One year ago today: September 14, 2014, I quit.
Five years ago today: September 14, 2010, justifiable tinfoil . . .
Six years ago today: September 14, 2009, provocative addendum.
MORNING
Right off, congratulations Trump on your “people are tired of nice” interview. You are aware that you are rubbing the “nice” candidates noses in it, aren’t you? They are wetting their pants at the thought of a one-on-one debate on the issues they so dearly prize. They seethe with envy at the way you get away with saying “Hell” on TV and let me tell you, showing that mountain of hand-written fan mail was a master stroke. I say open a few and read them live. Those are a gold mine.
What we got here is the old 7489 circuit from 2013. We are proud of our mistakes and do not destroy them. The proof of progress is real to anyone who experiences looking back at something and wondering how anything so simple was so confusing back then. This tiny memory device is being re-looked at as a kit we could, theoretically, build by ourselves. The primary topic of the meeting was to devise a simple game or purpose using the 16 available memory locations.
I’ll recap the device. There is a 7489 chip, capable of storing 16 nibbles (half-bytes). It is primitive but that makes it easy to learn. I devised this panel in May of 2013, it contains 14 LEDs. The two yellow LEDs in the low right corner are easiest to see. The others are wired so that they work as follows.
First you “write” a number with four switches. Then you select a memory location, that’s what I’m doing in the picture. Third, you hit the “write enable” yellow switch, which stores the number in the selected location. You cannot turn the power off, you will lose your data. Now, by setting any of the memory locations and hitting the other yellow switch, the set of green LEDs will display the contents. I designed and built this without any plans (or any help for that matter), so in that sense it is original.
Now, think of a game or something to do with those memory locations. I only need to sell 1,500 kits at $30 each. Be nice, this is serious stuff. I can produce six kits in a batch with my existing plant and equipment. I would incorporate a battery holder, a power indicator, and an external input (probably for the Arduino). The most expensive components are the little switches, at nearly $1.50 a pop, ouch. I’d replace them with handier rocker switches at 99¢ each.
[Author's note 2017: that last paragraph is misleading. I did not mean to sell the particular kit I'm designing here, rather making a comment on the total price and volume I would like to sell of any kit.]
NOON
Forrest Mimms does it again. There is a saying that goes if you don’t know who Forrest Mimms is, stop whatever you are doing, right now, and go find out. He’s built a seismic detector out of a piezo speaker. It detects any motion through vibration of the crystals. So instead of emitting a sound, it sends a detectable electric current back to an amplifier. I must build one.
Next, I tried to find any documentaries on the Indian Ocean. Good luck. I should make one, titled something like, “The Most Useless Ocean on Earth”. About the only thing ever discovered there was a fish from the fossil ages. A word on documentaries, I do not shop at business which are advertised on youTube videos. Such advertising is sickening, a dismal throwback to the worst of the previous century’s consumer mentality. For example, that is why I do not eat a the Outback. Their damn ads. I did not click on their ads because I didn’t want to see it. No, I don’t care if they themselves never put it there.
Or the emerging argument of whether the fresh water supply in the Great Lakes “belongs” to the states that border them. The argument should get ugly in a few years when the world supply is spoken for. It’s not like Alaska gold or Texas oil, which is physically under the land even when offshore. I’m not sure on that one, but it would certainly belong to whoever incurs the expenses of supplying it to market. I may not own the ocean doesn’t mean you can help yourself to the fish I caught.
One hilarious aspect of those “drain the water” documentaries is the number of worried and frightened people who think they actually take the water away to make the pictures.
AFTERNOON
I opted out of the movies and studied Kapyong, the battle in Korea where 1200 white guys handed 10,000 Chinese their asses. It isn’t worded that way, but it is painful to hear the PC commentators so unnaturally strained to avoid it. Folks, it was a totally political war, more so than most. The Chinese use human lives to make up for their lack of material. Not wise in a war of political ideology. All political systems are alike in one aspect, that they are based on not allowing even one person in their societies to do as they please.
Oddly, I feel the same about employers. That is why I often called my co-workers “the clock people”. The good employee ran his life by a good clock. This brought forth many a bewildering situation for them in the context that I was often the first person they had ever met that did not share their core value system. I was not motivated by credit card living, did not own a television, and was not embarrassed to take time to think.
Even my choice of words was infuriating to some. I didn’t “refuse”, I said , “I decline the offer.” For no particular reason, I’m having such memories this afternoon. Never once did I go for a three-beer lunch or a stripper bar with the boys. I would often forget names when unimpressive people returned from vacation. But surely the most enraging thing was, and I admit it, although there is nothing wrong with the way I treat women in general, there is a huge difference in the way I treat the ones I find attractive.
Again, nothing wrong. I’ll hold the door open for both, but the smile is subtly different. It was a repair department so when it comes to raw intelligence there is always one person in each room who completely eclipses the pack. You’ll have to use your imagination how that goes. So yes, it was obvious, but never wrong, that the pretty girls never had to wait in line. Was that wrong? Not if you can tell me how the others with their never-ending wants and needs could otherwise have been dealt with.
At the other extreme, over the decades, I probably asked others for help maybe three times. Total.
EVENING
A crop of houses has appeared near Winter Haven. All wanting cash, all in the $35k to 40k range. That is not a bad part of the world and I’m looking into it. Here is a place which I would buy today if it was owner financing and had a second bathroom. Mind you, the specs say the third bedroom is a converted garage with a separate entrance. JZ and I could handily put a bathroom in there and rent it out.
Next, I see an ad in Miami for a “ghost writer” for a “fiction based autobiography”. Anybody who can express at least four self-contradictory concepts in five words doesn’t need my help. I have three e-readers in the storage cabinet though I’ve never read an ebook. There just aren’t any consistently good authors that interest me. Don’t buy a reader based on the number of free books. All that is available are out-dated, stale public domain, or lunatic fringe.
It is no longer blog-worthy, but time to time I’ll calculate the ground point of the sun (celestial navigation). If I ever get a boat, I doubt I’d be sailing at night. That’s not the proper use of a boat after the sun goes down anyway. But what is becoming important in my studies is cartography, the maps themselves. Time for a deeper look instead of memorizing the different projections and taking the numbers along the edges for granted.
Maybe I need the maps just so I have a reason to take another train trip?
Last Laugh
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