One year ago today: May 16. 2013, most wars are east-west.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2009, breakdown.
Today, I hand you a gripe-fest. I don’t get along with people who think they are better than you because, say for instance, they work on the other side of a desk. At minimum wage. With no education. I’ll have you know I have never in my life worked for less than two and a half times minimum wage, and even then I was pretty young. Anyway, stick around and I’ll tell you what has been grinding my gears.
Here is something unusual, I think it is Italian cookies. Anybody recognize the car on the label? Looks like a Lada.
When I replaced the A/C, my lights began to flicker a bit. Eliminating the indoor wiring, that left the meter box, where sure enough, the problem was brittle bakelite. However, when I got home today I find the note on my door that they were restricting my service to 110 volts from 220 volts. (Of course they meant 100 Amps from 200 Amps, but only idiots work around here.) I had been waiting for them to pick a fight. That gave me the excuse to storm in there and tell them off. Result? We are now open enemies and they keep their distance from my yard. Mission accomplished.
It was later today I found out what they were on about. Years ago, when we installed the bedroom A/C (at the other end of the building), there was a circuit box in the way. We relocated it, a legal home-owner “repair” that does not require inspection and does not constitute “tampering”. There was a second outlet attached to that box, but it was not required so we disconnected it. The old dead wire hung there until it got in my way one day and I pushed it through the old conduit to the exterior of the wall. This is what they saw and my point is that they could not have seen it without snooping around the back of my yard.
Now, we have an interesting situation. When the meterbox was replaced, everything here returned to working exactly like it did before, 200 Amps or no. Seriously, everything is fine, no problems. But they think there are, hence they are sitting smug in that office satisfied to have cut off my A/C. So I will say nothing. Let them think they “won” if they are that dismal. Call me unreasonable, but I think once I pay the pad rental, I am also renting privacy inside my own home—and behind it.
Here’s a few more ways Windows Vista is a screw-up. The color scheme causes many web pages to wash out. I have not yet located the fix since they’ve hidden the settings button. And unless you use the MicroSoft browser (Internet Explorer), they’ve turned off the purple indicator that you’ve visited a website. Those Redmond bastards never learn (they have been charged repeatedly for this behavior). But if you want ignorance in its purest form, click on their button that promises to restore the “classic” Windows view. It only restores the shapes, not the functionality. You are still stuck with the gimptard Vista interface.
Ah, I hear some say, why would MicroSoft maliciously alter their browser when they’ve been hauled into court over it before? The answer is the law itself. When MicroSoft castrates a competitor’s software, it is not automatically the crime it was twenty years ago. You see, the laws don’t state anti-trust practices are spontaneously illegal, rather only illegal when a monopoly performs them. Once irrelevancies like China and Europe are brought into the US picture, MicroSoft can truthfully claim that Windows is no longer a monopoly. Hence, the MicroSoft crime rate drops to zero. That’s how laws are made in DC, by making sure there is always a legal out in the future.
Last, I had the task of advising a friend today about retirement. Once more, I was first [of my group to do something] and thus have the most experience, but had the least help. My message was simple. No amount of work will ever get you “enough” money, you will always run short at times. However, unlike a paycheck which stops when you do, all you have to do is slow down until the end of that one month and the next check will arrive. It still happens to me about twice per year, but I never run out completely. I foolishly kept working after my informal retirement at age 41, thinking there was still enough time for me to get rich.
Now I know. I should have quit work and lived on what little income I had at that age. Better to have spent the remainder of my active live as a pauper than waste it striving for the impossible. The system keeps generation after generation on their knees by encouraging each person to think they could be the next one to strike it rich.
ADDENDUM
“Bringing Down The House”, the book of the casino gang, does not tell how to count cards. That’s what I was expecting. Instead, it is an enlightening account of how card counting could be disguised and used to defeat casino security. One should read this for obvious reasons, although I assure you these are amateurish tactics compared to what I learned at the phone company. By chapter ten, once the book gets past the Grafton/Clancey phase, you begin to see some serious teamwork situations.
The casino’s spycams continue to record who you associate with in the hallways and elevators, away from the gambling floor. Now they are infringing, if you ask me. Thus, you have every right, when being surreptitiously recorded, to manipulate what the eavesdropper sees. You are not under oath. It is called spoofing and has nothing to do with cheating. For instance, when I’m being recorded, I automatically become left-handed.
I was curious to learn that counting is not illegal. Much as the casinos have spent trying to have it declared so, counting does not alter the odds and does not employ any devices. Then, there is the “Plymouth Facebook”, published by a house-retained detective agency. It’s a collection of mugshots of all gamblers who have won over a certain cap or more than an unspecified number of times regardless of whether there is any suspicion of cheating. The casinos can instruct those people to leave and charge them with trespassing if they don’t. That is probably worse manipulation of the system any than cheating at the tables.
Crybaby casinos. They only let you play if you let them win.
