April 30, 2008

           Due to lack of a suitable replacement camera, you get a stock shot of the last day of the trailer court. I’ll be here another month but the slow dismantling of everything has begun. Ah, the early morning symphony of saber-saw on aluminum. The management has kept a tight reign on looting, but that has begun also, particularly the obviously abandoned units. This place, with the prominent security cameras and infrared floodlights, has been left quite alone. This photo is the first unit I’d looked at, but never bought. Look close and you can see almost all aluminum has been removed.
           I’ve made up with Pudding-Tat over that embarrassing incident with the fog machine. It took two extra rations of Publix pet-junk, and we are at least on purring terms again. The next phase is assuring her it is the primordial mist of the jungle, now digitalized like the rest of her world. Hey, if she thinks those crunchy-wunchy pelletoids are cat food, she’ll buy anything.
           Testing the device was fun. The fog does not linger and will set off nearby smoke detectors, as stated in the manual. The unit is intermittent duty, that is, you must depress and hold a switch to make it operate. You get a twenty second spurt before the nozzle cools down. The literature says odorless, but there is a distinct mild chemical aroma I can’t quite place. The casing is metal no plastic, indicating they’ve had safety issues. In all, it is exactly what I was looking for. Now to train my audience.
           For no good reason, I read over a list of the local by-laws for conducting a business from your own home. While far less restrictive than corresponding laws in other countries, the laws here are more invasive. Where a Venezuelan law might limit the number of vehicles that can park in front of your house, the American law is focused on who you are and what you are doing.
           This doesn’t make sense, if they know everything, how can you wipe out the established competition with a totally new product and throw hundreds of people out of work? Before you get too holy on me, remember that by preventing it here, you are merely forcing innovation overseas. Why would anyone object to a new idea that puts Starbucks out of business and brings a cup of coffee back down to a reasonable 75 cents with free refills? Then when that deadhead ahead of you wants chocolate sprinkles, they send her to Dairy Queen.
           Waiting for a phone call, I picked up the bass and ran through half my song list. Two things I liked, first I could play half the list again and second, my old drum lessons are finally beginning to kick in. That requires explanation. From one persepective, I chose the two instruments that are played most dissimilarly in this type of band. You have to “think” about the drum to lay down the beat, but then “not think” about it while the bass is played. At first, this confines you to very basic arrangements. You should hear me now, remember, I took pro drum lessons but never took a bass lesson in my life.

April 29, 2008

           For a nothing day, a lot happened. Pick out what you are interested in because I’m writing out the whole lot. I took the Jamis (10-speed) in for that tuneup. Once all the little things were added, it is probably over $100. That makes over $200 I’ve put into that rig, but it is by far worth it just in exercise alone. You don’t meet as many babes as you do at the gym, but you don’t see as many smelly gorillas either.
           Since the bike has to be left in the shop for another day, I took the time to visit Trader John’s and picked up one new book, “When Titans Clash”, a history book. I also decided to give myself a treat and bought a fog machine. That’s correct, I’ve finally taken at least a baby step toward tacky stage technology. I traditionally considered such things as something to keep the roadie busy so he wouldn’t slobber on the groupies. I have no idea how to use this thing but I’ll soon find out.
           Moments later, the thing works fantastic for scaring the bejeezus out of cats. It spews a stream of fog through a nozzle about ten feet out. The first time I ever saw a fog machine it consisted of a water heater and twenty pounds of dry ice. This unit is uses a compound called “fog juice”. This is amazingly compact unit will fill my entire Florida room in around 15 seconds. It has a switch that has to be depressed to emit a jet of the fog material, which means I should be able to foot-operate it. I’m running out of feet.
           The thing was on sale for half price. I was pricing items and investigating new technologies over at the Guitar place. Funny, while in these stores I never bump into any of the musicians I’ve played with in Florida, but come to think of it, that could just be more proof they really do already know it all. Here are the things that interested me most, since I went over the entire store looking for ideas.
           Wireless guitar plugs turn out to require multiple channels. Those are $200. Light shows, the one gimmick I am comfortable with, cost a fortune as well. The simple LED unit I glanced at is $1,000 and all it does is flash a pre-programmed pattern (but see DMX below). I see also that digital recorders are designed to be mini-mixers more suitable for studio than stage. Several other products looked okay, including a new style of speaker cable that matches the back panel of my PA, a plug called a Speakon. I can’t justify the cost on those at $100 each, because the working part is still the same old copper cable.
           I also found a Pearl snare drum, not as fancy as the Tambouline, but only $100. I’ll look for a used one anyway. The traps (pedals) are also in the $100 range. Next time online, I intend to find out what DMX is because I’m getting too many different answers. It is some kind of “sequence controller”, but not a MIDI sequencer. It apparently controls things like your light show, and since they start at $400 I would hope they at least do that.
           Wallace wrote to mention he’ll have no email for a few weeks. Naw, he knows to borrow a laptop or go to a library. I asked if there are terminals on the cruise ship to make sure he checks. That reminded me to go ask for the price to align the new car tires (those cost me back $115) and they want another $60. Am I the only one who remembers when they aligned new tires for you?
           At the traditional contact hour, Marion rang up. Good news all around, they found the house of her dreams. Four bedroom three bathroom. Hey, wasn’t it supposed to be a three bedroom? Yes, but that’s what friends are for. They are actually not exactly in Denver. Remember that four months ago Denver was cow town to us. When we realized how far fate has brought us since she was 15, we’ve decided not to rule out meeting up in Paris or London in the next couple of years. Things are set for the fall but I don’t do winter.
           Thus, I’m now settling in with a coffee and a bowl of my mushroom chili, not for wimps. Trying to make friends with Pudding-Tat again. Where is that new book? Here it is. It don’t get no better. Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z.

April 28, 2008

           A near last look at the park, this one with some trees to emphasize the long years that the place has been here. My particular unit has been on this pad since 1956 when the structure was brand new. I cannot find any hurricane records but according to the locals, there have been a few severe storms in that time. I’ve looked at the anchor cables some of the units have (now that they are empty) and it is clear that the finest precautions of this type are cheaper than insurance premiums. I must discuss that with Wallace. Maybe I’ll look up what is available, who knows what I’ll find now that America has entered a defensive stage on the economic battlefield.
           Einstein was a postal clerk. Edison was a railroad worker, and so on. But you can be certain nobody with a half a brain was ever a security guard. With the possible exception of bank employees, that job has to be the lowest form of human life, bordering on a sub-species. This morning when I returned the flash drive to Gulfstream, the office was not [yet] open. Have you ever spent a half hour explaining to a security guard to give an envelope to the office when it opens? “But it isn’t open.”

           Did I mention banks? One thing you can say about American banks is they are all equally bad. The worst two are Bank of America and Washington Mutual, who have a rule or policy against everything you may want to do except deposit checks made out to you into your own account. (You should be able to deposit a check made out to you into any account you please, it is your check, not the banks.) Today’s example is cashing a check over $2,000. They won’t do it unless you have the money in the account to cover it, in which case they are not really cashing it. Yet you have to deal with banks or get ripped off worse by the check-cashers, and the system won’t protect your money unless you put it in a bank. All men who work for banks are certified bastards or the near equivalent.
           I’m still not having a lot of luck finding a good doctor, but I am learning a lot about the medical trade. The procedures of the business (and that you get) are largely the ones that insurance will pay for. It is a choking bureaucracy, there is even a jingoism for a person with cash, he is a “self-pay”. I only learned a few years ago that you could get a college degree in medical billing, but then again, when I grew up good doctors got paid more than bad doctors.

