February 17, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 17, 2014, map of Ganymede.
Five years ago today: February 17, 2010, stents require replacing.

MORNING
           This is my “blues album” shot from the train ride. To appease any conformists, it is a north-south bit of track. I know you people, and east-bound trains just don’t cut it. Blues people like things to be geographically correct. So we sing about crawdaddies and cotton, not cows and corn. Those are for the “other” kind of music. This is a siding near Sebring. Yes, I know, all of Sebring is a siding. But these rusty rails can’t be beat for white folk dat’s got dem Blues. Usually in a saloon, at night.

           Before we forget, there is a new wrinkle on counterfeiters you should be aware. According to my pal who runs a gas station the newest scam is to spray the bills with hairspray (neodoconate copolymer). This coats the counterfeit bill so that the marker pens get fooled. I have not personally tested this, it is a rumor. And apparently the test is to smell the bill for the scent of the spray. Yeah, but how long before they get around that?
           My nice MIG welder is at the clubhouse and that isn’t working out. The club rule is that two people are present when the welder is in operation, but other that meetings, there never are. And the meeting times, the real force behind the club, are already taken up with other matters. I feel the welder can be used for finer work whereas Agt. M never uses it without the dial set on full. I feel that the welder should be able to handle jobs down to just slightly too large for a solder job.
           The snag there is that I am too cautious around high voltage. But last time, I set both my pant’s legs on fire, remember that? Gee, M, your floor feels really hot, OMG! Consequently, it takes time for me to learn and patience is not one of M’s outstanding qualities. Anyone who thinks there is a chance I might pay a stranger to stand around and watch me plainly knows zilch about my character.
           As my sniffles clear up, I'm home puttering, and I discovered something. Because there are a couple of wood cutting tools in my old kitchen area, it is not surprising that there is a small container of petrolatum (kind of like fine Vaseline), the oily kind, but used for keeping down small plywood dust. The tube went missing, so I grabbed a large bottle of, let me read this label, “Smooth as Silk Designer Body Lotion”. There’s proof I was married to an actress, but anyway, this goop gets on the dry, splintery wood of the old “letter O” of January 8 fame.
           Be damned, next day I go to pick up the dry brittle piece and you guys who think the old lady is wasting money on these crèmes ought to see this, or I mean feel this. Even the end cuts take on a kind of honey-like feel, what back in physics we used to call mellifluous. If that is what it does to an old 2x6, trust me, that concoction is going to cure her dish-pan hands, tout pronto. The bottle I have is at least 15 years old and here are the oils contained: mineral oil, lanolin oil, sesame oil, jojoba oil, and wheat germ oil. It also lists “essential vitamins” and the usual made-in-America unpronouncables. All government approved.

NOON

           “The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.” --Jaqueline Kennedy.

           Lucky me, this head cold is subsiding already. Going to the shoulders more, which I don’t mind. I read up on the history of a German disposable anti-tank weapon, the “Panzerfaust”, for “tank fist”. It must have required a lot of nerve to fire, since it was only good for 100 yards. At that distance, you can taste and smell a tank, and you can feel the ground moving.

           Toward the end, the tube was made of cardboard and the entire weapon cost around $22.50. A lot of people mistake it for a rocket weapon, which it is not. Rather, it works on the recoilless rifle principle. The front site is the upper edge of the shaped charge head, clearly visible in the photo.
           By the way, that charge is incredible, it could easily knock out any tank in the world twice over. It would be deadly today. It comes with instructions on where to aim it at the Sherman and the T-34. The explosion completely swamps the entire tank in the blast. A hit anywhere on the tank will stop it by stunning the crew from concussion.
           It is a mystery to me to this day why this weapon only accounted for a small percentage of the recorded tank kills, both Soviet and western Allies. Unless there is something they don’t want us to know. But our trusted politicians would never keep secrets from the American people. That would make them paranoids, with something to hide. What? You say that rule only applies to non-politicians? I'll have to get back to you on that one.

AFTERNOON
           My head cold. Other than having to breathe through my ears, I’m okay. Any MIG welding experts out there? Nope, and that’s what I thought. I’m on my own again. I reviewed as many videos as I could, I think I got lucky buying the right type of welder for a beginner. I’m convinced it is a matter of practice. I believe what happens is, I think, this wire has a core that releases an inert gas that forms a bubble around the spot being welded. Makes a sound like frying bacon. Okay, but I haven’t eaten bacon in years.

