April 15, 2005

           Another study marathon already and it is only eight in the morning. Every source of coffee in the house has been tracked down, including the Maxwell House freeze-dried I bought in North Port (Charlotte) on Xmas Eve last year. The more I research hard drives, the more I come back to the same conclusion I had twenty years ago: two hard drives are better, one for your programs (applications) and another for your data. The data being the larger of the two by any margin you desire. This is in addition to any backup scheme you have in place. I am learning, for now I know that this “D: drive” should be partitioned into as many logical drives as needed to ensure there are no more than 312K of potential wasted space per cluster.
           The A+ test disks will run on the HP [where I had trouble running them on the Compaq]. I need a code name for the HP. I guess it is just the “video computer”. I am hitting 100% on the component and installation modules, but still 50% on troubleshooting and various Windows facts. A large part of A+ is convincing students that Windows is the best system ever devised. Prediction time. I predict that Microsoft is in for a tumble. I would like that, because they [MS] program from a standpoint that is “cute” by my standards. They’ve gone crazy with the number of Windows and VBA code. They keep changing for the sake of change – there is usually a different way to doing the same thing in every version of Windows, sometimes significantly different. Tally up ten different versions in ten years. Gates admits that Microsoft borrows good ideas and develops them, as opposed to having good ideas to start with. That represents the ultimate abuse of inherited wealth by preventing others from entering the market using money you never originally worked for yourself.

           I have not changed my tune on this since 1985. It was obvious that any company endorsed by IBM would skyrocket but Apple was still a viable competitor. I invested in Apple because IBM represented to me the total degeneracy of corporate America. People who worked for IBM had to be clones and practice group-think as a religion. (Alas, I had to sell my tiny Apple investment at a slight loss because I lived in a system that I now realize prevents most working men from ever showing a profit. This happened to me several times before I caught on.) My crystal ball shows MS taking a steep dive caused by some upstart company that refuses to sell out. This company will have a new and simple product which is better than Windows. The competition, Microsoft will find, is no longer publicizing their ideas for Bill to steal, er, I mean borrow (like Xerox) or copy (like GUI), and will charge far higher prices to be absorbed. Both of these diminish Bill’s margins and I see no evidence that MS has the ability to survive that market condition. Gates will sink billions into trying to get back his dominance through advertising and other equally unproductive stunts. A computer in every home, my eye. He means every home that has $300 to spend on his product.

           The MS features that tick me most these days: That sound recorder with the ridiculous one minute limit. The install process places thousands of files you never use onto your hard drive. It seems impossible to import a picture with the original aspect ratios into a word document. You cannot directly label the photos. The spreadsheet has to be programmed to add a new file to the bottom of a list. Hot keys and shortcut keys that cannot be disabled.
           New learning. Why is static electricity called static electricity? I know. It is the only type of electrical charge that is not the result of moving electrons. It stays in one place, hence, is static. I got the exchanged scanner from Take A Byte y’day. One thing you notice when you go through Hollywood these days is that they have solved the downtown parking problem. At least, it would appear to have been a problem, because they invested money in those Meter Masters that demand you have perfect timing to avoid either double paying or risk being towed. At least half the parking places are free at any given time even on the busiest days. You can now park right at the front door of dozens of recently vacated or bankrupt businesses.

           The Hippie called and we went for a major walk on Dania Beach. This is the area severely eroded by the hurricane surges last year. There are a few waterfront houses that did not used to be. The Hippie may have an ulterior motive. He met a girl on My Space, a bulletin, and told her he was 33, tanned and outdoorsy. That is well within the accepted parameters of web age shrinkage, as long as he is prepared that she has done the same. She told him she is a college hippie girl, 23 and new in town and feels she may be too young for him but can’t help being attracted to older men. Gag me with a spoon. Ann Landers says always tell him you are new in town. Translation: she is 30, weighs over 200 pounds, went back to college because there are single men around and her web picture was taken in 1989. I took various shots of the late spring flowers.
           I think this must be a school skip out day because the beach for once was crowded with young babes in pairs. It was great but no pictures. High school babes, with their own cars. High school remains the highest ratio of single women to men that most of us ever experience, although I personally did far better in first and second year college. By third year, even I noticed the declining quality of what women were still available Originally I had wanted to take out guitars and learn a few tunes on the beach, actually, in the parks beside the beach because it is already getting savagely hot in the direct sun.

           Also, sand and expensive guitars don’t mix. There are lots of picnic tables a few yards inland from the dunes that nobody ever uses, and Dania Beach has a far higher class of bum. It is more the classic surf crowd who may actually be out for the sun. Without the guitars we are a couple of beach bums, but it is not all for show either – we have a good reason to learn the tunes besides hoping to meet babes. The Hippie chickened out at the last possible moment and we walked three miles instead. It is the scenic route, south from Dania Beach Park. The Hippie posed for a baby Huey shot, if you can find it near this paragraph. Business has been bad this week and we had hours of free time to catch more sun than we have in months.
           The Hippie mentions his high school and early college days with some regrets. He tended to date flirtatious women and blame himself when they left. I was the opposite, if anybody can take a woman away from me, you are welcome to her. Go, just never come back. Although I complain that the well has run dry, of course I still hope I will score with a good one yet. I have the same three criteria as when I was sixteen. I see her, she sees me. If there is not a spontaneous, exclusive and positive reaction, I know it will never work out.

           [Author's note 2017: don't underestimate this factor of women who flirt with other men when on a date with you. I have zero tolerance for it, and have walked out on women who do it. It was jealousy when I was a teenager, but has become policy ever since. Don't put up with it, is my advice.]

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April 14, 2005

           Here is proof the only people in Florida who get up early are the ones who make enough noise to force you to do the same. This guy is spray-washing the roof at 7:00 a.m. I called Charles or Emily and talked [who advertise for graduates from PC Professor] about their service. They don’t know Mike personally, but are aware of the curriculum. The phone voice was low, so I’m going to assume I was talking to Charlie, who responded well when I mention I did not believe the other ads that offered twice as much money. I’m going in to the shop for an hour.

           An hour was all it took. They have this new system to job search that requires your life history before you can enter the database. I told them no way. Every last detail of your life is a required field, and my position is clear. If you want that level of information, you must consult me, not a government file. I walked out on them. Job search? I can do that anonymously with a newspaper and it cannot be proved otherwise. Then I stopped at Jerry’s and found an old Aptiva. I took it home but I don’t know why. It has a single hard drive and 2 x 16k RAM chips. Maybe just to see if I can make a decent word processor out of it. It has only 4 x 8 bit expansion slots. If I can shoehorn Windows 95 in there, I will have learned a thing or two.

           While I was at it, I pulled out that old Tandy from 1986 and what do I find in pristine condition? A 760K 5.25 inch floppy. Seriously, it is in brand new condition, and it is now sitting in the Hewlett Packard. That was some wiring job, let me tell you. Took three hours and I was seriously considering turning one of the drives upside down before I figured out a way to hook up the harness before sliding the A: drive into the bay.
           Well, almost perfect condition, I cannot get the controller to recognize the B: drive. It will have to wait until tomorrow. The point is, the HP will accept the drive, so it is only a matter of time until we get a blast from the past. In my case, that is real blasting because I’ve found disks on everything from the Reb’s song words to mini-diaries to old letters to RofR (that should prove most interesting). There is even an original copy of CP/M. I can just hear some of the guys in class laughing that I still have ‘old’ disks. They are too young to realize that I was fifteen years ahead of my time back then. Imagine, huge volumes of word processed material from 1982, a time when 99.99999% of all people had never touched a computer. When did the average person begin keeping blogs? Right, gotcha…

           Further, Julie has said that there are six more boxes of material. She only picked out the ones labeled obviously, something I am not known for (calling computer disks in plain cipher, I usually code the titles, so there are probably far more letters and documents than she has counted) . I still have to figure out the way to read the Apple disks. I’ve heard there is software that does it on an IBM drive. Julie is back in school and I guiltily admit I can’t remember that she told me all this. Marti is off the air for a month or so, probably both the wedding and time to move to Seattle. All of this material is destined to go onto CDs shortly. I’ll be curious to know how much space my lifetime’s output will occupy. Maybe 1/10th of a CD? That is my guess. Still, that is 65 megabytes, and you know Shakespeare’s output was only 5 MB.