           That does not apply to my dermatologist, who is by a margin the best. They called this morning after the biopsy. It turns out that “mole” under my eye was not cancerous, but an ordinary wart. I still had to be sure. This means, in addition to the work already done, it has to be frozen to prevent regrowth. I am floored by how warts can be so persistent. I may just look up some of the facts since I should not be getting them.
           Enough people have asked me about pretexting that I will give a definition. This is a relatively new and contrived term and that accounts for the confusion in some people—it has nothing to do with text messaging. It is actually an old private eye tactic now taken over by advertisers. It is similar to “social engineering”, where you pump your target for information while pretending to be talking about something else.

           Pretexting occurs when this is done over the telephone. “Hi, I’m calling to confirm you ordered a pizza. Is your mother’s maiden name Clark? Great, now for a free pizza, would you care to take a short survey?” Do you see the scam? You just been pretexted. There are 220 places they could find out your mother’s maiden name before they called and gained your confidence. This particular script is often used by skip tracers and process servers.
           If all this isn’t exciting enough, let’s talk about Pudding-Tat. My theory is that the hungry cat (“poor starving little orphan how will you ever last until nap time”) is all an instinctive act. I purposely feed her varying amounts at different times to simulate the savanna hunting conditions. Cats come from Africa, don’t they? So here are the clues. She whines like crazy when I open the fridge, although her food is not in the fridge. She eats at the same time every morning no matter when you put the food in her dish. She only nibbles the rest of the time. She does eat when I’m not around per the security cam. The hypothesis is that we are dealing with some mysterious forces of nature. What say you?

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April 27, 2008

           This is my video transfer setup. Note the two Sharp analog cameras, 8mm. You can also spot the mini-monitor and VHS tape decks in the background. This is not to edit the tapes, editing is all done with software (or such is the manufacturer’s wild claim). The equipment you see is just to get the material onto the computer. The computer shown takes 4 hours to render a 2-hour MPEG. (Motion Pictures Expert Group is what they call a compression scheme, where each frame is compared to the previous and only the changes are actually recorded. The resulting files are still gargantuan.)
           With a struggle, I did stay indoors all day. My mind kept finding reasons I had to go out. Pudding-Tat loves the company. I can’t seem to stand television more that a few minutes so I’ve read over half of “In the Garden of Good and Evil” again. I was hoping that would take a leisurely week. Quiet times here usually get me planning, and I see that I will have to travel out west this fall. It may take a month to do that if I can help it. Time to re-examine the box for the utility trailer. That project went on hold as soon as I found a place nearby.

           Another reason I’m looking forward to the new place is the huge amount of extra room. Here, whenever I do one thing, I have to move something else out of the way. It will be so nice to have a huge office, even if it is in the corner of my bedroom. Wallace is away on his Alaska cruise until May 14th, I expect him to be on his way here shortly thereafter.
           Taking inventory of my “band”, I realize that a whole new generation of equipment is needed for me to continue. I need to rack mount a few things so I’m not making seven trips to the car. I need a buss so I’m not hooking up cords and cables for twenty minutes before and after each show. And I may be able to afford both some wireless connections and a small LED light show. Either way, expect much more digital equipment to diminish the overall size and weight. I still cannot move my old equipment for medical reasons.

           There is a truly irritating commercial on TV, the one for GasX. It typifies what the fear that too many Americans harbor about offending anyone. So the commercial employs all the worst of stereotypes. The older woman is interviewing the younger man. He is on the spot because she is the housewife in a business suit. Then a definitely effeminate and obsequious “secretary” informs her that her son Rip is on line Toot. The message is that she is not powerful or talented, but gets away with things because she could turn any criticism of her behavior into a sexist issue. That is one weird commercial that true feminists must find revolting.
           There is some guy driving a motorcycle with a wagon behind it up and down Cedar [the actual name of this road]. He seems to be transporting large house plants. It is a wagon, not a trailer, and the metal wheels set up a terrific noise. He’s a stranger, so I wonder what is up. You know, I still don’t have an official answer from the management of whether I can stay here until late May. It does not matter, I can’t move until then anyway.

           [Author's note 2020: Here is a gif made from a recently discovered video bearing this date. If accurate, it would be one of the earliest known digital clips for this blog. Around this time, I was just learning how to take short videos with a still camera, probably the original Argus. These cameras product a "burst" of pictures that could be converted to avi "movies", but no sound.]

           Now, later in the day, I see that staying at home is only possible if I have something to do at home. The new place has no workbench. I need that kind of activity a few times a week, where I physically repair or assemble something by hand. The fact is, I don’t practice music enough hours a week to call that a real hobby. My hobby is reading, but I still need a lot of hands-on type work. I’ve often wondered if that is why I cook when I don’t really have to. I’ve always associated sitting and doing nothing with punishment, not enjoyment. JP reports there is new evidence that links Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s with long bouts of mental inactivity. Duh, really? How can they tell?
           You don’t have to read this, but I no longer spray chemical insecticides in the house, particularly in the kitchen area. Instead, I use prebaited glue traps. This has an astonishing effect. You get a kid of cross-section of what goes on when you aren’t looking. They must be having parties when you can’t see them. The one that most impressed me was the fly ribbons. While I rarely ever see any, the ribbon is proof that even the most airtight places like this one are incredibly full of flying bugs. So I put a few of these in several locations a long way from bait or food. Same thing, an amazing variety of species. Has anybody studied this?

           Later, I’m more than 75% finished with “Garden of Good and Evil”, which centers around a homosexual murder case, a plot that was already over-worked at the time of publication (early 80’s). It is one of my few books that had only been read once. The message is weak, but the book describes a lot of “customs” that fascinate me. Whereas I believe in a certain amount of regimentation to keep things organized, I loathe any hint of tribalism and always have. The rituals described smack of tribalism, where independent thought is stifled in the name of social graces. If it really matters what fork to use, why are you watching other people eat? Go home.
           Last, for the first time I know of, these records were used for factual research. That is true, I very rarely read my own material. Today it was used to fix some very important dates that were otherwise barely guesses. So there, this blog has a practical use!

April 26, 2008

           That’s JP under the truck last Sunday. We could not take the bikes along, as the back of his pickup was full of work gear. The flat tire is as bald and smooth as it looks. We are parked along Tamiami trail, around forty miles west of the Micosukee gambling casino. It was otherwise a perfect Florida day. As next described, these trips have become fewer and of longer duration. And more expensive.
           Since conditions shut down my plan for weekend bike excursions, I’ve been looking ahead to other adventure. When I say I want to spend more weekends at home, I mean in anticipation of other, longer trips out of town. One of the items I’ve looked at is a trip to Savannah, Georgia. It is around twice the distance to Orlando or a little more. it is not really a tourist destination.
           Savannah fits my criteria for traveling. I have no idea what there is to see and do. Toward that end, I’m re-reading “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”. The architecture sounds worth seeing but otherwise the book gives me the impression the only single women in the city are over sixty and who consider gossip just shy of a religion. The city claims a lot of firsts but then again, it was one of the first cities at the time. Since then, not much appears to have happened. Seems to me I did see it on the horizon when I drove here in 1999.
           Today I was on an unsuccessful hunt for printer toner. This got me around town for a few exhausting hours. Speaking of shopping, I see a spice jar of dill weed is over five bucks. Not only is that outrageous, the product would be long dried out trying to use up that amount. Time to start my own herb garden, I mean dill really is a weed. I should not speak too fast, I’m judging that by a plant I grew up around called dill, there was always a few stalks of it in the back yard. It smelled like dill. What if it is a different genus altogether?
           We noticed how the city cut down three large and beautiful shade trees across the street [from the shop]. At first we thought hurricane damage control, term used locally when the city wants to do as it pleases. That is, until they were replaced by Master Meters (parking ticket dispensers). There has never been a day when all the parking spots on this street are even a quarter full, but that does not stop the sumbitches from trying.
           In an unusual incident, this lady in the shop today started crying. She often comes in with her expensive laptop and uses the spare Ethernet plug. It turns out she has been trying for weeks to send pictures via e-mail. That is one of those tasks that you can spend hours trying to figure out but could learn in five minutes if somebody shows you. At the shop, we are well aware of this, she was not. She never said anything, so when we showed her, she broke down. People react in a variety of ways when they first learn the true vastness of the gap created by computers.
           Research on Pudding-Tat, a.k.a. the “Poopmeister” tells me that cats require five times as much protein as dogs. I never knew that, but does it explain the “Litterbox Paradox”? How does a skinny cat that won’t eat fresh salmon produce her own body weight of clumps and pellets every week? I guess it is one of those things we’ll never know. But part of her upcoming spaying is so she gets to be a bit of an outdoors type and bust her grumpy in the bushes. What? You never heard that expression? Bust a grumpy? Probably because it is a trite British term.
           I like it because it is hard to criticize, but this woman is advertising her eggs on the Internet. She has some technical knowledge of the process, but the thrust of her pitch is that her genetics produce blond and blue-eyed babies. She has pictures to prove it. She targets couples who might otherwise have children with different features. It is pretty certain if a man tried to advertise his services on that basis, it would be a crime of some sort.
           Trivia you didn’t want to hear. What is Boji? It is a Chinese company that exports, annually, to the United States, nearly two million Christmas trees. I used to know what Boji meant, it if pops into my empty head, I’ll say, but it is some kind of greeting.

