This is the oil plug that disappeared in San Antonio, or actually, it is the emergency replacement that got me 1,300 miles home. It is no longer made by Honda and that caused me much consternation. So this morning, I drove over to the police station. When they asked rather gruffly what did I want, I pointed to the cap. The bright orange cap in the photo is the temporary plug.
"Oh," they said. "just go over to Davie Road Yamaha. The plug from a 2004 Yamaha 450 fits perfectly."
Makes my day.
Well, a large part of my recent trip was the motive to see this happen again. And it did. I thought with all the cross-referencing going on, I could never be so lucky for another round. But now I’m set until October 2023 when I probably won’t be needing any documents. Unless the law changes again. Hey, in my America, people don’t tell other people how to be good citizens. You behave and don’t cause your neighbor any trouble. If you want to lend him a hand, that should be your decision, not society’s.
There is an aspect of law that I disagree with because it smacks of ex post facto. That’s where the system takes money from you under one set of rules, but when your turn comes around, they change the rules. This is effectively changing the laws of the past and that is so wrong it disgusts me. If you don’t follow what I mean, just wait until your pension check is delayed until you are 70+ and is half the amount you expected back when they made the deduction.
Foremost, band rehearsal of y’day. The previous month is the longest I have gone without playing or practicing. I took an acoustic [guitar] along on the trip but I didn’t have a single chance to dig it out and play. Yet, I was not that worried about getting fired because of the “lounge” music this band plays. It is trying enough to find a bass player, much less one who knows lot of old non-rock music. I had to fake about half what we played, but it wasn’t that bad.
It says here that certain educators are of the position that Arduinos should be taught at high school level. I had to look into that. I think it could be taught earlier, since most C+ programming is done by people of around an eighth-grade education, or about same as those who program web pages. Imagine my horror to see the same curriculum that shows the programming being taught without regards to the construction and usage of the Arduino.
Further imagine my feelings to see teens standing beside their projects who seemed barely aware that the Arduino worked on electricity. Nor was there any originality to those projects. The boys built electric guitar distortion devices and the girls built flashing jewelry. This, folks, is how the education system takes a new and wonderful idea and turns it into mass-produced mediocrity. I myself have over 25 years of education and I know rotten courses that don’t teach you any depth. For them to do that to the Arduino tells you why the [educational] system is failing.
My system isn’t perfect either. Learning “Streets of Bakersfield” was a task. If you think it sounds like a simple country song, you are probably doing it wrong. For me the problem was something I know too well. Equal notes. What is that? I’ve struggled with them my whole musical life. There are usually two places on a bass to play the same note. For example, the note “A” can be played on the fifth fret of the “E” string, or open on the “A” string. The hitch is that I can distinctly hear the difference between such notes, causing me to think I’m missing something. It takes me lots of extra time to figure this out every time I encounter it.
ADDENDUM
The last of the material from my recent excursion out west has finally arrived. Sad it is, but I thought Texas and Washington would be the last states to succumb to repressive record-keeping. Actually, that’s not quite exactly what I thought. I knew it would happen, but hoped not in my lifetime. There were several occasions this time around where I had to think fast when a nothing clerk popped a question off the computer that was unrelated to why I was in the office. I have prepared answers for prepared questions.
“That’s the address I use when I am on vacation over there.”
“I was visiting my ex-wife who uses a different last name.”
“I was out of the country for several years going to school.”
“I had a rich girlfriend and everything was in her name.”
“My accountant will mail it to me.”
You might find most of the answers I give to bureaucrats to be “interesting”. I generally reply by asking if anyone looking at the record would conclude it was accurate, and if so, “then leave it be”. Thus, the system can never be sure whether or not I confirmed the information, even if later they force an answer out of me. Sorry if you don’t agree with that, but the Constitution says there is no obligation to confirm or deny the accuracy of somebody else’s records.
People don’t think ahead will say this record keeping is harmless, or worse, say that it helps the system perform better. Nonsense, it is nothing but a setup. Having to show ID to use a library computer or buy eyeglasses helps only those with special interests, and nobody should have to cater to them. If you want to know who I am before I can buy glasses to see with, you should be strung up by the thumbs. I plain don’t like giving out information that stupid people could possibly use out of context, which is most information where I do business.
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