           I want to learn how to weld very tiny pieces. It seems like there isn’t much help. For that matter, not a single good topic is found on a search for how to weld small pieces or light welding. You get ads for a welding light. I think this is going to be like electronics all over—the bastards know exactly what you need, but no way. Sometimes the scumbags will even try to convince you that you are asking the wrong questions.
           But, I figure that welder has a low setting for some reason. I want to avoid having to learn about metallurgy. I‘ve learned if a magnet sticks to it, chances are it will weld. So, sit back for the learning experience. I know from years of e-mail, many people have learned things they found impossible until they read up on my approach and, this is important, my failures. I laugh at people who laugh at failure.
           Shown here is the brand of welder I bought. The switch with the yellow arrow says “MIN” and “MAX”. All I can say to all the bigshot experts so far is, “What is the MIN setting for?” Oh, for wimps and wooses like me, huh? Fine, I suppose you can’t cook rice either. Plus, you are all liars because regardless of what you say about a good welder making long and straight beads, I have closely examined small joints and I know they were done in little sections at a time. That’s what I want to learn. It sounds like a skill all the tough guys won’t admit they can’t develop.
           Now, when I say small pieces, I don’t mean like the welds you see on bulb filaments and motor windings, but structural parts that could be used in robotics. Like a casing I need from two tomato juice cans. Say, that might be a good place to start. When I was young, I worked a few months on a pipeline and watched the sections of pipe grow as teams of welders leapfrogged each other. But what I remember is those welders were making $330 a day back in 1975 and they were a pack of drunken bums.
           So that it is recorded, I have tried soldering and brazing small pieces, which are okay for structural parts. But any type of motor shaft, drive mechanism, or parts that get jolted from the side don’t hold. I was probably doing the braze wrong, but I could probably have broken the pieces apart with my bare hands. Certainly stepping on them would show they are brittle, hence not suitable. I tried pop rivets, but they will twist, and you have to be an acrobat to get at all the places a rivet is needed or work only on tasks that fit on a countertop. The same is probably true with welding, but you expect it.

EVENING
           Feeling better and famished, I thought to go out tofind some whole wheat crackers without, you know, the same ingredients as hand lotion. Easier said. It probably cannot be done. I was desperate enough to finally read the label on a can of pork and beans. Even that is laced with yucky high-fructose pseudo-food. I wound up dining on a giant tomato from the Russian market. It was the only thing left with ingredients found in Nature.

           If that’s not exciting enough, I pass Agt. M riding his bicycle down Federal two hours after dark. I dropped past his place earlier thinking to get to the beach for those star sightings and to test my artificial horizon theory. Great, by then it had started to rain. Now just you watch, it will be cloudy for a few days, just when I am hot on the trail. You conspiracy people need only check out what the Florida weather does to celestial navigationalists and you won’t have time to worry about the Rothschild’s FEMA farms.
           And here are the ticket stubs from my travels this month, so far. This is important because it represents I am totally back on my feet again, but actually, that has been true since December 2010. I retired in May, 1996 (youngest ever retiree from the phone company) and had only one setback, a medical condition. I was nearly bankrupt by late 2009. (And guess when the peasant class decided to gang up on me?)
           Bearing in mind that I am not a millionaire, rather my plan was that if I was not rich by age 30, to avoid spending my life as a debt slave. To spend my income, such as it was, to enjoy life to the best I could and not to waste it paying bills. If I knew then what I know now, I would have lowered that to age 20. And I would have become a merchant sailor and seen the world.
           Back to reality, I don’t classify Miami as “getting out of town” as it is only 33 miles away. Yet it qualifies because it is just over my 30 mile limit. What you are seeing in all these trips now is the money saved by visiting Miami. You see, the reason my retirement is great is not that I have money. I don’t. But I plan well for what I do, and I have a surplus at this point in time because it is so cheap to go into Miami for the day. The average trip there and back is like, less than $25.
           And February isn’t over yet.

ADDENDUM
           Since the navigation study went so well on the Winter Haven train, it makes sense that I should attempt to shoot a planet. The process is similar, according to the four books I own on the subject. In someways it is easier, providing you can find the star. For a little background on my approach, I arbitrarily chose November 18, 2014 as the day to study. It is a nothing day that is neither solstice nor equinox and I learned the hell out of it.

           That means I can tell you what every number and section of the page stands for and how it is used in position plotting. And why. I learned that the horizon in “nautical twilight” is not visible, making it useless for sextant readings. But on the same lists are the moon and planets. I chose to look at Saturn, follow my reasoning here.
           It has all the “readings” for a planet that I need to study. I know this from the Sun, so I’d best start right off with an object that fits what I already know. Then, there is Galileo. Back in sixteen-something, he saw the planet rings. I never have, yet I own a pair of 7x35 binoculars. Before I forget, those are the ones I got for something like $2 and fixed up. The optics are perfect, so now I want to see the rings of Saturn.
           Shown nearby are the calculations that brought me within the long-hoped-for one nautical mile of accuracy. (It is the tiny item "a=14" near the lower right, above the plot diagram.) Like all my critics, I regularly sit down and utilize full pages of complicated computations and reckoning. It keeps the mind sharp. And I know they would review my work for accuracy before they’d say anything derogatory, isn’t that right? Hello? Patsie? Are you there? Oh, she was busy feeding the penguins. You don’t wan’t to know how that is done. Moving along.
           Since planet readings involve going out on a clear night and finding things, I have also decided to locate Fomalhout, the start. That decision was easier, I plain like the name. We’ll see if we can find a clear Florida night that isn’t cold. I don’t like cold, I don’t generally like people that like cold. What? At the bottom of the picture? That’s just two 1-oz silver coins I keep for paperweights. I mean, with the currency situation being what it is these days, doesn’t everybody?


Last Laugh
If anybody knows Ken Sanchuck,
tell him we'll need his address.

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