One year ago today: April 17, 2015, real estate one year ago.
Five years ago today: April 17, 2011, learning transistors.
Nine years ago today: April 17, 2007, where is Mactown?
Random years ago today: April 17, 2013, downtown Macon, GA
MORNING
My bulb tester works fine except for the pilot light. I’m telling you, there is more to that than just connecting a bulb in parallel. It checks fine on paper, the electricity should see the circuit with a lower resistance and the bulb with a 660,000Ω resistor. Using the voltage divider theory, the majority of the electricity should take the path of least resistance and head for the circuit, but a trickle should go through the resistor, enough to activate the pilot light. Nosirree. In fact, when I do that, it creates either a short circuit or the action of the light changes, that is, it comes on when I kill the circuit power.
Yes, I know, they are meant to be used with spade connectors, which are soldered separately. But the price of switches and spade ends has become so intense that for incidental learning projects like this, I’ll sidestep the rules. As the error is so constant, I’ll build a spare pilot light and touch it to each set of leads until I find the combination that works. Phooey on the textbooks if they don’t wanna say.
Also evident is the long-term influence of the decision years ago to work with wood instead of more standard robot materials. That was more economical than it appears. Consider this, the majority of the robots you see are built from kits. We decided to avoid kits because they are expensive and don’t teach you anything about design and certainly don’t encourage independent thinking. One alternative is to buy building parts, like Meccano pieces. That’s a quick road to the poorhouse. That’s leaves a single choice: fabricate your own parts.
If you work with any product except wood, it is more expensive. Even scraps cost. The real deterrent is the price tag of the tools. One hand operated milling machine costs more than all of my tools combined. There is little advantage to building a prototype that lasts forever. We rejected any plan to build parts by hand the first day. All meaningful progress involves power tools and there is the added advantage that most power wood tools have other functions around the workshop.
That fancy power supply I bought in North Palm Beach is quirky. It works perfectly when you power individual components. But when connected to a completed circuit it fails to operate the circuit roughly a third of the time. You can connect another power supply and the circuit will work. But once the fancy power supply fails, it cannot be made to operate that same circuit no matter what.
All to the sounds of Garrison Keilor’s “Prairie Home Companion”. Right after that, NPR started up with their normal Sunday fare—slavery guilt. I propose a moratorium on songs about plantation slavery, for say, the next 150 years. Please, folk singers, no more, we’ve had enough already.
This morning was a classic example of how to spend a retirement day. All one has to do is plan it several decades in advance. Sure, I’d like to uptown chasing women, but there aren’t any to chase. The young ones are taken and the old ones aren’t worth it. At least that is the facts of life in this part of the world. If one is the least picky, it likely isn’t much different elsewhere. For that matter, after age 40, even traveling doesn’t work like it used to. If you can’t find a decent babe near home, you are not going to find one half-way across the Pacific. Sad but true.
Grapefruit.
NOON
Here’s a set of novelty drum sticks. They have small speakers in the bottom of the handles and snappy blue lights in the clear silicon tips. Each has a couple of buttons to change the sound to cymbals, hi-hat, and toms. Ten buck at Big Lots, I think I’ll incorporate them into my show. Fun to play with, they cannot be loud enough to hear the mistakes. That’s a plus.
I’m aware the bargains were in 2012, but did not know if I would still be around by now. Send me over some gumption and I’ll go to the lumber yard and price out how much to drywall a place. Materials only, the labor is free. And it is not like I have to drywall anything, or even more than one room at a time.
From that, I’ve scheduled an extra meeting concerning the place near Mulberry with no drywall. Turns out, we don’t know the trade. But after all, how difficult can it be, I mean, construction workers do it. Besides after the first room, I’ll have ten years’ experience. I’ve got something they don’t—a first class learning ability.
Did you get that Wallace, that’s “years’” with a trailing apostrophe, I didn’t neglect my grammar along the way. Wallace, the deficiency expert. You want to know why he made so few mistakes? Easy, he never did anything. He’d sit and watch the ceiling fall down rather than have his workmanship criticized right back.
It was over to the Senor for breakfast early today, funny thing, it takes me ten minutes more than it used to getting ready. You know, shave, shower, put on a tie. On Sunday mornings, I wear a tie if I go out. It improves restaurant service by 50%.
