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Tales From The Trailer Court™
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
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DOES NOT represent any average American life-style.
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
May 19, 2026
One year ago today: May 19, 2025, my most important event.
Five years ago today: May 19, 2021, that wood, that floor.
Nine years ago today: May 19, 2017, panning for shark teeth.
Random years ago today: May 19, 2007, is it that important?
Some cheeriness to get us underway with morning coffee. The game camera, after so much waiting, finally got our Lady Raccoon stopping by for brunch. This was y’day morning and it shows quite more detail than at first. She still drinks from the bird dish even if other water is available. She is well-fed when she picks at the food as seen here. Her shuffling shows the arthritis I’ve seen progressing and she is not as agile climbing the pole. But she is alive an well and I’m putting an egg out for her later this morning. Welcome back, Lady.
One for-sure around here is we know how long batteries last. That applies to AA and AAA cells which have their own database. That is how we know something changed three years ago this week. Cells that used to last in usage four months, like wireless mouses (not mice, mouses) and small electronics dropped to five weeks. Because the records are by battery size, it just took a while to spot the period the deterioration began. Calendar says food mention, so it’s a breakfast medley, spuds, sausage, eggs, with fried red onions. And listening to NPR.
If you ever feel down or dumpy, listen to a call-in program on NPR. You’ll cheer up realizing what dismal lives their audience leads. Would you take dating advice from a queer from Tampa? Some would. This week’s gist is the old kids-no-kids marriage issue. I take sides on that one with a “yuge” distinction—the attitude of the married couple. I’ve always seen marriage mostly as a final admission to settle down and have kids. What I don’t like is the couples who got married so he could finally get steady sex and she to get a steady supply of money.
We have the election year viruses hitting the news again, and they are pushing the nonsense that 70% of people are vaxxed. That’s got to be media hype. If you meet anybody jabbed, they are likely to express regret for it. Absent from the broadcasts is the very mention of the turbocancer situation. Don’t expect mercy, as the general attitude is sheeple deserve their consequences and the vaccine hoax is just one more example.
There’s no word for it yet, but when the MSM tries to use its standard foolery on-line, it can backfire. Most of it takes the form of laughable disappointments because USAID money is cut off. They try to fake raise money or gaslight it. Like that lady Senator who tried to raise $100,000 for her defense, claiming she had 119,000 followers only got $790. Or witness there has not been a single rap song on the Billboard Top 40 since USAID quit propping up their album sales. Tens of thousands of black focused web sites have disappeared.
Much as I disagree with releasing partial counts during active voting, this time the alarm is raised. There are 12 RINOs in the news as anti-Trumpists, and 10 of them, by the looks of early stats, are on their way out, and it is barely noon. Cheating is too dangerous, but they seem to have counted on “past performance” momentum that is not there any longer. They’ve disgusted their own votership. How about the entire MS NOW crew demonstrating their complete ignorance on famous lines from the Constitution, duh? Ah, I heard someone back there ask, if I don’t watch TV, how do I know what gives with MS NOW. That’s easy, I, at the mall, once walked past a TV playing an MSM newscast, so I know just as much about them as the rest of you. Skeptical? Try me. But the rule is no names, I don’t give a FF about their names. Nor would I have any idea why their names are important to others. A clone is a clone.
My study today was a look at the variety of laws that address “destruction of evidence”. These vary by jurisdiction, in many it is a subset of tampering with evidence. This is where things get sticky. There is no clear distinction between what is evidence and what could be anybody innocently erasing some old files. It’s a touchy area, because when charged with such an offense, there is the implication that you willfully destroyed evidence against yourself—and you have a Constitutional right against self-incrimination. You might think this is an unsolvable paradox, but in reality, most lawyers and judges take sides very quickly. Personal property which you have every right to destroy could suddenly become evidence without your knowledge. I just plain do not like such laws.
Texas bat-watching.
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This time you can ask if I’m work tired. I was in the shed most of the afternoon working my normal pace, or justabouts. Without thinking, so there’s an improvement over having to plan to walk across the room. I slapped together a box shelving unit to shove some of the boxes into order instead of stacked on my nice carpeted bedroom floor. It looks messy because I’m not done organizing. If you say that type of box-bench-shelf could some day double as a window planter, go to the head of the class.
The Israeli David’s Sling (renamed 2006 Raytheon “Magic Wand) has a new A.I. guidance system. This old hardware with new guidance totally illustrated how warfare has changed from physical vehicles to electronics. It lacks the publicity of systems like Iron Dome and has my attention because of the “warhead”. Unlike other missiles with explosives and proximity fuses, this weapon has to actually hit the target.