           Later. It is now 12:59 AM and I think I’ve got the B: drive working. This makes a tremendous difference, because prior to that time, my diaries were hand-written. It would take months to enter those pages, where as, if I can read it from the B: drive, I will shortly have an actual sample of 1987 word processing for you inserted right here. If so, you saw it here first. I was studying the videos included with the textbook, and I see that Mr. David Groth (pronounced ‘growth’) seriously needs my help producing entertaining videos. Back to the B: drive. There was a long lapse in my diaries around that time because of evening school. Most of the records were kept as short notes on a company planning calendar. I still have those calendars but nothing takes the place of a real daily record.
           Still later. I can’t get the drive to read the disks marked MW, which would seem to mean Microsoft Word. I see some incredible things, such as brochures for the El Colonial Hotel on the Orinoco River in Venezuela. That is in the early 90s, and I want something from the 80s for you. I’m going to reset the drive format to 360K, although I’m pretty sure it is 720K, that is not an option on the BIOS. Hmm, either the disk drive is not working or the BIOS cannot accommodate a DD legacy drive like this one. No matter, I am hot on the trail now. One thing I can tell you, is that the disk labels of the 1980s don’t stay stuck for 20 years. Meanwhile, here is the brochure. Cancel that, the brochure won’t save as a picture. Let me try another disk.

           [Author's note 2022: finally, I found this nearly original descript of the failed trek to the HUMBOLT HOTEL, in Caracas, Venezuela. This took place years earlier, during a time there was no journal kept, so this was from memory at the time. But that memory was pretty good. You'll notice references to Canada because until recently, although I was in the USA, I worked for a Canadian company and knew the lay of the land.]

           Still trying to get you something. I see I was a big consumer of databases as far back as 1988. The song words seem to be in that format. I found a document from 1992 that describes a hike I made on the mountains north of Caracas. Here are the first paragraphs, notice the differences in my writing style after 13 years. The forward, not included here, explains that the style is somewhat awkward because it was meant to be used on a then current Spanish translation software package. Notice the speed typing and lack of any spellchecker in Venezuela at that time. I believe the computer was a stripped down Tandy FD 1100, which cost at least a thousand dollars back then. (It was eventually stolen in Venezuela.)

           I received much information and malinformacion about the Humbolt Hotel. This beautiful structure is situated on a mountain to the north or Caracas, Venezuala. It stands about 40 storeys tall. It cost millions and millions. And it is abandoned. The city of Caracas is on a flat valley about one mile wide and many miles long east to west. Whoever planned this was undoubtedly a real estate agent.
           The mountain mentioned is part of a chain that forms the Carribean coast along the top edge of South America. The mountain passes are the only route to the coast from the towns and cities in the interior. There is no direct road to the seashore from Caracas, since visitors to the beach must travel around the mountain range. The nearest such place is about 15 miles away. A tunnel through the mountain is no likely to be constructed. The reason I've heard is because the mountains are volcanic. By the way, the mountain chain extends eastward, finally forming the island of Trinidad.
           There are dozens of wild explanations for the Humbolt. Some people say it was built in 1955. Others say 1965. Still others say the contruction took all ten years between. It depends on who you talk to. I am curious why it is closed. It is no good to ask around. Every version is different. Among the reasons I've heard are failed election promises, defective standards on the cable car (teleferico), and insufficient bribes paid to government officials.

           The cable car (teleferico) problem appears at first to make the most sense. Yet, even that creates more questions than answers. How could a cable car no make money? Especially in this instance, because it would be a monopoly. My guess is the whole situation is a study of corruption on an unbelievable scale. Except for a helicopter, there is no other easy way to get to the hotel. My opinion is that only a totally corrupt system and a totally complacent population could allow such a monument to remain in plain view of one fifth of the residents in the country for thirty years, with the possible exception of Edmonton, Alberta. (I hate that town and I've only been there twice.)
           There is no reliable source of information. If anyone knows the true story, they are no talking. Or no can talk, if you get my drift. The most recent rumor is that the state governor is fixing it up. (Any minor government official who has that amount of money must have fixed many things in his time.) I decided to climb the mountain and have a look for myself. It should be easy to see if there is any evidence of workmen or building material at the site, or near the top. I am not a mountaineer, so I must find a road.

           What happens next will give you some insight into the Spanish character and language. I would bet money the service roads exist. Yet everyone we asked said there were no service roads. Remember that Spanish is a language that seems (to me) to fail when trying to describe exact details. This means there is some discrepancy whether we are being told the roads do no exist, or whether we are being told we no can walk up the roads, or whether they simply do no know if there is a road but no want to admit it. This sorry attitude alone will prevent Venezuala from ever being an efficient country. We have these kind of people in America. They are called liars.
           The total number of people questioned is around a dozen or fifteen. Fourteen Spanish speakers say there is no road, one German says there is. Therefore, I conclude there is a road. Can you imagine having a medical emergency in such a city! The logical first task is to locate that road.

           On March 2, 1996 I walked with a friend to the base of the mountain. The mountains are apparently named ""Avila"". We stopped accross from a deep canyon separating two mountains. There are no good maps, signs or people who know the names of the mountains, although the mountains can be seen from every major part of Caracas. The Humbolt is an easy sight and is situated on the west peak. We saw an old sign saying ""Pico Oriente"" and ""Pico Occidente"", so I will refer to the mountains as ""East Peak"" and ""West Peak"" if necessary.
           From where we stopped, I was able to discern three or four unnatural ridges of tree lines angling upward at about 15 degrees. There are also transmission towers about 2/3 of the way up the mountain. Also, there are electricity lines. The vegetation covers the mountains completely to the top. The mountains are steep but not rugged. All these factors strongly indicate the presence of at least one service road. If the road exists, I estimate it should take about two hours to reach the top.

           The rest of the record tells how I got around half the way up the mountain after being given the wrong directions by the local expert, a travel agent who thought I was going to rent a helicopter through him. “All you have to do is get eight people to share.” If I did that, I remember thinking, who needs him? They (him and his staff) actually, if I recall, gave me the directions to the wrong bloody mountain, something that would eventually not surprise me about Venezuela. The next day I politely inquired about these directions and he finally admitted that he had never actually been there or arranged any tours to the place. I never did get up there in the next four years. I may not be athletic, folks, but at forty-four I was still hiking up mountains in Venezuela.
           That was also about the time I noticed that it became rare to meet people my own age [who were] travelling. Now, the reason is obvious, but back then I found it strange. Would not people turning forty give anything to get out of the routine and have an adventure? The common point was a mortgage. Anyone who signed a mortgage at 25 was at 50 a completely untravelled moronic nincompoop. They had a house, but wasted a life paying for it. Their one consolation seems to be knowledge that however wrong they have been, they are in the majority.

