One year ago today: January 31, 2016, Wal*Mart facts.
Five years ago today: January 31, 2012, America’s problem is the government.
Nine years ago today: January 31, 2008, we hate “job agencies”.
Random years ago today: January 31, 2011, you mean the Billy Graham?
MORNING
Here’s your cover-up news event being glossed over by the mainstream media. That papermill near Pensacola that exploded last week is now all hush-hush. The mill was mostly abandoned except for the part that produces industrial gas. One death. The media claims it was a loading bay accident. Not so, say churchgoers and residents up to twenty miles away who said it sounded like a low-flying jet going over.
The company has since claimed it was nitrous oxide, an invisible gas, but several pictures show an orange-brown cloud over the plant. Humans are pretty much evolved not to breathe any gas you can see, and I heard nitrogen dioxide was that color. The residents also report that after the explosion, a tar-like substance coated the roads and caused contact and respiratory inflammation. Wait, there’s more.
The company has since set up a tent on the plant lawn and allows only nearby residents to ask questions, one-by-one. They were expecting a “town hall” type meeting, but no dice. So the concern is what else is going on? The media quickly dropped the story and got back to digging around for anti-Trump trash or anything that could be construed as such. There was a quip in the local paper today.
The report was hidden in a left-hand column of page B4 amidst the zoning change notices. Darn tootin’ there is something funny going on. So, the question to ask is who has the power to get away with storing toxic chemicals near populated areas and the muscle to gag any investigation thereof? Monsanto? Cargill? Union Carbide? Take your pick, because it ain’t the Bhopal Girl Scouts.
A few of my books on celestial navigation have advanced chapters that I skated over since originally I was only after a working knowledge. I’ve since taken to reading these and, by George, some of it makes sense. Most of my hobbies have been on hold since I moved here. It will still be a while before I set up my soldering station, my PA system, and create a space for my lesser activities. I’m getting things done by myself but I won’t be winning any speed contests. Don’t get me wrong, I would not care a twit if I die with 50 unfinished projects. I would still like the satisfaction of getting back to my intellectual pursuits. Fixing the house is fine, but nothing compares to good research.
I might add that my complaint to Tractor Supply has their head office scrambling to make me happy. I really mean the head office in Brentwood. This cowboy knows how to write a complaint letter. They are pressing for the details of the store, but hey, this is a small town and I’m not about to point fingers. Home Depot has the same bottle jack for 30% less. My real complaint is how Tractor Supply has put me 50 days behind schedule and if I got the jack tomorrow, the time is lost and we are in the middle of a cold snap. In business all delays are costly.
Oregon wheatfield.
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NOON
You want a mini-laugh. Okay, you know how I sing by imitation? Well, over the years I’ve gotten good enough at it that I can belt out a tune along with the jukebox that is so exact, it sounds like two jukeboxes. I sometimes do it to give a dull place the head’s up that a good song is on the way. The humor is, other people who’ve heard me do this have taken to trying the same, and it doesn’t work. Ha. Even when they are on key, they can’t begin to match the tiny little nuances of the original, at least not the way I can. I thought you might find that funny.
This is the only “blueprint of the kitchen screen door. You can see it dated 2017-01-14, most of the time since then has been waiting for paint to dry. This is the sketch I drew from memory, I added one center rail, shown here, but changed that to two when I got there. The little red circles are where I counted how many dowels I’d be needing. On the edge,you can see the various joinery techniques I considered before settling on the dowels.
I found an unwatched DVD, the story of the Walker spy ring. That’s the guy who was selling navy code secrets for years, buying houses and cars and nobody suspected a thing. I barely remember the details and the movie is from a three hour TV special, so the first casualty is accuracy. I recall he recruited his family into the business to carry on after he retired. Didn’t he get a slap on the wrist? The navy certainly doesn’t mind since every time the Ruskies gain anything, they [the navy] just ask Congress for more money. And get it.
Helium-3 is back in the news. China, quietly, and private American companies have been planning on mining if for years. The hitch is that it is not available on Earth. You have to go to the Moon. It’s a potential energy source and this one is quite real. It makes safe, clean power plants. Don’t worry, it won’t put away all the self-serve gas stations, it isn’t a portable technology. Myself, I always thought that industry would zero in on extracting the helium rather than going looking for it in space. If you’ve never heard of helium-3, go look it up. It’s an interesting beginner’s physics lesson.
Alas, the program was nearly over when I cranked the radio this morning. It’s that Wall Street broadcast with the guy with the insect voice. Did he say that Saudi Arabia is actually talking about instituting an income tax? That’s all the indicator I need that their oil reserves aren’t infinite and that they’ve squandered all the petroleum dollars received so far. Building cities to look and act like the west but walking down the streets dressed like nomads.
