One year ago today: September 28, 2016, a generic Wednesay.
Five years ago today: September 28, 2012, hope as blind acceptance.
Nine years ago today: September 28, 2008, remember virtumonde.sci?
Random years ago today: September 28, 2010, 36 patron-hours.
Hi, it’s me, $710 later. Just so you’ll know, the state of Florida charges the full registration price for the year over any fraction of the year. Thus, while my tags become due in November, if I want to register today, I have to pay the full price for this year. And full price for next year in November. No pro rata for partial years. Florida is brim full of this type of small-scale rip off. It’s truly amazing to hear the authorities bitch and moan that they get no respect. They get exactly the respect they deserve. I'll give you the money details below.
The situation here is very much like the robotics club. The fuse box, harness, and blower motor all have to be replaced because there is no sure way to know where the short occurred that burnt the relay. Replacing just the fuse runs the risk of melting an internal wire, and these are bundled together to reach the harness. Building a robot has a similar quandary, do you put the fuse before or after the relay? Both positions have serious drawbacks. Ford is the lesser of the two evils.
The rear wheel wobble was also a pain. That caused a slight trading of words with the tire dealership once more. They all seem bent to get you on their database whether you like it or not. And I don’t like it. They do this by denying warranty on the product unless you give them your identity. I kind of had to stop the guy from entering my car’s data on CARFAX. (The bastard walked outside and started writing down my license plate number before I stopped him.) I don’t know what arrangement these tire stores have with CARFAX, but no, you don’t enter anything about me or my car on that database without asking permission. CARFAX goes too far. I could easily use the "anonymous" information on the CARFAX system to track you down.
It was brutal how much information they tried to pry out of me over these tires. They demanded personal information without offering me the chance to opt out. They are brainwashed to say they need your identity “for the 40,000 mile tire warranty”. Basically, the CARFAX people have elbowed their way into “authorized tire dealerships” to track how often you change the tires. But the information collected goes far, far, beyond that.
[Author’s note: this type of covert tracking happens behind the customer’s back. The presentation is arranged to make the customer believe it has to do with the tire warranty. Nonsense, all they would need for that is the VIN and tire serial number. The staff are not required to tell the customer they do not have participate. The idiot ahead of me actually gave them his passport number and annual income details. Like he was applying for a job.]
This is a typical CARFAX complaint. There are thousands of complaints on-line and you should read some of them. "CARFAX knowingly and actively solicits partnerships with agencies who link the CARFAX report to owner/registrant information. This backdoor linking with insurance companies, car dealerships, and service departments(...) trespasses on our right to privacy. CARFAX does this under the guise of protecting even allegorical buyers for vehicles that are not for sale. This practice should be illegal. CARFAX reports should be limited to owner/registrant requests. Let the buyer request the report and the owner choose to oblige or lose the sale. This says nothing of the billions lost due to incorrect or incomplete information garnered and published by CARFAX. Here even the buyer should beware. CARFAX is not a trusted source of complete vehicle disclosure. Let's find strength in numbers and fight CARFAX."
When asked, the staff is trained to lie that the information cannot be used to track you. I’ll say it again, there is a reason all these places are spending millions of dollars to collect all this information on you. There is a reason they act like they have a right to demand your personal information. I cannot imagine a single reason why a car dealership would need your date of birth and home phone number, nor of any conceivable way they could possibly use that information to your advantage. Wake up, America.
Empress Ballroom, Blackpool.
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I stopped at the old Greek place in Winter Haven on the way home. This is the same café on the west end near the Amtrak station from my first train ride of this century. It’s under new management, but there is something peculiar about that. I grabbed the breakfast special, which cost $6 instead of the advertised $3, a Florida standard. The two waitresses got supremely chatted up by the best (pssst, that’s me), but only the younger one was near my type. And she wore a garnet wedding stone.
Owning a car means I’m further re-learning the extent to which Florida is largely a low-grade scum-bag operation. I’m talking about the Florida state government, by the way. My birthday is in November, so the state insists that’s when I must renew my tags regardless of whether that is convenient for me. It isn’t. The state says I can renew up to three months in advance. Fine, if you have the money three months in advance. But that is misleading.
Think November. If you first-time register a car in September, you still have to pay for this full year. And pay a second time again in November. Ah, thinking quickly, you tell the DMV you want to register for November using the three month’s advance provision. Nope, that only applies to current registrations, not new ones. If you register a new car one minute before the due date, you have to pay for the entire year. They got me for $96.00. Like I said, scum. Like all corrupt systems, the clerk behind the counter is just doing their job. The Nuremberg defense, “I was only following orders.”
