MORNING
Everyone wants to know about the condo. It was on the fringe of Miami Shores, that residential area just north of Barry University. I misremembered the area, but hoped it would be south of Biscayne River. Nope, it was two blocks north. It was everything the ad described except that roofprint I saw was not a factory. It was a project. And that is a deal-breaker. I pulled up outside the condo, which has a ten-foot security fence, but did not bother looking inside. Even two blocks west across the canal, maybe, but I will not live across the road from a project.
Having plenty of time to scout the place, I noticed there was an all-night gas station on the corner, never a good thing. And I counted seven other for sale signs in the immediate area. That’s an alarm. I drove past the tennis courts and such, all were vacant. While it isn’t a rough-looking area, it would best be described as up-scale mixed. With a lot of the mix being Swahili and Bantu. There were too many old cars parked on the streetways as well.
I was all the way to Churchill’s before getting JZ’s cancel. I noticed the sign said it was back under old management. So I walked in anyway and though I didn’t see Dave or Mike, the place has their style written all over it again. What could that be all about?
NOON
Since I didn’t buy the condo, I had the afternoon free to examine more gears. Difficult as they are to make, it was even more difficult to get any help. Wood is also my choice for prototyping and let me tell you, until you build gears you only think you know anything about them. I learned no matter how close your tolerances and how smooth your finish, tiny pieces of the gears are constantly chipping off. Wood gears should be good for a twenty-hour run time.
The one site that had proper diagrams, the
If successful, I should wind up with something similar to this photo. I am far more partial to metal axles and springs, but I liked this model. If you look very closely, there is only one cut that is not a straight line. I’ve learned to cut straight lines quite well enough to know I’ll stick with the scroll saw over the much faster bandsaw. For small pieces, bandsaws are plain dangerous.
AFTERNOON
I have no such thing as ¼ inch plywood around here so I made some. While the glue was drying, I spent an hour on the long distance phone line. It seems some banks are trying to discourage check-writing by charging up to $2 per check. This won’t work with me as I never write checks for purchases (I use money orders). But I do use them for larger transfers, large in the sense that a $2 charge is not even an annoyance. My contact explained to me the idea is to catch bad guys, but we know that sermon off by heart.
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They know who the bad guys are, but feed us this crap that they can’t make a special set of laws against them. That is nonsense, that kind of law-making has been going on since the beginning of civilization. We discriminate against groups under all kinds of euphemisms. Single men have to pay higher taxes than married men. Adults have to pay full price. It is a minor step to make a law saying bad people can’t write checks. It is not unequal to treat bad people differently than good, we do it every day of our lives. What I don’t like is the current plan of treating everyone "equally bad". Think airport security--they could do just as good a job searching specific persons.
We also talked about Mars Direct and Mars One. You may be unfamiliar with these, but look them up yourself. These are the plans to colonize Mars. They all run afoul of NASA, or should I say the ugly beast that NASA has become. Back when NASA was “mission-driven” you saw progress, a man on the moon in seven [actually, it was nine] years. It was the cancellation of the Apollo program that changed NASA. Now, they want big, expensive, multi-generational projects to keep their jobs.
For example, NASA despises the low-budget plans to send long-term people to Mars, even though this is the obvious best plan. Why? Because such missions do not utilize the Space Station or require setting up a lunar base. NASA has become protective of its pet projects and resists anything that bypasses them. Nearby is a sketch of the travel module, a trip of around 100 days.
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Today, a NASA satellite located the probe. The NASA mission cost $600 million. America is on the steep decline. For instance, the front page of today’s paper had yet another headline on “gay marriage”, but the Beagle discovery was on the bottom left of page 17. “Beneath the salami ads.” Yep, America, you sure got your head on straight.
I’ll quickly describe the difference between Mars One/Direct and NASA. NASA would like a multi-billion dollar program that takes all the mission consumables along, like the moon landings, for both legs of the trip. This means time on the planetary surface is measure in hours and minutes. Mars Direct says send a robotic factory ahead to produce all the fuel and air needed from materials known to be on Mars already. Then send a manned capsule to stay there for 18 months(?), returning past the next outbound crew and arriving here as heroes. I like it.
EVENING
This battery pack occupied us until past midnight. The charge controller does not like the parallel arrangement we use to take the monster bike up to 72 volts. This was also the opportunity to discuss the robotic metal detector idea. We do not know how to interface the detector coil to our own display, but it seems to me somebody gave me a voltage detector circuit a year ago. I’ll dig it out of the trunk. The basic tankette would cost $800. That’s one gold watch if we find it. But I’m not the treasure hunter type, it would bore me quickly.
If it were possible, I would like to buy shares in a space program that is mission-driven. NASA is only 1% of the US budget, so DC should allow those who choose so to invest in the future of space travel by giving them a tax credit. I used to admire NASA, you know, up until the day they announced that Shuttle. I knew that was all brown-nosing after that.
Trivia. Charles Darwin did not write his findings out until years later and even them because he’d heard someone else was about to publish. It turns out he did not use only his own research data and it is now know that outside data was tampered with. Still, he got it right. If anyone tells you they don’t believe in evolution, ask them to explain it.
Who remembers the failed bio-dome trial in 1991, what was it called? Biosphere 1. The “team” isolated in the structure began to make “judgment errors” and formed into opposing factions. The cause appeared to be lowered oxygen levels resulting in the same problems experienced by mountain climbers. However, I believe that the scientists stopped short of their duties.
They should not only make the low oxygen test part of the training program, but use it to weed out the undesirables. Oh, they found something wrong, for sure, and have kept it a careful secret. I got fifty bucks says we know damn well what the two factions were but the “scientists” don’t want to admit it. Greedy isn’t protecting what you worked for, it is expecting a share of what the other guy worked for--and calling it "cooperation".
Last Laugh
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