December 24, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 24, 2014,
I lambaste political correctness before Trump.
Five years ago today: December 24, 2010, Xmas in the Gables.
Nine years ago today: December 24, 2006, crazy merry Xmas.
Random years ago today: December 24, 2009, college by candlelight.

MORNING
           Xmas Eve, and welcome to the blog that teaches you things without the sensation of a lesson. And today, here is a featured “polaroid” with a handsome dude. Hold an “instant” is something that has not happened since 1984, when this type of photo was already an anachronism. Fuji has brought out the “Instax”, a step into the past. For more info, read the night section below. The camera I saw was the Instax Mini 8, at a whopping $85, plus $10 for a 10-picture film pack. This type of product definitely signifies the lack of real progress in new consumer inventions that the US is suffering from its long-term neglect of R&D.

           I’m saying I would have trouble supporting pictures at $1 each even with my logistics system. Although it was a one-time maximum, this blog once required 700 photos for a single month. As an example, the few photos you see of JZ and I replacing the hot water tank were culled from a total of 49 pictures taken. Hence, I have to view the Fuji Instax as a rich kid’s toy. Mind you, for the no-tech adults that still constitute a majority in some locales, it has post-modern possibilities.

           Did you ever have such a quiet, pleasant evening that you didn’t want to wake up next morning. That’s me, I slept like the log, or maybe a railway tie. The wooden ones, not the lines they are widening over on Dixie with concrete ties. That is something to see, that robot-built railway. The concrete ties are spaced precisely and they are aligned without variance. You can eyeball the arrangement to the horizon with zero detectible error. If it was a millimeter, I’d spot it. The error is zero. Amazing.
           The bottom line is I’m ready for a week off. Like off the grid. Battery out of the phone, door locked, just me, a coffee pot and some unread books. Anyone with me on this? That’s a joke, son, I don’t’ want anyone with me. Retirement, even my version of it, means there are times when I don’t want to party hardy.

NOON
           I suppose there are a lot worse ways to spend Xmas Eve 2015 than rolling down I-95 in a shirt and tie on a sidecar, heading for Miami. I’d say it compares great with a lot of other circumstances. Well, actually, Gables Estates, not Miami, and then to Xmas dinner with the family. And what an excellent low-key affair, fifty-one people in attendance. Including a lot of children that were not born when JZ and I met. Neither of us brought a date this year and as usual it probably would not get mentioned if we did.

           Here is JZ with the kids that aren’t such kids any more, ha-ha the girls are as big as Santa now. Yes, that is the old Santa suit, although JZ had to use a smaller pillow this year. Har-dee-har-har, you didn’t hear that from me. My, how the years have flown, very few of the youngsters present were even born when JZ and I met 16 years ago. Gee, these photos are not as clear as they seemed on my tiny phone glass. But hey, otherwise they would not be shown here, either.
           Back to dinner. Ah, there were single women present this time. That’s rare, although as usual, they are all spoken for or engaged and/or heavily chaperoned, I mean these are no long exclusively family events. We (JZ & I) still represent the “bad boys” in the room, for what little that counts for at our age. Yes, I admit, we still look hopefully on to such possibilities.
           JZ got tied up at the Fort Lauderdale airport, so we arranged to meet at our old Denny’s on Dixie. Sixteen years ago we first had coffee in that place. It is now a Denny’s “Diner”, so no counter or stools. I got there early but took along my textbook on the Great Powers. The one I bought in the Thrift in Lakeland. It is such deep reading that in over two hours, I barely made it through 19 pages (hundreds more to go). See addendum for an interim book report.

AFTERNOON
           The Xmas after party with Santa and the tree, over at JZ’s sister’s place, always the best part of the festivities. It is a smaller group. The fabric on the Santa suit has shrunk a little more this year again. The popular gift item appears to be these “new” Instax cameras that print a “credit card” sized photo. They are nifty, but I would steer clear. The teens told me the pictures are still referred to as “polaroids”. Not for me, I know how quickly the cost of those things can escalate. And every picture auto-prints, there is no viewscreen, so it is not like you can take take a batch and only print the ten you want. The camera lacks a self-timer and a tripod mount.

