March 6, 2004

           It’s covered elsewhere, but WAMU stole my morning again. They just cannot do anything right over a stretch of even a few weeks without screwing something up, and passing the cost on to you. I planned my morning to take money out of the ATM, pay the car repair bill, and read a good book. Washington Mutual, by closing down a branch but leaving the sign up and the lights on, with a little sticker in the window that the next branch was thirty blocks away, where the ATMs were not yet working, turned the ten minutes into a major 3 hour long drive. Using up time, gasoline, and driving twenty miles through Miami weekend traffic. But, I had to make a deposit, so away it goes. Had to stop and use another expensive ATM, which in turn lowered my WAMU balance below the no-fee threshold, and stop twice to let the car cool down. You get the idea. WAMU is like that kid brother with piss in his water pistol.
           The only high point was there was another moron standing outside the WAMU branch, and I got to tell him off. He was totally plastic, wearing a Sear’s catalog suit. He was greeting people for the grand opening. I politely informed he would have been of better use at the other end of the parking lot telling folks the ATMs were down before they parked their cars and walked all the way over. He said it wasn’t his job—wrong answer. I told him he was a moron. He feebly remarked that the “Bank was worth trillions”, so how could they hire only morons? I informed him so did MacDonald’s, and their morons were far younger and better looking.
           It was mid-afternoon by the time I got to El Mago. There is something incredible about finding an honest mechanic in this town. I have one, named Manuel. The symptoms of that fuel pump were so distinct, he could have charged me and I never would have known. Instead, he found it was a tiny clip in the ignition area that was not grounding, thus stopping the fuel injection. Same net effect, but the repair was only $125.00. That puts Plan 81 back on track, so I tipped him twenty and went over to JPs. He wasn’t home, so I stopped in at an art store on US-1. Full of neat shit or what! All kinds of handy little doodads and gear. I’d spent another twenty just browsing, and there was even a kid there who knew I was the toothpick man. I learned that there are precut wood pieces that artists use to make frames that they stretch the canvas over, I did not know that before. I learned about acid-free glue, miniature hand tools, and got a ton of ideas for the toothpicks.
           Then I finally found Deli Lane. Unlike the directions I had been given, it is not on US-1. It is not visible from the main roads. It is not a right turn, but more of a veer off to the right into a weird area full of stop signs and police cars watching them, just like Montana. There’s more. It is not a deli, and does not have a sign saying Deli Lane that I could see. It also faces east, so you can’t really see it until you have already driven past it, and what you can see is heavily camouflaged by tree branches. It looks like a sidewalk café, but the sign says “Tavern”. Jaime was not on duty, a few inquiries showed that normally she would have been but is on suspension. Yes, that would be Jaime.
           Then I drove over to the mansion. JP was painting up a ladder, a few feet at a time. That is painstaking work. Ha: Paint-staking. Anyway, he is also taking down and repairing the shutters so that is why it is taking so long. I’ve painted bigger houses myself in a week. Next Saturday we are planning to get together and finish the job, if he’d quit worrying about my heart already. He does not believe I can tell if there is a problem, and his theory is that quitting smoking causes heart attacks. He may have a point, but I think it is lack of exercise. As far as construction goes, a paintbrush is not that heavy. He knocked off work, I was still thinking is was hours earlier than it was, thanks to the bank. We went over tto the Winn-Dixie across from Deli Lane. I bought a tooth brightening-product, cost me fifteen bucks. [It didn’t work.]
           JP is one of the slower shoppers. My car needed a deep clean, so I bought paper towels and did a section of the car at a time in the parking lot, waiting. It must have been over an hour, because by the time he came out, I had done the entire car, inside and out by hand. Mind you, he spent fifty bucks, so that takes time. Be warned other shoppers, JP is not above “sampling” things left in the open, like strange vegetables and such. He enjoys shopping like I do, often just to see what is new. He bought some Icehouse beer, which tasted more like yeasty ale, and we packed everything back to his place. Talking business, broads and watching cop shows on TV. It is plain, getting pulled over in a car is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and makes up the bulk of the television programming. The police have plainly got laws passed that allow them to push people around more from a car check than in other scenarios. [Author’s note: remember I am West Coast, where such stops are fewer than in Miami.]
           On almost every car stop, the police were able to trick the people into saying something incriminating, or got them arrested. I mean, are people stupid? Once those cuffs come out, you shut up. The worst and most obvious trick was the police asking you incriminating questions that were none of their business, that you probably would never answer except when surrounded by armed men at a roadside. What’s your buddy do for a living? Well, that is something you should ask him, not me. Another sad police line, “You’re not being honest with me.” Well, quit asking questions that are not your business. I would tell a judge whether I had been arrested before, but never a policeman. It is not his concern. We had grand sport watching all those stupid people talk themselves into jail. I always get Alzheimer’s when questioned by police, but never lie. They get anal about that.
           JP made steaks and coffee, he used to work in a restaurant for years, you know. Great cook but makes lousy coffee. We couldn’t find a Saturday night movie. I wanted to go chase women, but he still remembers the women who were checking us out at the bookstore back in, January was it? True, JP, but the bookstore thing is something you plan a week in advance and do in the morning. Can’t hop over there at eleven on Saturday night. Plus, I suspect all women who go to bookstores to meet men are already in an unsatisfactory relationship, not like they left the bum and are on their own looking for a new man. You are going to get caught in a crossfire dating women who do things like that.
           My bookstore logistics go back decades, it is not the woman you meet, it’s when you hold back and meet her friends. (This also, somehow, makes you a gentleman.) Is that ethical? Entirely, if you have not done anything with the first woman, made no promises, and clearly understand the game being played. She is out there looking for someone to rescue her, I am looking for someone smart enough not to need rescuing in the first place. She will not be able to resist telling her friends she has “met someone”, ensuring they will be all the more receptive by the time peer pressure forces her to bring you along somewhere. There is no honor among women under this circumstance, and that is not your fault. [Author’s note: I am describing my old tactic of not messing around with older women until after you have met their friends. It works for me. If they are babes, however, that is a different matter all together.]
           My one failure at it was Sharon from the phone company. She had played the game so long, that she stretched the never meet anyone else stage out indefinitely (over a year). This is the gal who would even rip out advertisements in magazines on her coffee table if they showed pictures of younger women. She was fanatical on that point, and I didn’t want to know why. Good thing I didn't stick around.

