March 12, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 12, 2023, a nothing day.P
Five years ago today: March 12, 2019, it’s official.
Nine years ago today: March 12, 2015, about my mistakes.
Random years ago today: March 12, 2005, ad for Calle Ocho.

           What’s this, then? Another Boeing flight with all the gauges going blank? Gee, the plane takes a nosedive for no reason and the pilot says the displays just disappeared. You’d think somebody at Boeing would read this blog so they’d have ten years notice this kind of shit is coming their way—and it’s only just begun. The funny thing, for me, is, I wonder if they remember turning down my job application in 1980 because I wanted too much money for their “programming needs”. I would not set foot on any airplane coded in C+ by today’s crop of simpletons. Even if it was parked on the tarmac. My reasons? They’ve all been spelled out here for decades. Coders are not programmers and never will be.

           The new camera is crappy, but it’s got to do until probably the end of April. Expect such pictures as turn out, like this neat $35 bottle of olive oil. No way, not even for the Reb, who likes that stuff. Why? Because all the revelations about how the oil is not the real thing and the operation is Mafia-owned. And such oils are getting a lot of bad press anyway, as it turns out many of the companies participated in the false reports that eggs and cholesterol were bad for you back in the 80s. A total scam, that was, like the bogus theory that drinking milk gave you strong bones.
           The Reb’s in for another day, I’ve decided to stay in town and keep things moving along until she returns home and the situation is stabilized. We got lots of people in town who are strangers to me. TV-watching strangers. They are helpful but they don’t know the drill. The doggies are not quite used to them and won’t take their medicine. However, taking them for walkies in this cold weather, I can certainly appreciate. Nothing is likely to happen until the Reb is back in charge. So maybe it is trivia time?

           The KIA dealership can’t look at my van until Friday. That means I’ll be chancing the trip back with that intermittent engine light. Today I discovered there are approximately 300 (known) Enigma machines still in existence. These are the coding devices used by the German armed forces during WWII (no, fellows, they were not “Nazi” machines). But don’t plan on owning one as the lowest price quoted recently is $250,000. Did you know, one of the keys that helped Bletchley Park crack many, but not all, of the Enigma messages was the German habit of ending transmissions by saying “Heil Hitler.”
           More trivia. The shorted the messages, the more difficult to decipher, and one mystery message right at war’s end has baffled generations of attempts. U-534 was one of the few boats north of the line where Doenitz ordered the surrender—so there was no reason for the messages to be still sent in code. By continuing to transmit, she was consequently attacked by Allied aircraft. There are many versions of this story, I choose this one because there must have been some incredible incentive for them to risk their lives in this fashion for nothing. Anyway, here is the message that has never been deciphered.

JCRSAJTGSJEYEXYKKZZSHVUOCTRFRCRPFVYPLKPPLGRHVVBBTBRSXSWXGGTYTVKQNGSCHVGF

           Before you have a go at it, be aware a team of experts with the latest in computer software has been trying for the past seven years. My interest was how they might apply A.I. to the project. I also peeked at how A.I. is churning through all the databanks to amalgamate your personal information from all the early people searches.

Picture of the day.
Daytona Beach, Florida
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           I think JZ is right about soft kidney afflictions. They don’t show up on ultrasounds, MRIs, or cat scans. So the docs are diagnosing based on how the patient describes matters. And some are not so good with adjectives. Anyway, he’s go worries of his own. While legitimately hoping the Reb is fine, he’s again dealing with that gal who wants to move in. Good lordy, don’t do it. That is one dicey situation and not just because I can’t tolerate that woman. In Florida, it works like this. If you let a woman move in, you’ll find it is nearly impossible to kick her out. Florida is very favorable to women squatters, since so many of them wind up on the welfare rolls. So they stick it to any man foolish enough to take one in.

           It works like so. She moves in and you cannot evict her or cut off the utilities, or take almost any recourse—except move out. But that’s where so many women make sure you own the place. Then they got you. It takes years to evict them and by then you’ve passed the six months cohabitation clause and they get half your stuff, plus on-going support. JZ knows, because it happened to a close friend of his. The guy lost his condo and is stuck paying the $1400 maintenance fee as in forever. And here is one of the pictures submitted for my insurance claim that they say is not good enough.

           Here’s the pooches in Bowling Green last day. The ladies at Spencers' gave them ice cold water to drink, which some people say is dangerous. I say how did doggies every survive in the wild if that kind of nonsense is true. If I didn’t say, I had to return a DVD player to Wal*mart, and the replacement didn’t work either. Something wrong with the HDMI cable. A replacement would have been expensive enough that I just bought the next least expensive model, a SONY. Hey, I don’t like them, they don’t like me, but I wanted to watch some movies with the pets. Too cold to stroll at night.
           They are in a lost daze without her. I’m next in that department, but I’ll never command their loyalty. They follow me around.

ADDENDUM
           More ill car news. Is your vehicle “wired”, of course, if you are under 45 you’ve likely been told it is for your own protection, safety, blah-blah, yadda-yadda. Your on-board diagnostics have been tracking your driving habits and reporting same to your insurance company and god knows who else. Like to drive more than 12 hours a day like I do? Pay up. Often hit over 85 mph, like I don’t? Pay up. Where does it end? Park outside a bar more than 30 minutes? Drive on to many gravel roads? Commute through an earthquake zone?
           Even braking too hard, it’s all going to cost you. You know why? Because you only wanted to be left alone—therefore you did not actively participate in stopping all these privacy violations being put into place, you millennials. Now you can’t even object because they know where you live.

Last Laugh