It’s not a big asset if everyone of the competition has everything you do. I feel my most productive years would have been age 24 to around 38. The exact years I had to sacrifice everything or I’d be starving now. Life has been nasty that way. Years wasted paying rent and taxes so others could have an easy go of it. But that’s another story. My interest is how the missile finds the target. It is launched vertically, therefore dives down on the target, meaning it must discriminate it from ground clutter before anything else works.
How about the GenX media expressing a desire to return to land lines, film cameras, and handwritten letters. Gee gosh, is that what you’d call future shock revisited? It’s a little too late for the masses. If only somebody had warned them and warned them and warned them.
ADDENDUM
I laughed at gold panning in Florida in 2016. I knew my cohort had not done his research, but his knowledge of the land eventually proved somewhat useful. That was Agt. R before he disappeared into the wilds south of Brooksville. Panning in the river at Wachaula, a half-hour from here and I’ve never otherwise been there. When I saw the price of “official” gold pans, I’m reminded to take the handles off any old frying pans around here.
The FBI are moving toward that system that monitors license plate, but on a national scale. Scary, once again because it does not confine itself to criminals. Of course some will say that makes the opponents paranoid, when in fact they simply do not to live in a surveillance state. I can see some jurisdictions removing the plates. It is really the opponents who are paranoid, it reminds me of that story about the people trapped in an elevator when the cable breaks.
As the cage speeds toward the bottom, one guy says, “I have an idea. Just before we hit bottom, everybody jump.”
The other passenger scream at him, “What an idiot! That won’t work!”
He replies, “Okay then—don’t jump.”
Monday, May 18, 2026
May 18, 2026
One year ago today: May 18, 2025, a delightful departure.
Five years ago today: May 18, 2021, who were not pilots.
Nine years ago today: May 18, 2017, first big project.
Random years ago today: May 18, 2014, Russian health food.
Some possible sadness, everyone. While we have a plump new family of very well-fed brownish-grey birds, we have a missing raccoon. She has not been around to her feeding dish, which I maintained randomly to ensure she did not get dependent. Even put some of her favorites out, leftover macaroni and bread crusts. Nothing touched in five days and if I did not say, there is a bad aroma occasionally in the kitchen where I’ve chased her from under the floorboards before. Today contains a pic of a yard plant that is actually flourishing in my sand patch.
Here is your photo-tale that shows how the flat repair turned into an all-morning jamboree. The flat was getting faster and this tire has defied every attempt to find the leak, including replacing the stem. No luck, so if I’m going downtown might a well do some bills and shopping—knowing it will take twice as long as ever. Make that all morning. First you see me using the Bauer to top off that tire. It was then that I noticed, although the rear tires are the same make, they are not a matching set. Normally I would replace both.
Nope. Over at Wal*mart, the shop won’t touch the $116.46 job because, shown here, one of the studs is missing. Policy. So then to the tire shop in Winter Haven. No sense wasting any more time on this and speaking Spanish helps override difficulties with the odd stud gone away and high prices. There you see the repair completed for $45 in cash. There is a neat Spanish word for cash, “efectivo” that opens a lot of doors. Sadly, it takes the younger people a moment to recall that this word really means “under the table”.
This put 40 miles on the car, so I drove the extra 5 miles to the discount for cash place. That came to $3.90 per gallon, that’s almost 50¢ a gallon cheaper than in English. So I tanked up, getting home late to find we have an appointment on Thursday. Good, I sunk the bucks into the vehicle just in time. The primary (elections) for the mid-terms begin this week in many states, so I was listening to NPR, the anti-Trump network. They are going on about Trump having a low 44% approval rating, but fail to mention that is twice as high as any Democrat candidate anywhere else.
Watch for violence and sabotage. My instinct says the Democrats were taken by surprise and know this round could seal their fate as a political entity. If Trump planned this, it is a masterstroke. They are not going to give up without a fight and they have killed before. California is the worst in that the Left figured they had the place sewn up, but rumor is three times as many people are voting Republican than they bargained for. Could this be the long-awaited upset of the Democrats and their New World Order. The one that puts them in charge.
Something has to jolt the masses into action, maybe the choice between food and gas to get to work will wake them.
Glancing at the FBI budget reveals a trend I never liked—the spending of millions to track down petty thieves. Make that worse by adding in cold cases, but I stress I’m only against wasting public money when the quarry is non-violent and not committing more crimes. I read about seven agents traveling across six states, running up a $3 million dollar tab to catch a guy for breach of probation. He was a hacker and there is no doubt the Feds hate anyone who is better at that game than they are. Hacking is wrong, but if he never steals anything, is it $3 million dollars wrong? I say no, not when there are others hacking election computers.
