The apartment complex I wish I’d bought. This is the nine-unit place on 20th street I’ve been admiring for a year. It has no balconies, true, but those get used about as much in Florida as they get used in Seattle. This is the place a small contractor bought and slowly improved the units, just himself and one or two helpers. Now it is done and the units rent around $100 less per month than anything comparable. And consequently always full of what look like great tenants for that area. I’d been trying to talk JP into partners on something like this for the past ten years. Good job, whoever you are!
Another day of intense long-range planning. Shall we say my situation is about to change, one way or the other, and I like to be prepared. I’ve been looking closely at currency exchange rates. The fact is, the only two I understand from an economic standpoint are Venezuelan and Canadian. It is possible to deal in both these currencies from hands-off (overseas) accounts. Then, I read that the Swiss government is handing over names, a severe betrayal of trust for that country. Switzerland claims these are only accounts involved in criminal activity, but what about sovereignty? Should banks respond to pressures from outfits like those headquartered in such places as the northeastern USA? It smells of retroactive law to me. Make laws saying no new accounts, but leave the old ones alone.I am holding back on everything at this point, financially. Certainly, I want a new car, a new camera, new clothes, and a complete customized Karaoke show that doubles as my PA/Bingo system. There are very keen reasons I’m holding back, anyone who remembers what a production curve is from Economics 101 can follow the fresh trail of my logic. I wish Wallace was back. Once he left to go bass fishing at the lodge, this summer has been the worst for me in my adult life--I overspent thinking he would pay his half. And it is entirely my own doing. Ah, but just you watch!
Remember Justin, the guy who started from nothing but a mail order business who now runs his own Internet servers? He called while I was minding the computer store and I admit to playing along a bit. Justin is renowned for not giving out any information to anyone who might become competition. I told him about the Red Devil drum box situation and he was able to give me a ton of perfectly useless advice, a process to which I listened in fascination. Not once did he accidentally slip in any usable points. A perfect spin-doctor. Never rising above the level of, "Did you check if it's plugged in before you called me?"
Justin maintains that Internet business is something anybody can learn if they work hard enough at it. I maintain there is no way that all those hundreds of thousands of dumb people and scam artists could possibly master the complexities of such systems, and Justin, they most assuredly did not work hard. Thus, I was curious where they “learned” it so effectively they can become anonymous criminals at it. I didn’t tell him my ulterior motive. I have been toying with an idea for a TV show, not that anything would come of it, but hear me out.
The biggest problem with on-line crooks is that the only place most people learn about them is by becoming a victim, or by hearing about it on the TV news. Sure, you can try to find out about a scam on the web, but can you trust that source? I visualize a TV series that finds one per week and tracks it down to the core. Right to the home address of the crook, plaster him on TV, expose the entire operation. I feel it would have similar audience appeal to what is already on TV, plus it would move a lot faster and be cheap to produce. Bill it as a community service, trace robot telemarket calls, snoop on the snoopers.
Having said all that, allow me to define the situation I have. My programming study was completed before the Internet boom, and the after-college job I got was unrelated to computers. By 1994, I knew nothing about on-line systems and still don’t (by comparison). This was not a result of bad decisions and in fact, 100% of the contemporary programmers I know are in the same position as myself—able only to program mainframe computers. When you program mainframes, somebody else takes care of all the logistics, you focus on getting results.
At the other extreme, you’ve often heard me rave about the difficulties of getting one of my ideas to work on the Internet. I’ve purchased tons of books on each of the various steps and stages, including Apache and PHP and djgpp and Inetpub. I can get each of these entities to work on their own, but I cannot get them to work together. These expensive texts are worse than useless for troubleshooting even the smallest glitch. I’m willing to pay somebody to show me if I could only find that somebody. I just know if I could work with the right outfit for a couple of months, I’d ace the whole thing.
Well, if things work out as planned, I may provide myself with that opportunity shortly. I know quite well nearly every module and sub-module of that Red Devil was lifted from other sources. If it had been programmed from air, too many features would have been done differently. I feel once I break the surface of how to get all the pieces to fit, it will be home free because of my classical programming experience. Then I’ve got some definite ideas of what needs changing, such as the spaghetti links of relational database apps.
In another mystery, I’ve noticed the techs that look at DNA use ordinary microscopes. I’ve had the wrong impression that they were looking at molecules, which are too small to be seen. They are therefore looking at something else. I find that most intriguing, and explains that DNA kit advertised a few months ago. The old arguments persist. Those who say they have nothing to hide, which is fine in itself, but what they really mean is something quite different. They are okaying surveillance upon others who may not agree. Privacy is not secrecy, but how are fools to know the difference?
I take the view that most broken laws are the result of a momentary lapse of good judgment. It is plain wrong to brand such people for life. I remind the world that the authorities have abused every system that was ever invented. Look what has happened with fingerprints. Millions of innocent people now have a police file (nobody said criminal record). That is, Big Brother is keeping files on innocent people. I don’t mind if the Boy Scouts do that, but I draw the line at the police, and by the way, so do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Examine excessive ratio of arrests in our society. The majority of males are arrested at some point. Only a minority are ever convicted, meaning it is mostly innocent men who are being arrested. And as far as the convictions go, I’m referring to the jaywalker who pleads guilty and pays the damn fine so he can go home. The police have manipulated the arrest procedure to shake people down. Arrest has become a brutalizing and career-trashing event, it does not surprise me when innocent people run (and yes, they do). They are afraid of the police, not the law. They are not resisting arrest, they are running for their own safety. Who wants to be the next taser corpse? DNA does away with “reasonable and probable cause” by putting everyone in the vicinity on a suspect list. Only a dunce cannot see that.
However, I think it will all happen anyway, so let me take another look at that [drum] kit.
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