August 4, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 4, 2015, real estate, Lord Trump, taxes.
Five years ago today: August 4, 2011, on the shuttle fiasco.
Nine years ago today: August 4, 2007, quick Chinese lesson.
Random years ago today: August 4, 2004, NASA sucks.

MORNING
           Another day with the Internet service knocked out. The lightning strike fried their router, which they call a modem. If you see photos, it’s because I’m in the library. Here’s a photo of going over schematics at the Panera. It will be one of the last times, the lineups there are not long, but the service is slow. The cashiers are always too busy filling counter orders instead of moving the lines. Agt. M has a neat but religiously based philosophy of always giving the other guy a “way out”. It works, but only if you have an infinite amount of time. He would complain to management, I would just go find someplace else to hold the meetings.

           This is interesting to me, his “saving face” approach. From my standpoint, it merely gives somebody totally in the wrong a chance to voice their idiocy, which is rarely the way to learn anything or save time. Nor is that how one achieves anything. Think of it this way. Even if Agt. M is right, by his age I was driving a Cadillac, taking twelve holidays a year, living on the south slopes, dating an actress, and bank-rolling a country band. That’s just on Tuesday mornings.

           While I’m cognizant as he is of the contributions that masses of stupid people make to society, I can’t reconcile giving them a say as the same thing a giving them a say in my matters. They’ll just say they don’t want all the things I listed, or by imply that others who have them have done so at the sacrifice of their humanity.
           Ha, Agt. M isn’t actually bad on that count, but it is remarkable how many people will justify having nothing by viewing themselves as “compassionate”. Have you never seen such people give a beggar anything but advice? To me, it depends on the beggar, not some value system toward beggars at large. It’s more like advice is all that some people have to spare.
           Here’s an item for you proto-psychologist types. It’s a quirk in my character that I often accept the other person is dead wrong if they hold some point of view that I used to before learning better or, more usually, acting on better new information. Or, put another way, think like I did before I learned better. But let’s be clear this does not happen when I’m dealing with most anybody. One has to go back pretty far and be pretty stupid to get into that position around me, Patsie.
           The best ever was my old Landlady, Roberta, when I was in college, whenever she heard my pal Greg and I discussing spreadsheet formulas. “What’s wrong with all you mathemeticians? Have you forgotten that two plus two is four?”

Wiki picture of the day.
Impala.
NOON
           Here’s the missing classic picture of JZ going aerial. Prior to tenting for termites, him having more experience than I do with topiary, he insisted trimming the oak branches away from the roof of the cabin. The cottage, you know, my new house. Show here are many things besides JZ up the ladder, cutting the branches with a circular saw. I want it on record I was against this method from the start. But let’s take a closer peep at the building. This is the shady north side, evidenced by fungus on the siding. The small window is the bathroom, soon to be sparking new bathroom.

           The larger window is the master bedroom, I’ve never liked window air conditioners. The unit seen here is going into the workshed and a beautiful new unit is to be properly boxed into its own wall niche. If I did not say, JZ says the asphalt shingles are nearing their life cycle. Say, I just thought of something.

           See that little jog in the wall? That’s where the new wing was added after 1975. There is the tiniest leak in the soffit material right at that juncture. I’m now wondering if that might not be the source of the damp sand under the bathroom. Hmmm, let me look into that. Thanks, good thing you pointed that out.
           If anyone noticed the squiggly thing in the bedroom window, that is just a piece of foam insulation the A/C installer dropping inside the window panes. JZ fished it out last Sunday.

           Have you seen the Brits trying to gloss over that stabbing by a “Norwegian-Somali” with no terrorist ties? Makes you wonder how the Norwegians feel about that. Mr. Trump, round them up and deport them all until they cure the problem between themselves. If it takes forever, that’s fine. Mind you, I do agree that it is pretty hard to find a political problem in the entire world that is not directly or indirectly caused by American interference. Same with most famines and wars in modern history. Still, the solution is revolution, not terrorism.
           This was an interesting morning in the library. It has become impossible to buy a newspaper in downtown Hollywood, FL. Normally I hit the gas station on Federa. Today I was downtown and finally wound up driving 55 or 56 blocks and making three stops. I finally found a rack at the back of the Cumberland station up on Sheridan. It does not surprise me in the least how little demand there is in Hollywood for this or any type of reading material.

