One year ago today: March 4, 2016, popular gif.
Five years ago today: March 4, 2012, your phone # is not “medical info”.
Nine years ago today: March 4, 2008, watching the helicopter.
Random years ago today: March 4, 2007, Praise at 1,520 Hz.
Today’s theme is “I told you so.” Who warned you about corrupt Florida condo councils and HOAs years upon years before the courts and investigators recently got around to them? Who told you about Sony, the hotel rip-off, the taxis, the illegal advertising—and gave concrete examples in most cases. You’re welcome. What set this off is this morning, Bushnell AM came in clear enough to listen to one of those lawyer call-in shows. You know the one, where every legal problem is either so simplistic that the straight answer belongs to Ann Landers, or so complicated that the advice you get is to bring your papers into the office on Monday morning.
The whole building was the museum, I must take a half-day off and visit. Already tired from the arts fair, I looked only at what was most likely to interest me, the railroad section. I’m not a railway buff but I grew up and lived most of my life in cities that began as depots. The decline of passenger travel due to airports has overshadowed this element of history, anyway that’s what I think. This was the more so in Florida, where it was the presence of that railway station that could make or break a town.
If you drive around any central Florida town along a railway, or in many cases a former railway, you’ll find a restored station. Did you know the city of Auburndale got there because the railway accidentally cut through a farmer’s land. He refused to cooperate in the building of a depot, so they relocated the stop a mile away on the neighbor’s farm. Such was the power of the rails just a hundred years ago.
Naarden, former artillery fortress.
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I wound up walking around the entire fair and you know, I didn’t see one new thing. Some of the art was very well done, like custom wooden pens and bonsai-like wire sculptures. It’s just that I always think art should not be so imitative; I would like to see something new once in a while. I mean, at some point, somebody was first with every art form. So how come I have never seen anybody with a first? That raises the speculation that maybe I have seen it but did not know it. Well, then quit calling it art. Gotcha!
Radio Shack is closing their store down in Bartow. We have a little experience at this, where they will not bother to move the small parts. Let me slate say $200 to buy out the entire component section and maybe the shelving with it. The rest of the store is junk, except the robotics section. Radio Shack has consistently failed to find a product mix that matches the day and age. It is mostly Millennial trinkets, like cell phone cases and Bluetooth earpieces. I’ve got a backlog of gadgets I’d like to build but balk at the prices of switches and connectors.
For example, here’s an in-line fuse holder. I like the design because it has an indicator light when the fuse is good, as seen in this picture connected to my bench power supply. I don’t use these much as fuses but rather as indicators, if you look closely instead of a fuse you can see a resistor I stuck in the blades to test this unit to 8.3 volts. The problem being, the retail price of this piece is nearly $6, an impossible cost. I missed the big Miami sell-off, I won’t make that mistake here if I can. Pick up the whole batch, thousands of pieces, for 10 cents each. Hey, that is all they are worth to me, I’m a hobbyist, not an assembly line.
Trivia time. Did you know 90% of all extinct species are birds? I was reading an article in Freakonimics about how hiring more police increases the crime rate when I saw their article on children’s names. Aha, didn’t I tell people to be careful what NOT to name your kids. The same book says there is some belief that middle income parents will “poach” names from more successful families, but that certain repulsive personalities can nullify that trend. The complete lack little girls named “Madonna” makes that point. What? Why do more police mean more crime? Oh, you just didn’t read the sentence right. It is the crime rate that goes up, not the number of crimes. There are now more police around to catch more of the bad guys, so the crime rate goes up.
“Claustrophics think better out of the box.”
It’s true, after some eleven years, I’ve learned to tolerate the taste of powdered milk. Today I tried a different brand just to make sure I wasn’t being fooled by some new flavoring or additive. Nope, the same taste and I don’t find it nasty any more. It’s blogworthy in that I never imagined I would ever not hate the compound. I’ve used it mainly for baking over the years, or as a base for flavored milk drinks. There you have it, this is a knockout punch to those who say I’m too old to change. But don’t bet on it, the stuff still tastes like chalk.
[Author’s note: so I looked up a picture of this drywall bit only to realize I already own one but didn’t know what it was. Bonus!]
Needing the break, I watched some old English episodes of black and white Sherlock Holmes. Like Shakespeare, highly over-rated, but still great little plays. Made back when sets were more elaborate, these are more like somebody filming a play than making a movie. That also means the actors can talk too fast for the quality of the recording. There were more unadapted scripts of proven appeal in those days, so bad acting or not, you still got a credible presentation.
As for my swamp creature audio tape, I’ve hit this long stretch where she keeps seeing the beast and letting him get away. This appears to be so she can burn up valuable time reminiscing, working things out with folks who have totally misunderstood her, figure out which of the locals raped her ten years before, and wonder if the forest ranger is secretly in love with her. There are 9 disks, this is only disk 4. But I’ll make a prediction. Some Hong Zong illegal zoo lab is injecting animals with a human intelligence gene. The best reason I think this is because the plot pointedly avoids saying it.
ADDENDUM
I could kick myself since I’m the one who loves to tout how European bookmaking includes a feature missing from other cultures, namely the index. That’s correct. Other language books have no index, they were designed so you were generally forced to consult the wise old master who remembered where the information you wanted was located. You know, the “brain” index, which works so well for people like Ken, Patsie, and Theresa. If I’d had the foresight, I would have got an index together for this blog, but it was not something any blog really had in the early days. My point is I’d like you to look at this photo.
This is on a tiny scale, but who recalls my speculation on the space elevator? So, let us not consider magnitude, but focus on how these cooling towers are tall but wide at the base. Where have my long-term readers seen this shape and concept before? Right, my design for the space elevator, where I explained that nano-tubes or not, the principles of the triangle would still apply if you wanted maximum strength. At the time, I was speaking out against other designs which ignored the ancients. Fact: my sketch of spheres and pyramids easily pre-dates these “new” towers, making this one more item that the Millennials did not invent.
Last Laugh
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