One year ago today: January 12, 2020, America’s top complaint.
Five years ago today: January 12, 2016, then the rules change.
Nine years ago today: January 12, 2012, Woody Allen sucks.
Random years ago today: January 12, 2017, every old newspaper.
Loved that video of the crowd destroying the MSM recording equipment. Why, it was just a peaceful protest. Good morning, I’ve received my stimulus check. I bought some lumber for the shed. Inflation, folks, the 2x3s that were $1.67 when I started are not $5.03 apiece. Good thing I only need another couple dozen of them. Yep, not that the Democrats can take the credit, the stimulus money was released. And phooey on the fake news that Trump is arrested. He’s still President for another 8 days. Anything could happen, Big Tech has purged Trump, but that will just make his ratings higher.
The van seats are loosened, the impacted bolts are removed. But I still cannot get at the latches on the front, there is something non-standard there as well. This photo shows the Mulberry Team zipping the bolts off, but they are still anchored at the front. If I can’t find the release, then these guys will rip the seats out for me. They love the new van, which I understand after they saw the old Taurus. I’ve already calculated I only need to get 37,800 miles on the van to break even. The Smithsonian might be open again by then.
It seems Trump made a speech at the Alamo. I’m listening to it as a host of San Antonio politicians are preturbed that they were given no notice. CNN has gone wild. That’s just terrible, they say. Could be, when you consider he also did not give notice to 26 local grandmothers, nor two boy scouts, nor the local dogcatcher. This is so radical, it demands somebody make a newspaper issue out of it.
Mauritius.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
My first real day back in town and mostly I paid bills. What’s bloggable about that? Easy, that process is becoming more difficult. Allow me to explain. In America, cash was and still is king. It’s accepted everywhere and anonymous—and a lot of the wrong people see that as a real threat. What is changed? The schools system. In former days, the American way meant increased efficiency, productivity, and so on. I can pretty much pinpoint the change because I was roughly half-way through my accounting degree. I’ll explain the connection.
We did not study efficiency; we learned how to measure it. This means that unlike “efficiency experts” we learned there are good and bad ways to increase profits. Think of it this way, stealing increases profits, but only bad people do it. In the American way, most everybody knew they could increase profits in the Third World manner of passing the cost on to the next guy. I say everybody knew it, but we were Americans and did not do things that way. I’ve mentioned before how a little slack was built into the system.
But the next generation bought into the warped concept that unbundling prices meant increased profits and that became the sole measure of “efficiency”. Businesses were geared to accept cash payment, but they are switching to electronic payment, which is not a new concept, is not an advancement brought on in the computer world, and is does not impart an overall efficiency that the customer-business relationship can all benefit. Are you still with me? Thirty years ago all this technology was known, but nobody would stoop low enough. Now, we have entire generations convinced it is better because it is on computers, and somehow they think they invented it.
What’s really happening is businesses are passing the cost of accepting cash on to the customer. I don’t have a credit card, which makes me a minority, true, but paying in cash is a freedom that should not be taken lightly. Many states are enacting legislation that says so. If you give up the freedom to spend cash, you will never get it back. Electronic payment is not more efficient—if it was some of the richest corporations in America would not be credit card companies. But right there, I’ve lost 90% of the class of 2000 onwards.
ADDENDUM
There are no blog records much between 1992 and 2003. This is not to say there were not other records, and I’m toying with the idea of simply publishing what was there. For example, I have a record of the number of toothpicks counted on July 14, 2002. The records (handwritten) show the box number, the package contents declaration, and the actual number of useable toothpicks in each box. There’s more, it contains the start and stop time of each box, and a long-forgotten number in parentheses afterward.
I think that number may be the number of toothpicks bundled from the box. Since the bundles were 100 each, there were a
lways a small reserve of toothpicks to make up any shortfall on the last batch counted. It’s actually quite a lot of information if you look into it. Because counting toothpicks on any day would rate as the most unusual activity, this qualifies for inclusion as a blog entry. It’s tempting to enter them into a spreadsheet and paste the tables. Let’s vote on that. Ah, unanimous, thank you, that’s the spirit.
As your treat for reading this far, yes, something happened of consequence. I just met somebody who might be right for JZ. I know what the guy likes in a woman and this gal is his type and how. Now to fix the problem that they live 252 miles apart and JZ won’t leave town unless he has “$3,000 in his pocket". Which will never happen.
