MORNING
That light drizzle of rain again, another storm nearby. Like most humid areas, the rain falls straight down unless a storm brings the winds. So we tried to get some work done but it was gusty enough to keep us soaked. So we held an impromptu club meeting at the Senor Cafe, where half the Latino community must have showed up with the same plan. The two people left on staff were swamped.
Our club workshed, shown here, has open baffles on the side to allow the breezes through. It also lets just enough rain through to keep the floor wet, so we could not work there either. The problem is usually the heat, so we are unlikely to address that issue. The new camera is so clear, you can see the wet concrete floor.
Chains. Not the kinds we live in, but the bicycle kind. With my current fascination with gears, I was able to modify an on-line generator to emulate the sprocket of roller chain. That's just the technical name for it, and I'm off to Wal*Mart to get one of those devices to remove and splice the links. You know, that thing that looks like a mini-corkscrew to push out the pin. The idea here is to find out for ourselves how durable the wooden gears would be. Close inspections shows the bicycle brand of sprockets are made of plastic. I'm also cutting some gears that are entirely experimental. Remember, I was disappointed by how few scroll saw patterns exist for useful articles.
I tanked up the scooter this morning for a record low price, $2.75. There's a codicil involved, the pump was out of premium and medium, so I used low octane. I'm watching oil closer than most because my personal research shows it is not like other commodities in one major way--if the price drops too low for too long, we get basket cases. Societies that depend on oil are structured differently than renewable commodities. All famines are temporary, but with oil, I'm curious to see who goes under first. OPEC is already over-producing to try to recapture lost revenues. That's precisely wrong. I wonder, has there ever been a depression in Saudi? It seems to be already underway in Venezuela.
As for the dropping prices, I suspect that is artificial and as soon as any player folds, the price will come back with a vengeance. But the game is dangerous. Nobody is going to fold unless they are on the verge of collapse. Back in the 1930s, the world was a collection of semi-autonomous states. Now, it is the proverbial house of cards.
Nobody told me how popular gifs are in a blog.
NOON
Don’t be expecting great happenings, the forecast is for 70% rain. I don’t even have trivia today. Well, okay, as it happens, 70% of the shirts in my closet are blue. Darker hues, like sort of navy, but my most common color is blue. Then green, then beige. I don’t own any shirts that are red, pink, orange, or yellow. But I own t-shirts of all manner, that’s different.
By 1987, the Cancer Society said the pipe had to go. Actually, the potato went in 1964, when it was decided the sharp prongs were too sharp for the generation of wimps born since then. So you get a plastic potato with the toy these days.
I was hasty with the chain gears. That’s what I’m here to learn. The tolerances are greater than I can work with wood. You might say the sockets that fit into the sprockets are smaller than I can make with my existing equipment. Or maybe I’m using the wrong kind of wood. If anybody can tell me, say so now because coming along after and saying you told me so isn’t an option around here. One thing I do not have here is small dowels. Never had call for them.
The blustery weather means I had all day to experiment. Upon reading the comments on the web site, I conclude that very few men of any age ever get around to cutting gears with their scroll saw. In fact, I could not find evidence that they cut very much at all. Other than that I’m not going to get any help, that does not surprise me. I replaced the original gear on my gizmo and found I also cannot cut gears with fewer than six teeth. The saw blade causes the laminate on the plywood to chip or separate.
AFTERNOON
Dan Lewis further says that Graham wafers are a type of health food given to patients various hospitals of the 1800s, often synonymous with nut-houses. I once dated a gal who’s grandmother had been in one to recover from tuberculosis. Apparently she was even luckier to have recovered from the hospital. They were called “sanitoriums”. At any rate, the Graham wafers were cheap when I grew up so we often found them in our lunch boxes instead of cookies, a ruse I didn’t care for.
But I can give you a trick of the trade not listed in these recipes. That is graham pie crusts, like in cheesecake, baby. If you try to crush up graham wafers yourself, you get a mess of chunks and powdery dust. Okay, this is going to give away I grew up in the bush, but the way you do it is put the crackers between wax paper on a baking tray and freeze them solid. Then apply a rolling pin and you get right-sized crumbs. Note that after a week, real graham crackers get hard and have to be dunked.
But I would not, these days, ingest a factory-made graham cracker, biscuit, or wafer. You should not be eating any corn products whatsoever, they are all poisonous. That includes maltodextrin and dextrose. Worst offender I know of are “Honey Maid” brand. They contain hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oil, and you know what hydrogenated means by now—it turns ordinary fat into transfat, which slaughters you with cholesterol. And the sweetener is no longer brown sugar, but high fructose corn syrup which has no nutritive value whatsoever.
Item: when I say I watch documentaries, I should probably underline this is not a passive activity. I talk to the narrator like a person and dominate the remote. Okay gang, I’m going to rewind that and play it again because not enough of you gasped. Hold on, we are going over that part again to make sure what he said. We are fast forwarding over these tired photos of the USS Arizona exploding. Freeze the display, let me point out a few discrepancies in this chart. You get the idea.
There are scheduled tea breaks and pauses for discussion or questions. Newcomers quickly detect I am not very good at “watching TV”. Many of them don’t even realize they have fallen into a typecast pattern of behavior, as if there is some “right” way to watch television that entails sitting there blankly staring and not thinking. Show ‘em how, Theresa.
EVENING
I sought out some unusual woodworking items, the most impressive was this recycled CD. Made into a plate for a light switch, this photo shows a dimmer. There is no reason it would not work with a regular flip switch. Other items I found were cake icing made to look like wood and a disk sander made out of an old kitchen mixer. Yes, it was variable speed. Or how about a trivet (you set it under your pan so it won’t scorch your counter, guys) that looks like an illusion? And I’m taking another peek at the robot finger built in the Nova days, but now that I’ve got a scroll saw and a drill press.
Inside one case was my navigation gear for traveling. Included is my special GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) crystal clock. And the battery inside said 2008. The case muffled the sound just enough that direction finding was impossible. It was discovered when I opened the case to retrieve some compasses for my gear designs. My Greenwich clock is quite sophisticated, with even a reset for the second timer to sync to zero once a month.
I see my homespun advice from the farm perked up my readership, but really, I don’t have a supply of them to share with you. The only one that comes to mind is to make your place smell nice for company is to simmer a small pot of dill leaves, or any spices, on your stove. But dill works best when you have brothers with really stinky feet all the time.
ADDENDUM
I don't know for certain, but I think this is a painting called "The Down Escalator". It depicts the complete loss of personal privacy and freedom now happening in America. Squads of anonymous watchers collecting information about who uses the escalator. Well, at least it is not as bad as Canada, where the form you fill out to object to answering personal questions contains the same personal questions. It's scary.
I don't really think the feds are building big FEMA camps*, but if they did, those who get rounded up first will, indeed, be the ones easiest to round up. That would be all the people who have nothing to hide. I doubt it will come to that, but if it does, discretion is a good policy to have followed since day one. At some point, one hopes, the camps will already be full before they bother chasing the undocumented. In other words, you don't have to outrun the bear.
The media has really glommed onto the France killings. Has anyone but me noticed it is providing the perfect test case for American-trained journalists to practice on? This is for real, I'm saying that the way American reporters and such work is fundamentally different than elsewhere. If you study journalism in other countries, the emphasis is seeking facts. Over here, the impetus is on doing whatever is possible to get a face-to-face interview, to manipulate the interview to "establish trust", then to betray that trust.
Last Laugh
Nothing new under the sun.
*They are definitely building camps of some kind, I don't dispute that.
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