I am going to miss this place but more specifically, I will miss having my own workshop. I get to fix little things that have no real formula for getting fixed. Little things that are cheaper to replace except you cannot buy improvisation. For instance, I found out if you have enough time and spring clamps, it is possible to repair a flat on a heavy duty bicycle tube. Ordinary patches bubble and burst. The trick involves an old tube and a pair of scissors.
In the background, there was a TV movie about The Saint, you know, Simon Templar. Val Kilmer, who has more acting talent than Leonard Nemoy. Right now he is poinking the 24 year old blonde babe with a Nobel Prize in physics who has trouble getting men to “notice her”. Since she is not divorced, not shacked up and has no “tossle-headed” children, the movie is not made in America. She’s just invented cold fusion, no less. The real unknown is how Kilmer can have short blonde hair one day and long black hair the next.Yes, the photo today is meaningless. However, I am one of the top publishers of pictures with no purpose but to make you think there might be a reason. I am not above including a photo just to get your attention.
I waited as late in the day as possible to phone JP. Ocean Reef is off. If he isn’t going, neither am I. My alternative plan is to spend the day reading and editing my MP3s, it turns out to be very difficult to fade on stage, even with the pedal. This means a lot of work but so is finding a partner on the same wavelength. We play often for a little cash. I like the way Danny DiVito puts it, “Of course you want more, that’s why it is called ‘Money’, you moron.”
In case anyone is wondering, yes, I do keep an eye out for any job that might pay me to sit around on a computer churning out shallow, inconsistent drivel. You know, the opposite of what I do here – did I get you on that one? Ha! I mean, I would like a job where I write the kind of article you see all the time on the Internet, where the authors with bad skills try to make you think it due to them operating on a different plane. The counterparts of balding white middle-aged guitarists who insist on playing Clapton.
The one blog that gets me is the East Indian who writes that he sleeps with his American lady boss. Except he keeps saying they spent the night “in each other’s hands”. At any rate, all the writing jobs seem the same. They want you to work for nothing until you “prove yourself”. I’ve mentioned this before, and that they all insist that you be an American citizen. Which means other nationalities can’t write? Duh, do you think it has anything to do with taxes? At any rates, there is one that caught my eye, paying for short 15-35 word reviews.
I’m heading out for the bookstore. The other choice was Panera, but with their prices, slow service and nobody to play crib against, Borders wins easily. I’m back from the bookstore already. Take warning that Borders prices have also gotten up into the stratosphere. It was a very fruitful trip, since I found some of the exact reference material my in-house library lacks.
Funny enough [because for once I was not looking], there were a few attractive women around, but they did not return any vibes. Although, one with her boyfriend was intensely interested in the fact that I was taking notes, a rarity in this town. Any rate, I do not approach women over 35. If I ever get accused of anything, it won’t be by some fattening housewife-type. Just so you’ll know.
The progress was all to do with the business card database. Along the way, I found an explanation that had me stumped. You know that common message “HTTP 401 Error” common on the Internet. I knew that to be the code when you attempt to log on to a site that requires a username and password, but you have not supplied one. (You get a different error if you supply the wrong info, which I know a lot about.) This 401 got me because, often, I knew that I had not been asked for the logon information.
The answer is PHP scripts. The exact ones I’m studying. There is a feature that remembers how a user logged on for the duration of their current session. Then, that user could go to any sub-page which required the same login without having to re-enter their information. Still with me? All that has happened is you have stumbled across such a page by a different path.
I delved deep into PHP. It has retarded features but I believe I’ve got a handle on it. I must say again, the sumbitch that palmed off that n++ “shorthand” hogwash must be somewhere right how laughing his ass off at how gullible people are. I can read most styles of PHP code and I see there are some severe security risks built into the system. Your on-line transactions and shopping carts use PHP, and it is not at all secure. Interesting.
This means at least some potential for the business cards, as I know it can be done. It is an immense project with an estimated 780-800 lines of code. Yet that represents a huge savings over duplicating the web pages for each card set and trying to maintain that ponderous system. I will take my own advice and change what I want to what the computer can do, rather than the opposite. Then I’ll get back to you.
In the news recently, the dork that was responsible for most of the spam in the world was arrested in Seattle. He reputedly had ten million fake accounts, although what form was not specified. The authorities say that most people would experience “a noticeable drop” in spam almost immediately. Now, if only they would arrest the ad-ware people. That would create a huge vacuum, know what I mean?
Trivia for today? Did you know India did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1958? It didn’t take them long to cash in on it. On the topic, did you know that the ancient Egyptians varied the length of the daily hours to match the seasons, so that daylight was always twelve “hours” long. Did you know that the Japanese did the same until just over a hundred years ago? Winter must have been great for overtime.
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