MORNING
America, the idiot’s paradise. The pundits are recommending we wait for Windows 10, since MicroSoft has quit supporting the existed systems due to “disappointing sales”. See, MicroSoft, what happens when you hide all the commands people got used to over the previous decade? No doubt, 10 will be no different, MicroSoft dictates, it never learns. I’m so happy to have lived long enough to see the dying throes of that company. I predict 10 will be another 1.
The club meeting this AM was early and brief. That’s something, on my own, I’ll shop around for the breakfast special, but with the club, $20 is nothing. That’s because the club is so much more efficient than working in isolation. The exact opposite of Nova, one might say. And everyone who sees the new improved camper wagon thinks the same thing—we could sell this. But I say wait, it is far from complete.
My motion to wait a few days until the electrical tests are complete was carried, and also to delay placing the deck plate. This adds thirty pounds to the weight. Last year it became a struggle to turn the wagon over whenever I had to get at the frame. The explanation is I was worried about throwing it off square without the plate. This mistake will not be repeated.
Here’s a poser for you. We got to discussing this weight and nobody could answer this question. Does weight distribution follow a trigonometric pattern? I say yes, but can’t back it up. If two men stand on two scales and hold a 100 pound bar between them, each scale should show the man’s weight plus fifty pounds. But if one man sets his bar on his scale an walks away, does it read exactly 50 pounds, or more because the bar is no longer horizontal. I say yes, but can’t back it up.
My reasoning is elementary. As one end of the bar gets lowered, gravity no longer acts perpendicularly. Here’s the quandary. The lower one end of the bar gets, the more it “weighs” until the bar is upright, whence 100% of the weight is on the bottom end. Thusforth, no weight exists at the top end.
Using trig, I opine, the weight of the bar varies from half (50 lb) to nothing (0 lb)from the point of view of the man holding the other end. Agt. M says the opposite. If one man lets go of his end, the entire weight is suddenly experienced by the other man. His perception of the weight goes up, not down, and stays that way until the bar comes to a rest, whence he feels only 50 lb again.
My response is that the bar should only be measured at rest, that is, fixed in place like a trailer axle. That every buddying physicist avoids the comparison of moving to stationary properties. We may devise an experiment over this. I studied physics, not engineering.
Walmart has changed their used paint policy. Now you have to go there “on weekdays” and check with the manager. In other words, quit wasting their time and buy new paint. As before, I will locate a new source rather than go along. I can’t stand businesses that save money by passing the cost on to the customer. It costs to travel there. And you can bet the manager won’t have a clue if they have any paint, but you can of course, keep checking back. But if you think they will just write a discount price on it, put it on the shelf, and let you go through it like you did last year, well. You just don’t know how to run a business.
I’ve heard there is a super-Target store out on University. Maybe I’ll go take a look. (I never did make it there.)
NOON
I watched a few short documentaries from the same series as Graf Spree. What a gap between leadership styles. On the German side, the officers seemed in control over a confused battlefield. The Americans tended to be a few highly placed officers, but all the rest ran around in near panic. Where an American would get on the radio or send an underling to get the facts, the German commander would get in a staff car and drive out for a look himself. But on both sides, I got the impression armored warfare as being great scenes of dashing tanks, until the first thing goes wrong and it becomes a traffic jam.
Something at Walmart this morning got me to thinking. I walked through the kitchen utensil area and saw a package of six cookie-cutters on sale. Several paces onward something clicked in my brain. Did I just see what I thought I saw? I stopped, backed up a few steps, and looked at the package again. Yep, all six cookie cutters were identical. Who, in their right mind, I thought, would buy . . . but then I thought about the women I’ve met since I moved to Florida. Close enough.
NIGHT
Rehearsal went fine, we are making progress. Trent is paralleling my learning curve on the guitar. He tends to play fourths instead of thirds, a matter that has to be deliberately unlearned. And I need a lot more time on chording, it is still the whole chord or nothing for me. But I am getting in far more hours on the instrument than I’d anticipated. We elbowed our way through Tritt’s “Here’s A Quarter”. If you are expecting the hit parade, it’s not here. Only pre-1979 classics. We aimed at “These Boots” and “Love Me Tonight”, with a stab at the excellent bass line of “Long-Haired Country Boy”.
And that weight will be closely monitored. It turns out the only easy way to get the weight of a sheet of plywood is to buy it first. The 3/4" plywood of the first unit was probably considerably more than needed just to keep out the elements. It sure gave things a sturdy feel, mind you, it did not even buffet much in the wind. But do I dare take the floor plate down to 1/2". This, and many more exciting details to follow.
ADDENDUM
Confirmed, barring a miracle, it is the end of Jimbos this 30th. Best little club for me, some seven years of entertaining, hardly missing a weekend. It will be missed. On the other hand, I carved that position out of nothing. It is not like somebody came along and said, “Here’s a ready-made gig you can take over.” Did I make any money over there? Best kept secret on the planet.
Did I ever tell you about the worst job I ever had? It is well known how my own parents promised to put me through university and then cut me off the instant I left home to do so. If I had known, I would have borrowed enough in a student loan to get through the following summer, but I was young. The only thing available was a janitor’s job at a laundry. Not a coin wash, but one of those plants that brought in commercial truckloads of factory uniforms and hotel towels. My job was to swab the floors, which were made of a soft brown linoleum material so the carts would roll over it.
These carts left black streaks of their caster material. The place was always hot and steamy. And segregated. The Chinese section, the Spanish quarter. I also had to empty to garbage bins and the Spanish ladies would peel potatoes for home on their breaks. The place was an immigrant sweat shop, other than the German owner and his cronies, I was the only white guy there. But that’s how desperate I was for money. Meanwhile, my older sister was living in an air conditioned apartment and driving two cars paid for, in part, by all the money that had been promised to me.
This job paid little more than minimum wage, I was reduced to barely surviving. Fortunately, two months later, a Chinese high-school friend of mine walked in the door and told me about a factory that was hiring. I walked out without notice. It’s the only time I didn’t give notice, but I’ll tell you why I did that.
The Kraut that owned the place did not, in itself, hate university. He hated people that went there to get a better job, sort of that any task they did meanwhile took a job away from somebody who really needed it long term. I saw his point, that university was for rich kids, poor kids like me were just there being pretentious. I should be backpacking in Nepal every summer, not sweeping floors. Oddly, there are still a lot of people who see university in that same light. A continuation of high-school but with no age limit.
The old Kraut would give me onerous tasks just to see how I’d handle it, but I was on to him. Still, he never made my life any easier, like whenever you’d do something wrong, he say things like is that what they teach you at university. So you’ll know, he only found out I’d been to university because one of the other employees had seen me there and told him the first day. It was my first summer out of university, and I was to find out later there were far worse attitudes toward working students than that guy. Try lumber mills in Montana.
Why, I happen to know a lot about the attitude of old Germans who run factories, and how they consider themselves a superior form of human to those who work there. It isn't as bad as the English, who vote themselves to become royalty. At least the Germans don't force you to worship them like royals, but they really do think they are smarter than everybody else if they own a factory. Even if their family gave them the factory.
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