One year ago today: October 15, 2017, the Allies lied.
Five years ago today: October 15, 2013, not stupid-friendly.
Nine years ago today: October 15, 2009, start your own band, Eddy.
Random years ago today: October 15, 2012, Irish pub failure rates.
Up at this ungodly hour, but I must get that trench filled in. Seems I require another conduit, which means another trip to Winter Haven. No, I don’t buy such materials at the local stores, that would be a dumb move. I already told that I don’t do my banking or even get my haircuts locally. I’ve learned over the years. Do these things ten miles away and be happy, safe, and secure. It has few disadvantages, but this past 30 days, I’ve made that trip twelve times. This is okay, and I’ll tell you why. My banking was always done at a certain concern and they don’t have a branch near me. It was nothing to zip over there on the motorcycle. It is only recently I’ve been burning car gasoline.
This picture is the club wallpaper, seldom used. But can you guess what it is? Probably not, it is a cotton sheet on my east wall that happens to make a nice backdrop. I plan to incorporate it into any 2019 videos. There is a rumor my entire editing suite may get upgraded for an Xmas present this year. But since I don’t celebrate Xmas, don’t wait up.
In unrelated news, I see my accounting computer has developed a glitch. This tallies with my contention that over time, all MicroSoft systems will degrade. The computer is the brand new Optiplex bought from the Hungarian church. It has never had any changes to the operating system or registry, think of it as one of the last “pure” computers still in existence. Yet it has dropped several file saves to different devices, ruling out the devices. And it chose to do it with banking, which are source documents shredded instantly after they are recorded. That’s why you get this telephoto of McDee’s. They have excellent coffee, though not as good as it used to be, and I’ll be there after my chores to nail down this money discrepancy.
Yes, to the eagle-eyed, that is not my usual coffee shop. This blog is uploaded using Dunkin, the financials are elsewhere and it is too early for the library. So you know, club policy is no on-line banking, not even checking your balance. If you don’t know your balance, you are probably not a member. I don’t mean nuttin’, I’m just sayin’. If the balance turns out to be not an error and there is no other explanation, it brings the Smithsonian back into the picture. For me, that is my pilgrimage, my Mecca, my Holy Land. And, I could stay there a couple of weeks. That’s on top of my budget for my upcoming holiday. For over half my life, I have a tradition of not spending my birthdays at home. That’s correct, and why you never see any birthday cakes in this blog. Not mine, anyway. See, there’s a reason for everything, with the possible exception of penguins and the DMV.
Now if someone could only explain to me why half the time people tell me they called and I never answered. Including times I was sitting right here with the phone on the desk and it didn’t ring. The answer is Virgin Mobile. I ran into Bradford last Friday who sent me his new phone number right while he was standing two feet away. The call did not arrive until this morning. Anyway, the question needing answering is why the illegal robo-telemarket calls always get through? Huh? Answer me that.
And when you are finished explaining that, tell me how these other word processing programs like Jarte ever expect to get anywhere if they won’t import Word formatting? It seems to me if I was competing with the 800 lb gorilla, I would make my software do exactly what his does, and add on from there. As it is, I only use Jarte because Win 10-wise, it is the best of the worst, and it will install on a tablet. But what freaking hassle. Yes, yes, I know, one could pull a millennial and just leave all my formatting at the defaults and still expect to be treated like an individual.
Brilliant!
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
It’s not a sharp picture, but here is a look at the citrus greening disease mentioned last day. It grows these scales on the outside of the bark, but the damage is the “roots” of the spores into the heart of the tree. It must rob the sap or nutrients from reaching the fruit. I found three more grapefruit, but they only grow at the very top, as if they are trying to get away from this fungus.
I also want a few things for the camper and I may take another chance on a GPS. You know my gripe with those things, plus I have quite the collection of units that got wet once. These flimsy contraptions are not for the motorcycling crowd. The afternoon was again too much heat, so I used the time for planning and got back out there late enough to work in the shadows.
There’s a federal law that on every construction job, there must be a screw-up at least once per day. I drove downtown again, bought a replacement pipe, but forgot the useful part of the pipe is shortened by the swage. So, I had to leave a foot of trench open, go downtown tomorrow a fourth time to get a one foot piece of pipe and a union.
The exterior part of the water line is done, tomorrow is under the house again. This photo shows the last of the conduit being run up under the joists. The water cutoff valve is evident. While at it, I’m going to build in toughs for all the exposed lines. The original wiring and piping was variously stapled, strapped, and for the most part left hanging. I tried insulating some pipes with those foam sleeves, but if you put them on first, the installation becomes unwieldy. If you try to put them on later, it’s a wearisome chore. This way, I insulate the trough and get the afternoon off.
