One year ago today: October 6, 2013, new lady singer appears.
Five years ago today: October 6, 2009, down from $887,000.
Ten years ago today: temporarily suspended, I will notify you.
MORNING
Here is a motorcycle called “The Rat”. I’d be afraid to drive it except at exhibitions. The spokes are wooden and it is not driven as low-slung as in this photo. It has air suspension that picks it up eight inches once the motor starts. It carries a designer number of 127. All exposed metal parts are copper or copper plate. The oil reserve is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
I also took it to be spelled “phintank ” but have no idea if this is one and the same. As this is connected to Nova, you won’t get any help on that either. Phintank is some kind of coding contest. But exhibition or contest, these are items patently not touched by the Nova group and it would be amazing indeed to find out they could contribute anything. I must attend on that count alone.
I love coding, but I hate C+, which is not real computer code. It is the overeducated mugwump’s mistaken conception of computer code. Except for machine language, real computer code is self-documenting. That is, the commands are English words that convey their true function.
NOON
I won’t be ready for the audition tomorrow, having just enough material to show them what I can do. Take heart, there is every chance the other bassists will be worse. This is the town of stereotyped clone musicians and I’ve handily won out before in those circumstances. Nor do I know what the new people are looking for, but I have reason to believe they want entertainers as well as players. It’s these startup bands with no stage experience who don’t know the difference and consequently, all get nowhere.
Then you realize how well written the book is, or actually, re-written. The author has gone over each passage time after time to tweak it for the right effect. And the research is incredible, now that I know about things like Weems & Plath. Strange how so much value is placed on reading the classics when we are young students and least able to appreciate the subtleties. How the linen content of old charts made them “whisper” as they turned.
How’s the trip planning going? From y’day, you have a budget for both time and money. And I have an invitation to repeat the Karaoke. I have been requested by the house every inch of the way and it is to my advantage that everyone understands this. Remember, I could have scooped that show in 2008, but held back on purpose. The talk is the other lady is fired, regardless of what I do. Talk is she was unreliable which makes me wonder, in Florida, how could they tell?
Inflation, no pun intended. The motorcycle tire, installed, is $200. It goes into the shop on Thursday. Say, that reminds me, the trip budget may be upped as I have a callout on Wednesday. Remember the callouts? Yes, I still get them, but the really big ones are gone. Computers are now reduced to household toys. Most of the work I do is on older non-networked XP systems.
But one callout a month would still make me a happy camper—quite literally. Get it, Ken? Literally?
NIGHT
The Nova troop e-mailed back, they seem focused on setting up a web site to contact each other. But that’s more than went before. Robots are not something built by encounter groups and committee meetings. Give them a chance, I say, but like most outfits who take my time, they would be astonished to learn the best study of their performance is a daily blog with no names.
I saw an accident. Texting black lady pushes into two vehicles ahead of her. No, I didn’t stick around as fifteen other people were closer than I was and were already texting. Low speed, nobody hurt, but the Latino guy scrunched in the middle, well, you know about Cuban machismo and their pretty cars. I hate to see a grown man cry, though he didn’t cry, that look on his face said, “Right when I have no insurance papers.”
And some blog stats, mainly because this blog is being rated by a half-dozen services who took it upon themselves to do so. Without even having to be asked. My ranking appears to be number 125,818th of something or other. On what scale I don’t know, but I would be curious where I rank with long-term blogs that do not contain advertising. Maybe top ten on that count?
Overall readership is climbing very slowly, remember blogs require more time and brains than tweets, so I have competition of sorts. Shortly ago I was less than happy to see how, for the first times since 2012, there were now gaps in time where nobody in the world was reading my work. At any given moment, an average of 18 people are reading this blog. But in the early morning hours, I am getting periods of nothing.
Even with those gaps, overall counts are higher. I’m not out after numbers, but the number of people an author can reach is never that far from his mind. My inferred goal is to be read one million times, enough to ensure me a place in history, I suppose. Outside of the USA, my greatest number of readers are in Malaysia, which is difficult for me to think through. Unless, as I think may be the case in China, some school is using this material as a teaching aid. I’m certainly okay with that—but once again alert foreign readers that this blog is not representative of average American or Canadian daily life.
Most people over here very rarely have or do anything worth writing about. Ever. And as I like to point out, when they die, nobody in fifty years will remember them. That is their lot and it is a telling fact that nor do they think or care about such things. They watch TV, buy groceries with a credit card, and consider themselves experts at discussing everything, whether or not they have ever actually done it.
ADDENDUM
First, settlement of argument. That’s Bostwana. See, it is not what used to be Southern Rhodesia. Close, but no cee-gar. Actually, this is two lessons. One, grade six geography. Two, when it comes to grade six geography, don’t argue with me.
I had to laugh at the success of British propaganda and how successful it remains to this day. Many of the best historians continue to report ruses as fact. One example is Montgomery and all the other generals in Africa. Newsreels portray them as leading from the front, but other than the few posing for the cameras, very few British soldiers ever saw their generals. Monty, like all before him, scattered like chickens for the safety of the rear the instant any Germans appeared.
The few early British victories in North Africa were more revelations of German inferiority in numbers than much else. Gort, who died face down running from a plane wreck, was portrayed as killed trying to rescue the pilot. Monty finally managed to hit the Germans with twenty to one in tanks (not five to one as reported, but 1,000 against 54) whilst Rommel was in Austria, and was stopped cold when Rommel returned. El Alamein was not Montgomery’s biggest battle. That was Operation Market Garden, where he got his ass whupped.
Yeah, yeah, some say the attack nearly succeeded, but that is more propaganda. That’s like saying Napoleon almost won at Waterloo. As with all British and most American generals, Monty only succeeded in the opening phases of surprise attacks, and only when the enemy was totally outnumbered. As soon as the enemy recovered from shock and the battle became one-on-one, it was game over.
As for the lovely finish appearing on our wooden robot club components these days, thanks for all the complements. No, it is not Minwax or Swedish oil or expensive stain from the lumber yard. It is a secret formula developed in our own laboratories, called “brown shoe polish”.
