One year ago today: April 7, 2014, great writing.
Five years ago today: April 7, 2010, memory lane.
Ten years ago today: April 7, 2005, what is “Canola”?
MORNING
Here’s what the new gears look like. To me, they look virtually identical to the last batch. except cut in around a sixth of the time required not that long ago. Bad photos make life more interesting, don’t you think? These are 9 tooth and 18 tooth models. Somehow they look nicer to others, and they’ve received compliments. That’s how they made the blog. It was from people that don’t usually compliment.
Telstar. I was a kid when they launched it from “a beach in Florida”. The location was a big secret, you know. It was the first time I’d heard the word “titanium”. Wasn’t that the neatest name ever? Other things I recall was how NASA was portrayed as civilian but even us kids never believed that. The school wheeled a TV into the gymnasium for assembly and kept telling us the satellite was also “civilian” because it belonged to the telephone company.
There’s a memory question for you. I remember the broadcast in color, but it could not have been in those days. Here’s something else to chew on. We were taught from an early age that war was wrong but, and with American education, there is always a “but”, war was not morally wrong. It was wrong because it cost a lot of money. Yet, everybody knew America had a lot of money.
My earliest aversion to the military was therefore, not based on religion. It was the thought of having to take orders from somebody who had no natural authority. On that count alone, I would not even join cadets when others were. I resented how they got free uniforms, because, you got it, they cost a lot of money. Back home, everybody knows how I trained my scout troop how to march better than the cadets, just to spite them.
Trivia: here’s another item for those with nothing to hide. Hospitals will not give heart transplants to people with criminal records. Other organs are okay. There is talk they will extend this policy to other areas of public record. Make sure your grandkids don’t jaywalk, but other than that, why hide anything? I think the "logic" falls somewhere along this line: "All people have secrets, but only bad people try to hide secrets from the prying eyes of strangers."
NOON
Are you ready for a tale from the trailer court? Okay, over at the bakery there are some elegant mango trees that shade the parking lot. The landlord is working on his second girlfriend, so he lets her pretend to manage the property. She does diddly squat. Take that to mean all she does is squat and diddly. So during the mango bloom last time, a low hanging branch hit a Hungarian lady on the head. Somehow, the landlord avoided being sued.
Does this mean I have some nice mango logs for my bandsaw? Then, some thieves went around the strip mall a week ago and tried to pick all of the locks. Except, these were Millenium grade criminals. I think the goofs tried to look up lock-picking on eHow. All they succeeded in doing is wrecking the locks. That’s except for the café and the bakery, the two locations which have security cameras. I’m going to be a nice guy and fix the lock for the Lebanese shoe guy. Why? Because the locksmith charges $200 plus parts.
The summer heat wave is here, I’m going to move my bicycle outdoors. Like I told, the new bicycle lock rack I'm building is not going to be welded. I did my research into the failure of our muffler welds and even 1/8” steel plate is too much for a “flat” weld. Hey, at least we learned that in a way not to be forgotten. That leaves bolts as the alternative, which I bought this morning, $1.84 each. We test welded a pipe to a 1/8” plate and found no matter how solid it looks, I could lop the joint off clean with one silent wallop with a rubber hammer. So bolts it is, we will solder the nuts in place afterward.
Stick around to see. We place less value on getting things done than on figuring out how to get them done. I’ve got all afternoon and two quarts of peach tea to drill eight bolt holes.
EVENING
Instead of an evening, we had an hours-long discussion about why all this welding did not work. Meanwhile, you can see me working on the new bicycle rack, a design that discourages easy theft. Shown here, I am measuring the depth of a six-inch bold through the tow tongue. If you look, you can see the angle iron piece I’m fitting. I will only say at this point I prefer to drill and place these objects on my own.
That’s why you get a photo of my sexy legs. Get a load of them gams! The fitting of these iron rods, or angle iron is the proper term, has so far been a lesson that no amount of measurement with metal construction is ever exact. I used squares and navigation-quality instruments and the orientation was always disappointing. You can rule out pilot error.
Golly, it is just a bike rack. Or is it? Can anyone else recall not so far back about the possibilities of welding together some bicycle parts together. How Dave-O said he could weld, but he also said he could play guitar? It’s in this blog somewhere and it is history. Except the part where I have a far better working knowledge of what to expect from welding.
Shown in the photo is the piece of angle iron that fits through the bicycle frame. That’s the part that forms a triangle ahead and beneath of the rider. The concept is to present a deterrent and in my opinion that means simple. The would-be thief needs to see through his drug-fogged stupor that moving along is far easier than stealing my bicycle.
Agt. M has a different approach. Swiveling hatches and ground rails anchored half-way to China. The array is impressive, but it is not simple. The bad guy has to clearly see what he has to cut through and give up before he starts. My basic pattern means he has to make three cuts to steal the entire working bicycle. No matter what he cuts first, he is leaving two parts behind.
Anyway, see if you can deduce what I have in mind. The club mig welder turns out to be an unwelcome favorite. Everybody likes to weld. Where I carefully plan and cut the bolt holes, others readily reach for a hammer. Grrrr.
ADDENDUM
Did you Austin Powers’ fans know Hollywood has its own Fat Bastard. Except our is for real. You mean I never told you about ours? If you’d like to meet him, go to the computer section of the local thrifts. I’ll even tell you how he got the name. He is so fat he blocks access to what he is buying, akin to a lady blocking the dress aisle so nobody else can shop while she is. Here’s how it works.
He’s the one who has been buying all the good flat screen monitors before I get there. The trouble is, he also buys them after I get there. The trick with the monitors is to test them first using one of the computers on the store shelf. This must be done one at a time. His modus operandi is to park himself so that nobody else can get at the only available power outlet. If you try to get past him he snaps at you that if the other monitors work, he’s buying them. The Fat Bastard thinks he’s got first dibs!
Well, we shall now see about that. The old Acer computer I’m using right now is on its way out. Its main virtue is that it is so small, about 8 inches square and a little over an inch wide. Say, Fat Bastard, I just thought of a use for it. Thanks to robot studies, it is now a simple matter for me to build a self-contained testing unit.
Author’s note: you may have guessed there is a spot of animosity as well. There is. I don’t like old guys with a little bit of knowledge and that is what I’m dealing with here. I’m acutely touchy about this type of individual when it comes to computers. My attitude is that if you can’t program, don’t get in the way of those who can. That would include not blocking the store aisle. The fat one is clearly a technician of some kind. And he thinks the thrift is his own personal shopping arena. Not no more. Ain’t nobody fat enough to block both shelves, not even Oprah.
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