One year ago today: May 1, 2013, seems distracted.
Five years ago today: May 1, 2009, I talk camcorders.
Ten years ago today: May 1, 2004, JZ and such.
Officially, nothing happened today. Here is a photo of my old hotel in Caracas, the Ariston. Walking distance to Sabana Grande. Nice place, quiet, but surrounded by girlie-bars and I’m not the type that buys my entertainment. This photo was taken in 1998. Let’s see if I can give myself writer’s block. And read to the end to discover some of the why-fors of the way this blog evolved. Why it is [this way] compared to what it used to be.
It’s the world, not me, that operates on calendars. I’ve tried paying bills in advance only to have them screw up. Even after you retire, you still have to put up with other people’s drama and panic attacks. Are you sure you realized that? We’re not playing Sudden Clarity Clarence here. I still have to chase around on certain days when I would rather not. And the electric company does not let you pay your bill more than ten bucks in advance. It’s to make sure you are where you say you are, part of the New World Order.
The pitiless summer weather is here a mite early, so it is ninety and ninety out there, relegating me to the shade until October. The space elevator, that carbon fiber cable mention here years ago is now a vogue topic. I drew a diagram of the base, but on of a more rigid and larger operation than a cable. I envisaged a skyscraper 20 km high to get the lift platform above the weather. Neat how I tie all this together, don’t you think? Anyway, I have some questions for the cable proponents.
How do you anchor this cable? This sixty-thousand-mile long cable. Since the satellite must orbit, you can’t do at the poles so does that leave only the equator? Where on the equator? Ecuador? Are you crazy? Until the cable faction gets far more specific on such details, I say my concept of a deck half-way to space is more practical. Meanwhile, the estimated cost to send a human to Mars by rocket is around $10 billion.
More realistically, I’d like a budget round trip on the Amtrak again. This is not, repeat not, my plan, but consider this, since it is a plan that typifies how I think. I find a train schedule and see where it goes in 24 hours. If I left in the morning here, I’d arrive there the following morning and I had no trouble sleeping on the “City of New Orleans” five months ago. I get off the train for the day, then catch the corresponding southbound home that evening, again sleeping on the train. Three day vacation without getting ripped off for a motel. What town is the correct distance away? Washington, DC. Never been there. Why not? The round-trip ticket is $312, that’s why not.
One might ask why not a shorter one-day excursion? Scheduling. Amtrak has no convenient places to do get off the train for a few hours. Okeechobee is the right distance, but the stopover is 37 minutes. Smarter to drive there. Thanks to my new-found aversion to motels, you know.
For a laugh, there is the National Geographic series on alien attack, where they claim the US has a plan to defend the planet. The fiction is that the Earth has war plans in place. Can you imagine the reality? The liberals would champion alien right to life and the ACLU screams the aliens are being oppressed. Obama wants to convert them into political allies by handing them food stamps and free cell phones. The military wants more money because wars mean promotions.
And if you think fighter pilots would scramble fast, just you watch Oprah and that little Hawkings twerp. By the time the invasion is a done deal and the aliens take over, the UN would step in and formally surrender. But my favorite it the instructions over the radio for citizens to evacuate the cities. I mean, that has worked so well in the past.
By holing up in my Florida room, I can defeat the heat. I did some study and thinking about robotics and the Arduino. The NOVA meeting was not organized but the enthusiasm was there. If they do not do so by next meeting, I’ll propose a light membership of first names and a common e-mail contact address. Robotics or not, there is ground that has to be scratched first. I will also attempt to find out who knows what about proxy servers and why two routers on the same frequency cannot see each other. I’ve also thought up a way to connect four Arduinos to a single board. If this has been done, I’ve never seen it, so contextually, my idea is original. I need to know what resources that university can offer.
I’ve discovered a disk of 2004 unpublished material. It is not blog-like and doesn’t follow the rules established years afterward. But it reveals much about my formative years in Florida and I may publish them to bring this blog more rapidly up to the ten year mark. That’s where things are slated to end, folks. At 3,650 posts.
ADDENDUM
So, what’s with the comments over my five-year flashbacks? Of course those entries look different. In those days there was no real format and no experience as to what was blog-worthy. Also, nobody had a background in blogging. The only rule was to avoid religion and politics except in critique and satire. A blog is an evolving thing. It isn’t like I went to Blog U. This blog did not instantly arrive here in final form complete with instructions.
Also, this blog is not affiliated with any other blog. This blog is privately owned and not associated with any external organization or business. This blog does not associate with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any similar social-networking schemes and discourages others from doing so. This blog contains intentional errors designed to expose plagiarism and prevent misuse. Written mostly out of habit, this blog is intended as education and entertainment only. This blog is not intended as any type of advice and we are not responsible for what you do.
And it is fully recognized how infuriating this blog is to the lower IQs. Those who don’t like this blog are probably better off reading Garfield anyway.
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