June 13, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 13, 2019, where we part ways.
Five years ago today: June 13, 2015, a fencepost in Texas . . .
Nine years ago today: June 13, 2011, they announce WHAT?
Random years ago today: June 13, 2012, that spells opportunity.

           The scooter is back. Both locks have been punched, the baskets are removed, and the license plates got tossed. The surprise was the $165 recovery fee, but this is your reminder that Florida is very much an arrest-the-victim state. It should be the thief that pays any costs, but as you know, doing things that way doesn’t generate enough revenue for a degenerate system. TMOR, this type of law is prevalent in America because it discourages people from reporting crimes. The police are aware of this but support it because it “keeps reported crime down”. Sick logic yes; about to change no.

           I got Agt. R out there to haul it back. We used the old truck which had an invalid sticker. Since he’s been aware of the recovery for some days now and could have gotten ready, well, all I told him was that if I was him, that’s a risk I would take. He instantly hopped in the truck. The scooter is in the yard, I’m scouting around for a matching set of locks. It may have to wait until I get back to my old motorcycle stomping grounds in Miami.

           This single morning adventure drained me, I’m not fooling myself that such days will still present themselves with increasing regularity. My pals try to cheer me that at least I’m productive, thanks. Getting old is still hell. Other than this chore, I have zero energy and nothing more for you. But I did find out Becca, the yacht lady, wants to digitalize some of her paintings. I like working with her late husband’s gear, he had the top brand of everything. If I’m not mistaken he had a printer the size of a plotter. No, not a blueprint setup, but a full scale printer. Mind you, that is the type of thing I often mis-remember.
           Here’s a good one. Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and ilk are banning sales of facial recognition software to the police. As if the police have no clue on where to find stolen property. Except for my scooter that is. In case you didn’t know, I was the one who found it, photographed it, and sent the exact address to the police department. As usual, they did nothing, this is how they handle stolen vehicles. Sit around and wait for it to show up on an un-Constitutional random search.
           Trivia. Do you know where the term “Bluetooth™” came from? It was a king named Gormsson who united Norway and Denmark in 958. Why not, nothing else was going on at the time. Anyway it became a code name for uniting the technologies of Nokia, Intel, and such who were going to call the thing “RadioWire” but every idea they , between them, could up with was already taken. Sounds typical. The king had a tooth that turned dark grey after a root infection. From a distance, it seemed blue.

Picture of the day.
April 14, 1975.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           A late siesta is better than none, and I found a DVD called “The 300 Spartans”, a precursor to more recent versions. It is so corny and laughable I had to watch it. The actors are actually wearing real bedsheets. While it follows the legend, I remind the reader that the Greeks had no symbol for zero. It says 300 against 150,000, but these are based on guesses. It could easily have been 30 against 150, or 3000 against 15,000. The movie was too long, but it was that or another Viet Name movie, you know, where all the pilots get shot down over Gilligan’s Island.

           In the end, the Persians surround the few remaining Greeks and cut them down with arrows. Seems to me they could have done that from the start. Ahhh, Hollywood.

           I found a pic ot the African duck recently mentioned. It has a red beak and green feet and is thriving in the polluted canals through the lower income parts of town. Funny, these canals were not polluted thirty years ago, so what changed? Subsidized housing, that’s what. There are three young ducks, JZ may try to catch one. I don’t mind a duck in the yard, but geese condemn grassy areas to walk-past only.
           Birds I know, and the nestlings don’t stand much of a chance in that canal. And if I have only the one, it will have a good life. Mind you, I’m taking JZ’s word that they are tamable and intelligent. Yes, this photo shows the mother standing on a floating stick in the garbage dumped into Snapper Creek.

ADDENDUM
           This snap caught my eye for how misleading it can be. One thing about C+ code is that it is voluminous. This is made worse by the non-maintainability of the code, which is usually “fixed” by adding even more. Take a gander at this picture showing the “code” used to send the first men to the Moon. The connection is that some people have pointed at this photo to say it was also very long. That’s because they don’t know their history.

           In the early days, when you ran a program, the computer spitted out a core dump along with your results. You would often get fifty pages of numbers that you had to flip through to find the usual half-page of your results. And it all came out on these wide sheets of fan-fold paper from printers so noisy they were often installed in soundproof vaults. You waited overnight and retrieved your copy from an alphabetized set of bins stocked by clerks overnight.

           My long term-readers will recall how I described this. I called myself Zorro, so my printout would be alone in the last bin and I did not have to flip though everybody else’s. I could also see that bin from the top of the stairs so I wasn’t up and down them ten times an hour to check for my results. I’m saying the actual readable part of the code you see in this picture is probably less than 1/50th of the stack. That, and I think I’ve met this gal somewhere—a long, long time ago.
           Time for another warning. Life-extending biotech is a controversial topic. The concept is to extend a healthy life-span indefinitely. While I’m okay with the life-span, there is something fishy about the way they insist on including the word “healthy”. It could mean just that you are not dead yet. Anyway, what you want to watch for is the motives of the people developing these technologies.

           They are after profit, not fairness. Let’s face reality, some people do not deserve to even live. Society has shunned and shut out these and other undesirables since civilization began. What’s to stop them from demanding equal treatment with the rich who will be the only ones able to afford the treatments. This paragraph gives me the opportunity to list the top ten types that should not be given the prescription—ha, most likely this list was a setup, but honestly, this is spontaneous and I have not had my morning coffee yet.

                      1) liberals
                      2) tax collectors
                      3) civil servants
                      4) politicians
                      5) lead guitarists
                      6) sex workers
                      7) repeat offenders
                      8) pet-harmers
                      9) Justin Bieber
                      10) census volunteers

           I’m not saying these people should die as quickly as often as possible, only that “treatment be withheld” due to chronic oversupply. Oh sure, there would be an outcry between themselves and a bit amongst people who are related to any, but nothing we have not heard before. Besides, they themselves can tell you they are such good people that Heaven will welcome them with open arms. Careful though, there may be an area in Heaven where they put all these people with their own kind. What? They have such a place already? It’s called Hell.
           And the holding pen is called [I am not putting the name of that city here].

Last Laugh