One year ago today: August 29, 2015, “I intend to move.”
Five years ago today: August 29, 2011, on degenerate banks.
Nine years ago today: August 29, 2007, such perfection.
Random years ago today: August 29, 2012, only men are evil.
MORNING
I’m officially here now. When JZ left with the van y’day afternoon, I no longer have the capability of moving back to southern Florida on my own. This is the long-awaited day and it also signifies that I am truly retired. Nothing spells commitment to a place like buying a house. I’ve rented since I arrived in Florida on December 24, 1999. Driving a Cadillac which contained everything I owned in the world, and no intention of remaining in Florida unless I scored the perfect job. Came pretty close.
Note the cows are so tame they start walking toward the road when traffic appears. But my house is solidly in the middle of a residential area that extends thirty blocks in every direction. This farm is an anomaly, the city just grew around it. I live in the established part of town, the houses are all pre-war and there are no convenience stores or gasoline stations in the area. Good, JZ, I like that. I already know what every car that’s supposed to drive down my street looks like.
This is also the biggest and longest term project JZ and I have worked on. And the differences are glaring, though not divisive. Like his groceries, JZ tends to buy lumber based on whatever is on sale, where I have very distinct quality and brand preferences. This means he thinks I overspend where I have to stop him from bringing home junk or cutting corners. On the other hand, I could care less if my furring strips are crooked where he will comb through the lift. Why, when they aren’t worth the effort. They cost 30 cents each.
For the most part, I’m on my own until I get established, yet I could hardly have chosen a better place. I’ll bet there’s even a gal out there for me. What she doesn’t know is all she has to do is knock on the door, walk in, and tell me to go sit in the living room until supper’s ready. There are a few pre-requisites, but nothing a decent girl would not possess in abundance.
I also took a closer look at an index for this blog. While it would entail less than 5,000 active records, the task is monumental. So I suppose the sooner I start, the more will get done. There are several approaches, including simply start recording the HTTP strings as the blog generates them on post, ignoring the days when it picked the first sentence instead of the date. I can get the date from the blog schedule. Since I would document the process, this is an excellent introduction to database in action, especially if you only want to dabble in it.
I’ll design the fields today. Each record is composed of fields, and I’d like to include a few extras like keywords for each blog, such as “county fair”, “Arduino”, or “gig”. And a location field, for example, “Savannah”, “Aurora”, or “Memphis”. Why am I even thinking of this step when there are 10,000 hand-written entries yet to be entered? The logical place to keep these is in File Express, but Windows won’t cut and paste raw text into DOS fields. It’s a MicroSoft thing.
Ireland.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Here’s a closer look at the furring strips. Most people have a chore imagining how these will hold insulation. So give me a day or two. I want to do this exactly right and don’t expect any problems. I’ll for sure get you photos since for me, this is something new. Insulating a floor above a crawl space. The literature says I should put an apron around the house to reduce air flow in conjunction with the insulation.
As things move back to normal around here, let’s see what’s on the agenda. First, stay away from Virgin Mobile if your time is important. I’m just now receiving notifications of voice mails that arrived August 9th. Way to go, Virgin, but if you think I’ll fly on your airplane, guess again. (Is it even the same company?) First thing I checked was my future pensions. Now that I think I’ll live long enough, I am again reviewing these yearly, and my year end is October 31. I do not follow items I cannot predict, such as cost of living allowances and changing laws.
Well, did I get a flood of e-mail back this morning and it is positive. Three important items just like that.
A) Other people turning 65 who paid into the gold membership, as I did, are reporting their premiums did not drop to equalize their government amounts. If there is no drop when I turn 65, this is good news indeed.
B) Households who make less than $128,000(?) per year, and that would be me, are qualifying for a pension boost of nearly $850 per month. Should that be the case, this house will pay for itself in no time.
C) I am informed that “earned income” is exempt from these calculations, so if I return to work, or more likely, operate a business after I am 65, that income will not affect my eligibility. The information is silent on what happens if I do anything before I’m 65.
So there you have it. If certain people had listened to me, they would indeed already have been living in a free place five years by now. I would be where I am now, but needing somebody to occupy my properties while they are up for sale. I won’t name anyone, but if they are still around, there would have been a handsome profit by now. But no, they gotta show they are smarter than the guy who’s done it before.
