One year ago today: December 21, 2020, where’s the French curves?
Five years ago today: December 21, 2016, we check out the mall.
Nine years ago today: December 21, 2012, Friday’s my day off.
Random years ago today: December 21, 2009, Taurus at Xmas.
Those stupid idiots at the FCC. Robocalls are back. I say again, the only solution is to heavily fine any institution that cashes their checks, or something similar. Let’s read the morning news. Well, Trump got booed for mentioning the vaccine, but he has no choice. Amazon caves to the Chinese to allow only rave reviews on specified political books. And identity theft remains a $700 billion annual crime with nearly 40% of consumers affected. All of them had credit cards. Serves them right, especially the ones who get that blank face and ask how else are they supposed to survive. Canada has a new word—infodemic. And the transgender gang has complained the term “womxn” is not “neutral enough”.
Want to hear something unusual? Try Stil Radio. Extra points if you can guess the language without looking it up. What’s in the pot? It’s the doggie’s breakfast, bubbling in gravy. You could eat it, since the chow is human-grade, but this is going in the freezer for Lady Girl if she ever shows up. No sign of the hillbilly several days now. Just when I needed his help with the shed and ledger boards, don’t you know. The gravy is like candy for the dogs and something unusual, they somehow know the aroma of cinnamon means great food. It must be from elsewhere as I don’t care for that spice much.
I’m holding my breath over the Webb telescope launch today. It is said to be 100 times more powerful than the 30-something Hubble. One thing I predict is the space agencies will be slow to release the results, it’s legendary for them bastards. I’m expecting Mars quality photos down through the gas clouds of Neptune and possibly our first glimpse of galactic planets. Of around 4,300 such planets discovered so far by indirect observation, around a half-dozen are less than the magic 40 light years away, and they are Earth-sized and rocky.
After reading about the shielding needed to keep the telescope cold, I guess they will never point it back toward Earth. This is the most complicated satellite ever launched and I learned the term “single-point failure”, which refers to an element that can, by itself, shut down an entire larger project. This telescope has to unfurl itself, something that recent engineer types have not proven that great at. It is now 6:51AM and just beginning to get light. In a bit, I’ll head for Winter Haven to finish what I was supposed to y’day. Once again, I report no aftereffects from what was for me a day of fairly heavy labor.
It rained. In the time it took me to get ready, down she came and Tampa says that will go on till nearly noon. If it keeps up, I’m in the mood to build another box and I’m impatient to try some routered miter joints. I encountered a third type of bit, one designed specifically for glue, but I admit to being partial to what looks prettiest.
Another morning of conferences, mostly a revelation of problems that we know other peole have not encountered. They would have said something. It’s good news if it means they have not gotten that far yet. Remember my words about these Internet businesses, all priced around $1500 and promising instant success. They make sure you take longer than the refund period to realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. Turns out 100% of the snags I’ve blogged are now emerging in the forums. What, have them people been sleeping for the last month? Biggest problem is non-response from the government offices. They are required to respond within three days of being contacted. So they just never pick up the phone, and they have not yet been contacted, right?
We were ready for that and have an email template modified to let them know the clock is running. They are beyond a doubt playing duck the searchlight which will not work with us. Here is the game they play. When you contact them, they may comply with giving you the public information, but what is needed is a list of any other supporting documentation they may require in addition to the official forms. This, you need to either talk to somebody who knows or go to the office yourself. They put the Reb on hold for 92 minutes and 97 minutes, then dropped both calls. Again, this will not work on us in the short or long run.
Read the addendum.
World’s most expensive penny.
($72,000 at auction.)
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I’ve decided this afternoon to look into Florida for business closer to home. Whatever I find, I will never be the first because Florida is third world lean and hungry. Even the middle class here exists on credit, which I equate to desperation mode. It’s laughable people who say their income is higher than mine when the reality is they have to work another twenty years just to pay down what they owe today. I was never more broke than when I worked for a living.
There is little doubt the clerk figures she is a computer expert, you know, using the computer all day like a typewriter. How is this to my advantage? Anybody who uses this list has to eyeball the items they want and re-enter the data in workable form. Each such step introduces potential error. I’ve designed a full page spreadsheet that can parse each line, you may note the top row is selected in blue. I select the top deals and paste, not key enter, the line into a spreadsheet field, where the text formulas pick out and covert the text to numbers where needed. The clerk screws that up as well. Notice the middle column has varying length so you have to add leading zeros, so make sure you leave that number as text.
My sheet of formulas isn’t perfect, but it is a hundred times faster, figured by the time it takes to type out each of those rows by hand and the ensuing tons of mistakes. My formulas, as always, check for reasonability. If it is as cold as predicted tomorrow, I’ll tweak the sheet, but I’ve not dedicated a lot of time to Florida until I find out why somebody isn’t already doing the job by hand. Face it, if there are enough grunts out there doing a job Cuban-style, they become competition.
ADDENDUM
A lengthy phone conversation with the Reb and we decide to carry on with our original plan, now modified to allow an outside group to review our paperwork until we know we get it right. This is a test of two styles, theirs and ours. Bear with me as the ancestor of this blog was a work and business journal. This is our fourth business venture in just over a year and I am prepared to keep trying anything that seems promising if it takes forever. Right now the biggest plus turns out to be the ease the Reb & I adapt to the two different “departments” which I will now attempt to explain. (Ha, I would consider it serendipitous if we succeeded on only the fourth try.)
The webinar last evening solidly stamps the procedures are written by a couple lawyers with supreme faith they can recover from anything. Over here, that is a luxury. At first, you hear them out. I’ll try to address the incompatibilities without choosing sides. One item is support staff, they have the resources to keep trying new people until somebody gets it. My method is to never turn over any aspect of the job until you know exactly how it works yourself. My backup plan is me.
The two systems in focus here are important because we cannot follow their instructions to the letter, but not doing so shifts any blame for failures. These are el-cheapo Internet startups, but they still cost something and for the record, I’ve already spent $7,900 for zero return. Their plan is to do as much as possible at once (makes you look busy), then pounce when a claimant is signed up. This consumes resources. Like lawyers, they are deadly at winning short term battles because they get paid win or lose. However, the one thing I will borrow from them is the decision-making process.
My setup is more linear. One client at a time, start to finish. The remainders on the lists are not going anywhere. I don’t like to bog down and I do not believe you can have a fixed solution to every situation as the training suggests. They go so far as to say they’ve seen it all in the past ten years, but I’m more interested in the next ten. I forecast this venture will see many points where planning won’t suffice, that is, you will have to wait until immediately after an occurrence before the next step can even be pondered. I’m not arrayed for that but I intend to learn fast.
At the end of 27 hours of quasi-monotonous training, they finally admitted things work best when you have considerable help. They may have been wise to leave that to last. They are so into the tracking software, I’ll check out BasecampHQ. And they belated mentioned a one-year time span to get going, a far cry from their advertising. I’m not a fan of other people’s experience given the countless times I’ve seen them develop opposite and often contradictory viewpoints from the same circumstances as mine. I often try, but I can’t tell you how many times people say they never saw something until I off-handedly mentioned my take on it. How many musicians before me have you heard categorize guitar players?
Did I just say “serendipitous”?
