One year ago today: February 7, 2016, widespread as it is.
Five years ago today: February 7, 2012, for the sake of accuracy?
Nine years ago today: February 7, 2008, no vintage California wine.
Random years ago today: February 7, 2013, Bobby Fuller suicide?
MORNING
Told ya I would find a use for those pieces cut y’day. Can you see the difference it makes to this ordinary window screen? Isn’t that a sweet touch? And that’s just using four corners, I’m going to calculate to see if I have enough molding to decorate the center rails as well. (They don’t have to be full width, but not only does that make the frame behave.) The frames look classy—but it also prevents the slight wobble that made the screens easy to install. But I’ll drive off that bridge when I get to it. The important thing is the transom so I can use my all-important screen door as it is ordained.
Baked catfish for breakfast. I drove downtown for coffee and got talking to the lady from the Mongolia. She had planned to import a special rum flavored with I think she said coffee. It made sense when she described it, she toured a variety of government operations in Mexico and Guatemala. She wasn’t ready for the coffee-tasting room, where they chew it and spit it into the fountain. Say, that reminds me that my favorite coffee, Maxwell House, needs to hire new tasters. Three bad batches in a row is enough.
Time for some good news. I found my bass tuner. It was cold that day I lost it and as luck would have it, I own two virtually identical black jackets. The rest you can get on your own. I took pity on the cardinals and refilled the feeder after one day. Why they were chirping their little hearts out. Next, I see about fixing the warped screen door. I tried the old Texas barn door trick but it only half-worked. What? Oh, that’s where you find the warped part of the door and add a third hinge and let it straighten itself.
But I’m feeling lazy, maybe a day off. I can’t find a decent guitar cord around here so I’m planning a trip to Auburndale soon. I never did go pick up that wireless microphone and remind me not to forget pop filters. I cannot sing through a stage microphone and play [at the same time]. I never learned to play without watching my left hand, which requires a headset, which means I go through pop filters. Oh, and a shorter XLR cable. I never stand far enough away from my PA to use the longer ones.
Want to play guitar? Check out the Fret Zeppelin. The next version of Google Chrome (Chrome 57) will permanently enable DRM. This reminds me of the reason we originally rejected the first Google Chrome tested at the shop so long ago. It contained countless unexplained features with puzzling purposes, and such feature had an “always on” provision. But like MicroSoft before them, these vendors are under no obligation to tell you that you are being set up to do as you are allowed. The idea that your computer is personal is largely your own illusion. Is there money in this kind of trickery?
To answer that question, think about this. Apple computer did not start off using their software to snoop and track people. MicroSoft and Google did. And Google just passed Apple as the second wealthiest corporation in America. For years now I’ve hoped and predicted that somebody would come along and wipe these two evil empires out by designing a system that restores complete anonymity to the Internet. This would cut off their intrusive software practices and a lot of their revenues, as people would flock to such a new system if it became available. I can’t be the only one who is suspicious; something simply has to be blocking that much-desired development.
Ah, did someone say these companies are regulated so it is not like they are bad. Wrong. Take a look at email. Google makes a big issue that they don’t willingly reveal your private correspondence to the authorities. But they do and that is made possible by their practice of keeping copies of all your e-mail. They did that on their own. And the way it works now, the police need a warrant to look at emails less than 180 days old. (Some sources say 90 days, but it is 180.) That’s crooked, it is akin to the post office photocopying all your mail and keeping it on file.
So, do the police really get a warrant to look at your newer emails? Of course not, there is too big a chance you would find out you are being investigated. Instead, they subpoena the email provider, who is the last party that would ever try to defend your interests. The subpoena targets the provider, not the email user, so chances are you’ll never have any clue your mail is being read. A warrant goes after the suspect while the subpoena goes after the storage facility.
Is this conspiracy theory? Nope, because it really goes on like that. In fact, it supports my other theory that says conspiracies, if checked out, tend to have a basis in real fact. (Actually, my theory applies more to rumor, stereotyping, and prejudice, but it is much the same process for conspiracies. The good ones don’t start themselves.) My objection to government-institutionalized record keeping is straightforward. One of the most basic and one of the most misunderstood facets of law is your right to remain silent. More to the point, the law says you do not have to testify against yourself. This is why, even if you confess, you get a trial.
