One year ago today: April 18, 2013, Steinhatchee, FL
Five years ago today: April 18, 2009, age-appropriate dating.
It’s a picture of a 5 volt power supply I built myself. And I always pretend to be interested in another man’s hobby. Actually I am more interested in the mentality of the hobbyist, particularly if I think there is money to be made. I mean that most when it comes to non-productive hobbies, the ones more aptly called “pastimes”. Golf, stamp-collecting, I even knew one kid who collected toe-nail clippings. My hobby is electronics. As you see, I’ve grown confident in constructing more complicated devices. This board can take an input from anywhere in the range of 6 to 13.5 volts and output 5.02 volts, the Arduino standard.
Will this be a nothing Friday if I don’t spend a lot of money? Let’s follow along. First, some trivia about my personal dislikes. Two things I don’t care for is songs about how hard it is for bands to make it to the top. Guys, you got lucky, so sing about something else. A related gripe is movies about how tough the news reporters have it in the combat zones. Every movie on that subject has an identical plot. It’s so worn out I wish a few more of them would
And cake. I don’t like cake. No explanation given, but I lost my taste for it a good thirty years ago. To me it is all bland and either lemony or not. Well, I should not say lost my taste, because I find the flavor matches what it is—a load of empty calories. Nor do I care for that whipped icing material these days. Am I the only one who likes the icing made from butter and icing sugar? Back when the only flavoring was vanilla extract, I’d take the corner slice with icing on three sides. Today’s Styrofoam cake would probably collapse if you put real icing on it.
I tried to read a chapter in the Windows manual about setting remote access here. I would like to access the files on my host computer from this client computer. There is a difference between setting up a shared local area network and allowing a remote logon—although I believe that very few people even over at MicroSoft have any firm idea of that difference. The bunch they have writing the instructions are a strange bunch indeed. Like many a tech, the only thing they are good at is pretending they know how to explain things and if you had any brains, you’d be able to follow along.
Wrong. I can follow anything that is logical. I admit for lack of clear directions, most of the shared files I have were set up by trial and error. Following the step-by-step lists in the MicroSoft book doesn’t work. You hit strange and unexplained dead ends every time. One feature I hate is the way most setup screens demand an “account”, but don’t explain how to set one up. No, it has nothing to do with the other accounts you may already have. Another annoying confusion is the computer name slash user name slash workgroup name. MicroSoft themselves have lost track of how that works.
To wind down, I ran through my by-now-familiar song list of the five-piece band. This, I can pretty much avow, is my last big band. Unless we strike it rich, this is barely worth it if only because it is not my brand of music, but we’ll see. I spent the morning adding little embellishments and finding out that there are “two els” in that word. The idea is to keep reminding the crowd they are getting world-class bass lines, which is not to say complicated bass lines. Complication is for guys who took lessons and lessons are the reasons you clowns all sound alike. Oh come on, don’t get your panties in a knot. I’m just the first guy who spoke up about it.
I re-wrote a few bass lines, including “Sunny Afternoon” (Kinks) to make the walkdowns span the entire fretboard (high D to low E). That’ll wake them up. And (Orbison’s) “Pretty Woman”, talk about your studio remake overdub, that song could have as many as eight different musicians strung together. Only the vocals are live start to finish. To make sure, I threw it up on Audacity and looked at the wave forms. Sure enough there are spots where the engineer notched out notes and beats to make it match up. “Holy Charlie Daniels!” said Zack Brown.
Then to the bakery, which you expected. Getting old is hell and I’ll tell you an instance why. I ordered my coffee and they said I wanted a cinnamon bun. How did they know that? Well, they said I was looking at it. Hold on, I objected. Just how do you know I wasn’t staring at the skin-tight blue jeans on the Russian mail-order bride? The skinny one from the hair salon that knows she’s a bombshell. How do you know I wasn’t looking at that? They, well, they just smiled and gave me the cinnamon bun.
Back home the radio was on some oldies station with the material even I never listened to much. “You’re My Everything”, “You’re The Greatest Love of All”, this type of syrupy ballad. Then again, I had the misfortune to grow up in one of those post-war shadow eras, right behind an entire generation who had been brainwashed into believing “doing what you were told” was the primary indicator of this bizarre concept called “maturity”.
And by god, you rarely saw such a concentration of mature people as in my home town. Why most of them are still there, probably mature as all get-out these days. My own completely whacked out and characterless older sister was considered mature, which she should thank as the only thing that kept her out of an institution. Fortunately, there were others of my generation in different environments who were not forced to be “mature” or else. Heck, you heard of some of them. Steven Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, John Lennon.
Later, I did go out. I was reminded of all the reasons I don’t go out on Fridays, and why so many losers go out that day. Now let’s be fair here. I’ve been out to just as many bars as any of you guys and I was often not just another customer, but the entertainer. Mind, unless you call every other week a pattern, I’m no regular either. I also know the rules and parameters of bar hustling and the exact point at which to become disgusted. That’s where I normally leave.
There is a new type of woman now hanging out at the joint. These women know the guys who hit on them are the worst liars. These sad women seem to use this as a form of entertainment. We all know it happens but it isn’t a good omen when it gets deliberate. If the guys buy them drinks soon the place is no longer a friendly club but another Artie’s. Once good thing Wallace would say about Artie’s is you certainly don’t have to wonder what a woman is doing in there. Laugh if you want, but this is not at all normal fare at the old club.
ADDENDUM
Okay, now an incident off the record. The other day, I was again asked if I was a lawyer. This is odd, because I do not act or talk like one. I have a possible explanation. Knowing how boring things get, I brought along the NYT crossword and sat back in the third row.
Other than that I was not as nervous or intimidated as the other defendants present, nothing was unusual. At one point the Judge made a funny and I was the only one who chuckled (spontaneously). It was courtroom humor, but I did notice that nobody else got it, including the normal denizens who should have.
Quickly spotting the witness against me had not appeared, I elected to move to trial and the Judge instantly dismissed the case. Not being familiar with the process, I asked, “Is that it?” He asked back, “You seem to want to proceed to trial without the witness.”
To which I replied, “I was rather looking forward to it.”
Then he asked if I was a lawyer and I said no. In my life, I’ve taken one course in business law. That’s how I know contracts are an offer and an acceptance and don’t have to be in writing, Wallace and Theresa. But as I said, this is off the record so no need to publish this on the Internet or anything. Where the whole world could see it.
***Actually, I just thought of something you might find very interesting. The reason I was "looking forward" to a trial. I'm still deciding whether to reveal my motives. It's nothing serious, but is conniving as hell.
