Most of the day was on a callout, during which I had several hours to kill while installing software. I watched the big screen Comcast cable. It may be commonplace in your life, but I’ve never seen it before. I scrolled through all the channels to discover the only one I would care to watch was TNT. The monthly cost of this system, which included Internet and a phone, was $180 per month. What an outrage, that’s $2,160 per year.I could go to a lot of movies at the theater for that kind of cash. And I like movie theaters, the popcorn, the big screen, the sound. But cable TV? There was the same ratio of cooking and Spanish programs as I get from antenna for free. I see that commercials are still set for IQs of 95 or less. Don’t you love life insurance ads in the middle of the afternoon? That you may die without having enough money.
My least favorite commercial was that Hoveround electric wheelchair. They get these stooges going on about how they got theirs for free. Nothing is free, they are passing the cost on to the taxpayer via a loophole in the socialized medicine law. But then showing these scooter-coots doing wheelies on the lawn at the Statue of Liberty or parking right on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Puh-leeze.
I make it a point to read the possible side-effects of my prescriptions. I won’t specify but one said some people experienced periods of self-doubt. Goddam, I wasn’t ready for the way it hit me. It will wake you from deep sleep. Everybody experiences this at times so it was shocking to me how a chemical could produce what I consider a heightened emotional state. Most of the medicines have substitutes and I’ll be asking this time. You can’t function when you get home from buying groceries thinking, “What have I done?”
Oh yes, the trick to the pickle jar mystery. Simply fill the inner jar with marbles. A scooter trip to South Miami was an option this morning. The clouds on the western horizon all day changed my mind. I spent some time planning an antenna holder that folds down from the wall for maintenance. And looking at tube radios, they are experiencing a new demand. Not from me, though, they start at $460 each for a four-tube model.
I’m still toying with my own radio receiver. The air capacitor is the stalling point all this time. I do think I will finally just glue some material between the plates and quite trying to make things line up. You see, the plates are loose as you adjust but move when you tighten, a point of no return. Where is that bag of bingo chips that looked about the right size. Ah, here we go. I don’t like bingo chips anyway as you can’t pick up the card to check the numbers.
Last, here’s an academic point about my computer code. I do not like loop commands that use the less than or greater than criteria in isolation. The straightforward reason is it introduces a number that is not in the remainder of the code. For example, if you want a loop to run six times, for me the criteria would be “less than or equal to six”, never “less than seven”. I like code that spells out what it is doing. The same way I like my women. Mystery? Fine, when you are 18 and it is unexplored territory. But after 21?
