October 17, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 17, 2015, they’d rather not answer.
Five years ago today: October 17, 2011, my former on-line dating photo.
Nine years ago today: October 17, 2007, the dirty turtle aquarium.
Random years ago today: October 17, 2014, Almanac contains page warning?

MORNING
           For the benefit of readers in northern climes, here is a classic photo of what termites do to a piece of wood. This is from the bathroom floor, where we found the nest in June. It was tented in July, but this damage means the entire bathroom floor has to be replaced. For now, there is a temporary sheet of plywood so I have access to the area.

           This is a sawn off piece of a nest area that was around two feet long. There were at least two known such nests, but nobody has actually crawled under there yet. The majority of the floor and all the walls were caught in time and this picture represents the worst of the damage.

           If you are into making your own sundial, here is an interesting that does a lot of the calculations for you. The design depends on your latitude, as does the slope of the gnomon and the length of the shadow radials.
           Come on, JZ, answer your phone. I have a reasonable offer to rent a cherry picker and I need to know if you’ll consider helping me cut the trees. That’s trees, plural. There’s two in the front that have to go. They are continually dropping dead branches and leaving the trees is asking for trouble. And that pruning saw is becoming a necessity. Agt. R. says it is one of those tools you’ll use once and leave in the shed for the next five years. If you lend it out, you’ll never see it again.

           Here’s something. Those who’ve been here a bit recall how I set up a trust. This was not to conceal anything, but rather in reaction to news that many states have enacted legislation that cashes in on poorly written wills. They revoke any form of power of attorney, and deny access to safe deposit boxes upon an individual’s death. To me, this is nothing more than a money grab by the system. That means don’t leave the important papers concerning your estate in a safe deposit box or it can take years for your executor to get them.
           Anyway, I noticed first with the banks, then the property deeds, there is no way the system will do business in the name of your trust, even though it is the legal owner. The bank will not even issue a debit card in the trust name or no name. It must contain your name. Now, same with the title documents. Even though the trust is the legal owner, every piece of correspondence, every transaction, every receipt, has your name emblazoned across the top, with the trust name secondary. No way are they going to let anything happen without telling the world who is behind that trust.

           To keep the record straight, I am not against anyone knowing who is behind anything—but I am against the policy of having the bureaucracy do it. If you feel somebody is doing something wrong, you call the police. You don’t start making rules and regulations that tell other people how to live their lives. That’s how they think in Texas. If anyone wants to know who is in charge of the trust, they should ask me, not some civil servant.

           [Author’s note: I have always supported the position that if someone wants your information, you have a right to know who and why before they get it. And, if they tell you a lie about why they want it, or pass it on to some other party that uses if for another purpose, you should be able to sue for prescribed damages or more. And if they want to use the information another time, even if they already know it, they should have to ask again. It’s a lost cause, but I still support it. Um, you can actually look it up and discover that, if the law was respected, that’s the way it really is. The system just doesn’t enforce the law properly.
           It’s part of the federal power grab. The Constitution says they can’t look at your private papers, but of course what they meant was your privacy. So government, to get around this freedom, begins keeping records on you from birth. Then, they are no longer looking at your papers, they are looking at their own. And it goes against the spirit of the Constitution. There is much more to my dislike of politics than my natural loathing of tribal ritual.]

Picture of the day.
North Korea.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
           Here you have what I think are pink grapefruits from my back yard. I say I think, because the tree has the blight and the fruit never ripen. I picked these low-hanging specimens to see if I can coax them into ripening indoors. The fruit is extraordinarily sour, but edible.

           Has anyone but me noticed how sissified the Internet has become? The majority of the surviving sites are reduced to bait and switch “free” offers. One particularly annoying bastard is this Ted with his 16,000 woodworking plans. Doesn’t matter if you specify or filter “free”, this prick Ted shows up until you would like to apply his band saw to his nuts, and when Ted says it is not his fault, apply the saber saw as well. It’s not like the sumbitch doesn’t know. Ted, because you falsely say it is free, most of us will never buy your stupid book.
           I was seeking free plans on how to build a cardinal birdhouse. Talk about chaos. All I wanted was a diagram or two and a materials list. Try it. You’ll learn the difference between information and knowledge, a lesson these Millennials missed by the millions. The few sites that had diagrams seemed to have birdhouses for everything except the cardinal. Figure that one. Bird houses and nesting boxes for cowbirds and buzzards.

