One year ago today: January 6, 2017, it’s not working right now.
Five years ago today: January 6, 2013, limerick sampler.
Nine years ago today: January 6, 2009,on Karoake & drum machines
Random years ago today: January 6, 2003, free Ernst Zundel
(He died in August 2017.)
Here’s your fancy Saturday photo. It’s so cold it collapsed empty plastic bottles. That’s hardly news to some of you, but so scarce in Florida it too top billing. I’m staying in today, so get ready for a little editorial, though I promise to keep it down. It was either the bottle or a description of my arm exercises. These are not exciting times. And if a guy like me is lacking things to do, imagine what the rest of the town must be going through. You know what I miss? The bookstore in Davenport. There’s a coffeeshop in there. Looks pricey, but so what? Let’s see how close I get to it.
The quality of the video is terrible. Even with good headphones, the music system lacks oomph. But worst is the stylus. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s pretty weird, since it should always work if a finger touch will work. It has only 32MB of storage so I put in another 16MG mini SD for music. The thing acts suspiciously, taking up to a minute to boot up while something is definitely going on in the background. It might be something I’m doing, but the kill WiFi setting (they call it airplane mode) keeps turning itself off, which means enabling itself without being told.
I already had to stop it from downloading upgrades, but I’m keen to that trick and usually catch it pretty fast. But I still would not keep anything private on this contraption. I downloaded the manual but it is 37 pages of obvious nonsense. I tried to find a manual for Word 10 mobile, but it’s only available for sale. By mid-morning I was at the coffee shop working the NYT crossword. It had too many non-standard English answers, that outfit is really slipping. I got some of the spaces by inference of other answers, but for instance, the answer NKD doesn’t mean a thing to me. And I’ve spoken English my entire life.
Everything’s paid up and I’d like to take a day trip, or maybe a couple of days. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see, as usual, I’ll get you some non-tourist type photos and my usual “there’s nothing funny going on” skeptical observations. It’s still early to say, but it looks like my finances are falling into place. Sorry no details, but I do have a situation that irked the hell out of me. I found it impossible to find out my government pension amount in advance. It did no good to ask around because everybody says the same thing—just call the government hotline.
But when I did that, all they did was pump me for information. See the problem with this, anyone? I’ll tell you just in case. The pension amount depends on two factors. How much you put into the plan over time, and the date you decide to retire once you qualify. I’ve seen the formulas, there is nothing else involved. Yet when I tried to get the amount, I was cross-examined with questions like where did I live between 1991 and 1996. With a girlfriend? What’s her name and address? And so on. I never did get an answer, so when I decide to take the pension, all I can do is estimate what I’ll get.
Ah, the smart alecks say, they didn’t get any such grilling when they called. That, the stupid twits, is because they already had your entire life on file. And if that is the case, it is not much of a life so don’t be comparing it to mine. My point is, the hot line is not a pension information service, it is an excuse to get your files updated. I’ve got nothing to hide from them, but I still would not go along with something that pathetic. Do you think I’m crabby because I pulled an arm muscle doing my therapy this morning? Or is natural on Saturdays when I have no gig.
Tunguska, today.
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Hmmm, I left Lady Nick with some fairly defined homework in the form of what I’d like to see accomplished by next week. But she has not been calling with questions. If she was putting in even an hour per day, I’d have expected at least a dozen calls by now. My concern is that while there is nothing difficult about learning the material, it still requires a systematic approach. And I know that daily is the best. It’s an item I’ll be watching closely, since I know adults don’t have any time. They have to create it. If I compromise, it will be to keep looking but keep her in the sidelines. Face it, if she wants to get on stage, it’s up to her and not me to get the fire lit.
And listen, I hope they strike diamonds. Enough to spray gushers of millions all over the Earth. Enough to make them as common as gravel and wipe out the value of all existing gemstones. Diamond jewelry is one of the most contrived rip-offs ever devised by mankind. Funny, I don’t feel the same about corundum gems or opals. Those are gems of real beauty. Ah, did you hear about the heist in Italy. Some quick handed thieves made off with $40 million in a few seconds at a diamond exhibition. The Sultan of someplace apparently didn’t miss such small change.
I was again reading Qbasic code, imagining what would be necessary to write an overlay that enabled the C+ programming to be written in BASIC. Except for the addition of some capabilities to work closer with machine language, it would not be that difficult. More commands would have to be added to make up for all the quirks in C+, but the idea is not to change BASIC, but to make C+ code read like it was written in BASIC. Right now it looks like it was written in the bathroom wall from Hell. I was reminded of the worst feature of BASIC from the beginning.
It has only one command to open and create a file. That means if you ask the program to open a filename with a typo, it doesn’t fail. It just creates a new file with that filename and carries on. This alone doomed BASIC from ever being a serious business language. Instead, the winner was COBOL. Code in that language is very easy to read—therefore easy to edit and correct. Twenty years after I had first studied COBOL, it was still the top business programming language in the world. Today, businesses don’t program. They buy software and change the way they do business so it suites the way that software behaves. Don’t laugh, it spelled the end of my career nearly ten years too early.
ADDENDUM
Just so you know, the guy mentioned above, Ernst Zundel, was not a Holocaust denier. He only said if it happened, it could not have happened as presented by the western press. I’m divided on that issue because of one very important point he makes. Namely, the witnesses were all shown to be lying under oath. That part will never make sense. If the version they were all stating was accurate, then why did they feel the need to lie? I don’t know, but the lying is on record at the courthouse.
In other matters that got my attention, I see there is a backlash out there against overpriced restaurant beverages. You know what I’m talking about. The breakfast special says $2.99 but the coffee that goes with it is another $2.99. It seems 15 years after this blog mentioned it, some brilliant people noticed. They are recommending for 2018 you drink water instead. Except they are forgetting that costs roughly the same.
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