Now $240 over budget this month, it is time to pull in the reins for 30 days. I had to address the problem of the ants from the vacant lot beside me. Twice I got bitten in a week working in my yard. They were not responding to ordinary sprays and poison, I had to call in a pro for $80. It is clearly in the contract that was my responsibility, and I tend to honor all contracts. That’s why I’m still here after all these years, and doin’ better than most. Know what I’m sayin’, North Carolina and Canada? Then, I did what I do when it gets this hot. I went up to the library for most of the afternoon. I’m okay when the government borrows Chinese money to cool their public buildings. I said public.
From the dumb sales pitch department, we have Monex selling silver with one true, but asinine, pitch. They have bags of coins with a face value of $1,000 (4,000 quarters or 10,000 dimes), from years prior to 1964. Those coins were 90% silver, or around $25,000 per sack. The point is, the currency has become so debased over the last 50 years, there is no way these coins will ever again be cheap. But they are still legal tender. Hence the Monex claim that “unlike other silver investments”, the coins can never fall below face value. Yeah, but duh.
I’ve got some fan mail criticism of my distrust of government surveillance of private citizens. Wrong. I do not distrust them. I dislike them. Let me set a few people straight. This blog is not written to sell newspaper columns or win elections. I have seen too many hypocrites in my time, people who privately hate blacks, welfare, immigration and taxes. But the minute they are in public, they staunchly defend every lamebrain horses-ass middle-class ideal you could cook up. As long as they think they can be identified, they do anything to appear politically correct. Once back in private, the invectives start again.
I do not believe in that kind of two-faced existence. If it was Nature’s intention that everything be equal, the zoo would be full of cows. I honestly believe it politicians were forced to represent their constituents, the war would be over, the borders would be closed, half the useless government departments would be shut down tomorrow and the mass deportation of illegals would begin in earnest.
These are the words of someone who dislikes the government, not one who distrusts them. I defy anyone to prove I do not support the majority on matters of national concern. And as far as my repeated remonstrations of the authorities, if you don’t like my stance, get your own blog. If you want to give land back to the original owners, go find a dinosaur. On the really big issues, my readership expects nothing less than onesidedness. This is not the place for fence-sitters.
I put the familiar Schwinn 12-function speedo/odometer on the eBike. The one saving grace of this piece of shit gadget from the once reputable is that it only costs 11 bucks. It works with the ingenious method of a small magnet attached to your bicycle spoke that generates a small current in a coil attached to your fork once in each revolution. Schwinn could have done wonders with this concept, but they cheaped out. The entire operation is so beset by quirks and bad instructions, you will wind up using two of the twelve functions, namely the speedometer and odometer.
To give you an idea, the first setting is enter the tire size of your bicycle into the computer. Since more than on tire can be mounted on a given wheel size, you look up a chart that gives the number of millimeters of travel on each tire revolution, except they don’t tell you this. On a 26” rim with a 2” tire like mine, you enter 2099. Brilliant, there, Schwinn, but then, I’m okay with standard to metric conversion formulas.
You can manually scroll or set to scan through average speed, distance (trip meter), maximum speed, odometer, clock, and travel time. Travel time measures only the time you were actually moving, it stops while you are sweating it out at a Florida crosswalk. Average speed is also based only on movement. But Schwinn has been taking lessons from Sony by controlling all twelve functions with two buttons.
Said another way, they don’t work worth a damn. If you put it in scan mode, it won’t display is your total mileage. If you view the odometer, you can’t see your trip meter. The trip meter is even more bogus, in that you would normally expect to reset it to zero rather often. The instructions say press and hold the left button, but this repeatedly has no effect until suddenly, on the 20th press, it takes. But it also sets everything else to zero, your odometer, your clock, your averges. Everything now has to be re-entered including your tire size.
How do I just know Schwinn management drink their cola with peanuts in the bottle?
