One year ago today: March 29, 2016, without being braggadocious . . .
Five years ago today: March 29, 2012, when the scooter was red.
Nine years ago today: March 29, 2008, averaging $250 per month.
Random years ago today: March 29, 2010, this went on for 2 months.
Top story of the hour is this sunflower bud. It’s the first thing that actually bloomed in my new front yard and I accidentally knocked it over with the leaf blower at dusk. We are now down to seven surviving plants. Keep the fingers crossed for bloomery as they are all around the same age. These are not the tall garden sunflowers, but 2-foot black oil sunflowers. I’m holding the entire plant in my hand. The background is almost leaf-free to be sure, and I killed the only splash of color that’s been there all winter.
He’s got one of those $3,000 machines to accept payment by any brand of card out there. At the other extreme, I know an awful lot about cash flow business operations. Agt. R tells me of a large building in Bowling Green that was picked up by a contractor for a song. I may go for a look. Apparently it was a truly solid structure which he fixed up into a retirement home or senior condo type situation complete with elevators. There’s no way I could finance anything like that, but then again, I managed to buy this house I’m sitting in right now, didn’t I? And no, I didn’t get any help.
Here’s a picture of the Alamo. I don’t have the history of the edifice, but it is four small kitchenette units on either side of a big central hallway. These open corridors were required in the days before air conditioning. Most of these houses in Mulberry, Auburndale, Fort Meade, and Bartow are owned by well-known or well-established families and called by their surnames. The building shown is technically “Oak Manor”, but the locals call it “the old Fychter place”.
Those who have known me since my 20s will pick out the superficial similarity of this building to Concordia Vega, the first apartment building I bought with my then business partner, RofR. So very, very long ago. The sun just came up, now if you’ll excuse me, I somehow managed to make perfect French toast y’day and I’m going to see if I can repeat the feat. Later, I did it again. I made perfect French toast. What’s happening to me?
Family stroll.
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So, there is gold in the Peace River. At least according to all the non-authorities who dominate the Internet. I’ve watched the river and the flow is enough to cause placer deposits. Unless I actually see proof, however, I’m not spending anything. Most of the river flows through private property. The easily accessible spots have been no doubt been dredged and over-dredged. For those who’ve never seen a small dredge operation, you can go on-line or I’ll just tell you the parts they don’t.
You get a small motor driving an impellor to suction up river sand and gravel into a sluice. This sluice is just a trough with some ripples and matting. One guy has to wade out into the cold water and to the vacuuming, which involves a lot of clearing the nozzle of rocks too big to fit down the hose. The gold, being heavy, deposits itself into the ripples and matting as it flows down the chute. At the end of the day, you sift these deposits down to a fine black sand.
At this point, the easiest thing to do is pan the gold out. There’s a trick to it, but it’s easy to learn. I’ve never done most of it personally, but out west I had plenty of people try to talk me into going partners on these operations. I mostly said no because there was no way to monitor the amount of gold without personally being there. And I’m no mountain man.
It is also easy to build a sluice, but the fancy store-bought units are so cheap it would not make sense. These are small pumps that fit on a pair of inflatable pontoons. The small units will fit in a car trunk. But placer gold is a function of time spent on the river and volume of sand and gravel moved. The ratio is proportional to the size of the dredge. The ones to which I refer are the smallest, with a 2 inch nozzle. At this point, let’s depart from the gold and the equipment. Where would I seek advantages if I were to go prospecting?
The first thing is to avoid the Internet and any advice therefrom. It’s also unlikely you’ll find any secret sandbars. So the idea is to go after what other people overlook. The two main reasons they overlook is stupidity and laziness. Having dealt with much of that to date, I asked myself how that could be taken advantage of. Well, anything that’s direct would be useless, so how about you and I take an indirect approach? You ready? Get on your thinking cap.
First, I don’t notice anybody in the research section of the library. So if they found gold, it was dumb luck or they sailed up the river until they found something. Without research, they would not know what years the river was in flood, or how to tell by looking. A flooding river deposits paydirt above average water level. The Gomers would necessarily mine the sandbank but not the riverbank. The riverbank has to be sort of shoveled into the mouth of the hose. I’m only guessing here, but a stupid person would not do the research and a lazy person would not do the scooping.
