One year ago today: September 1, 2017, investment advice update.
Five years ago today: September 1, 2013, 60/120ths on my ticker . . .
Nine years ago today: September 1, 2009, Limewire, surveillance & dog wigs.
Random years ago today: September 1, 2004, happy face.
It looks like I had a rough few weeks in a row here. In the end, I lost money on my last gig, the food wagon, well, let me say this about that. The part they do not tell you is that you can make money, but it requires an uncommon quantity of discipline and management skills. How much? Take a look around you and ask why everybody is looking for a good job? Because they do not have what it takes to create their surroundings. And running a food cart is not going to forgive anyone who is short on the self-reliance scale. I’ve maintained since day one most people do not know (or appreciate) the number of things that are handed to them so they can function even as they do.
It looks like I’ll not be the gourmet chef on these sandwiches, however. There is a knack to it and some foods I just can’t make as well as others, especially if looks are important. But I can easily meet the lab part of the course by getting the internal temperature exactly at 165°F and cooking time to 450 seconds. And I’m hard to beat for keeping things organized. The guy running the cart seems to have time to think and keep ten minutes ahead, but effective operation requires close to an hour. Like I said early and often, one man is not enough but two is too many. That’s in regards to optimizing the time. Of course, one man can run the thing, but not even close to optimal.
Pictures are delayed these days. Because MicroSoft has taken away the screen capture ability and removed paint from the bundle. That’s what is wrong with them, they should stick to making software that works and leave the legal issues up to the lawyers. If you try to solve a problem by prohibition, you simple force it underground and criminalize ordinary behavior. In turn this removes the incentive for the producers to create formats or systems that cannot be copied—and that is the real solution to the ownership problem. The wrong thing is getting software and ISP people involved. They tend to do things backwards on their own, so how anyone thinks getting them to police their own systems is going to work is unvarnished fanatasy. Can’t be done.
So here I am today, gumptionless because of the sluggish state of affairs since the beginning of August. Hold on, I did not say they stopped, only that they slowed down. A lot got done, including the three trips to Miami, but none of that was progress. The kitchen air conditioner has been sitting out there in the box because I’m not inspired to shove it into the wall and plug it in. So, let’s make a bet. It is now 11:57AM and I’m stopping at the Winter Haven donut place for coffee & wifi. If I get that unit actually into the wall and blowing cold air, I’m allowed to take the entire weekend off.
You see, the kitchen area as I defined it is too hot in the summer, always has been. There are fans but only the ceiling is insulated. That’s also the room where the only location for the unit is on the south wall facing the sunlight, at least until I build a canopy. I’ve got no help, so I’ll have to hump the unit into place with my bad arm and stiff back. Yeah, that’s still acting up. And even if I get the weekend off, there is nothing to do and nobody to do it with. It is two years today since I moved in and I have not met anyone with a hobby, any investments, or any academic pursuits. From that viewpoint, these things do not exist in central Florida.
They didn’t exist in south Florida either, at least until I started the robot club. And even then, we had four members, and two associates. Of that, one was vice-president and I was the secretary. If that’s the extent of street-level intellectuality in the population of Dade & Broward, there isn’t a ghost of a chance out here in Polk. Judging by the staff down at City Hall, I think the Mayor’s IQ must be around 95.
JZ called and he again wants to head out this way. But it has been over two years. I need that foilage cut, this is the height of hurricane season. (Careful, I sometimes call September the start of the season, but what I mean is the real windstorms begin around now. It is crazy to think he’ll suddenly change and be here to give me a hand with the kitchen, so I’m resigned to plugging away at it. The hole is already cut in the wall, I only intend to heft it into place, brace it, and plug it in. I’ll insulate around it and that will be a day, trust me.
The Drax station.
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Okay, I bought another scale, this one is also digital. The last one, after 60 days or twice the return period, just quit working. Now that I have the second scale, watch it start again. All of this has such a familiar ring to it. JZ says he’s met another fat girl. His tolerance for that is far beyond anything I can marshal, it was RofR and I who formed our policy on fat broads back when we were teens. By then, we’d already met women who unfairly judged us right back, but as he said, we have no control over what they don’t like, but in the end, they have control over being fat. And I believe that to this day.
I figured black and white pictures are better than that awful pink. Like I say about millennials, it’s not that the camera screws up like that, but that there are still people who make cameras that still can. The new appliance is centered in the wall shown here, above the fridge. You may note the hole in the wall is much bigger than the inset for the unit, but that is on purpose. To convert to a larger unit or replace anything, you’ll only need to remove four screws. Florida air conditioners wear out faster than yours, bear in mind. The larger pieces are also easier to drywall over and somewhat better to insulate without stuffing the material. Note also my excellent fridge magnet display.
