One year ago today: November 21, 2014, repressed memories, my eye.
Five years ago today: November 21, 2010, Boca Raton, meh . . .
Nine years ago today: November 21, 2006, good people and hills . . .
Random years ago today: November 21, 2007, the picture is
MORNING
Here’s some luck, remember that Dremel tool I picked up for a song because the bits were missing? I dropped the case and heard a rattle. Hmmm, I got out a big robot magnet and was able to fish out seven bits, and those Dremel bits are not exactly cheap these days. Yep, one is a sanding drum and one is that “mandrel” thingee for holding cutting wheels and sanding disks. They were stuck behind the plastic casing, but that’s a total flop to Dremel for using a case where the bits can even get lost like that in the first place. A dud mentality.
So I took and tested my rechargeable battery arrays. And not liking what I am finding. The three brands being compared are Panasonic, Duracell, and Energizer. They all appear to be equally bad. They go bad far earlier, and I refer to bad as not necessarily dead, but malperforming in some way long before the claimed “400 recharges” level. The Duracell is worst so far. I point out that these batteries are charged and discharged to spec, and that is to a level I doubt that one person in ten thousand has the equipment. I had to build my own discharger, see photo. The discharge bulb, although dim, is on.
I’d say every test round, it is looking more and more like these rechargeable batteries are a consumer scam. The factories know that after an average of 35 recharges (my guess), people just assume they’ve done something wrong and go buy new ones. And anything less than around 120 recharges is not getting your money’s worth over regular batteries, folks. Wait, there’s more. Preliminary results are showing it is even less worthwhile to bother charging batteries smaller than AAs.
Not even shown in the inventory tracking system required to organize this recharging effort. It is a four step process. Charged batteries in the device, dead batteries awaiting recharge in the rack or on the discharge unit (shown here), batteries in the charger (not shown) and recharged batteries awaiting usage.
The batteries awaiting usage must be discharged and recharged once a month, used or not. The wall calendar for the recharge dates is not in the photo. Setup as shown is for one device(my $14 Argus camera), so try to imaging the number found around the average household. I do not believe the Joe Schmoe has any such an elaborate setup. All of it hand-made as shown.
Therefore, since it is not made clear by the manufacturers what is required to actually recharge these batteries the claimed 400 times, until further notice, rechargeable batteries are a major scam.
NOON
The rain kept me on various tasks, one of which was complete the saw handle. To some that’s a boring afternoon, to me it is an adventure in life I missed out on for too long. When I buy a place, there is going to be one separate room with all the tools I need to tinker away the remainder of my life. Those who don’t understand the difference should go find another blog. I have not a moment’s training on tools, but that does not extend to the thinking part.
We cannot afford the “shortcuts” taken by those who thoughtlessly assume a trade is based only on manual dexterity. I'm not very good at learning by watching other people do something, I have to get it on my own. Nobody told me where intermittent pitfalls lie, so I cannot just start cutting wood and patch up mistakes along the way. Every step, start-to-finish, must be imagined, one lapse and you get failure. And that is what you should be looking for in these “monotonous” pictures—that this is being accomplished by somebody who has never built anything like a saw handle ever before. That is, I don’t come from a long line of carpenters who build motorcycle trailers, either.
Speaking of batteries and malperformances, I saw for the first time this morning and took an immediate dislike to this John Iadorola prick of a “newsperson”. He’s your typical crap-mind, not in any way seeking the truth, but convinced that his own personal agenda is the correct one for his interview victims to follow. I have a built-in dislike to those who do not do right, but instead always say what, in their own primitive minds, they think makes them look best. Such people cannot ever be relied upon. They will lie under oath if they perceive it will make them look pretty. And they are not above going out of their way to get into that position at your expense.
He did not ask if Trumps idea of registering the Muslims would solve a problem, as would be the proper question for a reporter to ask. No, on he goes about “Nazi rhetoric”, making his stupid brownie points with the Liberals. How, America, do these crybabies get their own news shows? Anyway, his attack on Trump made him a laughing stock because his cohort, one Ana Kasparian, also trying to prove a Liberal point, wound up contradicting each other. That is was Trump who was “vague” because he would not let them trap him with trick questions. Ha.
The critics newest attack on Trump is that he isn't really campaigning, he is only telling people what they want to hear. Well, duh, isn't that how you get people to vote for you, John-boy? Or maybe, as a Liberal, you think your opponents should only tell people what they don't want to hear. Is that it, you friggen moron?
This Iadorola is so naïve he thinks Trumps idea of a Muslim database is something new. Dude, allow me to inform idiots of your ilk that the government already keeps 71 separate databases on everyone—the information is already on file. Trump doesn’t have to “track down” anyone, he's only saying a separate database that is dedicated to Muslim-types, but isn't computer savvy enough to put it that way. He's still smarter than you. Is brain-freeze at the Ninth Grade level mandatory to become a news commentator? If so, John-boy you really to go back and work on your equivalency.