           Dropping into HF (Harbor Freight) for dust masks, I popped next door to Dandee for their advertised breakfast special, $2.99. That’s for one egg, toast, spuds. For the standard 2 eggs, it was $4.99 and then the stinger. $2.29 for a “in-house coffee”, bringing the total to $7.50. I could have gone to Denny’s for the slam. Mind you, Dandee’s is a mom & pop and has gone totally computerized including the flat screen menus on the walls. Nice, but mom & pop charge too much.
           I was researching floor joists. My crew, psst, that’s you JZ, and I had trouble fitting a full length sister joist along the beam I had chosen to experiment with. According to Black & Decker, the additional joist does not have to span the whole length. It can overlap at the girder. That’s good news. I further read a variety of housing books where I learned the following:

                 √ There is now a paint that intentionally peels and looks old. (It is meant for furniture.)
                 √ Old mail boxes make excellent bird nesting boxes.
                 √ A sun room is supposed to be minimum 40% window or skylight.
                 √ Bird feeders should be hung with wire as squirrels will chew string.

NIGHT
           The Amtrak fare is $35 from Lakeland to here. That is, about the same as gasoline in a private vehicle. This amount is chickenfeed compared to the savings in rent already carried on my books. So at first opportunity, I’m ferrying the batbike to the new digs. I must have been misreading the Amtak routes or not seeing something I wasn’t looking for—it depends on how thrilling one finds a train schedule. I missed a daily train from Tampa to Miami, and they share a track south of Winter Haven.
           According to this, I can leave Lakeland at 1:13PM and arrive in Hollywood at 5:59PM or Miami at 6:39PM. So, if I had a place to crash in either town, I could theoretically take the taxi to my appointments from Hollywood station once every six months. This is shaping up. Again, in America the problem is ground transportation at your destination. This country is designed around the motor car, and it is a horrendously expensive mode of travel.

           I’ll have to map this out, but the Tri-Rail service is easy for me, as my business is along that route to and from Hollywood station. I’ve made the connections walking from JZ’s place before. And the other end is Tampa. Except for passing through on the batbike, I’ve never seen Tampa. And except for the massive causeway, I can’t say I liked what I saw.
           Still, the total round trip including fare, food, and getting around in town works out to around $100 per trip, both ways. It’s not lost to me that I could avoid buying a 250cc motorcycle at all, if I could adapt to that train ride. By booking my appointments early enough in the morning, I could potentially head back on the noon train. There is only a gap of, say, five miles in a town where so many people owe me a favor.

ADDENDUM
           I see my investigation of a maze generating algorithm has two sides. Those who say it is a waste of time because it has already been done. And those who say any such techie material is worth looking into on its own merit. Myself, I suspect many people wonder why I didn’t just ask around first. I can answer that. It has been many years since I hung out on campus as a rule. Of course, I’m aware that somebody has already thought out the maze thing, I want to discover how they did it. In case I stumble on some novelty.

           Campus is where one normally gets exposed to what is “not out there”. Most of the ideas I’ve come up with since arriving in Florida in 1999 are independently derived. I don’t know if others are pursuing the same, because in Florida, I’ve never been able to find any groups of such people to associate with. Remember that joke of a Robot Club over at NOVA. That’s what I’m talking about.

           This parallels my limited knowledge of TV and movies. I understand that I probably often come up with material that is very common on the airwaves—but I have no way of knowing that. What usually makes the blog is the situation where I go looking and can’t find anything. For now, I’m looking into “Prim’s Algorithm.” Take a look at this maze segment. It isn’t a real maze, but from my BASIC programming, I see the flaws. Can you see them? Well, that’s because you don’t know what to look for.

           First, the maze is displeasing to the eye, that is, too obviously machine-generated. A maze for people who have time to kill. If this maze was interactive, one of the first things I would do is colorize portions of it to see if I could find “islands”. These are not official terms, I made them up when I programming my ten million pixel routines. You also see that there are long horizontal lines, That’s an illusion, the puzzle is virtually identical if you flip it 90°. Fahrenheit. Little joke there.

           Here is the same puzzle colorized, bearing in mind this is a representation only. This is not a real maze, but you see how the artificial border I placed sections off paths that lead nowhere. This is a handy way to cheat at computerized mazes. What? How did I do this? I used the Paint accessory.
           The large grey area around the center must contain the unique path, if any. While you are up, I copied the address of several maze-generating web locations, trying to avoid the free ones that want memberships, contributions, or contain pop-up advertising. Moments later, poof. At least I thought I had copied the addresses, but that’s what I get for trusting a library computer running MicroSoft.


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