I stopped at the RePost and found nothing, so I raided their ancient supply of used DVDs. I hit a mini-lode, with 15 murder mysteries and action movies, mostly less than a decade old. This remains all new to me. I find myself passing over the vampire slash zombie sheep dip, that millennial fare that has worn so thin. Why don’t they get grandmothers in body armor, it’ll be cheaper and they’ll still get their plastic jollies. Every generation thinks the next one is hopeless, but never in history have so many of the incoming done so much to confirm that suspicion.
Then, I decided to stay in and found the DVD “Red Planet”. It’s the old save Earth by escaping it but mercifully it avoided the stereotypes. No queers, no feminists, no rappers, no token Russian or Chinese experts, although some religion and older-ladies-are-sexy goofiness made regular appearances. The show had a physicist or two on the set, as the laws of physics are faithfully kept right down to the artificial gravity. The Martian sets are uncannily realistic for a 2000 A.D. movie and the special effects are tremendous. They even used the airbag landing system and got the crater topography exact. The acting is Academy material, but for a change that contributes to the believability of the script.
Things to love-hate in the movie. Well, obviously somebody thinks it important that when the computer does something, you tell it thank you, and the computer says you’re welcome. That might be an ideal use of computer software in the libtard handbook, but if my tablet ever starts with that shit, I’m going back to Windows 98. Oh, and when you radio the stranded ground crew from orbit, make sure you say keep saying “This is Mars One”. So they’ll know who is calling.
Later, staying in I threw on Speilberg’s “Artificial Intelligence” to find a contrasting brand of science fiction. The title is misleading and the plot is once again geared to heavy special effects but unimaginative scenes meant to appeal to juveniles. Every kid can relate to a combined roller derby circus robot combat cage, but nothing about it is original. That’s Speilberg and his knack for sticking to what worked in the past. In fact, the movie has nothing to do with AI. It is more based on the emerging phenomenon of humans becoming attached to anthropomorphic devices.
The movie even has your cyber-gigilo, though what women would find attractive about it mystifies me. He looks like 30-ish southern Euro-punk with a severely receding hairline. He even uses the old line, “Try robot and you’ll never go back.” Though, I must admit that is one line that seems to work on truly bored women. (I have no stats but obviously the majority of them must go back.) I’ll rate the movie as watchable, because it is amusing enough if you are the meanwhile installing an air conditioner or something along those lines. It set me back a dollar and you can borrow it if you want to. Hell, you can have it, okay?
ADDENDUM
That got me to thinking about what the last generation has done. It appears to be nothing. Not one new invention or creation. Just reshuffling the deck. Sometimes I hear them argue that all the easy inventions are already taken, but that has always been the case. When Edison invented the dynamo, all the electrical engineers in the land said he was wasting his time. They said if he understood even basic electrical theory, he would know that the problem of circuit drain was unsolvable. That’s where the neighbors turn on their lights and yours get dimmer. They told Goddard his space rocket was hopeless because there was no air for the exhaust to push against.
This is what is behind my explanation that it must be the education system itself at fault. While stupid people are entirely predictable as to what conclusions they will reach, not so with their reasoning to get there. But these days, there is a consistency to their poor logic that is hard to imagine got there any way other than mass indoctrination. I’m saying it requires constant input to channelize all those individual but simple minds into a carbon copy mind-set that just happens to be exactly match the libtard agenda. They seem to look at the world they same way they regard drugs, that some things are wrong but it is okay to do them anyway, if your reasons are difficult to argue with because somebody might get offended.
I’m reminded of my own experiences as I grew toward my own teenage years. There was a TV show called “Welcome Back Kotter” that I’ve mentioned before. It portrayed a slope-head Italian named Barbarino as being Mr. Kool, you know, that it was not only okay to be stupid, but it was funny and popular. I never saw the show, but I saw many of my classmates start acting that way. The laugh was on them, because a couple years later in the higher grades, no matter how hard they studied, there was no catching up. This is the one example I can easiest relate to, this kind of thing happens all the time.
And that’s what Douglas McArthur meant, I think, when he said that a soldier who gets out of step never quite gets back in. A lot of the classmates that made the Barbarino mistake went on to become other things, they called it marching to a different drummer, though we also called them dropouts. But I was there and by twelfth grade I saw may of them that just managed to graduate already beginning to regret what they had already missed out on. Now, I see the same thing happening on a national scale. I know this has all been covered in the media, but I don’t much listen to the media so I had to say something.
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