[Author’s note: the entries between February 1 and 22, 2005 are somewhat contrived as they concern notes taken about my return to computer school, by far the most important thing going on at the time. It is boring, technical and repetitious—unless you like following how circumstances alter attitudes. In case you ask, yes, there are lots of pictures, many darn good ones.
But now I suffer for my decision not to categorize them properly and I can't find them. I will try to keep down the number of repeats, but if they happen it will be at times like this. Hurry up, blog, and make me famous, then, I’ll have time to correct all this material.
The picture is a random Wiki, placed here for color. It is from 2005 but otherwise not relevant here. The lady in the picture is Florence O. Thompson, and this "most famous" picture of the Depression is a fallacy. She's having her car, a late-model Buick, repaired at a roadside garage, and the bill for that can make anyone look worried.]
It is now almost midnight. It took an extra hour to get home tonight because of all the detours. Florida is really bad for tearing up roadways and then taking years, not days, to put it back together. Class was slow again, and it proved impossible to repair the Compaq. The power supply was shorted out and there were too many proprietary parts. Compaq is very bad for that. There was even an extra set of green wires that seemed to power the CPU, but nobody had ever seen these before. I am again concerned about progress because there really isn’t any. As I foretold, the lectures have become a frustrating trial for everyone who let anything slide past. Now we are told to do something, and when everyone looks blank we are reminded that we covered that. I know we covered it, as in talked about it, but that is not the same as learning it.
Now, all those things we may have gone over during those 700 pages of material so far are being treated like we all have instant total recall. I’m doing okay but a lot of the others aren’t. Like I said, the way this course is taught, you would be smarter to learn to fix computers first, and then come back and take this course. My lecture notes have become a must-have and I’m printing up some more copies for Friday’s class. What makes them so popular is my habit of placing a question mark near every word that was not defined before it was used. Example. “Every domain is a namespace.” This word, namespace, is not defined anywhere. When it was first used, I tried (unsuccessfully) to find a definition. I'm getting sick and tired of such nonsense, and it is my money.
Like all schools that are tuition-driven, PC Professor has now entered the phase of giving us practice tests. These tests are [really] to ensure that nobody can say a topic was not covered. This means if you did not learn it, well, that must be your fault for being stupid. My notes are also in demand because I often write down when a topic is not adequately covered in the textbook. This tells the reader not to bother looking further. That is my point. If I have to go down to the library and do independent research to learn it on my own, then for what am I paying them thousands and thousands of dollars? University, yes, but college trade school--totally unacceptable.
Today we reinstalled Windows on a student computer, and the instructor kept asking questions about what to do next that nobody could answer. Then he would remind us we had ‘covered’ that, and barge on to the next step. This is not the trademark of an effective learning experience. You don’t learn how to read by memorizing the alphabet. In most cases, I remember that we had, indeed, talked about it. But that was all we did. The course is finished in May and I still can’t fix computers. The actual phrase in my notes that people seek is, “The textbook does not pursue this topic any further.” We have done a lot of software troubleshooting but that is not a substitute for learning computer repair. I’m sure it happens, but nobody has ever called me to reinstall their software. [Later, it did happen on occasion.] They call because the computer is broken. I cannot imagine how PC Professor can overlook this fact.
Still, it is software, and I will have an easier go of it than the others. I just wish it had not all been left to the tail end of the course, when there is no time to both study it and go back over the mass of material that we skimmed over earlier. I showed them pictures of the HP that sold. It pulled in $200 as a matching set, over twice what the components would have been worth. And the demand is there. So much so that Dickens the owner of ABC, showed me his warehouse. He has a few tons of furniture stored there, waiting for sales to open space up in his store. He has no room to sell furniture and is thinking of leasing a bigger place “in the $6,000 range” (rental per month). He says I can clear out a corner and store computer parts there. I quickly called JP with that news. JP has a line of a small display area on Biscayne, twelve miles south of here. It is a cheap office with a kitchenette and bathroom. I should remind him that when we talked about me living in the place, that was close to five years ago. Things have changed.
For openers, I finally admit that south Florida is not a very wholesome place to raise children. I have not given up on meeting the right gal yet. When I do, it is out of this state for me. Every third person here is a beggar, an ex-con or some kind of grifter. Nobody respects private property yet it is illegal to protect your own. The police are constantly bashing down somebody’s door or running a sting operation in your neighborhood. These locals don’t realize it is not the same everywhere at all. There are no small towns left, but there are places where stupidity is not a way of life. Florida sanctions stupidity, probably due to majority rules.
ADDENDUM
As I sip my coffee and munch on creamed chicken on rice, I note that prices for many commodities have shot up nearly 50% in the past two months. There has been a general rise in all prices and I wonder why there has been nothing on the news. Not a peep about gasoline hitting $2.41 a gallon. A loaf of bread costs almost the same. This is not the sneaky few percent inflation a year. There are other telltale signs. Have you seen the price of an ear of corn? I notice Publix is selling potatoes individually wrapped one at a time. Candy wrappers now contain a paper spacer, or the candy comes in a cardboard box that is half empty. Have you seen what they’ve done to quality? Chocolate chip cookies used to have chips inside. So did sesame cookies. Now, the chips and seeds are pressed only into the top layer. The other day I bought a tin of mixed nuts and somehow they hid all the peanuts in the bottom. I thought it was chance until I got a second tin of the same.
[Author's note 2016-02-01: The following passage may seem overly revealing, but I have JZ's permission to record it. The reason is what happened here is a very strong indicator of what would come to pass years later. The original intent was to show how a "rich kid" can easily get by on $60 a day, called in my parlance "Living like Harry". You can spend it all on a good time, because there is always more where that came from. JZ does not live high on the hog, but he is lax with money. Again, I have permission to write this. The pallet picture is from 2016.]
JZ can scrounge anything. He's not a scrounge, per se, but he's lived in the same neighborhood his entire life. So he knows where the extra dollars are, and one of his favorites is pallets. Not just any pallets, but the ones that have a $5 deposit (the usual is $2). Well, he has the habit of on the way home swinging past where he knows there are ten or more. He'll throw them in his truck and he's got $50 the rest of us don't. Problem, this eventually scuffs up his truck and is a source of embarrassment. For instance, I don't let him pick up pallets when I'm around.
Well, he dad gets him the new truck on the promise he won't do pallets. Are you ready for this? The very next short while, JZ is on the way home and hits the jackpot. His usual stop has 19 pallets instead of the usual 10. He can't resist. But you see, that many pallets is more than a truck bed. So he piles the extras on the roof and ties a couple on the hood. What the hell, he only has to take them a mile and nobody will see.
Sure enough, guess who is driving down that same road at the same time. His dad and his brother. Try to imagine, "Say dad, doesn't that look like JZ in that new truck you just bought him?" And there's JZ with just a vision slit between pallets barrel-assing toward the recycle depot.
JZ tells me he has never lived that one down.
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