I know what some of you are wondering. But in November of 2010, I did not know I had five years left. I was in all day unpacking and shifting things around to give me working space. I found my DVD “Cousin Vinny”, I’ve got my paperback (see addendum), and have four pots on the big stove. This might not be a productive day, but I’ll settle for that compared to down south. The evenings continue to be 15° cooler to my delight. The days, however, have that interior dank heat, Texas dog days.
AFTERNOON
Once again I hear of the eyeglass scam. You’ve seen it, prescription eyeglasses advertised for $29.95. But once you get past the price-fixing, the bait-and-switch, and the compulsories, you are out $250.00. Well, I just heard of a gal this happened to at Wal*Mart. Years ago, I said these 3D printers would not make an impact unless somebody could come up with a product worth printing. There are vast problems to be conquered, such as finding visually clear plastic, but here is a system that could print the whole eyeglasses.
You would have to face opposition from the optician industry behind the scam, er, pardon me, looking out for your safety totally. They would undoubtedly try the angle that these would be unsafe for driving. But the law doesn’t require prescription eyeglasses, rather “corrective lenses”. And anybody who can’t print up a pair of eyeglasses for less than $20 isn’t a contender.
I’ve told that the big challenge with these printers is designing the product. Eyeglasses, if you know your prescription, are an ideal candidate to be converted to computer processing. I believe I will look into this as I suspect the eyeglass industry already has. In my opinion, they are afraid to use it because it would threaten their empire. By the looks of things, I may have the bucks in place to take a serious stab at this by November.
As for preventing people from using the glasses to drive, that is a bogus argument. They could not be prevented from doing so anyway, or as the NRA would put it, glasses don’t cause accidents. I really intend to look into this as a spinoff idea to my original plan to make those sunglass stick-ins. This is not a new idea, but one that seems to have disappeared long ago. Before the advent of 3D printers. Do not be surprised, if I proceed, to find dozens of outfits who started doing this a split second before me.
NIGHT
Here’s a picture of a porch I like. I lack a second story, but imagine that model in front of my place, except I would not need the stairs. And my porch would be symmetrical, centered on the door. Any other arrangement makes for otherwise useless footpath lanes. Why did it take so long to find pictures of ordinary porches? As per practice, such photos are not marked “veryatlantic” because they are not mine.
Oh, I know some jerk will say that is their job, but no, it isn’t. They should be forbidden to cooperate with police, collection agencies, and credit bureaus without a search warrant. Otherwise, they are overstepping their function. I don’t think anybody ever registers a vehicle for the purpose of being tracked down if they get behind on some personal matters in the future and the DMV should not be acting on behalf of any private business concern and not at all unless the issue is one of ownership.
And that is that.
One of the most efficient moves Trump could make is to disband the DMV. It is disgusting how many Americans have been brainwashed to think registration is a necessary aspect of vehicle ownership. The entire process was cooked up by a Texan politician who was trying to justify his years in office without doing anything. Of course, once the authorities discovered the Constitution only protects personal papers from warrantless search, it touched off a new era in American jurisprudence. Within a legal half-life, system was full of laws that didn’t say you had to comply, but provided penalties if you did not.
And furthermore, I believe the right to remain silent should be extended to people who merely do not want to get involved. It happens, so why criminalize it?
ADDENDUM
I’m into a great new detective novel. It’s called “Stigma” by Philip Hawley, Jr. This seems to represent a newer, better-written type of novel on the market, and this is a good example. The hero is not your Hollywood stereotype, the loose cannon cop or the misunderstood detective. The book does suffer the Ivanhoe flaw, where everybody is related by birth, failed relationship, or commando unit. He is, however, the standard ex-Navy SEAL.
So far, the hero’s father knew the lady who stole his formula who works for the bad guy who hired the killer who was in the marines with the hero who used to date the lady who is going to work in the jungle at the charity hospital where the formula is part of the secret drug that is killing the kids who show up at the hospital where everybody works.
I emphasize that there is something different about this style of writing, I’ve run into it only through the second-hand books that I tend to buy in bulk. Maybe it is some new formula the journalism schools are churning out, maybe a corner turned in the detective novel market. These books are best enjoyed if you have some background in the field. Not a degree, but for instance, this book is set partially in a research lab, so it helps to know how to pronounce the lingo.
There are several sides to these changes. I like the way the plot moves along without the massive focus on the hero’s personal life—but can this endure the fickle reader’s market? The author also tries to include contemporary items that strongly date the work. The problem there, is ten years from now, will anyone reading this material even know what a VHS tape or an answering machine were?
Then again, so what?
Last Laugh
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