One year ago today: October 19, 2016, Combat, my eye.
Five years ago today: October 19, 2012, the youTube clock icon, still.
Nine years ago today: October 19, 2008, remember Judge Baker?
Random years ago today: October 19, 2010, proof of concept.
For anyone who doubts that vinegar is an acid, here is the rust bath after sixteen hours. Those are not hamburger patties in a bread pan. For rustburgers, please check with Applebee's. These are blooms above the rusted rosette irons lying just under the surface. That’s ordinary vinegar from the food mart. The reaction is slightly exothermic and you can actually hear sizzling noise in a quiet room if you lean closely enough. If I didn’t say, I had second thoughts about using the caustic rust removers in my shed. Also in there is a set of rusted together bicycle wrenches, the cheap old Japanese brand, and the old army knife.
Who recollects the all girl band I didn’t join earlier this year? The ones who played freebies for the church? Guess what? They are now up in Nashville. Their music hasn’t gotten any better (and it always was bad) but somebody is promoting the blazing daylights out of them. Such tactics have worked before and face it, they are a mother-daughter team of skinny blue-eyed blondes.
Studios can do some pretty amazing things but pity to the pure music lover who ever pays to hear them live. I’ll be watching their progress. Right now they are playing the hillbilly circuit. You know, the sprightly gals ‘raised on country sunshine’. Somebody is spending a fortune on that illusion. And it is slick with pro photos, and an embossed website.
The backlash from this Equifax security breach is heading a lot of attitudes in the right direction. Like the executives to blame, I thought it would die down. Instead, there is a steady pressure from many directions about the ethics of keeping and selling this kind of information on people. And a lot of the articles are using phraseology very similar to this blog back in the early days. About lack of knowledge or consent, and not offering people the option to not participate even though it usually exists.
I’ve devised a way to perk up the bad attitude and performance of students these day. They have no incentive to learn anything and it becomes a monumental waste of money to have the government running the school system. So, my plan is to motivate the students financially and save a ton of money. Has this idea already been thought of, or tried? Once more, I don’t know. If so, it should be tried again. For each student who gets above 70% on an exam, we pay him 25¢ for each correct answer up to a maximum of $25. Now, he’s got an immediate cash incentive to actually to the homework. You could put half of it away for his college, or any number of variations on that theme. Let it be called “SmartSchool” or something.
Alcatraz
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Today found me way over in Winter Haven again. It is a more convenient place to do business than Lakeland, which seems to lack a defined downtown worthy of the name. Funny how folks like JZ think it is a hassle to drive over to the next city, when in fact that city is only nine miles away by freeway. And he used to drive twice that through the city to go for a beer. It was mostly paperwork. I made $1,045 in case you are wondering. But you don’t want to hear about that. Here’s me making a buffer pad for my bench grinder. It is utterly dismal that nobody around here sells regular 4” pads that fit on an arbor. (I learned later these are called 'nylon brush disks'.)
I’ve spent time warning about this. The days of the $1.99 breakfast special are gone. It’s a good thing most of my money is tied up in things that will hold their value. Did I mention another vacant lot across the way here just sold for twice what I paid for this place? The cheapest house in town on the right sight of the tracks is now over $60,000. And no way you’re getting my house for that. Unless I get a call from Nashville. No, not the mother-daughter tag team. My ex lives up that way.
“I wouldn’t have to manage my anger
if people could manage their stupidity.”
~ anybody at times.
Keep reading and you’ll learn the relevance of this headline. My eyes are blurry. I just ate a helping of boiled peanuts and the sauce was mucho picante. While in Winter Haven, I stopped at my favorite coffee shop to read a book I’d found on old American trees. In the eastern parts, anyway, there are not that many virgin type forests left. Oh, before it slips my mind, I found some credit card and a medical card lying on the sidewalk outside the library. I turned them in to lost and found. The PIN was written on one of the cards. Anyway, in another coincidence, I found that many old logs are still found with the same ‘broad arrow’ mark as the pirate cannonballs, a sign that they belonged to the English crown. I’ll look into that, because I know that England had long run out of trees they could use for masts and side-planking.
My ulterior motive for hanging out most of the afternoon over there was to check what changes have occurred in the on-line business market since I was last involved in it close to ten years ago. I didn’t like what was going on then, for I’d correctly predicted that the commerce would become as tightly regulated as the banks. What I saw today confirmed that. The old Internet is long gone. How, to have any third party collect money for you via e-sales, you must give your Social Security number or an EIN (tax number). No way is the government going to allow any cash transactions over the ether. And they encourage this by turning a blind eye on complaints by people who lose cash that way.
It’s these millennials who are allowing it to happen. They don’t know any better. Back in 1990 if the government had tried to track cash, there would have been an uproar. But now, they track virtual dollars and it is accepted by the wired-ins as a natural consequence. It isn’t. This is why I wish I knew what the next medium of exchange would be when they outlaw cash. I’d start stockpiling it now. There will always be a stop-at-nothing demand for something of value that can’t be traced. Too many men away on conferences in Miami, that financial powerhouse of idiots, are just not going to put their after hours rentals on a searchable database.
I mean, if they keep arresting them in batches of 300, how are these scruffy millennials every going to get any? Don’t get me wrong, we had millennial types back in my day as well. But they weren’t proud of it. They knew better than to scream and demand their rights all day long. And despite the fact there was a sexual revolution happening, they still had to pay for it.
ADDENDUM
Rewriting history, the hallmark of the leftist press and the strongest element in both the DVD I’m watching and the book I’m reading. “The Aviator” is the fictionalized account of Howard Hughes and contains barely a shred of fact. But it has every element of gossip and speculation. For some reason, Hughes rankled the Hollywood set and this movie shows it. I’m no fan of Hughes, I find he did nothing that most people could not have done if they’d inherited millions. But to go up against the big movie-making moguls of his day, well, let’s just say he was a total outsider.
I only needed to read the first fifty pages for this account to join the other fictionalized Allied tall tales, like D-Day, Dunkirk, and how some stinking unknown Pacific atolls suddenly became “vital to American interests”. It proves that you don’t have to be the victors to re-write history, you need only have a stranglehold on the media. The biggest similarity between China and America is that in China, the newspapers serve the government and in America they do not. Either way, you are not going to get the truth out of them.
Last Laugh
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