April 25, 2008

           Here’s JP in the Picayune Forest, south of Immokalee. The area is astonishingly insect-free. It was on this trip for the first time I saw soybeans for sale and I did not know what they were. It looked like pale clumpy oatmeal. They get oil from this? The weightlessness of the package was startling, so I today I purchased my first liquid soybean product, a coffee creamer called “Silk”. It falls short of half-and-half flavor in my coffee and yet costs just as much. It is forgiven because it got me to spend a Friday evening at home.
           Success for the mystery flash drive. By printing up a half-dozen representative pictures and showing my clipboard around, I was able to find a security guard at Gulfstream Park who recognized the people. So much for the German babe theory, she turns out to be an assistant trainer. She is here seasonally and apparently went back to Michigan. That explains all the horse pictures. No names (my policy) and her property is in an envelope at the personnel office. Along with my business card, hey, I take bribes and I’m very honest about that.
           At the shop today we talked Blu-Ray, the new 15GB disk drives. We are already installing the burners. I will be making the switch shortly, now that I have a few years experience with the technology. The down side, is the winner is Sony, a totally untrustworthy company, creators of the “service contract”. And the rootkit, for those who recall that fiasco. My primary goal now is the pending switchover to Apple for at least my home usage.
           A new virus called Malware or A-Malware busted right through my Symantec protection like it wasn’t there and seized up my primary office computer. Clearly the government has no intention of outlawing this practice. They are too occupied with vice laws, which is something they understand, see? May I point out that I view software piracy as simply the penalty Microsoft has to pay for allowing such things to happen. Anytime they want, they could use their power to force a law prohibiting the introduction of anything into a computer without permission.
           Jason, the waiter from HWB, or actually ex-waiter recognized me at the coffee shop. If he is wise, he is about to get a bit of a free ride. You see, he is interested in guitar but claims he is too shy. He is, but he also got up on stage and played the material he was comfortable with. I can work with that. The thing he remembers most about the Hippie is how we were stuck playing the same music every week, and that the Hippie would never try anything new.
           The movie I saw was called “The Promotion”. It is barely worth seeing as it constantly strives to be a comedy with a serious message. The all too familiar plot is two workers having to pretend to be friends while going after the same job. It is a fairly good depiction of the predictable and avoids the Hollywood homo-divorcee-feminist clichés. There is a scene taking a direct stab at racial intolerance – from the other side (some goon takes offence because somebody mistakes “black apple” for “bad apple”).
           I was invited to perform last night, a milestone for me. Hey, if I can’t play bass, how could I perform? That’s the good news. I was asked to sing. And I did. Two songs. Now I know I can do it if I have to. I’ve sung before, but only to backing tracks with other vocals where I knew the material inside out. This time, I did the real thing.
           My new medical clinic has not called yet so I spent a somewhat uncomfortable day on various computer tasks. I’ve begun testing a product called DVD-Fab. It is tough on copyright protection and my spider-sense tells me Sony is going to pull another fast one with Blu-Ray. Like most savvy users, I don’t care what protection scheme you use—as long as you put it on at the factory, not on my computer.
           For you budding counterfeiters and infringers, here’s an inside tip. Cartographers often include fictitious roads and names on their city maps. They watch to see if anyone copies their work, and yes, it is accepted in court as proof. Could that be why so damn many little towns have a Washington street?
           Again, I am trying to adapt my lifestyle to spending more weekends at home, at least twice a month. In the process, I just discovered that I have read all 76 books on my premises at least twice, some of them as many as eleven times. (That record-holder is “Hell In A Very Small Place”, which I like to read whenever I need reminding that there are worse strains of idiot than the native Floridian.) While boiling up a huge kettle of mushroom chicken broccoli soup, I finally decided to read a computer manual so old there is a 5-1/2” floppy in the back cover. The above statistic does not include magazines, which I can read countless times over.
           My policy is to mention anything totally new, so don’t read anything much into the following description. It is only here because it is new. The dermatologist nitrogen zapped a couple of dark spots on my arms. They have tripled in size, but are clearly going to disappear. How did mankind get along with these conditions before technology? The intense cold freeze-dries the entire spot plus a tiny area besides. The good area can replace itself, while the bad cannot. This limits the treatment to small areas, but it is totally painless, in fact, no sensation at all. Fascinating.
           So as to leave you on a different note, here’s some trivia. Almost everyone knows that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to slow typists down so they would not jam the hammers as often. But do you know how this was accomplished? That’s okay, I’ll tell you. The idea was to break up commonly used pairs of letters so they were wide apart, such as “pr” and “sl”. This tactic did not work but the pattern remains long past its intended usefulness. Kind of like valet parking.

April 24, 2008

           As if I didn’t register my dislike of Vista two years before it arrived, MicroSoft has already announced it is working on a replacement for that abortion. Details are scanty but I believe it will be called a very Apple-sounding System 7. Their naming system has always been designed to cover up their legion mistakes. Watch for more strange “security features” and incompatibilities with non-MS products as their grip on the marketplace is slowly pried open by Google.
          Not that I’m praising Google. It is just that I dislike MS and Yahoo! even more. Google keeps records of your searches and 73% of all their daily traffic is still spam. Scumbags. These records are potentially evil—the Constitution says you don’t have to incriminate yourself but what other purpose have such records? Certainly not to serve you better, and it is now well known that the government has recently granted the phone companies immunity from prosecution for all those zillions of illegal wire taps they assisted with over the past fifty years.

          You know, the Germans fought World War II never suspecting how the British found every one of their Malta convoys. They thought the British had 400 reconnaissance airplanes. The British had 3. Think about that the next time you get pulled over for no apparent reason.
          And a good place to do that thinking is in the shitter at the Corkscrew Bird Sanctuary. There are no birds left, but there is this excellent green sewage system. Follow a diagram of how the annual 100,000 flushes flow through a series of septic tanks and bacteriological filters to be reused. This photo shows just half the unit which overall is surprisingly small. The other half, cut off the right side of the photo, is under maintenance. You may notice the entire area is covered with screens, either to keep people out or because Nature needs a little protecting from the environment herself. I was so impressed, I paused to make it 100,001.

