By the way, that’s Alaine in the cake photo. She, too has found a small bakery in her own neighborhood. I pondered what to get her from my bakery and decided on poppyseed cake. Now, come on, guess what she chose to get for me? Poppyseed bread. There you have it, a classic example of inter-bakery commerce. There, that’s enough about Xmas and food. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes of this blog. Oops!
While mapping out the basics for 2014, I found myself continually reminded of people I’ve seen or met who had money but still could not find anything interesting to do. Like that trainload of people on the way to Memphis last month and I won’t even mention my family. Boring people think traveling makes them more interesting, which is enormously false. I didn’t see one other passenger from that train in downtown Memphis. They were not on the trolley, the shops, the tea room, the library, the soda shops, and certainly not on Beale Street. But other than that, they are “well-traveled”. I suppose.
My situation with travel is the rising costs. I have the camper pod, but everything else is expensive. On my last trip, I’ve found that every landmark worth seeing has been turned into a tourist trap. No improvements, they throw a fence around it and charge admission. And camper or not, I generally went from city to city before I stopped for the evening. Not once did I find a nice spot in the middle of nowhere, nor did I want to wake up miles from breakfast. If I want to make 2014 anything like as exciting as this year, it will require deeper research and planning.
And I never spoke much of it, but I missed a beautiful bargain in September. Three bedrooms, three baths, for $38k, with the land. I had to spend much of the down payment on the trip west. Things have improved enough that won’t happen again, at least not until 2023. There’s always the economy, but now I don’t have to worry near as much as most others who are not even remotely prepared for a bad stretch. Folks, all democracies bankrupt themselves in 250 years. 1776 + 250 = 2026 means any time now.
True, the papers are trumpeting a recovery but they have reputations for telling the proles what they like to hear. Part of the problem of tying up your bucks in a “safe” investment like real estate is that you can’t sell part of a house for daily expenses. The last thing you want is for me to find out you are selling because you have no food in the fridge. I’d probably react the same way the world back when I needed help. Then, once I’m comfortable and set for life, I can sit back and tell people what they ought to think if only they were a cool as me. As Mark Holmes would say.
As for planning ahead, today the beginning of ten years since my heart attack. I’ve beaten the odds. Significantly, I feel fine and I’ve solidly broken the dependence on a job for my well-being. That gave me the long “rich-kid” stretches [of free time] where I could do things like learn to sing. That alone guarantees I will never go hungry. Back when I worked for a living, I had to constantly be on the lookout for any interruption in the money supply.
So what have the a-holes over at Bland done? They have replaced the older classics with junk versions. For a dollar, you don’t get Roy Orbison’s “Sweet Dream Baby”, or Charlie Daniels “Long-Hair Country Boy”. You get some cheesy stump version recorded “live in Ireland”. Up yours, Touch Tunes.
My remaining peeves today? People who say “seer-up” for syrup, “milli-tree” for military, and “lye-barry” for library. Those who say “new-kew-lar” as well should probably move on. This isn’t the blog for you. We don’t want new ideas hurting your brain. What’s this news item from the BBC? The average American works 46 hours per week? My milkshakes! That’s almost as much as I sleep. Then again, the average American is a dunce who has to make those credit card payments.
Just a reminder to all the dismal peckerheads who don’t understand the English word “free”. All your 30-day trial crap is automatically deleted without even being looked at. I hope you all choke to death. No, don’t have a Merry Xmas. It is not a “free” 30 day trial; it is a 30 day trial period. The fact you have to market your crappy product by trickery says what it is worth. You scum are beneath contempt. Are you listening, Arcsoft? Fire the batch you just hired and bring the old crew back.
Last, how did I spend actual Xmas day? The town I live in is so boring, I rode the eBike over to Starbucks. I do believe I was the only person in the place that arrived there for a cup of coffee. Meaning I don’t know why all those posers and bigshots where there but it evidently wasn’t to have a quiet mug and relax.
Bah, humbug! There. I said it.
ADDENDUM
MicroSoft is really going to pull the pin on XP this time. There are, like myself, millions of users out there who refused to get taken in on later versions of Windows that did little except hide familiar commands. I can’t seem to find a decent explanation of how this move by MicroSoft will affect users, so I’ll spell it out here. This is one of the reasons we like this blog—plain words that stay on topic.
The problem is security. Windows is an extremely network-friendly system. It tries by itself to join networks if any are available. This makes it vulnerable to hacks and viruses. It might not seem obvious to anyone trying to make sense out of router installation instructions, but Windows is constantly testing for the Internet and trying to connect. It can and will connect at low levels not obvious to the user.
That means MicroSoft is engaged in a constant battle of patching up vulnerabilities, while the hackers are hard at work circumventing these “hot fixes”. Once MicroSoft ceases issuing those updates, XP will be defenseless against an entire generation of the worst hackers known, namely disillusioned and disgruntled ex-Microsoft employees.
I’ll say it again, the ONLY secure place for your data is on a separate computer that does not have any capability to connect to the Internet. You should have a separate and designated computer that is used solely for going on-line and nothing else. My system is a little more elaborate. I have a kill switch that does not permit both my Internet hardware and my storage drives to have electrical power at the same time. And I don’t really have anything to hide; I just do so because it is wise procedure.
You may not have anything to hide either, but that is today. You do not know if you have something today that would be wise to have been hidden when the future arrives. Remember the survey, “Were either of your grandparents Jewish”. You done been told.
In a similar vein, I see certain web hosts are refusing to cooperate with people and agencies who attempt to remove their personal data. The hosts argue that once something becomes public information, it should remain so forever. Really? And I wonder who appointed them the custodian of such matters. From where do they derive such authority?
I said before, the best defense is to not tell anyone in the first place, but if you are already so far under nothing will help, then flood the market with bogus data. I do this with “job resumes” knowing full well what those agencies are up to.
