[Author’s note: You get mainly prose today, as I was cooped up. I’ll be talking about clubs, but I mean the kind of club based on knowledge, learning, skill, or even investment. Florida is full of the other kinds. Nothing much intellectual about clubs for sports, cars, weight loss, and boot camp, methinks. I’ll let you know what I come up with over the next few days. I'm not joining up, I'm just looking.]
Home is where you’ll find me. If there was something to do in this town besides drink and gamble, I’d be doing it. Don’t move to south Florida if you are looking for interesting pastimes. I told you already, the economy here is work, drink, sleep. Tell people you are in a robotics club and they stare at you. There are no semi-professional societies or organizations of any kind in the area. When the book stores throughout the area closed, I found nothing to replace them. I enjoyed those foolish poetry readings at the coffee house—provided I had a book to read to fill in the lapses.
There are just no clubs, agencies, or organizations in the entire area, with the exception of things like the men’s club that flies remote control airplanes. But even on campus and among musicians, there are no interesting, academic, dues-supported, self-mentoring hobby clubs. Our robot club can hardly find members since we are too far along the way to bring anyone new up to speed. Unless that person has that elusive fully-equipped machine shop we can use.
One thing I used to enjoy was BBC documentaries. Since 2005 they have gone downhill. They once had topics on cutting edge science that imparted real knowledge. AS such, they were not for everybody. Alas, that has been replaced by low-budget mass-appeal rubbish matter like acupuncture, dream therapy, and hour-long monologues on mental depression. Now that this once-great source of learning has been turned off, I would join a club interested in research on anything from solar power to film production. Nothing is available.
I’ve successfully avoided the majority phase of the flu going around. Everyone seems to have had it and I know staying home works for me. So that’s how I got to finally watch “My Cousin Vinny”, the spoof murder trial comedy. Some good scenes though the plot loses momentum between the court scenes. I finally saw the grits argument that so many people at my old job would say when they found I liked grits. Hey, I was raised on grits, though I never found out what “hominy” was until a few years ago. Boiled and instant grits taste the same to me, but read on, I may stop eating corn products.
Her effective career lasted four years. Temple was a pioneer speaking out on breast cancer, proving that if you make $3 million before puberty, you don’t really need ‘em. That’s why if I had a choice between rich or famous, I’d choose famous. They can’t take famous away from you. She had a stab at California politics, but face it, by 1967 she was nowhere near as good looking as Arnold.
February 11, today, is supposed to be the big mass protest on the Internet against mass surveillance. It will pass unnoticed for most. The time to object was back when cookies became popularly known to be used for unauthorized purposes. It should have been nipped off at the bud. None of the participants in the protest, such as Mozilla and Reddit are actually ceasing to collect private data, they merely want you to send an e-mail to prevent the government from doing it. So protest on-line and get yourself on the suspect list, you terrorist, you.
For the record, a letter mailed first class to Canada on December 21, 2013 did not arrive there until February 4, 2014. What am I doing mailing letters over there? Marion. I told you. Her mom is Canadian so she went there for the “free medical”. Then I find out they will not let her leave the compound. There’s socialized medicine for you. No distinction between non-ambulatory and incompetent. The bureaucratic side of healing.
I have a terrible memory for names and faces. Always have. I honestly believe it has a lot to do with meeting so many people about whom neither particular is worth remembering. I mean, I never forget a pretty woman or somebody who owes me money. I am not making this up, I have a real problem with it, and I’ve lost jobs and promotions over it. I won’t expound what brought this up. Just ask me what the guy did, don’t ask me his damn name. His name doesn’t matter a twit, only what he did with his life.
Last, I read more in JZs medical books, but after chapter six, the reading gets tough. You have to retain a huge accumulation of technical terms from up to that point. One item that got me was a list of disease symptoms. I was unaware that the largest single indicator of disease is inflammation. This includes internal organs as well. Your system is reacting to being poisoned, or damaged by other foreign material. Then to learn such diseases have not only tripled in the past quarter-century but hit Americans at three times the rate of the rest of the world. What is with that? Who is responsible? One source blames GMOs, genetically modified organisms. Could be, these combinations are not found in nature and people are either eating them, or eating food that has them.
But I am certainly going to take a closer look at artificial sweeteners. I did not know that some are digested, others are not. The dangerous ones are digested.
ADDENDUM
AT&T is up to their old tricks. Pardon me, these are really fairly new tricks, because they at one point at least pretended to be a reputable business. But since the Internet has changed the meanings of such words as “free” and “no obligation”, the phone company has become a frontrunner in deceptive practices. Near the top of their grocery list of wrong-doings is the “authorized solution provider”. These people do not work for AT&T, they are commissioned salespeople who will use every trick in the book to sneak in a higher cost service on your existing contract—although it may be a year before you get zapped.
Nearby is the form presented by the “salesmen” who stated it was to arrange for a repairman/tech to replace a modem. Just a month ago, there was a problem with it. Now hold on, this is an order form—and nobody ordered anything. AT&T does not require an order form to replace their own faulty equipment. When you see it. This tiny logo in the upper left says these people are something quite different than what they said they were. They are not AT&T and represent nothing but their own selfish interests. They are not there to repair anything. They are salesmen using the AT&T ticket so you will let down your guard.
It turns out this “replacement” modem is in fact the cancellation of DSL service and a switch to U-verse. The “order” form is a credit application which contains negative options (you have to check any extras you don’t want) and it is an intentionally confusing document with eight sections. The salespeople are slippery, their answers sound scripted and they are continually redirecting the conversation to useless points like how many other businesses switched and what color of the contract copy you “get to keep”, like they are doing you some favor.
The obvious lie is that these people do NOT work for the phone company. The individual I cross-examined stated he did, but then admitted his paycheck does not, in fact, come from AT&T. (He picked up that if he had said yes, I would catch him on what those checks look like.) Folks, you cannot have it both ways. The phone company does not hand out paychecks to people who do not work for them. It’s that “authorized” catch phrase again. Define “authorized”. By whom? You likely don’t know you have the legal right to opt out of these sales calls, although it just means they will start telemarketing you instead.
So here is how the scam works. Basically, you DSL people can go get, um, lost. The phone company is cancelling DSL to force you to switch carriers or accept the U-verse package. (Package? Bundle? I’ll explain.) Your only option to continue your Internet link with the phone company is to change to a different bundle called U-verse. This is the phone company’s answer to high-speed cable accomplished by the use of fiber-optics. The term “bundle” means you CANNOT order the services separately, the services being TV, Internet, and telephone. Even if you use only one, say the Internet, you must accept being provided with all three, like it or not. I think it obvious where they are heading with that.
Price? Over-technical and confusing to the average person, with five grades of service. The lowest is quoted at $29.95 monthly, but ChaCha reports that the final bill for most customers with that grade of service comes to $44 per month, quite a difference. It also smells like the Comcast low-buy-in scam, where after a year your contract automatically renews at a new and higher rate. You must cancel on precisely the anniversary date as anything earlier or later hits you with a cancellation fee and/or an interruption of service. Slimy, or what?
If you call for clarification, they try to conduct a survey and just talk in circles. When I called, all their lines were so bad I could not make out the words at the other end. That undoubtedly has to be done on purpose. Shame on you, AT&T.
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