Complete radio station, nowadays.
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Wise as I’m getting, I took a long snooze and finally got up with the energy to cut some box places with the relatively unused arm saw that is frozen at 45°. Actually, it wasn’t, but it was so hard to adjust, I jammed it there just after Xmas—and am just getting to it now. This cannot directly use the Golden Ratio jigs made up for my regular boxes. But hey, I made those when I had to. It took a lot of hours to get the existing jigs to work, methinks I will have to repeat the process from scratch, as even on-line they avoid this topic—unless you have a major sliding compound miter saw.
The limitations of the small laser are more apparent, though the real constraint is my imagination. What can be done with this that nobody else is doing, yeah, I know, easier said than done. But the overall lack of innovation for (three American) generations now must leave some kind of opening.
The neighbor was out painting so we had a visit over the back yard fence. Both of us chuckle to hear others say they have hobbies like us, as in music and painting. You just know they are lying, anyone who thinks playing live music is a casual pastime for extra money should have to spend a year in Nashville. (I save money with music, not make it.) Why does something tell me that 3D printer will wind up the same, as in something that is supposed to be fun and money, but is not. I found once again I’m adjusting my budget and that larger printer may not be in the works. When the shop removed the flat this morning, I asked the owner if he could spot what was causing the issue. Easy, he said, your rear alignment is out.
This was the problem with the Ford and I know how to work around it. Calculate the offset of replacing a tire every 8,000 miles against the cost of an alignment. I was quoted $260 so that is within range, just not right now. And the Hundy is not for heavy use. It’s already saved my bacon well over the price tag of $3,000 so I don’t mind keeping it in decent shape. I asked two places about drilling that 1/4 inch hole through the firewall for my starter, both did not have the drill bits.
Then a couple videos on so-called advanced bass techniques. All dominated by guitar players who really don’t know how to play bass. First mistake is using your fingers. It deadens the sound and in any case, is a phony technique championed by Guitar Center to sell bass lessons. The average walk-in has seen stand-up bassists pluck the strings and is easily convinced that’s how you do it. Some of the advice was good, like keeping your fingers close as possible to the strings and one dude actually hit on playing thirds, but as a finger exercise.
ADDENDUM
I wonder, can that anesthetic have long-term effects? This morning I had to shrug off that identical “fog” that persisted a few days back in January. It’s easy to test, try a couple word puzzles before morning coffee. Not exactly scientific, but you’ll know. Or try some meridian angle math in the east or south. For once I have the time to sit and think. Over the past two days I’ve experience burning, stabbing sensations where the nerves were dulled, like they are trying to come back. But they don’t, the long-term numbness is as bad as the first day. I’ve just learned to live with it.
In all these decades, I have finally met another writer. That’s not somebody who writes for a living, but one who enjoys writing. I doubt I’ve ever known somebody who does it for a living. Then, my next-to-last guitarist begins actually answering e-mails. He’s on my “casual” list, folks who I think may be interested in a subset of my goings-on, and of course he will know about Kooters by now.
He does not know about the blog, but would know that anything written will have a permanence not attained by talking. Kind of like recorded music. So, with that unique permission, let’s see what he has that is blot-share-able. He is a published author and has these book-readings, a part of publishing I never cared for. But you get that a lot in the entertainment field. Somebody you wouldn’t know writes a hit song and strangers become fascinated by what he did before.
The Prez had two grandkids when he moved, now he has four. Family barbeques and always some wonderful crisis, not to mention I saw his garage. He kept all the paraphernalia of his own crop, so the new kids get all the real toys. What today’s wusses would call danger toys.
Sunday, May 17, 2026
May 17, 2026
One year ago today: May 17, 2025, getting up again.
Five years ago today: May 17, 2021, 67 cents a pound.
Nine years ago today: May 17, 2017, this means you.
Random years ago today: May 17, 1998, a book review.
It’ already half-way to noon, I slept in, but I found this old footage from 2012. It’s a sidecar jaunt through beautiful Coral Gables, Florida. That was also a Sunday, rare because a few weeks later I rode all the way to Denver and stayed there for months. It is not adventure that lacks around here. But even the right spirit needs money and youth—the best I can do is claim I never wasted a opportunity. How I’d live to have the sidecar back on the road. With the right equipment, even Tampa becomes an exciting town.