          Speaking of revelations, I must repeat my prediction about pent up inflation in the food sector. Thailand just announced the production costs of rice soared from $300 per ton to $1,000 per ton and is still climbing. No doubt their adoption of Western management practices will assure not a penny of it reaches the production workers. No joke, seriously, a lot of people subscribe to that Brit foolery than a manager who looks after a stack of $100 bills should be paid more than a another who looks after the same amount in $20’s. Dammit, Minty, put your hand down.
          Today, I was investigating methods to counter the Google records. Remember that a lot of you laughed when I warned about identity theft fifteen years before it became a problem (the largest single financial problem in the country today). Well, I’m also warning against Google. I ran across a product called “Haystack”. I have no details and it may not even be on the market. What it does, is during any time you have Google active, it continually performs a huge number of random searches, thus burying your real searches like a needle in a haystack. You get more if I find out more.

          Also, the fateful phone call for Pudding-Tat has been made. She will have to become a bit of an outdoor cat as I cannot expect others keep her isolated. I was informed adult cats could not be spayed, but the expert, Marion, tells me otherwise.
          Unlike Memorial, I was in to a truly decent clinic today. None of the intense grilling about my financial background because the doctor understood I was paying cash. If I didn’t mention it, I had a wart develop right under my eye. It was gone in half a second, along with a few other blemishes and my $350. I spent a lot of time in the sun when younger, bud id din bodder me none. What an utterly pleasant and respectable practice, unfortunately I cannot use real names. But they are on Sheridan and have nothing to do with Memorial.

          With permission, I have a true tale from one of their staff. When younger, each of their children had a cigar box where they kept their money. One day the husband needed bus fare and placed an I.O.U. in the box. When the youngster returned from school (Grade 1), they asked him to open the box and asked him if he knew what the I.O.U. was. He said, “Sure. Those are vowels. But where’s my money?”
          For the record, most independent clinics (I’ve spoken with) are fully aware of Memorial’s reputation for lack of respect for patient’s rights and abuse of personal information for marketing and insurance purposes.
          In celebration, I’m going to the movies. Return tomorrow for the review.

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April 23, 2008

           This is an Immokalee fixer-upper. The blue tarp covers hurricane damage. The last hurricane in the area was what, 2005? Even the Mexicans have passed up this joint. As you will find if you read on, this isn’t the only thing broken beyond repair in Florida. In this instance, the inspector can refuse the rebuilding of anything with over a certain percentage of storm damage. Yes, there have been severe and heartless abuses of that authority to get rid of unpopular entities.
           So y’day I’m using the Internet when the lady from the Friendly Inn enters. They found a flash drive and assumed it was mine. Nope. It was agreed I take it to the shop and see if I can find anything about the owner. Nope again. But we all like a good mystery, and there are lots of photos of horse racing. That means Gulfstream. Somebody there should be able to tell brown horses apart (not me) and there are several distant shots showing the owner to be a blonde very German babe with lots of blonde friends. If I know Florida, somebody will recognize that instantly. Keep returning for future details.

           More news from Wallace. Considering the options, he has hinted he may drive down. I’m all for that, it is a fantastic drive across country. The last time I did it in 2003, the cost was less than airfare. I would do it again any time. He mentioned our gas prices as being a bargain, I’ve emailed him to elaborate on that.
           Who likes good news? I have just been informed by Memorial Health that their official position is that I booked an appointment with them a week ago, drove over there, parked, and waited in line so I could refuse medical treatment for a painful medical condition. They emphatically repeated this was my “decision” that had nothing to do with them. You see, where I wanted a heart checkup, they wanted an inventory of my other organs to place in the catalog of a “marketing firm”. All I had to do to get treatment was sign a contract saying they could do anything they please with my IIHI without asking for permission. If you are not sure what IIHI is, look it up.

           The exact phraseology is: “We reserve the right to change our privacy practices as described in our Notice of Privacy Practices. If we change our privacy practices, we will issue a revised Notice of Privacy Practices which will contain the changes. Those changes may apply to any of our protected health information that we maintain.” So up yours, buddy. They are equally good with circular double-speak. They "issue" the notice AFTER they make the changes. Are you SURE these people aren't Canadian?
           Medical blackmail. Again, I cannot get treatment unless I sign their “ghoul clause”. There are no other options, all the cardiologists in town are on their system. Please note that none of the grounds for their refusal have anything to do with any known therapeutic procedure. It is all insurance and internal politics. They even have a lawyer in the building. When asked, the staff confirmed that they always made exceptions for religious beliefs concerning blood transfusions and diet. Except my religion does not qualify.

           You know, I once thought of becoming a doctor. Career advice was totally suppressed when I was growing up. In a small town, you could not exactly go around asking other people because word of this would get around, plus there was nobody you could trust to tell the truth [they would play it safe and tell you what they thought your parents wanted them to tell you].
           Thus, I did not know that doctors went to university to study. I actually thought they began working at a hospital, and once they knew how the place was run, they were elected to become doctors. Laugh if you want, but in many ways this makes just as much sense as the way it is sometimes done. Until I was twenty, I thought only doctors who didn’t know how to run a hospital had to go to school until they learned how. Hooray for small-town parenting! I think I just met doctors who don’t know how to run a hospital.
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April 22, 2008

           The James Canal, I believe, east of Naples. Everglades or not, the water looks polluted up close, although there are plenty of fish. This is a control gate, as there are slots on the sides to add more of the concrete barriers you see here. Looking straight north toward Alligator Alley roughly ten miles distant and we are around fifty miles south west of Lake Okeechobee. This area is called the Picayune Forest.
           JP reports that research has discovered that claustrophobia is a physical, not a psychological condition. Something to do with a part of the brain that is shaped differently. Remind me to look that up. He says some auto union took a cut in pay from an average of $23 to $11 per hour. I don’t feel sorry for them, mind you, because I have copious experience with the union mentality. If you are making over $15 per hour at a job like that, you should be spending the surplus on retraining yourself, because sister, it ain’t gonna last. I used to spend $4,885 per year at evening school while I was unionized. I didn’t see any coworkers in the classroom and they didn’t hear me complaining about a lost job. Seems about even to me.
           Unless it materializes soon, I report the Argus [digital camera] is gone. In the end, the camera took 7,133 pictures, of which over 5,000 survive. This is nearly 6 pictures per day over the 41 month life of the camera. That’s some kind of record for an $18 contraption, and it was still going strong, November 2004 to April 2008. The camera changed the way my records are kept. It took nine years after the first color cameras arrived for me to finally take the plunge. This was because the manufacturers had not met my criteria until then: a simple camera that held 25 “Internet grade” color pictures for less than $20.
           The earlier brands were difficult to master and not very rugged. They offered few advantages other than not needing film. I am also hesitant about new formats, I wonder why? (It was my own decision in 2004 to standardize on jpeg.) The actual conversion was many months long, as I learned to store, manipulate and transmit the pictures, never meeting anyone who could assist. In fact, many bragged they had more memory and megapixels but often did not know how to get the pictures off their own camera. They used the camera as primary display and storage! I won’t mention names.
           Return later today, as I’m going to see a cardiologist. When I phoned around, I emphasized that, within reason, I was not interested in paying for a consultation, only for therapeutic treatment beginning on the first visit. That is, I already know something is wrong and I wish to see someone who is not going to charge me for two visits to tell me that. We shall see how they deal with it, but it seems to be a favorite billing trick.
           I like that. When asked if lightning ever strikes the same place twice, little Johnny says, “After lightning hits it once, the same place ain’t there no more.” Anyway, there is a point I want to clear up once and for all. At university, I studied general sciences. The reason for this is because the only valid career advice I had ever received was from my grade eleven social studies teacher, Mr. Ian James. He said if I was not sure what I wanted to be, that a Bachelor of Science degree was an excellent springboard to many advanced studies. He meant law or medicine—but I did not know that at the time. Nor did I know that a BSc. was by itself not that useful a degree. I only took a few minor courses in computer science, again, no adequate advice or role model available. Of course, if I had known, I would have focused on computers.
           What I did know was that the people who were supposed to be paying for this were the ones that put about they “weren’t paying me to be no goddamed scientist”. They said I should become a doctor. So did I, but we had also agreed they and not I would supply the money. Tragically for me, they were also the type of people who later said that a deal struck with a twelve-year old was not legally binding. So I continued with sciences, but I was never the party who confused this with becoming a scientist. Nope, that was not me.
           Later. The cardiologist refused to treat me. Actually, his staff refused but that is vicarious. Even though it had been pre-arranged that I would pay cash, their “policy” was that I had to sign all the forms associated with insurance. Among these forms were agreements which allowed them to place my private medical history on junk mail, telemarket and spam lists. Plus a clause allowing them to contact me for “fund-raising” for the rest of my life whether I wished to be contacted or not. But the one that got me was the organ list.
           They demanded the right to place a complete inventory of the type and conditions of my internal organs along with my identity on an Internet catalog, while all the while assuring me these organs were “not for sale”. The contract they said I had to sign if I wanted treatment stated that no matter what they agreed to in the contract, they reserved the right to change that without notice. When I said I preferred to have some kind of notice, they refused to treat me, continually insisting it was my decision.
           I have a question. Under such circumstances, would you go see a doctor who might have been offered two million bucks for your lungs because he just advertised them as “not for sale”? You, son, are gonna die. According to Memorial Health System, they can and will put you in that position and tell you it was your decision to “refuse treatment”.

