One year ago today: December 4, 2021, 3D, nice but still useless.
Five years ago today: December 4, 2017, it's shoulder damage . . .
Nine years ago today: December 4, 2013, only 234 miles to town.
Random years ago today: December 4, 2003, a dress code protest.
I was up late looking at crypto and you read some interim results in the addendum below. Folks, there are two ways people learn how to manage money. The hard way and the really hard way. This morning, I ran the numbers and they were out 5 cents.
Sure, it could have been a $1,000.05 cent difference, but 5 cents was enough. I spent ten minutes tracking it down. What happened is I opened the on-line account at 7-ish this morning and was reconciling the week when the on-screen display updated a $20.55 transaction for gasoline. No beep, no alert, just poof and the situation came to a stop until it was resolved. And that's another thing, if you put gas on my account, dammit, make it an even number. What's this 55 cents thing?
Silver is going nowhere but I did get 12 hits on my ad for an acoustic player. I pegged half as Polk wannabes that have not done much in the past. Stay clear of the type who view a duo as a starting point rather than what the ad says. Few of the offerings specify a willingness to change anything or learn new material. My material is dance and country friendly, not 80% slow blues like some of the lists I've been handed. I received a lengthy response to an ad I answered in February. The guy wanted me to use Dropbox, which I declined because it is spyware. He went on about how I had an inability to follow directions and he wanted a band of members who do exactly what they are told. I understand why this guy is not in a band.
Then he went on to list of things that went wrong with the band he is trying to put together. It's typical how these guys see no connection between the problem and the way they are doing things. The problem usually turns out the same—the people managing the band have no real management skills and the people leading the band have no leadership skills. Both stem from the same source, that is, thinking the guitar player is the key to operating the show. They point to the success stories not realizing those are the rare exception.
Too cold for me, I took the dogs the long way around in the best sunlight today. Since then, it is on the sofa for them and back to study for me. I see many of the experts on crypto are wildly naive enough to think the rules don't apply. Also, you see a lot of people put money in but not so many take it back out. Crypto has been around long enough that I think there should be some balance to that by now.
Reading some statistics kept me busy. Like how most landlords who are against rent controls inherited the properties they rent. Makes sense, when you don't work for your money, it changes the attitude toward those that do are stupid suckers to be milked dry. What's this 180,000 deaths per year are attributed to soft drinks (causing obesity). That seems high. What seems right is that of the 9 million Americans on disability, 7 million are quite capable of work—if they had to.
The California losers are back at it, screaming $15 and hour is not enough. You see, once they got that, all the prices went up and they can't fathom the link. When you live in a state where the largest contingent of residents are on welfare, no amount of hourly wages will ever be in your favor. Come back when you want to kick the able-bodied off welfare and people might listen to you. California in 1991 was the first time I heard the argument that you can't leave welfare up to the churches and charities because there will always be a few individuals who don't get enough. That's better than millions on welfare getting too much. Yes, welfare pays too much when they can afford cable, computers, smart phones, cars, and microwave ovens. Welfare should allow only for gut-stretching poverty. It's tough, but all other measures result in corruption.
The “impassable” Ardennes forest.
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Little Sammy turns 15 in February and he's not getting along well. I'm taking him to the vet on Tuesday for tummy issues. Here he is curled on my robe as I get his attention. He knows the drill for everything around here but his vision and hearing are deteriorated, so sad. Ah, but he can also tell when the Reb is going to be away and that means rumpspringa. He gets to eat boiled chicken which means chicken broth, a traditional favorite. He even knows when to take himself for a walk these days. He has lively moments but most of the time he'll take it easy resting up for marathons which will never come along again. I know the feeling.
To remind myself I'm here mostly on business this trip, I went over the books an additional time for “reasonableness”. To me, that is what was lacking when Enron shafted their people. Of the 15,000 that worked there, I point out not one caught on to the scam, but that's not entirely my take. I figure there were probably a hundred people who knew something was off kilter. They just didn't know what, which I call the slide-rule effect. Ever used a slide rule? How they come up with an answer but you have to put in the decimal point yourself? That's what I mean by “reasonableness” but I apply it to a lot more items. Without a grounding in solid facts, you can't tell if things are in the right range. And that was the end of Enron's pension plan.
What's happening is after a series of small business ventures that we looked into but did not pursue, the business account is sitting there, ready, willing, and able. I don't like money sitting there. I was raised around people who, while they were not broke, had the total peasant attitude toward money and therefore suffered all the same idiotic problems as being stone broke. Toil for an hourly wage makes for a poor mental image of how money works and I went through that entire transition. From when 100% of my income was from back-breaking toil to today when 0% comes from that source. And regular validation checks keeps it that way.
The predominant aspect of peasant-mindedness is that money is something you spend. This quickly transforms into debt, the spending of what you don't yet have and it is all downhill from there. I sometimes grin when I notice things like $4,000 sitting in the joint account that has not been touched in six months. Try that shit for five minutes around my family and you'll soon learn the meaning of folly. But, not a penny of it got there by itself, so hand's off and I mean it. The only argument poor people have that I consider valid is that nobody gets rich in isolation. I can tell you that peasants are nowhere near as fair and polite as they like to think they are.
In case you wonder, yes I do get asked time to time how I made the switchover. I can't say because it took so long (until I was 36) and had so many dead ends (because there were no guides, only thieves). But I could narrow it down to several modes of behavior. You need self-control because nobody around you will have any. I could have bought a new car every couple of years, but I kept mine on the road an average of 14 years each. If I'd gotten married just because I was the last in my circle, I'd still be paying for it today. And if I'd signed a mortgage, this morning it would have been an alarm clock that woke me up. One more thing, you have to get over any hesitation or guilt over treating stupid people like they are stupid people. They are peasants and this is why castles have high walls.
ADDENDUM
Fact is, folks, there are two broad categories that on-line businesses can take. Those models that are based on known facts that can be explained in familiar terms. The other is the BTWB, or baffle them with bullshit. We know which one has taken hold of the millennials. Binance.us has risen to the forefront as one of the more easily learned and adopted, but they are still crippled by jargon.
multiple execution venuesThis is not the vocabulary of some new professionalism. Do they think nobody has noticed the last three generations have not invented a goddam thing? I guarantee you, each of those buzz phrases has a good old and simple analog term that means the same thing. Half the job is matching them up. I'm reminded of Elliott (who has dropped out of the picture). I tend to go on-line when there is a definite advantage or no more secure method—which entails that the process must be new and different. Elliott was the opposite, like many people who got here late in the computer game, most of them only after the Internet. They tended toward hickware, which is what you get when antiquated inefficient analog systems are “computerized” by idiots.
seamless off/on ramps
SEN connectivity
priority onboarding
These is the crowd who come up with these terms, thinking I suppose that the vocabulary gives them some aura of (what is known as) contemporaneity. Elliott was bad for this, flinging some nonsense terms like “metrics” or “omnichannel” constantly hoping to land on one you have not heard. And that means you a “wantrapeneur”. You get the idea. I particularly dislike examples like “metrics” which has a previous and different meaning. My opinion is these are designed to confuse. On the other hand, I quickly adopt those with humorous or sarcastic edges.
I'll find out what these phrases mean but I got ten bucks say they are something already well-worn. What's happened is some millennial, not knowing history, things because it hasn't been on a computer before that it is something new and original, so why not give it a tech-sounding name? People might think you are smart or something, but only if you keep it up long enough, Tyler.