I made up pancakes and spent the morning as it should be. One neighbor working on his tractor, the other building small wishing wells. Did I say about that? He builds novelty lawn ornaments and why don’t I? Because he has a house full of wife and kids that can ring up sales 24/7. The neighbor behind is painting pictures, and across the way no sign of life in months except the porch light at times. About as far as you can get from GenX America as you can get without going hermit.
It’s a new set of rear tires for the Hundy. It’s within budget but I see the a battery light. Not good, this is a new $165 battery. I’ll check the alternator for voltage, the only test I’m equipped for. Um, alternator testing was one of my first gripes about stupid millennial posters. If you go on line and search for this test, 90% of the responses will be from dumbtard millennials. The very reason a consumer would want to test an alternator is to see if it needs replacing. Yet these videos show some gimp testing the unit on a work bench. That, folks, is a special kind of stupid.
This morning was for planning and review. Like most Americans, I’m spending twice as much on food while the government is trying to tell me inflation is 8%. They don’t know I keep tbs and $20 worth of groceries in May 2023 now costs $38. Checked also was the gasoline budget, not looking good. I’ve earmarked tomorrow for vehicle maintenance, it’s news not for the work, but that I feel well enough to schedule it. I could not find any problem with the alternator just said, which means it might be something parasitic. Very hard to find in older vehicles where each department runs its own wires.
In further planning, I have a 180-day supply of meds, which are the standard heart pressure, thinner, cholesterol, and water, plus what I now know is permanent anti-gout and diabetic. That let’s me keep a half-year planned. My condition still wavers but stays consistent over a day or two. Well more than enough for me to look right through this summer and to November. Nine years past my planning horizon. That is, zero long-term plans that did not originate before that time, and I’ve been living mostly by budget guidelines in a world changed out of most recognition.
I’m playing Green Day tunes, a band I never cared for, driving two vehicles, and where I once wrote down PINs and data I didn’t want to lose, I now etch the information by laser into wood keychain strips. This is now some 30 years since retirement, that is since I got up to go to work. I obey my own rhythm, I wonder if history would rate me a success on that? I did not plunge into youthful debt and waste my life on payment plans. But I still paid.
Wat Samphran, Thailand
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It is 3D printer time. Allocating 2 hours study time for each 30 minutes hands-on, I have examined the apparatus and found all parts there—so it seems. The print nozzle has a temperature and positioning gauge not explained very well, but we have not yet turned the printer on. It is under a blanket in the red shed lean-to. It needs a better roof over it and a sturdy bench to rest on. I’ve talked with Mason, the student, and explained the rules to him.
Hmmm, the literature I have read tells me there is, once more, far more capability in the machine than most people ever use. Unless I have a superior college grad, experience tells me there is a classic mismatch between the dude who sets the machine and the one who operates it. I’d best be careful not to wind up being the one with the headaches. I was not impressed by the mass amount of filament needed or the price tag. Mind you, I did learn to like my laser, did I not?
Here are some cautions in the printed matter: Do not print anything illegal. Never make food storage vessels. Don’t make any electrical appliances. Do not put printed objects in mouth. The hear impossibility of inventing anything new with the device means I have allocated only enough money to figure out how this thing works, not to put it into production. Here’s a view of something I found rare – useful items printed in 3D. A fuse holder, desk vice, model train boxcar, and stackable ammo boxes.
Next it makes sense to investigate what could be printed. Like the laser, the market is already flooded with all the easy, corny, novelty, and impulse items. Hence the conclusion these tools are only good for prototyping, requires a lot of brainwork. Can you thing of a small, useful, sellable item that could not be produced more cheaply in China once you invent it? My thinking is I would like to see about printing some plastic gears. I scrolled through a thousand pages of on-line designs without seeing anything with real appeal.
For me, the hope is to combine these technologies with other things I can do that others might not find so easy, but that’s another chapter altogether. But, no need to convince me it only takes that one good idea, though for me it would be fifty years too late. But I am stunned why nobody has yet invented things like a sextant that reads automatically. (There is a Korean model with a digital read-out but that’s not what I mean.)
Saturday, May 16, 2026
May 16, 2026
One year ago today: May 16, 2025, at light speed.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2021, they’ve learned . . .
Nine years ago today: May 16, 2017, offending the unsquitable.
Random years ago today: May 16, 2012, on stenography.