           Sadly, some of the more familiar faces were missing. In fact, it was touch and go that JZ and I went this year, I sort of had to push for it. Well, hey, we are most happy on holidays when out chasing women and carousing, and now that the first generation of kids has moved on, we are the only two bachelors left in a huge crowd of couples. I just told you the only women there were look-but-don’t-touch. If I had bought a place, I can pretty much project that we would not have attended. It’s a nice family event, but it would be nicer if we could show up with families of our own.
           Don’t get me wrong, it is great to spend time with a family that I know better than my own, but by ten-ish, both JZ and I are ready to go hit the night clubs. At my age, being a bachelor begins to take on its own traditions. I know places to go that are not the standard Miami shigga-booga boom-boom joints, but I also know the time to go there is the week after Xmas. We can only consume so much time around the fireplace, then it is time to hit the dance floor.

NIGHT
Here’s a curve. This is a cabin, I may have remarked that it was “too far away”, but I handed JZ this photo as confirmation that this is the type of place I am looking for. It was meant to represent a generic style, the old “fishing cabin”, or former summer cottage. Change of pace here, because he showed it to others, who universally like the place. It is totally redone on the interior, as in “move-in-ready” and the kitchen is huge.

           I grew up in an era (but not a household) when the kitchen was the focal point, and this kitchen is a room you could live in. To me, it is just a small house, but it must have some charm to have the effect it has. Thus, after an hour of banter with JZ, I’ve decided to give this place a second look.
           We may even go take a peek, but it is 300 miles from here. Further than Deland and not on or near any main road. My primary concern is that it may be, at that price, in a bad neighborhood. Yet, bad neighborhoods are almost exclusively in the cities these days. This place is four miles into the countryside, far beyond Nike walking distance.

           The point here being is JZ’s proselytization that getting any place now will pay off providing both a secure place for my retirement plus a base of operations to find that magical fixer-upper we’ve discussed for years. A working retirement has always been an unspoken fact and these days it is prudent to think that way. Social security may not even be there when we turn 65, yet there always be plenty of money to fight trillion-dollar wars for nothing.
           The price? Well, that’s the thing, the tempting thing. The total price of this place is what I have now for a down payment on something else. That is, I could buy this place tomorrow. However, I notice it has been listed for 58 days, so something is wrong with it. We need to find out if it is something we can live with, such as a new hot water tank or even a new roof. Those things we can deal with.

ADDENDUM
           Now, five years after my first Arduino and my initial foray into the robots controller field, there are some reasonably-priced new microcontrollers entering the market. At prices as low as $7, that quite an incentive but beware. Some of these devices are the emerging but not yet standard 3.3 volt power requirement. I wish these engineers would announce a switchover date a few years in advance rather than offer parallel systems that are incompatible. Worse, the power supplies are not only identical pins, they are often positioned directly beside each other.
           Be further aware that many of these new boards utilize SMT, which means “surface mount technology”. I have never seen any sockets for SMT chips, meaning the chips are soldered directly to the circuit board. In turn, that means you cannot remove the chip and place it in a cheaper or smaller emulator. It’s a store-bought board or nothing.

           The book, titled “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Specifically, the European powers and Japan. (Japan wasn’t really, but because of its remote location, was able to industrialize to about the same degree as Italy without being pressed from all sides).
           The book is hard to peg, because it is above college level, but yet if for some reason a college student ever decided to read it, they might disagree. You see, it is an extraordinary history book because that factor varies with one’s degree of other historic knowledge. Since European history means military action, and my first degree is that topic, I find the reading unmercifully intense.
           Almost every sentence can be a referral or allusion to this or that. I find myself reading some passages five or six times. For instance, our school system teaches us that Britain in 1912 was the mightiest of Empires, that except for those pesky Boers, the Brits had never lost a war. Yet this book spells out the facts, that Germany had surpassed England in almost every category except the size of its Navy. Even then, the German ships were “pound for pound” better built and operated.
           Bearing in mind the book covers an era when it has become impossible to mention that wars are financed by bank loans. Instead, you get graphs and charts that say the same thing without mentioning the word “Rothschild”. Not many people know that Germany had all but won the First World War, and had done so supporting a victorious army with only 4.6% cost to the national economy. The other countries had to float huge bond and bank loans and were almost bankrupt.
           Today, it is well know what happens to countries that don’t participate in the world banking system, that is, what happens to countries who do not borrow money from the big banks to fight wars. Ut-tut, you are not supposed to even think about who owns the big banks. Anyway, like Syria, Japan, Germany, Libya, and before too long, North Korea, they all get the living snot bombed out of them until they come into line. “Give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws.”
           The book can’t spell it for you without being labeled hate literature, so it follows the usual roundabout path of innumerable charts and diagrams that get at the same point.
           Very complicated reading.


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