What are preformed brake lines? Teresa came by today to report that preformed brake lines may be readily available. They are, but not for my make and model. We had brunch at BK and talked more about the Section 501(c)3 idea. She knows people who run these things and make a decent living having only one or two big sponsors. I’ve always considered this kind of thing unethical, but then, in my day this wasn’t a valid career choice. “When I grow up, I want to sit in a fancy office paying myself $250,000 for running a registered charity.”Who remembers Gerhardt? The German filter inventor from 2000—2001? I was his wedding videographer. A guy from Jimbo’s bought distributorship rights for a water filter that is now being manufactured in South Africa. I recognized the description because that filter is unique. Also, the rights excluded “selling to FEMA” and that has Gerhardt imprinted upon itself. Could it be?
The trivia for today is a poisonous bird. First time I heard of such a thing and it lives in New Guinea. The feathers and skin contain poison. The bird, called a Pitohui, does not attack with the poison, it is strictly a defense against being eaten. There is something I think more significant. The bird is colored red and black similar to other bad tasting or dangerous but unrelated animals. A snake and a butterfly in other hemispheres. This is too much of a coincidence; the colors must have some evolutionary connection.
Hollywood movies are even stranger. Not just “The Sopranos”, either. They do persist in showing these heavy-set middle age men with gorgeously slim wives. That is so out of whack you wonder what they are getting at. Are those balding, pyramid-shaped men with round faces supposed to represent some kind of ideal? Even if not strictly a husband, the only skinny actor (they will show around younger women) I can think of is John Ritter, who got his job through connections. What? Didn’t know that? He is Tex Ritter’s son.
Newest scam on eBay. You see a nice big, picture of a product with a “list price” of between $100 to $150. The ad even contains the specs of the product right down to the shipping weight. The scam is, you order it and all you get is a CD with a list of the prices and contact information of people selling the product. Boo, eBay. The picture in the ad is not a CD disk, but that is what you get. Double boo.
I was eBay pricing video monitors, the wide narrow type. At this point, that heavy set lady who denies she is involved in pyramid schemes came in with a new computer. The thing is, nobody could see it. Then she reached in her purse and pulls out an Acer, roughly the side of a small keyboard. Hey, didn’t I warn people the era of the disposable laptop was nigh? There it was. Brand new, with 1G speed, 1G of RAM and a 160G hard drive for $299. You can’t fool me; it works just fine. I will investigate.
Back to the brake lines. They are a priority, not because of the car, but of the timing. I can survive without a car. But Valentine delivery time is here and that means a round trip to Miami. Alaine called and I’m invited to lunch at what is now the top Quizno’s in America. They now have every possible health, cleanliness and performance award available. She reports JP is out with a horrendous head cold. When JP misses work, it is serious.
There is a new breed of virus that sail right through all consumer grade protections. The viruses I know of are “brisv” and “AntiVirus2010”. Worse, I suspect these strains are using spyware to attack. Spyware is legal, although it should not be. They load as spyware and use that to invite the virus, thus defeating all known software firewalls. PS, Symantec (the outfit who bought Norton) does not get rid of spyware, you must separately sweep for spyware. Note that Spybot is letting far too many tracking cookies through these days. Get ready for a massive jolt on the Internet.
[Author's note 2022: that jolt was Windows 7. Zero new features and chock full of institutionalized spyware. This was MicroSoft's belated foray into electronic tracking and profiling. They botched so badly, in no time you had Win 8.1 and Win 10 and, it seems to me, they left the spyware in place but farmed the spying itself out to Google, the true professional sneaks.]