Let’s get to that Kooter’s logo. It’s the color design India cropped me off their web page. Nice, but not suitable for laser imprinting. Grab a coffee and let’s see what we can do. Photoscape to the rescue. First, turn in black and white and get rid of that shaded background. Brighten it to the max and do the same with the sharpening filter. Keep looking, you will find the setting that lets you crop circles. Ha-ha, did I just say crop circles? The trick is keep what you want printed above the laser’s white or blank resolution.
mmm, only a half-hour and we have something usable. Take a look at the two side-by-side, the rendering direct from jpeg, then the final output for now. I know that Adobe has the function of changing these graphics to SVC files. But I don’t put Adobe on an Internet computer because I’m not quite that stupid. Without a vector file, each logo requires ten minutes burn time. With accompanying sparks and aroma. Fun and games‽ (Yes, that is an interrobang, and if you see the phrase “hard-to-find 3rd IQ digit” on-line, yep, that was me.)
These views show the results almost to scale but otherwise not that accurately. It appears number three looks best, but it is number four. And the fifth is a “vector” that is junk. Since the software file has no visual edit, you cannot remove that outside border. And the graphic is a lame outline, similar to that Arduino scribe or sketching program I tried many years ago.
The tradeoff with my equipment is time or bother. You can lighten the scan by moving the laser faster, then darken the imprint by making more than one pass. This won’t do, so I stepped through each “free” vector converter on-line. The results are a mixed bag of crap, let’s say I’m still working on it. I cannot be the only person unhappy with the offerings. To date, I would warn impatient people away from laser etchers. There are dozens of desolate dead-ends awaiting you. For example, scorched tabletops, disappointing delays, countless bad results, and the need to have an attended and convenient work table nearby—as if your desk is not already cluttered enough.
It’s pork fried rice for brunch, by mid-morning I am still on the vector conversion path. As usual, 99% of the services are dirty, lying, cheating scum with their fraudulent “free” claims. Worst are the douches who step you through a “free” trial and zap you with their lame price at the final stage. They must figure you won’t back out now. What complete and utter lowlifes, the strange part is how they think they have latched on to something new. The same scams were around along before the Internet—but nobody was ill-bred enough to do it for a living.
South Haven, Michigan.
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According to the James Webb, this 71-galaxy cluster is the largest known single object in the universe. Here is you speeded up pirate copy for those, like myself, don’t think publicly-funded offices should be able to copyright anything. It is near the edge of the event horizon, but don’t quote me on this. NASA has a bad reputation for miswording these type of discoveries. Meanwhile scientists say they are baffled at the increase of AIDS-like turbo-cancer among vaxxed young people.
By 6:00PM, I made it to the shed and built this “bedroom box rack”. I’d measured it out before January and made several errors. Thus, my net gain shown here was one box. It looks neater, you did not see it before I landed in operating theater. My bedroom doubles as a hyper-convenient workshop and that’s the way it will be. The rack was really so I did not have to move more than two boxes to get at anything and for that, it works admirably for a two hour project.
As shown, the boxes are just thrown into place to get them out of my way. I’ll make it more efficient. This is the first real strutcture I’ve built from pallet skids and it was fairly nice to work with. Mind you, keep your clamps handy or it becomes a two-man job. Since this worked well, I think I’ll make a bench along the picture window with storage underneath. What do you think?
My music blurb, which states I am interested only in a duo, has alerts a Lakeland five-piece outfit has been checking and re-checking recently. So I pulled up their profile and so can you, at youTube, They are a five piece, but I’ve jammed with the singer and lead player some five years ago, probably in Auburndale again. They do the Legion circuit and they are loud. Big bands are almost a full-time job.
Which brings us to tonight. I would normally have invited India, but decided to check out Kooters on my own. The guitarist, Jack, was not there. I was way in the back but instantly recognized superior vocals—and also how-and-that the lady with the guitar was not playing most of the time. Aha, I’ve seen this before. Who remembers the mother-daughter band that gave me the runaround? I hesistated because I did not recognize the daughter at all. I remember the girl at 13, not the married woman at 23. But when she began singing her old song list, it clicked. That’s the daughter and she’s back from Nashville.
Aha, again, for the reason I hinted as a warning ten years ago—these other yahoos are failed guitar players and will never stick around. Tell you what, here is a video clip. Recognize the lady? I didn’t, but that is one familiar stage. I’ve played there some 30 times. Remind me to send a copy to the Prez. Let this band happen and there will be no looking back. I already know her entire song list but it is a different band without the mother.
ADDENDUM
It seems Trump’s policies are causing disruption over at OPEC. People tend to forget that organization is a cartel with the sole purpose of inflating oil prices. That tactic works when there is nobody competing with lower prices. That is exactly where Trump is applying the pressure. I don’t know the finer points, but if the cartel falls, the gas should be under a dollar per gallon. I gather the situation in Venezuela could cause the Saudis to increase production at a lower price, which is not compatible with a cartel’s “artificial market discipline”.
