One year ago today: October 28, 2015, delete Play Store!
Five years ago today: October 28, 2011, more 39-year-old women.
Nine years ago today: October 28, 2007, her daddy was rich.
Random years ago today: October 28, 2014, caciocavallo podolico.
MORNING
Here’s a gal riding the unicorn whose horn would not stay in place. Like much of the parade y’day, it requires a little imagination stretching to see any connection with Halloween. But the turnout was great, in the thousands. The parade started out on the highway and made its way to the civic center, so everybody got a front row seat. In Miami, they’d put up bleachers and charge you five bucks to park your ass. And rope off a VIP section for all the fat, old, ugly people in town who wear funny hats.
This is the same motorcycle I’ve mentioned over time that I’ll need to make trips to Miami twice a year. The batbike is more fun, but I don’t like wearing it out going over the same roads. The batbike is for new adventures, not repeating old ones. If I buy the Rebel, that’s my birthday present this year.
This motorcycle is not purchased in isolation. I will need an enclosed parking space and both a budget and provision for maintenance. Maybe I can use some of my existing tools, but I’ve never been big on metric. I’m also in the mood for nice furniture. My old recliner got tossed. It was just not a good enough shape for my fancy new digs. And I priced out the leaf blower at Harbor Freight. With a coupon, I should have that by tomorrow. It is impossible to get the yard leaf-free by raking alone.
It seems Hillary made a speech to “a crowd” near hereabouts last day in which she said she found it “intolerable” that Trump has insulted the majority of people in this country. If that’s so, then they need insulting. It’s the only thing that causes most people to examine their own attitudes. I do not believe I know one person that has been insulted by Trump—and I know a lot of people who would find the truth insulting. If I was to be insulted by someone, I’d prefer it be someone like Trump.
Who remembers my house-painting story? When Willie, the town painter and drunk told me I’m doing it wrong, he got a piece of my mind. But when Jimmy, the millionaire Chinaman who owned the hotel and never painted a thing in his life told me I was wrong, I got down off the ladder and asked him to steer me right. Yeah, same thing with Trump. If Obama insulted me, he’d get a few choice words in return, at least one of which he does not want to hear. Because the truth would insult him.
I can hear the train whistle at night. It is an echo. This contradicts my premise that I said one day I would live so far from the railway tracks it isn’t funny. Or at least it seems so on the surface. In a sense, I do live well more than sufficiently far away from the tracks to qualify. The old promise didn’t say much about the whistle and after all, there are a bunch of potash mines in central Florida.
On the positive side, this is the first time in half a century that I’ve slept for an entire week with the windows open.
Meanwhile in Russia . . .
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Library also means trivia. Did you know the divorce rate is calculated by “dividing the number of marriages by the number of divorces” each year? It seems to me that division is backwards, but I’m quoting a government source. And they never make mistakes. The skewed statistic is caused by the fact it is not the same people getting married as are getting divorced. Apparently, if you match up the instances, the divorce rate has never been over 41%. Quite different, I’d say, than the 66% [figure] often quoted.
I researched the foundation requirements for sandy soil with no frost line. That’s here, and they say a bed of gravel is adequate. I’m tempted to slide three long steel girders under this place and put some jacks permanently in place. I think I could throw up a decent shed for less than $400 in materials. That’s a bare shed, with shingles and tarpaper siding. But not including doors and windows. That would include an 8 foot by 10 foot vehicle storage or garage area. I’m still shopping for matching siding. Although I can’t find any, it seems at least it is a fairly common design.
More trivia. While the law had been on the books, the federal government only began using social security numbers in databases to track people in 1987. Beginning that year the number of “missing” people jumped nearly five times and has remained fairly constant since. It would seem some people prefer to be missing. The total reported is around 2,000 to 2,500 daily, 85% of them juveniles.
People without social security numbers have been refused medical treatment and vaccination. That is merely a portent of what could happen if the government takes over Obamacare. On the surface it seems fair—that people who abuse free hospital emergency as primary care can no longer shove the cost onto the taxpayer. But the real medical problem in American is the incredible costs of medical school and inflated status of doctors made possible because of insurance.
Cost corruption always occurs when insurance companies get involved. It tinkers with the formula of supply and demand. It kind of works like income tax, where the majority who pay into the system rarely see any direct benefits. But those who are clever enough to succeed in getting on the receiving end garner billions and billions until corruption reigns. Such it is with doctors billing medical insurance companies for sky-high profits. Fees that would put doctors out of business if they tried to bill the patients directly. Most people can’t pay $35,000 for the repeat imaging scans where cancer is suspected.
The key, of course, is to stop restricting the supply of doctors by making medical school less elite. Only those doctors who save patients can rise to the top. As it is, the majority of graduates are either up their eyeballs in debt or from families whose ancestors know how to play the game. Both are incentivized to get back what they can out of the system. We talked about this before, what will happen if the government takes control of who gets treatment. For a mini-example, look at the situation over at the veteran’s administration and imagine that twenty times over.
Here’s a photo stitched with my freeware. Not too bad a job for software from I think something like 2005. Over the years, I’ve tried to use it to make manual stitch points, but it never works as well as careful camera work to start with. This was either the Mulberry or Bartow fire department. Look at all the ladders. There were no buildings over three stories at the time.
NIGHT
There’s so much to do, I took the evening off to make a wooden cup handle. The idea was to test all my equipment, since I used the scroll saw, drill press, band saw, and 1” sander. Nothing fancy, I traced a kitchen cup handle and cut a wooden duplicate because I have an old Budweiser can full of zip ties that was inconvenient to lift. So now it has a handle. You know, if paid any money, I wish I could have spent a lot more years of my life puttering around fixing things. There’s no market for it any more. It’s cheaper to buy a new one from China.
ADDENDUM
I took a closer look at the advertisements in the October Smithsonian magazine. What is being plugged in a magazine aimed at part-time intellectuals and overeducated smugs? About the best thing to be said about the magazine is at least it isn’t National Geographic and glamorize stupid jocks. The ads that got my attention were:
√ a cruise past New England
√ “insanely comfortable” un-Sneaker shoes
√ a Bowie knife
√ a free pearl necklace ($24.95)
√ a Hearing aid
√ permanent press men’s shirts
√ queen-size mattresses ($2,699)
√ model airplanes
√ pheromones
√ australian hats
√ gold coins “at cost”
√ pajamas
Okay, let’s allow that the cruise has some remote scientific purpose. Even then, it is my understanding that since 1960, scientists don’t go on investigative cruises or any such jaunts of their own volition. They kind of sit around and wait for grant money first. That’s when they are not cooking up theories that appeal to the Nobel committee.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
