Have you seen the place Patsie bought me last November? It’s a beauty. It turns out she thought I was living in Wallace’s place, which shows you how easily I could have taken them for a ride if I was as dishonest and sneaky as that family. She showed up one weekend in February while I was checking on the place. She caught me off guard, but only to the extent it took a few minutes to realize she thought I was still living there and another minute to put on the impression that I was.
You see, she had bought me this new place, but had not quite yet finished paying for it. Now it is mine. Thanks, Patsie, you have no idea how tough it was not telling you to your face what you are. Enjoy your ensuite. If I got a nickel to bet on it, I say you’ll use it once and never again. For you it ain’t fun unless you are causing trouble.It’s getting warm, leaving only mornings and evenings for work, a cycle I’m used to after all these years in Florida. Dave-O came by in the early afternoon. He has not yet figured out how to get here right at supper time for the good eats. I wish I could report something new and exciting, but the bottom line is that this remains a journal and not every day brings thrills.
But every day has its unique points and there is no yardstick for that. Today I found some contradictory diagrams on the Internet. I call the authors of such articles “netcompoops”. In the good old days it cost money to publish, so authors took care to proofread and correct, knowing and caring that another expert may actually read their book. Today, any yahoo can publish for the price of an Internet connection. (Myself, I don’t even pay that.) In today’s instance, I found transistors labeled completely opposite, complete with incorrect diagrams. Netcompoops. (I later took to just calling them "Millennials". Same thing.)
In another typical circumstance, my multimeter has a test port for transistors, but not one of the people I asked knows how to use it. But they all agree it is the sign of a good instrument. Lord love a duck.
I spent another hour (between calls to Colorado) testing every possible combination of transistors on the breadboard. I’m stumped for now. Even intentionally putting the transistors backwards causes the same results. What am I up against here? I have a theory.
Several sources talk about a transistor becoming “saturated”, a state where it cannot “pass any more current”. Are they trying to say it is “on full”? I suspect once the base current exceeds a certain value, it allows any and all current to flow, including the 5V from the Arduino. I have no methods to calculate or measure the correct current and my selection of resistors is simply too small to go trial and error. Time to think again.
There was a short documentary on the WWII action at Kohima and Imphal. These are the towns in Burma where the English stopped the Japanese advance into India. I was amused by the “British” aspects of the account, which stated a few heroic Englishmen held back the entire Imperial Japanese Army. It is known that offense requires three times as many soldiers as defense. Here’s the facts.
The Japanese “offense” had only 85,000 troops against the British 120,000. Even that is after the English had the luxury of removing 40,000 people by airplane. The Japs had no tanks or heavy artillery and no air support. The British had American-made Sherman tanks that astonished the Japanese gunners who could not stop them.
But the little known part is that the Japs had a small army of anti-British Indians and thought they needed only to get that army over the frontier into India to cause a rebellion. What the Japanese did not know is that the Indian army was no better led in 1942 than today. The Hindu generals stayed hundreds of miles from the fighting, content to eat grapes all day and running off to pray whenever a decision was needed.
To those interested in what became of Vernon Meyers, I can’t help. He disappeared. Seems he finally escaped from jail in Calgary, Alberta, and flew to the USA. He published a book called "Fifty Years In The Furnace" and I may have located a copy. I know he can’t be extradited because there was no legal sentence against him, he was held without cause. If there is any guilty party in all of this it would be Revenue Canada. Thugs and thieves, every last one.
I found out about his second trial, though. In Canada, there was once a legal provision for a second trial, that is, the disgusting double jeopardy. It was called “trial de nova” to give it a better sounding name. International pressure forced Canada to revoke that sick provision, but apparently they brought it back special just to get Vernon Meyers in 1970. Revenue Canada knows most people charged with tax evasion can’t fight back. Meyers fought back and Canada put him in prison.
By late evening I had messages from Colorado. Nobody up there is exactly dancing in the streets either. I know the recession has hit hard and I estimate it requires a minimum of $75,000 per year to operate a family. Operate? Yes, it is a business just like any other, and if it fails it isn’t called bankruptcy. It is called divorce. Today I bought turnips, now $1 a pound and a loaf of bread for $4.
Get a set of tools and learn to repair what you already have. Stop buying anything new, and don’t buy anything big until prices seriously start dropping. Think, is a lawn mower or a washing machine really worth $600? I’ll give you $50 for it. If a product or a worker is too expensive, don’t blame yourself when they lose, for charging decent prices is a part of a game that somebody must lose. Don’t believe the hype that borrowing money stimulates the economy. Woe to those who did not heed my warnings not so long ago and ever so long ago. Lose your late model car, dump your house, cut up your credit cards and live within your means. The party is over.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