           I noted that in 1996, passenger airliners cost $400 a pound and (this was only months before I left the company) that I challenged the ‘50/50’ rule for answering calls. This referred to the next department over who insisted that everything was equal if our department answered half the incoming calls. I maintained it was not equal, and they argued it was. They backed off quickly when I suggested a money test. I’ll pay you a dollar every time you answer a call that is for me, and vice versa. We should break even, correct? Even when faced with such facts, phone company people cannot admit they are wrong. I used to work beside men who would tell people to call back in an hour knowing they were off shift in thirty minutes.
           Since I intend to get most of my writings on disk, I won’t duplicate much of it here. I see I predicted that good jobs “will be at a premium in 2005”. I was inside the pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico in 1986 when an earthquake occurred. I felt nothing, I had crawled up the passageway into the center of the pyramid and did not find out about the tremor until hours later when I crawled back out. At that point, I felt queasy because I somehow knew something was wrong while I was inside. There is mention that every major law concerning Human Rights in Canada was passed by judicial rather than parliamentary procedures. The real treat will be those 5.25 inch floppies. There just don’t seem to be enough of them.

April 13, 2005

           Another early start, and it is a day earmarked for intense study. Unless the Hippie calls and we can manage an extra practice sometime this afternoon. I’m looking south out my window. The view is great, there is no fence and the couple to the west keep such a beautiful yard. Little shrubbery things and trees in clay pots. Bark mulch and lots of flowers. It is all for show, they never use it. He regularly dusts the patio furniture they never sit on. It amounts to a private view for me, because the yard is not visible from the street. There is another house in front and a long narrow driveway that is mostly blocked by an SUV. I’ve always wanted a gardener.

           I can’t use the yard, only look at it. I don’t miss it, never having had a yard of any repute. I have a small patio I rarely use. My only door faces north and I would have to walk around the entire building to view the neighbor’s yard directly. Look near here for a picture of this yard through my Venetian blinds, and remember that this is still in the wintertime.            Okay, back to study. It is already 9:00 AM. I will wisely split the day into part lab time, starting with the computer from ABC. He says it runs for a while, then reboots itself. Although I do not know, nor have I really learned, how to troubleshoot this problem, I do know it is a very hard thing to diagnose. All random or intermittent electrical problems can pretend to be something else. Let’s see how far I get.            First, the book studying has to be done. I’m reading the glossary in the textbook A+ Complete from Sybex. Most if it is written by one author, David Groth, and (like this journal) suffers accordingly. In the glossary, you can see that he has done research since and adopted better definitions as time or complaints came along. It is easy to tell because the writing style changes drastically. Glossaries are easier to change than the body of the text, making it more informative. Groth has an annoying habit of explaining things in circular fashion, “A data bus is a bus that transmits data.” (Not a quote, just a typical representation of the fault.) Why, if was not such a perfect day, I’d complain. It is 82 degrees and partly cloudy at 10:30 AM. This was the weather that fooled me into staying in Florida in 2000. The scorching summer is on the way, be warned.

           The Hippie called before noon, but there just is not enough time to do a power walk today. (That’s me doing a knee-up in the park.) Besides, he tends to go on the same walk all the time. If I walk a stretch and don’t meet the gal of my dreams the first day out, I’ll walk someplace else tomorrow. Either his taste in music is changing, or he has some kind of plan. Last practice, we played “El Paso”. That’s the song that goes, “Out in the west Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl.” Try to suppose you’d told me forty years ago I’d ever play that song. To me that tune (although I like it and think the lyrics are great) represents “old” music.            Then, he finds this music book at the Dania Beach library. He’s got this plan that we play hits from old TV shows. I’m all for it. It has great audience appeal, riffs like Hawaii Five-0. “DA-da da DA daaaah-da.” He mentioned Adam’s Family, but don’t ask me to name that tune. I would remember Gilligan’s Island, and with Cowboy Mike’s banjar (a correct term for banjo), there’s Beverly Hillbillies. Other than that, I remember exactly two themes. “Baby Elephant Walk” and “Mission Impossible”. [Author’s note: it’s a small world. When I finally decided others were not to be relied on for a music band in this town, “El Paso” became one of my lounge standards, and TV themes became part of my opening act – something that never happened with the other people.]            x margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; margin-top: 1em; margin-left: 1em;

April 12, 2005

           This is the finished computer unit, ready for sale. I had not yet learned to dislike HP computers for the difficult designs and general fragility of the components.
           When I get that learning mood, I tend to move fast. Quantum leaps ahead now, yet sadly a lot of it is because what I need is not being taught in the course. I’m learning because I’ve resorted to plenty of extracurricular studies. It is that, or fail. I play a lot of attention to these moods because they can completely change my life and always prevent any going back to the way things were before. Not always, but often enough.

           When The Hippie called, I told him I’d go over to ABC (The Thrift Store) with the repaired computer. Once I got there, it still took another two hours to get everything up and running. He has a copy of Microsoft Works which I’ll need to evaluate. I don’t think I’ve ever used it. Dickens (the owner) got to talking and he ran a pawn shop in Key West for fifteen years. Once he saw the computer all set up with a printer and working fine, the value hit him. Two hundred dollars for what he might have got $40 for in pieces. That is the HP Pavilion computer that was at the shop for a week. I’ve got another to take in tomorrow. He was getting offers on the computer before I could get out the door.
           He also has a warehouse he isn’t using. Hmm, isn’t that kind of interesting. He says I can use it. Maybe I will, if only for computer parts. It is true I have a long ways to go to meet my own standards of computer repair. That doesn’t mean I’m a rookie. I know one hell of a lot more about computers than most people ever will already, and this most recent ‘learning crest’ is just beginning. It usually lasts a month or two, but can be as little as a week. If the right set of questions shows up on the exam, it is an easy 95% to 100% for me.

           Does anyone know about that locksmithing course I took back in the 90s? That was right in the middle of a crest, and I got 100% on both the exam and every assignment. They sent me a free key-making machine and a bunch of stuff if I remember, congratulating me on a good career choice. I was making 50 grand a year sitting around at that time.
           I met this lady, Yolanda, and went through her taxes since 1998. She is living on disability, and at 58 she had better start getting her life together. We met because she was trying to talk Dickens into selling her the computer on credit. I wouldn’t if it were my computer. The whole idea is the shock value, which causes impulse buying. I already know you can’t get a good used cheap computer in this area and people do not trust regular computer shops. The atmosphere in the thrifts is far better for selling a computer for several hundred dollars. Turns out she was single, but just not my type. Yea, she wanted a relationship first. No dice. Not at 58, tootsie.

           By late afternoon I got over to Mark’s place and finished his taxes. He wants to start a non-profit half-way house. The plan is to give recovered alcoholics a stable home atmosphere to get them back on track. He calls it more of a ¾-way house, which is neat. He’ll be needing some excellent business plans and says he’ll be in touch. He tipped me $20. [Then I never heard from him again.]
           Then I get home to discover my Norcent DVD player is on the blink. After maybe 50 movies, it keeps coming back and saying ‘wrong disk’. What cheap crap, that thing cost me $38 new. It’s tempting, but no, I am not going to learn about DVD repair this year.
           Instead, let’s talk about food. Always an American favorite. Do any other cultures ever write much about food? Or diets? Let’s do both. First, if we bypass chocolate, what food is more favorite than coffee? My coffee levels have gone past the records set in teenage college. This is a sure sign of deep study. I’ve had to tighten the budget and buy generic brands. Publix is not bad. Here are some of my coffee details. I buy the foil packages. You know, the ones that used to be a pound, but have gradually shrunk in one dimension to an 11.5 ounce package that costs the same. I use the famous Black & Decker coffee maker from the early 1980s. Famous for lasting so long and being one of the original articles that has been across the oceans with me. Yes, because there were places in the world I coule not get decent coffee, this coffee maker has often come with me. It has lived in the trunk of my car while on the road.