April 21, 2008

           This is the scenic route. The unpaved road surface is overexposed, but it accurately portrays the blinding white reflection off the coral roadbed. This is the fifteen mile side trip JP and took y’day, on the way to Corkscrew, Florida. It is characteristic that the trees don’t provide much overhead shade. There picture, about noon, shows how directly overhead the sun beats down.
           Myself, I’ve driven countless miles down such back roads, but JP seemed nervous just ten thousand yards into the backwoods. What if we got a breakdown? Then, JP, we walk back to civilization. We’ll make it by dark. (And because I’m not calling a cab on my cell phone, alrighty?)

           Strangely enough, there was traffic on this single-lane dozer track. To pass, each vehicle has to nudge into the bushes which are easily sharp enough to scratch the paint jobs they put on these days. I had to chuckle when we walked back to the truck later in the day. JP was startled at all the fingerprints all over the truck, palm prints, too. I informed him they were mostly his own; he had never seen road dust sticking to a vehicle before.
           I used his Vivitar camera to record these shots, which also explains the lousy quality. It turns out the camera is so bad, even Vivitar tries to pretend it does not exist by not supplying the driver on their web site. That is a totally scumbag thing to do, and I reviewed the product accordingly. That entire camera package, the Vivicam55, is messed up. I advised people to keep their money because “Vivitar obviously doesn’t need it anywhere near badly enough”.

           Overall, there is a sad statistic to this last weekend’s adventure. JP and I travel mainly because it is more fun than going alone and it is equally difficult to find people who naturally want to see new things without spending a fortune. Are you with me here? Even when Wallace was here last time, the single most expensive thing we did was an airboat ride ($20 each and Wallace paid because I was out of work at the time) but the idea was we got there. If we’d had anybody else along, they would have wanted the rides that were $45 per person. You get the idea.
           It is a 66 mile round trip to JP’s place from here. In how many years now, he has only been out this way once. That alone may count for the fact that we always travel the 100 miles from his place. There are exactly four roads possible from his address without doubling back this way. The Keys, Flamingo, Okeechobee and Naples. Those are the only places we have ever gone, accordingly. The statistic says once Wallace is here and there is a mentally aggressive, enthusiastic fellow traveler, what are the odds I would go get JP? My guess is the same odds as him driving up here, I am afraid.

           Isn’t education wonderful? Somebody once said it lets you worry about things on the other side of the world. I’ve been having people I barely know knock on my door trying to sell their computers. It is all junk, but the quality of the junk is improving, if you get my meaning. Times are bad. If I see an iMac, I’ll let you know. Also, the French Canadiens are all gone. They got together and left a note on my door with all their addresses up in Quebec, asking me to keep them informed of my new address. Names like Picard, Perron and LeFleur. Hmm, there are a couple lady’s names on the list I am sure I don’t know. (Hell, except for Norman the guitar player, I don’t really know any of them, and he only knows five words in English.)
           It’s been a while since I mentioned the bicycle, yet these days are perfect cycling weather. A slight breeze and 78 degrees. The Jamis now has 3,125 miles and is showing definite signs of wearing out. It requires a major tune up and a new internal hub for the pedals, for it is wobbling and clicking slightly on each rotation. It still draws serious attention from strangers because it is so well used and adapted for getting around. The paint is permanently tarnished and the racks double the weight of the bare bicycle. Put another way, ten percent of the travel I have done locally in Florida since I got here has been on this bicycle, and according to my tax return, I now put (slightly) more miles on the bike than the car on a monthly basis.

           Last, I heard someone pronounce the word “dishevel” as in “dis-hevel” instead of “dish-evel”. The Big Dictionary says that is definitely wrong, but is it now? All the nearby words in the book followed the convention that the prefix did not alter the pronunciation of the root word. So is it a prefix? I’ll stick with popular option. I don’t want to cause any dish-armony.

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April 20, 2008

           This is the scenic route. The unpaved road surface is overexposed, but it accurately portrays the blinding white reflection off the coral roadbed. This is the fifteen mile side trip JZ and took y’day, on the way to Corkscrew, Florida. It is characteristic that the trees don’t provide much overhead shade. There picture, about noon, shows how directly overhead the sun beats down.

           Myself, I’ve driven countless miles down such back roads, but JZ seemed nervous just ten thousand yards into the backwoods. What if we got a breakdown? Then, JP, we walk back to civilization. We’ll make it by dark. (And because I’m not calling a cab on my cell phone, alrighty?)

           Strangely enough, there was traffic on this single-lane dozer track. To pass, each vehicle has to nudge into the bushes which are easily sharp enough to scratch the paint jobs they put on these days. I had to chuckle when we walked back to the truck later in the day. JP was startled at all the fingerprints all over the truck, palm prints, too. I informed him they were mostly his own; he had never seen road dust sticking to a vehicle before.
           I used his Vivitar camera to record these shots, which also explains the lousy quality. It turns out the camera is so bad, even Vivitar tries to pretend it does not exist by not supplying the driver on their web site. That is a totally scumbag thing to do, and I reviewed the product accordingly. That entire camera package, the Vivicam55, is messed up. I advised people to keep their money because “Vivitar obviously doesn’t need it anywhere near badly enough”.

           Overall, there is a sad statistic to this last weekend’s adventure. JP and I travel mainly because it is more fun than going alone and it is equally difficult to find people who naturally want to see new things without spending a fortune. Are you with me here? Even when Wallace was here last time, the single most expensive thing we did was an airboat ride ($20 each and Wallace paid because I was out of work at the time) but the idea was we got there. If we’d had anybody else along, they would have wanted the rides that were $45 per person. You get the idea.
           It is a 66 mile round trip to JP’s place from here. In how many years now, he has only been out this way once. That alone may count for the fact that we always travel the 100 miles from his place. There are exactly four roads possible from his address without doubling back this way. The Keys, Flamingo, Okeechobee and Naples. Those are the only places we have ever gone, accordingly. The statistic says once Wallace is here and there is a mentally aggressive, enthusiastic fellow traveler, what are the odds I would go get JP? My guess is the same odds as him driving up here, I am afraid.