SPECIAL FEATURE
Next, here is your treat, the $20 magazine article for free. I have to say something about this new tack that millennials say all these businesses going bankrupt is being blamed on them and it’s not their fault. Sorry if I repeat things written here recently, but this discussion is on-going. In a sense, I agree with them up to a point. But they go beyond that point. They suggest the reason these businesses go broke is because they don’t meet millennial needs, so they don’t shop there. I still agree, although I think the problem started back in 1985 with Sony discovering you could slip quite a bit past the American consumer.
These companies that got big also got arrogant by taking up the “Japanese” business model. Any warranty work is now paid for by the customer, not the factory where the responsibility for quality lies. In the old days, if a store sold you something that didn’t work, you returned it to the store. They replaced it, because it was their moral duty to make sure they weren’t selling you factory junk. The system worked quite well. These stores, however, changed that policy and soon were not meeting anybody’s needs other than their own before the millennials arrived. The factories had done the same long before. The hallmark of the millennial age is built-in deniability, big time. The factory never sold you the product and the store never built it.
Where I disagree is how the millennials seem to think what is replacing the bankruptcies is an overall improvement. Wrong, and this is the first generation since America began that is so totally wrong on that count. The American way, sometimes burdensome, sometimes wasteful, always represented progress until around 1990. Enter the entitled generations, who think anything is new just because they’ve never seen it before. Take texting. They embrace it like it is hot stuff because most of them, it seems, have never used a typewriter. Thus, I’m saying for the first time since America began, an entire generation is moving backwards, reintroducing outdated concepts as new because they can be crammed into a smart phone. Gee, one day one of might get tired of texting and “invent” something where you can press a button and just talk to the other person, y’think?
Outwardly, I concur that the millennials shopping habits are not to blame for Sears, Radio Shack, and a dozen more big players that tanked. What I disagree with is the millennial smug attitude that because it is an app on a toy phone, that the replacements are better. Far from it, the incoming new operations are some of the worst in the world, led by Google and Facebook. Such nonsense was formerly unheard of in this country. Bad businesses used to fail, now they are becoming the norm. You can’t show me an Internet business that does not have some glaring flaw. And the X, Y and subsequent generations support this model. Their outlook seems to be one of educationally-induced myopia. They are trying to make business equal and politically correct and woe to them.
Except, you can’t vote your way into prosperity and they have not learned that lesson. Look at what they’ve done to the American way. Previously, competition meant giving way to better quality and lower prices, allowing the best to come out on top. Now quality is superfluous, replaced by sheer numbers of startups. Get your own virtual store for $99 and be responsible for nothing. Success no longer depends on innovation, rather by sheer luck of the draw. Gazillions of startups based on the gambling strategy whereby a tiny fraction must necessarily survive. The way of the cockroach.
Don’t bother with a two-year warranty, there will be nobody there to honor it. Besides, it doesn’t cover parts, which Sony pioneered pricing at 80% of buying a whole new unit. This has parallels in the unbrave new world where nobody is to blame for anything. It’s already happened in the court system and real estate when anything goes wrong, each person in the chain can prove they did their job right. It was only a matter of time before that bull became the dominant business form and it will be as successful in the long run as all those other wonderful things the millennials have brought us. What? You want examples? I’ll have to get back to you on that, but if in fact they have not invented a damn thing, rest assured even that isn’t their fault either.
ADDENDUM
Some might ask, if the books are so airtight and I’m an accountant, can’t one tell by just looking what’s to a given situation? Let me explain something. The big accounting system in place today is the double entry style, which is hundreds of years outdated. It works, but it finds only fact, not fault. People still embezzle millions and look at the Bernie Madoff stunt. (Didn’t both his sons commit suicide? Wouldn’t that be ironic justice?) My books are airtight only in that if there is an error, that is faithfully recorded. There have been 29 transactions since the NSF, the error is somewhere in that grouping.
Here’s what I suspect happened. The insufficient funds event occurred in January of 2017. During the week I moved here, a withdrawal was mis-recorded as half the correct amount, and my large minimum deposit in the account allowed subsequent checks to carry until said January. It slipped through the cracks because that was the first week since my birthday in 2010 that I did not record the transactions by computer, because it was crated up for the move. My manageress has complete authority to move money (isn’t it nice to have somebody you can trust) and I think she may have stepped in and covered the check with her own money, then forgetting to take it back out.
If this is the case, she will have to come and visit, or zip down for a holiday when I’m in the area not too long from now. Bear in mind, they have winter up there and people often get snowed in for weeks. Technically, they plow the mountain passes. The drive is still dangerous. The official policy of equality means all airline passengers are now treated as suspects so few people I know fly any more. The last time I did (2003), they confiscated my letter opener and made me boot up my laptop. Yep, the terrorists have won.
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
