June 7, 2005

           Happy 30th, Jude. I think. Let’s see how the calibration went. It says I traveled 4030 steps, although they count every foot fall, which I call a pace. To me a step is from where one foot lifts until the same foot lands. Then it says 1.52 miles, where it is really 1.75, so my first guess was reasonable. So, how many inches per step? Well, 1.75 times 5,280 times 12 equals 110,880 inches total, divided by 4030 gives 27.51 inches per step. Rounding down (pessimistic case) gives me 27 inches per pace. It actually seems to work well so far, adding that I burned 242.1 calories.
           There is a strange newcomer at the park. He is in great shape, tanned and trim. But he also wears spandex, has a haircut out of 1952 and brushes just a little too close when he jogs past. Thus, his great physique is lost by his childish look-at-me behavior. Even on the cooler mornings, he always takes his shirt off. I’ve seen people step onto the grass when they see him coming, where I just make sure my elbows are well out into my social distance so he is the one that has to make way. Also, the tan on his torso is different than on his legs, which hints of tanning lessons, which in turn hints of self-obsession. That is a fancy way of saying nobody in the park likes him or wants him around. What I cannot handle is his Frankie Avalon haircut. It looks like one of those Greek war helmets. I cannot fathom, then or now, what goes on in some men’s heads to think those greasy cowlick curls of Vaseline are attractive. The style seems to go with men who have big noses, which is odd because it makes their noses seem even bigger. The Meyer Lanski look.

           What’s this, a big search in Aruba for a missing teenager? I see she is blonde/blue. Last seen leaving a club with three men. Three men? Whoa, we need a lot more information before taking sides on this one. A woman has a right to leave a drinking establishment with whomever she wants, just like you have a right to walk through skid road at night flashing a roll of hundred dollar bills. There was nothing about Intel on this mornings broadcast, so maybe The Hippie heard it wrong. It seems to me a switch of suppliers would be the news event of the century. So far. Today, I’ll do more research, maybe hit the library before noon. This is the time when I need some firm advice on my writing? When and where would you pay to read the style and topics I record? All the articles I read are in top magazines and are expected to be accurate, researched and proofed. These people have degrees in journalism, and it generally shows.
           We had fun today. The Hippie calls, and he wants to see Flamingo Plaza. This is the Thrift store mall on 10th in Hialeah. He wants me to drive. Just as we get there, I get a call from Workforce, and he distracts me just enough to lock his key in the car. He tells me this horror story of one time he was in the middle of the Everglades at a rock concert and this drunk guy locked them out of his car. This was how he knew for certain you could not open his car without a key… Both drunk, they decided to break the back vent window, but missed on the third hammer swing and broke the wrong window! Now, I’m laughing my ass off and he is panicking. Whoa, The Hippie, we’ll get this car open, but I have to stop laughing. Like a lot of locals, The Hippie has never seen anyone open a car door with a coat hanger. Of course, none of the stores had a wire coat hanger, so I bought a pack at the dollar store. The Hippie, as usual, was over worried, whereas I feel he got a free, no charge lesson on how to break into his own car. Sure, it took 15 minutes but that’s no big deal to learn something useful.

           Flamingo Plaza used to be a great weekend place to shop for bargains, but it is no more. It is high-priced second hand, and a lot of it is junk. Buyer beware more than ever. They had a Pentium II 200 MHz clunker in there, but it was priced at $100. I would have offered them $15, because of everything that had to be done to get it to a saleable condition. It only had a 1.6 GB drive, so it would not even hold Windows XP. However, The Hippie wanted to see the place and he spent $20. On the way back we stopped at GuitarLand. Wow, a simple drum machine is still close to $200. You don’t readlly use a drum machine on stage, rather you record your tracks to CD and use those. The Hippie thinks we already do lots of country music, so I asked him what was on the hit parade. Aha! Hank Williams is not there anymore, Big G.
           The big news from The Hippie’s view is the Federal government overturning the right of individual states to approve the medical use of marijuana. He was an activist with the local groups until it was apparently taken over by doctors, lawyers and anyone else who could line their own pockets. He quotes the tale of one lady director who bought a house cash the same year the group went bankrupt. Any way, he is really up in arms about how unelected federal agents, who know nothing of individual circumstances, could make a law that causes others to suffer. I pointed out that he is starting to sound a lot like me on other issues, to which he surprisingly agreed – once he thought about it. In my world, the feds don’t know who is using medical marijuana until you tell them, which would always be a foolish thing to do.

