TubaOrNotTuba

I got my education through the public system. I mean, there were a few bumps along the road, but on the whole the taxpayer helped me to learn how to read, write and do all the calculating I needed. That remains true right through university. Today I watched a video talking about the movement in the United States to turn education into a business. Some of the familiar terms would be charter school and vouchers. Seemed a little silly to me until I remembered something from half a century ago. While studying in education we had a professor that tried to convince those of us who were going to be teachers to consider going into the private school business. Not established schools but rather ones that we would establish. After all we were all keen right? Well, we could put together a curriculum and set up a pricing scheme and convince certain parents that we were the way to bring the future to their child. It became a subject for conversation around the common room and the lunch table. Imagine if we started our own school and we could decide what was going to be taught. We could pay ourselves enough to ensure a good living and a good retirement. No need to bring in the taxpayer in this one. Sounds familiar right? Obviously none of us did such a thing but I remember that the professor had a certain interest in such things. A small business that allowed governments to pay a private company that he owned for certain parts of education. It has been said that there are truly no new ideas just recycled ones. And while recycling is a good thing for the environment there are costs. I will watch what happens in the debate elsewhere. And I remember that the song of the siren, cash in my pocket, was there even when I was young and inexperienced.

I miss the good old days. Back when I didn’t have to put things away carefully knowing they will be hard to find. My friends had a joke where they would say that it was always in one of three places because that’s how I rolled. Now I actually lose things even here in the house. I have objects I haven’t seen in months and yet I know they’re not far away. However the share magnitude of going through drawer by drawer to find something as innocuous as a charging cable leaves me saying that it can wait it’s no longer one of three places. I now work on one of three weeks. Yes I will get around to it. Triggered by boredom probably. But it really becomes overwhelming the simple act of pulling out a drawer empty the contents on to the bed sorting things out and putting them back into place can take hours. With no way of knowing if I will actually find what I started looking for. Plus, I become distracted. Another one of those look at what I found moments. Meanwhile the radio stays uncharged am I close remain unsorted and I now understand that law of thermodynamics that I so missed back in high school. We’re now waiting for the next coffee delivery. A matter of days apparently. But it means I just can’t go and just draw another coffee. Great moments of in certainty. But hang in there. Eventually i will sort those things and move on to the next part of life. Or maybe not. The book can wait. So can the movie.

When solving problems do not rely upon experience. Also look at the symptoms. We had a new condition on the RV after winterization. The water pump would not shut off. Now someone with less experience would jump to the conclusion that the pump must be broken so I should order a new one. But that isn’t the only solution. Thanks to the other minds who frequent user forum, she who owns the vehicle learned that if a pump does not have access to liquid it gets insulted. It stays on wanting to solve a problem that does not exist. By adding another couple of gallons or jugs of winterization juice which you may know is antifreeze to the water tank everything returned to normal. Going forward we will know this but without the help of other minds in the forum the solution would not have been obvious. We can now go ahead towards winter without that niggling worry of why doesn’t the water pump turn off. Some problems do have solutions and they do not require you to replace parts or call in expensive experts. Do your research. There is a large world of expertise out there just waiting to be asked. And no, winter is not upon us yet, but our days are counted. I see the temperature and I know that water freezes. I know that I would, too, if I decide to hang around outside for too long. I wonder what life is like for those who live in really warm places. You know, where it never freezes.

