Everything is green, but a luscious west coast green. Not the anemic Florida green. This was a late afternoon party over at Marion’s place [near the mountains]. The long shadows say late evening, actually this photo is a couple years old. That’s two of her boys and I think that was the current husband, Bruce. He was fascinated by my trips to South America, mainly because of all the women a white guy could get over there. He was a hundred percent right about that.
A little breakthrough on the database side of things. Remember that annoying problem that the drop-down lists would not display wider than the bound field? The answer was a property of lookup lists. Practically nothing can be done in isolation with MicroSoft, since everything depends on something else they didn't specify. It reminds me of Ken Sanchuk, “Well, if you won’t let me drive your car, why should I pay my half of the rent?” Um, Ken, maybe because we agreed on rent long before you found out I drove a Cadillac. What? Oh, I see, I wasn’t being up front [about my property] with you. I'll try to do better by you in the future.
[Author's note: I was developing an employee paycheck tracking database. The mention of "isolation" refers to the MicroSoft habit of design, where a change in one parameter throws off another, creating a constant runaround for the person trying to get things done. That's how good old Ken ran things. If you smoke, don't even go halves on a pack of cigarettes with that guy. To him, that would just be a foot in the door to the remainder of your possessions.]
On that note, this new fast food advertising gets to me--they call it a special but eliminate the drink. Example, the three meals under three dollars at Burger King. Apparently nobody in their entire food industry remembers that most people have a drink with their meals. Other than water, which causes an extra wait when you ask for it, therefore even water is not free, the drink costs another dollar, all of which is taxable. Which comes out to $4.50, which is one hell of a lot different than under three dollars.
Now I don’t mind the price, what bothers me is that they think fancy themselves clever. I once heard one of their people explain why they do this which amounted to saying because everybody else is doing this. But it was along the same lines as car rental ads and why shipping and handling is always extra. By unbundling the costs, they can advertise a lower price for the base. Like, does anyone really believe you can rent a car in New York City for $19.95 a day?
Now, how about my municipal bond fund? We are going on four or five tries with the change of address. The problem seems to be I live on 41st Street. In their system this comes out as "41 ST ST", and I don't get my mail. They key it in without reading back for confirmation. I figure (with the labor of reissuing the forms) it’s cost them over $50 so far. I’d much rather they put all that wasted money into my account. I’ll try again this week, since they may be getting all this from my new broker (Peter Zachary at First Miami Securities), who is even more loathe to do any real work. (My last broker was great, but fell ill.) (And then died.)
I got a reply from the “other” property I inquired about in Belize. They claim part of the subdivision is almost 25 feet above sea level, but only in response to one of my more pointed questions. Hmmm, nothing on the coast is has that much elevation. The sand bar they're selling is one inch above high tide. Who's zoomin' who?
There is a memorial service for Maggie next Wednesday, but alas I cannot travel so far for even so close a reason. Wallace will be fine.
I started reading "The Glory", by Herman Wouk, who is plain running out of wars and scraping bottom with his plots anyway. I’m reading because I know the Jews (yes, yes, the Israelis) most definitely kicked Ay-rab butt back in ’67 and Wouk is good at describing action. He has a wonderfully "western" concept of warfare.
[Author's note 2016-02-22: years later it came to light what was tacitly understood by all students of warfare. That is, the US lent Israel stupendous amounts of strategic aid (satellite intelligence, etc.) to win the Six Day War. Then, later, supplied free tactical aid (jet parts, ammunition) to consolidate the "victories". It was one of many instances that revealed the Jewish "over-representation" in American politics. We've seen this before and we'll see it again. Why fight wars when you can cajole the western democracies into doing it for you?]
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