Today reminded how doing chores by car requires 2.25 times longer than by motorcycle. It took me 5-1/2 hours to get today’s paperwork done. Most of it wasted because Florida is designed around shafting people who use cars. At the post office some asshole pulled up with a camper van and sealed four of us into our parking spaces for twenty minutes. Ostensibly he was some big shot mailing letters more important than the rest of us. With my motorcycle, I would just have driven around him and/or flipped him the finger. Welcome to fucking Florida.
Another completely crooked operation is Florida auto insurance. They use the orphan defense. You remember that one? The kid who murders his parents and asks clemency from the court because he is now an orphan. The Florida system works on the angle that the average claimant does not know the mandate of insurance companies. They are, by law, required to restore you to the position just before you suffered harm. Not one penny more, but not one penny less. That’s where the rot sets in.
They are not bound by any law that says they must be fair. They hit you with that idiot “book value” of the car. They don’t want to pay you for the contingencies, like how you will have to take time off and go shop for a replacement. They don’t want to pay you for the time you waste talking to them. The agents are trained to act as if you are a low-life used car salesman trying to unload a piece of junk on them, but they happen to know it’s been in a wreck. The orphan thing, sorta.
“YOLO is just carpe diem
for stupid people.”
~ Jack Black
Here’s your amusement. See the sign on this truck, your neighborhood nuisance alligator trapper. Have a laugh over Florida, but you know, that got me to thinking. You know how I love to park overnight and sleep in my car or camper. I find it always helps to put some kind of sign on the vehicle that justifies its presence. And that discourages people asking questions. I have two such magnetic signs, the message on them is a national secret, but I need a third sign. I tend to park in predictable places and don’t like them getting too used to my signs. This truck gives me an idea.
The book is amusing but not enthralling. Lots of snappy milspeak, “wheels in the well by 0830” type of lingo. It does give an interesting lecture on uranium. Since I’m not advising anyone to read this book, the plot so far is the presence of uranium in the northern Chad desert. This ore is milled and refined into a compound called yellow cake. The book explains, in the only really interesting chapter so far, that the result is not really yellow. That name comes from an earlier inefficient process and the product is actually dark brown or black.
The primary sources of uranium ore are Canada and Australia, the latter having around a third of all the known uranium in the world. In theory, they only sell yellow cake to good countries. Or at least countries that are good up to the moment they trigger a nuclear bomb. The US is far more forward thinking, like the way the Clintons gave North Korea two nuclear reactors and five billion dollars in 1992. The Clintons recognize the need for new enemies long before they run out of the ones they already have.
The book is fully of bothersome clichés. Other than particularly colorful language, every character is lifted from the movies. The over-assertive black lady, the nurturing mother urging peace at every opportunity, the ramrod retired general or colonel or whatever. Worst is the French foreign legion. Listen to me, there is nothing special about that outfit. They are misfits with one other thing in common—they are not French, legally speaking. That’s why they are called the foreign legion.
These fierce fighters got their asses handed to them in Viet Nam and Algiers and most every other place they showed up uninvited. It’s a French thing. This story has them contracting as security guards over an illegal mining operation intending to ship yellow cake to the Iranians. Published in 2007, this book follows the pack by painting Libya as the bad guy. (In fact, Libya threw out the Al Queda and outlawed weapons of mass destruction back in 2004.) The US “advisory” force is to block the shipment of yellow cake into Libya and the foreign legion is there to make the delivery.
ADDENDUM
Always pay your electric bill as soon as it arrives. I know this can be a hassle, but you should adopt that habit early in life. Nobody likes having the electric cut off. Furthermore, paying the bill promptly is also one of the easiest methods to re-establish bad credit. Trust me, I do understand the process of bill-paying. I was in the same situation when I was young as most: the cost of just staying alive was so high that the job I had paid the rent and utilities. Follow this logic: I always waited until the last moment to pay the utility bills. That way, if anything went wrong, that was the only emergency cash I had, and it was the electric company that would get stuck, not me.
Sad as it seems for a kid like me with top marks in school, that is how I lived for years after I left home. No trade, no job skills, no way to get ahead. I had based everything on getting through university and immediately after that into a high-paying job. You know the tale from the trailer court on that one. Because I was promised that education, I never took any shop or trade school. I was reduced to unskilled labor until I put myself through, ten years later.
Then you are darn rights I got myself a fancy desk job. And sat there until I retired at age 41. Sounds fine and dandy, until you realize all the people around me doing the same thing were ten years younger than I was. A different generation. Other than the prettiest of the women, I had nothing in common with that crowd. Nothing. (Um, most of them did not retire at an early age, as they used that job to plunge themselves into life-long debt. Sounds familiar, don’t it?)
Last Laugh
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