Friday, May 15, 2026
May 15, 2026
One year ago today: May 15, 2025, brazenly prancing.
Five years ago today: May 15, 2021, step one to riches.
Nine years ago today: May 15, 2017, one massive crime zone.
Random years ago today: May 15, 2026, an evolving art.
Aiming for a quiet day, will they let me have one? It’s been a few days since I’ve seem granny raccoon, so I set out one of her favorites—potato peels. Nothing. So I set the game camera and now we wait. The day was a little too quiet. I fell back asleep until 4:00PM. If we have any pics today, it will be after that time. India is out of town, Karen is visiting grandchildren, and from that ten days in the hospital, I have an extra $60 I can spend on anything I want. This photo is the 3-gallon tank off my ex-favorite compressor. It is planned to use it as a saddle tank. It made today's blog because it took so damn long to strip down.
Let’s check the news. Ouch, the Trumps are suing MSNOW for slander, and it’s a bad one this time. The whole MSM structure has been shaking for months now that the USAID welfare tap has been shut off. The good old days when they could invent the news are gone, but MSM has no tricks left in their bag. California moves to ban barbeques because some folks cook pork. Remember when they banned starter fluid? There’s backlash against data centers, while proponents envisage a State where all citizens are “on their best behavior”.
Since I was already sitting down, I read 14 pages of information on using plotting sheets, including directions on using the navigation triangle. There are several common uses for thee sheets that I’ll sidestep for now. It’s enough for me to find a single location, I don’t need to be adding wind, current, tides, and bottom soundings. There is a certain satisfaction to charting that data as a final step to confirm you got through the entire process close enough to be happy.
Electioneering, it’s better this year than ever because the libtards need to pull a fast one to even survive. We have 6 suspected cases of the rat virus the world over, yet they are ballooned into 2,700,000 media reports of “outbreaks” and “deaths”.
After hours go-kart.
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It cooled rapidly by 5:00PM, sending me outside work at least some. Nobody wants a day to go by without getting a bit done, do they? So here is my production for the next three hours. One generic box and a set of “spice” boxes for Karen. They are not done, one of the knobs is cross-threaded and I ran low on propane. I’ve run into a predictable snag—the best boxes now require cuts of lumber that cannot be sliced from a single picket any more.
Back in the cool with three fans operating, I looked over the mess I made of the navigation plotting sheet I tried to do from memory. It’s late, but I just made some potato mushroom soup and got to thinking.I should do the math that leads up to the plot, paying more attention to the figures that get placed and labeled. Could I then chart something like the position of the Sun? It would be a start—you don’t have to see the Sun to chart it. Let’s get started.
First off, how typically millennial the clock that shows on a search of GMT does not show seconds. What difference does 1/60th of a degree make to stupid people, anyway, it’s not like you are traveling to Mars. I’ve not 03:43:25 at Greenwich, Saturday May 16, in the year 2014. That puts the Sun at -236.6720° and I’ve encountered a problem. I have only trained my self to select meridian angles (local hour angles) in degrees and minutes, not decimal degrees.
As a study aid, I found I could place a blank plotting sheet on my desk and bring up a tutorial on-line. Then follow the tutorial in real time marking the same information on my sheet. The worst tutorials are the unrehearsed, usually with Captain Hindgrinder trying to wing it and draw his diagrams on your time. I found two handy tidbits. One is the identical charts my readings can be 60 nautical miles different from the demo—plainly somebody is mucking up. The other is the quality of the chart paper. It is crappy. The charts are printed on both sides, but anything heavier than a light pencil mark shows through. Any type of ink or marker makes the other side unusable.
And don’t skimp on your instruments. Get a real set of bow-flex dividers, for example. The compass school brands are not accurate when spread past 45° and often the tips cannot be closed closer than 8°. The sheets have many applications, I suggest you pick one and learn the hell out of it before moving on.
ADDENDUM
The 3D printer has to be tethered to a computer and I don’t have one ready for the task. What I can do is read the manual. I don’t like what I saw. To print a simple object, in this case a 3-inch tall money figurine, I quit watching after some 15 pages of settings and instructions. I counted some 70s option needing attention just to feed the plastic filaments. I know most are one-time tweaks but this is not what I have in mind for just now.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
May 14, 2026
One year ago today: May 14, 2025, a long day, I’d say.
Five years ago today: May 14, 2021, yep, $5 million.
Nine years ago today: May 14, 2017, the cost of nothing.
Random years ago today: May 14, 2008, why they howl twice.
