One year ago today: January 26, 2022, the last good bulbs.
Five years ago today: January 26, 2018, a waste of $800.
Nine years ago today: January 26, 2014, every second sentence.
Random years ago today: January 26, 2016, dinosaur juice.
I stayed home, like a good boy, but that just means a surge in activity in some other area. In this case, Morse code again. Right after I mentioned I’d never taken three minutes of code flawlessly, that had not changed. But I came close. I was outside to clean up the raccoon mess, they tip things over. I confirm we have $186 for this weekend, so that’s an excellent van trip somewhere. Fifty years too late, but still, a treat. Get out the sextant, I have a default formula for such adventures, it involves libraries, museums, and finding the local college pub. Anything but the ridiculous standard by which others waste retirement.
There’s no fool like an old fool—I take that to mean an old fool who’s forgotten how to have fun, so he reverts to childishness. I see it everywhere. It makes sense, if they have no pursuits, no hobbies, no imagination, of course they would look foolish doing just about anything. You see them in the crowd, won’t even dance because they never learned that, either. All they know is go to the pub and watch TV. As an experiment and by comparison, tomorrow morning I will write down the activities I get around to before the day starts.
I promise to be fair and not do anything that isn’t mostly routine. But I will naturally record anything that is of hobby or academic interest—because that is where comparison is invited. Kind of like when I go to a pub and there are no nubile females. Others get goofy and hit on the uglies, where I’ll work the crossword, write a letter, do some navigation, add numbers, read a book, design a chicken coop, and (given the opportunity) play bass on stage. I’ve been called a lot of things, but I don’t think an old fool is in the top ten.
Ha, it was predictable as rain. The law associations are in an uproar over the traffic court plan to use an A.I. lawyer. The parent company, DoNotPay, has received severe letters from law firms about “practicing without a license”. In a court, the defendant would wear a 3D virtual headset with an ear-plug telling him what to say or do. Naturally, this is a death threat as far as the law faculty is concerned. My concern is that a defendant is allowed the best defense possible and that would not include some lawyers I’ve seen. In reality, it’s the best defense he can afford and I don’t believe A.I. can be artificially held back by these vested interests forever.
Also, who is practicing law? The software or the defendant. He is allowed notes and most anything except recording, which seems stale in this day and age. But most anyone who has gone up against a lawyer knows that where they get you is not truth or facts, but their familiarity with the court procedures. And it is not supposed to work that way. The court should have to allow a non-attorney all manner of leeway and stop prosecutors from using inside attack modes.
This is the situation a millennial would call and existential threat. But who is practicing law? The wearer or the software? And what if the A.I. could consistently win, or even win 51% of the time? Most people I know think the law profession has been running roughshod over people for a long time. Lawyers have every incentive to disregard common sense if something else pays better. Almost every body of law has another that contradicts it, so it becomes a guessing game based on the mood of the court that day.
NPR, your public money recipient radio, has once again refused to include a “best music” category of country music. Thus, I got a mild surprise listening to an entire country-like hour on their best roots page. I think some sharpie slipped one past them. I picked up on this last week and it was still there today. Have they slipped up? Anyway, it’s all still pretty watered down (but highly overproduced) material with predictable themes and lyrics. NPR hates country music.
Wooden wristwatch.
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The brownies cut off my Internet service again. Always two or three days ahead of the deadline, but if you pay the bill in advance, they just move the due date up. Boost Mobile, and you can rant all you want about “racism” because I’ve visited the place and know this is exactly their deliberate mentality. If, over a year, they can keep getting you to pay your bill three days in advance every month, by year’s end, they’ve got 36 extra days out of you. This sort of shit is never a mistake whenever there is a Hindu or Paki on the far end.
Boost is completely out of touch. Their advertising currently advises people to “start a family”. Shucks, Honey, why not? Ain’t doin’ nothing else this weekend. To make things worse, I was across the street from the Boost office this morning, but decided not to pay in advance for this very reason. This is what they mean by third-world, you have to be on constant guard because every two-bit third-worlder is out to shaft you for one penny, but there’s millions of them.