           Normally, my favorite brew, always decaffienated, is either Maxwell House French Roast or House Blend. I make the coffee, four cups (per the non-functional scale marked on the carife) at a time. The capacity is twelve of these ‘cups’ and that means there is company. I have tried using smaller coffee makers, but they make the brew slightly more bitter in the wrong way. I use a real coffee scoop, but I heap the product. This coffee maker is programmable and cost a pretty penny in its day. It was the first LED programmable that many people had ever seen. This is the unit that David Janss fell in love with in Los Angeles in 1991, so when I moved all his friend had an emergency fund to buy him one. He would just drool at the aroma of coffee in the morning.
           Coffee, today, costs me $3.69 to $3.89 for the 11.5 ounce package, which I buy two at a time. I keep track of total consumption not by weight, but by how many of the 200 count packs of coffee filters I go through. Oddly, my two best buddies in the state are not coffee drinkers. (They have coffee makers, but if you visit and they offer to make a pot, take my advice and offer to make it yourself.)

           [Author’s note: the following refers to my neighbors, who did not cook. They start banging around when I do, which prompts me to write about what’s cooking. Neat circular logic.]

           Chicken. I am a great consumer of chicken parts. That’s because I can’t eat the whole chicken unless I max out for a half a week. Y’day I picked up a can of soup and read the recipe on the label. Alas, I threw it (the recipe) out, but it was the Campbell brand that used one can each of Cream of Chicken and Cream of Brocolli. What a feast! Excellent, or what. It was like super Chicken a la King, which I don’t understand what some people have against. Instead of a bed of bicuits, I made my usual rice with a little curry. Add french beans, which I prefer to lima beans, and the usual carrots plus the unusual whole green baby peas in the pod. Don’t forget as much garlic as you prefer, to blazes with the neighbors.

April 11, 2005

           [Author’s note: this entry is typical of the rambling notes I take when tired from study or a long day. This is a picture of the computer donated to the Thrift, my first upgrade attempt.]
           I wiped out y’days file by accidentally clicking on the wrong button. One day I dream that Microsoft will make it very easy to disable gimp features and the misery they cause. Would it not be simpler for the whole world to make special computers for gimps? Or at least create a special button you would need to press each day to activate these so-called shortcuts. Not that I am any standard, but every person I know who swears by those shortcuts is a computer idiot. Some of them actually think they are impressing me by knowing fifty of these keyboard commands.
           To balance the day, I was in an intellectually creative mood. I love such days, I just seem to wake up knowing it will be a thousand mile an hour day. I read big chunks of the textbook to cash in on the mood. I noted many errors in the text in the process. It could be I am still the only student in class doing the required reading.
           The Hippie called, and we walked around his neighborhood so he could get his chores done and bills paid. We rarely walk long and fast enough to get to the aerobic plateau of weight loss. Which guy plays the harmonica now? (It is probably Cowboy Mike, the hillbilly guy who is not keen on playing live gigs.) That may have changed, for he seems to have taken a real shine to the new lady who moved in next door. She is a plump middle-aged hunk of frump in my books, but I can see she might have been okay twenty years ago. Her sister is the waitress slash barmaid at Jakes. Her sister is younger, slimmer and blonder (I hear). Suddenly there is an interest in us playing there.
           From just the first few things she said I find her revolting. She sat outside and listened to us practicing and jamming y’day. That hillbilly music would certainly make us a deadly and unusual group to perform at biker bars. She would fit right in, but she is absolutely not my type. She talked about how her ex and her broke up in Homestead. It just seems to me unless some women have invisible talents, they should probably stick with what they’ve got. I’ll wait to see the sister. The Hippie is far more tolerant of such people than I am. Then again, he also has a court order not to associate with them.
           As long as Mike is falling for her lines, he will show up at practice. For that reason I told The Hippie we should cash in on his sound as fast as possible. I want to get all our tunes on CD with chords and lyrics. I for one do not underestimate the amount of work required to make up tapes and songbooks for new band members. Give them a CD and let them print it up. The Hippie still lives in a world of photocopies on this one. [Author’s note: as usual, the Hippie got into an argument with the Cowboy and he quit before anything got accomplished.]
           I tried to create and fathom the document hyperlinks today. A lot of people think the Microsoft help index is so helpful, and it is in an obsolete kind of way. It gives misleading definitions that are incomplete (in most cases) and assume you know the jargon. The most direct improvement they could make is true examples of every command. I’ve known about hyperlinks for 15 years, but never used them. Following the directions given, you can only create a one-way link within a document with no way to return back to where you started. The commands are there, but not any useful examples. I want my document to link to every spot that contains a certain keyword, not just the first one I bookmarked. Single forward links I could have done in 1990. If there has been any improvements, I can’t find them in the index.
           Then the Class of ’05 met up at the Kyojin Buffet in Delray. That is one expensive joint. The buffet is fantastic but it is also $17.00 a plate, my weekly budget for staples. They had lots besides sushi and I had some excellent chicken and vegetable tempura. I had a few incredulous looks because I spontaneously addressed the two ladies at the door when we entered. In Chinese (Cantonese). The gang I was with did not know anyone could tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese, much less joke with them. I said we needed a table for six (pronounced “lawk” rhymes with hawk) men, but I used the term for single men, ‘Yan’. This is not strictly what it means, but good enough for this story. Anyway, the women started pointing at each other and saying they were single. Is this the point to remind you that at first some people in the class thought I was making a lot of things up?
           Then, our two Latin guys, Juan and Angelo (I can’t remember his name) split and did not make it back to class. They skipped out, no big deal. This isn’t the army. We loaded the anti-bad stuff applications on the Thrift computer and tested a whack of new features. Mike brought a fancy blank for the CD bay where I removed the non-working drive. Looks snappy. He is still having trouble with that fancy computer he built with every little gadget including a few dozen I've never seen. Like a ”northbridge” chipset cooler. It has fins and fans, just like the CPU, and also some flashing LEDs. It has a see-through plastic case.
           These customized types of computer cases are the rage with the gamers. They are nice looking and you’ll see a lot more of them. I had this idea twenty years ago in another form. I wanted some really fancy wooden cabinetry type cases, with real expensive keys. Ivory or whatever is close but not endangered. See, the company president has the same plastic cased computer on his desk as the filing clerk, and I envisioned something in a deep oak or walnut, like they used to have for stereos.
           Earlier I had stopped at ABC Thrift to remind Dickens that the computer was on the way. I’ve got it in the car. It is newly reformatted and everything is tested out. It has no software, not even games. Thus, I think I may swing past all the Thrift Stores and ask them to put any donated software behind the counter for me.
           The main event at class tonight was Minesweeper. Everybody’s got a system to win, including Mike. That is why I floored them with the trick (the hack described a few days back that indicates the presence of a mine.) A few people around there are beginning to suspect I may know a thing or two in this world. I explained the procedure and that it was in the manual. Finding it was a feat of perserverance, not intelligence. But it still floored them. Rewind to those photos I took of the San Soucy Motel. That classic blues backdrop. They took the sign down. It looks like they cut it off with a torch and threw it away. Another landmark carted off to the rubbish heap. Last, I tested the inverter for charging up the video camcorder in the car and it works fine.