This time, I overdid it. The big omelet. So you’ll find me here the rest of the day building small control panels. My earlier electric work lacked decent panels and often had no off-on switch. I’ve decided on a pilot light strategy of my own, using a parallel wiring system and a very large resistor. In my inventory I found a small baggie of “non-polar capacitors”. This construct makes no immediate sense, so return later to see if I can find anything. A capacitor that discharges in both directions, maybe?
Meanwhile, I watched a series of short documentaries on the victories of Alexander the Great. I’d say that is conclusive proof that history is re-written by the victors. The Persian army of 250,000 could just as well have been 25, 250, 2500, or 25000. There was no zero in the Greek numbering system, and, well, you know how these Greeks love to exaggerate.
Let’s see, how would one write the number 250,000 in Greek numerals. It would be MMD with a line or score above each letter—but that system did not exist in the time of Alexander. At that time, the largest number that could be accurately written by the Greek system was 3,999.
Following the strict rules, 250,000 would be written like so:
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Imagine carving that on the temple wall. It was not exactly easy either to format it for correct display on Android glass. Two hundred fifty M’s. That is, two hundred and fifty one thousand marks.
EVENING
I’m missing a few small items from my music kit, such as my XLR to phono converter. Expensive things that will turn up the day after I replace them. Not being tired, I ran another scan of the properties up north, some 538 are on the market near Lakeland. Take away 200 fake-outs, mobile homes without the land advertised as real estate. Remove another 200 auction hours with sucker prices to waste your time. Auction, my eye. Of the remaining 138, reject 100 which are flippers in bad neighborhoods. Unfortunately, there are no convenient list filters to block these annoying ads. They have to be painstakingly sifted through.
I’ll tell you who else Trump should have investigated when he’s in is this entire “medical records” sham. Not the medical part, Americans are already fleeing overseas for their operations. But the day to day way they do business. They are plainly past the point where they are interfering with people’s lives and imposing arbitrary rules and decisions. This morning I get a call from yet another doctor’s office welcoming me to their “family”. What? I was never asked or even informed of any such event.
That new office had my entire file in their possession and even called my unlisted phone number. Ah, but this time, I know who gave it to them and I’ve repeated warned them to quit doing that. I don’t need phone calls from people I don’t know. Send me a letter. In January, I randomly changed all my passwords and phone codes, which by the way you should be doing, and so next week, it is time for a new telephone number again. This time nobody gets it. One of my exes worked for Visa collections department and anyone who thinks medical records are secret or private is a dismal cretin of the first magnitude.
Sure, I’ll tell you what else is annoying. This trend among Millennials to make up sales words. I already think broadcast advertising (ads aimed at nobody in particular like billboards, spam, and telemarketing). They are a disgusting byproduct of the most sordid factors of American industrialization. Mr. Trump, ban this horrible practice by making a law that only those who request advertising can be inconvenienced by it. Don’t worry about consequences for the ad business, turning on the television constitutes a request. What set me off this time? The word “Eventstacular”. Enough is enough.
ADDENDUM
I’ve singled out six tunes from my list for the upcoming Thursday in Ft. Lauderdale. It is one winner of a presentation, particularly if the same group of ladies shows up again. The women will always sing along first, possibly because they are better natural singers. I’m still reviewing whether to take my regular guitar or the mini. And like it or not, I have to contend with the chance-maybe-likelihood that guitarist who was on just before me is going to show up again, as in payback time.
It could happen for you hardly could know the guitar mentality like I do. Just be prepared, is what I’m saying. Besides, guitarists are inured from birth to treat bassists like marginally dim second cousins and can’t imagine anything different. So you can visualize what happens when I show up. I’ve jammed with him but can’t say where, we are not adversaries but I my natural basic presentation did steal his thunder, that is, if I had not arrived, he would have had it all his own way. You are correct if you see I find this a very touchy subject. Allow me to explain when I say these guitar players can’t relate to a crowd, I don’t mean they are stooges.
Rather, the most common shortcoming is having a contrived manner, sort of like how some guys memorize pickup lines. They have an awkward time with anything but a pre-cast situation. My act is the other extreme, so ad-libbed that it is impossible to rehearse a thing. And guess who is the expert at appearing to be the rube who just jumped off the potato wagon? Hey, that has always been part of my show.
The other deficiency with guitar acts is they tend either play the exact same material for twenty years (you know who you are) or have to over-concentrate on musicianship. This kills spontaneity. And those who try to compete with me on that count soon learn a new definition of nimble.
Last Laugh
(Duh, would you repeat the question?)
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