March 5, 2004

           What’s this that the original charges against Martha Stewart have been dropped, but not the obstruction of justice? When a person has to defend themselves against false charges, what is really being obstructed, I ask. Justice is not blocked when it was somewhere it did not belong in the first place. Everyone one of us with an imperfect memory is now a step closer to the prison cell.
           [Author’s note: this was a comment on the distorted practice of “questioning” suspects. If you don’t respond, you are presumed guilty of hiding something. If you do respond, it is used against you. If you give partial answers, you are dubbed a liar. It is a sad situation for a modern society.]
           The database [progress] went okay, however. The milestone is that I was able to do the entire new set of links in my head, and that only took thirty years to arrive. There are three sets of records, all suffering the same problem of at least two kinds of information on each of the one-page forms. No wonder they arrived in a three month old pile. Without going too deep into it, no matter how many courses a student takes, he receives one monthly attendance rating. Isn’t is twice as easy to attend one course than two? What about the courses that are more than a month long? Somebody did not think it through.

           [The following refers to a database I developed to track employee training to produce a report that never seemed to get done at site level.] So I spent the day entering the last entire semester of data. The results will be very impressive, not to mention rapid. That is mainly because the core tables are there to link it all up. This entire process is, I suspect, worth a fortune in saved effort, but also in the new capabilities. Things got behind, I see, over the sheer volume of work that had to be done manually to produce simple reports, such as an OTJ (On the Job) training report. Just add up the hours? Not so fast, you haven’t seen the forms. The school must know there is a huge problem, for their report cards contain a whole section for tracking and asking for these same missing reports. It would seem the school took it for granted the problem was unfixable, an odd behavior for a school if you as me. Certainly, no person in that academy ever solved the problem.
           The garage didn’t work on my car. The new management is strange and do not let the mechanics go ahead as before, especially with their long-term customers. I called there, and even asked Dyami for a ride over, because she works late like I do. That’s another story, but I would normally never ask her for a favor because she turns it into a crippling cause, always assuming you are wrong if you don’t do things like she does. She must have asked me five times if I’d called the garage yet. Lady, I call them the correct number of times, don’t worry about it, I just asked you for a lift over there. Dyami is a divorce looking for a place to happen. [Dyami is a lady from work who lived near El Mago, where my car was being repaired.]

