Yesteryear
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.

TMOR, the primary is where each political party chooses who they want to represent them if more than one person in the same party is running. This was normally a sleepy event but this time the weak and RINO Republicans are being weeded out wholesale. The Democrats finally caught on and are pouring millions into races out in Idaho and Wyoming, but it is probably too late. They can hardly win on issues, those nasty approval ratings again, and smear campaigns take time to orchestrate.
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.
Picture of the day.
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.

I have a desk model but will not quite slice through a standard 3-1/2” standard lumber size. The bigger saw, the one I used today, does not slide, causing the same situation in a different dimension. I do not own a decent table saw. Both saws are required to build a box, and today I cut just the four sides of a sample, which is on the laser just now cutting the Kooters logo. It is a large (3” diameter for my equipment) mendala that labors my equipment and takes forever. It will stall out the laser of moving too slow and too long, and cannot pick up where it left off if you let it cool down.
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.
Staying put tonight, I read the latest on robots and drones. The Chinese have a giang bugger than can scale walls. It won’t be long before one yards off with an ATM or two. My evening was not the usual tired time, I watched some movie clips. Best were scenes from “Greyhound”, a movie about u-boats. Interesting for me because I recognized a lot of the charts, commands, and lingo the sonar people were using. All from reading navigation and I saw the Morse code light flash the number 9.
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.
Last Laugh