It took all day to get things set up at the wig place. The web site that everybody seems to hate so much looks very well done if you ask me. Every part of it is functional. Pardon my ignorance, but soon I’ll have to learn exactly how that shopping cart system works from the retailers point of view. It is easy to use, but I want to know precisely how, when and from whom I receive the money when I sell something. It turns out nobody seems to know (the facts I need to know) and the manual is 140 pages long. That will keep me busy.For reference later, I think that this shopping cart is connected to your PayPal account. When somebody orders, they pay into PayPal, who then forwards an email with what they ordered to the seller. No, I don’t know how it works because this transaction would obviously involve something I do not use or agree with – credit. I’ve paid for everything cash for twenty years and I’m quite fine with that.
The doggie web page has gone through a few evolutions, none of which kept me in charge (so I am not responsible for anything that is wrong with it). There is no shortage of critics but we are quick to notice it is the people who know least about the programming challenges that seem to naturally dislike the things that are hardest to modify. Why can’t you make this bigger? Why can’t you move that over here? Mind, I tend to ignore people who don’t speak up until after they see the finished product. You know the type I mean?
One thing about the dog wig operation that has settled down is the level of daily activity. Everything is a priority and as long as you treat it so, things eventually get done. If this week keeps busy, I’ll have enough to invest in a basic set of bookware for Chinese. I notice lots of useless stuff with that weird Pinyin spelling system, which I actually would not mind if they used English pronunciations. But how they get “Tse-tung” to spell as Xiadong is beyond my limit.
Trying to learn that Pinyin would be worse than trying to learn Spanish or Morse Code by looking at the printed material. Still, the amount of books shows that it must serve a purpose for some people and I’ve seen some people make headway at it. One must wonder if it is not really just the best effort of some marketing department, you know, the ones that went to the same college as those advertisers. For example, here is a book “Chinese Crosswords”. Aren’t here 932 letters in the “short” alphabet? Who’s that comedian that does the take off on a Chinese Wheel of Fortune match? Where the game is four months long, as in “You got an upside-down house with a goat in it?”Did I mention I read several articles on Chinese customs? If you want something, apparently you can’t just ask for it. You have to go about it in the most fantastically indirect and time-wasting methods imaginable, even in an emergency. Several sources pointed out that for all their social customs, the Chinese can be very crude about body functions and there is no such thing as a quiet Chinese room, there is always somebody spitting, coughing, swearing and generally making noise. There is also constant public burping, coughing and passing gas. But what the heck, I’ve been in Fox Creek, Alberta.
Today I concluded by 16 hour study of the system. It was one of those things I never studied in school and always thought existed up to the day Columbus was the 16th or so person to discover America. I still can’t put any dates or many famous names into the slot but at least I know better where it sits in the picture. I’ve also been looking at these RSS feeds, or are they called ATOM? That is where readers, instead of visiting your blog every day to see if there is any new material, just request a summary or email when something new arrives.
It may very well be that I’ve chosen the one single large blog company (www.blogger.com) that does not support this feature. That would make my luck consistent. I knew what these “feeds” were, but I could not get information about activating the service with my postings. Now I know why, and I’m thinking it is a good thing every post is backed up over here.
To you northerners, the heat index in this town today was 110 F. None of that Arizona “yes, but it’s a dry heat” excuses, it is like a sauna in Miami in the summertime. Plus, the town councils have outlawed shade. People can survive in a desert and still herd camels but breathing in super moist air at that temp around here means it is impossible to cool off while in any sunlight at all. I think I’m going to rig up some fans inside my car.
Later, I looked into the possible reasons for Publix peanuts being worse than before. After finding out how they prepare the peanuts, I conclude that even size-graded peanuts must vary in batches and Publix is not the highest bidder. What? Okay, the peanuts are sifted into five different sizes but I don’t know why five. The Publix brand I get are called Jumbo, and I knew these were not as large as the same designation years ago. I rate these as the second largest and I cannot find the largest for sale anywhere.
More interesting to me was how they shell the peanuts. They are forced between spinning cones and the cracked shells are air-blasted away. The shelled peanuts are also sorted by size and undergo a final human inspection. This sort is not done by shaking them on a grate, but by an inclined plane that throws the peanuts “uphill”. The heavier peanuts get thrown further up the ramp, strange as that seems. The book said it is the same principle that a heavier flat stone will skip further over the water than a light stone.
Much later. Okay, I give up for now, that Linda Ronstadt sang the first verse and a half of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” in between B and C, and the rest 1.18% higher. I’ll eventually get it but it could be as much effort as getting a band to learn it right. I still can’t equalize out the bass line to “Stir It Up”; it is almost as if Marley had a guitar player with his amp on full bass doing the same lines.. The successes tonight were “Dock of the Bay”, which is now half again as long, and remember how reedy Patsy Cline’s original tunes sounded? Not no more, now that she is doing her own backup vocals, thanks to a neat module written by Juhana Sadeharju.