           Now the Internet business investigation is on hold. The only thing certain is that they are out there to steal as much of your money as they can before you wise up. Unless you approach it very slowly and obliquely, they are a dangerous crowd. The scams are heavily layered, seeking to take you for a few hundred dollars at a time without every stating the true price or the final step. Like a telephone bill, they try to force you into their way of thinking about the costs, so if you disagree it can only be because you don’t yet understand. When studying the beast, don’t give them your real name, for as soon as you ask a dumb question, every place you go for a second opinion has already been tipped off. It’s like a small town with only two used car lots, owned by twin brothers.
           [No, I didn’t discover the Internet web page rip-offs. I was just among the first to write it down.]

           I thumbed through a woman’s magazine in the checkout line. Roughly 75% ads for products to make them more beautiful, at least in their own minds. I notice this new foundation garment meant to shape over midsection rolls of fat. It must hurt terribly. All striving toward that single goal, a Barbie doll look in her mid-twenties. The implication is that this will assure her of a steady stream of world-class bachelors begging to marry her. Not to pick her up on Saturday night (as is the usual case), but to marry her, the magazine assures.
           I recently read that the real Barbie is dropping Ken after 43 years of dating. The issue being avoided by Mattel is that a married Barbie would not sell. (The company blames Ken’s “inability” to make a commitment.) Ask yourself, why would a married Barbie just not sell? If what women say about themselves is true, there would be a stop at nothing demand for a married Barbie. Either way, no mercy from me, I see nothing wrong with natural wholesome good looks. It is Nature’s way of keeping score. Ugly people don’t breed less, it is still supply and demand.

           The article on Barbie perked my interest because it was a result of reading another article on the Internet yesterday morning. The article was about why some men never marry. It was obviously written by a spurned woman. Such women perceive unwillingness as incapacity; you get that a lot among the jilted. She failed to understand that some men have higher standards (in wives than they do in girlfriends), and the process of selection takes longer. Where did that women, who was busy waxing her legs, shaving her underarms, plucking her eyebrows, dying her roots, painting her nails and massaging her cellulite ever find time to write about men? It’s a mystery for the ages.

March 4, 2004

           [Author's note: image added later. Peacekeeper missile test firing, Kwajalein Atoll, 2004.]

           Charlie and Tim got a close look at some of the new database output this morning. I would say it passed with full honors. Sometime in the past, Charlie must have asked for some information. That’s because he’s referred to it, but I cannot recall what it was. To me, it was just another data dump. He was impressed by the fact it was normalized, that he could sort and filter the list. These are standards for me, but it is a little scary that Charlie is head of IT and never heard of it until I spoke up. He is therefore a potential enemy by his own lack of progress. Such people hate progress.

           [Author's note 2016-03-04: I became aware that Charlie was a total jealous dickhead over how my databases outperformed his best work. Don't assume I was at fault, I volunteered to show him the workings so he could do it himself. But some people are born pricks and he was eventually fired for his inability to do much, really. That was after I left the company. He had it coming. He became an outspoken critic of my database, but that merely tips us off how stupid he is by comparison.]

           I began entering the apprenticeship records, looks like three tables, plus lookups. I do my best work when slightly distracted, and I’ve found something new (for me). It’s a game in Yahoo! called Word Racer. You get a series of four ever-larger grids of letters and race the clock to find as many words as possible before any other player gets them. It gets tough, and uses a dictionary like I’ve never seen, with words like pht, lek, tep, dis but not tech or leeds. My highest scoring word to date: hailstorms with two bonus letters (twice the word score) for 400 points. Players, can you figure out which grid and how? Yes, I play on company time when programming gets a little intense and I need the break.

           After work I failed to get through to Manuel, but I know it was the fuel pump on the Caddy, now the fourth pump. It’s $250, so cancel the car trip this weekend. The price of the original fuel pump replacement was $140, now it is nearly double. I called JP to let him know the weekend is not going to happen, and he is down sick with the flu. Sounds bad. On a whim, I drove over to the Hurricane Inn, what’s that nice little town north of the airport, and got into some serious NTN trivia. Naturally, the locals all being sports fans, never stood a chance on questions about Russian jets, economics or glaciers. I did get invited to join the Tuesday club, but did not commit. It was a fat lady at least my age asking, and that doesn’t work for me. I may give it a try, but one could tell they were seeking the “trick” I was using, unable to believe that anyone could be smart enough to walk in and win against them all.

