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.
