One year ago today: October 2, 2013, two years no plagarism.
Five years ago today: October 2, 2009, a generic day.
Ten years ago today: temporarily suspended, I will notify you.
MORNING
So many asked if I had a picture of the blob that mismanaged the Nova meetups. Nope, nothing recent. But I think I found his picture when he was in the junior high marching band. Here you go. Yeah, that’s him thirty years ago, all-rightee. The whole town still remembers how he flubbed his one queue at the recital.
The normal procedure in navigation is to take a sighting at noon and work forward until you find your position on a map. I’m going to “work backwards” and find out when is noon around here—and bear in mind my definition of time has become much more than exact in the last 90 days. I would take out the map first, and estimate where I am. Okay, I’m around 80° 30’ longitude (west of Greenwich).
I turn to today’s date in the first Almanac table and find the time of meridian passage over there, it says for today that happens at 11:49, early because the planets “tug” on the Earth. Now I convert my longitude to time, using the Arc to Time table, 80°30’ equals 5 hours and 20 minutes. Add the times, and I know at Greenwich Mean Time (to which my clock is set) means it is noon here at 17:09. QED.
Without even looking outside, I use another table to find the declination of the Sun on this date at that time, S3°44.1', do the math, and sure enough, I know where I'll be at noon today. It is only 10:39AM right now. All this won’t be on the exam, it’s just to demo the value of learning the process rather than memorizing the steps. Which took about three times longer, by the way.
NOON
Collin asked about what it was like for me to return to school as an adult. Things have definitely changed, starting around 1985. There was less of a party atmosphere and more serious students. Education had by then become expensive enough that you had fewer professional students. I know he meant the women, and there is no doubt the average campus lady is shorter, heavier, frumpier, and less of a looker than in my day. See this photo? There was nothing like that at my university. Nothing.
More time was now spent going over the basics again and again, and glossing over the advanced points that I wanted explained. I called it “The shift to Chapter One.” True, the slow students marks went up but mine dropped by up to 15% from high 90s to low 80s. And that ain’t right. Higher education is supposed to weed out the dumb-fecks.
I have no idea if it was on TV, but I hope the eyes of America are on Stockton, California. Does a city have the right to pay creditors ahead of employee pensions? I say they do, partially out of spite. America has been two camps for some generations how, those who (like me) want to do right versus the “pension-builders” who supported a system they knew was corrupt and wrong. If the creditors come first, the employee pensions take a 60% haircut.
This case would establish a precedent. But can you imagine people who were planning on three thousand now getting twelve hundred. They might have to sell the house they sunk their whole lives into instead of learning a worthwhile backup trade and how to invest in a declining market. Possibly they even think we’ll all get together and feel sorry for them, they way they treated us. Just doing your job? Good, now just pay your bills.
So if they lose more than half their pensions, what are all those people supposed to do? That’s easy, let them do the one thing they are good at. Let them do exactly what they are told. Am I supposed to forget California wanted eight months back in 2012 to look up a file for me? They had it comin’.
Next, I ran through half the new band’s “must play” list and while I won’t be fully ready, what I do know will be super-solid. Once I “listened through” many of the tunes, I realize I have after all heard them before but didn’t spot them as country music. Example, “Country Girl” I thought was “Shake If For Me”, a pseudo-rock hit. I sent them a fully descriptive e-mail of how and why I was behind schedule.
Last night I dropped in to check my new “Karaoke” setup and bumped into a gal at the club who decided I was the man for her. Except, she forgot to ask me. But her constant attention made me walk out and forget my booklet of celestial calculations on the table. Not to worry, it is stamped with a warning.
EVENING
And that house I looked at? They called back and offered me $20,000 off. Nope, I told them, wrong neighborhood. Price is not important on that count alone. I would not live there. Period. I expect to get what I want because I can get the cash. That’s rare these days. Here is the picture of the tiny, one-window living room. But what do you expect for $59,000? (I believe I told you it is more of a cottage than a house, but that’s what I’m looking for.)
Focus tonight was the tomorrow’s Karaoke show. As I walked in the door and ran some cables, one of the speaker poles fell on me. I worked on, as the whole shebang had to be figured out and streamlined by showtime tomorrow. I took in a mixer, some adaptors and cords, and was rewarded with injury. Nobody knows Wanda’s old system, so I spent five hours and got it. My PA speakers don’t have the oomph for Karaoke.
The falling [speaker] pole caught me on the right hip, elbow, shoulder, wrist, and ankle. I will be in some kind of holy pain when I wake up tomorrow. By chance, I was still wearing my motorcycle helmet, so no real scrapes or bruises. But I blocked the brunt of 45 pounds and I’ll know it in the morning. But I think we may just have us a novel Karaoke show. With Lee-Anne and I, it will be different, no question there. For any speculators, Lee-Anne is the waitress and we are social and intellectual opposites.
Check back tomorrow to see if I’m invalided.
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