           I finally got through to the doctor for my test results, and the soonest opening was the 24th. I cannot keep taking all these pills full strength until then. I’ll call back again, since he did say he was taking me off them in a few weeks over a month ago. To try something new, I bought this tea latte, it’s a powdered tea mix full of carbs and sugar. I remember, I bought something like this many decades ago, and didn’t care for it then, either. It was worth a shot, because it would sell for two bucks in a shop, I think.
           Also of note, every other city except Miami, since the middle of the last century, has perfected the technique of smoothly paving around manhole covers. Miami not only refuses to learn that art, but they plan the streets so the covers are not in the center or edge, but right on the tire travel paths.

March 3, 2004

           I see the signs, Calle Ocho. I’ve been meaning to get over there ever since I got to Miami. Can’t remember why I did not go last year. The newsreels look like carnival in Rio, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, except it is real people and not faggots in drag.            Thousands of people. JZ says his sisters go every year, and report things like young women taking their clothes off. (Well, if his sister says so, we will have to check it out.) It must happen for his sisters to mention it. The parking won’t be a problem, because if we are within taxi distance whether we park at home, his place or Quizno’s. He doesn’t work Sundays so I’ll bring up the plan next time we need something to do. Cally Ocho means “Eighth Street” and that is 8th SW in Miami. They block off the street and make a free for all.

           JP has mentioned it is really a Latin festival with roots rather than just another street party. Good, we could both use some Spanish practice. The fact that it is plainly so much livelier than South Beach means there have got to be tourist women there. I know, at my age I am dreaming, but dating over forty is a lot like playing the stock market. You have to be out there over the long term before you can get a windfall. Too many people think they can do nothing and suddenly win. I know JP wants to meet some decent women, but thinks he doesn’t know how, he does not know they are not really out there. Seriously, would you date a fifty-year old woman if you had any other choice?
           The Caddy is over at the shop. The tradition of my home state of issuing both a front and rear license plate has saved me a fortune in tows and cab fares over the years. This time is no different. It gives me plenty of time to read, and I am returning to that horrid thousand page Queue manual for the fifth or sixth time, the one written by that egghead Jennings. He jumps all over the place, refuses to use practical examples, over-dwells on stuff you never really use, and has no clue how to talk to a beginner.

           Still, once you do a lot of trial and error for which you do not need him, and go back and translate what he is saying into English, parts of it make sense. That’s not a compliment, because he is marketing these books to beginners who would never have that kind of patience. Jennings will casually use a phrase that requires months or years of academic struggle, and assume you know what he means. Example: normalization. Every database manual should have the first hundred pages on that topic alone. Jennings mentions it once in chapter five, one sentence stating it is a good idea, in an offhanded way.
           I’m falling for a TV ad campaign. Indirectly, but still. A few of my friends have said these new strips and pastes for whitening teeth work well. Further, they report it is true that it makes you look younger, in some cases up to ten years. The prices were throwing me, ranging from $14 to $40. A quick exam of the labels show they are all about the same thing. The active ingredient is hydrogen peroxide, so you are really bleaching your tooth enamel. My teeth have always been dingy, and not bright, even when seeing the best dentists that money can buy. I think you cannot bleach your teeth without feeling pain, but I intend to give it a try. The one that says your teeth get “seven shades brighter” what ever the hell that means.

           Rhonda asked me why I don’t switch to contact lenses as well. Can’t, I tried that for years. Soft contacts, extended wear, all of them made my eyes itchy and uncomfortable. They never fit so I could not tell they were there. They all gave me night halos. I could not, as they claimed, sleep with them in. This dried out my eyeballs, and no way was I going to use eyedrops every morning. I also never perfected the trick of putting them in without a mirror, and it became a hassle whenever I traveled. Remember the two Norwegian gals in Venezuela who had to keep their contacts in until I got a driver from 300 miles away to find them a pharmacy open that national long weekend? Oh, don’t worry, they made it worth my while.
           No eyedrops for me. That is some kind of chemical solution, and your eyes are telling you not to just cover things up. Eyes are kind of important to me, like. Same reason I rarely use nose drops. Except nose drops don’t work, I just keep thinking the new brands might have something, but neither sprays nor nasal pills can clear my clogged sinuses when I get something. I have to live it through.

