March 21, 2015

"What's good for Google is bad for you."
Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 21, 2014, home alone.
Five years ago today: March 21, 2010, um, home alone?
Ten years ago today: March 21, 2005, growing discontent at school.

MORNING
           This is an “automatic” gear changer for a ten-speed, maybe an eight-speed, bicycle. Great concept, but the thing cannot be set to operate either flawlessly nor transparently. Even when set to factory specs as only robot-grade yahoos like us could even attempt, this contraption will not behave. It is either too sensitive to pedal speeds or waits too long to change gears. It’s brand new, so I doubt it is inherently defective. Conclusion: this shit ain't workin' right.

           Which brings us to the new bicycle security rack. We have some surplus handlebars from the monster bike that may be all we need. But I still have the gnawing feeling that pipes can be bend more easily than a comparable piece of angle iron, or square piping. And that’s another topic all the “experts” don’t seem to think is important enough to reveal.
           And allow me this opportunity to state that I do not feel sorry for women who have bad relationships. They are the ones who should pick and choose. It has been my experience that if you look into these women’s backgrounds, you find they did have a selection of nice or decent men, but they rejected them. Not exciting enough.
           Ah, some say, can they be blamed for that? Yes, you see, we all crave excitement—but I do so at my own expense. These women invariably think they can marry (or screw) their way into a lifestyle they are not willing to earn and pay for on their own. They often never tried because it is easier to shrug and say that men own the world. Correction, people who try own the world.
           And don’t you never mind what brought this subject up. But lazy people will never see a penny out of me unless they elect more tax collectors to do it. The only problem, said Maggie Thatcher, with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
           It should surprise no one that a ring of police and tow-truck swindlers have been rounded up in Miami. Yet, this type of scam is typical in a country that encourages people to hire a lawyer instead of learning their rights. It’s an old Florida scam, you get in an accident and while the police are there, a tow-truck that you did not request shows up and takes your car to impound. You don’t argue because the police are “collecting evidence” and you want to play the nice guy.
           But the big scam is untouched. That is the scam where, instead of allowing free competition and low prices, the City of Miami licenses only five towing companies, who pay a kickback of $25 for each tow to the city coffers. Remember, in America, this kind of dishonesty is not corruption—because they refuse to make any law against it. Cute, huh? No law = no corruption.
           Still, fraud is fraud and Miami is tops in the local sleaze-department.

NOON

           “Just learn your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” --Spencer Tracy. And he outta know.

           Whatever that flea market at the casino is, the one that charges $12 admission, is finally over. As shown here, that is the only time other than the biker rallies that that parking lot is ever full. And since I’m staying home today to study and putter, that’s as lively as it is going to get. But this is still not as boring as marriage because I can walk away from it all. Or scooter away from it all.

           You know what I’d do if I had the skill? Write a new browser that puts control back in the hands of the operator. I’ve gone over this before, and now again a month after comparing Win XP with Vista and beyond. This direct appraisal shows how the line between operating system and browser is narrowing. They are all after their slice of the “secretly-watching-you” pie. The Internet situation as it exists provides no incentive for programmers to cease developing annoying advertising and tracking apps. Nor any reason for companies to advertise truthfully.
           The first feature I would include is a big fat “Not free” button where the user could flag any web page that falsely advertises free when it isn’t. That includes “free” trials, or excessive advertising, or cookies, which are all forms of payment, but also extends to sites like Amazon who plaster their meta-tags with the word. Then, this new browser could be set to ignore such sites—and since it is majority rules, there is very little the lying companies could do to circumvent the block.

AFTERNOON
           Ah, this is retirement. To blazes with people who regard it as a time to do nothing. You and I have already had the convo about losers who associate inactivity with relaxing. There’s your future dementia candidates. Don’t use the old noggin and of course it is going to atrophy. Shrivel up like a peanut and then your loving kids ship you to a nursing home at five gees a month to eat porridge. They know the formula, no brain, no complain.

           Here is a close-up of the redneck radio. Actually, the radio part is storebought in the sense it was a kit. The rest of it was slapped together as part of the learning curve of the scroll and band saws. The backside is not the receiver, rather a five volt power supply. Anything from six to eighteen volts in is regulated to five volts out. But we speedily discovered the radio works better at nine volts, so that part is being ripped out next rainy day.
           I spent an hour examining the effects of band saw settings, mainly the types of blades that do the best job for varying materials. It seems straightforward enough, just as it seems that most users likely don’t bother with changing the blades for a small job. That’s the impeccable logic of the working man and probably why I got a brand new band saw for less than half price.
           What, you like working-class logic? Like the announcement in this morning’s paper that the biggest concrete pour in Florida history was on for this morning? Darn, I missed it. And how about this factory floor reasoning: “Buy a big pickup truck and forget this nonsense about running out of oil. Did the Stone Age end because we ran out of stone? Step on it.”
           Trivia. Of all the natural occurring mineral products on the planet, there is only one that no living mechanism has incorporated as part of its needs. Yet is one of the most plentiful. Aluminum. When you consider life will maximize the property of almost any available substance, this avoidance of aluminum is probably something maybe we should pay more attention to.

EVENING
           And evening that finds me as comfortable as can be, which is not possible if you have too much money, you know. I’ve got some documentaries in the background while learning some bass breaks. These are not to be confused with snappy bass licks sometimes heard here and there. These are full-fledged instrumental breaks that take the place of a Lead break.

           This evolved, naturally enough, from my tactic of “playing ahead” that made showoff guitarists sound like they were just following me. Doing full breaks merely takes that to the next level, although not by very much. But once more, they are original to me because I’ve never heard any other bassist do this and I am not copying anyone. Just you watch, somebody will come along and say exactly the opposite.
           Here is the monster bike. If you notice the color changing, that is likely because there are two frames. This day-glo green is the newer model. For the files, this electric bike is not part of the robotics club, but like my cPod, a personal venture that benefits enormously from club membership. Even the coffee is free. It is far more of an electric motorcycle than a consumer-friendly vehicle.
           The funny part is Agt. M is going through that phase where everybody untrained in physics thinks Tesla was an unsung genius. I found it best to let them find out, one by one, that there is no free electricity in the air and that capacitors cannot take the place of batteries. Too many “inventors” don’t pay attention to how politics works. The electric car was scrapped due to oil company pressure. They even bought all the small railway lines in America and burned the wagons. Oil is not part of the government of the USA. It is the government of the USA.
           When I see the news from the Middle East, I’m sad for America. Our kids play cowboys and Indians because that is what they saw growing up. The Arabian kids play at what they saw, so they play Muslims and Americans, and they add the part of dragging the dead bodies off the streets and covering them with shrouds. Scary or what? When they grow up, they are not going to distinguish between the warmongers in power and the average man on the street. Did the            Allies care that most Germans were not members of the Nazi party?
And you don’t have to be sharp-eyed to spot our side is not over there bombing military targets. They are bombing primarily infrastructure. Schools, hospitals, power plants. We are the first American generation that is not leaving the world a better place than we found it. And while it is foolhardy to blame the average Joe, he is responsible for “voting in the past”, a naïve procedure that ensures nothing will get better. Most Americans would not vote for a third party even if a good one came along.


Last Laugh
People who would not listen.