           Isn’t education wonderful? Somebody once said it lets you worry about things on the other side of the world. I’ve been having people I barely know knock on my door trying to sell their computers. It is all junk, but the quality of the junk is improving, if you get my meaning. Times are bad. If I see an iMac, I’ll let you know. Also, the French Canadiens are all gone. They got together and left a note on my door with all their addresses up in Quebec, asking me to keep them informed of my new address. Names like Picard, Perron and LeFleur. Hmm, there are a couple lady’s names on the list I am sure I don’t know. (Hell, except for Norman the guitar player, I don’t really know any of them, and he only knows five words in English.)
           It’s been a while since I mentioned the bicycle, yet these days are perfect cycling weather. A slight breeze and 78 degrees. The Jamis now has 3,125 miles and is showing definite signs of wearing out. It requires a major tune up and a new internal hub for the pedals, for it is wobbling and clicking slightly on each rotation. It still draws serious attention from strangers because it is so well used and adapted for getting around. The paint is permanently tarnished and the racks double the weight of the bare bicycle. Put another way, ten percent of the travel I have done locally in Florida since I got here has been on this bicycle, and according to my tax return, I now put (slightly) more miles on the bike than the car on a monthly basis.

           Last, I heard someone pronounce the word “dishevel” as in “dis-hevel” instead of “dish-evel”. The Big Dictionary says that is definitely wrong, but is it now? All the nearby words in the book followed the convention that the prefix did not alter the pronunciation of the root word. So is it a prefix? I’ll stick with popular option. I don’t want to cause any dish-armony.

April 19, 2008

           Years ago RofR and I had a Ford F150 with dual tanks. Until today, that was the last time I had ever put $50 in a gas tank until today. That’s 13.931 at $3.589 per gallon, the most expensive tankup on the Taurus ever, and you see it could probably have taken $60. I’m not the least concerned because these prices punish people who drive SUVs in the city. Oh, they’ll just put it on their credit cards and stave off the issue, but it all adds up.
           What? I don’t like SUVs for two reasons. One, they are a truck. No matter how many creature comforts you pack into them, they are still a truck and hog the roads. Two, they became popular because (being a truck) they were [originally] not subject to the gas mileage guidelines set by the government for conservation. The people that drive them are destroying the environment.
           The drum shop has an item called a
tambouline. I was searching for something to emulate a snare drum. A tambouline is a small, single-skin type of tambourine, but it has the snare strings and a snare sound. The problem is the dang thing costs $150. That’s around twice what I was looking to spend. Also, a drum pedal costs around $85. Music is not a cheap business.
           A new magazine, or at least new to me, may be my first regular in years. I used to be a huge consumer of magazines but the watering down of my favorites during the 90s kind of let that fizzle. Popular Science became PopSci, you’ll know what I mean if you read a recent issue. The new magazine is called “Make”, about home projects. One of my first acquisitions may be their Top 100 and they offer kits of some kind.

           [Author's note 2020: Make magazine suspended operations in July 2019. Amid a massive show of support from over 100,000 subscribers and over a million youTube subscribers, the company was slated to begin again on a limited basis by August. I don't think they ever did.]

           One of those projects was a simple but brilliant clock. No picture [yet] but the guy took three old VU meters and mounted them side by side. He put new scales on the meters to replace the old amps or decibels, whatever they measured. Then he hooked up a set of capacitors and a transistor. As the capacitors charge and discharge, the needles on the meters tell the time. The far fight meter is seconds, the middle is minutes and the far right meter the hours. Brilliant. Why can’t I think of things like that?
           Will dropped by and invited me to Legion #92. He said there is a regular guitar player there. Except that guitarist was not there tonight and in his stead was a talented but unimpressive “lounge act”. One of those acts, while of high technical and musical virtue, put the audience to sleep faster than the Hippie at a coffee house. No end of two-part harmonies and Lydian modes, but not one person dancing. Goes to show you that these audiences just don’t know technically perfect music when they hear it. The dummies.

           There is a series on Puddingvision about country stars. It documents their “struggles” to get to the top. These shows never get to the core of the issue but it is fun to see these people caught up in their own hype. Myself, I don’t need to know about who somebody else is divorced from before I like or dislike their music. This one show features some country singer who gets pregnant just before a big tour, and does go on about how she performed anyway. Her fans say wow where I say it figures, she would pull a stunt like that on her producer.
           These documentaries carry, in my eyes, one single element of truth that escapes too many people – that even with prodigious talent and copious money, to get ahead you still have fight against people who have neither. That is, most people don’t realize how much in life is due to circumstantial advantage. Ah, a good example would be my own background. People could say that I should have been guaranteed success because I was blonde and blue-eyed, that is, I had all the advantages. Wrong, for you see, where I grew up, so was everybody else. There was no circumstantial advantage whatsoever.

           The blonde, blue-eyed girls married millionaires from the city, and the blonde-blue-eyed boys went to work in the local lumber mill. You still needed rich parents and plenty of their help to really get ahead in the world. Before anyone points out that I should still have become rich, I would like to point out that most of the kids who had all that parental money didn’t become rich either. They didn’t have what it takes to fight the system. In fact, I would be curious to know if, other than RofR, whether anybody I grew up with ever became truly rich.
           You know, rich enough to sit around the house all day drinking expensive coffee, writing blogs and never working another day in their lives.

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April 18, 2008

           This is JZ in an Immokalee liquor store. Notice the home-made 2x4 shelving. Too bad you can’t see the prices are also correspondingly low, around 2/3 of regular according to JP. He has his choice “Canadian Mist” rotgut, in the plastic bottle. This is a photo from the future, next Sunday actually. It is to spark your interest in a trip we are about to make.
           I don’t pretend to follow politics, but I know when the state becomes too powerful. The talk is how the Feds strong-armed a 74 year old grandmother at the airport, and when she pushed back, she spent the night in jail. Charged with felony assault on an “officer”. How sick is that? I believe all laws giving favored protection to anyone should be abolished. Federal agents should have no more “protection” than anyone else. This whole airport security thing is a crock anyway.

           Fred called me in to the office early, seems all the people who were going to help him out today never showed. I knew there was no way he was going to the doctor and back in an hour, so I took along all my work for the day. Sure enough, he made it back just before closing. This gave me time to go fact-finding on Corkscrew, Florida. The official designation is “rural community”. That is practically the only information on the place, as the web site is dominated by a nearby bird sanctuary of the same name.
           I cannot find any evidence of buildings even from 1,000 feet altitude. The lenses don’t go any lower, what a crappy space program we got for all that money. Yet there is mention of a “general store” on the road to Immokalee. Of course, all this means we have to mount an expedition into the very heart of uncharted territory. All that Brit stuff, but I mean bring back souvenirs, not take wives from the natives. Then, it depends on what the women look like, doesn’t it?

