One year ago today: January 15, 2016, anybody else’s space program.
Five years ago today: January 15, 2012, the junk dollars.
Nine years ago today: January 15, 2008, last photo of Trader John’s.
Random years ago today: January 15, 2015, Florida: unfriendly to treasure hunters.
MORNING
After nearly an hour’s deliberation, I’ve decided against the Kregg joinery system until I check out dowels. The other option was biscuit joints, but that also requires special equipment I don’t have. Instead, it’s a quick trip to Harbor Freight for a dowel starter kit. With my coupon, it should be cheap enough to try this technology first. It is also a time-tested method. Moments later, here’s your picture. (Later, pay attention to this $4 kit, it saved me a bundle already.)
Here it is. Actually, there are two sets here, a 1/4” and a 3/8ths. Maybe you know the difference, but I don’t. This is all new to me, I have never touched a dowel kit before. We shall give it a whirl, both kits with a starter set of pegs came in at $98 cheaper than the Kregg. I know there will be trade-offs, but it doesn’t make sense to spend a c-note to join lumber unless you are building something swanky.
Long before dawn, I was reading the Antarctica book, this time a deep read, except for the translations of ancient poems. There is a certain tedium to these old stories, I find them “religious” in a peculiar sense, which I will now explain. If you’ve ever listened to uneducated people worldwide describe what they don’t understand, it falls into a definite pattern. Usually it involves animal parts. You know, the head was of a lion, the tail was like a fish, this variety of early childhood nonsense.
The book pulls together the common parts of these legends, and it is not the version we are taught in grade school. The only readily known part is that these tales all involve a flood. There’s more, however, and the Polynesian stories are the most vivid. Trivia, did you know that the story-tellers of Polynesia had the job of chanting the history while rocking side to side on their feet. The accuracy might be explained by the custom that if the narrator was wrong or made too many mistakes, he could be put to death.
It’s the details that kept me reading. They describe details that very few scientists even know. Like how above a certain longitude, the sun behaves differently. They talk of “endless night” that exactly matches the polar winters and have words to describe phenomena that happen only at high latitudes. And more words to describe the mid-Pacific locations of islands that have never been inhabited.
Other cultures from Japanese to Icelandic also tell of an event that changed the climate drastically. The best stories are still the Polynesian. The books cites all manner of evidence that they are a race descended from neither east nor west. For instance, they had neither rice nor corn, both of which grow readily when introduced in modern times. The theory centers on continental plates, rather than buckling and grinding against each other, the orthodox view, can rotate and reposition themselves like floating corks.
Since this rotation would not affect the massive inertia of the oceans, there would indeed be catastrophic flooding, more so on the shorelines where most humans live. The South Pole, once a lush and temperate climate, got shoved into its present position by one of these continental shifts of ballast. Interesting. The inhabitants were forced to live in caves in the darkness until they opted to flee north toward the warmth. Every major Pacific legend has this as a central event in their creation beliefs.
Now, if some expedition to the continental south turns up some evidence of ancient civilization, that would be a game-changer. Think of the consequences, such as it would not seem so “nazi” that the Germans were looking for something over there during the 1930s. And the sun moving backward in the sky? Maybe it was the land moving instead. Hmmmm.
Spanish galleon cross-section.
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NOON
I waited a long time for something like doing the laundry to be a headline for the day. This could have been it, folks. Instead, you see, when I throw the duds in the suds, there is a Dunkin in walking distance. So I ate four munchkins with my coffee. Within the half hour, I was ill. But, I know from experience, anything like that takes much longer than a quarter-hour to manifest itself. So I don’t blame Dunkin. Yet, I haven’t eaten anything else since y’day afternoon. Hey, at least I didn’t hit you with another picture of the shed floor.
Ah, the same voice asks how does this relate to here and now? You see, this is exactly the type of project for which I want that work shed. I had to put this together on my robot desk. And that desk is more for assembly of fine parts than globbing glue and weights and fixing motorcycle parts. I see about getting a picture for you once it’s mounted on the batbike. Banana for scale.
“I'm So Miserable Without You, It's Like Having You Here.”
AFTERNOON
Here’s that schematic of the core memory, but I don’t know how much of a schematic. Are those really magnets, or is this just a picture of the concept? This, folks, is what is wrong with the way electronics is taught. They throw a diagram like this at you and expect you to get the same out of it that they do. It does not indicate the value of the resistors, or whether the triangles are diodes or comparators. Do the wires of the grid touch, or do they operate the little rings by induction? We’ll presume the dots are ellipses to indicate the triangles continue across and down.
So, I’ll delve into what’s really behind those rings. Are they magnets? If so, would not their fields interfere with each other? If they are not magnets, why is it called magnetic core memory? While I don’t discourage anyone from studying this topic, be prepared to face nothing but this kind of half-baked bullsh every inch of the way. Or you could keep coming back here until I give you the easy explanation once I figure it out.
Alas, this blog has no index and no easy way to know when that could be.