           Lucreshia called from Workforce. Something has happened at that end, for they are no longer insisting I go to PC Professor. They have another school, EZ Computer at 7615 Davie Road. 954-447-3139. Hey, that is right across the street. I called, immediately noting they are paranoid, for they will not take calls from blocked numbers. All my outgoing calls block, because it is not your business what my phone number is when I answer your advertising. It turns out they are not offering MCP, but may in a couple of weeks because, it seems (ahem) a bunch of Florida trade schools seem to have folded recently when they were cut off from government money for underdelivering. The lady I talked to (Tina) said their A+ class involved at least 50% lab time, that there were two computers on each desk, one of which was for nothing but repair exercises, and that in her class at every student repaired at least 11 computers by the end of the semester. Wish I’d known that. Lucreshia says I’m already approved, so I can start any time. That means next month is okay. Now, to find a job repairing computers and getting things underway so I have a skill to fall back on. Don and I realize to really learn networking, you have to set up a working network first. Otherwise the technical material just dances in front of your eyes with nothing practical to relate it to. As an example, we were told that to use a network, you have to map a drive. But we were not taught how that is done. We were shown once, but that is not teaching. Trades are learned by repetition.

           So far, my prediction on internet service is true – it all costs about the same. DSL is $37.90 once you get them to tell the truth, and even then you can’t be sure. They first quoted me $34.95 when I asked for a “complete and revealing out-of-pocket monthly cost to me in total for working service”, and only later reluctantly revealed a ‘mandatory’ Cost and Recovery Fee. (Yes, I smell it too.) If it is mandatory, it is part of the cost, ladies. Not the price advertised, but the cost. Listen to the question. The one I got tried to pretend she did not understand the concept of total cost.
           Later in the afternoon, I wanted out of the house, so The Hippie and I went to Archives for coffee. He swears he has never been there, and like most people who live here, gets confused when you give them directions on Sunrise in Ft. Lauderdale. There is a twenty block section where the normally north-south US-1 Federal Highway jogs along Sunrise Boulevard, which is an east-west roadway. On this twenty block stretch, they are one and the same road, you can call it whatever you want. At both ends of this twenty block stretch, Federal Highway forks and carries on. I do not see what is so confusing about that, but the average person from Florida needs you to draw them a map, at which time they’ll say, “Oh, I know what you mean.”

           I spent $8 on a book about the Internet, for it seemed to be very well written, and goes into such aspects as the pattern behind packet switching and domain names. The Hippie, of course, had to get back in time for his 7:30 lesson, so we only had time for coffee. I’m tempted to go see Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith. Nobody I know likes that name, Sith is too typical a word that kids come up with when asked to do so. It reminds The Hippie of syphilis. I decided to read instead, noting that Maxwell House coffee is now $4.71 a package, up $1.50 in a month or so. I have a coffee budget, but I pity those who did not listen to my warnings about inflation. The government stats are based on a ‘basket of goods’, and I believe that basket intentionally contains items meant to keep the percentage lower. Based on the things real people buy, inflation has always been closer to 10% per year.
           Then The Hippie calls and he wants to go to West Virginia next month, to a hippie festival. He says there are tons of cool people who are anti-system. I, on the other hand, am having great fun with the request. “So, The Hippie, tell me why we have to go all the way to West Virginia to break the window on your car?” It sounds interesting, but I had better be working by then.

           He mentioned the other day he had trouble sleeping, and without actually thanking me, revealed that he had used the time to read. That’s progress in my books. The main difference between me and an idiot is 5,000 books. I have learned very little in life from my fellow man. For example, I now believe I am one of the few who know what a proxy server does. Ask your next computer pro if they know. Okay, listen up. Some internet services are not true internet services in the sense that they require you to go through (and pay for) their software to use the internet. AOL, WebTV and CompuServe are good examples. This acts as a firewall, in that only certain requests and answers allowed will make it through their systems. Firewalls slow the operation down, as every incoming and outgoing packet is verified. To speed things back up, the internet service uses special dedicated computers that scan the internet for the most frequently accessed sites, and store the information at their offices. These computers are called servers, and some examples would be a mail server, a chat server and a newsgroup server. When you log on, the system takes you to these servers instead of the internet, and you get the illusion of very fast service. A proxy server simply stores the most frequently accesses web pages so your screen refreshes faster. That is because it is refreshing from the proxy server, not the actual internet. (They don’t admit it, but I think these proxy servers are the real source of spam, ad-ware and pop-ups. They are also the logical space for spyware.)