           My quick phone call to the cardiologist confirms I need blood work. What is that? Seriously, I don’t know, I’ve never had a lifetime of Dr. Kildare and General Hospital, and it is not like I’ve ever been dreadfully ill for any length of time. I’m very weak from whatever I’ve got, so I’ll be going in next week. I just know they will mention cholesterol; they always do when you are over 30. Today, I had six tiny meatballs, and my Spanish olives were stuffed with anchovy. No other sources of cholesterol. But you watch, that will be on the list. Pardon me, I also had a spinach and feta cheese stuffed pretzel. Cheese is a source. But it is not like I’m scarfing down a triple pizza four nights a week.
           An odd discovery. Office Max cannot use their own inventory database to cross-reference manufacturer’s product codes. Not yet admitting defeat, I cannot find a cartridge for my beautiful Minolta laser printer. Nor is it even in the store catalog. Wouldn’t you know it, something that works well is obsolete. The only defect I logged is that it only has one flashing light for all error conditions. It considers no toner to be an error condition. Took me an hour to figure out what was going on.

           Wallace has been in touch and will be flying down with the dog, Millie. I will resist the urge to call her Millipede. The flight is 11 hours, it seems to me it used to be just over 8 hours in my day. I flew over Miami roughly 30 times before I ever lived there. Good, he will be in the new place while I finish moving things. I’ve pretty much decided to abandon all the junk here. I do have a ton of office supplies. Which brings me to another crossroads. Do I switch to Apple?
           When I look at the piles of gear I’ve accumulated to keep a simple computer going, I have to wonder if it is worth it. I’m not hard on equipment yet I’ve had five major hard disk crashes in the past eight years. I have to keep two drives on the shelf just in case. Sure, that is pure envy when I look at the clean desks of people who own Macs. True, there is a lot more software for Windows, but how much of it do I ever use? And how much of that ever works right all the time?

           I priced out DVD players for an hour. They seem to be going up in price, even the junk like Coby. They are now 2/3 the size of a laptop but should be, I think, in the $50 range by now. It is closer to $200. I can’t really afford anything right now, but optimism says I can at least window shop.
           Last, I stopped for coffee at the Barn, and read an article on Idi Amin. When he kicked out all the Asians (that means Pakistanis), he turned their businesses over to his henchmen. They started selling expensive imported shirts based on the collar size. They were so uneducated, they thought these were the price tags. In America, we don’t do that. We let the henchmen pick on senior citizens. Now don’t say anything or your skull gets cracked. I mean, it wasn’t your grandmother and besides she should have let them strip search her, right? She had no legal right to protect herself from the assault, right? The Federal agent was just doing his job, right again? Don’t you get tired of being right all the time?

April 17, 2008

           Excuse the bad scan. I’ll explain in a moment. To those who’ve noticed the delays in pictures recently, I forgot my camera over at JZ’s last Sunday. We need to get out of town for a while. The county fair may still be on this weekend, if I feel like walking. I’d rather us get out to the boonies, a little further than usual. Our radius seems to be around a hundred miles, and we’ve seen most of everything once already. Hey, I just did a scan on the map and it is astonishingly fixed at a hundred miles. Neat.
           The trouble is, to get JZ underway, you have to go get him. That adds another sixty-six miles to the trip. But once we get going every trip is an adventure. I point out that people from Florida don’t seem to travel on weekends. Wallace and I probably saw more of Florida in a few weeks than JZ and I do in a year. Looking down from the satellite at the trip Wallace and I made to Sanibel Island, what is this? A blemish on the map? A flyspeck, maybe an atmospheric artifact or lens aberration. I’m telling you, there is nothing in the middle of that swamp. Let me zoom in and 3D it.

           It looks like a dirt road and a village called Corkscrew. Tell you what. If I can find it on a real map, I’ll go there and take some pictures. Here it is. The legend says “unpaved road”. Wait, there is an approach from the north, a paved road called Route 850 jutting down northwest of Immokalee. In fact, it says there is a swamp and bird sanctuary also named Corkscrew. Okay, start packing.
           Mysteries of the animal kingdom. Either Pudding-Tat, Empress of Hollywood, has tripled her consumption of water, or we have a visitor. Since she would not allow anything like that, maybe the rule of evaporation has changed? She’s fooled me before, I mean, how can a five pound cat fill up a litter box every day? It is a good thing the food and box are at opposite ends of the building or she’d get no exercise at all.

           We are in the grip of a cold spell. The mercury is plunging to 75 overnight. The locals are bundling up and complaining. It makes for excellent bike riding. I’m averaging six miles per day. You know, just pedaling past all the “for sale” signs and empty condos along the waysides.
           In case I didn’t mention it, who remembers the Jewish Thrift over on Hallandale is out of business. It seems the owner had a chain of stores but wasn’t paying his taxes. I always shopped there last because his prices were so high compared to others. I’m still looking for a Realistic tape deck. I cruised through Wal-Mart earlier this week and noted the brands and types of DVD burners on display. Wal-Mart constitutes my consumer trend research department. I see these burners are still not totally accepted yet.
           Returning home, I find a big block party three doors down. All the Frenchies are having a big wind-up. Most are in their eighties and will never return, but a few have bought or rented in the immediate area. Ever since I helped that guy next to the laundry with his flat tire back in ’06, I have been very popular with the whole crowd. Robert was playing guitar, so I brought out my drum kit and we had them literally dancing in the streets. Later, after the women left, they were singing obviously dirty songs, of which the only word I could pick out was “Viagra”.

           It was the neighbors turn to drive me crazy. I cannot eat sausage any more, doctor’s orders. But the aroma of frying sausage, particularly Ukrainian garlic sausage, is near irresistible. Get a bike, you’ll rediscover the smells of America. And learn why back alleys are rarely a good shortcut. Since I’m allowed all the skinless chicken I want, I tried an experiment. Is there really any difference between freshly ground pepper and pepper in the jar? The answer is “Yes, but.”
           Fresh ground pepper has a marginally better tang, but so little that it is not worth insisting upon. Pepper is still “the best spice ever invented”. My conclusion is that freshly ground makes no difference unless the pepper itself is fresh. There may be some volatile oils in the peppercorn not present in the crumbs. Otherwise, any pepper is better than no pepper. Beware of cheese in a shaker, however. Who recalls the Italian brand that was discovered to be ground up umbrella handles? The seller was never charged—the law only applied to food products, not lumber. I’ve got some gourmet sawdust we could fry up, add a little garlic.

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April 16, 2008

           So I wake up this morning with a craving for turkey stuffing. No, not the home-made kind but some instant brand. With more man-made ingredients than a neutron bomb. Even the local ants don’t recognize it as food. See that package? Had 670 calories so it’s a good thing I could only finish half of it. It probably has something to do with completing those taxes and feeling the need for reward. Even though I plan ahead for how each investment will affect my taxes (it is a fool who doesn’t), my return each year gets more complicated. That will soon stop.
           I drove the automobile [during the week] for a change. Needing various things up from the shopping plaza at Oakwood, it was also an opportunity to get shocked at the prices of office consumables. That has to be the racket that is the least affected by recession. An ink refill kit cost me $24 and I know there isn’t five bucks worth of plastic and liquid in that box. Did I mention that refilling has become so lucrative that the local pharmacies now do it.

           Moons ago, I praised a new ink product that had very low prices. It is called “Ink Station” and has the logo of a gas pump saying that photo printing is finally affordable. This, to me typifies the market. Once they got in the door, their prices soared up to what the others were charging. I won’t consider refilling cartridges commercially simply because the obvious controlled element is that ink supply. They’ve got it so a refill costs over half of a new cartridge.
           Look at what Dell tried. They altered the shape of their cartridges so that you had to buy them online from Dell. Now I see several companies quickly adapted their cartridges to fit. So, it is an ink oligopoly and the key must be some difficult to copy phase of the ink manufacturing process. The worst two companies are Hewlett-Packard and Epson. HP makes cartridges with anti-refilling features and Epson embeds a chip that measures when the tank is empty. It requires an expensive device to reset that chip.