While I didn’t join any gold operations, I listened closely to what they said. I’d be a novice but not a total greenhorn. For example, I know the trick of placing a magnet across the sluice. Iron is also heavy and where there is iron, that’s a clue where to look. While I’m speculating and not prospecting, if any gold was found I would have other options than selling it directly. For one, after my famous gemology course of 1988, I have a keen eye for which nuggets, if any, have a jewelry value that exceeds the gold content. And I have the technology to melt gold (but not refine it) into slabs. Why, oh why, did I give away my microscope?
In the fading evening last day, I shone lights under the older part of the house, the kitchen area in particular. What a rat’s nest. No way that electrical is done to any spec. Code. What code? If I can, I’ll clamber part way under in the daylight and show you some photos. I would re-run the whole lot. Visible are at least three grades of wiring, none of which are rated for the exterior exposure under the joists. It is worse than bad and I could see spots where the old woven cloth insulation has worn through where the wiring had been swaying in the winds through the crawl space. The 220V line to the big A/C unit is a 40 foot piece of clothes washer cable.
This is important in the sense that I’ve always wanted to use the word “clamber” in a sentence. This, folks, is where planning ahead pays off. I started in the bedroom when everybody said the living room was more important. Now I have the option of moving into the bedroom and living there comfortably while I do a complete makeover of the old section—and this time I know what I’m doing. Alas, the bedroom is not finished yet so that becomes the task at hand for now. As soon as the drywall is up, I’m moving in there.
What’s this petition to send Trump the bill for security at his office in New York? Absurd. If the $120,000 per day is too much for the taxpayer, then take the money away from protecting Obama, Israel, and Clinton. That should easily cover it and potentially get rid of other problems. After all, there are a lot of violent, crazy liberals out there. And that dweebyTaylor Schilling. Can anyone tell me how on Earth she became an actress? Could Millennials possibly be that easy to fool?
“I tried prospecting, but it didn’t pan out.”
ADDENDUM
Trump has announced he will not be touching Social Security, the single biggest fraud in history. Too bad, he could achieve immortality by cleaning up that operation. Monthly payments to people on the books over 130 years old, rampant disability fraud, handouts to illegal immigrants. That is why the system is going broke. There’s now talk of in 2032 cutting the payments to Americans by 125%. What does that mean? After you are 70, you have to pay back something? The “Wall Street Watchdog” finally reported something that was in this blog 30 years ago: gymnasiums full of young men lifting weights who were on disability. Mental disabilities. As in, if you report them, they’ll kill you.
I had tuned in to hear a scheduled report on Trump defunding sanctuary cities. It’s an excellent start, because it not only cuts off the places that break the law, it demands they begin paying back amounts already received. However, in a typical leftist twist, the broadcast was more concerned with the problems these poor, poor sanctuary cities. There’s parts of Chicago that are no-go zones even for the police, and they want more illegal immigrants?
Speaking of lying press, I finished watching Valkyrie. In the old legend, the gods decide who is to live and die. The DVD is mainly hogwash, portraying the generals and people as rising against the “evil” Adolph and his genocidal policies. This never happened. Right up to war’s end, Hitler regularly walked among his fully armed front-line combat soldiers without escort. Many would love it if either Bush or Obama and Hillary would have tried the same thing.
[Author's note: for my overseas readers unaware of the fact, when the American president tours American troops, the soldiers within something like a two-mile radius are required to unload their rifles and hand over the ammunition to an officer.]
A big part of the plot is dedicated to how the conspirators had to nullify the SS as soon as the power vacuum occurred. This is Hollywood jabber. The reality is the conspirators had no intention of surrendering. They wanted Hitler removed as head of the armed forces, not necessarily the government, because they thought they could run the war better. They felt the war was winnable by negotiating a ceasefire with the west and turning the German forces eastward on the Soviets—a completely sensible military strategy at the time, considering they did not know about the atomic bomb.
During this lull, which would have stopped the bombing, Germany would have continued the deployment of new weapons, which completely outclassed the rest of the world. Jets and rockets fifteen years ahead of the pack. Instead the movie is bent to reinforcing the stereotypes of western propaganda over Hitler and the SS. Most of what you heard about the SS isn’t true either. They were mainly an elite military force, similar to the US Green Berets and the British Commandos. When they surrendered at the war’s end, the SS expected to be treated with full battle honors and were shocked to find out how they had been demonized by the western press. A press owned by an identifiable faction, you know.
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