David’s Ramblings

My regular FM radio station bit the dust a couple of months ago and I’ve been forced to migrate the dial looking for another station that isn’t too irritating. Funny how that’s the criteria, find one that sucks the least… you know there is something unsustainable and rotten when that is the criteria used to find a service; and people wonder why the airlines aren’t making money?

Anyway I’m digressing from my point. The commercial air time is totally consumed by debt relief, credit card consolidation, reverse mortgage scammers and Life Lock identity theft protection. I’d like to address them all but I’ll start with Life Lock’s commercial.

I’m struck by the total ’skim over the content without thinking logically’ nature of the message. It doesn’t make sense but is delivered with total confidence. It is a confirmation of the emotional sell. No thinking; all emotion.

The opening statement is that more that n million people will have their personal information stolen this year.
True, since the average data breach involves millions of records. BUT that isn’t the same number that will suffer from an identity theft. That is a different number! we are already talking about apples and oranges. It’s not logical, just scary.

Then they talk about huge benefits like opt out of free credit cards offers. Ah OK I pay you monthly all year long for one task that is free that takes me 5 minutes and an internet connection? Great deal. They do other things too, the one significant item is an offer of help to fix any problem caused while you are a member, but they don’t tell you what the limitations of that are… that’s the fine print.

They close the ad by saying ‘call now and mention this ad any you’ll get a 10% discount! That’s like getting 1 month free!’ Uh last I heard the year was 12 months so 1 month free is not 10% off?

Is anyone listening while their brain is in gear?

My other question is why the only advertisers are catering to folks who need tax relief, debt counseling and such. Is our middle class in such bad shape. That’s scary…

PS - Today Lifelock was hit with a 12 million dollar fine for deceptive advertising and “their claims were bogus and accused them of operating a scam and con operation” Read More Here

With the sunny days this week I was able to use my lunch hour to add more rocks to the lower pool wall. I’m about 6 feet shy of completing the circle! Now I have to order the tile. I’ve decided to use an off white talavera with accent tiles of luna y sol…

For wome time I’ve been working on restorations of a BMW R71 and a Volkswagen Kübelwagen. They area almost done and I took advantage of yesterdays sunshine and fair weather to pose them in the yard…

Now that the surrounding rock wall for the pool is getting near completion I have to pick out what type of surface I want for the bottom.

I have two main ideas… I like the glass tiles because they have depth and will add colour to the water but thye don’t quite flow with the Mexican motif. The talavera tiles seem more natural. I’d do a pattern of mainly off white tiles with an occasional painted tile thrown in. Perhaps like the kitchen with the sol y luna tiles?

Preferences…

a Saturday update…

Worked more on setting rocks, about 9 feet of wall done so far. Man this is taking a long time, but it is looking good…

It finally stopped raining and got warm enough for me to cement more rocks on the wall of the fountain… It’s coming along more slowly than I’d like but looking good so far.

Next is to order an in line pump and the tiles for the bottom of the pool…

I was passing through Bastrop Texas this weekend on my way to an event in Anderson and I happened across this fellow in a parking lot. He was pulling in towing his survival home and stopping at the cell phone store.

This guy seems to have a lot of skills, talents and smarts in order to build adapt and maintain this mobile survival shelter. Something must be wrong in our society where people like him are homeless. I think it may be related to a statistic that 1 in 4 persons in USA are employed protecting the wealth of the rich. Here’s a link to that economists’ work.

Anyway he’s take two bicycles and welded them to a frame that enables fairly good mobility, added a platform that keeps him off the ground and looks to have a fold out roof for protection and there’s a propane heater on the back. When closed up provides a bit of protection for his belongings.

Sometimes the view out the window of my home office isn’t a cheery and nice as usual. Today it’s been grey, rainy and cold all day long. At least the indoor scenery can remind me of Spring approaching…

While on the way back from North Carolina over the holidays, Ursula lost 3^rd gear synchronization…further along the way 4^th gear lost synchro too. After limping back home with as few shifts as possible she’s at the transmission shop with her guts out being repaired.

Ursula up on the lift…

with her tranny removed…

…her guts on the operating table…

It got down to 10 degrees at the ranch on Friday night… coldest in over 25 years here in Central Texas. Despite having lamps with 150W bulbs in the water building and under the tarps protecting the lines from the water tank the lines froze solid.

The standing water in the fountain froze completely solid and three days later it’s not thawed a bit…

Fortunately I was able to get a very good pump service (Highly reccomended! AQUA PUMP & WELL SERVICE, INC.) to come out within a few hours to fix the current damage.

I’ve put heaters now in the pump building and under the tarps covering the feed pipes!

I know I want a nice little netbook like the Yoga and an E-reader like the Skiff. The money is ready to jump out of my pocket.

But the brakes come on every time I read about this hot new gadget it is accompanied by some text like this… “the Skiff is optimized for newspaper and magazine content and will use Sprint’s 3G network to offer wireless connectivity…”

Why would I buy a device that milks me every month and ties me to some contract of adhesion with a large company that can brick my device at their whim? Think it can’t happen… remember what Amazon did to the Kindle users, reached out at night and snatched back their lawfully obtained and fully paid content*.

Why would I go from a book that I can own, lock up in my library, loan to a friend and read anytime I want to “content” from service that can dictate how I use it and change the terms of use while I sleep!

Similarly why would I buy a netbook where I have to subscribe to a “service provider” in order to use it to do what I want with it?

Seriously?

* And if you think they learned their lesson and won’t do it again read this. “Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.”

Read closely… and translate… the meaning is that we will delete and control your content in a different manner; it does not say we won’t ever do it.