One year ago today: August 27, 2018, brainless chit-chat.
Five years ago today: August 27, 2014, what box of pencils?
Nine years ago today: August 27, 2010, 9 years for my dryer.
Random years ago today: August 27, 2006, a $10 day.
Operation Tango Foxtrot is a go. H-Hour is 10:00AM, a few hours from now. We are off to Antioch, Florida on the quest for turtle food. Get it, Tango Foxtrot? Tennessee otherwise appears to be out of proper reptile grub. Adult turtles are omnivorous, but less carnivorous than juveniles, which will eat just about anything. They eat earthworms, which have zero nutritional value to any other species except birds. There’s your bird-reptile link for the evolution deniers. This exciting turn of events is spurred by several days of fruitless chasing around. Get it, fruitless? During this interval, we have discovered that JeePee, Nashville’s most famous box turtle (2,812 views) like cooked rice and raw onion. What other blog provides this priceless pet information?
Tennessee has the tse-tse mosquito, likely an invasive species from Florida. You can flop on the sofa and before you know it, the dogs want out next morning. I speak from experience. I fell asleep over disk four of “Betrayal”, where you historian types would get a blast out of what was considered high living at the time. The classic detective movie visit to the stripper bar had not yet been invented, so it was flashing colored lights in clubs with white tablecloths. To the town councils of Florida, those are sheets of woven cloth that cover the top of a table in classier joints. If you plan to check this out for yourself, best ask me for instructions on those other things on the table called “forks”.
It is the description of the upscale Cuban club that seems pedestrian by the standards even ten years later. The band wears uniforms, there is a haze of cigarette smoke, and the women are wearing mink. This was considered upper-middle-class and I was only ever in such places once or twice. I didn’t care for the phoniness of the women or the predatory tactics of all the beta males that head for such places. What? I’m not predatory, I’m opportunistic. The biggest difference is if I want anything from a woman, I just ask. But the other stock elements are there. The Russian spy lady “with arresting blue eyes”, the thug CIA agent, the poison pills. I sure miss the memory feature on these CDs. They can’t pick up where they left off.
I’m still learning the ropes on this, but knowing I cannot be the first person to encounter this typical MicroSoft omission. I found a trial version right away. Wait for the evaluation. Most on-line forums are useless, some of the greatest generation tell how to use Rename, the most painstaking method of one-by-one possible and precisely what the questioners are trying to avoid. Page after page of these jerk-faces, it’s as bad as going to a 1960s night club. Doing the batch Rename does not work because it doesn’t start at 001 and doesn’t always keep the files in order.
There is a way to do it in DOS as a batch file, but if you use it once, you’ll never do it again. Even otherwise okay sources like Techwalla give lame directions on this subject.
King Tut’s ring.
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There is one clip where they name the great people who played the Tropicana. Left me out in the cold. Who is Josephine Baker? Paul Robeson? I recall early movies that featured the Tropicana, but I thought it was in Miami or some other over-advertised eastern city. The Internet indicates this Baker woman was a twerk dancer and Robeson a singing lawyer. Why would anyone go to a pickup joint to hear a gospel baritone? I supposed the first generation of boomer might know them. Look at the gulf that separate me and my older sister. We didn’t even read the same magazines. She thought Elvis was the King, I thought he was okay but could not hold a candle to John Lennon.
While out there, I saw a Goodwill and dropped in. Argh, it is that Goodwill I said I’d never bother with again. I didn’t recognize it coming in from the west side of the lake. There are certain businesses that, well, the staff and the customers are too slow to tolerate. If I want to spent five minutes shopping and fifteen minutes in the checkout, I’ll go back to Florida. Another thing, I’ve learned you can tell the character of a neighborhood by the books that are donated to Goodwill. The Antioch area must be a cultural wasteland or idiots, daydreamers, and dismal stooges.
I regularly check the musician section in Craigslist. I know the reputation and I’ve heard the stories that Craigslist is so bad. But, how about we take a look at the facts? I used to love a good laugh by sifting through the rants and raves, but a couple years ago organized hackers began systematically flagging every post in some categories, and South Florida was a prime target. The assumption was flagging software but there seems to be no factual information on what happened.
It’s easy to guess the answer. You see, Craigslist is a pain in the ass to its competitors. It is a virtual monopoly in what it does. The reason is because it is mostly free, doesn’t allow advertising, and leaves its format alone. If you saw their home page ten years ago, it is almost the same today. Craigslist makes its money from job and some apartment postings. But the majority of the services are free and that has proven damn hard for the money-grubbers to compete with. Craigslist is the 800 pound gorilla of advertising and media in most cities, nothing else comes close. One good thing about Craigslist, I think, is it forced fundamental changes in the way the Establishment media conducted itself. Before Craigslist, advertising was horrendously expensive and often they told you what you could have, take it or leave it.
I do wish they would fix the problem with rants and raves. There’s probably no incentive to do so, being that Craigslist gets more daily hits than Amazon with 700 times as many employees. Craigslist is the model Internet company. No marketing department, no staff meetings, no sales force. As far as I know, the biggest segment of the business is a few programmers who repel third-party factions who try to manipulate the operation. I know, because I was one of the original hackers. Would you like a reminder of my more infamous exploits with the early Craigslist system?
Okay. I was the guy who redirected the flagging button to send my posts to the best-of list. I set up the system that people would flag and get the impression it worked instantly. I posted the requirement for different computers and how to get around it the same week Craigslist instituted that change of my favorite was to program a page that looked exactly like the posting screen. It drove people mad when the buttons would not work. For a while, I put a “Virus Dowloading” popup on the frozen display. I used to make choice changes to advertising copy posted in the musician’s section. One of my most enduring tricks was to post thousands of blank lines so the button to get off the page was inaccessible until you figured it out. Sure, I got some threats back, but for them, I reserved the really nasty stuff I won’t tell you about.
I knew Craigslist would start coding in inaccessible scripts, which I’ve never learned, but I had a whale of a time until they caught up. Why did I do it? Because they would not fix their flagging system. I suggested a procedure of one post, one flag. It turns out they won’t change because they believe that what they have is pure democracy in action, but it really gives a minority the veto. The real reason for why Craigslist is so durable is anonymity. Nobody can trace you on Craigslist, nobody can track you. When you make a comparison to any other big Internet organization, the bottom line is Craigslist, for all its faults and flaws, is the good guy.