April 10, 2005

           Where does a $1.95 breakfast cost $5.00? Hollywood.
           I think today should be spent studying. There was a rumor I’d go over to JZ’s but I’m not doing so well on the practice exams yet. I carefully took notes on every lecture. They still seem to ramble all over when I re-read them. A+ is a listening course, not a doing course. It is 8:30 and I woke up dreaming of a diet soda. Never mess with nature, so that is what I had for breakfast. There is also an urge to go to the beach really early and get some video time in. Maybe, for it is just before 8:00 in the morning. I will do that. Just to see who else is crazy enough to be out there this time of morning.
           Speaking of dreams, those five police really did a number on The Hippie. Remember, they stomped him while he was face down on the pavement. He still has nightmares of zooming backwards a hundred miles an hour in a car he cannot control. These five cops all swore under oath that The Hippie had tried to ‘assault’ them with his car. I am curious. How do five cops trying to arrest one man all get in front of a car? Do they lock elbows and form a human barricade? Or do they line up one by one perpendicular to the bumper? If The Hippie was that dangerous, it seems they would have surrounded him, thus making The Hippie the owner of a miraculous car that could move sideways.

           [Author’s note: the next passage turned out to be quite visionary. Almost all the downtown businesses of today were sold, taken over or closed down due to high costs imposed by City Hall. It is still the same downtown, but now run by strangers and prices have doubled.]

           Y’day when I walked through downtown Hollywood, it was clear that a lot of restaurants and specialty stores were closing down or moving. I didn’t have my camera. My guess is close to 16 recently vacant stores in the main three-block business area between Young Circle and Dixie Highway. You know, the area with restaurant chairs blocking the sidewalks, merciless electronic parking meters, $3 cups of coffee-like liquid, predatory parking enforcement and places that “start you off” with something to drink. The places that won’t let you stand under their awning when it rains, charge you $2.55 to print one e-mail page and whose meal specials don’t include at least a cup of coffee and charge for refills.
           The same area that hires people to spy on you [for parking on their lot while you zip over to the post office] and has macho police types staring at you just for walking through their shopping center that has closed circuit TVs trained on you continuously. In the center of it all is an ugly pile of dirt that was there when I first saw this area five years ago, now dubbed Mt. Hollywood. All of them don’t seem to be doing that well. I may be turning ruthless, you know, because as I sit here counting out the several dollars in change I will need just to go for a walk on the beach this Sunday morning, I am having trouble feeling sorry for those people.

           Now, I am back from the beach and $5.00 poorer. I had to fall for one of the oldest scams in the book. This would not have happened if I’d remembered that in Florida, always take the exact change with you. I brought along just $2.75 for parking. I found a place with a breakfast special and infinite coffee. The waiter never carries any money and the cashier is in on the scam. They know you likely have to pay for parking nearby, so after ten minutes of waiting for my change, I had to leave or risk having my car towed. I really had to hoof it and got there just as the meter maid was rounding the corner. My $1.95 breakfast special zinged me the full five bucks.
           This double gets me because I don’t buy that nonsense of the waiter working through college any more. Waitering is bottom rung and not an alternative to a real job. The restaurants that went broke in Hollywood in many cases had a permanent help wanted sign in the window. Maybe they should consider paying the staff a decent livable wage and have them stick around. This whole tipping thing is silly, for Americans otherwise are too bright to pay for anything twice. Unless you can go in the kitchen and get your own food, you kind of expect a waiter kind of thing.

           Attitude is also part of it. Maybe once in history, some waiter in an upscale country club in New York really did have an $1,800 week once. That, lady, does not mean you are going to get that in some waterfront beanery in Florida, so lose the attitude. Another thing, two dollars for the whole evening is plenty tip from a regular. Not all of us are on vacation, and nobody likes the server who expects a two-dollar tip every round or ignores you. If you got bills to pay, get a real job. Then the café owner might actually have to do some of the dirty work himself. That is one thing that politicians and café owners have in common: they don’t do well at any other kind of work, especially the kind where you have to build up your equity slowly over a period of years.
           Let’s talk waitresses. Like any male, I would tend to tip a young single babe more than others, it is the way they built the world, you see. The problem is Florida’s concept of babe. Listen to me, some 32 year-old woman with rumpled thighs does not cut it, man. She’s shacked up with the friggin’ doorman, for Christ’s sake. What do you expect from me? A housewife in 1960s style hot pants is not the real thing any more. Cellulite should be covered up, it is not everybody’s favorite sight on the beach.

           One menu advertised starters for $9.75. Starters? Who’s arriving, the Biafran Army? It would be too obvious or I would get you some shots of another Florida phenomenon. Twenty year old men should be in their prime, but we have this inordianate number of beer gut types less than maybe 25. They sure think they are in their prime, walking around in string thongs thinking the women are drooling. I’m not talking about some guy developing a bit of a paunch, but the corpulent spheroid butterballs with a real overhang. Also, west coast people, be aware that on a Florida Atlantic beach, you are never more than a few yards away from humans or signs of humans. I would not complain, of course, it those were all sexy young blonde blue-eyed single firm breasted women, but those do not exist on the beaches out here. I took one photo I call Man Friday, because I was unable to find a stretch of beach without a footprint. They also run these tractors over the beach, a noisy and smelly operation best done in the middle of the week.
           These restaurants also have a bad habit of blasting Latin music over their sidewalks on weekends. Latin music sounds better without being amplified, not necessarily a compliment, and in any case, Miami is over thirty miles away from here. I took many other photos, just because they looked good. Maybe I am developing a photographer’s eye. But I doubt it. One of the pictures looks like an isolated dune with a lonely seagull. It is carefully posed and I am standing on a railing so the dune nearly matches the horizon. There are some sunrise photos because it was a very brilliant morning. Other shots include a palm-framed beach scene and some local plant that produces a huge berry, much like a crab apple. If these pictures are visible here, enjoy, for I never took that many photos when I had to pay for development back in the previous century.

           The $30 per hour job seems too good to be true. I’ll let one of the other guys in class find out what the catch is all about. Fifteen an hour seems more realistic when learning a trade that I intend to strike out on my own the minute I master even a part. I may ask Charles or Emily at 561-213-5827 about their offer. They supply the leads sound good to me. The other guys in the class can take the bait. Floridians assume if you are smart, it all happened around this time last year. They cannot accept that some of us were always smart and learned a long time ago that there are some things you just do not do for money. (Then again, no woman ever offered me money for sex which would definitely put a different angle on things for me. But she would still have to be damn good-looking.) I even got you a photo of that Hollywood sign offering condos for $39,000, but not before somebody doctored it to read $69 or $99,000. Don’t rush out and try to find anything at that price. Notice the morning scene with the beach umbrella.

April 9, 2005

Author's note 2015-04-09: the repetition in the following entry is quite normal for hand-written material. Ten years ago I often jotted notes down over the day, rather than one quick entry session like now. Just ignore repetition and enjoy the messages.

           Here’s one lonely seagull heading north toward Ft. Lauderdale. This photo is looking over beach grass, which is supposed to stop the tsunami when the Azores slides into the Atlantic in 2012. That seagull thinks she’s lonely now? Wait till she gets to Ft. Lauderdale.
           As usual, I spend Saturday morning reading. In this case, I have been studying. The difference is a lot like listening to music or getting out and playing it.I think I’ve read on Saturday mornings for three-quarters of my life. I see that according to the CompTIA exam people, one of the correct answers for a ‘critical device’ on your computer UPS is an on-line jukebox player. Yep, just gotta have a juke-box on your computer or how are you supposed to get any work done? Speaking of stupidity, here are some items I heard on NPR (National Public Radio).
           The City of Miami Beach is having their 90th anniversary. A public official was actually bragging about how tax revenues were at an all time high. (See how twisted you become when you work for the government?) Another article was about some petting zoo animals being quarantined by being placed in isolation where they will never again be allowed in contact with the public again. Apparently the humans who caused the infection were later just released from the hospital and allowed to go their merry ways. Insert tasteless queer joke here.
           Then, there is the controversy of whether druggists should be required or allowed to withhold the morning after pills from women under 16. (The law avoids the real issue of whether people stupid enough to think women under 16 don’t have sex should be allowed to become pharmacists in the first place.) It is only 10:00 in the morning now.

