I spent the early morning reviewing video footage, I may have an hour of good material in those 11 hours of recordings. That’s about right, much of the road trip is repetitious, the camera randomly turned itself off, and the interior of the museum was darkened just enough to make digital photos on the grainy side. Here’s a montage of the 1/12 scale Ferris wheel, the best attraction at the St. Augustine operation. You get a better idea of the size from the people at extreme right.
Here’s a retraction of a probable error, but since I’m not going to go back and delete the boo-boo, I get a chance to explain. The lady (see Nov. 11, 2011) with the boxes of gold I estimated at close to $3.6 million, well, it was likely not gold. I should have recalled the gold-plated bar of silver I myself had purchased recently. The tip-off is was the custom wooden case. My silver dealer says that is a tactic used by late night TV and telemarketing outfits. So my explanation is easy. How in hell would I know what is sold on TV or by phone?
[Author's note 2016: can't beat the next paragraph for optimism. I'm not dead and silver is not $400 per ounce. My health is excellent when I behave and silver is $16.45 per ounce.]
To follow up on that, it means what I may have seen was the largest amount of silver, not gold, that I’ve ever actually seen. If it was silver, it was worth $64,000. My studies indicate this is the time to buy silver, not sell it. At some time in the next ten years (when I’ll be dead), silver should hit $400 per ounce. These metals also have bubbles and it will be a fancy dance to know when to sell out.
This not too old computer is already showing limitations. It cannot properly edit the files from the helmet cam. There will be sparse pictures from St. Augustine until I get the Vivitar software to work right. It is doing what it wants instead of what I want, which in this case is to capture still from the video and put them in a directory that I can find. The folks at Vivitar seem to have had difficulty in the extreme with that concept. What if one does NOT want to upload raw, unedited footage to Facebook?
I’m reviewing the videos to see what caught my attention. They have a small block of acrylic that sparkles a little. Inside it are 12,000 tiny brass screws used for making watches. Basically, somebody swept the floor and stirred these into a mold, but this is as close as you’ll get to originality over at Ripley’s. So enjoy yourself, dammit.
These last few days of the month are taken up by chasing around paying annual fees and licenses. This system is unique to America, where everything from license tags to property taxes tend to match the month of your birthday. It is not perfect, and for example, you may be spending the actual day of your birthday in a government office instead of properly enjoying yourself. But I still like it compared to other countries where the system is designed to continually be checking up on you.
A good example, or more correctly, a bad example is Canada. If you do nothing, you won’t know what I’m talking about, but if you travel extensively, you’ll find out quickly enough what I mean. Back when I worked there, at various times I’ve left for 3 months, only to return to find my truck towed, or my bank account closed, or overdue notices from departments I never heard of, and one time an arrest threat from the census bureau.
My former business partner and myself can report instances when we flew back from other hemispheres to meet some damn Canadian deadline, then flew back at a cost of $1,900 per trip. We even tried to fill out each other’s documents in absentia or assign power of attorney, but they won’t stand for it. You have to show up in person or else.
[Author's note: I'm getting flak on that one already. Read the post. It states most Canadians would not know any better because they are accustomed to showing up in person. They have never left the country except on short vacations, so don't have a clue how repressive the system really is. They don't know any different--and clearly don't want to learn that the difference exists.]
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