You like rain? This year I’ve got lots. Okay, I admit even by rainy Seattle standards, the last week has been a bad one. I was lucky to get my 16 miles in today. Here is an odd one for you. As I walked out of Starbucks this morning, a Chinese lady out of the blue started talking to me. There was no reason for her to pick me out from the others. She spoke no English and told me she needed to call a number “sam-ling-ing, lok-ling-lok, som-gow-sam-pat” but did not have a deen-wah [telephone]. I have no idea how this lady knew that I could understand this.
Of all the days to forget my cell at home, hey, it was early. This lady was stuck, so I asked a passerby if we could borrow his phone. He was a Starbucks regular and said he knew somebody inside who spoke Chinese. Cantonese, actually. Surprise, you know that ditzy waitress around 22? I think she is Ukrainian, but is definitely northern Euro all the way. Not only does she speak Chinese, she does so with a perfect accent and has ten times my vocabulary.
How? I had to ask around. I mean, I know this lady and she just does not have the brainthrust to pull this off, and anyway, if so, why is she working a McJob? The answer at the end of this lesson. Ha, I like that, calling this journal a lesson. Maybe it is for some. When I got to the shop, Fred informs me the mother of my seven-year-old student had come in wanting advertising for a school meeting tonight. Great, I pedaled home in the rain to get business cards and blurb sheets. Word of mouth is not the best advertising, whoever said that was disillusioned, however, it is the cheapest by far.
The video security system took a step forward. My data was wrong y’day and I spoke too soon. The camera requires 7.5 GB per hour! Nor can the format, frame rate, resolution, audio or compression be changed to do anything about that. As proof of concept, the system is working fine. Now I know it can be done by me for cheap, as opposed to merely knowing it can be done expensively by others. It is difficult to get me to believe what most people say they know about computers.
What is wrong with this picture? I had to snap this for you on the way in this morning. If this was a car, it would have been ticketed and towed within the hour, a good revelation of the mentality of the locals. Ticket and tow their bastard minds can grasp, but anything new or different stuns them into do-nothing mode. The machine was stilling sitting there when I rode past to the beach ten hours later. The machine is gutted but what a great picture.
A guy from South America brought in a series of DVDs that gave me much difficulty. It has a type of copyright that layers some parts of the movie on top of others (order is important) and can detect when it is being played on a small screen, like the ones on cracking software previews. Remember, I am not making any illegal copies, but merely informing my customer that it can be done. It can be.
The beach was deserted thanks to a fine afternoon rain shower. I had a six o’clock to meet Al who is having some trouble with some of the procedures, like faxing, email and logging on. I got the Invention page up and we looked at a report of prospects. These are people who have requested an information package about the Patent process. Al contacts them to see if it arrived, and according to the guy on the phone, a certain percentage of these contacts lead to filing fees and commissions. I wish Al the absolute best and told him my hesitation is that it smacks of a pyramid scheme.
The JC Toys appointment is set for 8:00 AM tomorrow. This time it should go for sure. I’ve checked everything I know of at this end. I don’t have any spare Cat5e cable, my plan is to pick some up at Home Depot. Remember, I worked several years in that area of the world up to 2004.
Here is an interesting photo angle. I was along the beachfront near Harrison Street east and decided on this view against a gray sky. I must wrap it up for tonight, but JP called to say not to worry about his brother [Joe] and his interference with the computer. It seems he put about that the software was not legit, but failed to explain that was the same status as the software on the laptop he donated. It is the transfer that is illegal, not the method or hardware involved. Duh. It seems to me there is a lot of this kind of thing going on in that family – the assumption that being a doctor makes you smarter in general than people who are not doctors. It is true enough in this part of the world that it blinds them to exceptions. Suffice to say I know more about computers than any fifty people in Miami – and computers are not even my strong subject.