           My new studies are bearing fruit. [A] Mr. Bodman called this morning (just now). I successfully talked my first client through a software installation. I never said it was easy, just that Dell does not do it very well. I got him to install Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0 and open a real estate file. We covered in class about how to set Adobe as the default reader for pdf (portable document format) files. Talk does not work for me, and I can’t find or remember how to do that now that I’m back at home. You know, I have no pricing structure in place for this phone work, nor any way to bill for it directly. Adobe is no big deal, doing a phone install is.
           Alaine called this morning, and really wants that laptop cleaned. (It is pretty grundgy and has never been cleaned.) She also wants to pay, but she must know it is a two-hour trip over there. Unless I am visiting JP, it cannot really be done from here. Maybe that explains why a lot of places want $75 for a service call – because unless the repair goes really fast, that works out to maybe $25 per hour which is a loss if you are operating your car.
           I tried study, but you know, a host of little things have been falling behind, so I had to get out and spend $60. It was actually a lot of fun. It took all afternoon, and the Hippie kept calling be until I got abrupt with him. No matter how many times I tell him if he is going to download things from the Internet onto his computer, it is his responsibility to fix the problems. Not call me every few minutes. He still tries to sit at the keyboard and click on buttons, which to him is logical but to me is random. I bought several bargain movies. The plan was we were going to get together and watch a western. He cancelled out, but seems to think that means I am not doing anything and am available for troubleshooting over the telephone. Au contraire, I am very busy doing nothing.

           [Author’s note: the following as to do with a set of speakers and a radio. The Hippie is trying to flog a set of speakers and I casually mentioned my buddy fifty miles away has a compatible radio head. The Hippie took this to mean I was going to go get the radio, hook things up, test it and then pay top dollar for his speakers, or in the alternative, take the speakers across town and sell them, and so on. The Hippie has a strange concept that if he views something as a good deal, so does the rest of the world. You have to be careful what information you give him.]
           I plan to do nothing, which he cannot grasp. When he does nothing, it appears to be because he failed to plan anything else. He also still, at this late date, tends to make decisions based on what I do. I caution everyone not to do that. If you persist, you will be cut off from information about what I do until you either quit or pay.
           I grew up in a family where nobody would commit to anything until they found out what you were going to do first, then they would block your path in ways they could not have had they not known what you were going to do. Follow that, and you will see how insufferable it is to deal with such people. So, yes, I am very resistant to that behavior. This time, the Hippie has this set of 5.1 speakers for sale, and I remembered JP has the 5.1 amplifier. I asked, JP does not want the speakers, but he says I can have the amplifier. Now, stop right there and think.

           I did not say I would match up the speakers and amp. I did not say JP would give anyone besides me the amplifier. I don’t have any speakers. I do not want to buy any speakers. JP does not want to buy any speakers. It is probably true that the speakers and amplifier could be matched up and sold as a set. If anyone else thinks so, they are welcome to do so without my help because I am too busy. The Hippie seems to think because it is a good deal, anyone who does not drop everything and go for it is just plain stubborn. He is suggesting I drive down to Kendall and get the amp, wire everything up, and if it works, sell it. I am suggesting he should do all that stuff by himself – or I can cut off information very quickly. My system favors the cut off.
           When I told him to do it himself, now he thinks I am going to give him $50 for those speakers. I told him that would never happen. I don’t listen to $5 worth of speakers a year. Again, he could not have gotten these crazy ideas without knowledge that I had a line on the amplifier. Such info will simply get repressed from now on. He holds a grudge against people who don’t see money things his way.

April 8, 2005

           This is the DVD drive I lobotomized. It crapped out just after the warranty expired. Notice the components are identical to the innards of your computer drive. Unfortunately, the mounting bracket was different so I had to junk the unit. It was educational and not something I would have attempted a few months back.
           Bank machines [ATMs], a concept behind its time. I didn’t lose any sleep over it. In fact, I think my system is trying to make me catch up on all that sleep I lost chasing women for the first 45 years of my life. Okay, ask yourself, who was your first crush? Mine was a blonde babe by the name of Wendy Cottrell. I was in grade two, she was also, but in the Catholic wing of the school. The two areas were not allowed to mingle. I once knocked on her door and asked if we could play, and I was told basically to get lost.
           I’ll give you a clue of where this happened. It was around 5,000 miles from Hollywood, Florida. For an idea of the distance scale, here are some locations at that distance. Aberdeen, Scotland. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Midway Island, of WWII fame. Tristan de Cunha, in the South Atlantic. Or even in the middle of the Sahara Desert. My second love, hey, I was already 8 years old, was considerably closer. Her name was Sheila Greickol, and she was only 3,000 miles from here. That would be like Easter Island or the Azores. Neither of them knew about my secret love, however. The poor things, they both grew up to be lawyers.

          Author's note 2015-04-08: I got out my navigation gear and it turns out the "directions" given above are surprisingly accurate, as in within 50 miles. Not bad for what I knew in 2005 and for such round numbers.

          

There once was a girl from the Azores
Whose body was covered with sores
When she walked down the street
Dogs jumped at the meat
That hung down in great gobs from her drawers.

           This is a gross poem for your entertainment. Actually, I was checking to see how well the "pre" tags worked, and got so many hits, I left the poem in here. As for the girl? Rumor has it she immigrated from the Azores and eventually married a fireman or two from Orlando . . .
           That was the Hippie on the phone just now. His amps are finished, and the cost is $170. That is pretty steep but that is also why I intend to get on the receiving end with computers. I’ll pick them up on the way to school this afternoon. He said something that Victor Borge [a comedian who pokes fun at the English language] would have had fun with, he thanked me in the past tense for something that has not yet occured in the future, “Thanks for picking up my amp.” (And they say English is easy?) He gave me the phone number of the Amp Junkyard, 561-997-7959. I did not need a name, because I already know that 90% of the cash flow businesses in Florida are run by guys named ‘John’.

           I should have been studying, I know, but instead I made up a bunch of posters for the Sunbird and Excel lessons. I hate work, see. Anyway, I’m going on my own 2-hour power walk around the neighborhood and putting up all my ads. They seem to bring in far more and better business than newspaper ads, although I have not done any newspapers ads locally. The Hippie says you can make extra cash standing at the post office and getting people to sign referendums.

           [Author’s note: the referendum job was valid. Within two years, I would be working beside the man who was running that business. But it is a business with no controls.]

           It sounds like a job for a pretty girl, and I doubt it pays in cash [wrong, it pays up to $300 per day at the right location, but I did not know that yet] However, too many of the girls were cheating.

           I walk two miles a day, often in one stretch. Today I walked over to Take A Byte, and also put up posters for the car and lessons. It was the big computer store on the south side of Hollywood that gave Marilyn [a former student] my phone number. I went in and thanked them, and dropped off some more advertising. Most of the local computer people recognize the need for a good teacher and they are pretty cool about my advertising on their premises.
           The (computer) class is going out for Japanese food on Monday. I’ll stick with the Tempura. Raw seaweed is not my general fare, and as for wasabi, Al Klit [a contemporary employee at Telus that crashed at our house for a few months] used to say, “Food shouldn’t hurt.”

