JP and I have been trying to get that movie “300” for two months now, partly because he kept getting the date wrong as to when the DVD would be available. It would have been today for sure, but his A/C is not working. It hasn’t worked in years. Like the Taurus, it gets cool but never cold. So the heat out there by 5:30 this morning made it easy for me to decide to spend the day right here. Or nearby.Which raises the question of how they decide when a movie is going to be released as a rental? I know it has to do with money but it seems to me that, well, no, when I think it over, it is totally money. I’ll move on to something else. Like when is this blog going to be discovered as a totally fantastic human interest product? I found out it does have a sort of news reader called ATOM. But you have to find the blog first, and that is taking just forever among the literati. They are just doing this so that I can later say “Well, I had to start somewhere.”
Who can define the “Free Rider Syndrome”? This is where some public services get enjoyed by all including those who do not have to directly pay for them, the usual example being a lighthouse. The problem is when some people adapt to a lifestyle that does little except seek out the free services and come to expect them. There is an example pending, you can tell.
Okay. In walks the first Canuck (crafty devil is gonna save hisself 18 cents) and puts Canadian quarters in the washing machines. He jams them all, one after another right down the line. It can take weeks for a repair to be effected, during which period nobody can do their wash without driving downtown. This wastes everybody’s time double. So who is in the wrong here? Okay, remember what you just decided, no changing your mind.
Those who know me remember that Laundromat I owned back in my twenties. I unjam one machine, use it, and jam it back the way it was before. Everything is as I found it, the Canadian can’t waste my time (I know that this is what secretly really bothers Canadians) and I have a clean machine to use without waiting in line every time I show up.
This is, of course, an utterly brilliant solution to a difficult situation, and teaches a few stupid people a lesson in the process. No, I am not the repairman. No, I am not Mother Theresa. I suppose you could ask me to help out, but I don’t parlez-vous. I also subscribe to the philosophy that stupidity is self-correcting. You sin against Nature by helping the stupid too often, they’ll get a syndrome. If you feel sorry for them, ask mommy to tuck you in tonight.
Of course, there is always one New-Ager with a super-guilty conscience who will play do-gooder and say I should have helped for free. Without explaining why he isn’t helping them for free, those jerks are all alike. Besides, I used to unjam all the machines, only to find them jammed again within a few days. It is hard enough to find a clean unit without the whole park using “mine” because the rest are broken. Don’t be a hypocrite, you already said who started it.
Having time to sit beside the air conditioner all day, I may have succeeded in capturing some video with the Dazzle device. Except it took a fortune of other equipment to make it work. I’ve found a low-res camera that will record a little over two hours of my front patio on a DVD. There is no provision to make it B&W or lower the quality to lengthen the time, but at least it is burning. On an external $400 DVD burner, that is. The Dazzle carries no warning about this requirement.
The sad news is the system will not work with the motion detector. It is all or nothing and it has a tiny 2” x 1.5” view port, has a hard time recording through glass and the night vision capability is maybe 18 feet. Also, the infrared light attracts a lot of insect life and if you know what to look for, you can see the projector ring from twice its effective range. I’ll work with it, as it will play directly on a flatscreen.
Ah, it is late, but it was worth the hack. There is no guaranty, but I do believe I have another system that will record what I tell it, not what Sony says I can. The Sony restrictions are so bad it makes it difficult to copy anything without going through hoops. If I did what I think I just did, I can even get around that dreaded Universal Disk Format that Roxio keeps lapsing into. I’ll know by morning. Again, part of the trick is slowing the recording speed down below 5,540 KBs (4x).
It works. This also brings forward the long-awaited day of DVD backup disks. Roxio has that annoying “1 to 15 minutes” eject time and that ridiculous capability to fix a disk so it will only play on one computer. This setup is going into the shop tomorrow morning to see if I can make back that $50 from last week.