I glanced through the NYT Bestseller rack at the grocery stand. It’s mass produced schlock. In music, I miss those snappy tunes about some nonsense subject like we had before. “Henry the VIII” and “North To Alaska”. And I miss novels about something other than mystery, action, or romance. Books like anything by Jules Verne. These tunes and stories were not defining works of the era, but they provided some relief to the mainstream grind.
I keep telling myself I have to write “Planet 107”. I’ve turned the idea over many times but something always stops me from proceding. This is the concept book of future space travel where humans finally decide segregation is best and each “type” of persons are allowed to immigrate to an entire planet of those who are like-minded. There are rules, for instance, the like-mindedness is not self-determined. Or all the welfare cases would opt to move to rich areas and beg, type of thing. No, they are put on a planet of other welfare cases. By then, 280 inhabitable planets have been colonized.
The idea works fantastically until the year 2045, when the transport company on Earth goes bankrupt. For the next four generations, the planets are left to their own resources until 2122, when a mission from Earth goes out to check on what’s happened. The results range from hilarious to tragic, but there is a war going on. Everybody is trying to get to Planet 107. That’s the planet where all the “John Wayne” types went. It is fantastically wealthy, white, clean, unpolluted, and safe, with total personal freedoms and no laws as it is self-governing. There is only one crime, which carries the death penalty, and that is to propose any type of taxation.
Planet 1, the Liberals. Everyone is dead because to prove they were tolerant, they allowed themselves to all be killed by one madman, who then committed suicide because there was nobody else to kill. Planet 2, the welfare case colony, I have not decided. Did they all go to work because they had to, or did they all die refusing to fend for themselves. The book is a study on the outcomes of the views held by the various mindsets that are fracturing the world with their private agendas. But a social study, not some analytical projection.
NIGHT
Cancel the beach. That new lady was at the old place again, but the weather turned ugly about start time. Thusforth, I spent some time researching real estate. Looking over my shoulder, you see my search criteria blocks any ads for over 55s. Am I anti-old age? No, the purpose of that is to filter out any trailer parks. If I get a mobile home, I want it Texas style, sitting on its own little acreage. With a big old oak tree. Not only is the music called off, so is the trip to Okeechobee tomorrow in JZ’s new truck. We were going to the Serendipity for coffee.
Here is the last step in the sequence, you are looking at the saw handle, not the blade. In the top photo, you see for comparison part of the old black plastic handle, which broke at the first opportunity. Using it as a template, you can see the original cutout, then in the middle picture, the handle plug is removed so you can see it in isolation. Nice, huh? (The handle is further down the finishing stage when this photo was taken.)
Last, in bad light, is the handle fitted onto the back saw blade. A back saw has an extra rib along the “back” or top of the blade, you can see it, to keep the blade from flexing. The saw teeth point forward in Western saws, backwards in Chinese saws. It makes apparent sense to have the teeth cut on the pull stroke, but it is actually harder to cut a straight line that way. Beyond that, the logic escapes me.
Now, I mentioned stepper motors. We’ve talked about these before, these motors require a controller and a special set of electrical signals to operate. The problem is the woeful state of the instructions. Like anything else electronic or computers, 99% of the people who can finally do it lose all ability to communicate the material to the layman. Unlike saw handles, I cannot take a picture of electricity, so I accept the challenge to write a definitive set of directions for ONE of these motors, and I’ve chosen the unipolar stepper.
There are actually three robot motors that require controllers, and they are normally presented as two types, the servo and the stepper. But there are two types of stepper, I chose the more common one. A stepper is that “whining” sound you hear on the robot wheels as it moves from place to place. When it stops, there is a different “whine” as the servo takes over. The way I remember the difference (and I will repeat this information in the article) is imagine I am on Mars.
To go over the horizon, I have to walk, that is, take steps. But once there, I have to “serve” up some results for the people back on Earth who paid for all this shit. So I uses da servo.
ADDENDUM
Okay, as promised, I listened to some Britney Spears. No, gang, I am not into pseudo-rap no matter how well it sells. Same with Gospel and Ska, the answer is no. But I did hear in her music something well-know, but I don’t know if there is a name for it. This is where a song is a hit, but only one part of the entire tune is catchy. The rest of the song sucks. So, it turns out I have heard a couple of Spears’ choruses (“Baby Hit Me One More Time” and “Oops, I Did It Again” but having to listen to the same songs repeatedly would be torture on me.)
She often sounds like the music and vocal tracks were written without collaboration, which normally I would like. But not when the disjoint sounds contrived. And I don’t like “chant-singing”. Worst, most of her bass lines consist of less than six notes, total. In Alan Jackson’s “Don’t Rock the Jukebox”, I play approximately twenty different notes in at least five distinct patterns. Spears has one pattern. Worst feature—her youTube videos enable autoplay. Stupid Millennials like autoplay. The randomness captivates their peanut-sized brains.
And who is the next little girl they are plugging on youTube? That one from Tampa they got singing old-lady songs already. Thirteen and she’s already got hip-bulge. Stecker. Skylar Stecker, there’s a moniker that will sell the hipsters if I ever heard one. Heading straight down the Miley Cyrus path, that one.
And, click Spears off my computer? Oops, I did it again.
Last Laugh
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