I don’t have a picture for you today, so here is an older one. This is the front of part of JZ’s dad’s house. JZ and I painted that house in early 2005. This is the central part of the house with the main driveway. The three parallel windows on the ground floor at center next to the main entrance is the guest dining room. If you take a look, you’ll see that was a lot of work. Look at all those shutters and some of those eaves are at the top of a very tall ladder. Or along some slippery roof tiles. I can see that spot JZ missed!
Dickens called this morning so I was in the Thrift for the day. It was quiet but better than recently and in the off-season I can use the extra cash. Some of the vintage material {Damion brings in] is getting pricey, as in a $159 end table and a $300 rug. It works out okay since most of the summer shoppers are locals looking for bargains and we certainly have those. Jerry, the Irishman, was in for a visit, great, it breaks up the day.That day was on the Internet, grabbing more music. I’m learning two tunes a day, and this morning it was Waylon’s “Rainy Day Woman” and Boxcar Willie’s “Smoke That Cigarette”. I stepped through around fifty tunes to find prospects. The ones with the most interesting titles seem to be the slowest. I do not like draggy music.
This guy called about transferring data off his old computer to a new one. I can’t recall the steps needed, or if any software is required. Anyway, he asked about something in AOL called “stem”. While I don’t know that, I do know that there is nothing new on AOL. He made some smart remark about it, but backed off quickly. He spotted the potential comeback. I’ll find out what “stem” is. AOL is notorious for misusing ordinary English, but I’ll bet nobody there knows what a leff professor is.
There were just enough [Thrift] customers to keep me away from getting anything done except downloads. I glanced through the first chapter of a donated book on anesthetics. Although first used extensively in England, it is considered an American invention. Here is the trivia. Ether was discovered by that Swiss guy, Paracelsus. For some reason, he was trying to sweeten chickenfeed. Crazy Switzerlander, I guess, since the chickens kept passing out. Then he saw them recover with no ill effects. He correctly guessed it was a gas, a remarkable achievement for the time.
The book continued to say that ether was used (in America) as early as 1840 for dental work and for surgery that did not involve “a lot of blood”, such as removing skin growths. Another point I found enlightening is that until the early 1900’s, American medical schools concentrated on teaching students how to run the business at maximum profit, rather than doctoring. Today we are more advanced. We have medical conventions for that.
Another fact is that when you get cable Internet, the cable TV company essentially uses one TV channel to send the signal. Their wiring, the coax cable, can apparently can accommodate up to 1,000 Internet users per channel, with each cable capable of hundreds of channels. The cable company uses a method called “capping” to limit the amount of data one modem can throughput. Yes, this means if you can “uncap” a modem, you potentially get tremendous bandwidth until they track you down.
All techs have heard that the cable modem is “not really a modem”. Now that I look at it, I see it is but a device to control access to the “always on” cable signal. The one I’ve got has a MAC address on the box, meaning this is a very important piece of information for the installer, or whoever he is working with back in the office. Also, this MAC address of 12 hex digits uses the first six to identify the manufacturer – so it is those last six used by the cable company to configure the hookup. Most interesting behavior from a company whose installer stole my bicycle last year. In fact, let me take an even closer look.
Later. Nothing on the Internet proves to be of any help. All you get on-line are acres of uncultivated words, all so shallow as to barely qualify as knowledge. As soon as the box is connected, the computer reports a 100Mbs connection, which I’ve never understood. There is no data receive unless the cable is connected to the box. I must stress that I am only looking, since I don’t want my bicycle back. That connection should not happen, this box is broken somehow. Who do I know that has a spare? Ah, I know.
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