Much as I like my Bosscruiser, the bike has a preventable problem due to bad design. The kickstand will malfunction. You cannot install a forked model because the chain is in the way, and the regular model is too short. The bicycle leans over too far and any weight, say a laptop in the basket, will slowly begin to twist the front tire to the left until the bike falls over. It did it right in front of my eyes.
Shame, Bosscruiser (yes, maybe the kickstand was not their model, but the fact that the design allowed a wrong model to be installed in the first place is still their fault). All replacement models I viewed another defect – none of them had a prong that would rest on anything except a solid surface. They would poke through lawn grass. I think I will drill a hole part way through a golf ball and see if I can cap it.
Due to discrepancies on my DSL lecture last day, I went out and bought “DSL for Dummies”. DSL does not work on fiber optic; I was right and they were wrong, so I won’t mention it. These Dummie series vary wildly in quality and I must mention this volume is very well written and brilliant in passages. If you want to see the opposite, read “CD/DVDs for Dummies”.
I repaired an HP printer today. It is just not something we repair, but this one was such an expensive unit, the two hours was a bargain. It took longer to uninstall all the drivers I had to install just to test the unit, plus all the junk, web connections, strange applets and virus-like weird files that HP puts on your computer without asking permission first. They are getting as bad as AOL, who have got to be the strangest ISP in history. Here's a picture of a ship just because.
For example, you had better pay attention to all those warnings they issue about how they will never call you for personal information or to confirm anything. It is their roundabout (dishonest) way of telling you they have a security problem. Ruth called today about her password. Last Saturday, somebody tried to long on to her email. They apparently called up AOL and claimed to have forgotten the password. AOL reset it and now Ruth can’t log on.
Ruth immediately calls here, she is still unclear on the concept that we don’t have any help desk. You are supposed to learn from us how to repair things yourself, and if you have waded too far out, that does not constitute an emergency. I told her I cannot get out there until tomorrow. At full price. It is her own fault for not learning to log on. AOL does not help much either. They want to know “the last four digits of the method you use to pay your monthly bill”. Maybe Ruth is reading it wrong, I’ll see, but since she read everything else to me (over the phone) perfectly, I have to conclude AOL is the culprit. I did not know methods had a last four digits.
I’ve decided to re-install Linux on the Internet computers and purchase another desktop from Fred for $200. I’ll operate it as a customer unit that I am just testing. Semi-permanently. I threw a lady out of the store today. You know the type, they come in looking like a million bucks, but when I twice asked her what she was selling, she refused to give me a straight answer. Something about saving money on my Visa accounts. I told her to leave and not come back. It must have been a first for her because she put a screwball look on her face like she had up to that point thought she was so beautiful that nothing like that would ever happen. It did.
I’ve done some deeper thinking about Norwegian Cruise Lines. I have no doubt they’ve got the computer networking relegated to a no-class job. Yet I was ready to do just that kind of work to get onto the cruise ships when I first got here. There is no doubt the job would be anything but routine and that is where I can thrive. If it is a ten hour day, that could amount to $1500 weeks, and unless you smoke and drink (which I do not), living expenses are practically zero.
By late afternoon I was in Dunkin’ Donuts working the Sudoku puzzle. The staff, well, I basically had to tell them a big part of the reason I’m not there as often is that there is no place to secure my bicycle. Plus that Columbian babe went back home a month before she turned legal, dang.
That reminds me, a Columbian guy was in today asking Mike about laptops, so I translated. He seems to want all the older models we have that still operate on Windows 98. Indicating that is the pirated copy they are using in that part of the world. (Windows is so expensive, each foreign area has one older version that dominates.) He also needs somebody who knows how to comply with minimum American tax law.
Then I went over to Big Al’s. His mother had new tiles put in and the workers yanked all the wires out of the sockets, then proceeded to cover all the expensive equipment with a layer of chalk-like dust. It was not easy, but finally I got Al’s cable TV working. By not easy, I mean he has one of those odd-ball video recorders that you have to turn off to make it work. It actually stays on internally and rebroadcasts all the signals on Channel 3 or 4. When you turn it on, it expects a VHS or DVD and will not rebroadcast the cable TV signal. He paid me full computer repair rates to fix it.
So I made decent money working 4 hours. The rub is that I had to bike all over town to do it, over seventeen miles. I’d rather work at home and put in those miles along new areas, such as the beachfront in Fort Lauderdale. I was going to get bored, but I had to use the time to learn “These Boots Were Made for Walking” on the new Alexis drum box. Tricky, for I have to reset it during the chorus pauses, a technique that is troublesome on stage but also makes me irreplaceable except by a live drummer.
