Congratulations to Alaine on the most successful birthday party yet. The turnout alone put mine to shame. She cooked a sixteen pound turkey for eight pounds of people, so I scored a big take-home tray of leftovers. Featured here on the left is something I’ve never had before, a corn soufflé. JP had been around earlier but skedaddled before I arrived fashionably late after recharging the sidecar battery. Portside is Alaine. Once the company was gone, family went on to some live music and a late round of cake and coffee.
[Original photo replaced.]
Alaine remembers how I had one weak tune last birthday. I can throw some light on that. I had barely learned to sing by that point. It took me [the previous] eight months to half-master the first two songs (Spiders & Snakes, and Folsom Prison Blues). I took a few “coaching” lessons in 1990 which I failed completely since they only improve those who can already sing. And made me suspicious of all singing lessons. Essentially, I have had zero training and when I carried a note it was something I figured out on my own. I assure everyone that real citified lessons in my upbringing would have been akin to an out of body experience.
The next get-together is Xmas dinner definitely to be held at a restaurant this year. Probably somewhere in the Gables. Alaine showed me an aerial photo of dad’s house for sale. There will be a memorial service in around a month. If nothing this party shows how far back in time we go with this. Grandkids that were children when we met (not Alaine’s but other family) are now finished university.
For the record, the restaurant again passed annual inspection with the highest rating on the east coast overall and the highest rating for cleanliness. Although I cannot discuss the rating numbers directly, let's say if it was a university exam, Alaine's GPA would be 4.0.
The quote of the year award has gone to Romney for his 47 percent remark. Many people were offended, but I say he was correct in his observation. Around 1970, I proposed much the same thing. Only I was referring to civil servants. While Romney said everybody on welfare or assistance would never bite the hand that feeds them, my position that the way a government stayed in power was to expand the civil service. This would ensure neither the employee nor anyone in their families would be likely to oppose more taxation or support a change of regime—but there was a fine balance how much bureaucracy a population would tolerate. Reagan grasped this. Places like Canada have not.
Make sure you come back this Friday, as I’m taking a new date to the bluegrass exhibition at the Hollywood bandshell on the beach. Where did I meet this cheery gal? At the bakery. Some may have guessed that. She’s way up there in the brains department, we actually met when she overheard a chat between myself and the bakery staff, who are well aware of my pursuits and, shall we say, the conversation can be hard to follow if one hasn’t done one’s homework. This new gal didn’t miss a thing.
Meanwhile, I’m reading a new book, “Fire”. I do not like it but want to see where it leads. If I don’t throw it against the wall, I’ll provide more info shortly. It is difficult reading and I rarely appreciate that. [It contains] all manner of foreign names and customs that contribute little to the plot, which seems to center around a set of chess pieces. So far it reads like an over-complicated history text with an author failing to pretend he is so classy. I have an innate aversion to this behavior.
ADDENDUM
Come on now, be fair. Which blog that you know of has always been the most strident supporter of 3D print technology? That’s right, and now a tissue engineer in Missouri printed live beating heart cells. True, it has been done before and it was cells from a chicken, but what good is a new-born babe? My ideal lab would contain a 3D printer, a laser cutter, and a CNC milling machine.
Part of my enthusiasm for 3D is because it is disruptive invention. Allow me to expand on that. Large industry in America has political clout that is often used to choke upstarts. You can read about it in the Harvard Business Review, which quotes a case of Indiana blocking the sale of electric cars by demanding showrooms display at least ten models. Yet this is entirely the kind of laws one expects to find in places like the Atlantic Northeast, with all their weird politics. And other controversy-generating slurs. Did you know up there they sit around all winter shivering and thinking up new ways to tax each other?
Well, I can think of a dozen industries that should be allowed to die on the vine. They’ve been entrenched and take their bloody time at your expense, or exist only because of credit. Why does a design shop want $2,500 to make me a fifty-cent toothpick holder? And why don’t internal parts from cars fit other model years? These businesses have become smug and need a wakeup call. And don’t we all love the shops that try to turn every inquiry into a custom job, like that outfit that told me they’d have to set up a new production line to make me a cardboard box back in 1994.
If you do not understand that 3D printing is going to change the world, you have not been paying attention. It has been called “the happy catastrophe” by Seeking Alpha. These printers are going to sweep aside huge chunks of the establishment and I’m all for it. Why should I have trouble finding trousers that fit because the garment industry thinks everybody my height must have a 65-inch waist and legs 13 inches long? Screw them, I’ll print my own. Why should I have to buy the complete assembly when the blinker switch breaks? And screw Home Depot and their $8 spar packs when I only want one 11/64th wing nut.
Unrelated to printing, but another industry that needs to go is taxis. Taxis can’t stand competition, and now that they have it (Uber, a cell phone app), they are crybabies. The very idea of $35 to get to the airport stinks. Taxis and airports work together to make it tough to drive and park there yourself. And hotels, that entire society of ass-hats needs to be taken down completely. That’s why I like Airbnb (Air Bed and Breakfast). It’s a service that lets you rent out your spare room to decent people who are traveling. Some of the private houses are really nice, I’d glady pay the $55. And Airbnb’ll reimburse you $1,000,000 if there’s any damage or trouble. Good bye, Conrad, and don’t slam the hotel door on your way out.
Businesses that suck, the whole lot of you are on notice.
Now, if only somebody could come up with a way to get rid of Amazon and eBay so some decent outfits could take over. Another place that’s beginning to really annoy me is Digi-Key. Look at their site once and you’ll be sorry for the next six months. Apparently Digi-Key has never heard people don’t like pop-ups. Or worse, they have heard. I will never buy from them until they grow a brain.
Note that the fastest growing 3D printing stock is called DDD (3D Systems Corp). But their low end printers cost $15,000 so I do not think that is the one that will take off. If experience prevails, some less able outfit will grab the popular imagination and the public will be stuck with another round of under-deliverers like VHS, HTML, MicroSoft, C++, PayPal and other crap that cannot be made to work right just no how.
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