I did the food thing again. Made a great meal and did not write down the recipe. It was ordinary chicken soup, but I added some ripe olives and some day old Cuban bread crumbs. Cuban bread is meant to be eaten the first day, it even comes in a paper bag. I had to be content with smoked turkey sandwiches with all the trimmings including hot mustard, and a tumbler of half and half ginger ale and cranberry juice last evening because I ate the whole pot of chicken soup earlier. This is the telltale sign of a bachelor hitting a winner. The Hippie (don’t tell him I told you) ate an awful lot of soup and sandwiches before we started hanging out. Now, he has the bachelor complaint of having to eat a ton of the same food or throwing it out. Thus, when you can eat the whole thing it is a winner. Exception: pizza. Anyone can eat a whole pizza no matter how bad it is.
Marilyn cancelled our lesson today, giving me plenty of time to study. Plus, to figure out the details of the way Microsoft has changed things that worked quite well before. For example, spreadsheet cell locking and protection. It was just complicated enough to discourage most people from fooling around with it.
While reading this morning, I found the local Jamaican radio station. Like most, it is one format. 100% raggae and not a single note of variation. With one exception. They play this music to annoy listeners to get their attention. Do you know what music they use? Ha, it is a few seconds of Scottish bagpipe music. I thought Jamaica was once a British colony and they might like the skirl of the pipes, but obviously they hate it. The ads indicate the station is south, near Plantation. The current hit by ‘The Crown Prince of Raggae’ is an version of ‘The Land Down Under’ which I believe was originally the Village People. Or another of that crowd a generation after Linda Rondstadt.
Today we are going to learn to download and install printer drivers from the internet. This will be lucrative, in that I have a line on roughly 40 unsold printers at a time because they are missing the software. They are at the various thrift malls, and all appear to be in good condition except for three easy ingredients: software, ink cartridges and proof that the printer works. Where is that database I tested in Hialeah that listed the prices of all print and toner cartridges? I’ll find it, because I remember smirking over the fact that there are more, not fewer cartridges as time goes by. Even the same manufacturer’s models don’t fit in the same internal brackets.
This is also proof that there are far more stupid people in the world than there were ten or twenty years ago. Take for instance that CD-ROM I had to install in the Presario because the IDE plugs did not line up. It looks like a CD-ROM and has all the features with software, but it does one thing only. Play back existing pre-recorded CD music. It will not read any DirectCD, UDF, photo, video or data CDs, or burn any files, and it gives a file read error if you try to install any applications.
It does one thing: use an expensive computer to play music. That is a real no-brainer. Yet there are enough such people that it was profitable for somebody to set up an assembly line to produce these pieces of crap and to ship them over and sell them in this country. I salvaged it out of a computer that had a Pentium III processor, that tells me a lot about the original purchaser.
Trivia You think Hewlett-Packard is a computer company? A dedicated outfit who's primary wish is to provide you with top-quality computer printers and ink? Think again. Before the company glommed onto the computer ink cartridge scam (by selling printers cheap and over-charging for the ink), Hewlett-Packard made a "shock machine" claimed to cause weight loss. Their primary product was urinal flushers. That company stunk to high heaven long before I pointed it out.
