There was an advertisement on TV about General Motors entering the pharmaceutical industry. They made a big point of how there were synergies between the car and drug businesses. For instance, they could save hundreds of millions of dollars on studies by using crash test dummies as test subjects rather than humans. They showed an example of testing a topical acne drug on the crash test dummies. None of the dummies developed acne, and most of them had only minor side effects such as skin discoloration. One had its head fall off, but that was considered to be experimental error.
I found someone who offered to put a new engine in my Oldsmobile Cutlass for $500. When he was done, I met him to pick it up. I popped the hood, and there was no engine there; he’d outfitted the engine compartment like a trunk. He said he’d put the engine in the back. I looked in the trunk, expecting it to be full of engine, but somehow the engine all was recessed fairly far into the trunk, leaving lots of room. But he wanted $2000, and furthermore that was just the first payment of $20,000 he said I owed him. I had no idea where I could get that kind of money. When I got in, I discovered that it wasn’t actually my Oldsmobile. Also, the new engine did have more power, but it sounded terrible, with lots of knocking and other bad noises. I tried to get the money from a local businessman I knew. He had seen in the news that I had been reported as a missing person, and called my grandparents to pick me up.
I was at the San Jose airport wandering around looking for someone or something, and not having any success finding him/her/it. I was carrying a large tabby cat, and after a while my arms were getting very tired. The cat was mostly good natured, but occasionally squirmed around. I wandered through all three terminal buildings without success, whereupon I decided that I needed to search long-term parking. I was worried that they wouldn’t let me on the parking shuttle bus with a cat, but they did. Later I met someone who recognized me, but he apparently wasn’t who I’d been searching for. He showed me that my great aunt had a web site with the genealogy of all our family’s cats.
I went to a ham radio meeting. Everyone was showing off cool stuff they’d found at the latest swap meet. A few people knew that I like old computers, and were offering me stuff, but it was all fairly recent PCs (though in exotic packaging) so I politely declined. One guy had an elaborate presentation on display technology, from simple indicator lamps and LEDs through CRTs and LCDs. Everyone wanted to talk to him, so I only got to talk to him very briefly myself, but he mentioned that he had worked in HP’s display division, then transferred to the calculator division where he wrote the firmware for HP’s fourth handheld calculator. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get his contact information or email address.