It was not going to make up its mind whether or not to rain today, so I puttered around the house. Fixed the extension light, transplanted the ferns and fertilized the pineapple and coconut, rigged up a cable pegboard to sort out that mess and moved some rocks around the landscaping. I’ve also decided that instead of air condition the Florida room, I may install four extra fans. This makes sense since I can already work there with one fan directly on me. Why run up the electric bill when all I do is work and read in there?
That was after work. I went into the shop, where Fred let me in on the secret of how he can restart all those Dell computers. When I do it, the drivers get clobbered or something else always goes wrong. He has, hidden in the top shelf, a set of small (2.5 GB) hard drives with each major configuration. That makes sense and I was wondering how he managed that trick.
I know I’m a major critic of MS for calling things misleading names. I have some other examples to prove I am not picking on MS, only that they are the worst. One is USB (Universal Service Buss) ports and devices. They are not universal, the plugs and sockets are keyed and must be plugged in the correct way. That, son, is not anything near universal. Another misleading term is digital camera. The picture taking part may be, but the rest of the camera is not. Question – if it really is a digital camera, why do you still have to buy a polarizing filter?
The point here is the menu selection. They say it is digital, but you cannot go directly to the function you want. You have one button to scroll through the entire menu in a fixed order, which is zero improvement over analog. My Gemini has ten functions, if you miss one, say like tonight I was driving and saw a great shot. You have to press the selector button either four or five times to get to AVI. You also have to press it a certain way for a certain time period. Miss it by one (which I did) and you must go all around again, which is far faster than waiting for it to time out. Digital, my eye.
It was a good week money-wise and I may take tomorrow off. Dickens cannot find anyone to fix the AC and that puts him out of business until that time. The unit is up on the roof – a Florida classic. Hard to get to and even harder to fix working in the sun. I was going to go up to University to check out the coffee house, but I got a late service call. Not bad, $70 to program a fax machine and install Norton. Hey, I’m worth it if you are the type who can’t read instruction manuals. That eFax still gets me sometimes, especially explaining to people how it works. I didn’t get back until after dark, so I went shopping. Was it Tammy Faye Baker who said shopping was cheaper than therapy?
Something new, a pluot. I tried a sample and then bought a few. It tastes like, well, fruit. I realize later it is a cross between a plum and apricot. Which they couldn’t call an “aprilum”. I came home and have been sipping on Postum all evening. You know, I’d drink it more often except it is so damn expensive. It is made from grain and yet it costs more than coffee. Except for maybe the ridiculously priced coffee imported from overseas places, like Hawaii. Where, by extrapolation, the laborers must make $45 per hour.
