Admittedly things are slow right now. Expect some action once the tourists arrive next month, maybe. This stretch is my traditional doldrums. A cool spell has arrived keeping things a perfect 78 degrees. Nice for a bike ride and I’m going to sink around $54 into the eBike. Not for repairs, but general upgrades, like heavy duty tubes, tires and brake pads. Generally the eBike has proven its worth. I went for a ten mile ride for my exercise and the lead acid battery is already showing signs of age. I get barely 15 miles per charge instead of 22.The new lithium battery weighs maybe five pounds compared to 20, but at $350 each, I won’t be placing those on a $400 bike. Having sincerely nothing to do today, I did the rounds, including a trip to Lee’s bicycle for chain grease, then to Radio Shack for what is proving to be wasted time. I like the place, so it’s with regret I say they don’t carry the parts like they used to. All their electronics is for beginners, for that matter, less than beginners because at first I thought it was me that couldn’t find the right components.
Now I see they don’t have enough for the hobbyist, even at three times the normal pricing. (That’s still better than seven times at Alfa.) Sadly, M and I have had to cancel the club meetings or often just talk on the phone because we can’t get required pieces, even as salvage. We must get past all the logistics before my programming skills are any good. One hugely positive development is that when we build something by hand, I will often write a program to test it. This is the opposite of what they teach in college.
Then I ran into Guitar Eddie. He can’t chum the old haunts anymore because the second hand smoke was bothering his lungs. I grew up in a smoking household so it doesn’t bother me. I don’t even notice it even walking in from the fresh air. I told him about my guitar practice and he agrees if I carry my bass habits over to a six-string, it will be an impressive show. So watch out all local slackers, you days are numbered. What Eddie means is how I do not revert to simpler patterns as soon as I begin singing. Don’t tell him it is much more elaborate than that.
A surprise for me to discover one of the first Arduino programs I wrote months ago is appearing in textbooks as an advanced project. Ha, it was one of my first attempts, the program that flashes the light the number of times on the button you press. Remember that? It’s the same old story, the well-funded people are beating me to the punch, but now by months instead of years.
It somehow reminds me of a kid in my scout troop, a nothing personality, an average student. Yet when he went to university, he breezed through medical school with such high marks he was hired as a professor on grad day. Then again, it seems like Cortez and 530 men defeated the Aztecs, but it is easy to overlook that he had the resources of an empire backing him up.
Here’s something. The ill-informed now have their own website. It is called OutKube and designed to “lure moronic Internet commenters away from all other sites”. Created by a coalition of media sources, it contains confrontational posts “carefully crafted to draw in dim-witted web users”. This includes those with views on gay rights, Sharia law, Jewish media control, the New York Jets, and the second amendment. Finally, half-brains of the world have a place to call home.
Once Outkube became active, newsrooms all over America and Britain began to report their panels were again having intelligent discussions. The site employs professional moderators to keep things as “idiotic as possible” and claims their users “take the bait every time”. One powerful tactic is a popup (if there is no keyboard activity for over 15 seconds) of a woman’s picture asking if she is “fugly” or “doable”. An estimated 65% of their 40 million users are male sports fans. That figures.
I found the site using the Red Skelton formula of searching washroom walls for the best comedy, and it was great for an hour, then I quickly concluded it was being fronted by moderators. You have to join up and be a member to see the good stuff, an option I declined. What, you didn’t know that’s how good old Red got his material?
I came home early both from being unaccustomed to “going out” on Fridays and from failing to find a source of 77 feet of enameled copper wire needed for my next project. Things will remain at a crawl until I can afford material or we gain the resources to order in bulk. I can’t be paying $5 for ten feet. I should make friends with some rack rat and get access to the phone company roll ends, though it is 22 gauge where I’d like 30.
