September 7, 2019

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 7, 2018, long & fruitless.
Five years ago today: September 7, 2014, extreme introversion.
Nine years ago today: September 7, 2010, sold out.
Random years ago today: September 7, 2008, STP music puts me to sleep.

           The blog that dares headline a can of 3-in-1 oil. I buy one can every twenty years and this time I got the large size. It was mis-priced, so why not get the biggest size? And that’s the thing. It was not a can of oil, but a bottle. For the longest time the metal can was the trademark of this brand. Don’t ask me when it changed and I don’t like it. The bottle is a step down-hill for this famous brand. The label is also sinking, if you notice the European style claim of “long-lasting”. This is a catch-phrase making the round in Europe. It is meaningless but increases sales. Keep reading for more on this.

           Y’day at the dollar store, I saw this calculator. I don’t need another one but I shelled out the dollar because I see a lot more to this device than it would seem. I was in my teens when the first hand-held electronic calculators appeared on the market. They were prohibitively expensive, as in hundreds of dollars. I remember when my pal’s sister got one for Xmas. This tale from the trailer court begins a few years after that when “pocket” calculators arrived. No way they would fit in a pocket, but it marked the point where Japanese competition began.
           I finally bought one in 1975 for $39. By then I’d already had rules about buying such things, such as no proprietory battery types. This one was rechargeable, with a liquid crystal display which ate power and required an overnight charge to work an hour or two next day. It had no auto-off feature, so you can imagine the frustration level. But that is around $265 in today’s money, so I used it all the time. That was also the time when manufacturers began to call memory a “function”.

           So I want to examine this $1 calculator with 56 functions. Battery powered with a solar panel and auto-off, it says it is a “scientific” calculator. Really? They are available everywhere but it is hard to find a financial calculator which might be of at least some use to people nowadays. Here are the functions I can find. The directions on the package show how to use the arithmetic keys, often euphemistically called “math keys” by those who so obviously need to do so. I listed the 46 or so functions I could find in today’s addendum. I wonder who would pass a quiz on what many of those are for.
           One dollar, that’s amazing to me. Not that long ago such a calculator was unavailable at any price. Less cheery is the fact that such a device exists because, get this, it means not one new function or discovery has happened since the advent of computers. If America had kept pace, this calculator, rather than being a mystery to most, would be the equivalent of a slide rule. Instead, except for cosmetic details, the same calculator that was used in 1969, that is, fifty years ago. Shame on you, America.

Picture of the day.
Iowa 80 truck stop.
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           We had plans to visit the houseboat. Turns out the seller is not that anxious. She had told us any time after 4:00PM on Saturday. But this morning somehow became next Saturday so screw that. We thought of driving past the marina but that’s too far away for half-measures. Instead, I suggested we stay home and I’ll work on the lawn swing. That piece of furniture has become a mini-fixation for me. It turns out the swing does belong to her and she wants it in working condition. Rather than get elaborate, I doubled up the slats, shown here. You can see the original slats have deteriorated.

           Here’s another view, showing the back. Since I have no idea what I’m doing, what is shown here was what looked right. In the end, I cut away all the rotten parts and replaced them with new. But the lumber is untreated. The only protection is the paint but I figure it will outlast me and that’s good enough. I’ll get a good picture of the finished bench. It is sturdy enough to stand on now, but light enough to manhandle.

           That’s because I used some of the hand-picked lumber originally destined for the turtle cage. Kiln dried lumber varies in density. I had picked out all the lightest pieces and some of that found its way into this project. Note Sparkie there for morale. We had planned to find something around town but this is America. There are no affordable cultural pursuits open after five o’clock. This is where our tastes can clash. Where I like those murder-mystery dinners, she has written several of them and would rather not. So I took an hour and wrote my newsletter to the sound of the Reb upstairs playing the piano and singing. That’s quite a contrast to the other gals I’ve dated, who would be watching soaps and painting their toenails.

           She knows a financial adviser who has recently stated he will no longer deal with millennials. That’s the second such incident in a couple of months. We had quite the conversation on this situation. It may become known as the 3-in-1 talk. It has to do with conclusions reached about the seeming lack of ethics and responsibility of the current business climate. From faceless corporations right down to the lowest Internet scam artists, the way they do business has become as anonymous as the privacy people used to enjoy. Read that one again.