           Last for today, I must do my taxes this weekend. Quotas are far below minimums in some areas, such as work equity. I wonder what Frank would have said if he knew I had $4,000 equity in the toothpicks, rather than the $2,000 he thinks was there. Before you say not honest, remember that Frank could and often did cost problems that cost up the amount of money he thought you had. Even now, there are things wrong with the station wagon that I am only discovering when I have to use them. Many of them classical Frank problems, like forcing plastic parts past their design limits to “see if they can take it”, and that includes the plastic ignition on the Taurus. Honesty has to be informed, and Frank himself did not say he had this problem, and it could be possible he does not even know it is a problem.
           [Author’s note: this is about retirement money, and should be interpreted as planning years ahead rather than doing any calculation on the numbers. I plan all my investments well into the future.] Now, I could easily switch that equity into bonds or something, because it is sitting useless. But Plan 81 is sworn not to do that. No former equity unless it is found money. I know that twenty grand is doing nothing, losing to inflation, and there is no way I could pretend I found it. I would like to get it into a pension plan, indirectly by using my 20% cap on wages, but that could take years. Sorry for the misnomer, there are no real pension plans left, rather I now have a far less reliable 401(k) plan.

March 1, 2004

           It’s kind of lonely at the top. That remark is the result of a discovery that the database used by the State of Florida is not normalized. And nowhere near as developed as “ours". The further inquiries into a web site business continue, and I have contacted Marlene (friend of Tony & Rhonda) for some pricings. (This refers to asking around for prices real people paid to get their Internet business running, not the $499 “Web Page” specials advertised on telephone poles. It is difficult to get an answer due to "layering" of the required protocols.) My research on Internet business took me way off base today.

           Database info, I know you were just waiting. The swing is right back to the un-normalized structure developed by Gus. Nobody wants to criticize. Yet, I know Gus is very aware of the problem. (This confusing paragraph refers to politics, not database. My small, slick database is universally useful, but my predecessor, Gus, designed a spidery system for purchases. Certain people are insisting that before my system is adopted, it must be integrated with the other. This would bog my work down to their level, but it would prevent them from admitting they have a bad system.) It seems they want to migrate my little set of [normalized] tables onto the SQL server first, let me be the sacrifice. Has anyone here made a commitment? Its politics but any change to Gus’s system is a sacred no-no, I am the only one stressing his data tables have to be re-done.

           [Author’s note 2022: this photo was added to give this page more color. It shows Paris Hilton from back when she was a blonde. By 2022 she is less than half as blonde and more than double the thigh size.]

           Paul is talking about putting some MicroSoft engine on my desktop, every method of declaring me the dbo (database owner) doesn’t work with the backend on the SQL server. So it may be up to me to figure out how these things interface, and if so, that could get expensive one way or the other. Truly, I would like to do that, but they are hinting of linking EmpMaster and Forefront [two local applications with many unused features]. For now, I say there ain’t nobody that smart, and if there is ask him, what he’s doing in Florida. The goal here seems to be to get the sites doing their own ordering. Using Gus’s 47 tables and hieroglyphic queries.
           Investigating deeper into Internet business, I see that most web based businesses (as opposed to business which merely has an information page) took over where mail-order left off. Mostly drop shippers, mostly crooks selling drop ship dreams. Tom Bosely plugs SMC, Specialty Merchandise Corporation, saying “get started” for $25.00. Yes, get started losing your money, because other sources confirm you will spend close to $3,000 before you can sell anything. More rumor says that the site you get can only sell things from the SMC catalog.

           [Author's note 2021: I smelled a rat alright, it turns out SMC was a scam. One of the first on-line operations to overcharge you for a cut and past Web Page, and when you quit because of no sales, they continued to deduct monthly fees from your bank account. I have never put any banking information on line, I saw that one coming. When I want to know my balance, I look it up on the office computer, it has all potential Internet ports plugged with crazy glue.]

           There seem to be two ways to go. One is a customized site with all kinds of bells and whistles. The other is join something called an “Internet Mall”, where all the pages have a generic look. In the first case, they say customized sites exist by the thousands, and just sit there. Nobody lands on them except by mistake, and the only people who made money were the developers. The mall idea is that people arrive there ready to buy, but competition is fierce and profits trimmed to the marrow.
           [To relax] I read about the Plain of Jars, that huge field in North Vietnam full of hollow stones they think were some religion. It's some big deal locally, but you can have it.

           [Author's note 2020: Posts like this that read in a "clipped" fashion invariably are redacted from calendar scribbles. There is no intent to sound technical, rather that is the material that usually got recorded.]