Snooping into your private papers, which includes your computer files, is forbidden by the Constitution for this very reason. Creating files on your personal activities is nothing more than a deliberately formal attempt to bypass your right to remain silent. In America, it is called pleading the Fifth, in Canada, evoking the Evidence Act. It is beyond plain to see these records have no purpose except to build a case against anyone later accused of a crime. It does little good to remain silent over an incriminating question if the court will allow warrantless information as evidence. The records become a standing type of hostile “character witness”. Worse, the system is under no obligation to reveal anything excuplatory. You better be damn careful.
To those who say honest people would have nothing on record that could be used against them, that is about as stupid as you can get. Like I said, the Fifth Amendment is one of the most misunderstood. The systems wants you to think you have to answer their questions. Never tell the police “your side of the story”. Tell it to the court, not the police, who will use it against you. And the use of meta-information is their most effective method of doing so. CSI doesn’t tell you how many times the wrong man gets convicted.
Hoh Rain Forest.
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NOON
A year ago I reported building the stand for my belt sander. I rarely review the links until the moment I publish them (the random link takes longer than the other three combined) but yes, I’m amazed at how often things of a similar nature tend to fall on anniversaries or near anniversaries. Like using the cPod as a trailer, when in 2008 I reported on a camper. Anyway, it is truly fluky how often these ideas crop up concurrently on a given calendar date.
I’m learning the traditional carpenter or homeowner lessons. Sure, I’m a generation or two late getting around to it, but it’s not like any of that time was wasted. One class I’ll probably never learn is how to abandon a project because I ran out of money, ahem. This week’s top lecture was straightforward. You can never own enough clamps for house repairs. That’s carpentry 101 and I never really bothered with them before, unless I used cheap spring clamps normally used to keep my tarps down. I could have used 32 clamps today. Show here, this one frame uses up all my available clamps of every sort, you can see how I was already going makeshift
Next, I called Mack, who kind of knows Tuesday is practice day, but he didn’t have time. That’s the guy who just retired. He will live to regret he didn’t play music every moment he could. (Mind you, that’s an easy call.) Presently came the supreme test of the screen door. Wind and rainstorm out of the northwest. Not a single rattle, it was rather romantic like an old movie, except without the ladyfriend with no tattoos. Did I mention Agt. R and I were talking to this lady about that. It’s that perspective of the single female, she swears this town is full of single women everywhere you go.
“It’s like ten to one,” she said, “I wish I was in Miami where it is the other way around.” She wasn’t kidding. Remember when my pal out west said the same, everywhere she went to meet guys it was full of women. La grand illusion, folks, because a couple of times a headcount shows that if the ratio exceeds two to one (two men for each woman), the women think they’re outnumbered by other women. Yes guys, women constantly go scouting for men. It would do well for some of you to realize that and quit being jerks about it.
Men say the opposite, that there are no women. But they have a point. There really aren’t any. Yet the ratio has to be four or five men to each woman before men feel crowded out. In Florida, the ratio is normally seven men for each woman. Do the test yourself. I don’t mean just night clubs. Go to any location in Florida. The library, a coffee shop, café, etc. and just do a head count (exclude churches, bingo, and women’s prison). Don’t make any judgments as to suitability, just a raw count of adult men and the number of adult women. If you find a place that is anything close 50/50, let me know.
Now, I did exclude suitability as a criteria. One can go to places like Wal*Mart or a laundromat and find a better proportion of females, but at that point you have to look at the females. If gender was the only criteria, these places would be packed full of men. Imagine the pickup lines. “How do you get your whites so white?” “Can I buy you a rinse cycle?” “I’ve got a private dryer back at my place.”
My interpretation is that women do a better first-round elimination than men. I’ve got heaps of experience to back this up, remember, back at the company, I was a “safe date”. Unlike most men, I listen to women when they talk between themselves. Except for the sleaziest of gold-diggers, women will mentally cancel out all the loser men. Couple that with women’s loony attitude that all females are automatic good companions and therefore competition, and yes, one would then conclude there are too few men in the room.
