One year ago today: April 21, 2014, I predict 2144 AD.
Five years ago today: April 21, 2010, I begin matrix studies.
Six years ago today: April 21, 2009, another day.
MORNING
Where was I? Oh, yes. Drinking tea and eating poppyseed cookies. I slept straight through until 4:00AM. That whole clinic ritual still throws me off balance for 24 hours. I’m half-way through the new crime novel, which has relapsed to a more standard style as the author is plainly tiring of being creative all day long. But me feel sorry for an author? Not bloody likely. There’s too damn many mediocre ones out there, and none of them ever score with the French diplomat’s wife.
Don’t be thinking of tropical paradise, most of these are barrier islands within sight of the Florida coast. To get really off shore, you will be in a different country with strange customs. Weird places where old men wear Dockers and Brut cologne.
In the novel, the black lady—it’s not me, you will be reminded in the book every few sentences about race—is becoming a bit unbelievable. Nobody lives on an island nobody has ever heard of, especially not one with a 2,500 square foot mansion abandoned on it. And should that really happen, it seems unlikely that such a lady would hobnob with the state senator and high society in general. But if she can do all that while being unemployed, please tell me the secret. At 2,500 square feet, I’d have space to build a robot and park my bicycle indoors. Maybe.
And I’m back on track here. What adventures will today bring, I say, trying to sound like a 1970s Muppet commentator. Ah, but most of you are too young to remember the original Muppets. Look it up. Oscar was a street thug who beat up on Kermit and a half dozen other unsavory puppets were the obvious models for the nastier characters on “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”
Kudos to the restaurant that banned screaming kids. It was disappointing to hear later they retracted the ban. It’s a good start. People that take noisy children where they can annoy others are assholes. Their trip about “rights” is nothing but shrugging responsibility. They are no different than noisy queers or people who pray out loud in public. It’s all about themselves, how they want the right to belong to a society but still do anything they please.
“Childhood is that wonderful time when all you need to do to lose weight is bathe.” –Anonymous
Here’s some trivia. The average America watches four hours of television per day. That four times what I spend on this blog, except for the time I spend taking pictures or maybe researching blog-specific subjects at the library. Conclusion: the average American must be four times smarter, four times more informed, four times more in tune with the world than I can ever hope to be. Why, he probably knows what a Millenial is.
The only reason I was not in Miami this morning was that rain. Crappy early morning rain that does not refresh the day, it just makes it muggier. You must be thinking of nice winter rain, but winter is over. Instead, we held the club meeting at the bakery and wound up spending $18 on it. I can’t warn everyone enough that complacency is about to cause a horrible round of inflation. The CPI announcements lull people into thinking inflation is a few percent per month.
Nope, it lurks in the basket of good you don’t buy. Then one day it hits your shopping cart and you get a wallet-ache just buying a bag of groceries. Get ready for that in spades. Gasoline will soon shoot back past where it was, I’m guessing close to $6 per gallon. And that will take the steam out of the entire economy. The lurch is, the robot club has $18 for breakfast on a nothing Tuesday. Do you?
Here’s a development. In the mornings I also drop off a newspaper at the vacuum shop. Today I introduced M to the owner’s husband. It turns out he can order specialized batteries on the cheap, making an instant old-boy-network connection. That would be a boon to our club. Plus, although I have not yet discussed the matter, would not, when you stop to think about it, small vacuum parts like motors be something a robot builder should consider?
If that sentence sounds convoluted, it is also an example of how conclusions are often drawn by deduction over here. So I decided not to tidy it up. Does anyone know if vacuums have gears in them? I know better than to ask anybody at Nova. N’yuck, n’yuck.
[Author's note: this study of gears has become a captivating short-term fascination with the club. We have no provision for making gears except the drills and saws at my place which are restricted to loose-fitting wooden gears. But I can rattle one off that works in less that five minutes now, including the design. My conclusion is that many, if not a majority, of people who use gears could not make one nor understand much more that the most ordinary concepts of how they work. There is too much to the subject. I'm only a novice, but yes, I would some day like to cut a metal gear.]
AFTERNOON
Whoa, gang. The article on private islands was for amusement only. You want to live on an island? You think you could live on an island? Wrong, and wrong again. Remember the old saying that the only people who’d have a monkey as a pet are those who never had one before. Right. These island are uninhabited for good reasons. Also, because the islands are all visible from the mainland, you will have a perpetual security nightmare in Florida year-round.
