One year ago today: September 29, 2018, I’ve been through worse.
Five years ago today: September 29, 2014, at the train museum.
Nine years ago today: September 29, 2010, comments on real estate.
Random years ago today: September 29, 2012, late on purpose.
Here’s my quasi-famous Florida Department of Transport fifty-cent penalty for accidentally driving a half-mile into their SunPass lane. (It was poorly marked.) What is a stamp these days? It’s around 56 cents. So calculated the cost of this just in postage and the dollar for the Money Order. Then there’s the processing. All this has to be recorded and filed. But, if you don’t pay it, I believe they eventually impound your car or refuse to renew the tags. This, folks, is why nobody wants to give up their gun. That would make America another one of those countries where people dream that one day the government will just leave them alone.
I’ve a great idea. Let’s go downtown for an early coffee. Maybe pick up a few things and generally take up a couple of hours. I’m buying and this has nothing to do with the fact it is freezing in here because I’m the one that forgot to turn off the kitchen A/C last night. Of course, one thing led to another and by 8:00AM I had made up a shopping list and burned a barrel of dead grass, wood scraps and fallen branches. Funny thing, that smell of burnt wood I hate, the smell that gets in your clothes and your hair, I didn’t mind it this time. I even had a picture before I tried to download it from a Sony, where the delete button is identical in size, shape, and nearly location.
How’s my smart phone quest? Nowhere, I toured all the local places that sell phones and they are all locked. Or, in my terminology, millennialized. The posted “price tags” are the monthly payments. They think they can get you to pay $500 and rope yourself into a contract for years by spreading the payments out. This appears to be the height of their intellect. They can’t even build a phone right. I know from watching most people that they don’t or can’t use most of the phone features. There’s a whole range of problems associated with electronic devices that reveal our political people are computer illiterates.
Product lock-ins and tie-ins have been illegal for decades but put a chip in it and even Ralph Nader thinks it’s mysteriously immune from existing law. Clinton probably didn’t have a clue what a server was until somebody noticed hers wasn’t secure. Hitting that delete all button was the fastest political move of her career. (But tipped us off that deleted e-mails are not recoverable or somebody would have done it.)
Now China has that 500-whatever camera than can spot a face in a crowd, I’ll be you it will soon be applied to driver’s licensing here. You will be pulled over not always for driving infractions any more, but because some A.I. robot has determined you are a person of interest, and the motor vehicle stop is the closest American police have ever brought to Gestapo-like perfection. Australia takes the lead by introducing cameras to spot texters. But they won’t stop there. Read my lips, never talk to the police, even socially. Remember that police are allowed to lie to you. And they are trained to goad you into breaking silence. All they want is “your side of the story”. Right.
I stopped at the supply house to find out nobody locally carries a Fernco (rubber) coupling in the size I need. Still, I’m sticking with my contention that every possible plumbing situation has a fitting, if you can only find it. My backup plan is to cut the smallest adequate section of pipe near where I plan the water heater, and untwist the two pieces. Iron piping is not meant to be tapped into because untwisting one mid-section pipe tightens the other end and so on. They weren’t thinking ahead, I suppose.
I thought I had a dryer ready to go, but yet another wasp nest said not so fast. The poison takes 24 hours and by that time I plan to be in Miami. I’ll use the downtown dryer time to do more shopping, I need lots of doodads.
Dornoch castle.
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My fiscal year-end is approaching, so I’m getting a head start with the paperwork. I have a commercial bank account so I’m subject to different fees, including a whopper if I use a non-system ATM. Yet I distrust the big bank systems, so what to do? This year, I’ve been hit with over $90 in extra bank fees. Then, there’s that car, costing me $242.67 per month, not counting any repairs. Or that new set of tires in Tennessee. I’ll soon have the Yamaha on the road (a prediction) which will help. It’s laughably little to some folks, but my entertainment budget with the Reb in the picture drops to $224 per month. That’s what some guys spend on a single date.
That’s one strange inconsistency. Adventure costs money, but you can’t buy adventure. When I look back on Tennessee this year, I don’t much recall the dinners or the dates. But look at the fun with that broken lawn swing.
