A) high income and good taste are not the same thing
B) lawn slugs are a far greater problem in Florida than generally reported
C) no matter how well-armed you arrive, never look some women straight in the eye.
This morning I canceled the arrangement with the publishing distributor. Not a wise economic move, but I consider it the right thing to do before things got any deeper. To offset this, I went into the shop and met the guy who is going to help me get a database on the Internet. (He never did.)
The arrangement is that he will show me how it is done. He talked me out of 30% of all profits, but that will be nothing since I can always come up with new and better ideas.* He is to set the correct things together for the business cards. Allow me to explain a few things.
I was stymied by the procedure. While I understand each step, I could not find any material that showed me how to link them all together and get a web page that is a searchable database. When he described what he had to do, suddenly the whole shebang fell into place. My earlier observation was correct – all the so-called computer manuals I had read avoided stating what was required start to finish and contained absolutely no practical examples. It turns out it is, as I suspected, at least a two step process in addition to the web page.
Thus, I’m writing it down to compare later with what I discover. He mentioned PHP and MySQL, both are books I have read. However, now I know they must be connected in some way and I can run with that. PHP is another one of those idiotic languages with strange punctuation that is not really any improvement over BASIC, and uses exactly the same constructs, functions, formulas and logic. I say idiotic because for all the good it does, they might as well have stuck with BASIC.
MySQL is a primitive database language, a quality makes it usable by almost any operating system and relational database program. Both PHP and MySQL are dismal knock-offs of earlier languages, but now I have been tipped off that they are used in conjunction with searchable web databases. It will be interesting to see if I’ve already figured it out correctly. Here goes.
You open a web page, but this web page contains PHP programming. It generates a form in HTML and sends it back to you. You fill out the form and send it in. The PHP picks up variables you entered and sends them to MySQL, which in turn searches a database. MySQL then returns information to PHP which generates another HTML form and sends it to your browser. If I am wrong I think that I can’t be very wrong.
I made a supply run for Fred, the people at ChipTech are beginning to figure out that I am difficult to brush off. Fred returned a motherboard that was still under warranty. They indicated they did not have a replacement and would send it for repair with a two or three week turnaround. I pointed out that if they did not have a replacement, then, in fact, there was no warranty and that if it required being sent to the factory, it should be transparent, that is, it is them and not us who should be doing that. Suddenly, they found a replacement. This is one of the most annoying things about Florida is that people will repeatedly try to avoid their responsibilities with this trick.
Also, the new guy knew how to solve the slow Linux problem. I found out later the same condition returned when I restarted the system but at least I see it is not the bigger problem I set out to find. I will pk every card but the search will likely be by city since that is where the cards are concentrated. I thought about county but who knows what county Missouri City, TX, is in? Also, some counties have more than one big city.
This also means major knuckling down to get things over the hump. Since this was the last spare time I’ll have for a month, I decided to move some furniture around. Enrique tried to pretend this place (the one I eventually bought) was full-sized living quarters. He had a king-size bed in the main bedroom. This left no space to open the dresser drawers or move around. I threw it out.
It may seem minor, but simply moving out that bed became a major operation taking four hours. He [Enrique] crammed so much stuff around that every move involved clearing space in stages, often moving the same thing five and ten times. It is one in the morning and I am only around have done. The up side is that chucking that bed [I would have donated it to the Thrift, but it was too big to fit into my car] is that it increased my living space by 10%. I now have a desk in the bedroom.
I detect some quizzical looks. No, I did not have a desk there before and wanted one now. For anyone who thinks that is weird, ask yourself if you have, say, a TV or a phone in your bedroom. I consider those things in the bedroom as signs of a failed and doomed relationship. I, on the other hand, still hand-write letters and that is where I do it. That will be the day I allow a TV in my bedroom.
All told, I worked nearly eight hours, getting things arranged. I want more work area because I enjoy puttering. I repaired a half dozen things today with my hot glue gun, including a book binding, my fanny pack, some unraveling cables, a frayed belt, a picture frame and the battery case for my bicycle light.
The big bed was replaced by my hide-a-bed. Yeah, I still have that thing. I own the strangest one in existence. When you try to open it, you’ll swear it is jammed shut. Yet when you stand it on end to move it through a narrow doorway, the thing springs open by itself and is nearly impossible to close without setting it down again. It is alive, I tell you, how does it know?
Last, I checked out those color business card scanners. They are shockingly expensive, as in $150 to $300. There are cheaper ones that scan only in black and white. This is more Japanese marketing, since the components are not significantly better than flatbed scanner, nor are they much different. At those prices, I’ll keep scanning by hand.
Well, nearly last. I also sent the Digital Concepts camera back to the factory agent in NJ. No, I do not sign up for phony warrantees and fake service plans. If it does not work, I send it back to where it came from and watch to see how they deal with it. Dickens called to say that sales have picked up since I’ve been there. Good.
*[Author's note 2015-11-06: I was to learn the hard way that the current "generation" of database people all had the same mantra. Focus on Internet database and pray like hell that someone comes along with that spark of an idea that makes your database better than anyone else's. Then screw him for 30% ad infinitum. I now recognize this as the hipster philosphy of life, a.k.a. "Zuckerberg-Think". Why bother coming up with your own ideas, steal something. After all, they are the greatest generation. Raised on natural and artificial flavors.]
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