One year ago today: December 11, 2015, a Libtard interview.
Five years ago today: December 11, 2011, First World Dilemma.
Nine years ago today: December 11, 2007, Alaine’s birthday.
Random years ago today: December 11, 2002, there is always a Plan B.
MORNING
Look what I found for sale. It’s a 1980 City “Commute” electric car. I remember seeing one of these parked at Denny’s on Ventura Blvd in 1991. This one is out on the prairies somewhere. I didn’t record the price, but it wasn’t much. The ad contained a comment at the bottom stating, “I don’t need any help selling this car.” Ha!
I took the morning to write letters and begin wrapping up the [annual] books. My fiscal year ends near Halloween, but I also keep a running ledger of expenses and I applied extra effort this year. I wanted some facts to compare in case I found a place. Don’t expect expenses just plunged after May, but I’ll get you some extremely accurate stats on such details as daily expenses by week, month, year.
How about my gas, grocery, and entertainment costs to the penny? Would you like that? How much does a non-gigging musician bachelor really spend on drinks? I already know my restaurant expense has dropped by around 90%. My coffee budget has long since been trimmed to $30 per month. My intention is to compare with facts the price of living in my nice country cottage compared to the lowest costs of staying in South Florida. Could be an eye-opener. But I suspect I’m going to figure out that Americans should no longer move to a new place anywhere in the country without a float of around $5,500 per family member above and beyond any projected price tag.
[Author’s note: a word of caution about budgets. To do them properly takes some accounting knowledge, since you have to keep a follow-on set of numbers to see how you are faring, and of course, budgets don’t work without discipline. I so often see people base their financial happiness on unworkable foundations like kinship, religion, investments, even superior technology and social contacts. Somehow they fail to recognize those only work for people who already have wealth that they are protecting. All tactics except superior discipline only defend wealth, they cannot create it.
The sad news is that above a certain income level, money obeys rules. If I had to define those rules, I would say they represent classical mercantilism. Supply and demand break down, there are no longer any mutually beneficial transactions at the top. Everybody’s gain is somebody else’s loss. The rich cooperate by dividing up the pie between other like-minded rich folk from behind very deep moats and very high walls. You can see this unspoken partition, how the railroad money never tries to make movies or build skyscrapers and vice versa.
Just why do the rules change like that? Easy, rich people do not compete against each other like poor people do. Remember the pie? The rich create and support a system where no matter how talented or creative a poor person, if he tries to get ahead, he will be on his own against a group that may only be 1%, but they outnumber him. (Notice when poor people ever do act in unison, it is labeled “revolution”?) That’s also why you don’t expect miracles from Trump.]
Ha, did you read that numbskull Liberal report that the American economy cannot “grow” more than 3% next year unless they allow in more illegals? My view of Liberals at they are all guilty-minded over something, that’s why they are so desperate to “prove” they are good. I was listening to an afternoon broadcast that says immigration should be cut back to 250,000 per year. Wrong. It should be cut back to zero until all the illegals have left (because they can’t get jobs, welfare, or government services) and the current legals have completely assimilated and speak English as a first language.
As for the angle that they are fleeing Mexico because it is corrupt and there is no work, let them flee to the worker’s paradise of Cuba.
Thirty-six shooter.
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NOON
Here is an unusual picture, it is an area in Saudi Arabia with 100,000 abandoned air conditioned tents. Although I don’t know what they were originally intended for, they are the basis for why people are asking why Saudi Arabia hasn’t taken in any Syrian refugees. I know the answer to that. The Saudis always vastly over-report their true population, because they fear their neighbors. If any find out the true Saudi population is probably less than four million, they’d be invaded in a Saddam Hussein minute.
I reckoned out the woodpile-fence again and reduced the length to 23 feet. I have 7 logs averaging 15-1/4” in diameter and just over 32 feet total length. By reducing the depth of the fence from 18” to 16” I still won’t have enough lumber to reach 24” in height. Still, it is just a woodpile, so it does not have to run the length I had planned. Howie was over and says to just lay some treated 4”x4” on the ground and stack the wood on that. I would still be inclined to treat the wood with some type of preservative and insecticide, meaning it could never be burned indoors, but we’ll see.
That’s another nine bags of leaves but that’s mostly it for the season. I’ve got some cool weather trivia for you. Blankets and thermal blankets, what’s the difference? Regular woven blankets will increase your exterior body temperature by 3°F for each layer. It doesn’t sound like much but it must be enough. Your average exterior is what, 72°F or something, I’ll have to look that up. Thermal blankets have a more open weave that is more than 3°F, but I can’t find any information on how much more.