           As we walked into class, Angelo pointed out an ad. Someone is offering $30 per hour for anyone nearing completion of the A+ course. It is basically what I do now, drive to people’s house or business and troubleshoot their computer. There is obviously a catch, but again, it may be a catch I can live with. Somehow, I don’t believe people just walk out of a two-month course and start making $60K a year in Florida. They require a car and driver’s license, which I have. Just not Florida. What is the catch? That would make it the highest paying job I’ve ever had by close to half, and double my last job. I do need some practical experience in a hurry. I may give them a call. Mind you, there is another ad on the back wall for the same work that only pays $15 per hour, so something does not tally up. Unemployment pays $6.88 per hour.

          Author's note 2015-04-08: At the time these job prospects were getting tossed around, I did not know that my working days were about to end abruptly. Any one of these job options should have represented my peak earning years. I did know know within a year, I'd be writing these tales from a trailer court. And that a third heart attack would put a stop to my walking.

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April 7, 2005

           This is not the school lab. This is in my apartment. If the school even has a lab, it is shrouded in deep secrecy. Notice the soft-shell bass guitar case in the left background.
           Dang, I think I forgot Marti’s birthday again. Or is it April 17? They say a gentleman remembers the woman’s birthday, but not her age. Marti must be 21 by now. All of her sons by her third marriage are over 6 foot tall. This would also mean that Sean is twenty, and I have not seen him since 1987. Nestor, my godson in Venezuela is around eight, and I have not seen him since 1999. These are long and separate stories. Liz (John) must be over fifty and I have not seen her since 1998. Harry, since 1994.
           Then, 2005 is not over yet and it is a year of change. The Hippie and I intend to keep up our regimen of power walks. Although I’ve lost only four pounds in six months, I sure feel much lighter on my feet [since a recent medical operation]. This morning I am reviewing directions on burning CDs. Somehow, the Win 98 SE copy I have has the product key burned into a separate file (102 files on the disk instead of the standard 101).

           Of course, I intend to find out how that was done. It certainly raises a few eyebrows [at school]. There are some things I can’t copy at all, which means I’ve missed something on the subject. This means more reading. I gave Don, the airplane mechanic, copies of all the charts drawn on the board during this semester. I noticed nobody else even writes them down.
           The test exams are an eye-opener, and they mirror what I’ve said. I can consistently do 95% in the theory, but fail 50% of the troubleshooting questions. So I took a break. The Hippie and I walked over to Publix but as usual he cut things short to get back home. A two-hour walk became less than 45 minutes. [Exercise for me is not an option.] We talked about diet a lot because he reads up on these things. He talked me into trying olive oil again.

           To me it is pricey and not that tasty, but a pint of oil lasts me three months so I’ll give it another chance. Diet books would have better appeal to me if they talked in ordinary terms all the time. Take canola oil (I caught The Hippie on this one). What the heck is a canola? A nut? A vegetable? A seed? Is there a big field of canola somewhere? A shady canola tree? When I knocked on The Hippie’s door, I saw these chest high cases of that Guana juice. (I bought him one the other day, making a big fuss about how he was worth the 20 cents. It was five for a dollar.) He liked it so much he bought the whole inventory. It tastes like a mild, medium sweet purple grape juice slightly fruity. “Delicate yet not overpowering, a piquancy all of its own.”
           The intention was to make up for the walk later, but I got a call out to Pembroke Pines to set up a fax machine. Remember what I said about the companies no longer printing the manuals. Sure enough, it cost somebody $32 to get me to set their fax to answer on the first ring so Hewlett Packard could save on the $4 booklet. I guess I would not be so against this practice if the company offered to sell you the manual for another $10.

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April 6, 2005

          The good news is that from once a total software person, I now know what all those ports on the back of a desktop computer are for.            Who recalls that HP computer from ABC Thrift? Yes, that thing is still not fixed, and that is the tale for today. This is the unit that was donated in good, but non-working order. Since it was in such fine shape and had been working recently I thought it would be a good candidate for me to practice what I had hoped would be my newfound skills. Wrong.
           I finally gave up, but only to the extent of tackling it on my own. It was the most perplexing problem. Every component worked fine but it would not boot up the operating system. Forty hours of following every instruction in the text plus the notes I’d made were not helping. It just sat there and said it did not recognize MSCD001. It would do this right after I had placed the CD into the tray. I was able to discover lots that did not work, so the time was not wasted. The owner had removed all the valuable parts except a single DIMM card, and replaced the hard drive (HDD) with a much smaller unit. Otherwise the computer should have worked. What do you think it was? (Yes, it is running now.)

           I studied from 6:00 AM until 4:00 PM and then took the computer in to school with me. The instructor was able to determine in BIOS that the HDD was second on a list that required it to be first. This area had not been covered in class. From that point onward, the progress was logical. First load the operating system, in this case Windows 98 SE. Then use another computer to download the NIC driver off the internet. This is a ‘can opener’, because once you get that connection, the drivers are free. First the video driver, then the sound card. This is the first computer that has been repaired from scratch in this class.
           Am I happy? That depends. You see, I am glad the thing is finally running. I am not glad that I have not learned enough to even diagnose such problems, and the class is ¾ finished. There is no way I could have come close to fixing that computer, and yet the BIOS is the simplest part of the machine. If it is any consolation, nobody else in the class had any idea either. Why is it not one of us can troubleshoot BIOS yet? Does not that seem odd? Also, if we are to learn all these things, they must be scrunched into the next 2-1/2 weeks instead of spread over the entire two months. I was very afraid of just such a thing. No balance between lecture and lab, now the meaningful part of the course becomes a memory contest instead of a learning reinforcement event.

           There was a curious twist. The instructor does not give notes or allow time to take them. I wrote it down anyway, so I was the only person to completely follow what he did in the repair process (of that HP Pavilion 7845 computer). Well, except for the guy who already knows the trade and is just there to get the certificate, Chris. Having notes to refer to is important, as some of the others are [finally] beginning to notice. I am also hitting up to 95% in some of the practice exams, but that is largely luck. Some of the other practice [exam] modules that I have not studied yet, I cannot even understand the questions.

