Do you know what Green Light party is? It is where singles and not-so-singles go stag on Valentine’s. Fifteen bucks at the door, music is a deejay. Hardly enough to get me going. Anyway, the theme is at the door you get a red, green, or yellow wristband. Green is single, yellow means uncommitted, and red means taken but bored at home. You might think that’s where to look, but the reality is it merely attracts the full gamut of losers.
Here’s trivia. Where is the only place on the planet where a sea captain is required to give up command of his vessel? The Panama Canal. A pilot from the canal authority takes over. It’s that, or sail around the Cape of Good Hope. Most people who do that never do it again. The concept is that Panama is losing billions to supertankers that don’t fit the existing cuts. It’s all about money, without the tolls, Panama is another banana republic. The sums needed are astronomical, but the lingering feeling is that inflation is working just as hard as the people digging the ditch.
What’s this item in the paper that Israel has a problem with African border jumpers? Would they [the jumpers] not have to somehow cross the Negev to reach civilization? Apparently not, there are 50,000 of them. My advice Israel is ship them back now, or they will start to breed like, well, you know. You fought and died for your freedom, let them go back and do the same where they come from. But once you let them in, well, let’s just say anyone who thinks that is okay should be forced to take a unarmed walk through some American inner city. And before you call me a racist, did you take such a walk yourself? Well, there you go. I suggest most stereotypes have at least some basis in fact. These profiles don’t invent themselves, you know.
It seems they have so far let the refugees stay, but wherever they bunk them, the crime rate soars. The community complains, and they don’t get all cute about it over there like the press does here. If the Israelis intend to preserve their culture, good or bad, take a lesson from the USA and get the bus ready. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Jews are all that great. But they did contribute a lot to America. Newspaper cartels. Bagels. Stand-up comedians.
For the first time in maybe fifteen years, I peeled and ate an orange. What can I say, I don’ t like them. (I’ve consumed a lot of orange juice, mind you.) What happened is I took an hour and walked around Winn/Dixie to see if there were many challenges buying food without corn, soy, or soybeans and without cottonseed or canola oil. My milkshakes, those compounds have found their way into the majority of everything I’ve been eating. I purchased a few organic snacks, noting the 25% price premium. Why does it cost more to grow something that is processed less? Because America, that’s why. Same with unleaded gas.
Music. I chose three of the tunes on the new list and went to town. First, “Day After Day” by Badfinger. Most bands, including the one I’m in, tend to leave out orchestral flourishes by playing only their part. Is that clear? What I mean is the guitarist and keyboards tend to leave out anything that is not their instrument. Thus, if we played Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, nobody would play the horn part, it ain’t their job. “Day After Day” is actually a sparse instrumental, giving me plenty of opportunity to add in those background notes to the point where I’ve now got a completely tailored bass line.
Then on to “Don’t You Forget About Me” and I did it again. Those rapid-fire root notes don’t lend themselves to my treatment, but this tune is an exception. I left the bass beat identical but play it like I was strumming a rhythm guitar. It’s a winner. And last, “Angel From Montgomery”, I listened to all the live recordings on youTube and combined them into a series of harmony parts for bass and guitar, that is, the guitar part no longer stands by itself as well as when I hit the thirds. (If you don’t know music theory, most harmony parts are a third above the melody. And I already play many thirds on the bass where guitarists tend to play fourths.
Call it a full day for me. I’ve got a few e-mails back and forth with the lady doctor from Harvard. She is just not a writer. One note here and there. I sympathize that most people would rather date somebody who lives nearby than write, but it seems to me there is a partial lack of enthusiasm going on here. On-line dating carries with it the codicil that one is not getting satisfaction where they are, so relocating is part of the deal. But if you don’t write much, that’s an instant handicap. No, I’m not driving all the way to Pennsylvania without a little animation to perk things along. I’ll give it a while yet.
ADDENDUM
QBASIC is up and running. At least the emulator. I’ve already run a few test programs as I move directly toward graphics programming. What do I recall about graphics? Years ago, I designed many database modules where those who had difficulty with logic went into game programming. Or let me just say that is a different brand of logic. There’s two cute words for that bunch. “Difficulty” and “different”. Hey, they couldn’t cut it so they took the easy way out. And that is why most of your video and computer games are pretty much alike. Game programming is repetitious.
Nearby is a screen shot of the QBASIC opening screen as it appears on my computer. This type of display is often called an IDE (integrated development environment) because it acts like a mini-word processor that spell checks reserved words in the program and often has features like step and immediate, which help with debugging. You step through the code one command at a time, or run the line by itself immediately before you place it into your program.
Software manuals are as bad as electronics. Tons of material covering the basics to death, nothing in the middle, then at the top a few expensive and specialized offerings. I skimmed down a few pages of search results to confirm it is mostly disappointing come-ons. Funniest are the geeks who announce they are going to build the ultimate learning site and you can see how soon they quit. Yeah, dudes, writing interesting material every day takes hard work and a little talent. Beware that like C+ and ilk, almost all code examples given in training material are trivial by design.
Already I’ve finished the 400 page book and should be testing code by this evening. If anyone got the impression I am just learning QBASIC, I never said that. The first coding I did was in BASIC, the parent language of QBASIC. Yes, Patsie, it is an acronym and all the letters are upper case. I am merely plowing through the code a refresher. Mark my words, like the Arduino, I will quickly reach the limits and get bored, content to know I could it if I had to. Then it can sit on the shelf until a worthwhile project comes along.
Back in university, I was taught linear programming. This is code that marches through the commands in a single path, start to finish one at a time. I knew this was not efficient and had already begun to develop independent theories about modular programming. It means code in subroutines that can be transplanted between programs. For instance, a log-on screen should be imported to every new program. And subroutines that are repetitive should also be written to be transportable (C+ types are insane for writing modules that cannot be re-used.) Believe it or not, when I was seventeen, this was considered very advanced thinking.
Fred went through the same process and nearly failed a course because his instructor not was qualified to grade his work. I often got 99% marks because the college computer could not print three-digit grades. My modules were more about making output look good. I'm saying I generally only modularize the cosmetics. I still embed the important calculations in the control module, one short line at at time for readability. Hence, I also know an awful lot about designing reports because I had to learn it from scratch.
Statistically, there are more books out there than ever. But my sneaking suspicion is that it comes mostly from hack writers who, unlike the scientist say, have not doubled their knowledge every seven years, or whatever. The point is, I disagree that one goes to school to learn to write properly, else the world would be full of proper writers. It’s become more like the Guinness record book, the trick is to define your own category.
