One year ago today: December 26, 2014, on self-supporting women.
Five years ago today: December 26, 2010, Liechtenstein?
Nine years ago today: December 26, 2006, 10% higher than recorded.
Random years ago today: December 26, 2012, read the cost . . .
MORNING
Here’s an ad from Popular Mechanics. I’ll be looking into this machine. I thought it was a mini-table saw, which I’ve wanted for years. The literature says it uses a jig-saw blade and that dude is definitely cutting a plank. I trust reciprocating more than circular. I’m always hesitant about tools that I don’t use all the time and this could be the exception. It weighs “less than 15 pounds” and it says perfect for rip, scroll, crosscut or “intricate” miter cuts.
The videos show that the jigsaw blades are too wide for any type of sharp curves, so don’t toss your scroll saw yet. The newest model has no speed control, probably one of the most useful features of the tool. Hence, I think it would be smarter to build a table plate for an old jigsaw and turn the thing over. Say, maybe I’ll do that. The club definitely has the tools to build new tools, a frontier that has to be crossed for any serious robot enthusiast.
While this is going on, I made up some more of my specialties: wooden cleats to wind up power cords on “modern” tools and appliances that lack them. Remember when all quality tools had them, or at least that rubber molded end that you could clip the wound up cord to itself?
[Author's note 2019: I did not purchase this tool, which is basically an upside-down jig saw. It suffers all the same shortcomings. Underpowered. weak blade, slow cutting, difficult to keep sharp, ornery to change, and prone to dulling in the middle while the ends rarely get used. I'll stick with my real jig saw. For ripping, circular saws wear the teeth more evenly.]
NOON
This would have made my Xmas, a Kassoy digital microscope. Alas, the price was misquoted at $399, but I had to call and ask. It was, indeed, $3,999. But worth every penny of it. I won’t go into the specs except to say this is the type of microscope used in gemology, of which I know very little, except for a course I took in the 80s or 90s at night class. This makes it ideal for looking at diatoms, since the silicon structure is better visible with these “3D” Leica lenses.
He does not have a concept of not borrowing money. Like most retards, he thinks that is how things are always sold and those who won’t borrow are either deadbeats or holding out on him. I say let him stew a bit, the bottom line is we have money and he does not. Who knows, maybe his rich uncle gave him $500 for Xmas and he’s feeling flush.
You may not like what I say next, but some truths always hurt. You see, he has to be careful that somebody of the wrong type doesn’t offer him full price. He lives in a small town and is thus somewhat beholden to his neighbors to keep the status quo.
Here’s something to chew on. I often do the map work in a coffee shop or a pub, which are generally occupied by the bored do-nothing sorts. Just ask Wallace. Anyway, this concept of a cottage in the interior is vastly more popular than at first glance. Almost anybody who sees what I’m looking at loves the idea and I’ve even had offers to rent or move in with me (none of the ladies are suitable for that). There are a few who consider it a total waste of money, but generally they are the ones I can’t explain to them that it is not likely I’d actually live there long term.
It’s a shack, they say, but that is precisely why the price is low and is also what it would be used for. This is not Buckingham Palace or a country estate. I remember my own disappointment when a guy I worked with retired and told us he was going to go live in his fishing cabin. I guess we thought after 40 years at the company, he’d have something pretty nice. It was a 16 x 24 plywood shack. Still, I did not laugh as much as the others. At least Pete isn’t going to die on a big pile of house that the kids will fight over.
It’s a shack they say. But it is supposed to be. A shack bought and paid for cash. That part, they don’t say.
I’m telling you (see photo) six months ago this would have had some activity in the “southwest” corner, but now, it looks like a crime wave.
Other localities checked [today] but rejected for outrageous prices include Bowling Green, Haines City, and Wauchula. Who would spend $100,000 on a one-bedroom mobile in Bowling Green? Even the town name is a rip-off.
NIGHT
OMG, look here! Silver has flat-lined. We are doomed. Take all your valuables to the church basement before dawn and over-inflate your car tires by 15% immediately. Either that or just relax, the market does this every long holiday weekend. I’m twenty bucks over budget so I’m going shopping tomorrow, but none of this Black Friday or whatever. I mean the swapmeet, where I only spend on tremendous bargains.
It has been 19 years since I quit the phone company, or more accurately, sold them back my job for 6 figures, what a steal that was. Pity, so many people worship the false god of counting money. Oh, by all means, have a go at it. But if you are not on cloud 8 by age 21, time to quit chasing rainbows. Since it could be argued what I did at the phone place was not a real job, you might say I have not worked a day in my life since 1981. That, children, is a form of success—the more so because never have I been on public assistance or accepted charity.
So with that in mind, tomorrow I take the day off and putter around. Nope, I’m not rich in the money sense, but my chances of making it big by being correctly positioned are infinitely greater than those whose viewpoints are limited by having their noses to a grindstone.
I’m on page 126 of the Great Powers book, and it is finally more interesting as we get to around 1905 when Germany and America take over the world from England. The Empire is corrupt and bankrupt but nobody knows it yet. England, trying to clutch onto the dying “Free Trade” system, will plunge all of Europe into two wars that will reduce most of the continent to rubble within the next 40 years. England focuses on destroying Germany only because she perceives the US as being too far away to be a threat to the world power structure.
Meanwhile the US is building up to twenty warships at a time, controls a canal that spans both big oceans, and has amassed a horde of a third of the gold in the world. This is beginning to attract the attention of the large
Last Laugh
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