One year ago today: July 2, 2015, Arcadia, the arbitrary choice.
Five years ago today: July 2, 2011, Glad-It’s-Not-Me Department.
Nine years ago today: July 2, 2007, a Lewis Grizzard paperback.
Random years ago today: July 2, 2008, Pudding-Tat on patrol.
MORNING
Par usual, I’m getting conflicting info on which jacks to use. Some say hydraulic is dangerous, others say it is okay. When I was younger, I saw a house lifted with a ratchet jack called a Simplex. This ratchet mechanism had springs for both directions you pumped the lever. As we now know, when I go on line to find these things, it quickly becomes a bullshit session where the seller wants my date of birth before he’ll tell me the price.
The floors are bowed up at the center because the exterior walls sagged more over the intervening 70 years. This, plus the termite signs are what I suspect motivated the owner to sell for such a low price. Down the center of each set of joists (there are two sections, with a total of 32 joists) runs a 2x6” plank resting on two stacked concrete cylinder blocks. I envisage another plank a few inches off center.
My plant is to jack the floor upward by a fraction, say a quarter inch, and remove the upper cylinder block of each stack and replace it shorter concrete pylon which is pre-cast to accept a 4x4” post. While the jacks keep the floor up, these posts will be string-leveled and cut to horizontal. Then use the jacks to gently set the joists above it down to the new plank, all nice and level.
Is this a permanent or great solution? I dunno. But I do know it took nearly 70 years for the old floor to need replacing, and I think Nature is going to replace me long before that floor ever again. Not until that floor is as level as I can make it do I start fixing doors, windows, and plumbing pipe. The good news is that only two doors are on the partitions (interior walls). The others work fine, as I said, the exterior walls remained level and plumb.
Not being the least sleepy, I finally took time to watch the Brexit debate. It was two people I never heard of until last week (Nigel Farage and David Cameron) being asked questions from a hand-picked audience. I could have turned the sound off and told you that audience was seeded with planted dupes paid to ask race-baiting questions. When Cameron started talking, the total impression I got was “Lyin’ Ted”, the way he sidestepped every question or turned it into an issue he had a prepared answer for.
So, for your benefit, I’ve devised and all-purpose Ted Cruise/David Cameron response to any question you don’t like. Ready? Say this:
“It is not just a question of [insert whatever the other person said], but whether or not we can [thrive/adapt/succeed] and I think that is the real question here. How do we create opportunities for our children and our grandchildren? We have to ask ourselves that question [instead of the one you asked] and here is my [generic prepared] answer.”
I favor Nigel for his political incorrectness. Watch him tell off this European “official” saying, “I don’t want to be rude, but you have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk. And the question I want to ask, that we all want to ask, is ‘Who are you?’ I’ve never heard of you. Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you.”
Nigel could be the British version of Trump I’ve been suggesting. He is by far the most dynamic personality in those meetings of (I like this word) Eurocrats. Especially when he exposes their corruption, we know they don’t like that one bit. Like myself, he has complete contempt for non-elects. There is a movie on the pro-exit side that is worth watching.
Beautiful John Day, Oregon.
NOON
Next I went shopping for a used motorcycle. I found what I was looking for minus one feature. I’d never heard of the brand “Keeway”. The advertising says it is big in Europe but often you get Chinese manufacture who sell exclusively through outlets to make you think the product is made in Germany or Italy. Ah, here it is. Started in Hungary in 1999, it was acquired by QianJiang, which does not sound all that Hungarian to me.
Add another tune to my bass list, not because I like the tune, but because it has a bass solo. Todd Rundgren, step up to the mic, “Bang On The Drum” is this week’s pick. Even though the song title is pretty well the only novel lyrics in the song. Plus, I saw a guitarist once strum that bouncy keyboard riff. Even should the song not become a fixture, I can use it as a tailer. That’s a sequence tagged onto some other song at appropriate moments. My bass, however, is 250 miles away, so I’ll have to pick it out on guitar, a tedious process for me. Maybe I’ll find the notes or the bass tab, I have no qualms about using every source available. I regularly steal licks from guitar tabs when I get an excellent rhythm player on my side.
I lack the vocabulary to tell you how much I loathe what Millennials have done to the Internet. When it comes to marketing, they have shit for brains, but the Internet is your prime example of majority rules. They get in there and screw up a working system and want your money to unscrew it again. That’s real brains, guys. It’s the dumb-jock mentality, as long as some other guy made big money at it, they support the entire idiotic system because they think one day they’ll get a turn.