           What? Oh, sorry. An oligopoly is a business dominated by a few large companies who pretend to compete by advertising a lot, but are really bound together to prevent new entrants. Like Ford and Chev. What? I told you before, they do it by campaigning for “safety standards” in Washington that make it too expensive for newcomers to start a factory. The cars are just as unsafe as ever because they give idiots a false sense of security.
           I encountered a new virus today, called XP Antivirus. What a clever name. When you do a registry search during the elimination process, you will get tons of legitimate files with both those terms. So you have to go looking elsewhere. XP Antivirus takes self-infestation to the next level, it embeds itself under a different file name and calls the script off the Internet. It disables both your native anti-virus and if you have it, sets Spybot into a frenzy. In the end I got it, but the bad news is that it was somehow using explorer32.exe as a vector. You cannot use Internet Explorer again without reinstalling the whole system. No big deal, IE is primitive and problematical. Use Opera.

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April 15, 2008

           This is that gawdawful ugly sign at the east entrance to the casino. It is on the wrong side of the road for northbound traffic, and behind some trees (you can’t see them but they are there) blocking the view for the southbound. The sign has the moving LED display to announce jackpots and such. It must have LED “bulbs” because there are always some of them burnt out.
           It is so nice to have people on whom you can rely. I was on the cell phone for 73 minutes with my west coast people and got more done than your average month around here. Sure enough, my mutual fund investments fell 10% ($3.50 per share) in the last month. How did they know I needed to sell?

           It just seems to me I am paying the fund managers to prevent that kind of thing from happening by diversifying my money. As it stands, if I sell now, I’ve lost all the dividends I’ve paid taxes on in the previous 20 quarters, or five years. If I don’t sell, I can’t get affordable primary care. How do they know? However, let this be a lesson to any one who invests. I have followed the rules for decades and never came out ahead in the end, either losing outright or barely getting my money back. Before you laugh, remember, I never made any mistakes. I just never got lucky, either.
           My strategy has always been to buy while the market is falling. This is exactly what the pros do. However, they seem to know when to sell. Buying is easy, selling is hard. I judge my gain by the amount my stocks gain after a huge plummet, called a bear market. I’ve noticed that each recovery since 1980 is less profitable by this scale (although the numbers get bigger every time). Note that I said judge my gain, not realize it, as I do not buy and sell the shares of my mutual funds. This is merely a mechanism I use to gauge the performance and the performance is getting weaker despite I am with the oldest and most trusted mutual fund in existence.

           It was one of the rare days I did not step out of the house. It seems both my printers are out of ink at exactly tax time. That does it, I’m pulling the printer at the shop off the network until some method is discovered to bill in advance. Because of the delays with these printers, I will be one day late with my taxes and I will never buy anything from the Brother Corporation again. In the end, their “printer” has let me down every time I relied on it, if it wasn’t one thing it was another.
           Around a week ago there was a fly I could not swat. One of those Florida flies that always circles in front of something you can’t hit, like your coffee cup. These flies are also too smart to land on flypaper, but sometimes you get lucky. So I strung up a strip by the window behind the computer. Now I look at it and ask myself what kind of rodeo is going on around here when I’m not at home. You should see the number and variety of things I’ve caught. Make no mistake, insects like warm climates just as much as people do.

           There are 53 small bugs and 2 medium sized. Since none of these are in evidence when I’m around, and they are all flying insects, these antics carry on while I’m out. Soon the termite swarms will begin. They migrate every spring to form new colonies. They get in here occasionally but there is nothing for them to munch on. Pudding-Tat is useless except she hates roaches. We do get the odd large one but she bats them to death. Good kitty.
           Oh, and Marion says, contrary to what the SPCA web site says, the cat can be spayed after being a year old. Since Marion used to work with a vet, I’ll have to reconsider the status of Pudding-Tat. I mean, folks, Pudding is never going to be allowed to have kittens intentionally. And that is that. I’m just tired of having to keep the doors always closed and nobody would ever cat-sit under those circumstances.

           I also got the 2007 taxes done. Looks like I’ll get the $300 incentive, whoop-de-do. I can hardly wait, considering after reading the law on disability, if Donald Trump had my condition, he could apply and have the same chances of getting it. I haven’t seen that much equality since I left the farm.
           Later. I got the revisions done for 2006 and 2005. Now to begin the most serious calculation I’ve done in years. The trade-off and breakeven points to my own demise. That has got to be the ultimate in planning ahead. Actually, it does already go beyond that because after the fact, my estate is to pass seamlessly to Marion with one or two small exceptions.

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April 14, 2008

           This is the neighbors getting ready for the big trip back to the land of the ice and snow. They have learned to be quite self-reliant as far as mechanical repairs and these guys are replacing brake shoes. Although the state law says they have to do such things as get local tags and licenses after 30 days, a complete blind eye is turned on the French Canadiens. They are integral to the economy here, or at least that is the local conception. Brake shops may disagree.
           Today’s fare is less than interesting for most, but planning into the future brings the past into very sharp focus. Very sharp. While everyone makes mistakes, the facts are clear that every major problem I’ve ever had in this life was caused by somebody else. Unlike those who author their own bad times, I seem to operate best when surrounded by a close group of independent operators who maintain a professional distance. And rarely ask for anything, certainly never helping themselves to my property.

           Of course, I spent the day going over future plans in quite some detail. I was finally able to get a series of answers from reluctant departments. That is all done. In the process I talked with a lawyer who found it remarkable that I had done the groundwork. He said most people get themselves into a jam and call him to “sharpshoot”. We clicked instantly when he quoted a case from 25 years ago and was stunned to discover I knew exactly what he was talking about. Hey, it was a famous case.
           Wait, he said, “Let me go into the conference room because I’m going to help you for free.” Great. He mapped out the entire process for me, the most important aspect of which is the schedule of how long things will take at each stage. There are five stages. Plus pointers on what to do and not do during that time. With this person, I cannot fail the factual side of my argument. But there will be an argument, so I’ll eventually need a lawyer.

           An offshoot of that conversation was the lawyer’s further shock at how little had been done to further my education when I was young. (Sad but true, my parents did not contribute even twenty dollars to help me out, and in fact maliciously held me back. My older sister got the equivalent of an advanced medical degree for nothing. This was strange because if it was true that family ties were stronger back then, how come I never met 14 of my mother’s 17 brothers and sisters?)
           New music. Look at this tune, “Too Many Dirty Dishes” about a guy who comes home from work and finds leftover caviar and steak when he is sure all he had for breakfast was cereal. Obviously a blues tune. So the next time my crowd wants slow, they’ll get slow. My first set is normally the most laid back. I have not decided yet about “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”. Love the tune but it does drag on.

           The French lady who comes in and messes up my computers brought me a slice of home-made chocolate cake today. Explaining she knows she isn’t a slice herself and admitting that she bothers me by constantly asking questions that other people pay me to answer. It was great cake, but I’d rather have the twenty bucks.
           Last, a call from the dog wig place. It was back to the same old theme, wanting me to tell them all the information I would if I had been an employee. They say that they cannot declare their taxes or calculate the total of what they paid me without knowing my “contractor’s number”. This is nonsense, of course, but for some reason it has to be explained to each person that arrives over there. No, I am not giving you my social security number unless you agree to state that I was your employee for six quarter-years. These people are weird, often calling and asking for the amount on, say, check 1214. I go through my entire records and there is no such check over here.

           Trivia for the day. One Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, a captain and U.S. Navy astronomer declared in 1923 that “the fundamental postulates of Einstein are crazy vagaries, disgraceful in a scientific age and repudiated by reputable French and German scholars.” With a name like that, what did you expect? Humility? Sounds like he better start baking a chocolate cake. With peanuts.

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