One year ago today: September 22, 2014, I quit the band.
Five years ago today: September 22, 2010, on Canadian thinking.
Six years ago today: September 22, 2009, she never called back. Fool.
MORNING
From the family portrait of 7-segment counters last day, the item on the far left seems to have been the most popular, but it is no more. (Oh, it is still popular, but not in original form.) It was manually operated, but the testing became advanced and tedious enough that I slowed down an Arduino to human speed and programmed it to run through the test (which is how I was able to “sense” 50 milliseconds). I repeat, “No shortcuts.”
I know people don’t like to believe any progress is heavy-duty attention to detail, but the bad news for them is there are no shortcuts. I ran into the old familiar problem of the counter skipping the digit “9”. But I also noticed (being a musician) there was also a 50ms extra delay between the slot where the 9 was missing and the count recommenced. This tipped me off to the solution. 50/1000ths of a second.
[Author's note: what I'm saying here is people do not like to think of progress as the result of the other guy's hard work. They would prefer to believe that the progress "suddenly dawned" on him, and that given the same idle time and circumstances, it would dawn on themselves, too. Never underestimate this factor. I know I've got it sometimes.
I further discovered a quirk of the Arduino, another ultra-important point missed out in the manual. When a digital pin goes to 0V, it also runs a connect to the ground or grounding pin. You’d best be careful with this, since it can easily create an unexpected dead short. As a rule, do not connect your external battery supply directly to any Arduino grounding pin. I recommend at least a 220Ω quarter-watt, I use 1 watt resistors when I can find them any more.
Most distracting in the background was a video of Korean shipyards, the ones who build the big ones. It seems for every Koran supertanker, there is an uneducated loser who went into media reporting. “Will it float?” he wants to know. Like the question was never asked two years before the design people decided to spend a few hundred million. It irks me because that is the same gronk-level “reporter” who would ask Trump to quote the bible. Uneducated dickweeds, that’s what such newspeople are, trying to create news rather than report it.
But that’s a non-revealing statement. They create the news, but that does not extend so far as to actually help out. These cowards are charming as they stand by, filming a victim bleeding to death, or a child’s body in the ocean, useless but handing each other trophies for “bravery”. Newspeople of this era are a sickening spectacle. And say, what’s happened to that anemic-looking Ramos moron? You know, the traitor-hero who was supposed to galvanize the anti-Trump Latinos.
Or was that just another Miami Herald mega-fizzle? Like their “housing recovery” with prices that went up 4.2% while real inflation was three times higher the same year.
NOON
I’m not impressed, I had the breaker at the meter fry again, and it is on the power company side. I’ve concluded it is a combination of factors, for example, the last time a huge lighting storm had just gone through the area. What I want to do is get into the crawl space beneath this unit for an inspection. JZ says absolutely not to get under there alone, but that he cannot arrive as backup until next Saturday, the 26th. I shall follow that advice.
Be careful where you locate your feeders, because that warning isn’t in the rule book either. For example, do not hand it directly above the hood of your Escalade. That guano is high acid stuff, more than a match for any paint job our species has invented.
It is not all work and no play, here is a half hour video on the butterfly. I consider it very well done and worth the watch. And Kudos to Rowland and Alvarez, the two guys who stayed behind to help when an assisted living company Valley Springs Manor abandoned 16 elderly residents. I know there are two sides to the story, but that, Valley Springs, is intolerable conduct.
EVENING
Can’t say my horoscope doesn’t keep up with the times. Today it advised I check my e-mail before making any decisions. I’d check it right now, but wouldn’t that be making a decision? Meanwhile, I tried to find an afternoon movie about high school or college that did not have the work out theme of the nerd ultimately besting the school bully. My distaste for that plot is a personal experience. In high school, I was neither a bully nor a nerd. It was more of a separate class in which my and my group of friends shunned both those “other” types.
Oh, we had the bullies, the Willies and the Teds, usually hold-backs a year or two older than the rest of the room. And we had the nerds, like my brothers who were not bullies because, well, because they were also wimps. But don’t ever let them get the upper hand, either. It was a small town, but even then the distancing was complete. I scored with all the hot chicks except the one I really wanted, Monica. Unlike the movies, the nerds never did ultimately win the hot babe over with “sensitivity”. Hell no, they got the leftovers.
For that matter, years later it was to come to my attention that most of the local guys never scored at all during high school. That double surprised me because I thought that was pretty much impossible. Then I find out neither of my own brothers got anything until they were 18. What a bunch of losers. Even then, one brother had to get shacked up with the first gal he met, the other got lucky once before her father shipped her to a college 1500 miles away and put a stop to that.
Now, where was I with that Arduino code . . .
The C+ language declares array sizes in 1-based counting. Thus, for my 10 digits of 7 segments, I defined an array of [10][7]. Makes sense, right? But, when I go back to read those values, C+ switches to 0-based. The read loop parameters are [9][6]. One set of numbers starts at 1, the other set starts at 0. A very easy mistake for non-nerds to make. This, folks, is why the C+ language will never be used for anything serious. It is the “legalese” of computer communication and self-limiting through convolution.
Then on top of that, the information in the array also uses ‘tard counting and is inverted for common anode. See diagram nearby. (Don't forget, the arrangement does not have to be row-column, I chose that arbitrarily. For reasons.) And please, really look at the thing, it took an hour to create. The pictures in this journal often take longer to make-ready than the blog itself. But I had to go highly visible to compete. Readership is down thanks to social media.
And just when you think you’ve got it right, even the Arduino can throw a curve at you. As you save the files, called “sketches” the Arduino uses that screwed up system of creating its own folder for each sketch. But it doesn’t always tell you where that is. Now, I’ve lost the complete set of code that was the successful three digit test run. Fortunately, I printed out a copy. But always remember not to trust Arduino to keep your backup copies. They have been bastards about that from the word go.
ADDENDUM
OMG, if I go back to college (entirely possible, and I would be there now if I had the cash, no loans), one has to get “affirmative permission”. They had a fat one on NPR saying so. Hey, if it’s radio, how do I know she was fat? Double hey, I could tell she was ugly, too. But permission to have sex? I think I will put the matter to rest right now. I state categorically to all the sweet young things on campus that this is my written permission for you to have sex with me. Really, it’s okay.
Either way, permission has never been an issue in my life. Guys, just move on to the next one. As for the women who get “incapacitated”, that has more to do with their taste in men than the presence of alcohol. NPR makes that one a tough call by lumping all men together as the aggressors. But it seems to me jerkwad frat houses are very conspicuous and these women are not being kidnapped or smuggled in through the basement window.
Same with the women accusing Cosby of assault. I take one look at them and the only part I can believe is that it must have been 40 years ago. At least. Sure, I’m a redneck, but that’s better than being a Liberal because a redneck cares about the future of this country and you live in it. Statistically, I mean, I see that 30% of my readership is European. Yes, Patsie, the Ukraine is still in Europe.
And I may bow to pressure from the people who like the blue background on the recent photos. I think the enthusiasm will wear off, so I’ll keep it for now. According to ProLifeTips, if you want the Jehovah’s Witness creeps to leave you alone, the next time they come knocking, tell them you were “disfellowshipped”. Be stern and serious, and they will never come near you again. And I did not know that it is illegal for movies made in America to allow endings that portray the law has having been defeated. Because, it never happens in real life, I suppose.
Last Laugh
(Good thing she's got a fat one!)
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