One year ago today: March 14, 2016, my biggest disappointment.
Five years ago today: March 14, 2012, 28% only applies to banks.
Nine years ago today: March 14, 2008, already visibly older.
Random years ago today: March 14, 1997, Sedro Wooley, Washington.
A research day, resulting in a number of surprises. Taking a really long look at the deck for the sun room, I’ve decided to bolt the joists and end plates to upright 4x4 beams, see diagram. And to let the deck floor overlap the beams by two feet on each side. This effectively hides the beams from view. The reason for the bolts is simple. It is the only affordable method I found that would allow me to raise or lower the entire floor should the foundation shift again. It is far easier to bolt the lumber to a better location than rip up the floorboards once more. This project is getting close, so expect to read a lot about it.
Shortly thereafter, I ran string line along the front of the building. Although it appears the north end has sagged, it is closer to level than the south end. Aha, that could be the reason the kitchen drawers stick so solidly. Out comes the 30-ton bottle jack. I misplaced my camera, so no photos till I find or replace it. If the city allows this type of cantilever deck system, it will halve the number of holes I have to dig, though that may not be the best of approaches.
Did you see the guy kicked off American Airlines for calling one of the employees a bum. That’s outrageous, because he should have called him an asshole. This mollycoddling of incompetent employees across the board has gone too far. There is a reason passengers call the staff names and as far as I’m concerned that is part of the job. I’m particularly irked when these public service employees, including policemen, have to resort to fines and penalties to get any respect. It has been decades since working for the airlines had any prestige, and even then it was confined to the youngest and prettiest stewardesses. And yes, you heard me right on that.
When I was a kid, stewardess had to have that nursing certificate, and they got fired when they got married or pregnant. I didn’t say it was fair, I am saying I liked that system better. You didn’t have to contend with the queers and feminists that infest the workplace these days. Once more, I’m not saying those type of people are bad, I’m saying you didn’t have to put up with them. I prefer people less in touch with their feelings and more into doing a good job. There was a time when a girl could become a stewardess to catch a good man without resorting to becoming a Playboy bunny. So don’t bother saying they had it all bad.
Here’s some trivia. When the British went into Zululand in the late 1800s, they got their asses handed to them more that a few times. From these battles, the Zulus had thousands of muskets and ammunition. But like the Apaches, their battle tactics were geared toward individual heroism rather than the teamwork of delivering volley fire. The trivia is that all the British dead in several battles were killed exclusively by bullets, and not stab wounds. Isn’t that something?
Meyer Township School Number One.
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Next, I read up on blue jays. There’s more than a few who don’t like them, calling them the bully bird. My decision is to do nothing and see how the bird behaves. He’s too big and heavy to perch on the birdfeeder, so he’s limited to grabbing one seed at a time. Let’s not encourage the guy, but watch how he handles the situation. Jays have a reputation for being very smart animals. Well, here’s his chance to show his stuff.
One of the booklets I read quoted the cost of installing one single-hung window in 1937. Total parts and labor came to $16.35. These days that buys you just the pane of glass. It says in 1920, the factories began selling double windows but with a single weight in the center section. Looking at the diagrams, I decided against that. I’ll stick with the wider column needed down the center. I will also look into an oil-based paint for the building trim. Whatever was there before plainly did not last long.
Here’s what might be a money-saver. It says the window wood can be adequately repaired by using automotive body repair paste, called Bondo, I believe. It further says exterior wood can be repaired using marine grade or waterproof Bondo. To match of irregular parts, it continues, just press a piece of cardboard to any existing part and use that as a mold. If it works, that would be a boon.
“When I told my doctor I wanted a second opinion
he said come back tomorrow.”
Up at the library, I was researching small engines, and ran across a series of videos concerning aircraft engines manufactured in Germany during the Second World War. It started off as intriguing how the engines were built to last and how this made repairs difficult. The story followed a company called Rotax, for “rotating axle”, and how after the war they prudently moved across the border into Austria just prior to being bought out by the voodoo-secretive Canadian Bombardier family. It was then I saw a video of conditions in Germany after the war.
