This is my morning coffee and breakfast. Why, what did you think it was? That’s a triple Euro coffee, a whole wheat croissant with butter only, and the granny at the bakery likes to fix me a garnish. That’s tomato, the red paste is goulash sauce (zippy and zero calories) and maybe you can see the tiny bits of peeled garlic. Note that the bakery does not serve this snack, it is for me only. But now that you know, you could ask.
Upon hearing the stat that the average working couple eventually costs Medicare three times what they pay into it, I stayed up an extra hour and reviewed my plans for counter-inflation. People, it’s coming. The fake money has already been printed and distributed (they used it to pay the troops overseas). But it will find its way back and soon reach “the corners of the empire”. One serious situation I see is middle class people retiring with too much house. Inflation will hit homeowners hard.Their equity, or what they thought was equity, is tied up in a house they can’t sell and those houses are expensive to operate. Have you seen the newscast that the illusion of consumer spending is caused by millions of people who have quit paying their mortgages. They realize it will be years before they are evicted and they are spending their money as fast as they can get it. My point here is that their big houses will become a liability they can’t sell, and maintenance costs are a bulls-eye for inflation.
My solution is less house, but with a keen eye to operating costs. As far a neighborhood, I prefer no neighbors. I can’t afford that. But I don’t need that many schools, shopping plazas, opera houses, or community swimming pools either. As well, I’ve learned most people have embarrassingly wild assumptions about what they will do once they stop working. They seem convinced the world will supply them with low cost entertainment.
Change that up for an hour, I was up all night, happens every time there is even a mild change in my prescrips. The time was put to good use as I completely wired up a counting circuit that bamboozled me for a long time. I’m finding the wiring diagrams harder to follow than the Integrated Circuit data sheets. It counts from incredibly fast down to a stop, with flashing lights to show the progress. With three ICs, it is the most complicated circuit I have built to date. Rebuilt, actually, the first time it stumped me.
In the end, I was up 30 some consecutive hours, but you should see all the territory I covered. I even have the new seven-segment LED working properly and the next step is to investigate getting it to display meaningful information. Right now, like your TV, it only displays useless crap, but does so very nicely. Read lots now, the lack of sleep always returns me with a three day siesta.
Pause for a moment over this display. It takes considerable effort to have, say a three digit number, display in response to an input like temperature, or in my test case, counting the number of events. The light can be made to blink in isolation, that’s kindergarten. How to cascade the overflow is another matter. These LEDs also eat power, anyone who had an LED watch remembers having to press a button to read the time. There’s more to it than just flipping some switches.
Trent didn’t make it for rehearsal, he’s got company in town. I’m slowing developing the BB King riffs, investigating what notes work. The box patterns and pentatonic examples are feeble when it comes to constructing turnarounds. But that’s just fine. If I can get an integrated circuit to work, I can figure out what a guitarist is forgetting to make clear.
Then I went to Karaoke and won more movies. I may also have won some cash, but here I’m not sayin’. The movies are better. Shortly after this, I found $7 in my scooter seat bin. Must have fell there when I wasn’t looking. This might be my week.
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