Remember Xoikers, my completely developed and tested word puzzle game? Around here, good ideas get delayed, never destroyed. I can’t afford to have it properly patented, which runs around $2600. Well, it seems one of my clients has an invention that can be made by a robotics club. And her husband is a lawyer. Xoikers is an interesting product because at top predicted sales, it would produce merely $62 - $65 per day. Yet I believe that I am right to think that while most North Americans would reject it on that basis, they are fools.
Why? Because, while it is only $62 per day, it is an extra $62 per day. The production and distribution costs are zero. And only a fool would turn down an extra free allowance per day the way things are going. In the near future when the pension plans collapse, the puzzle money will be a ticket to paradise. There is no sacrifice to create the puzzles for the software is already written. As long as I can walk or crawl, I can produce all the puzzles ever needed. And it is the simple ideas that are hardest to compete with.
Simple is the watchword with the new guitar lessons. Everything necessarily has to be fairly easy, but from the word go I am insisting on perfect timing and discipline, and I don’t use the word “perfect” loosely. In music, timing is indeed something that can be perfect. But to that timing, I add syncopation and full stops, another lost art in Florida. With Erin, I have a receptive learner and I can take the time to demonstrate how the various instruments mesh without boring her.
Just you try to get some other guitarist to play less than he is, to listen and study the interplay of bass and guitar notes, why you’d be accused of blasphemy. Also consider the fact that whenever you play something the way the guitarist plays it, he can quit and join another band while the rest of you will be stuck with something you can’t transfer. I am careful to point out to Erin what she would have to change to play the same music as a soloist. Most guitarists don’t even think there is a difference.
And oh yes, the pension plans will collapse. The money isn’t there. Companies raided the funds over the past twenty years, hoping to replace it with future earnings before they had to pay out. The future earnings aren’t there either. So few people from the boom have retired so far that the companies can still make faces, but the rot is setting in. Only 3 million have retired, there’s another 82 million to go. The entire existing middle-class, so to speak. The ones who, when they try to work under the table, will be praying for the privacy they so willingly gave up.
Trivia. So, I’m learning guitar, robots, and how to sew. There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today. And peanut butter in the past year has gone up in price from $435 per ton to $1,210 per ton. That’s a better percentage than gold.
Which all gets me to thinking what I would do if I had the extra $62 per day. The same question is what would I do if I had the money? For starters, I’d move to Colorado, but I’d also wait until next Spring. If there is one thing I don’t like too much about Florida, it is the summer heat. You can’t get anything done. If you leave your A/C on, it costs you plenty, if you leave it off, you sweat and your papers stick to your fingertips and elbows as you try to work. If you have a fan, your papers are continually blowing off your desk.
I experience the same problem in reverse in the cold Montana winters. It was easier to stay warm and dry, but then the cost again. Twenty below zero affects mobility as well, so that restricts your work in a different way. Ideally, one would spend the summers in Washington and the winters in Florida, but there seems to be no reasonable way to accomplish that. Except being born rich. The two economies have nothing in common. A Washington business in Florida would be quashed by the corruption. A Florida business in Washington would be laughed out of town.