Nobody else knows about raccoons either. Yet we know somebody out there, other than some high-priced pest control shop, knows the trick to getting rid of raccoons. But, they are not talking or posting. On-line you get advice you don’t need. The raccoons are in my back yard, not living in the attic. Or the prick who says all you have to do is empty your feeders or bring them inside every night, which is precisely what you are trying to avoid. Yes, I need a break over the weekend. I may throw a coin for east or west, knowing things are no better either way, but a change of scenery always works for me.
I bought two lengths of stovepipe, or I should say aluminum-like metal tube. Have you seen the price of stovepipe these days? Probably not, unless your house is over 40 years old when they banned wood heat in the city limits. By the time I got home, the temperature was falling again, down into the 40s. I put on the space heaters and my original book on navigation. It’s informative to review these things in light of what you now know, and it was not my imagination that the book was not that well written. Several articles have appeared on-line of the returning importance of traditional navigation but I think thanks to GPS it’s mostly a lost art. Couple that with the fact that it is also difficult brain-work.
Tractor Supply may have seen the last of my business. Rumor is they support drag queen shows to pre-schoolers. If so, that’s an automatic boycott and around here that means even if they reverse course they remain on the black list. Buried way down here is another reason I’m a grouch this afternoon. I got chased out of Dollar Tree by a persistent old lady. I went in with a list and I know that store. There she is, blocking the paper goods aisle. She wound up getting in my way around six times, I even tried walking to the far end of the store and working backwards. You’d think such women would catch on how people would rather walk all around the next aisle than ask to get by. After six, I cut my shopping short, paid, and got the hell out of there.
It’s always some magaizine or TV show sending these old ladies where they are not wanted or just make pests of themselves. Oh, I know the shoe is on the other foot, but there’s a twenty/thirty year age difference since men would not go away. The one today had spent all her charms much longer ago than that. I mean, do I even look like I’d date a fifty year old grandmother?
ADDENDUM
To those who ask me the best site to learn Morse code, my reply is nowhere. Every on-line site has some serious defect that will lead you astray. It seems more like every possible dead end and blind alley is represented by these sites that promise to teach you code the easy way. There is no easy way. You simply keep at it until one day, you’ll experience a quantum leap. It took me years. I’ll describe it a bit of what worked for me.
1. Accuracy is more important that speed.Then, one day, you will start the same procedure that’s stalled and let you down so often, but by now you’ve memorized all the letters and numbers. You’ll start just another routine, but when you hear a first letter, you no longer think, your hand just writes it down. Then follow a string of letters the same thing, you just automatically write the whole letter without hearing individual tones, rather a group of tones as a unit. At that point, you’ve got it. As soon as that happens, then, I semi-recommend the Koch method and another six months of dedicated practice with that. Don’t rush the Koch method and learn the numbers in separate lessons for now. Leave celestial navigation alone while you are learning code.
2. Don’t stop if you miss a letter.
3. You will go through a phase where you listen to the dots & dashes.
There are plenty of sites where you can download practice text, which seems to work better than apps that let you paste in your own material. As far as listening in, there are no good interesting broadcasts. Lot’s of the same jargon you get in text messaging. It’s all old people who sincerely think the world needs to know their name and what style of antenna they are using. The closest thing I can liken it to is guitar players who go on about string brands and Clapton’s underwear. Whenever I search for anything more, it comes back to my idea for the world’s cheapest satellite. This blog transmitting from space. It has crossed my mind that I could put it on-line just to see what happens. Morse may not be great for sending long passages but has it ever really been tried on an Internet scale?
Have you heard the KFC is offering a Taylor Swift Special. Two skinny legs, two small breasts, and a left wing. I’ll take an order to go. Anyway, I am leading up to another Taylor joke, the worst one yet. Taylor Swift has 500 songs about men leaving her but not one song about giving good sex. You see where this is going. Um, Ken, that’s the joke.
