Here’s some ride tickets from the fair. The Ferris wheel took four tickets. These are worth around $1.25 each, so map out your paycheck before planning a family outing. Oddly, the tickets are sold singly but there are no one-ticket rides. I bought them in batches of 12, these were my leftovers. On the way through the exit gate, I handed them to a weary-looking man walking past with four kids, saying “I hope this helps.”
Today’s addendum (shown below) is the original post concerning silver. I’m keeping it for posterity. Like the rest of this blog, it is written solely for amusement—but I didn’t realize it would amuse so many people. I am not an investment expert.So far, nothing spectacular has come of my predictions and suspicions. Mind you, that makes my analysis of the silver market just as accurate and valid as all the experts put together. I’m not a precious metal guru, guys, and this blog is for entertainment only. That, it certainly did, producing my single highest day of total hits. Beating out even Holly Halston, which name I mention here in the cause of shameless self-promotion.
Let’s remain calm about this and think along the lines that if you acted and made a fortune, I expect a cut. But if you lost your shirt, it ain’t my fault. See, this is proof I am learning more than I thought from the writers of technical manuals. If you win, it’s because you took my advice, if you lose, it’s because you didn’t. Gee, being a Canadian is easier than I thought.
Today’s normal blog is the usual recounting of events and opinions. True, it is less exciting than market speculation, but most people are here to share a perspective. Mine, to be exact. Why mine? Well, let us read their blog so we can make a fair comparison. Anyway, a reminder this blog is descended from a small weekly publication meant to give company personnel something to chew on at coffee other than the boss’ backside. In fact, if you look at the phylogenetic blog tree, you’ll find “Tales From The Trailer Court” was the first to grow a spine.
I spent the early day brushing up on my old-guy music. That’s any tune that was popular with any generation before me. My musical era includes everything but the very oldest Beatles, and that’s some of what I’m learning, like “Lady Madonna”. I take pride in playing this kind of music exactly note-for-note and I’d forgotten what a hoot that song was to play. Give it a listen, although it is sometimes tricky to hear the bass line from the pounding piano. Since I play both instruments, I can really cover that number.
The Friday club meeting again stretched on well into the early evening. We heavily discussed the role of the Arduino and how programming could spare us the hardships of learning from “experts”. Agt. M points out correctly that program code is not electronics, where my position is that we cannot keep relying on authors who have been wrong so often in the past. While this talk went on, we were repairing old equipment and may have saved a bundle. Remember the drill press that got caught in the flood? We dried it out, oiled the working parts and be darned if it didn’t start up.
At the other extreme, we could not find a decent hacksaw. The average [hacksaw] model is not suitable for electronics as it both overheats and has too wide a kerf. Agt. M is finally delving into programming with his brand new Arduino. Formerly I was the only club member who operated them. This is not to be interpreted in any way except to indicate how long things take in the real world. It may be another week before the drill press is moved here and set up, for instance.
Another unexpected variable is heat-sinks. That’s those aluminum cooling fins. They are low-tech, just a series of fins to dissipate heat. It turns out they are so inconsistent that the rule of thumb is overkill. If you look inside your computer you’ll find they are often the largest single components.
For that matter, the finer-tooth models on the math coprocessor have come into real demand over here for use on our voltage regulators. Since the heat-sink topic was another not adequately covered in existing texts, I had to throw out several early regulators that were unexplainably melting my breadboards. I’m tempted to mount the regulators separately for all the trouble they’ve caused me. Note that transformers don’t work on DC.
The club meeting is only a few blocks from the club, so I dropped in to see how the new Karaoke show is faring. It isn’t, at least not in the early evening. Three people, including myself made up a small but enthusiastic crowd. Although the new lady has the old lists, she does not have the same discs. Remember those discs, the ones I wisely kept away from. I wonder what happened to them. I stuck around for an hour, sang a bit, then split for Chinese food. The spicy hot Mandarin variety.
On the way, who do I see but mechanic Miguel. We drive the only two identical scooters in town. That’s why we can stop on the road and swap a jar full of computer RAM chips for some snappy chrome bolts for my vehicle trim. He listened to the new scooter motor and says it is running sub-optimally because of a slightly mismatched muffler system. He can fix.
ADDENDUM
