I’m going into self-imposed exile on the change-giving machine mentioned y’day. My oath, people are just too stupid to understand one of the most basic activities of daily life on this planet—getting change for a ten. They have not the brain-thrust to grasp a machine that just gives back the unspent change, not change for the entire bill. I begin a quest for this contraption since it simply has to exist somewhere. (I do not want one of those elaborate checkout scanning machines at the supermarket. Got that? If this confuses the hell out of you, chances are you are reading the wrong blog anyway, for Christ’s sake.)I will describe what I want one more time. It is a box around the size of a small cash register. The operator pushes in the dollar amount on an ordinary keypad, say, $6.00. If the customer has $6.00, you feed that into a slot. But if the customer pays with a $10 bill, you feed that in the slot and only $4.00 change is dispensed. I cannot fathom what is so friggin difficult for some people to follow about that. Trust me, Morons of this Earth, there is no cause for your paralyzing terror, panic and alarm.
Once I have the timing software, the printer counter and the change machine, I can set up an “Internet Café” for less than two thousand bucks. It will lack the bells and whistles but that has an appeal of its own. A location that springs to mind is the 99-cent store on Dixie and Sheridan. Everybody who has tried to make a go of that location fails because they are interlinked with some big outfit or another that involves swiping time cards. To me that spells lingering financial death, for the existing credit system is geared up to huge corporations, not small shopkeepers. (Plus those computers are all expensive units with DVD burners and administrator privileges, which is asking for trouble.)
I tried to listen to “Half the Man I Used to Be” by the Stone Temple Pilots. But I fell asleep. “Interstate Love Song” didn’t help much either, although it sounds enough like early 1970’s music to make me suspect this band is a tribute to the era. It is a bit catchy once you quit confusing it with the old Deep Purple licks which it entirely consists of.
I’m going for a short drive today. Wallace and I talked about a trip to Homestead, but he didn’t confirm. As it stands, he won’t leave the dog at home, can’t leave the dog in the car, and I’m not going any place that allows dogs. I wound up at ABC Thrift, except now it is “All ‘Bout Christ” non-profit ministry. Right. I’ll see if I can find a power supply for a laptop that was donated there minus that important accessory, but beyond that the operation is too changed from the way Dickens ran things.
Then over to the bookstore for some research. I was after such various items as bread recipes, radio frequencies and a few pointers on a C++ compiler. A book of inventions got my interest, but it was dominated by things women use to feed and walk babies. The most novel invention was a knife that cuts off the burned part of your candles, you know, the cavity around the wick. You slice that off and you have a shorter but functional candle. For a while, anyway. However, my day was checked when I discovered my car is having trouble starting. It cranks well but is not getting gasoline. Sounds like a fuel pump.
We also found out why the electric bill was so small during June and July. They estimated the meter reading from the previous owner who was a true skinflint with power. Now we have to cough up, but that’s okay. It is one of the small prices you pay for living in paradise.
Reading at home later, I’ve found a condensed version of “Surface at the Pole” which seems to be a companion story to the only hard cover book I’ve ever read in Spanish. That was ten years ago, I can’t recall the title. It was about nuclear submarines under the Arctic ice. Not that exiting a plot made entertaining by the descriptions which reveal how subtly the military mind-set differs from real life. Most civilians eventually get enough of ceremonies and plaques.
