Off-season can be a real drag in this town. The local landlords are lucky that business has to pay the rent year-round. All that saved me today was this black dude came in that needed thirty CDs copied in a hurry. Which led me to the further conclusion that some of my network computers are not set up right to make these copies.
Then Fred walks out of the back with a great little ftp program. It is a little complicated at first and the directions suck, but it seems to have all the required features. As usual, I will not be able to find anyone around who can give me a hand with this stuff. It appears to work by logging on to two remote computers as if they were connections to just another hard drive. The software displays two panels, one the source and the other the destination. The connections I will have to figure out, the examples given are useless.
I spent the early day getting routine maintenance done on the network. This included help from Fred getting the sound (audio devices) up and running. For some reason, on-board sound cards give me trouble, mainly because I don’t know how to go about getting enough information about them to go looking for a driver.
While all this was going on, I managed to burn a DVD of a movie not released yet and that will be my entertainment this evening. It massively clouded over near quitting time. Florida must hold the record for places that rain a lot but don’t install adequate drainage. It rains intensely here, there is rarely a day-long drizzle. Do the city planners build for this condition? Of course not. Every rainstorm thus creates a mini-flash flood. Take a look at this little river running down Hollywood Boulevard.
No excuse exists for this kind of poor planning. That stream is eight feet wide and ankle-deep at the curb. See it flowing down the street? Well, you cannot walk around it at the intersections and if you pull your car up to park, you can’t get out without getting a boot-full. You cannot ford the water anywhere, the storm sewers don’t appear to work at all. This water is headed straight for the Atlantic Ocean. The City will ticket you instantly if you try to park parallel so you passenger can get out or if you try to pull into one of the driveways to do the same.
Note that this attitude on the part of the City has another side-effect. This is mid-afternoon on a Saturday. See the dozens of shoppers and cars in the busy prime-time shopping street? You think Florida would learn that you cannot tax your way to general prosperity. I believe that was tried Canada but all the truly talented people kept leaving the country. The bastards.
Speaking of dead-ends, a person now requires a minimum annual income of $109,000 to afford a house in Miami. Nobody who works for a living makes that kind of money around here. The system has spent more money on welfare and subsidized housing than would be needed to outright buy the houses and give them away. Home ownership is highly over-rated anyway, it’s not like your house is your castle anymore. Every flunky cop, city inspector and telemarketer has a key to invade your privacy any time for any reason.
I went over to see Dickens at the shop. He’s admitted he wants out but that he’ll hold for his price. He also has that house in the Keys that is on the market for $800,000. I won’t break your heart and tell you what he paid for it in 1989, but I confirm that it would make a grown man cry. Really cry.