It was a disturbing video. It showed the Allies keeping 11 million German soldiers in prisoner camps long after the surrender. And there is the London Cage. They were forced to do hard labor on a starvation diet and confess to crimes that never happened. I thought the western Allies had signed the Geneva convention? Worse, they set the soldiers to work rebuilding foreign countries when they should have been returned to Germany. You see these newsreels of thousands of German women clearing the rubble—because there were no men. In contravention to international law, the soldiers were not released when the war was over. And in fact, most of the damage was done by Allied bombs, not the German military.
The German prisoners were also used to clear minefields and booby-traps, often with fatal results. This was against international law and many feel it was the result of furious anti-German misinformation unleashed by a press who could not be charged with any crime under American law. There is a theory as to why this could have happened, but it is a three-part theory that invites arguments when all facets are not considered in unison.
The first part says that the German soldiers were “infected” with Nazism and thus could not be simply released back into society as could a Soviet communist or an American liberal. They had to be “de-nazified” first, and what better way than working them to death? (The hallmarks of American justice are evident, how instead of profiling the few known bad guys, they used "security" as an excuse to abuse them all “equally”.)
That’s the second part of the theory. Some say this whole slave labor evil empire aspect of wartime conditions was invented by the American media to demonize ordinary wartime conscript labor in Germany. The fact is they were ill-housed and ill-fed was more due to Allied terror bombing of the infrastructure than any inherent cruelty on the part of Germans. However, that many of the prisoners came from countries that were supporting the enemy invasion of Germany probably did not make life easier for anybody. The implication is that conditions were no worse than could be expected by any country whose food distribution network was destroyed by the enemy.
The third part reads like a conspiracy theory. The junior officer core of both the Soviet and Allied armies had been intentionally and systematically infiltrated by large numbers of anti-German fanatics. These were the middle-rank officers who accompanied the troops into battle, and once in Germany they allowed and encouraged their soldiers to abuse the German civilian population for revenge long after the war was over.
Some say this was deliberate and point out it was a continuation of pre-war policy as far as these religious fanatics were concerned. Especially on the Soviet side, mass rape of German women was rampant to contaminate as many German births with non-German genetic material as possible. Crazy as it sounds, it would have been a logical backlash against Hitler’s supposed master race writings—supposed because that is only one particularly malicious interpretation of what he actually wrote.
It is appalling how this aspect of the Allied occupation is completely glossed over by the western historic versions of the war. A million German prisoners of war were starved and worked to death. That’s one in ten, while in the German prisoner of war camps, the death rate of American and British prisoners was so low that no attempt was made to propagandize it. Somebody has been lying to us about something, that’s for sure.
ADDENDUM
What’s this vicious rumor that I’ve gone dormant because I didn’t put the squeeze on the gal at the library? Nonsense, she was with her mother and I was avoiding trouble. With the early exception of Julie K, mothers and I have never gotten along. Then again, Julie was one of a kind, and she was the one who (wisely) made all the moves. I had to put the brakes on because I knew I was moving back home and she would not follow. She had these two teenage daughters that were not at all attractive but she even wrongly suspected I was after them. But what was gloomy was the way she thought they were virgins by age 14. Other than that, she was undoubtedly a remarkable mother.
I hit on every chick I see that is remotely doable but not to the point of being foolhardy. A lot of people miss this because it doesn’t always look like I’m moving in for the kill. Trust me, if you see me talking to a pretty gal and it’s not something obvious like at the bank, I’m hitting on her. I just don’t go about it like most. Put another way, I don’t usually waste much time talking to women who I don’t find attractive, so which came first? I never said there were absolutely no women at all, far from it. They’re everywhere. What I’m bemoaning is the lack of quality and their fantastic expectations. Whereas I used to hit on ten women a day, these days that would be a good month.
You know what I’m talking about. If an older man expects a young pretty woman, he is being unreasonable, a predator because he’s bald with a beer gut. But these older women, tattooed misshapen, divorced, and characterless, it’s okay for them to expect a knight in shining armor. With a castle they can get once he figures out what they were still doing single at 42.
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