There was an oddity to this conversation. The lady [present] was herself looking for a man but her demands were outlandish. She was 35+/-, plain but dolled up, divorced, the slightly beefy cowgirl type, TV hair style, with no concept of mingling with men who weren’t cheating on their wives. It was the same old tale from the trailer court. She couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance, and as far as I could tell, had no pursuits or attributes other than a pair of jeans a size too small. We were the only three people present and if she concluded there were too many women present for her to have a chance, she was absolutely right.
What highlighted this effect was that TV show came on the overhead where you say “What is” before the answer. She got left in the dust, not just by the program, but by the situation. She sort of realized we were acing the answers while still carrying on the conversation, but for her it was like “pick one”. She could talk or watch TV, walk or chew bubblegum. She not only failed to get a single answer, she had trouble grasping the questions. She evidently held it strange that others could. Get this, she insinuated I was cheating, to which Agt. R told her in six months that is the first time he had ever seen me even look at a TV. Well! She knows the bull when she hears it and just look how these men stick together. How strange these women want a man who can make them laugh when they can’t even follow what he’s saying?
“I got two dead canaries for sale –
and they ain’t exactly going cheap.”
NIGHT
What a pleasant night. In the fading light I glued up some lumber, but the real work was beginning to rake the far back yard. I have three back yards. The house yard, the shed yard, and the garden. All subject to severe leaf coverage. The fun was the garden. The Lizgarden. That was work. It has not been raked in a good twenty years. I resorted to the garden rake when I found layer after layer of decomposing old leaves. My estimate is twelve bags of detritus. That fire pit becomes a necessity. They sell an above ground model downtown, it’s a hundred bucks. But it has a lid and I don’t look forward to hauling all that debris to the pit.
You can work slightly past dark only. After that, insect repellent becomes an aphrodisiac to every skeeter and gnat in the vicinity. And are they dissed when they find it’s only you working in bare arms. I threw on a long-sleeve and sat in the sidecar a bit, watching the Moon and Venus. I should have taken a [sextant] reading, but my binoculars were fine for tonight. I see I also have some resident bats, probably from the neighbor’s barn. Did I mention, he was not in the aircraft industry. He worked with a famous designer (1930s) who planned out the interior furnishings. That is still something I find admirable and I asked if he ever gets back into it or hears anything, let me know. I had wanted to build a plane when I was in my twenties, but found out you can’t do it if you have one uncontrollable factor. It’s called “winter”. The only known substitute for an aircraft hangar is a successful heated bicycle shop. I have neither.
My transom is ready to install, pictures soon. I had the screen door open while slow cooking some chicken stew. With both turnips and potato. I want a chicken pot pie, but can’t find a good recipe that tells me start to finish, including how to make the little pie shells. I tried it with regular crust and sides are done before the soggy innard parts. It was an evening, the aroma of the stew lets you know a clock is not necessary. Others have validated that this year’s batch of coffee is bad, so I bought a jar of instant. I got used to instant in the Philippines and when made right, it is better than poor-quality drip coffee. And cherry pie for dessert. It don’t get much better.
ADDENDUM
It was an exceptional all-night rain, Seattle style. How did it know I haven’t finished the roof on the shed? Nights like this demand I get a porch, remember in Florida, it does not often get cold during a rainstorm. It is quite pleasant to sit under an awning and watch the weather. Normally it is a tropical downpour. Even rarer, there was a lightning storm over the horizon somewhere and some place is really getting it. I estimate some of the rolling thunder is lasting up to twenty seconds.
Visible are the sun-leaning sunflower shoots, now averaging five to six inches tall. I weeded them back to six or so inches between stalks to give them a chance. Why doesn’t one you clever people out there give this squirrel a name? He’s the bravest of the lot and comes closest to the house, doesn’t panic at every movement. That cheap watering can I got at Wal*Mart doesn’t work right. It will sprinkle, but the bottom of the sprinkler head allows a stream of water to escape, which disturbs the soil. I mean, how do they even design a watering can that doesn’t work?
Last Laugh
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