Fred is dog-sitting. The best part of it is the dog is around forty pounds and thinks it is a puppy. If you sit down, you may find Rover on your lap. Or he’ll run right at you and leap up expecting you to catch him. My camera batteries died so I have nothing to show you about that. Its fun, but the dog gets into everything.
Now, we have a new personality on the scene. His name is Skrbc. I always get a kick out of Cyrillic names. Back in my university days, there was a brute on campus called Rskyvosk or something like that, I called it “a name of ponderous consonants, vowels, that is, heavily outnumbered”. This new guy is a doctor, and he writes books on the topic. He was a walk-in whose computer got wiped out when he tried to install the wrong version of some MS product.
I’m going to see if I can rearrange the navigation buttons on his web page. He subscribes to that Yahoo store thing. Now I’ll learn how it works, but I rejected the whole Yahoo store concept the first time I saw it. Again and like eBay, they stick their noses far too deeply into what should be your private business affairs, a holdover from bricks and mortar landlordism. “You’re renting my store, therefore I have a right to look through your customer list.”[Author's note 2016-01-30: I have no idea why there is a picture of a strip joint here. It is "world famous" but I've never been inside this or any strip joint except as a paid musician on ladies night. And technically, that should be "lady's night".]
That is exactly what Dr. Skrbc (rhymes with “Skrbc”) is going through. He’s got established clientele, but if he tries to contact them directly, Yahoo shuts him down. That is precisely the kind of nonsense that I love to figure out how to get around, and Skrbc’s eyes nearly popped when he saw me zip through the code to find why his navigation bar was at the bottom [where people have to scroll all the way down to find it]. It is nothing but can be an impressive sight if you’ve never seen anyone do it before.
So, what do I have against Yahoo? Nothing personal, but I can be very opinionated about people who overstep their authority, even where, in some cases, they have the authority but it merely appears to be unwarranted. Make all the profits you can, but only insofar as you allow others to do the same. It is one of those “self-limiting” freedoms. I first ran across the problem at a shopping mall whose lease agreement included a percentage of your sales. Think twice – to do that, they must plainly acquire the right to examine your books, and that is something you should never let anyone do without a warrant.
(It turns out the store was referring customers over to a second location across town where they paid a fixed rent, and the shopping mall sued. Again, I see that [referral] as a perfectly natural reaction to the mall’s repressive policy, something the shop owner has a right if not a duty to try to get around. In my world, the mall would be sued for even going so far as to find out about the referral – it is just [literally] not their business. The shop deserves a medal. However, this was in Canada, so the shop owner lost.)
Today was the deadline for Matthew T. Broderick to call. Plainly he does not have the time for this kind of undertaking. A band requires eight or nine extra hours a week, of which only 2/3 is performance time. I sent him my phone number three times, with no response. Now it is Wain’s turn.
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