It reminds me of P.J. O’Rourke’s philosophy of what you get when you spend other people’s money on other people, “That’s how you get Chernobyl”. I needed to get outside so I basically walked the bike the three miles over.The short hospital stay has thrown my ecosystem for a loop, I am six hours behind schedule in my thinking. It took me an hour to get to the bookstore, the only activity I can manage although I’m doing fine, really. There was a warm wind from the south all the way, a sure sign it will be a tortuously hot summer.
I lost my voice at bingo last night, and I am a mess. Off balance, dozey, can’t concentrate, spots before my eyes, mumbling, nodding off. But this is Florida, so nobody noticed. The bookstore was full of babes just when I was in no condition to strike up a convo. One of them was the spirit and image of Judy, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes, I hope she didn’t catch me looking.
For one of the first times, I found I could not concentrate enough to read. Well, I could, but why bother. I instead went through a pile of picture books. I also like PopSci at times, and they rarely publish an item without good pictures. I was surprised to learn the last “old-style” Volkswagen Beetle was built in 2003. In Mexico. Didn’t they just finish setting up that factory?
Another thing I looked at was a jet engine with no casing. The turbine blades whip around in the air and apparently work four times better, but make too much noise. I saw a Swiss Army knife with a flash drive. According to PC magazine, 4,500 flash drives get left in pockets at the laundry each year in England, and over there, 3% of the population think Bill Gates is a comedian. (Over here, 51% merely think he is a bad joke.)
I recognized my first Arduino. PopSci had an article about a home-made atomic clock, that is, a device which resets itself to the atomic radio signal. I glanced at the guts and sure enough, there was the Arduino. Told you I was slowly getting it. The code is downloadable, I will try to print it tomorrow for in depth analysis. Again, this type of code that interacts with the physical world is truly intriguing me.
Also on my table besides my decaf were a book on electric bass specs and some tabs on old Jimi Hendrix lines, such as, “Yo-momma gonna be muh squeeze?”. Actually, I mean the bass lines of his music. It is all 16th notes, like some spastic on an acid rush, with at least four “x” notes per measure. X in tablature means “indistinct” note, which in my parlance is called “a
mistake”. But what I really can’t figure out is the absurd prices being charged for standup electric basses. Who would pay $5,000 for something that, Oprah aside, looks so funny?The last thing I read was a history book. Another thing I can’t figure out is why the Wright Brothers would spend so much time and money building that airplane, only to go out and fly the stupid thing backwards.