           Even in an economic free-for-all which has been the perception but never the case in America, there are unspoken rules that must be obeyed. First among those is how this is the first era where the “American way” has been forgotten or ignored by the majority. Yankee know-how was famous, but it rested on the bedrock that you do not do unto others. Anybody in the last century could have sunk to any low imaginable—but they did not. Bad business practices generally failed because (I think) people in general were aware that if one did unsavory things, it meant others would do the same. Keeping above that plane kept American business unquestionably on top of the world. That’s a blanket statement, but has anyone a better way to put it?
           I’m fully aware each generation will point at the next and predict chaos will reign. That is not at all the meaning behind my criticism of the world today. This wired-in crowd is the first to apparently totally forget the American business heritage. This was the basis of our talk. Reb says the millennials were born into a world that caused their strange behaviors, while I say it is entirely their own fault and they are getting what they deserve.
           This is where my analogy of trying to explain color to a blind man came up once more. Trying to tell a millennial that while you can shaft your neighbor and scam you way to riches, that does not mean you should do so. I’m not referring to the day-to-day operations, or even the criminal element that every age has, but the way that a society tolerates what are often evil business tactics. In prior American history, bad corporations have tumbled, in today’s world they thrive. I can’t cover it all here, but it has something to do with the simple fact that there has been an almost total lack of innovation and invention for the past 40 years.

           [Author’s note: the Reb says things like apps are new, but I think they are nothing of the kind. Then again I have three computing degrees and she doesn’t.]

           I’ll give a simple example of how failure succeeds. Most of us have a product that would never have passed muster twenty-thirty years ago for user-friendliness. Your cellular phone, be it a flip-phone or a smart phone. The menus are such a horrific mess that most people find the few least complicated utilities and center on using those. It is not uncommon to meet people with $500 units who haven’t a clue how to perform simple tasks like forwarding a photo in memory to my computer. They’re stumped, some don’t believe it possible. But they have no problem using those cluttered menus. What does that tell you? Don’t even suggest I do not know about complicated and ill-categorized menus.
           Nor do I mean only so-called advanced devices. Look at my old flip-phone. It has two buttons exposed on the outside of the casing, the ringer volume controls. That’s fine until you spot the design flaw. Whoever did it was so stupid he would have been laughed out of town in my day. But I have no doubt he is alive in today’s world being ostensibly treated with “equal dignity and respect”. The flaw is that at one end of the settings, the volume is 0 (on a scale of 0 to 8) and at the other end is the “silence” mode.
           Think about it. When the exposed button gets bum-dialed, either direction it moves will end at a point where the ringer cannot be heard. Allow me to say, “Duh-fuckin-duh”.
           It takes a special kind of stupid to come up with that kind of thing, but it takes an even worse mental climate for such things to be considered technological advances. Things with built-in stupid used to wind up in junk heaps, not worshipped like modern marvels. The Reb empathizes with their situation; I say it serves them right. You don’t become mass failures overnight. When you entitle people enough to be comfortable pushing 35 in their parent’s basement suite, they will never learn from their own failures. I suspect in another ten years, this bunch will try to “vote” themselves into success. It may not doom the resilient American system, but it will shock the daylights out of it.

ADDENDUM

           Look at this now lovely lawn swing. This is not quite done as it got too dark to paint shortly. My fingers are pinching that rotting section I finally quit trying to repair and replace with new. Those vertical ribs behind the backrest are new and are not affixed to the frame. The reason? So the bench will still bend a little under weight and give a more comfortable ride.
           The bench that was to be a half-hour repair. I had no clue the swing had sentimental value. It is not fully operational, or will be when the paint dries. You can see my cheerleading section scratching his ear in the background. This is my domestic life, folks, and I domesticate very readily. If you think this dog ignores me, at one point when I turned the bench on its side to paint the bottom, the smaller dog immediately ran and sat in the newly created shade. And I’m not the one to ask him to move.
           I’m dumb, but I ain’t that dumb.

Last Laugh