           Then again, the entire Internet system had it coming when it was originally designed with a complex billing structure. When I tried to get a fixed total price for a web page in 1997, nobody could give it to me. There was always one more fixed cost or one more variable cost beyond the scope or control of whoever you were working with. The page designer knew you needed X amount of memory or speed or throughput, but had no idea how much that cost. The guy with the server packaged his offering so to get any one single good feature, you had to buy five you didn’t need. It never ended.
           Plus, the business climate has declined by becoming multi-culturalized. It used to be possible to operate a business in America without cheating and lying, except possibly to the competition. Now, everybody does it. What’s changed? You’ve allowed in the third world influence, with their un-American practices. How did I know? Because I experience third world business deals before they came to America. The difference is day and night.

           I like to use the example of my paper route. A simple business, but a business all the same. In four years, I made my money without ever cheating a customer. I provided the product by the day, they paid for it by the week. Now look. They want year long subscriptions and on-line payments, and plaster the editions with fall-out cards that promise unrealistic trial prices. The route people are paid by checks, the only cash in the system is the street boxes.
           The decline is noticeable everywhere. In my day, the store took back defective products and replaced them. They dealt with bad suppliers on their own time and dime. Product warrantees attached to the product, not the purchaser. Nobody needed your life history to sell you a toaster, they just took the serial number and the date of sale. There was no phony precalculated effort requiring you to adopt a filing system for the receipts or keep the original packaging or sell you the warranty as “service contract”. And free delivery was a given, not an advertised special.

NIGHT
           I had to show you this beautiful view from the library. It would take about an hour to walk around that lake. No swimming, there are alligators in the vicinity. It’s your typical city park where you never see anybody unless there is an event. But I like that because it is such a contract to Miami. If this was in South Florida, there’d be bums sleeping under the trees and a chain link fence to seal the place up after 6:00PM. It’s culturally integrated.

           By evening, I met this gal who knows all the musicians in the area. Her ex was the big recording studio for years before he hung it up. That’s both the studio and the marriage. When I mentioned I was a stage personality, not a recording artist, she knew exactly what I meant. It didn’t go anywhere because she was the only gal in a room full of bruisers, but she did buy me a beer to get me to stay. She’s a sweetie who set off all my alarms.
           I was doing the books, which she recognized, meaning she’s got a background in accounting (as opposed to bookkeeping). Like any complex undertaking, it can be awkward to point to the moment in time when new economies introduced into a system start to tell. But I think living here is finally beginning to tip the balance in my favor. While the totals remain high, the shift of ballast is evident. For example, my coffee budget has plummeted from $90 to $33 per month, and my dining out to $180 to $0. A lot of the remaining expenses are items that have an end in sight or add real value to the property.
           Why, if I live to be 150, things will be great.

           And the interminable song lists. I have a new one for each musician I meet and my own list that evolves as I waffle between playing bass and working on my guitar solo. Today it was my own list, which is largely songs on which I can solo with either instrument. Some of the newest tunes are a little shaky but I can count a solid 27 ready-to-go. The traditional gig mentality says you need 32 songs. That’s four set of eight and like most traditions, it has no rationale other than that what has worked in the past.
           The latest addition, Bobby Darin’s “Things”, is a winner. Or at least my version of it. I semi-yodel the high notes. Another advantage is that it is a tune that is hard to over-play. This becomes important in a duo, where there is a tendency for new people to try for as full as sound as possible. Alas, that is exactly the wrong thing. It can take a while before many musicians realize that a rustic duo sound is just another style which can require as much work to achieve as, for example, a blues or a reggae sound.

ADDENDUM
           Here’s a mystery picture. You are looking at the tiny Hershey Kiss shaped tack or nail near the pen nib. Every once in a while, I’ll step on one of these walking around the house barefoot. It must have some use in shoemaking. Too tiny to be worked by hand, it appears maybe one of those fasteners applied by a magnetic tack hammer. If you know, leave a comment. Comments are not published, but they are read.

           And for the record, yes, my boycott of Hershey remains. Not because of who is right or wrong in their labor disputes, but because Hershey angered young people by their employment policies. That’s a complete no-no around here. I’ll look again, but it seems they promise teens from overseas an apprenticeship-like position, then never pays them the amount promised. That’s a quick way to get boycotted for life in my books.
           I happen to know a lot about people who never pay what was promised. This is never an accident or some misunderstanding. Never. It hurts more than a tack in your toe, and it hurts forever.
           Mrs. Cardinal appeared late this morning at 8:49AM and the low temperature over last night was 68.6°F.


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