One year ago today: August 11, 2016, on mesothelioma .
Five years ago today: August 11, 2012, 864 miles from home.
Nine years ago today: August 11, 2008, Millie at Okeechobee.
Random years ago today: August 11, 2015, send her back.
My day off, and I’m using it to hit that music bar over in Winter Haven—unless it rains. Check with me later, I’m also chasing around. It was kind of neat listening to NPR this morning because they were interviewing real people about retirement. Usually they just have some lady going on about doom and gloom, but she does come up with statistics that really slap around people who don’t think ahead. There’s no way she can single-handedly go up against that volume of stupidity. But I listened because I could swear I used to work with some of those callers.
The statistics were there, but as usual the commentator danced around them. Let me spell it out for you. First and foremost, housing is the most expensive damn thing about retirement. You’d best figure out the least you can get by on, even if it involves moving to a cabin in central Florida and fixing it up yourself. Got that? That’s half your retirement right there, Sparky.
The next important task is the one nobody wants to hear. You have to start planning before you are thirty. Companies no long offer fat pension plans and you can never save enough. You have to invest, and people who invest successfully can’t get away with the stupid notions that swirl around in most people’s heads. Crazy ideas like welfare, equality, and immigration policy take on a whole new dimension when they begin to rob you of your own future.
I know that only one in a thousand will listen to this advice. But I can guarantee you that is the one individual who won’t be calling up Suzie on the radio when they hit sixty to ask her what time it is. Do I have any sympathy for those who did not plan ahead? None whatsoever. We were bombarded since childhood with the need to not rely on the system for old-age security. I have a really hard time feeling sorry for people who didn’t listen. I realize there are people out there who think I’m just as wrong as I think they are wrong. But the difference is, when I schmuck up, I don’t go crying to them for a handout. And that’s a huge difference.
Bridge in Kansas.
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I took the Rebel out for a forty mile run, back to that little barber shop out south of Plant City. It’s a pleasant country roadway and on the return leg I see a thrift store that was closed when I passed by last June. They have some tools for sale, but on the Rebel you can’t carry much. As I entered, I saw a lady the image of my first big city girlfriend, Angelface. My double take alerted her that I was more than interested. My word, what a beauty, but alas, that split moment before I recovered my composure, the flash was gone.
I was also short cash, but look what I found anyway. A bale of robot wire and a year’s supply of 60/40 (electronics quality) solder for $1.75. Plus two bucks for the movie in the upper left. The big roll of solder, the one washed out in the photo, is plumbing grade. No, I’m not donating it to JZ. Not unless he’s here to use it helping me put in that solar powered hot water system. I’m putting in a new tank in the kitchen, so I’m pondering what to do with the [old] portable unit.
The portable is the size of a dishwasher. It takes too long, if you ask me, for hot water to reach the shower, so that’s an option. Also, I do believe in hot water washes for certain items, like socks, pillowcases, work clothes, and spray washing certain car parts. Either way, I’m not throwing that heater away. I’m just supplementing the hot water supply. That’s all the good news. I get $30 worth of solder for a couple of bucks. I will insulate the pipes. In the summer, it also takes a bit to get cold water to come out of the tap, and even then it isn’t that cold.
Certainly not as cold as the beautiful lady in the thrift store once she picked up that I was attracted. That usually spells boyfriend or some sort of benefit situation. The dating situation is so fine tuned these days that one negative vibration, even in isolation, is a relationship-killer.
I can’t believe I gave myself away so easily. The best-looking gal I’ve seen in a couple of years and my jaw drops before the door closes behind me. Way to go, bass man. I meet a girl with the same eye color as myself and now she doesn’t even know I’m alive. Like Angelface, she was around 5-7, maybe 102 pounds, with the body of a cheerleader. A teenage cheerleader, I mean. Blonde. I don’t know if there is an ideal BMI, but she’s my nomination. See, I can still dream, my friend.
And how about that goof trying to claim he didn’t grab up Taylor Swift’s dress. Claims he bumped into her ribcage, but got his anatomy all wrong. Several of her bodyguards saw the move. String the guy up by his thumbs. Would I be so mean if it wasn’t Taylor Swift? Probably not, but that’s largely because I know she did not ask for it. The creep only got close to her because he had a press pass. I’m one for revamping this freedom of the press thing to allow damages for people maliciously harmed by anybody in that system. Same with diplomatic plates and pouches. The same rules for everybody or no rules at all, in a sense.
“When people are free to do as they please,
they usually imitate each other.”
~ Eric Offer
The Friday night gig? It rained.
Here, watch this.
ADDENDUM
Here’s an article linked via Jimmy Ruska, the tech news site that could go places if he ever starts filtering out the self-serving crybaby campus posts. “Newest official study shows queers who smoke weed have superior genes” sort of postings. That’s the news source I use for tracking net neutrality. Here’s one phrase the average person should learn and support. It means that everything on the Internet stays equally available to all users. Without net neutrality, people like myself would quickly purchase all the good stuff and be first in line. You would have to pay or queue to access information sites. By the time you saw a job or anything for sale, it will be, like the real world, already picked over by the elite.
However, I believe the destruction of net neutrality would also spawn the growth of an alternate Internet. An underground Internet. So few remember that the original Internet was itself an alternative to the big corporations and mass media. I don’t like what Amazon has become, but without it, the prices at the big box stores would be phenomenally higher these days. Because by squeezing out the mom & pops using economies of scale, the megastores could essentially price everything so it could only be bought on credit. Then they’ve got you.
Amazon scorched the asses off Sears, K-Mart, even Wal*Mart. The newspaper conglomerates have shrunk what, 30%, from when they had it all their own way. The cable and phone companies have resorted to despicable depths of false advertising and bill-padding. My opinion is that the Internet today is worse than it was in 1997, but that things would have been a lot worse without it.
That’s correct, the Internet was better twenty years ago. Everything was anonymous; you could look at whatever you wanted and if you wanted to buy something you had to come up with the cash. Nobody was in charge, nobody was spying on you, there was less information but a larger diversity of material. Most articles were written by knowledgeable people who cared about their reputations. The decline began when, instead of developing modern applications for this new system, the Internet commenced getting bogged down by adapting it to the old ways of doing business. It didn’t fit so they made it fit.
By 2000, it was no longer a leading edge technology. Instead, real innovation was stifled as the Internet became methodically watered down to fit the old and unfair systems that were already in place. It was probably a good idea in 1997 to have banned all credit card transactions on-line on the premise that the existing system invaded privacy. Now, you have no choice. Just you try shopping on-line with cash. I do it, but I’m equipped to do it. How long before they ban that, too?
Anyway, here is the article:
The late Dr. Richard Feynman of Cal Tech did a famous study of the Challenger shuttle disaster. He ranged widely throughout NASA and its contractors, talking to anyone who could shed light on the quality problems. A group of production workers had found a simple way to improve the calibration of the rocket engines, (by adding four paint stripes) but it was never implemented.
The foreman said he wrote a memo with this suggestion to his superiors two years ago, but nothing had happened yet. When he asked why, he was told the suggestion was too expensive. "Too expensive to paint four little lines?" I said in disbelief. They all laughed, "It's not the paint; it's the paperwork. They would have to revise all the manuals.
Quoted from "Personal Observations on the Reliability of the Shuttle" in ‘What Do You Care What Other People Think?’ by Richard P. Feynman, (W. W. Norton, 1988). This book is enthusiastically recommended, as is his earlier collection of stories, ‘Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!’.
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