourists. Therefore, to be left alone, one should pretend to be a tourist for as long as possible. I have always maintained that in this day and age privacy is a very valuable asset. When you give people a choice between protecting their assets or obeying the law, you can’t complain when they choose the former. For the self-righteous among you, Washington State has a very good system. You can be a legal resident of the state and not live there. A residence can be “the place from which you apply for any government license.”


           [Authors note: at the point the next paragraph was written I had begun to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars in investments and insurances. This tends to happen when I stay too long at one job. I've also seen how people who get themselves into that situation too deeply often become the natural first target for shysters, con artists, and government inspectors. All of us know people who been sued simply because somebody found out they were rich. In the end, I lost my job and decided not to replace it. This happened before I had the incentive to place assets overseas.]

           Thus, I am really anxious to get that phone number in Belize. The final step to asset protection is always offshore incorporation. Panama is a real haven, but somehow it is just too far away for me, and I don’t know anyone there. It’s also a long drive. Belize has all the plusses. Even if some major corporation didn’t buy up the very piece of land I had my eye on. [Long Caye]

           [Author’s note: in the end I did not choose Belize, but I may travel there for a look. I was getting too many conflicted messages about the lifestyle there.]

           I finished reading “Churchill, the Struggle for Survival”. It wasn’t about the war, it was a book by his doctor. Cute. A curious work, as the author was a doctor who originally wanted to write, became a doctor and eventually had to write because he needed the money. Only in England. Maybe I shouldn’t say that because look at all the American lawyers to become authors. You’ve been warned, it is about Churchill’s survival, not the Free World.


           This picture was added in 2023 to give some color to this post. It may be a repeat, but it was taken in 2003 on a trip to the Everglades.

December 12, 2003

           I don’t like Bill Gates. He has capitalized on the Big Lie by acquiring a reputation of being a self-made millionaire by roundabout [repeatedly] denying that it's true. William Henry Gates, III fails, in my opinion, go on TV often enough and stress to people that he is NOT a self-made millionaire. He was born a millionaire, so you damn well better stay in school. So I don't just mean that I dislike his business (because I actually hate Microsoft) but I also personally dislike Bill Gates, even though don't really know him. He presents himself as a role model when in fact he is no such thing.
           (Somebody remind me of who it was that said turning a hundred dollars into two hundred is hard work, but turning one million into two million is inevitable.) Bill is below average academically and probably had to drop out of college. (The rumor is that his parents yanked him out to avoid the embarrassment of being kicked out.) I heard his mother was on the IBM Board of Directors, the first company that chose DOS, an item too often left out of his corporate life story. Is Bill really that rich? Well, they say if he had to pay $1 liability for every time his operating system crashed, he would be broke in less than six months. Call him rich if you want.
           MS wiped out my P81 file again. I will never figure out how MS knows that is my most important file. MS knows to wait until just before I do my backups to suddenly make the file read-only, and cause a system error if I try to copy it. That’s about six times since the file began in 2001. Only that file, and that is what brought on my happy thoughts of Bill Gates this cold winter day in 2003.

           Interesting. The Christmas gift from the office this year was no longer a voucher. It is a credit card with a magnetic strip and is charged for the gift amount. I used mine to buy a microwave for the office so we don’t have to walk all the way downstairs. Kudos to Westinghouse, who package their microwaves with the glass turntable on top, in a Styrofoam case with a hidden notch holding the electrical plug end. So that when you go to lift out the Styrofoam, the plug snags and the glass breaks. A round of applause for Westinghouse!
           The local library was actually quiet today, considering it is in the heart of Hialeah. I browsed through some twenty books, topics like ocean coastlines, Amish waterwheels, paper aircraft wing design, trick wooden toys, types of robot wheel systems, you know, the average stuff of any reasonably curious man. This is in addition to my regular reading.
           This week I finally finished Crighton’s “The Great Train Robbery”. The same Crighton who wrote "Jurassic Park", "The Andromeda Strain", and "Airframe", all of which I've read.) I've been reading this for about a month because I was fascinated by the old English theory that the rich upper classes couldn't become criminals. Breaking the law was a disease or condition of the poor. Trust the English to cook up that kind of notion.
           I love the research he did, but he does not go far enough into it to amuse the modern reader. Without realizing it he kind of describes the evolutionary progression of police departments, and why in the long run police departments can never work right. He describes how the London police quickly became as corrupt as the criminals, but does not point out that America is around 50 years behind England on this one. The process of corruption is still only half completed on this side of the pond.

