One year ago today: April 12,2013, St. Johns ferryboat.
Five years ago today: April 12, 2009, Greyhound sucks.
Wait till you hear this. Who remembers those $18 chocolate bars at the bakery? A customer came in, bought one, and gave each of us a sample. Shown here is me holding the first chocolate I ever ate that had gold in it. That’s right, you can see the gold flake in the lower left of the square. Flavor? It is dark bitter chocolate, not at all affected by the precious metal and other decoration. Not at all your everyday experience.
It is not unusual to find offers to buy stuck on my vehicles and such. You've heard we live in a disposable society and those who move to Florida get this both barrels. Thus, it is rare to find something older that is kept in premium condition. Such as my red scooter. How well I recall the futility of trying to find a used scooter back in 2009 when I was in the market. You are more likely to find a cheap WalMart knockoff than something in good shape. Incidentally, have you heard WalMart is getting into organic foods? They've announced their prices will be half what others are charging. Must check that.
The Arduino, finally a breakthrough with the hardware. Forgotten where I left off? No prob, here is a refresher. Two years ago plus a little, it transpired that coding was going to be the difficulty with Arduino microcontrollers. You have to learn a subset of C+, meaning you have to unlearn good habits, etc.
I hesitated to continue programming because Arduinos were so expensive, as in $35 each. If you have one Arduino, you have to blank it out every time you want to run a new program because it costs too much to
As usual, I found the solution [to the circuit question] while looking for something else. It’s too complicated to delve into here, but by following the other project, I was able to figure out something else they won’t tell you—how to make a crystal oscillate. That’s another of those things the idiots figure “you’re supposed to know”. When I did what they did, the crystal just sat there. They had managed to neglect saying it involves connecting two capacitors and I’ll explain how once I get something working. We are still not out of the weeds, as the next step is an adequate start-to-finish tutorial on something else needed: the printed circuit board. I’ll have to use breadboards meanwhile.
Speaking of idiots, MicroSoft still hasn’t ironed out the bugs with their spellchecker. When is the most likely time one would spellcheck a word? That’s correct, right after you just finished typing it. This happens a lot at the end of my sentences and by then, I’ve automatically typed the period. If you hit F7, which do you think Word will spellcheck: the last word or the period? Same with the Thesaurus, even if you highlight the entire word, if it has a period, MicroSoft focuses on that. These are the people who claim to be industry leaders? And who say you should trust them to do things right?
But since you’ve been patient and listen to me rag about stupid people, here are a couple of techniques I’ve picked up from others. When you place an IC onto a breadboard, start at pin 11. Then the little numbers along the edge of the breadboard will line up with the IC pin numbers that run backwards across the top of the chip. Keeps things organized. Electrical tape does not work. The product is a bad idea to start with. Most places using tape could be better off using shrink tubing.
My e-mail tells me that some people disagree with my opposition the tax to save Miami-Dade College. I reply that I am a Libertarian. Without the use of force and fraud the majority of people would not pay any tax and I support that majority. I believe all participation should be voluntary. I do not tax Miami-Dade and they should not tax me. I am against the tax more than against Miami-Dade and they should pay their bills without encumbering others. One expects those in academic stations to have a grasp on such fundamentals.
But I dislike MDC for their contention that their institution benefits the community, who should pay up. Such argument is embarrassingly vague. Those who want the “system” to pay are invariably freeloaders of some stripe by trying to get out of paying their own full share. Where I come from, that is called greed. Bottom line of Libertarianism: Mind your own business. I would never prevent you from helping anyone you please, but neither would I ever compel you to help anyone. All I ask is the same respect.
My GMO ban. I’m not a vegetarian nor a health food nut, and I’m not following any trend. Let’s clear this up, too. When I decided to stop eating corn and soy, I was not reading whacko webpage nutrition theories, I was studying DNA and genetics. Big, big difference. Unlike the vegans, I can probably tell you the chemical composition of the helix strands. And I’m not intentionally going to ingest anything which my system would not have recognized as food ten thousand years ago. The only thing I have in common with most people is diet and I have little to lose by testing what makes a difference. What I chose to eat is based on logic, not emotion or imaginary science.
Here is something odd. That dry-erase board I got on sale because it was slightly warped from getting wet is shown here. A broken part of the frame reveals the construction to be two pieces of cardboard glued flat on a piece of very thin sheet of flexible metal which forms the writing surface. Talk about cheap. But now look at the back side. Those three pieces of rebar are my additions. These are quarter-inch think aluminum, impossible to bend by hand. Yet you can clearly see how that cardboard is managing to bend the metal. Figure that one out. Cardboard against metal.
