One year ago today: October 22, 2014, my first censored post.
(And to date, my only blog censored by Google.)
Five years ago today: October 22, 2010, pondering “debt service” ratios.
Six years ago today: October 22, 2009, my old taxi (Venezuela).
MORNING
Here is the new plantation starting up. These are the replacements for the crop lost in the big windstorm. There is talk of a mini-greenhouse on the porch to ward off a recurrence. This is around half the plants started today. Note the colorful “pots”, I painted the middle one on as best an Xmas theme as I can. I’m just not into visual arts. Those are supposed to be holly berries, they look like clingstone cherries.
Moving on to other things you need to know, have you ever heard of a “Grainger box”? Probably not, since they don’t call them that any more. These were the anti-radar boxes carried on US spy planes, like the U2 shot down over Russia. The one carrying Francis G. Powers, who nobody ever heard of before. Or since.
The plan had been that the U2 flew too high for any Soviet missiles to reach. To this day, nobody has admitted that the answer is probably the simplest. Don’t launch the anti-aircraft missile from the ground, but from a high-flying aircraft. Say a Mikoyan Guroyev. A MiG. The guidance was probably still on the ground, but it worked. Later, the Ruskies just built longer-range missiles, which soon were shooting down one in every twelve US airplanes over North Vietnam.
And I hate Android, which is what I call that lame operating system on tablets. It has a tendency to close any window you tap on when it knows you don’t want that. But what I hate most is the false screen messages. When it is searching for a file (the search function is one of the worst) it will display “There are no files in this folder.” But my favorite has to be when you drag and drop a file to move it, you have to hunt around on the destination screen to make sure it doesn’t place it inside some folder that is already there—they got rid of the I-bar indicator of where to drop files.
While I’m moaning about this, it took some 50 separate hand motions, those swipes and flicks that make you look like a complete moron, to bring up a picture of a bicycle. The sad part is, all these quirks had been painstakingly cured by the time of Win XP. But along came the “greatest generation” and it’s back to square one. Soon, we’ll be looking are retro-fitting XP on the tablet. So I can get some work done. The tablet has no mouse port. A mouse, as we now know, is 15 times faster than Android.
One more annoyance. Is it just me, or does anyone else hate those videos (and staff meetings) where the commentator talks slow in case there is one super retard in the entire auditorium. Or the ones that waste a minute introducing themselves. Put in in the credits at the end, so if anyone is actually interested in who you are, they can look it up.
NOON
A load of work on the Honda, this time mainly mounting the new sidecar saddlebags. They are not that heavy, but look more than sturdy. Forget streamlining, I want raw cargo space. The left side is shown clearly, the right side will not fit unless I raise the spare tire around two inches. All I lack is the correct size of wrench to do that, the stub is long enough to add a spacer.
What’s this, there is talk of restaurants cancelling out on tips. But not because tipping is not an American custom, rather because the tipping is “unfair”. The server gets all the cash for just doing the tail end of the process. They have a point, but watch out. The places that do it replace the 15% tip with a 21% increase in food prices. Scumbags.
I am curious, where the 15% thing comes from. While pondering that, I’m rigging up a buzzer on the turn signals of the sidecar. The machine is loud enough that I regularly forget to cancel the signals, sometimes for miles. I was thinking about tip pooling at these restaurants. That just makes five tax cheats where now there is only one. I hope tipping for musicians never fades. I make 81% of my musical income in tips.
AFTERNOON
Another long lazy afternoon in the back yard. Got the signal buzzer installed, all the hatch covers replaced (they had been progressively removed to get at wiring on the long journeys. I repositioned the windscreen and replaced all the tie straps for the extra wiring and trailer harness. Everything is up to snuff and now I need to take my baby on a road trip. The windscreen had been loosened by the heavy tarp I took to placing over the bike when it proved unable to withstand ordinary Florida weather. I'll be in the back yard all rest of the week.
And somehow, I’ve misplaced all my large wrenches. Strange, I remember wrapping them in the original plastic holder and thinking how rarely I ever use large wrenches. Now I need them. I’m taking the evening off to plan the large panels that remain for the new cPod. Don’t worry about winter, it was completely comfortable below freezing in Utah last year. I think it was down to ten below north of Pendleton one night and I slept right through it.
EVENING
Next, Agt. M arrives with packs of Ramen noodles, which I cannot eat. He’s got a resistor needs replacing that I had to rig up from three smaller resistors, careful how hot they get. Then he wants to go to the beach. Nope. I will drive home after dark, but it’s next to impossible to get me to go more than a mile from home once the sun sets. Hey, I drive a motorcycle. Anyway, he brought over this blue beer that tasted like candy. He said he didn’t like it because it tasted too much like beer. I said the opposite.
I made the Ramen noodles and he ate all four helpings. 100% of your sodium, and 1100+ calories. It took a minute for him to clue in I added all the extra vegetables and used half-and-half chicken broth for the liquid. Dude, I’m not the one you tell about how to make a meal out of Ramen. And that’s why I quit eating it ten years ago. It is always the “other guy” who gets the heart attack. Yeah, well, when I was his age, I was not only healthy, I was a lot tougher. And look what happened.
As a parting thought I warned him, man does not live by Ramen noodles alone. One day, when your turn comes, you’ll be glad you have friends like me who can bring you over a jar of peanut butter. A pal who knows ten ways to cook porridge. Did you know, he has never eaten porridge? Have you ever tried to explain what porridge is to somebody who has never seen it?
ADDENDUM
Part of the late night meeting last day was a frank discussion about the MIG welder. We do get to use it, but it is not convenient. And that is a death knell for many tools around here. Now I was completely unfamiliar with spot welding, but take ten minutes if you may, and watch this video. No sparks, no muss, no gloves, goggles—the guy even holds the piece being welded with his bare hands on the metal.
It’s like the drill press all over, I suspect. That is, a drill press is not even mentioned in the majority of robot building guides, yet one of the first questions I’d now ask a newcomer. Do you have a drill press? From this video and a few other sources, I think one of these type of welding machines is due to appear here shortly. If it works, expect another quantum leap in productivity.
The product has mixed reviews. The decision is really mine since I control the club finances and I run a tight ship. I’m balking at the $175 price tag, even with 20% off that’s $140 plus tax. I only stay in charge by making consistent good decisions. But this would not be the first time I bought something I have no clue about. My question is, will it weld tin cans? Can I build things out of tin cans?
Last Laugh
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