          [Author's note 2015-12-12: how's this post for an accurate prediction of things to come? The police, corrupt? Who would even think such a thing. They've repeatedly investigated themselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing. Whatsoever.

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December 11, 2003

           Progress on the radio. (I actually built a working radio using chocolate bar wrappers, paper clips and small office supplies in my desk drawer.) I got it to resonate (tank) today. Some may say, no big deal. It is a big deal because I'm not assembling a Crystal Radio Kit here--a friend of mine did that kind of thing and all he was ever got good at was assembling kits. The idea was to understand the principle of each component, and to make a working model before replacing anything with a store-bought piece.
           My terminology may not be exact, but nothing in the radio field really is, as I found out. By tank, I mean the combination of capacitor and coil is resonating on strong local stations. The proper size capacitor, in my terms, is two sheets of aluminum foil 13x12”. I predict several months before I can “tune” this tank circuit, and longer before I can build a diode.

           [Author’s note: years later (2008) I found somebody had written a book on building things from office supplies, but they were the less techno-minded. You know, the bead curtain out of paper clips. This is also one of the rare instances that I let on I can do my whole day's office work by mid-morning, and the rest is spare time. Shhh, don't tell anybody.]

           The Christmas bonuses came out this week, so I stopped in at the Diamond for happy hour, I get there late so everyone is already lit. There was a blonde, about 40, in a black pantsuit. Am I the only one who remembers pantsuits, you know, 1960s, hippie chicks? The one-zipper model that she would have to practically strip off to take a pee? I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but quickly picked up she must be a regular there. I don’t do regulars. So I commenced to cipherin’. I am calculating the possibility of putting an ATM at the office.
           Some things are easy to find out. The average person takes $40 out each transaction. They do this three times a week, and often impulse buy with the first $5 to $10. There are (according to a database I happen to know a lot about), an average of 84 persons in the office each day. The nearest ATMs anyone would travel to are at least, time-wise, a dollar away. That’s Galloway, down to 36th, or all the way to Doral. I know that every time we have an office lunch, somebody is late because they have to stop for cash. I understand the law changed in 1996 that anyone can own an ATM. Like vending machines, I learned before I was 20, all the good locations are gone and the ads in the paper are scams.

           Some things are not easy. One example is dealing with the dopeheads who sell ATMs. They are a sly and crooked bunch. The information I need is both the fixed and variable operating costs. Each place I contact will only give one figure or the other, depending on how they plan to bait you. I found reconditioned machines for as little as $3500, considerably down from the $14,000 when I last looked six years ago. Other places quote a “system” with 61 payments of $225. Coincidence? The truth must lie somewhere between. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the blonde, patience already. I'll get back to her.
           The two critical pieces I need are, what is the cost of using the ATM system? You know, Cirrus, Star, Plus. There seems to be some price-fixing here. What? Oh, of course, I meant “volume discounts”, heaven forbid I would say "price-fixing". The other item is turnaround time. I need to know exactly how long after the cash is dispensed from my machine until it is transferred to my account along with the usage fee. I need to know how soon I can use it to restock machine so that I can calculate my float. I plan to do this on a daily basis, at least at first. If it is like fifteen days, I just don’t have the cash to stock the machine. Credit is a last resort, but like Churchill once said, I’m not asking for gold, I’m asking for steel.

           [Author's note: in the end I didn't place the ATM because I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone. But I also know that a good used vending machine of any kind shouldn't cost more than that around six hundred bucks. I was to find out years later I was right about that when I was called out to fix a network of these machines. Florida is so full of con artists.]

           The blonde finally came over and asked if she could borrow my ‘expertise’. Hmm, the trained observer is already having fun with this one. Forget the fact that I may have been the only man she’s seen in 20 years who didn’t hit on her, that I was the only person in the joint getting anything done. Maybe it was obvious that I was thinking deeply, although and but then, how would she know?
           Expertise my eye. Yet I would have probably gone through with it except for one factor. There's a waitress who works there named Dolly whose husband is a regular. The guy is a total write off jerk face. And the blonde was on a first name basis with him. 40-year-old blondes in pantsuits don't hit on guys like me, as I don't look or act like a millionaire and looking intelligent counts for nothing around here. I just had to test if this was a setup, so I replied I’d forgotten my expertise in the trunk of my car.
           AaainnKkkk! Wrong answer. She left. Fine, she wouldn’t last ten minutes in my world with that kind of attitude. So, I didn’t score. But neither did she, and after 40, it’s a buyer’s market, ladies. I stress again and again if I could give the women of the world any useful advice it would be to be extremely careful who you are even seen talking to. Real men don't care for women who are too popular.

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