Alfredo sliced his thumb at the shoe shop. He is too stubborn to go get stitches. I am not that handy with custom leather sewing, but I filled in for the day. Now that he has experienced my assembly line method, he wants me in there every day. That cannot happen. If I could do all the work and run the shop, I’d have my own front. He is still not happy with the concept of one guy beginning a repair and another finishing it, but he sure likes the money from the resulting higher production. This does not change the fact that this economy is in shambles. Prices for luxury goods are dropping, I’ll record here the ones that I find telltale. The major fast food joints all have an increased $1 menu. I find that less intriguing than how the lack of cash or credit has crept up to the near-medical fields such as “rejuvenation”. There are constant ads for half-price procedures. For the first time, many ordinary people are now aware of what plastic surgery costs.
These prices are regular, not half. A nose job is $5,000. Breast implants are $10,000. Tummy tuck $7,500. The new lap band procedure, we already know, comes in at $30,000. Except for dating clubs, I have a hard time imagining what could more reflect to the world the decay of our values than this standardization of useless medical practices, along with the related staff and equipment. While some people are bankrupted by disease, others spend an annual income on looking pretty. What is the ratio of women to men at these clinics?
Some may have noticed the lack of reader comments in this blog. Let me explain that the vast majority of comments that arrive are not valid from the standpoint of interest in this material. Instead, they are the standard phishing and linking probes which I moderate out. Counting comments is not a true measure of popularity anyway, particularly when those comments are false, “I found your blog very interesting as I did another blog at blah-blah-blah.” I estimate overall less than 1% of commentors have even read anything that day. (My readership is more likely to send me an email.)
Today’s picture was taken on my new Jazz DV152 camera thingee, which I now review after a few days of ownership. The good qualities are the simplicity of use. It does three things: Take movies, take pictures, and play them back. Uses AA batteries. Hook to TV or computer without fuss using included cable. A 512 MB disk holds 4,112 jpegs, or 4:39 minutes of video (always Hi-Res mode as other modes are as useless as a MetroPCS employee). Has a tripod mount.
The software is Arcsoft, trustworthy but a little too foreign for everybody. Has a module to directly upload to youTube which I quickly misplaced. Decent time-out interval. Includes a primitive and easy to follow video editor. Four buttons for four functions. Did you get that, Sony? There is also a built-in USB plug (with an extension cable), but it is far easier to pop the sandisk into your card reader as well as easier to forget it behind in there.
Now the downside. No viewfinder, thus impossible to use in bright sunlight. No internal memory at all (zero bytes, nada), adding the cost of a sandisk to the $30 purchase price. There is a slight but acceptable shutter delay. No flash. When activated, the default mode is movies, not stills, and this cannot be changed. You will miss good shots over this screw-up. No self-timer. Internal sounds (on, off, shutter) cannot be disabled. No power source except batteries and it really eats those.
Pell Grants. I finally delved in there, prompted by Theresa’s plans. Return to school grants are decent; a good alternative to a dead-end job. The only forms I found were for high school students, but didn’t the President recently say every American should get a college degree? Then they can have high-paying dead-end jobs. He evidently doesn’t understand the psychology of sitting around on welfare making babies. But he certainly understands poverty, along with all the other politicians who studied it at Princeton. Come this Friday, let me compare the Pell Grants to a part-time job.
