Make this one topsy-turvy day so far because I’m out of kilter. The explanation is that I don’t do drugs. That is correct, and I never have. And I read every day, so there I am reading y’day and I don’t fall asleep. Next thing I know, it is 5:00 AM. Sure enough, that afternoon I had drank a bottle of diet Pepsi, but didn’t check the label. It had caffeine. My system is so intolerant of drugs I could not sleep until late afternoon today. Which means I was artificially awake when E24 called at the last moment to cancel the seminar. I kind of suspected that would happen. I was 24 years old myself once and I remember it like y’day, but that is only because I have a very good memory. I had wanted to pay for his trip on the Tri-rail, or we wanted to go pick him up. We’ll work something out, but Agt. M and I were momentarily out of anything to do. So we came back here and got the antenna working. Sort of.
I was correct, it was unbelievably complicated and many of the procedures were backwards to what was stated in the manual and my years of experience. It involved a series of static IP addresses that were set to access the devices, then reset back to dynamic to make them work. Plus, the antenna had to be set in bridge mode in a situation where I know there were no bridges involved because we used to use bridged settings at the phone company when I worked there for fifteen years.
At that point we decided to go spend the money allocated for the seminar on lunch at Aventura. My eyes were watering, but not at the food. For some reason the food court was crawling with incredibly beautiful women, I must have fell in love fifteen times in fifteen minutes. M actually likes sushi, give me a grilled hot dog with mushrooms and onion any day. Nothing at the mall, even a slice of pizza, is less than $6 these days. But Aventura is upscale so it is one of the places still packed and like they say about Yuppies, somebody has to shop retail.
Then we went shopping ourselves at the computer store. I walked up and down every aisle to notice there is not a single really new item for sale since twenty years ago. You can fudge the formula saying that putting a computer into a telephone is new, but is it now? That is something that used to be a major cause for concern at the annual meetings when I worked there. It was a reality the company tried to suppress by quashing the competition over deregulation. They were aware with their outdated business model it was too expensive a feature to offer, but I was there and I tell you they certainly knew about it.
What nobody foresaw was that with miniaturization and cellular service, a smaller, more nimble competitor could launch into the market. Hello, Apple. But as far as something new, as in a product or concept, I don’t see any progress. Who will invent the next spreadsheet? Now that was something new. Next thing, I find myself exhausted from lack of sleep and zonk out until past dark. So I’m back wide awake and don’t dare sleep again or I’ll throw myself off zone worse than shift work. Incidentally, the major reason I left the phone company was after I had been there nearly twelve years, they put us back on shift work. My system cannot adjust to it because I have a life. Others don’t seem t mind.
So, I am going to do something I have almost no experience at—I’m going out on Friday night to spend some money. In this instance, it’s Dunkin Donuts over on Federal. On the electric bike. To do the crossword puzzle and wonder why I’m not back at Aventura watching the babes. M seems to like the ones who, to me, look like they’d make a good wife. Myself, I like eye candy, I like all the good-looking ones and can’t even see the ones who aren’t. Hey, it’s an affliction I’ve had since I was eight years old.
Later, responding to demand, here is a more detailed photo set of the power supply that I was building under the magnifying glass. This is typical of the work I can do now, and this shows both sides of the component. On the left is the back of the board, and you can see the hodgepodge of wires and solder joints that lend momentum for me to learn PCB fabrication. This gadget works, and it really is a quantum leap forward in my ability to make these parts. The right side shows it is a basic power supply, without the heat sink, showing the two smoothing capacitors and the standard “on” light I tend to include in all my parts these days. The blue thingees are power connectors, in and out. The “board” is a piece of a larger brick I snapped off to make this part.Why will a collapse of the United States’ economy be faster and worse than the implosion of the Soviet Union? Here’s my example. Imagine a desert island with three people in business with each other. Each pays the others in gold. When the economy collapses, all three are left with their gold. Now take the USA where business is done on credit, not gold. What are they left holding here? I'll be holding the silver. . . .