NIGHT
I finally got the scanner working again. (The disk with PaperPort got misfiled.) So here’s that Catholic school humor from Lakeland last year, the newspaper clipping with the names of the student body. You’ll see the name that slipped past the proofreader. This, dear Editors, is why you always proofread anything you receive that is word-processed. At least it is humor approved for all audiences.
If possible, and I know this is for the umpteenth time in my life, I would like to record some of the novel bass solos. In a pinch I could play my own guitar accompaniment. But I only know three guitar beats and I’ve played them so often they don’t sound right to me. Right in the sense that I, anyway, can tell it is the same person playing both. Um, that’s a lesson around 15 million Millennials could stand to learn.
On that vein, have you see the stats on Millennial incomes? Their median net worth is like $10,090. That’s half what I used to keep in my savings account at a comparable age. And their household income is $40,580. Per household? Well, these are the kids of boomers and I was there when they were the majority of the working class. They were repeatedly warned that their complacency was filthy dangerous, but every one of them had hat “I’m alright, Jack” attitude. So now, even if they got away with it, their kids aren’t going to.
I was there, I saw them ignore the warning signs. I experienced their attitude that they didn’t think taxes were too high because it made everybody else “pay their share”. I watched them destroy the school system so that even dumbtards got a trophy. And few have been as critical of the drop in college and university standards than myself. These days anybody who can borrow enough money can get a bachelor degree. The same report is false when it claims the Millennials are better educated. A simple spelling test will dismiss that nonsense.
The boomers sat back as their elected “representatives” shipped the good jobs overseas. But like good citizens, they never complained and labeled anybody who did a conspiracy theorist. Well, let me think of the last year before I retired that I made $40,580 per year or less. That would be probably around 1989. The same newspaper mentions a group new to me, the “Young Invincibles”. I’ll look that up. We had the same in the boomers, but it would be more accurate to call them the “Not So Young Thought They Were Invincibles”. Ha! Who’s laughing how? Actually, who’s been laughing for twenty years already? May 23, 1996 is the last day I “worked” in my life.
And by the way, don’t hand me any of that crap about the value of hard work. It is fun when the peasants think like that, but ha, look what it did to their kids. Gee, if hard work taught people a good lesson, why is the countryside full of broke bastards who don’t know dick? I think only sadistic parents think they can teach children that hard work is good. It might sound great as a Sunday sermon, but anyone who steps back and takes a look realizes how badly it fares in the long-distance race. I shudder to think what would have become of my life it I’d followed any of the bullshit advice I had forced on me as a youngster.
ADDENDUM
The things gone missing. My tuner, my clippers, and something else I already forget. I found the clippers. On the window ledge behind the curtains. In return, a DVD went missing. As I picked up a DVD case, it fell to the floor right in front of me. When I bent to find it, it was gone. I got on all fours with a flashlight and can’t find the thing. Figure that one out.
Remember last year, although there is no law that requires it, I was unable to open a bank account in Florida without providing a telephone number. Now I hear they are beginning to require an e-mail address. I forget whose number I gave them, but that’s hardly the point.
How about that flight with SpaceX? They’ve had their share of teething problems but at least it isn’t a phony civilian front like NASA. Remember the Ajax and Redstone explosions? I don’t, but I’ve seen the newsreels. The media insists on referring to the barges that recover the SpaceX boosters as “so-called”, I wonder what that insult is all about. The SpaceX program is sadly taking on a NASA-like penchant for publicity, that is, appealing to the stupid majority at the expense of scientific advancement.
Like the “goal” of bringing Internet access to Africa. Folks, it isn’t the Internet, it is Facebook. If you don’t know the difference, then you deserve what you are going to get. It all sounds so noble until you talk to people who have tried to delete the Facebook files. Can’t be done. A few have gotten off the page, but they are dunces if they think the files were really erased.
I glanced through the help-wanted section of the paper, mainly because there are still occupations there that do not involve the dreaded “employment agencies”. There was a list of five “fast-growing” jobs. Wind turbine technician? It required a degree and “long-term” OTJ training. Fine, until some committee looks into that scam and shuts it down. An operations research analyst makes good money, but math is my weak point. There’s a photogrammetrist, which involves making specialized maps from satellite photos. That’s a candidate for robotic takeover if I ever saw one, but you Millennials go ahead.
What’s a millright? That’s the guy who fixes machinery in factories, although my experience is that they were the saw filers at Montana lumber mills. Egad, it says here they make only $48,000 per year. Who apprentices four years for that chickenfeed? The fifth occupation listed is technical writers. The pay is a respectable $70,000 per year (median). When I officially retire in a few years, I’ll take another look at writing. Do you think I can do it? Let me tell you, the people who are writing instruction manuals these days have their heads up their asses.
My estimate is that there are only maybe 500 good user manual writers in the entire country. Did you know my only published work to date is a shop manual for a hospital machine database? And I almost didn’t get paid for it.
Last Laugh
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