MORNING
Another Saturday, and I’ll tell what’s happening here so my critics can compare with their day so far. I have the bearings extracted from the roller blades. Despite being very high quality Germa-made, they are an exact 5/16ths inner and 7/16ths outer diameters. Hence, I can test the initial wind generator operations using dowels I have on hand.
Not only do I not like Lego, I don’t like the design of the figurines they use. I dunno, maybe they look like pansies. Even when I had my meccano set as a kid, I never put little dolls in the driver’s seat—but I’ve heard it said there are some men who used to do those kind of things when their parents weren't watching. Constantly.
I found the camera I wanted on-line. In the past three months since I last looked, they have gone from $12 to $45 each. Looks like other people have discovered they work right. I will likely spend the money. But now I get only one instead of three. I’m surrounded by locals who can’t keep a positive balance on their account or are the type who never need to order anything on-line. Sad, really.
I was able to determine the problem with Country Legends 97.1 FM is incompatibility with my chosen browser, Opera. There are compelling reasons not to put Google, Internet Explorer, or FireFox on your computer. So many such reasons that those who do it are generally those who don’t know any better.
And, by careful adjustment of the microphone sensitivity, I was able to convert my old Olympus voice recorder to VOX, that is, a voice activated device. Good, because those things they have gotten expensive. What’s neat is I’ve also converted a cell phone talk mic to work with the recorder, a boon because the microphones from Radio Shack these days are really disappointing. I got one lapel mic, not only did it require a hearing aid battery, the attached cable was like nine feet long. Duh. And you can’t cut it because it is molded ends and the wires are too fine.
Maybe I’ll get out my trusty scroll saw and cut me a fancy boom, so I can VOX hands free while driving. I have two helmet cams, and both fail badly at collecting sound. They are calibrated for bicycle speed and motorcycles cause sound to wash out in the oncoming breeze. I will try to get a voice track and match it to video, but read the addendum to see why this isn’t an efficient task. Native sound is always the best.
NOON
”Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repairing.” --Billy Rose
Way past noon. The traffic was so bad I turned around after driving half-way to Harbor Freight. Even the side roads I usually cut down were bumper to bumper for miles. Now, I have a new treat as this blog evolves. Whenever I have a noon entry (like this one) for the next month, I’ll put in a snappy saying or quotation (like the one above). This should be different from ordinary collections, well, first because it is in the middle of the blog, but secondly, because they are random messages from practicing Morse code. Ah, I knew you’d like that.
The purpose of routine maintenance is to prevent routine problems, duh. Funny how my family never quite figured that out, but then again, nothing falls off an empty wagon. So I was not happy earlier when a loose bolt fell off my scooter front brake bracket, causing the bracket to spin with the tire and wedge itself on the fork. It was overlooked, as the bolt was facing inward toward the spokes, so it never really got checked. And now I’m out $30.
What’s this, the airline pilots have negotiated a 23% raise, retro to last Dec. 2? See, that’s my kind of union. You may be aware that was my chosen profession, a pilot. Did you know my aptitude score for it was one of the highest that ever came out of Texas? Ninety-three percentile, nearly off the scale. It was not just the money and glamor and short working hours, but I recognized early it was a skill that, in the end, could not be swindled around by any corporate boardroom no matter how they connived.
True, pilotless aircraft are already flying, but I would have been retired long by now. As you know the reason I never became a pilot is simple. Back in the 70s, they only took people with natural 20/20 vision . The alternative was to join the air force, but like today, that was the most corrupt of the military branches. To this day, you still need family money and connections to start anywhere but rock bottom. In a way, I sometimes wish I’d done it anyway. Unlike you guys, Ken & Hector, I can never blame stupidity for holding me back.
Now, what’s that sputtering, choking noise? Oh, I see. Hey, I’ve told everybody in this room before not to snack off my plate. What? Intentional? Now way, as a matter of fact, I do like horseradish sandwiches.
AFTERNOON
Here’s something that makes up for my lost cash on the repair job this morning. While looking through the book section up at American Thrift, what do I find but an original MagicImage in the box for $5.99. You won’t remember this camera from (I think) 1998. Since the package was still sealed, I brought it home and be-damned, it works like a charm. Here is a photo of the box.
This is not high tech photography, nor should anyone who knows this blog expect any such thing. Photos are nothing but an added convenience to the prose. The camera takes only 20 pictures in hi mode, but it has some interesting features for a 1998 build. For example, it will make automatic AVI movies—both forward and in reverse.
And I do appreciate the fact that the photos max out at jpeg fidelity, that anyone who tries to enlarge the photos gets blur. CSI won't be finding any license plate numbers on this blog. You don't have to be the enemy to get treated like one around here, being a jerk is enough in itself. You know, a jerk that tries to enlarge photos instead of just look at them. That kind of troll.
Note also, Gen-Xers, the original batteries in the 1998 box worked and were still fully charged. You see, before your gang came along, they had to build real batteries. Oh, we had bad ones, but nobody was stupid enough to buy them. The bad crap never really became standard until you guys came along. Now you run along and do as you are told, because nobody born before 1991 knows a thing about what's really going on. Nomsayn?
