Here is an unofficial sneak peek at the new room, with the back door open and the bed ruffled where Pudding-Tat attacks phantom prey after a sniff of catnip. The fan is needed and besides, it reminds me of south American hotel rooms which I learned to sleep in years ago. The stripes on the windows are not prison bars (as Wallace says), they are leftover strips of insulation I put there to cut down on heat radiation while I was working. Not all Florida places have them on every door and window, but this one does. You can’t see them from here.
I may lose a few “customers” in the process, but the new billing system at the shop is already bearing fruit. Remind me to bring in my headphones, not because I listen to anything, but because it stops people from talking to me. Today I must have been interrupted twenty times. Mostly it was by people who tried to log on to the Internet without paying the deposit up front. Yes, I know it works differently than before, but that is because nobody was obeying the rules. It is a poor man’s Internet cafe. The computer monitors (not the computers) are now controlled by a simple switch behind the counter. It was a matter of running a separate power cable to each unit. I had regular customers bitching that they “were only on for a minute” as though they shouldn’t have to pay the minimum. Now they do. Stay on line for the full twenty minutes or you lose part of your money. But it is better than me losing mine. I even had one try to argue the ownership of the computers. (Anyone who thinks they can get information out of me would have enjoyed witnessing that episode.)
There are also certain customers of Fred’s who think the service is included because they are getting their computer fixed. Not so. I’ve also got a secret weapon in some old electric clocks behind the desks. They only run when the monitor is on and I can see how many hours the equipment has been in use. These clocks are in addition to the new kitchen timers that represent the “official billing time”. I plan to put my video cam on the switches in case any customers figure the system out.
We had a couple of thick-headed gypsies in the shop trying to get something for nothing. They have a brand new Sony laptop but don’t know how to use it. They bring it in, saying it won’t go on the Internet. I log on and it works perfectly. Have you ever dealt with these gypsies? Or what do they call themselves, Romani or something? Constantly trying to get something for nothing. The problem is they are trying to tap into their neighbor’s wireless service and think they are going to get us to show them how.
It took me a half hour to get them out of the door today. They returned after Mike had left, saying the computer didn’t work. I showed them it did (the problem was that they didn’t know what they were doing). I told them to phone Mike and see if he would help them. They wasted the half hour trying to trick me into saying I told them to come back tomorrow, that I was promising that Mike would be there, and also promising them that he would fix the problem, but that never works. It is exasperating to deal with such riff-raff.
They will soon say the wrong thing, which is “It was working until you touched it.” Then we throw their gypsy asses with their stolen computer out the door. We can’t prove anything, but who else shows up with a $2,500 Sony and doesn’t know the password? I got involved because the only common language was Spanish. Several times between themselves they made the Freudian slip about how they had “taken” the wrong computer.
From there, I left to go buy an ordinary 15-foot extension cord. What a massive undertaking. Store after store. Fourteen miles on the car. Dealing with missing price tags, illiterate staff and the predictable, “Extension cord. What’s that?” people. Shades of the old days because I sometimes forget how bad Florida is when you try to get something done. All I ever hear is what wonderful geniuses everybody is, but they still come to me when they need a simple computer hooked up or their phone doesn’t work. In the end, I found one extension cord, and I had to drive all the way to Oakwood to get that.
Wallace came in at the end of the day so we dropped in to Jimbo’s. I read the crowd and all the non-tippers were in. California Johnny is back, wanting to form a duo. He doesn’t play classics and I don’t play original rock. He says he is “looking for a bass player” to learn his material. Neat, because I’m “looking for a guitar player” to learn my material. He vastly oversimplifies what the other person has to do to learn his “easy” stuff, a very common defect amongst aging guitarists. Do we know anybody else like that around here? It is a difficult concept for some, but Hendrix and Clapton are not god-like figures in my life. To me they sound like ordinary guitarists, one on uppers and one on downers.
California Johnny wants to team up with somebody who has a going concern and split the money down the middle. Yeah, me too. I can’t think of anyone with an expensive PA system who’d go for a deal like that. Musically, if I do anything more, it will be to learn the 25 songs in this whole world that I can sing. That recent inspiration is from Arnel, who said when he started, he could not sing either. He was just the guitar player in a four-piece group. Now he makes $1,500 a week having fun. His guitar is highly customized with all the MIDI controls built into the tuner cavity.
It turns out Arnel does not usually jam, but he was completely impressed by my bass act a year ago. My style makes subtle but significant changes to the originals and this has more appeal to the general audience than to other musicians. For example, the Hippie does not even seem to realize the bass lines I play to his music are completely customized to capture the mood of each song. These are not copies of other licks strung together (like his lead breaks). For example, in Jambalaya, I play an octave dominant in the exact opposite pattern and timing than expected in country music. I never took bass lessons and learned this could not be done. I also use the natural 7th (not the flatted 7th) that guitarists avoid like taxes. There may be enough novelty in my act that I should try to take it to the next level where I’ve been recently focused on learning more of the same.
By the way, the new bedroom is perfectly comfortable at night and I’ve been sleeping there for a week now.
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