Nice car, with no hub caps. I have no idea what this is, but I do recall seeing a few still around while I was growing up. This was a bad day. Everyone has them. The difference is I have a blog. When I vent more people know about it and they gain insight about the amazing way ordinary things can get my goat, and I feel better. So if you don’t like it, get your own blog, ha!
First of all, PayPal got things totally screwed up. After wasting two hours on hold, they finally admitted their instructions were out of date. When you click on an “Add to Cart” button, some code executes that sends back to the PayPal program the details of what you bought. PayPal claims they have a wysiwyg screen that generates that code. All you do is copy and paste it to your web page. Well either they lied or their code generator does not work.Next, I had to deal with the original markup programmer. I think I now have proof that women can program, but they don’t really know how they pulled it off, because they can’t explain it afterward. My question [to the programmer] was, “Where is the html page where I paste the Paypal button code?” (To any non-programmers, this is not even a computer question, I am just asking here where something is physically located.) This crazy woman started talking in wild circles flipping back and forth between PayPal and html. Every time I tried to stop her and say talk only about one thing at a time, she’d go haywire and say I didn’t know enough to follow her. I finally told her to quit wasting my time and hung up.
All day long, while I’m sorting this mess out, people keep phoning me to the point where I may not take any more calls at the shop. I am raising my prices again if I don’t like you because by far the major reason I don’t like someone is they won’t listen to me. I’ll give you a real example. Guy wants an ad put on the Internet, my price is $30. He’s called me seven times over it so far. No, I don’t write the ad, you do. No, I don’t take the picture, you do. No, I don’t download the picture off your camera, you do. No, I don’t track the ad, you do. See what kind of bozos I have to deal with?
Then, I do believe my newest guitar player disappeared. The situation is familiar, he is another Cowboy Mike. He knows half enough songs. So he gets gigs now and doesn’t want to spend time rehearsing. The problem rears up in a couple of weeks when the novelty wears off and the clubs don’t want him back. His act is not anywhere near strong enough to stand on its own; whereas my act has passed the test of time. Soon he will be like every other guitarist around here, trying to get new gigs with the same old tired list of songs from the day he started out. He will spend the next twenty years hoping to start a band without success because everybody else is trying the same stunt except people like me don’t trust him any more.
Fortunately I kept up with my live Karaoke (hereinafter “LK”) so I can keep up the momentum. I’m about half done. I hear Arnel ringing in my ears about learning to sing. I’m drawing nearer to the conclusion that I may get up and sing even if I am lousy because I still put on a good show. I have not had time to look at why the laptop is playing the music back funny and in a way that cannot be fixed even with my best external equalizer. Worse, the problem can’t be heard without setting up the entire PA system here. I’ll get started on that Wednesday afternoon.
There is a peculiarity about when I sing. I seem to be able to do it over a microphone when I can hear my self on the PA. What I can’t do is sit down and sing just by myself. If that is the case, I’ll just set up yet another PA here just to practice.
Okay, trivia time. How many ships a day pass through the Panama Canal? On average, it is only around ten. The bottleneck has to be the locks, although I think they are double locks so ships can pass both ways simultaneously. Ten doesn’t seem like many so I looked further into the finances. The canal fees appear to be based on the most sordid political principle in history, namely the ability to pay. This means they charge more if they merely think you can afford it. I’ll see if I can find any published rates. Today’s source, published 2009, merely said the fees are “up to” $150,000 depending on such things as the value of your boat. It is astounding nobody has built another canal in the face of such corruption, telling us the people paying the fees are equally corrupt.
Last, googling for adequate photos of Antarctica was not productive. I went to the library and hauled out the biggest atlases I could find. The pictures were better and in most cases newer than Internet fare. There were labels to support the east-west divisions along the prime meridian/date line axis [that I’ve questioned]. Despite the International agreements, it seems dozens of nations are over there exploring for gas and minerals. This costs millions in an environment they are all sworn to leave untouched. And you thought penguin breath smelled fishy.
My hobby interest in geology shows. The Antarctic panhandle and at least one set of trans-continent mountains are a continuation of the Andes. That means the “Ring of Fire” goes through the polar ice, only coming to an end near southern New Zealand. I think this emphasizes the way the deep trenches that circle the Pacific become random between this mountain range and Japan. This break in the pattern is revealed by the hodgepodge of funny-shaped islands around Krakatoa. I advance an amateur theory that isolated random eruptions are too textbook. The real danger is a rapid-fire series of quakes radiating from an ordinary eruption in this area and proceeding sympathetically around the entire perimeter. You know, where California and Chile sit. For now.
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