Based on what I can hear it’s a windy evening. I’m not going outside to check because I don’t need to move around that much. Anyhow we had a day in this city. More precisely a day at the local hospital where I go from time to time for my eyes. Because I want to keep track of these things, I’ll use this as a place to document what happened. We arrived on time. Give or take a minute or two. And on today’s list of things to get done a chance to look at the laser. I know those devices come with strict warnings about not looking at them, but my doctor has other ideas and so after a suitable number of eye drops, to shrink or enlarge the parts that he wanted to look at; I was told to sit in the proper seat and look at the bright light. And then he sat and etched a path around my iris. I did not see it, but I could hear it and feel it. I think I have 30 new tiny holes. Little tender and there was some nausea involved that’s all part of the game. The whole object of this exercise is to keep my internal pressures down. Currently, it summers around 9 and he would like to see things a little lower. All very subjective. But with the promise that I could come back in a couple of weeks for another look, alone another laser, we returned home. Everyone is talking about snow tires right now. Not us because ours are in order but everyone else is comparing notes on whether or not they’re ready for the inevitable snow. We will be because we have no long range travel plans until the new shoes are in place. Also, winter starts slowly, and we should not have any big accumulation until after the holiday season. Still a long way off. And, back home, I returned my usual place to do the usual things. No sudden improvement in my eyesight but the doctor assured me that all those holds would not give me a perforated remove as wanted section. It’s a doctor thing I guess.

It was not my intention, but today I took a primer on painting. Virtually. Which set off the discussion or the study was finding an answer to why the local paint store might have 600 colours of white to sell. I know 600 is an exaggeration but barely. And it turns out there’s a lot more going on than I had thought because paint is science. We are far removed from that time I helped my uncle to cover a barn door using lime and something that wasn’t water. Anyhow if you’ve ever painted you learn quickly that the coverage is unequal and uneven although the cost never goes down. And this video explained what’s going on. Explain about all the different reflective and chemicals and everything else that makes the local paint store into such a money pit. In this video the idea was to repaint that awful brown colour used inside the average RV. Replace it with something a little more human. And it can be done. You just have to be willing to spend a little more from the get-go on your paint. Forget the can of bargain basement primer because that’s where it belongs in the basement. Instead, invest. With some counselling. Paint stores have staff that know what’s going on. And if you ask the right questions and show them what you want to do, they will find an answer much faster than you will. Forget the old school method of taking paint chips. They have apps for that. And remember that in an RV the colour of your lights changes almost from one side to another along those panels. Move carefully and do not be satisfied with the first thing you stick on the wall. I say stick loosely these paints do not like to stick. That’s why they sell so much of it. But if you take your time you can go from brown to white or light or something. Just treat it as a challenge

I have learned that focusing on the people in a movie can take you down some dark alleys. So, instead I am looking at locations. It turns out there are people who like to find out where a movie was made. Especially when it involves real locations and not just a soundstage. Today I learned about the making of the Rocky Horror Show. The movie version. Someone found the building which served as the set. It is now a hotel but back many years ago I don’t know how many it was a place that was rented for the making of a movie. The roof leaked so badly that one of the main stars became ill. When you visit it now in the company of someone who has a good eye for such things you can spot all sorts of artifacts throughout the building. Some of the main features like the elevator are gone but there are windows and doors and cupboards, gates and all sorts of things that makes a location into a location. I found the whole thing very interesting. Not enough to go and see it for myself but to know that others have gone that way and found where the motorcycles parked and where the different details such as the lab was located that’s interesting. Although the narrator was given to over-the-top expressions perhaps as a part of his own age, he did point out that it was not all done in a studio although the studio was nearby. There are probably costs involved and this old mansion served their purposes perfectly. I think I will follow the channel and see what else I can learn about places I have seen in movies and that others have taken the time to find. Interesting and inexpensive road trips for the next winter. And a good reason to re-watch some movies from a lifetime ago

This afternoon I went into proactive mode. We’re still probably weeks away from snow but I had to clear the deck a furniture so I could eventually clear the deck. It’s a real thing if you have heavy furniture when the snow comes everything becomes heavier. I’ve learned to be very careful when moving heavy objects from up to down. Gravity might be my friend but if I missed my step, I will be underneath rather than on top. And so, I simply moved slowly and carefully over and over again to get the furniture down to ground level. All good and it serves as a reminder that the stuff is much heavier than it probably needs to be. There you have it my first real preparation for the next season. On another subject I watched the documentary on the making of an old adventure movie. One done in the days before CGI. Imagine the kind of time it takes to go into a small town and have the people remove all of their television antennas just so you can do one shot. I guess there’s a budget for that kind of thing and it’s probably faster than painting them all out by hand but for those watching movies we forget the things used to be done with a lot of attention. The movie? Why, the first Raiders of the lost ark movie. It seems like a very long time ago long before I ever heard the term CGI. Did they even have it back then? I probably should rewatch the movies I think there are five of them now or maybe 6. I haven’t seen them all so I can only guess. I like that in the most recent movie they were able to bring back the original indie without getting crazy into the CGI. According to what I’ve read he is aged very well.