However, make no mistake about it, the purpose of the income tax, as opposed to most other taxes, is to keep files on the private lives of each citizen. Keep tabs on every business activity, place of residence, ages of every child, name of every spouse. They won’t need tax revenue for the foreseeable future, but it’s never too early to start the erosive private files. They saw how America did it over 50 years, starting with the DMV. How you start small, and gradually turn the driver’s license into identification, then require people to produce it for most purposes. Never kill the host.
“If we’re not supposed to eat at night,
why is there a light in the fridge?”
NIGHT
She’s chilly and that is top story. Seriously. This is like being back on the prairies where only one room of the house is heated. Mind you, that’s not because I’m cheap but because my heating gear can’t keep up. If I knew I needed more, I’da bought more. True, I didn’t buy to save money—but my motive was never to bitch about the utility bill. If you can’t afford to heat or cool your place, get the hell out there and chop firewood. Then maybe somebody will listen to you whimper.
As admitted, the screen door frame is too weak. It is already warping in the weather. However, it is forming a cup, which is not a bad thing if I can figure out how to bend it back when the screen is installed, thus stretching it super-tight. Next time, I will use lumber at least an inch thick, may 1-1/4” for the outside rails and stiles anyway. But what you see here will have to work for now.
And I have sad news, my friends in Maimi closed the restaurant. The place was a landmark, it changed the character of that neighborhood. Now it’s gone, but it will be replaced with something, mark my words. Even opening that business was a milestone, a tremendous accomplishment at a time when the rest of the economy was taking a nose-dive. They outlasted all the competition and my advise was they take a long vacation. I say, get in the car and just drive somewhere for a few months. See the countryside. Make some plans. They did nothing wrong, it was the externals that changed and all businesses are vulnerable. Personally, I think they should take some serious time off and celebrate.
Antennas. The failure of the robot club antenna venture is history. We tried and failed to build antennas. If you read back to 2012, you’ll see pictures of the very high-quality units we produced along with descriptions how we could not get any of them to work. The alleged experts were no help, so the project was shelved. What do I find out today? Elliott, from the left coast, is an antenna buff. For thirty years he never said one word, until an email this morning when he described modifying a TV antenna. This guy and I used to discuss business matters an hour a day for over eight years and the topic never came up. Now you explain that one.
The trick is getting that guy to write. I got the (no defunct) club to okay an antenna kit purchase, there is still $1,173 in the account which technically belongs to me. Technically, but that’s okay, I’ll be spending in on technical stuff.
ADDENDUM
Here’s a real chewy addendum for you, death and taxes. Don’t conclude I’m in despair over anything. I’m concerned about Social Security unless Trump goes in there and cuts off all the people who don’t deserve it. That would shift them onto welfare, but who cares? Stealing is stealing. My concern is that to catch these cheats, they enact laws that cause difficulties for new applicants.
I’m the type that takes all bad news, even rumors, very seriously. That’s lesson one when you work in a cubicle. So I’m going to tell you a little secret that will disappoint those who think I’m a good example of planning ahead. In 2007, I made a separate 10-year plan concerning the inevitability of my own death. This should have been a plan a beginning in 2009 for a variety of strong reasons, but in 2007 I was, shall we say, deteriorating. Hence, my ten-year “death plan” ends this year, not my planned early retirement date of 2019. I’ll never starve. I could rent this place out, I have reliable people to do that, and go live in Arkansas.
So, what’s my point? Well, you see, every month it seems there is a change to the system I was relying on. By 2019 I’ll could be 100% reliant on pension income, though I’ve planned otherwise. You bet I’ve cause for concern when I hear that while the laws themselves don’t change, the bureaucrats are continually fiddling with the formulas. My calculations in 2007 were contingent on absolutely everything going right. Nowadays, I’m not so sure.
You see, very few people get the maximum any more, and those are the ones who put into the system for over 40 years. That’s a lifetime and it’s a pretty piss-poor dollar amount in return, though you can presume a person who actually worked all that time has other sources and a paid-for house. Unless they worked for the phone company, in which case they will retire as broke as the day they started. Ha!
The rumor is they will adjust partial year credits and early retirement rates, both of which concern me. But the one that is scary is the lowering of the definition of “rich”. This disqualifies anyone above that amount from tax breaks and benefits. There are some sources that say a family making over $40,000 per year is rich. We already talked about this, and it’s no a pretty thing. I don’t lay awake in worry, but I’ve run the numbers. In the worst-case scenario, I could get half what I was expecting. That would piss me off because at the time they took my money, there was no such provision, it was a social contract. I paid my dues 100% and expect 100% of what was promised at that time.
However, the now-retiring middle class has been driven to desperation. Most oldsters are just getting by so they will never upset the apple cart. The government gives lip service to catering to the senior vote, but in reality, no senior is going to become a lightning rod when he can’t survive the tiniest interruption. If the government announced they were cutting all payments in half, the majority would do nothing. They’d be glad to get that. What a pitiful situation.
Meanwhile, inflation marches on. Prices are ten times higher than that day in my teens when they taxed my first paycheck. And most of that increase has been in the past few years. The average Social Security check is around $1,350.
Last Laugh
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