August 29, 2006

This morning was overcast, the trees swayed in the wind. Hurricane Ernesto is taking his time getting here. I took a call from Rhode Island this morning to do a network setup over on Oak Street in Dania Beach. Their video driver was shot, so I could not do much. I don’t know what the guy does for a living, but he bought a three unit apartment and they are turning it into a single family dwelling.
May I add, that is quite the family. The daughter is a blonde, and unbelievable blonde. Her name is Rose, and she is indeed. My only consolation with seeing a beauty like that is that I used to get more than my fair share in this lifetime. I’ll likely see her again since once their computers are fixed; they’ll still need the router installed. She had that look, she could have been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-four, you can’t tell with babes like that. The son, well, I didn’t get his name but it looked like it might have been Petunia.

Kinko’s must have closed early, since we got a spate of business in mid-afternoon, all looking to check their e-mail. Oh, and like I mentioned last year, we are starting to get Canadians in again, complaining that our prices are too high. Since we are the lowest in South Florida, I must once more conclude that there are Internet places in Canada that charge less than $5 per hour. Don’t tell me those places are subsidized, too.

Note the deserted streets. Most places are boarded up but the low velocity of the reported winds left many places taking a chance. Most hurricanes are not much worse than bad storms with unusually little lightning. I talked to Fred about the work for Justin. We agree that Justin has produced something that works and is now reluctant to change the formula, although he recognizes that his sites are a little out of date. Fred has no problems using FrontPage to create the pages, while I hesitate to leap in so fast. I’ve looked at these apps, and they try to emulate CSS, which is a standard. For the same effort spent learning, one is far wiser to learn CSS. You won’t get immediate results but you’ll be able to use any new version that comes along.
Here is a photo of [Hurricane] Ernesto just starting to kick up the waves on Hollywood Beach this morning.
I also peeked at the Alesis drum box and printed up the user manual. It seems to do what I want how I want. There is an A to B rhythm, best explained as two variations on a drum beat. When you press the pedal, it does a fill and changes to the B style until you do the same to change it back. If you hold the pedal down past the first beat of the measure, it does the fill and stays on the A style. That answers my question. I looked at a Roland DR3 that did much the same with three variations (why bother?) but had a fatal flaw. It required a special cable to operate two foot pedals. You don’t need that kind of shit when you are up on stage, trust me. Roland had their heads in the sand on that one. I’ll try to eBay something tomorrow. The clerk at the music store was less than helpful, so I’ll spend my money elsewhere first.