One year ago today: December 29, 2014, my dream machine.
Five years ago today: December 29, 2010, hotels, legalized Mafia!
Nine years ago today: December 29, 2006, signed, “Donald Duck”.
Random years ago today: December 29, 2013, US financial colonies.
MORNING
I have another theory. No matter how rich or how poor a man might be, you can judge the quality of his retirement by the number of spring clamps that he owns. Before retirement, you have as many as you can afford. Ah, but after retirement, the game changes, see? You’ll need all sizes, from small clothespins to the hand-held models. I’d say the average requirement for a happy camper would be around 72 clamps total. That’s just the hand-held, I’m not even talking C-clamps or pipe clamps.
So I got the wagon for $40 but add the $10 for gas. You get the idea, nothing is free in Florida. And if by chance you find something you think is free, step over it and keep on truckin’. I made a short video of the wagon already, but more to test the parameters of the modified Nikon-Samsung-Panasonic recorder. Which I also got to take stills, a feature I thought was broken, but started working again on its own. The pictures you see today are really a test of the camera system, which should be an improvement in clarity but not so much in content. Trust me, it is very hard to take interesting pictures day after day.
These tests increased my dislike of Windows and Android. These are no longer operating systems designed to do a job, they are strictly optimized for idle entertainment. If I try to erase a flash drive or SD card on Windows 8.1, it can take several minutes for it to even read and inventory the card. Often I get fed up and walk over to my old XP machine and perform the task instantly. I was testing a variety of microphones to record better sound than the Nikon, which only seems to work well in a quiet, interior setting.
Wait, there is more bad news. Further testing has directed my attention to more damage caused by the solar panels. I stress at this point that the panels were installed exactly to spec, not one step of the process was taken without complete understanding of the functions and pitfalls. Yet, I now have three expensive lead acid batteries, a 225 watt DC/AC converter, an electric blanket, and a set of bad side marker lights that have one thing in common. They were all powered by or connected to a charge controller driven by solar panels.
If this is the case, that was a $500 mistake. There’s little else I can test other than destroying good equipment or dismantling unfamiliar electronic components. It may yet turn to be a simple problem, or a defect in one of the panels, so all is not lost. As usual, stick around and eventually, we’ll get to it.
NOON
Here’s a picture by request—though I do not encourage requests because they funnel a blog to what others think should be written. Hey, my life is just about as boring as I ever intend to let it get, and this blog was meant to reflect that. But I will answer why I rebuilt the camera housing. Why did I bother to build a case for the old Nikon when you can see the old case when you peek through the covering. Because, I explain, I salvaged those parts of the covering because they contained the button covers. This picture is what you get without the new (wooden) shell.
I’ll add the same for testing the audio. From this morning, I found I have at least four types of jacks and my best gear will connect to a PA system, but not any recording devices or my computer. It is becoming evident that I am going to need a powered mixer that has true multi-channel capability. These Tascam style single-track-at-a-time toys do not cut it. Tascam should be shortened to just “scam” because you cannot really produce anything worthwhile on these recorders unless you spend an inordinate amount of time learning and tweaking the settings.
If it sounds like I’m off on a techie tangent, sorry, that is not what’s going on. Instead, I am hacking some of my older gear to produce better results with equipment that I already own. For instance, look at the clarity of this shot of one of the pair of shoes I bought at the shop so recommended by Theresa. The “leather” finish is flaking off after one wearing. But what I’m after is the clarity of the pictures at a closer distance from the camera lens that I could before. It’s a dumb and unconnected picture, but it shows I can get them much clearer now.
NIGHT
I’m going to attempt a project in the New Year. Entertainment, which for me means something different than routine for most people, has become expensive. That’s my point, without my house gig, I go out a few times a week and spend money. I didn’t do that before and there was no real budget for it. I just never thought I’d go so long (over a year now) without some type of gig income. Hence, for me “entertainment” is an expense category on my budget card.
I’m going to try to log what I spend on entertainment for an entire year, 2016. This is often talked about but the only places I’ve actually seen it done was for business expense accounts. And I don’t trust those for two reasons. People fudge the amounts whenever they get employer reimbursement. And they will over-spend even if the result is only a tax deduction. I seek to find out, within reason, what I spend and how I spend it. This should be interesting, because if I buy a house as planned, that upsets my biggest expense category.
The last thing I need is to find out I should be living in Belize or something to stretch the budget dollar. I’ll need some type of handy recording method while I go out. And I’m not used to that. I usually have a scribbler, but no way am I co-mingling accounting data with my “brain notes”.
ADDENDUM
Trent writes from Texas confirming the severity of the storms. Bad luck, pal, that was the entire time he went visiting this season. The news is he writes about getting himself a “guilele”, and it is about what it sounds. A cross between a guitar and a ukulele. I tried to search some demos but kept getting some finger-pickers showing off flamenco riffs. Naturally, I want to know what the thing sounds like when it is strummed. I gather it is tuned an octave higher, similar to my small practice guitar.
For reading this far, I’ll give you another tale from the trailer court. I met the lady whose father got shafted on a patent design. Like myself, he had signed an employment agreement that anything he invented while on the job was company property. This is a very strong reason why I did not let the company know where or what it was with me when I was not on the job. Anyway, these contracts can be vicious. I know that to this day the phone company uses forms I designed and systems I created that were never meant to be covered by that contract.
I felt that way particularly about computers, since as I’ve mentioned, in 1981 I was the only person in the entire company (14,000 employees) who had ever touched a computer—ergo, how could I have knowlingly signed away my rights to anything I invented? I know what some will think, but computers were never part of the deal if only because they had not enough knowledge to ask.
Anyway, she says to his dying day, he was bitter as hell about that invention. What was it? The Pringle's can. Not the chips, the round container. I'll ask her for more information, she's a little hottie.
