September 14, 2013

           Here is Mr. Lizard on the warm pavement. He’s looking at me, no doubt envying the eBike as I effortlessly glide home from the bakery. Hey, Larry Lizard, I’m warm-blooded, get an evolutionary move on, dude. Actually, I have a theory. A lot of people don’t know that lizards cannot run and breathe at the same time. Their front legs press against their lungs so they have to stop to take gulps of air. My theory says T. Rex had those tiny front legs for a reason. If you were that size and had to run down breakfast every damn morning, small feet make good sense.

           What the? My wine and keyboard picture was a hit, doubling my exposure. I didn’t tell you, but I also posted the much the same blurb on my Brainiac on-line mating site, the one I’ve given up hope on. Not a typo. Mating. I don’t know any other reason anyone would waste time with these sites. Women certainly don't join them to meet interesting and dynamic men who, intellectually, are completely out of their league. My profile is carefully orchestrated to not be like the other men, and yes, I do check their postings. The whole lot of them are so mind-numbingly boring their best chances would definitely be to date each other. My bio states right up front that I am not looking for many responses, only the one lady who is “weary of all the perfect men” who infest dating sites.
           Now is the time for a little advice to those whose posts resemble all the others. What do you people expect is going to happen? Let me give you some sage advice. What would you think of a car ad that ran six months without changing? There is plainly something ghastly wrong with it. I am also the past-master at meta-information and I know that if a post, male or female, sits there for months, that person is a loser on all counts. Right? If either sex made a contact, they would be wise to quickly take down their ad because they’d know that’s the first thing the other party is going to figure out to check. QED.
           Thus, I’m having a little fun with the dating site. Mainly, I’m making my profile so off-beat that if there is a winner out there, she is the only one that would dare to reply. The type of woman who wants a man already tamed isn’t at all a good match for me. I don’t think I’ve every met a woman who totally liked me just the way I was. I’ve dropped a goodly number of females who tried to improve my situation without seeing any need to get permission first. Now hold on, I have me women who did like me as is, but they would have liked any man on the same basis, and that isn’t what I’m after, either.
           Here’s your dose of trivia. No, you can’t get this good stuff off Wikipedia. We all know about Dixieland, but where does the term arise? It isn’t from the style of music. That is not the correct origin. Here goes. Back in the beginning, Louisiana was a French colony and one of the popular pieces of money was a ten franc note. In French, the word for ten is “dix”. Thus, when you went to New Orleans, you went to the land of the “Dixie”. Fair enough? (I wonder how long before Dan Lewis quotes me on “Now You Know” "Now I Know". All his “trivia” can be traced to other sources and not to any original thinking or research. He often quotes mistakes verbatim. For original material, you have to keep returning here, where there is a difference between quoting and thinking. But I won't say what it is, after all, Lewis is a lawyer.)
           Bringing up the last of the evening, bingo was fairly mediocre. These days you cannot beat that. I stopped at Karaoke afterward and found the same amateurish situation, you know, wait an hour for your second turn. It is a difference in philosophy. Do you make the musician spend money waiting for his next tune, or do you let him get up there and entertain the entire room? In this case, I stopped at Buddy’s, and did not wait the hour. They had one mic hog get up there and sing the entire (gag me) version of “Taxi”. Long Karaoke songs are the opiate of the masses.
           It was more fun to hang out at Jimbos and make snide remarks that most of the clientele was sixty-some years older than Charlie’s teeth.

ADDENDUM
           Moving from the trailer to the electronics means fun for me. This is completely uncharted territory but the interior will certainly be well lit. I’ve decided to completely dissemble the wooden panels for painting before rollout. This will allow me to route the electrical in the most efficient manner. I got up at 2:00 AM and tested the chassis with two lights, and it is surprisingly bright, much like getting onto a city bus at night.
           The interior is smooth and the blue color is bright enough to surprise the onlooker. It resembles the inside of a small boat cabin. I replaced the dangle sockets with plastic ceiling models in diagonal corners and ran the neon vapor lamps till morning without any voltage loss. Either one of the two lamps [that came with the kit] provides all the reading light I’ll ever need. My concern is battery life and there is no way I’ll trust a single word any engineer claims on the package. Remember my eBike where 22 miles equals 6 real miles.
           I also want to run a small window fan inside. I’ve chosen a 0.8 Amp model to test, figuring this will provide the same draft as my overhead fan in Caracas. I lived comfortably in that hotel for two years without A/C. The solar panel specs are confusing, like they won’t define a “day of sunlight” as 12 hours or 24 hours. I’m designing a control panel that has two distribution points. The main panel near the front requires I unlock the “tool box” and flip three switches for brakes, markers, and turn signals. A fourth switch activates the secondary panel near the rear, which controls the interior system.
           There is an option appearing on my drawing board. This puppy will, if the camper battery system proves adequate, supply starter current back to the motorcycle via starter cables which I already store in the sidecar trunk. But for sure, the interior of the camper will include the fan, a radio, a USB charging station, the two reading lights, and an inverter with two 115 volt outlets for emergency use only. My main concern is that fan. Anyone can sleep where it is cold and keep warm. Hot is different.
           Both interior and exterior panels are fuse-protected and there is a small 6 volt DC sub panel that runs the security system, a carbon monoxide detector, a smoke detector, and an Arduino that monitors the entire system for performance. There is also a float charger installed in case I find a commercial power supply for free. Even that would run through the batteries, so that there is no 115 Volt power going through the camper ever.

           It isn’t electric or robotic, but the club meeting also decided that a keyed lock for the camper is a bad idea from the word go. Keys get lost on holidays. That means we voted me a club (very high quality) combination lock that goes outside by day, inside by night. The rear panels and entry hatch will be 1-1/2” of solid plywood thick. That’s two layers with all the hardware hinge bolts hidden between them. Nobody’s breaking into this camper without an axe. Technically, it is safer than a store bought camper because there is a secret emergency egress nobody knows about.
           To anyone who figured I left the combination set after taking this picture, good thinking. Just not fast enough. Still, that’s sharp. I did notice when the shackle was closed, the tumblers did spin to a predictable pattern. I do not know if Master [lock] did that on purpose.