Today’s frustration was trying to find the music tab to “Bang On The Drum”. After 40 minutes of viewing the bulldonkey, I wish I’d learned it from scratch. All I wanted was the quick pattern but they’ve taken that away. It used to be you’d click on the link and get the info free, as was intended by the Internet. If somebody wanted to make money, they did so by unobtrusive means. Now, these pricks electronically block the path to what used to be there and want money to get out of the way.
This is why I don’t care if these Millennials never find a job and inherit a bankrupt economy—instead of contributing their share, each one is out to scam their Zuckerberg billion. He don’t got the brains to invent anything, so roundabout stealing is okay in his books. Today, when you log on UltimateGuitar for tabs, they are gone. Instead you get a blocking ad to sign up for lessons. Yet you know the tabs are there because you used them for years. Then in moved the Millennials.
Millennials can’t even take credit for this kind of degenerate marketing. They just adapted the old runaround. If you’ve ever asked somebody to teach you trigonometry, or how WiFi works, or basic electronics, you’ve experienced what I mean. The sumbitch knows the question you are asking, but he’s not going to give you a straight answer. I still offer a two hundred dollar reward to anyone who can explain to me how integration works. And I would have paid many times that if someone had come along when I was eight years old and told me the easy way to play rock music. It never happened.
This is no joke. I can’t do integration because nobody will show me how to solve the formulas. When you ask them, they launch into this total crap about limits as x goes to zero. Read my lips, I know all that and I’ve passed the exams. What I want is someone to show me how to solve the formulas. Instead they parrot back some pre-memorized crap that does not answer my question. And by 2016, I still can’t do differential equations.
Same with singing, for the longest time I could not sing. Nobody would tell me the easy way to sing even though every one of those bastards knew what I was asking. It took me half a century to figure it out on my own. Would you like me to tell you the easy way? Sure. Get your favorite song that has an easy starting note. (Um, “Happy Brithday” is rather difficult and not a good place to start. Pick another song.) The trick is that you already know that first note in your head. Singers call it your “ear”, but it is your brain.
That’s why you can identify the song when you hear a single note on the radio. The trick is to find that note and force your voice to match it. Of course you’ll get it wrong a few times. Then you realize that each time you practice the note, your brain gets a little faster at forcing the match. It took me about five minutes to realize if you “think” really fast, you can sing along to the tune by correcting each note so fast nobody notices.
And to this day, that is how I sing. I hit every note wrong, but I correct it so fast you think I’m singing.
AFTERNOON
Here’s the house that is closest in price, size, and area to mine. It is a run-down HUD house over in Eagle Lake. Um, might I say that although most people around here turn their noses up at Eagle Lake, I’ve been there and can’t find anything wrong with it. Anyway, this tumbledown shack carries a $30,000 price tag. When I look at my new place just 30 miles away, I don’t question my good fortune.
A review of what happened tells me a number of things “wrong” with the real estate market that were not apparent at first. We spent a year learning the ropes, and during that time the acceptable practice of reading ads and making contact with agents produced worse than no results--they produced bad results. We were lied to, cajoled, insulted, wheedled, sweet-talked, and got nowhere. I announced in April this year (you can go back and read it) that I would change tactics on May 1. I did. Eighteen days later, I was a homeowner in a fantastic neighborhood (if I must say so myself).
I emphasize that I am only looking. There are no bargains left in the area, at least not any that you’ll find without my assistance. My year of research involved looking at 511 places, most people don’t have the resources for that. This time around, I have experience, money, and infrastructure. The prices are too high but diligence may pay off still. Just remember, I’m being twice as diligent as all of you put together.
My examination after the facts tells me a number of things. Where I was once certain my competition had unlimited cash, it now seems they were operating near some kind of limit. I operate on a small but healthy unused surplus and they do not. Their philosophy of flipping without making any substantive improvements to the older buildings is diametrically unalike and incompatible with my operation. And if they again show themselves as fast-money artists skimming the top, I will simply seek out another house with a “crooked floor”.
And when I find it, I will again have the cash money, but this time also a huge and completely equipped indoor workshop. How’s that for logic?
The results of my hour at the keyboard are conclusive. I think I was lucky to buy when I did, even though it drained the coffers. I’m today as cash broke as I was in 2010. There has once again been a general price bump through the [central Florida] area, though that doesn’t help me just now. Even junk houses are asking $20-$25,000 in bad areas. I’ve listed those for you over time, like the areas of central west Lakeland or east Plant City. If you see a new bicycle in those neighborhoods, the serial number has been filed off.
