One year ago today: December 13, 2024, a day with JeePee.
Five years ago today: December 13, 2020, a disinvestment event.
Nine years ago today: December 13, 2016, a grumpy post.
Random years ago today: December 13, 2015, total unfamiliarity,
From my high-traffic back yard, here’s two guys that wisely avoid each other. It remains too cold, causing my oldest injuries to gripe. This morning I’ve planned a task that may see futile. It’s a barrier created by the usual lack of cooperation and communication between parties on the Internet that the Internet was supposed to fix. Huh? Well, instead of getting along, each faction seems to have gone down their own garden path. There are fifty variations of the C language, none of them compatible. If you click the “inspect” option on any web page, you’ll see what I mean.
The pattern is decipherable and I’ve done it with GPS data when looking for coordinates. That’s where you hit a brick wall. Unless you have a library of resources and the time to wade through it, any existing manual is not going to have space to teach you enough. The Arduino text has some examples that presume you know what they are on about. Thus, my plan is to use the IDE (a kind of mini-word processor for code) to enter the example using my own format, which clearly delineates and separates variables, subroutines, and modules in the source code.
The IDE has a feature that “tests” the code before allowing it to assemble or compile or whatever the GenXers think is clever to call it these days. My plan is to use that to test each part of the code until I teach myself how it works. If that sounds familiar, it is. I have often called it learning to “think like an idiot”, a skill honed by my early family life.
Another example of how idiots think is the tags (HTML commands) that Blogspot allows since it was bought out by Google. It is evident nobody on the team ever consulted with a professional blogger (or any blogger) to find out which ones were useful. There is a useless blockquote tag, but no tag to embed a sample of music. The search command does not recognize punctuation. There is no proper setting to indent paragraphs. Go figure.
Dang, I had trouble walking the show but glad to note my food donation probably feeds them all one day per month. The trouble was, although the room is warm and I’m under an electric blanket, I got up for a glass of water, then my usual 5:30AM pee-pee, then at 7:00AM to fire up the coffee. Those three cold walks were enough, and some of these injuries are twenty years old. I’ve never rode in a Jeep. This one has all the custom parts, the seats still have the Sheriff’s star upholstery. The parking lot had a shuttle which I gladly rode the quarter-mile to the door. I’ve never rode in a paddy wagon before, either.
It’s a 30 mile trip so I listened to more of the Paris tale, but they had best move fast. I’ve begun disk 7 of 8 and propaganda doesn’t work if you push it too fast. Hannah, our 31-y.o. historian, has begun to sympathize with women who were rounded up by the Germans and we just know she will latch onto the Jewish ones. But Tariiq is going to be much tougher to tie to the cause. He rarely ventures outside the Algerian neighborhood. He’s met an old puppeteer who is filling in the blanks. I think the plot here is that Tariq, desert peasant, is sensible enough to learn to pay tribute to the Jews, what’s the problem with you other people?
What’s this? The Joe Biden library may be shut down. These operations rely on donations and it seems he has not gotten any since 2023. The University of Minnesota has diagnosed “Whiteness” to be a disease.
Maverick County Pageant winners.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
If you like, there are more video clips appearing in January, 2000. These are from recently uncovered backup files. I recognize a number of scenes from stills taken out of these VHS originals, so I plainly had that capability by 2003-2006, when many of these backups were created. Since I only had a SONY [tape deck/player] at the time, it must have been a boring real-time undertaking. I had one of those “Pinnacle” harnesses which could be made to work.
What’s hard to imagine is how I had the patience back then. I lived at motels in Miami until I scored my first job—at a temp agency. One day, I will tell that story. To summarize for now, I was not sure about staying in Miami, which I found to be a dirty and unsafe place. Nor did I know what towns were nearby (that's how I found Hollywood), so I picked a temp agency out of the phone book (a type of analog database of that era). To put it mildly, I know how to run an entire six person office by myself, which includes everything from ordering and logging supplies to payroll, to fixing computers and copy machines. Thusforth, I scored the highest paying job on the temp board, a job in a trailer on Brickell Key. $12 per hour.
That is another tale from the trailer court. I was the only male on staff at Victoria & Associates, and none of the women wanted a “construction” job. That staffing agency had an award system based on performance and all I’m saying is I won the Secretary of the Week award every week for the next year until I decided to decline the basket. These two pictures are repeats from that happy time, funny they have a relevance today, 25 years later. There’s the typical basket and a yellow arrow pointing to my jobsite.
There was no blog or journal in 2000, so be flexible with dates and events. There are mentions of my budget, gigs, partying, and general daily life in Miami. Amusing.
My afternoon plan was to catch up on the books and read for the duration. But, delving into the books is not as carefree around here as it seems. The culprit again is inflation, hitting hardest at those commodities I consume. Food, gas, utilities, daily living. Xmas costs me nothing, just another holiday, but I have this looming feeling of an expensive trip to Tennessee in my stars. Then, two hours reading Arduino, but also on various methods used to defeat gambling machines.
I admire people who defeat the machines, since I do not view gambling as either a pastime nor a legitimate business. I don’t see what is wrong with stealing from thieves—and I’ve listened to all the arguments. If somebody can cheat, ban them and blacklist them, but jail time is unwarranted, again just my opinion. At street level, if you can scam the scammers, I say you deserve a medal.
If find it hilarious how the thieves are increasingly being caught by accountants, not security. And, they are caught because the cheater used ID. Carmichael, the locksmith, was caught through his travel records, meaning they are also tracking everybody, which is a different can of worms. Via bargaining, he got no jail time, a $50,000 fine, and some community service. It’s definitely a lucrative career path, considering he stole $16 million. The videos up-play the consequences of being caught. Ha, I would laugh in their faces. Nobody with that kind of money goes to jail in America, not even O.J. Here’s some clever folding flower lights.
The latest version of the IDE is not installed. It has a number of new features I like. A larger text area, for example. And there are more built-ins meaning less reliance on the dreaded exterior libraries. I haven’t touched this app since Tennessee entered my life which means using it means relearning it all. I may have time since my swollen arm is slow to heal, and my bones still ache. I’m under the covers and warm during the cold night, but take last evening. I walked into the cold kitchen for a glass of water and later I visited the loo.
These brief exposures are enough to trigger dull pain, worst is across my shoulders in the deep dull manner from my therapy sessions with Big Loretta. I have taken to wearing my shoulder heating pad whenever sitting. The heat is soothing but the pain remains.
Another round in the youTube ad wars. It didn’t last long. This time the embedded ads play, but never entirely disable the Skip button. It’s still a drag to have to listen to a few seconds of crap. They can insist all they want about their right to advertise, but the bottom line over here is that this computer belongs to me and it is therefore my say what displays on it. Blocking the bullshit is conceptually no different than simply looking away and not watching it.
ADDENDUM
Instead of Spotify, use Demus Music
Instead of Netflix, use Plex
Instead of Pinterest, use Pixabay
Instead of Canva Pro, use Photopea
Instead of YouTube, use Odysee
Instead of TikTok, use Clapper
Instead of ChatGPT Plus, use Poe
Instead of Google Drive, use Terabox