While it has only one control button, that button always steps through the menu in the same fashion and each level offers one of two selections. Are you listening, Vivitar, Nikon, and Sony? I didn’t think so. Do not run out and buy this camera, because it will not work on MicroSoft Vista or more. That, comrades, is why you never, ever completely trust an outfit like MicroSoft. Making their software backward compatible would have cost or lost them nothing, but they didn’t. They change things to deliberately screw you around and I know that for a calcified fact.
To end on a happier note, the custom clutch wire for the Honda has finally arrived. Indeed, it is an ordinary wire 7” longer than the newer type. And I need a mechanic type to get under there and set the thing up properly, as the clutch plates on the Honda are, or have been, adjusted to some type of maximum and the new cable has to accommodate for that. Another reason I never let anyone drive my sidecar, ever.
EVENING
Here’s some trivia. Right up until several weeks before the end of WWII and certain defeat for Germany, Hitler regularly drove to the front lines in an open car and mingled with fully armed combat troops. By comparison, during the Gulf War, President Bush was surrounded by squads of bodyguards and all US soldiers were required to unload their weapons when he was present. Also, 10% of the available manpower in all of Europe fought or collaborated with Germany against the Soviets. It would appear, contrary to what we’ve been fed, that Hitler was an extremely popular leader.
I’d reviewed some documentaries on corporations and the way they are ruining the country. Yet, corporations are the logical outcome of the American mentality. If I had a company, I’d prefer it to be run not by people skilled at whatever the corporation does for a living, but bloodthirsty money and power hounds. That’s why I believe in unions and why I believe a lot of people against unions are kind of thick-skulled.
Anyway, corporations are downsized to about a third of my day. Instead of workers, there is automation and that has no use for middle-management. Come to think of it, I never had any use for them either, but they insisted on finding things that needed managing. I was glad during the 90s when they got canned by the millions, you can find it clearly documented in my other writings.
My opinion about corporate workers who stayed after the shakeup of the 90s is not kind. I had it figured out by the time I was in my thirties. You give the company the best years of your life and they feed you a line that as long as you are moving up in pay grade and abstracts like “seniority”, you are experiencing success. Thus, if you quit, you are walking away from success and that would make you an idiot.
If anyone is in that position, I can only warn you that a job is a false sense of security. We all worried how we will eat if we quit our jobs. This is America, you will always eat. So it boils down to a place to stay. If you play it right, you should be able to buy a place you like by working five years. It may not be a penthouse on Park Avenue, but it might be a perfectly adequate and comfortable mobile home in a safe and quiet Florida trailer court. Where 89% of your disposable income goes toward enjoying life.
And I’ve never had a really, really bad day since I walked out of that cubicle in late May 1996. And yes, I generally look forward to every new day. I once heard it that a coward is somebody who fears what will happen to him if he speaks up, but a hero wonders what will happen to others if he does not. Personally, I think the country has gone downhill, but that corporations are only gaining profits because they are still cashing in on the layoffs of the past two decades. This charade will catch up with them.
ADDENDUM
The low quality of my composite recordings so far led me to spend several hours testing alternatives last evening. Composite means two or more tracks simultaneously, something the Tascam and its cousins are not designed to do. Oddly, all the other equipment to make these recordings is here, but the recorders say this is not to be. These so-called multi-track recorders are, as I posted on ePinions, the equivalent of a $30 tape recorder from 1970 with overdub.
An example of a composite recording as different than a true multi-track job is the bass lines I produce. Ideally, I should record the original track while playing the bass line and talking into a microphone describing the action. As it is now, I have to import the original, play the bass in a separate real time recording, a real time-waster, and either talk into the same port as the bass (which distorts both) or make a third pass, wasting more time and the lesson is just not the same trying to describe action after the fact.
What I tried last evening was to record the talk track to a different recorder, then export the track and line everything up in Audacity. This almost works but requires exceptional dexterity to keep everything lined up. And exporting tracks from the Tascam is real time again—it takes 15 minutes to export a 15 minute track. But once on Audacity, things can be worked in true digital. This means the smallest project becomes a major operation and almost guarantees the results will be “indie” quality. And that is a quality I have really learned to dislike.
Worse, doing this work with Win 8.1 sucks. Win 8.1 is designed for graphical interfaces for dummies who can’t type or read, so asking it to process a sound file slows it down. Have you used it to copy a file? Before, in XP, bam, it was done. With 8.1 you get this tard graphic designed by tards for tards who are simple-minded enough to be occupied watching the thing crawl along.
Praise Windows all you want, but the progress on 8.1 was about half the speed of XP. No, I can’t just switch to my XP unit because MicroSoft has made 8.1 incompatible. For now, quality recording in the full sense is for super-special projects only. I’ll say it again, XP was okay if they’d just left it alone. The parts of it that were “improved” were for low-IQ users.
Last Laugh
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