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April 5, 2005

          That is a 1954 Ford. Parked somewhere up in Ft. Lauderdale, I think.            It is midnight after a full day, the kind I like. In the order it happened, this is the recap. The HP computer is just maddening because not one of the repair techniques learned in school will cause that machine to load Windows 98. I finally wound up taking the parts out and trying them in this machine. For some reason, the original machines will not recognize the CD-ROM and load the operating system. I made a couple of copies on this unit, and I see that I still have to learn more about the copy process. For example, I cannot copy the copy of Windows 98, but obviously somebody can. I have to take it in to school.
           Remember Guy DePastino? He’s the honcho at PC Professor. I had a good talk with him this morning, and he will not be insisting on photocopies of my ID, nor record of any information for that matter. If someone wants to see my documents again, they should come and ask me again, simple as that. I don’t like it when people do it behind my back, because they have something to hide. The Hippie came over and we walked over to the Mall to put up advertising and pay for a few things. I am informed that when you are stopped in your car in the state of Florida, you are under ‘technical arrest’. Don’t say you weren’t warned, all you people who think everything is just fine in this great country. Remember well how you feel the next time you are stopped for a burned out taillight.
           Our tow-truck buddy was in the lot, even The Hippie noticed how furtively he watched when anyone took even a few steps in his direction. Good, I love a paranoid, it makes teaching them a lesson just that much more effective and rewarding. I’m sure more will come of that, not all of it recordable here. [I published the picture and details of the parking lot spy in all the local Laundromats. Hey, you can do the job, I am merely making sure you can’t do it anonymously. He now has to watch his back all day long.]
           The Hippie and I were in Publix, I actually bought a lottery ticket. Call it a hunch. What did I say about inflation coming back, and how we have to make the poor people in this country poor again? Rumor is the real estate bust has hit the Carolinas. The real sign is the price of Carnation evaporated milk. A month ago it was 85 cents. Today it is $1.03. Ouch.
           Today was the last extra class this semester. It is tough getting in there four times a week, plus the barrage of information gets overwhelming. Interestingly, this was the first lecture I’ve enjoyed since we started here. I learned everything and I say that is because this was a ‘proper’ lecture. It was two hours of lecture and two hours of lab. It may not have been designed that way, but since we were hooking up printers, it was taught differently. Far better, in my opinion, others did not think so. We connected three printers and a scanner each, including downloading the drivers from the ‘net, and networking them through our LAN (local area network). This is far more to my liking, because most of what went wrong had to be fixed then and there before the class could continue. It was pretty obvious I was picking it up faster than the rest put together. Amazing how practical experience works.
           Hmm, there is a new class starting across the hall. As usual, if there are any women in any school I attend, they are never in my class – a constant throughout my rather extensive education. There is this little redhead in there. I’m sure it is fake, but she has the body of Jill and the face of Noreen. She smokes, and that is how I get a chance to look her over – all the smokers meet outside during break. Even after all this time, it does not bother me at all to stand next to a smoker, nor am I ever the least bit tempted. By smoking. She is tempting, indeed.
           Last, now that I’ve gotten to know my classmates, the talk is more about jobs and money than before. Money is why everyone is here. Computer repair is not something that attracts people as a hobby. Today a few facts came out. One is that some of the people in the room are repeating this course. At $3,000 a pop I do not have any such option. But what gets me is a lot of these men are in the same boat as me except that they are not getting any government help. I can’t mention names, but some of these men were outright refused educational funds because they were ‘already too educated’. Hmmm, how was that determined?

April 4, 2005

           [Author’s note: another entry about computer repairs. By this time, the school had totally disillusioned me. They had completely lied about the content of the course. At the end, I could not, as promised by them, fix computers. Instead, they kept saying I was not at the end. Well, as far as PC Professor is concerned, I was. Here is another picture of my kitchen table, not the schools mysteriously invisible computer lab.]

           [Author's note 2016-04-04: nobody knew it, but it was this computer school scam and another similar complaint I made about Broward Community College that was instrumental in the later investigations into student loan fraud. I've covered it many times, so I'll just say of the class of 35 grown men, I was the only one who had the cajones to stand up and say we had been cheated. The entire purpose of this "computer repair course" was to sucker everyone into signing up for an over expensive college degree.
           For the record, I did not specifically complain about the student loan part, but only about the constant pressure to sell you one. I was the only adult in the room that knew it was borderline loonie to enroll in a (then) $24,000 program for a job that paid $10 per hour. Here's a message from beyond the years: I hope all you tough guys who went along like sheeple actually got suckered on this one. Especially the bullshit artist who was after the Paki teacher's pudgy daughter. Dude, that story of her starting medical school was to get her married off. She was already pushing 30.]

           It’s just noon and I’m exhausted. First of all, why did I follow the instructions in class on March 18, 2005? The teacher said not to make notes, that we would be doing the exercise so often that it would become boring. I should have ignored him. The exercise was installing the OS on a new disk. He meant a new computer, but in fact it is the same process used on a disk that has been wiped out by the former user. I just don’t know where Mike gets his idea that he can skim over important things and expect everyone to remember every word. To some people, it seems, all facts are created equal.

           The result is by today I still cannot get Windows 98 SE installed on that Hewlett-Packard from ABC Thrift. I follow what few notes I was able to reconstruct and the text is no help. Both Mike and the text offer directions that assume every step goes by smoothly, which has never yet been the case. It places me in a situation I don’t care for. If you ask Mike for advice, he always reminds you the material was already covered. This puts you in the position where you either have to tell him he didn’t teach it very well or falsely admit you were too dumb to learn it in order to get the answer. The last time I asked a question about what he had just finished saying, I was only told that I “got it backwards”.
           That was a curious statement. I’ve gotten things mixed up in my life, but very rarely do I get them outright backwards. He had us create a read-only drive and in that drive create a folder that was read-write. The universities I’ve attended say that due to ‘containership’, a child cannot have more permissions that a parent. He had just taught us differently, and I wanted an explanation. Instead, the only thing I learned is that I’ve “got it backwards”.

           From 7:00 AM until noon I tried every possible combination of installing DOS and Windows from the CD, that is, combinations that we did in class. Nothing works, it does not recognize the CD-ROM, although the read light comes on. The computer creates a RAM disk D: that nobody asked for. I want the CD to become drive D:. Typical of the way this class is moving, we have learned exactly what a RAM drive is by definition, but not how to use it, what it is for in practice, and we have certainly not learned how to get rid of it. There are huge gaps present when you can’t get these basics in a computer repair course.
           Another thing that pesters me, although this could be my imagination, but the whole class has noticed whenever you ask Mike for advice, he kind of uses this as a mechanism to discover what your motives are and what you are up to, that you would ask. He should stick to just giving the answers. I have no idea whether the next fifty years will be as fair to me as the previous fifty, and therefore I don’t necessarily want or need some stranger from Florida suspicious that I may be installing pirated software. Especially when that stranger has a decidedly bureaucratic mind-set.

           What was learned today? I’ve learned to insist on answers early in each class, but that is another matter. The terms ‘domain’ and ‘network’ were getting tossed around as if people just naturally knew what they were. Do you know? When you log on to your computer, are you in a domain, or a network? You can be in one but not the other, you know. You could be in neither. It turns out nobody in the class knew. The glossary definitions did not make much of a distinction, saying they were collections of connected computers. This seems to be a classic example of a situation where nobody wanted to admit they did not really have an idea of terms and it was too late to speak up. No guessing here, tell me the difference.
           No, that’s not it. Both terms are computers hooked together with shared files, but that is not the answer. All the computers on a network share a common network name, but the same is true for domains. You’ve got to do way better to pass my course. The answer is the way that security is handled by the computers. Did you know that? A network is where the individual computer looks after it’s own security. In a domain, the system security is handled by a central server computer. Thus, a network is a peer-to-peer network structure, while a domain is a client server arrangement. In a network the password is to log on to your workstation, in a domain the password is to long on to the server. Some systems have both. Again, the difference is how security is implemented.

           I should have warned you to skip today’s entry unless you wanted a boring recap of many recent events. A lot of the little things have been simmering for over a month. Take this thought: One of the reasons I chose A+ is because my unemployment only went until May. Computer repair, while difficult, could be learned in the available time if (and probably only if) I did most of it full time. There is probably no chance I will ever have such an opportunity again – to go to school at government expense. Now, I have this strange ability to name computer parts but not fix them. Throw in the first 1% of the quirks present in DOS and Windows, and that is about the limit of what has been taught. In terms of actual repair, it has been a waste of time. Dammit.
           No amount of independent study makes much difference, since most of the books come from the same source. I can see how A+ evolved from an effort to give potential technicians a solid background to something quite different but I don’t know what. Five weeks ago we learned the I/O addresses of eight devices. Why? We have never used that information to repair anything, or at all.
           So I ask, of what good was the effort of memorizing that table? Apparently there was no reason, except possibly to pass the exam. And that is ridiculous. We have watched the instructor do a bit of troubleshooting, mostly without explanations of what was going on, but we ourselves have never learned any firm and logical systems to repair broken units. While it may be possible to learn a trade or to play the piano by watching someone else do it, that is called apprenticeship. The word is that except for apprenticeship, mankind might have put a man on the moon in the 12th century.

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