Next, the ever tamer northern cardinal will now feed when I’m working in the yard. And I was, another two bags of leaves including lots from Howie’s yard. He tells me Zeke (who is a lady cat) is really called Misty, the only survivor of a litter from the neighbors to the north. When I named her, she was to far away to see it was a lady, so I just repeated names until she responded to Zeke. I had noticed the cardinal would sometimes risk landing on the ground, which I found odd because there is gourmet food in the feeder.
Upon close inspection, I found the problem. The fancy bird food has attracted ants. I got out the ladder and hosed the tether rope above the feeder with insecticide. Still, I’m dedicating that feeder to the cardinals and from here on, it’s black oil sunflower only. The smaller birds also feed on the sunflower seeds. Maybe another feeder is in the works?
Howie confirms it was a tree that hit the shed. I could not see the angle until he explained the tree, after the lightning hit, split and one side fell on his garage, one side on my shed, and a third huge limb dented the roof of some farm implement he’d had parked in the back driveway. He finds the idea of a woodpile-fence quite novel, though I assured him it will be many moons before I chop that amount of wood by hand. I just can’t see throwing all the beautiful wood away.
It was a seriously rare pinball in that shed, he told me the name, Prince something. He’s got all the good parts but I may find something useful in the wiring, robot-wise. Rusted or not, the innards were plainly built to a very high standard.
“Don't Know Whether To Kill Myself Or Go Bowling.”
NIGHT
I watched another round of Steve McQueen reruns on DVD. I vaguely remember the series but none of the episodes from when I was young. The plots, as with most programming back then, was better written than today. Called “Wanted Dead or Alive”, it certainly had better-looking women than most of the other westerns. I heard a theory that since America had no ancient legends, like Camelot, the cowboy-as-hero was invented to fill that void. Here’s one of the ladies now, just think, no tattoos, no piercings, just natural. Mmmmmmm.
Nights like tonight, I could sure like that porch. The two ladies up the road have taken in a third who is quite the good looker. She must work as I see her walking out and back at fairly regular hours, I always say, “Hello, neighbor.” It is one of the few times I will, as a musician, say hello to somebody first. Then again, not everybody looks like her, I say, while making that clicking sound between my cheek and teeth.
It was a country Sunday evening and I spent it as such. I’ve decided tomorrow I’m baking something I’ve never made before. Something with lots of ingredients that takes lots of fussin’. The Almanac says tomorrow is a best day for cutting firewood, but I barely got 90 minutes work out of me today. My tendency to work till dusk is further abbreviated by the shorter days. When I say dusk, that is until actual sunset. I will work slightly later putting away tools, until the Sun is 8.5° below the horizon, where the ambient light corresponds to a full Moon on a cloudless night. See, I actually read my Almanac. It also says the 7th was a good day to castrate animals, but I wouldn’t do that on Judy’s birthday.
Here’s another still from Steve McQueen, as he tracks a bounty in the old wild west. That’s the wild west that has a stressed ribbon suspension bridge on the way to the cabin. Double ha!
ADDENDUM
I read up on wind farms. That entire business stinks to high heaven. There has been no real progress in thirty years and the industry thrives on government grants. If it was possible to compete with fuel-fired plants, they’ve had plenty of time to demonstrate it. I suspect it all has become another nuclear power plant fiasco, where the costs [of the plants] keep spiraling so far out of control there will never be any reduction in utility costs. Those people ain’t stupid.
Careful, I’m not saying the technology does not work at all. But where are the promised breakthroughs? Is your electric bill down 20%? According to one Charles Opalek:
√ Wind turbines rarely produce their advertised full power. On average, wind turbines only produce about 20% of their nameplate rating.
√ Wind power is unreliable and undispatchable. When it is needed most, it will likely be unavailable to provide any power when it is needed most.
√ Wind power is not clean. It takes a lot of dirty energy to make the materials, manufacture and install a wind turbine facility.
√ Wind turbines are not environmentally friendly. They are noisy, unsightly, kill bats and birds, interfere with radars, and have been shown to be responsible for a slew of health problems.
√ Wind turbines consume electricity whether operating or not. Often this power is not even metered. Care to guess who is paying the bill for this power?
√ In theory, if 20% of US electric generation was replaced by wind power, the decrease in CO2 emissions would be an unnoticeable 0.00948%.
√ In reality, wind power doesn't reduce CO2 emissions at all, because backup fossil power plants have to cycle wildly and inefficiently trying to keep up with erratic wind power output.
√ Wind power will not replace fossil fired power plants. Germany estimates that by 2020 up to 96% of its wind power capacity will need to be backed up by new coal fired power plants.
√ Wind power will not reduce US dependency on foreign oil. If wind power replaced 20% of US electric generation, the resulting decrease in oil imports would be a measly 0.292%.
√ Wind turbines have an embarrassingly low Energy Returned On Energy Invested value of 0.29. The manufacture, installation and operation of wind power facilities will consume more than 3 times the energy they will ever produce.
Last Laugh
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