One year ago today: August 22, 2013, anti-freeze in Florida?
Five years ago today: August 22, 2009, I like bingo.
Ten years ago today: August 22, 2004, a Sunday.
Also, if the photos in this post look correct, as in centered, oriented, and with a transparent border on three sides to keep the print from butting up against the margins, then I succeeded. You see, google once again mucked up the photo format, they are real ass-clowns for doing things like that.
What a mess y’day. Took me half the day to get home. A very large truck over on Federal broke the seals and spread transmission fluid for nearly a mile down Federal Way. What a mess, and he kept going. They had to bring in a fleet of dump trucks and lay down a bed of sand to soak it up. And because I don’t have my Argus camera yet, no photos. That’s okay, it was not all that exciting. I stopped at the Russian store where I always tell the lady who asks me what I want in a wife, “A good cook.” And she always says, “What else?” At my age: a convection microwave.
None of the customers from the old shop have been calling or responding to my inquiries or demo disks. This is odd because most who heard me play back in 2009 said that they would hire any band I put together. So I dug a little deeper find out that none of my people are on the club committees any more. That would explain the lack of bookings. My disks are getting shunted into the pile because nobody in charge knows me any more. That includes the Czech club, although admittedly they are closed for the summer. What to do now? I'm thinking. I'm thinking of paying my band to play there once out of my own pocket. Floridians are cheap. Free always works.
Am I the only person who wonders why, on the Internet, there are no sleepy little towns that like themselves? Seriously, pull up any town with a website and they try to talk you into moving there. And I ask myself, why in tarnation would Fayetteville, NC want your or I to move there? Pass through, spend some money, okay. But to move there? They have a city song, you know.
If you have three minutes, listen to Paul Harvey back in 1965. Or Red Skelton in 1969. In a lighter vein, I tried to find a good link to TSL (Tennessee SuperLab) but failed. There are links, but go get them yourself. Those guys don’t know how to set audio levels so turn down your volume knob. That’s the bozos who made the painting from 80 mousetraps on a sheet of plywood. Here’s a link to a Chinese seismometer.
What’s this? Increasing droves of teens are getting off Facebook? I suppose that’s perfectly natural once you grow up a bit. That, and you need a PC to really use Facebook, so it is already outdated. Anyway, the total loss can only be explained by people quitting Facebook altogether. Good. Tried it once, didn’t like it. Too snoopy, and just when you thought people could not get more boring than in real life? And I never did like websites that don’t allow deletion of posts and cancellation of membership without any trace.
How goes my navigation studies? Now able to focus on the math in isolation, I’m finally getting consistent results. I’m still getting 40 mile discrepancies, but it is localized to the way I’m using the tables. And I found out that tables have more than one form and more than one set of instructions. It's always so cute when they do that. I now view each difference as a separate method and am learning which ones to avoid. A testimony to the accuracy of quartz clocking circuits: the el cheapo stop watch I bought only lost 6.5 seconds in a month. This is a completely acceptable standard for navigation, but so you know, I’ve learned to correct for that, too.
That was back in 2001, in the coffee shop era. On guitar was the Hippie, so of course, we played only what he decreed. And he got away with that because I had not yet figured out how to sing in those days. (That's correct, I didn't learn to sing, I figured out it out.) So we played a list of half-baked semi-hits and made zero in tips. Looking deeper into the picture, there is the university bookstore. I think that everyone with college-age children should be forced to walk in there and examine the prices.
You can’t fool me, most of the books for sale are first and second year poorly written crap. That part has not changed since my day—but what do early students know about rip-off book prices? It gets worse after third year and beyond, when they know you are unlikely to quit. The average price noted was $104 per used book, or around half sticker price. Who would pay $208 for a text on marine biology? Ah, a student with loan money that the university has on file. Right? The university knows precisely how much you borrowed—they filled out the form, remember.
I don’t buy what I cannot pay for cash. That included four integrated circuits at RadioShack. I thought that place was going under, which I would not mind because right now they are blocking the path for a startup with reasonable prices. Anyway, the four chips, which should cost $1.60 now cost $12.00. That steamed me so I went home and watched some of those outrageous home-made videos about life on Mars and the big coverup. You know, without the people who make those things up realizing it, they have some constant themes that are cause for deep thought
One is that the manned missions to Mars could have taken place by the 1980s. I don’t go so far as to believe they did take place, as the cover-up would have been too expensive. But the technology was there and so was the motivation. The arguments for not going are the weaker set.
The second item, and you’ll have to be a little more open-minded to follow this, is what kind of people are candidates for a Mars journey. The majority of these videos quickly get to the topic that a Mars colony, for all its scientific motives, is really a trek for the salvation of mankind. Only those good for the survival of the human race are going to Mars. Thus, let's take a look at who is NOT going.
We’ve got eyes. Everyone can see right way who is not on the list. No meat salesmen, no half-breeds, no single mothers, no divorcees, no queers, no drywall contractors, no Muslims, no Jews, no retards, no drop-outs, no hookers, no druggies, no Cubans, no welfare cases, no old farts from Dunkin Donuts. It was like the passenger list for Planet 107.
I think it pretty safe to say not one of my critics is going to be on that passenger list. Where do I sign up for this fun flight?
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