No calls, so an unexpected day off (so far). Norm is the French Canadien guitar player, and his keyboardist friend is Robert. They host a line dancing fest at the beach once a week, which happens to be today. If no work arrives by noon, I’ll go see them. It is one of those hot-cool muggy Florida winter days perfect for bike riding.
As you see, I did go to the beach, and these guys actually have a fairly large following. Around sixty people. The bad news is that Norm, the guitarist, is leaving on Easter weekend to go back to Quebec for the summer. It is a pity, I just got him half-trained to play along to the blues. He still drops chords, but not when he plays with Robert. That could be since Robert kind of drowns him out when he does.
I talked with Bernie, at the bowling alley. He has to get clearance from above, man I hate bureaucracies that pretend to give managers freedom to act. This week is out until he gets “friggin’ permission to hire a band”. Any way, I called the G, and he may be interested in a Wednesday night gig, maybe even an open mic. This was obviously before I learned you could not trust the Hippie not to cancel out at the last minute and go play a solo.
Again, I am having that problem that the software I use cannot produce a CD that will play in a DVD player, yet I know that it can be done. It seems I have to figure it out again from scratch every time I do anything. I have the SVCDs, but they require a computer to play them. My newest and best computer still requires hours to render anything over ten minutes long. As usual, the MS products cannot be used to produce anything that can be read by other popular formats.
Which gives me time to read, and I found out quite a lot about the manufacture of sardine cans. Is this juicy material, or what? Then again, it probably beats what you were doing at the same time. Why don’t they just put the sardines in a regular can and forget about it? It seems people want to eat sardines whole, and they are too tender to dig out of a tall, narrow can. The can has to both contain and offer the sardines laying flat when opened. That is also why the can used to have a special roller key to open the lid – a conventional opener takes to long and piercing the can wrecks the fish.
The pull-ring used currently still leaves a lip, but small enough to remove the pieces whole. The rim remains, not just so if need be a regular can opener can be used, but also so that the can is strong enough to retain its shape when the lid is pulled off. Yes, I did have an alternate subject I could have used here – the intense frustration of my new digital wristwatch. After hours of screwing around with it, the conclusion is that either the alarm beeps randomly or the thing beeps on the hour. You cannot turn both off. How I long for a good old wind-up model.
Another thing that gets me is the DVD process. I cannot reliably burn DVDs because sometimes the disk is incompatible with my software. Yet, when I give the disks to Fred, he can burn them no problem, and he is not a software person. Somewhere, I know there is a book that explains what to do in plain English, but where is that book? It has to do with encoding, but I’ve got every encoder known to man. Usually, I convert the file to AVI, then try to use that format to burn discs.
I can add that the U lock, from a company called Bell, is of a very bad design. I hear the gnawing question, how could a bike lock be badly designed? Easy, you cut too many corners. Worst feature: the key must be inserted to both lock and unlock. This is annoying (unless you carry a separate key chain, which increases other risks), for the rest of your keys must dangle from the lock.
Yet, you must let go of the key to align the parts. Most unnerving, because the key fits loosely in the lock and often drops out by itself. Right when you are most likely to be near open sewer grates. When Bell screws up, they go all the way.
The mechanism lacks a spring, so you cannot unlock it and pocket the keys. No spring means you cannot just snap the lock shut, you must feed the prongs into the cylinder and turn the key in reverse. It is therefore kind of funny that the cylinder can turn by itself just from the weight of the keys, wouldn’t you know it, and half-lock itself. This means around a third of the time, when you go to close the lock, you have to turn the key a second time to re-open the latches all the way, which requires both hands. Bell would be hard-pressed to make it any worse, but because it costs ten bucks, you are hardly going to throw it away. All Bell saves is the five cent spring like I wouldn’t notice.
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