Small islands. You only think you want to live there. Double the cost of everything and maybe reconsider the reasons people learned to move together into relatively efficient cities some 10,000 years ago. To me, any island without a railroad system is too small.
Consider reading the Private Island Buyer’s Guide. You may find that island living is one of the most scrutinized behaviors you’ll ever find in the world of civilization and tax collectors. The one thing you are not going to have is any privacy.
New communications technology means there are no really private small islands left. The riskiest areas are Central America and Asia. Leasing is more popular than owning foreign property. While alternative “green” energy has advanced a long way, it is still expensive and unreliable. The most active market on the planet is the islands around Bermuda, popular with the drug smuggler set.
Second most active market are islands in Canada, but you don’t want to live there and rumor is the government is about to crack down on private ownership. That is, soon nobody will be allowed to own more than 49% of an island larger than 3 hectares. Whatever a hectare is.
Myself, I’ve lived on islands and do not care for it. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who wants to live on an island should contact the Chinese navy. According to some Pentagon experts, they’ll build one for you if you let them put a jet landing strip in your back yard. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha!
(To any snooping agents, of course, I'm only kidding. The Chinese want the front yard.)
EVENING
Now I’m kicking myself. Um, guys, I don’t need any help with that. One day after I walked past the drill set in Harbor Freight, I discover in my vast collection, I do not own a 9/32”. Guess what the standard shank size is for magnetic bits? Sit down, Patsie, that’s shank, not skank. I’ve also discovered the best way to get some odd shapes of wood to fasten together is to mill them out of a solid block. And slot screws and screwdivers, and possibly the people who use them, should be outlawed.
While this is going on, I reviewed the Amtrak offerings. The bottleneck in Florida is Disneyworld. At certain times of year, like now, it is impossible to find any discount fares. So if you wanted to go on through Orlando to some place I’ve never heard of, like Deland, you have to book either a more expensive seat or a month in advance.
Working along, here are three critical steps in the process. Yes, I see the mistake in the number of gear teeth. It will still work because the teeth are the correct size. There’s just three too many. On screen, you note the match-up, which is tricky unless you can set your screen to true size. Next, you see my literal cut and paste with the thicker spokes and the pilot holes drilled.
Last is the finished gear. The major difference between step 2 and step 3 is two broken saw blades. Yep, I broke them both. At the seam of the new weld. However, it did not cost me another $21 to pursue what is going wrong. I think the blades may be more sensitive to wood thickness than I imagined. What I’ve got here is the thickest wood for which my model was designed. Those neat rounded internal edges on the gear are exactly the same radius as a quarter.
Some manner of limit is being reached. For most purposes, this is about as big a gear as anyone would ever need. This is too large to fit under the yoke of the drill press. I’m of a mind to return to cutting very small and fine gears again. This is about as accurate as I’ll get without resorting to specialized cutting equipment. For me, this was plenty of fun for the evening. And it isn’t even dark outside yet.
ADDENDUM
A topic arose today about the definition of redneck. It was in relation to these “humanitarian” efforts to rescue refugees from Africa, the ones drowning in the Mediterranean. Should they be helped? This is an easy situation to dichotomize. If you say no, don’t help, why, you must be a redneck. Wrong, there are plenty of options between the two extremes. I’m going to record my third side.
Side A: A Humanitarian would help but go on to compel others to help.
Side B: A Redneck would not help but go on to compel others to not help.
Side C: A Libertarian would allow those who opt to help to help, allow those who opt not to help to not help, and compel both parties to leave the other side alone.
My stance is in the middle for a simple reason. Those who compel others to help often wind up causing more hardships upon others than those who ostensibly being helped. Also, to shield people from their own mistakes is to populate the world with idiots. So I am neither a humanitarian nor a redneck, but a libertarian. However, I do tend to side with those who merely wish to be left alone and I've noticed when the money runs out, Humanitarians quickly become Liberals whose only common trait is after-the-fact finger-pointing and begging for funding.
Why, if Ann Coulter showed up this morning, I'd have invited her in for tea and cookies too.
[Author's note: I am fully aware of the rule that says no indent after a list, and that I included one in the above. Those "rules" were, to those who study the subject, printer's guidelines to make the pages look more balanced. I say such rules should be re-written to match changing times and that the indent is there because it looks better. 'Nuff said.]
Last Laugh
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