From where I sit, life is just a collection of interrelated anecdotes. Here’s one. I used to collect recorded music. On cassettes from other people’s album collections. I was young and had no shame. And I collected over a number of years hundreds and hundreds of different titles. Despite my willingness to live in community life at the university I lost only one album. And I can tell you which one because that’s how I work. The title John Mayall. I know, he did a lot of different albums and I cannot tell you for sure which one but this was a double album of best hits. Required a full pair of C90 cassettes. A lot of music. And so, today, I went looking and found a documentary on his life. I lack some details but his work seems to have involved the greats of that time. Yes, Eric was among them. And now I am thinking that I should go refind the album and listen to it properly. I have the time and a better appreciation of what was going on. Maybe the album old part inspired me to do something musical. After all miracles happen. In any case if you are going through your cassette collection and you find my Mayall let me know. It was good enough that I have not forgotten it after all these decades. And all the other cassettes are gone. It would have a unique place on my bookshelf. Of course, I would have to go out and buy another cassette player that is just a detail.

I am no longer in the market for high end computing devices. Actually, I have not been in that market for over a decade practice fun to see what’s being sold to the public. Yesterday I listened to 1/2-hour broadcast from Apple Corp advertising their most recent machines. No, they still don’t make my toast and coffee. However, there are so many little, tiny processors under the hood that I was to take the rest of my life I still wouldn’t be able to count them all. Do I really need a computer that can handle a dozen simultaneous displays? Or feed data to a dozen other machines at the same time? The answer is, obviously, no. I did check the prices. And in keeping with the best of sales the prices have not changed during the last decade which means that you now get a lot more for a lot less. I will probably never get to see one of these high-end machines because they do not walk around by themselves just yet. So, scratch another detail from the list. No toasting coffee, no coming to visit, just technology. The names evolve. If I was to go to someone and say I want to buy a new Mac they could probably point me to the dealer. Or I could open Amazon and let them do it for me. No need to involve a genius or pushy sales staff. It is all out there online and if you wait for a few days a big truck will show up at the door to hand you a very small package in return for all your money. Of course, I could find new things to do with the computer. I can let it draw pictures for me or make movies for me or turn my home into an orchestral pit. I am not going to do any of those things for the moment. However, Apple Corp if you want to send me a sample just get in touch, and I’ll give you, my address

For most of us we tend to forget things. In particular things we have learned in a classroom setting. Do not blame the teacher and do not blame the student. Today I found myself thinking back to when I was learning radio theory and in particular radio jargon. There always is jargon. In the case of communications, a lot of that becomes codified. You were taught to say things in a certain order with a certain pacing so that others who have learned similar things will catch on to what you’re doing. It probably is not good to grab your microphone and yell help. And so, for fun I watched a video made in a classroom in I believe England where they were teaching correct radio techniques at sea. Voting if you will. And because most of this is used internationally, I felt immediately at home even though my classroom time happened a lifetime ago. You know I could probably do a decent emergency call up even after all this time. I was well trained, and I was tested regularly, and the brain holds on to things like that. What I enjoyed in the video was seeing how newer technologies are integrated into the field. We have better tools than we used to. And a lot of things that we took for granted have been codified into the radios themselves. You press the right button, and it does things that you used to have to do based on your training. It does not negate the need to train the operator. And so, watching people give emergency call-ups means that we are still doing things the way we used to, but with better tools and that’s a good thing. Am I going to race to my radio and shout to the world? Not a chance. Because the most important message I took away from today’s class was, that you should talk as little as possible. It makes sense in our busy world.