It took 15 hours, but I’m rested. What news this morning? For nearly $700,000 you can have a handbag make of T-Rex leather. It’s reconstructed from proteins found in bone fragments. How about a volcano with blue lava? This photo is real, from Indonesia. That’s all the non-politics worth looking at, so let’s see what we can get accomplished on this otherwise sedate little Florida Thursday.
I made it up to BestBuy to look at those small Marshall amps. They have great bass sound sitting on the shelf, but can they “throw” that sound? None of these places really have a spot to check this. There is a price gap between around $80 and $300. The blurbs on many ads do not show if the units have a phono (guitar cable) jack.
The latest tune on my list is the old Seger hit, “Night Moves”, a song I’m indifferent over. But the bass line is a masterpiece. I detect three different bassists used in the original recording, or possible the same moody bassist on different days. The songster version is accurate but no tab can teach the technique. The faithful version used some open string double-stops that Guitar Center and 99.99% of guitar players hate on the bass. And I can chord on that instrument.
The other triangle costs about four times as much ($26) and was my present for getting the stitches out. It has a precipitous learning curve and trying to use it from memory this morning was my grim reminder that there is no substitute for hands-on experience. And I am totally out of practice. The new tool is called a navigational triangle, reviewed here long ago. There are excellent on-line tutorials, though those might not make plenty of sense to the uninitiated.
Oklahoma, 1951.
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That 3D printer needs to be put to work. A call to the young fellow, Mason is his name in this blog, and we met up at the old club for a chat. I needed to explain the printer is not set up and would require a space big enough for two people, plus storage of both input and output suppies. I estimate 80 square feet and have only one place I could adapt for that. You may recall Mason has a supply of treated lumber, though I would buy it rather than incur any claims in the future. And, I would need substantial help to ready the shed.
First thing to notice is the lack of entertainment. Before, there was sometimes weekend DJs or Karaoke, but no more. It is gone and you know my theories on that are backed up by statistics and experience. The club is flat dead and it can take years to recover from such bad decisions. Everything is gone, soon as you walk in, you notice the silence where the staff used to have free juke box music (to an extent). According to Josh, the owners have become stingy as hell about even that. The answer is to once again hire (and advertise) country bands. Except there are not really any left in the area except guitar duos from towns like Auburndale.
There are several other brands that self-identify as “social tonics” and “plant-powered living”. Willie’s Remedy, that’s what it is called. Look it up yourself, I advise you use VPN.
Lastly for now, I made no secret of documenting the downfall of the old club due to outsiders. This city is not big enough or positioned correctly for a Las Vegas style night spot and trying to do that chased away the regulars who kept the doors open. The cover story was that Cathy left a while ago to have a baby and work in a real estate office. I probably mentioned that although I never believed it.
Sure enough, the rumor mill is grinding slowly. There was apparently some hard feelings over the way the termination went. When Cathy left, so did all her friends who worked there and I recorded the four-month dead spell of zero customers. Frankly, I’m surprised they survived. Gee, if only somebody had warned them and warned them. Now, it seems Cathy is up the avenue bartending for the competition. I’ve played that bar and know the owner, she will have no say in the operations. The safe bet, if you ask me. Don't read me wrong, I like Cathy.
ADDENDUM
There is a lot of buzzing about the dude who recovered some bitcoins after 11 years of forgetting his password. The wording is slanted to convey that A.I. was used to crack his password. Fake. Deep in the article is mention that Claude (an A.I. chatbot) was used to sift through his old college computer for files that predated the bitcoin purchase. Hardly what it claims to be—and it is still only a claim. The report also claims the bitcoin was bought for $250 and is now listed at around $80,000.
The details are on GitHub, which I dislike. The instructions are so bad I can’t use them or find anyone to give a quick tutorial, so you can find more info yourself. But there is a legal battle or two raging over 3D software. Two facets of it get my spotlight. First, but lesser for me, is the question, if I buy your 3D printer code, does it belong to me? I say yes, by default, unless there is a plain and understood agreement in advance of any money trading hands. This issue overlaps who owns my computer and does anyone have a right to disable something on it?
Second is, if I 3D print something, who has any say about how I did it or my intentions? To me, the answer is an easy “nobody”. It sounds superfluous until you see what slicer producers are up to. A slicer is the major reason I do not use my 3D printer. It’s a reader that scans an object and generates a 3D printer file that creates a reproduction. True, that is why many buy a 3D printer, but the right-to-repair issue is far from settled. This makes me think, have 3D printers become that good since I last looked?