Doron Witztum: Literature, 1997. Doron (rhymes with you-know) headed up a team of Israeli scholars using the ELS (equidistant letter sequence) to uncover dozens of hidden words in the bible. Because, like, there weren’t enough already.
Boron. That’s it. Rhymes with boron.
NIGHT
It says here time to mention food. Okay, I made leftovers, or more accurately, I made lasagna from leftovers. Tomatoes, cheese, and chopped sausage. It’s not just me eating good, I did not take down the birdfeeder yet and I’ve got some kind of bird I’ll have to look up. Larger, like a bluejay, but not that big. A type I thought was insectivorous. Dull plumage, possibly a female.
If you’ve noticed the overlong blog today, thank July 4th. I live near the casinos and the fireworks crowd don’t like to wait until the actual holiday. These days (nights?) it is mostly the el-cheapo star bursts and Roman candles. I suspect there may be some fire regulation anyway puts a height restriction. I don’t enjoy the shows any more, but then again, I’m near the casino, not the small city downtown I’ve wanted to live for years.
I stayed home, drank expensive German coffee, and read more of that complicated history book, “The Rise and Fall of the Great”. There are long passages of pure Semitic propaganda that get in the way of serious study. I was reading for information about the formation of the horrid state of affairs the USA today, most of which I recall were started during the Reagan years, when the military convinced him to deficit spend to “defeat the Ruskies”. It was not Reagan, but the self-serving military behind that one.
The aspect that intrigues me was Star Wars, which never came about. But it sparked the increase in wizard weapons. That’s the concept that quality prevails over quantity. You’d think the Pentagon learned their lesson on that in WWII, where it took six Shermans to knock out a Panther, but no. A large part of the problem with expensive weapons is that if you don’t win the war in the first phases, they are incredibly difficult to replace. If you run out of cruise missiles blasting up the first 10,000 enemy with AK-47s, they’ve got 10,000 more by tomorrow.
Of secondary interest to me was an old theory that may be revived in the upcoming decade. They used to teach us about each nation’s “natural share” of world resources. This was always a bogus argument by have-nots who lacked the wherewithal to develop what they had, a concept familiar to me since birth. The theory ignores the fact that greedy people don’t want their own share, they want yours. Their own house is a tumbledown mud hut because they don’t like the expenses of maintenance. See, I’m an expert in pegging these sort of people. They never learn that your lawn doesn’t mow itself and you have to keep putting gas in your fancy car.
So what proportion of world resources would the US command if every nation got its cut? At the end of the big war (1945) we had 40% of the world’s nice things. The theory says we should have 17%. If all the deficit spending was paid off, we’d have far less than that. If the wrong person gets elected this time around, the world will be dancing on the carcass of this country.
ADDENDUM
A gain the insurance question arises. Should I insure the house, or should I insure myself against being sued over the house? Few people do both unless they are under some contract or pressure to do so, usually from their mortgagor. I’m leery of contents insurance and I know if the place gets flooded or burned down, I’m covered by various other agents and contingencies.
But I’m already able to see past the renovations and plan the work shed. I’ve always wanted my own work shed, even if I’m not a skilled worker. I should not say shed when I mean a barn-like edifice that would dominate the entire rear side of the property. That raises a point that because I don’t write about Arduino electronics and celestial navigation, it does not mean they are absent. They have just become so routine that they don’t make the mention most days.
Fact is, even last few days up in Lakeland, I was seriously studying the Sun’s declination. The easy way to think of that is to consider it the Sun’s latitude. How high is it in the sky, the most useful reading being at noon. Technically, that noon reading is all you need, but you’d have to know so much arithmetic that it is better to study the whole navigation subject. Reminder—navigation is intended to be used a sea, where there are no distinguishing features on the surface.
I balked at that [same] idea years ago because of the complexity of the code, but now these come along. The best code I’ve seen is by Adafruit, and it is “nifty”. If you can stand the retarded layout of GitHub, you can download the library. Think of libraries as the way the sub-idiots who like C code hide all the rat’s-nest programming they don’t want you to see when they praise how simple the language is.
And I’ve been trying to find a video that shows an interesting polarized filter effect. Most people are familiar with how a polarizing filter will stop surface reflection and how two filters can be rotated to block light. But there is a third fascinating effect. If you add a third filter behind two that are blocking the light, you get grayscale. Here is an interesting video if you like stealth viewing. If anything I write here is common knowledge on TV or the Internet, remember, I don’t follow viral posts, social networking, or TV, so I would have no idea about that. I post what I find myself, not what the crowd is following.
Last Laugh
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