Meet the UnCoupon. Publix tells me it is a coupon, except it isn’t a coupon. You can use it, but not as a coupon. See, it says digital coupon, so it is a coupon. But you have to go on line and sign up. Right. All sheeple please forget about what just happened to your privacy and PIN numbers over at Target. Everything is under control because Target has issued a statement that the information was “encrypted”. Target is a big company and therefore knows the people clever enough to hack their most secure files will be stopped cold by a secret code. So there. And no pretty girl today, either.
And that horrid feature where it displays the album title or the artist instead of the song title. What insufferable meathead came up with that one? I fully understand that a majority of stupid people listen to songs not because they are good songs, but because so-and-so sang it. But, I don’t memorize soap opera credits or sports statistics, and I don’t memorize album titles. I am slowly going through the entire list and deleting that useless information one by one. Remember the days when computer meant you could turn off the features you didn’t like. Now they shove them down your throat. Get those people a hand basket.
The good news is I feel fine. Everybody told me I would have sore calves and aching muscles from pushing that scooter halfway across town. Wrong. I feel fine. Not a single woe and in some ways I feel better than before. That surprises even me. This, following an entire month of nine hours per day on the motorcycle, yes, I’m surprised. Then again, I also thought I’d need to spend every third or fourth day in a motel bed, but those are lumpy mattresses compared to my pod. And it isn’t Zumba [that limbered me up], because I have not been there in two months. Hmmm. I must be getting younger.
Here is a site listing the top ten 3D printer objects of the year. If you look at #3, just printed last month, you may recall I published this idea here long, long ago. And while we are talking computer stuff, do not trust the Windows random number generator. Any encoding you do with it can be cracked in a matter of minutes. It isn’t random and has never worked right. Guess which one Target probably uses. Because we all know Target only hires the smartest people in the world.
Another statistic that’s getting fudged is the average US retirement income per person. Hard data is unavailable. Household income isn’t a good measure since it has been many decades since the traditional family has been a majority. Civil servants have the highest pensions, averaging $38,000—but also the most insecure in that the guidelines that keep company pensions in line don’t apply to the government, who rely on taxes. But from what I can find, it seems the average pension income for a single man is around $17,000 of which $13,000 is Social Security.
With food prices doubling every year now, time for them seniors to contact fiverr. I read this site advising seniors how to make extra money. Deliver newspapers, it said. Donate blood. Hold a yard sale. In other words, work a dead end job, drain your body fluids, and sell your belongings. Yep, that’s gonna work out just swell for everyone.
Medical insurance. I laugh when people complain that they will be fined if they don’t buy it. Wrong. It is not a fine. It is a tax. It is to stop people who refuse to buy insurance from getting free medical care whenever they get sick. Essentially, it is a law that makes medical insurance mandatory for those who work, like in most other countries in the world. When you work and don’t buy insurance, the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill. America, the free ride is over. Those who don’t pay go to jail for tax evasion. If they still refuse, well, it looks like the system finally got okay with letting them die.
And always remember, once cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
ADDENDUM
The control and test panel for the 7489 RAM chip was a complete flop. But I learned a lot. Like what? Like wiring panels is expensive. Test every LED and wire them last in locations you can get at. Wire-wrap instead of solder where you can. Voltages don’t seem a good way to test continuity. Green LEDs are naturally dimmer than the reds. I need some reliable 5 to 6 volt power supplies. Buy some different colors of 30 ga wire. Flip switches are very sensitive to solder heat. And I’m still learning.
This panel will be scrutinized and analyzed to the nth degree. The red circles show, left to right, the power switch, the two read and write controls, and the wiring distribution buss. In a real computer the read/write controls would have their role taken over by a CPU (central processing unit). This panel will accept controls from an Arduino, but I have to get it working first. I am not discouraged in the least, I know I got further than a lot of others. Hell, most would scatter at the first sight of something like this.
I believe the problem is in the distribution wiring. I learned from the scooter harness diagrams that the first thing to check is all the ground wires. In fact, I will rewire this panel so the ground wires are black and all run to an obvious point. Right now, you’d have to trace the grounds to find the common. (It is on the first green LED next to the power switch.)
The way I designed [it], the 7489 chip will always be active when the power switch is thrown. Every other function is dependent on the switches, which I wired in series. I think I will break those up into sets. This complicates things, but makes it easier to troubleshoot. I don’t think this panel will yield easily to what I need it for. And I will seek out components that are easier to wire-wrap.
