February 19, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 19, 2023, those ATMs are made here.
Five years ago today: February 19, 2019, okay, I left the picture up.
Nine years ago today: February 19, 2015, traffic light sheild technology.
Random years ago today: February 19, 2009, my old solo act, sigh.

           That was JZ on the phone nearly an hour. He’s lamenting he missed that trip to the Clermont Citrus Tower. He’s Florida all the way and remembers the extensive oragne groves before the blight. It’s peaches now, mostly for juice, as the nice looking fruit doesn’t grow here. We don’t get the required 400 consecurive hours of below freezing annually. Besides, he’s not investing enough to make these trips without taking a loss, you can’t fool me. If you don’t complain about the right things, you are not investing. He’s also got that trick memory that the dozens of places we were house-hunting are all nearby. He further does not allow for the fact he was only on a few of the expeditions, while I made dozens of inquiries.

           Y’know, I have not been in Plant City over a year, and it is too cold outside for yard or shed work. But the afternoon sun usually gets things temperate. Maybe tomorrow I’ll consider a visit rather than wait out the morning. JZ recalls the area as heavily wooded, but the only thing close to that is along the very shallow rivers through the area. It’s agricultural and every useful square inch is laser leveled vegetable fields. I can’t find a listing for the bar for a picture. If you see the map, I found the neighborhood on Google, but the map screens take forever to display on this system. I searched my top 200 posts that mentioned Plant City without finding any photos of that pub. JZ thinks it is ten minutes away.

           Wrong. Plant City is 40 miles away, that Bowling Alley is 21 miles, and so on. He thinks the Great American Bar is just up the road. That’s where he finally picked up a good-looking babe—almost. That’s the one that got into a fist-fight with the fat lady behind the bar. Remember that? I’m talking to JZ when suddenly there is a foot on the counter right where his hand just moved from. That fat gal actually leaped up over the entire bar to beat the other lady with her own shoe. He remembers that, but not the two hour drive from here.
           Never seen anything like it before or since. That fat lady moved like a ballet dancer. JZ says they got into a squawk, which is possible, they both knew he was a new rich guy in town. Myself, I say it was some long-standing feud with them women and we got in the line of fire. It’s clearing up outside but I had to spend four hours composing yet another letter to the insurance company. They say since the car had a salvage title, it should not have been insured for full value. Fine, but I took offense to their statement that it was our duty to provide them with a document neither of us had ever heard of. And the bottom line, I’ve got a signed and paid for policy in my hot little hands. The difference is now down to $2,900 and I’ll settle if they offer half.

           Then another hour on the phone to Tennessee, you know I am not a phone person. The Reb knows a lot of libtards, so I’ll need a window to pay my bills when they are not around. I don’t tolerate them well. The really bad ones think Biden is doing such a fine job and could really make changes if only the Republicans would give him the power and the money. Isn’t that what all communists say? She’s impressed by the pictures of the boxes I built. The standing joke is that if Tennessee had not come along and slowed me down, by now I’d be famous far and wide as the “Boxman of Orlando.”

           We have two more tiny birdies. They are pale yellow. No pics yet, but they make the feeder quiver when they roost. They are grab & fun feeders, possible juveniles of the tufted pair that still show up occsionally. What’s this? An e-mail from Trent. Yep, his kids are college age and these days that is major paperwork. He is aware of the insurance claim and made this quote. “Insurance companies and lawyers are both full of it. Problem is you need both to get one of them to do anything.”
           His music these days used that gear called Ableton. I’ve seen it, there’s a picture of the interace here, but never cared for that indie techno-pop sound. Even their demos use spastic drum beats. It must work well enough. It’s like a computerized mixer that works off your monitor and desktop, I think they call them Digital Audio Workstations. It uses MIDI tracks which I’ve never found user-friendly, and if you are a beginner, maybe try their “lite” version.

Picture of the day.
Main Street, Jerome, Arizona.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Fully admitting I over-slept my nap, I also read more on transistors, all of it over my head. By 8:00PM I decided to call a meeting of the unoffical robot club.This was easy because Wilford is now the Monday bartender. Arriving to an empty room, I was somewhat surprised to learn the barkeep also has the authority, within reason, to arrange for entertainment on his shift. This is no mean feat, as the local market is saturated. We covered electronics and what direction he should take first, then pondered what could be done to get locals out and buying beer on a nothing Monday.

           It would have to meet a lot of criteria, such as something he could run himself while still serving, and something that ends each session. That is, it can’t be something like robotics where if you miss a week, you can catch up. Bingo comes to mind but there is already a spot up the road that does Mondays. Mind you, I could defeat that by guaranteeing s $100 prize on the tenth game, if you’ve played the previous five. So even if you were the only one present, you’d still win the $100. It’s the only word-of-mouth advertising that really works. You might lose money the first couple weeks, yet that is still cheaper than advertising.

Not only did I over-sleep, I made another eye doctor appointment. No, I’m not going blind. Blind people can’t describe the horizon from atop a bell tower a month ago. I’ve never gotten used to bifocals and I want them taken off my eyeglass prescription. Have you seen the ridiculously small fonts on medicine bottles these days? The dosage and directions are often the smallest writing on the label. Bifocals don’t help, I’d rather reach for a magnifying glass because I’ve had okept handy near my work desk most of my life. In fact here’s a picture of the current glass, see photo. This scene should never have made it past the censors, it shows a closeup of a computer monitor, but it’s just today’s blog.
           How would I describe my vision? Other than the recently discovered lack of peripheral vision to the far side of my right eye, it has not changed since I was 12 or 13. Still, I should be better prepared for a decline. Age is a factor, I mean, any man who’s blog dates back 45+ years is no spring chicken. How was I to know millennials would be stupid enough to shrink medicine labels?

ADDENDUM

           Here’s an odd topic for this blog. Pornography. Have you ever heard of Kagney Linn Karter? I never have until today, when a flurry of comments about her suicide surfaced. Killed herself at 36. I care not about the reasons, but I do recognize that for most men, paying for sex is the closest thing they will ever get to variety, and that creates a supply and demand situation for these women. The problem is, as she got old, she ran out of supplies. It was the comments that got my attention, they reveal to me one’s position on pornography depends 100% on whether you are a sexual winner or sexual loser.
           The term “porn star” is to me an oxymoron, but this is the second one I’ve seen in my life. Other than the one who walked into the computer shop some fifteen years ago, that is it, folks. I guess when you have the real thing, you don’t have to pay for it. I saw the After pictures of this broad at the end, a frumpy-looking housewife type wearing clothes twenty years too young for her shape. No links here, you got the wrong blog. It’s the hype and comments that got here, not the porn. And don’t we all just love the on-line soi-bois who like to pretend porn is now an accepted lifestyle?

           Here are the top ten:

1. She gave it away until there was nothing left to give away.
2. They got their feminism, now let them deal with it.
3. She contributed nothing to society and suddenly it mattered to her.
4. Just another lazy, tattooed, drugged-up slapper.
5. She was probably molested.
6. That’s the long way to take out the trash.
7. As useless as a Mt. Everest corpse now littering the landscape.
8. Obviously from a single parent family.
9. No real men in her life.
10. It’s called taking down the “For Sale” sign.

Last Laugh

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