Anyway, the legal battle seems to center on a slicer named (a href= https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Forcaslicer.vip%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F09%2FHow-to-Install-and-Download-Orca-Slicer.webp&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=0d81fa82a4ba8b8fa607472dd1df37e685f9dd03ce917d65ffd49d6f971847a8>OrcaSlicer that disabled your printer when you they felt you needed permission.
I’ll leave you with that, but some guy wrote code that unlocked the lock and sent Bambu Labs into a fit. Because he did not copy their software as they claimed. He only enabled it. For the record, I have never dealt with Bambu, but I disliked them from the instant I first saw their website in 2023. This photo is a typical Bambu unit showing four color capability. Wow, that is bad English, but it is what I want to say. I casually once examined the improvements claimed by Bambu and found them to be hype-based. That is, a print chamber that stays the same temperature seems to me to be a requirement, not an expensive extra.
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
May 13 2026
One year ago today: May 13, 2025, queso zaragoso..
Five years ago today: May 13, 2021, uncomfy buffeting?
Nine years ago today: May 13, 2017, peculiarity in public.
Random years ago today: May 13, 2011, lost syntax error.
I am still in Miami. It’s true I don’t know anybody with a workable computer to post. So wait until I get home. Yep, it is sad how little the generations around me know about the computer as a tool. Those older than me either have no computer or have one they can barely use to get on line to game and check the weather. Those younger are no help either. They have four or five favorite apps but cannot type or spell or use a spreadsheet, yet consider themselves power users because they are on-line 15 hours a day.
We did not go chasing women as planned last evening. I got home and fell asleep. Nine hours later I was home here today, same thing again. Zonked out. I had one appointment and I fasted, which turned out the right plan. Because for all the plans and promised made during my recent stay, my primary care clinic had not received any of the records. More worrisome, what records they had were wrong, showing me checking into the wrong hospital on the wrong day.
The two clinics are only 8 miles apart, so I went up to new place to double-check on a few things, including the return of the LiveVest. It’s a good concept but the reality is I just went the critical 3-1/2 months without it. The plan is to test my heart again and see if I’m still groping along at 35%. That would surprise me, because the way I’ve been feeling, doubling that to 70% would give me super-powers.
Got to love that report of the dude who got himself hired, corrected a software bug that has been bothering him for months, then quit. And besides, few things better demonstrate what thin margin of understanding today’s “coders” have compared to traditional programmers.
Best I can do is round you up some random photos of the last 48 hours. Here’s time at the Pinecrest library, where the staff are anointed by above to keep you from viewing anything they don’t approve. And partially ugly, sluggish librarians do not approve of very much, I must tell you.
Classic ha-ha fence.
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It’s fire season again, which coincides with the Florida rainy season. It takes political genius to have the two coincide every damn year. Here is the view westbound on Griffith last day. There seems little logic to spending millions dousing these fires when a simple annual plowing of the perimeter would contain them.
Often, I use long drives to reminisce and review “cautionary” events, today was an example. Daily life is too interesting to fit this thinking in most of the time. Cautionary means a review of lessons from the past that are advance warning signals that continue to crop up all through the rest of life. Like why, without any planning, there are certain types of people who have never gotten past my gates. That’s why, when I bitch about them, it is generally third-party from a distance. That was always one of my incentives to operate at a surplus—you can reject having to deal with arseholes on a regular basis.
I have published (anonymously of course) my latest version of my theory that libtards have certain traits in common. Not their behavior. You can get an endless stream on that from any social media. I mean the root cause behind why they are so detested and detestable. Wow, talk about backlash—but my theory encloses that behavior by subsumption. While my theory goes back 60 years, thought I did not necessarily have the vocabulary or ammunition to fend off the inescapable reprisals.
Sometimes called the “Fairview Theory”, you know it by essence. It is the explanation of the twisted thinking of liberals, gossips, and most people who hate you for having a good time. It states the instrumental factor these people have in common is two-fold. They must go through their teens without getting any (or if they do, they get into trouble). That’s stage one—no sex back at the real and only time it counts for anything (it can take a while for the socially inept/inert to wrap their heads around that one).
The trouble starts at stage two. They get out of high school into a complex different world where the competition is even worse. They fall to thinking those lost sex times can be recaptured by everything from pick-up lines to career success to forceful measures such as prohibition. But it never works. They never again get the young pretty ones. Ah, but we’ve been over that.
What’s new is my contention that these types never get women under 25 who are not hookers. They know it, the women know it, and the world knows it. So to such people, every woman under 25 automatically becomes a “minor”. So, you can from that piece together what is really bothering such assholes, and why they become such staunch and unwelcome designated drivers. Now, that’s all pretty heavy, especially for the victims, and did I just say ‘subsumption’?
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