There is another rip-off making the rounds. It seems odd that anyone would still make a CD player that does not play MP3s. That is just plain dumb, the era of musical CDs is long gone. There is the factor that music stores like disks that only hold 13.7 songs but the units should at least play MP3s. Here is the scam.
Mechanically, the CD player remains identical, but they add a fifty-cent piece of junk microphone jack on the side. Then they round-of-bout imply the thing will play MP3s. Rip-off! It does no such thing, you still have to go out and buy an MP3 player. Then plug it in, you essentially use the CD player for a powered speaker. Not what you wanted.
You know what else is scary? People who pray at fast food joints. Are they giving thanks or are they aware of the quality? Do they suspect it might be their last meal? I was out this morning to the Panera, where the service has again slipped back to near zero. These places just won’t hire fast-moving people. Usually I get the self-serve coffee and work Sudoku until the lineup gets to less than twenty minutes. Today, it never did.[Author's note 2020: now that the Reb and I have reconnected, I'm better versed in health food. It now makes sense why people who eat at fast food joints pray a lot.}
I was on my way to Wal-Mart to check out answering machines. There is a chance they don’t make what I want any more. Maybe there is software but the stuff on the shelves is real crap. I returned the first unit to Target and checked out Radio Shack. I was also shopping for a back-up CD player. All of it was junk built into cases that look like 1970s ghetto-blasters.
Wordpress. It is a blog company that has a following in the Caribbean, and now Howard the author has an account. The technology is fascinating although the different brands all seem to offer the identical features which have to be trial-and-error located and figured out. This is a screwy process even when you know what to look for. We had the thing up in running in about an hour (including uploading pictures) which is nothing short of incredible. Wordpress seems to accept large picture files. Their screen says 50 GB but I’d have to test that. More on this in a moment.
Here’s useful advice for new bloggers. The site where you, and hopefully your audience, will view your blog is not where you create it. This caused me plenty of grief until I figured it out. You have to log on to your blog company main page, and create a passworded account. That is where you do your blog work, and when a “post” is complete, you “publish” it by sending it to another separate web page that displays your creation on the Internet.
There is an emerging incompatibility with camera manufacturers and jpegs. The camera jpegs are creeping upward in size, which defeats the purpose of a jpeg. (A jpeg is a file that is compressed because the smaller size transmits rapidly over the Internet.) I understand the basic theory of resizing the pictures and tried to cover it in one hour, which cannot really be done. That is an entire technology that has to be learned slowly, but we did alter a series of pictures and discover that AOL has built-in compression software. Which works without being asked.
I have to wish Howard luck on that one, since we only had time to find something that works. Aha, and what did I warn everyone about buying an expensive camera? They have too many functions and too few buttons. The expensive models don’t hold any improvements for most people and bigger “megapixels” can make the results even less useful than a cheap unit. Get a good thirty-dollar digital camera and learn on that. (Just make sure it has a real viewfinder and uses regular batteries.) In the end, I never had to get a better unit, I still use the $18 Argus.
Trivia – why do digital cameras beep? It may be an urban legend, but I heard a plausible theory about that. The first models were a huge rage in Japan. Apparently book stores began to complain that customers were coming in and snapping pictures of things like recipes and walking out without buying the book. Hence, the beep, although in my opinion it is things like recipe books that should carry an audible warning. One of the first things I did was dismantle my Argus and cut the speaker wire. You wouldn’t do that with a fancier rig. For the record, the Argus is alive and working for a living. By pure coincidence it was one year ago y’day that I almost junked it. Turns out one of the electric contacts had slid out of place; I bent it with a needle-nose and put it back. You can see the Argus here, with the paint worn off and a zap-strap holding the batteries in place. It belongs in the Camera Hall of Fame many times over. My estimate is approaching 6,400 pictures. The cost-effectiveness of this camera is on a scale never likely to be duplicated.
The gig tonight was so-so, I have personally never seen such a dead Labor Day weekend. There was maybe an average number of strollers. The Mexican restaurant next door tried to blast their Karaoke but just made fools of themselves, for it was clear the people along the sea wall had gathered to hear my show. (When they started dancing and clapping, I said to hell with that and sent a pretty girl over the Broadwalk with my tip jar and got $5 out of them.)
Around 9:00 p.m. this guy rounds the corner with a guitar. His gig fell through up the road at Toucans and he wanted to play. He does exactly the same thing I do, except he can sing and play guitar. He uses an iPod. He’s got real music in there with the vocals taken out, something I’ve been meaning to look into. Ariel, I think his name was. We jammed up a storm of old hits. He says he’ll be in touch, but I can tell he is a single act all the way. Did I mention Howard dropped by to see my act? Turns out he knows the owner.
More trivia. Rice has been my staple for years so I finally looked up “parboiled”, a term first used in 1566. According to the Big Dictionary, it has been mistakenly taken to mean “part boiled” where it actually means totally boiled if not over-boiled [food]. Since all rice must be boiled, calling it parboiled on the package is jumping the gun. I’m sure there is a reason for it. Maybe I’ll check that out the next time I go to Borders for a parboiled coffee.
