One year ago today: May 23, 2016, the model’s ready.
Five years ago today: May 23, 2012,now that’s a motorcycle.
Nine years ago today: May 23, 2008, remember ridiculist?
Random years ago today: May 23, 2013, this is ant country.
The rock tumbler instructions say to check often. This morning at the 60 hour mark, there was noticeable progress. I’m also gaining the experience, since I finally found some literature that discussed problems. And I’m getting every one of them. Rocks of differing hardness are polishing differently, and the aluminum oxide does emit gasses that can’t be good for you. The rock that already looks the best is one of the railroad rocks. You know, those freckled rocks from around the railway ties, at least I think that is where it came from.
This is the test board for the wood stain. Shown is a piece of pine wood with 1, 2, and 3 layers of stain. The rightmost looks best to me, but when this same test was applied to the oak wood flooring, the results were much different. The oak turns dark when almost any stain hits it. One coat and that’s it, a second coat makes it too dark and a third coat you can’t even see the wood grain. Maybe that explains why so many oak floors are so dark. Maybe they had no choice. And the color stays deep red with it is covered with a poly finish. Stick around and I’ll get pictures. Again the above is pine, not oak.
I want to play in the naughty pine room. With Mexico’s favorite weather girl. But before this time next years, can’t dilly-dally, nomsayn? The fastest I got going today is a half-mile an hour so cut me some slack. Add in the three hour siesta and I didn’t get my drywall happening. It’s a good thing I don’t have to rent the room out for at least another five or so years.
I’m giving Trump to the end of the month. It’s been six months, where is the wall? Why do I still see obvious illegals racking up $200 in food stamps? You’ve sold out, you’ve been manipulated by the insiders. The only good outcome is you’ve created the situation for the next hard-liner who now will be elected and will kick ass. Trump. you should have rounded up all the opponents as traitors, and because you didn’t, they are going to impeach you, on principle alone. What a wuss you turned out to be.
Anti-facial recognition software hood.
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I could not get kick-started all day, so I puttered around. Is that because I now have the resources to putter to my heart’s content? I raided Agt. R’s garage for parts to rebuild his bench and sorted out the stones he’s got drying. Alas, not any of it is any good for polishing. There’s a few shells and vertebrae, but they are a long ways from salable quality. How come, two weeks into the process, I’m the only one who knows what to look for? I pored over the rock polishing instructions yet another time and am more than ever convinced most people who own a tumbler have no idea what they are up against.
The literature says 30% of the rock is worn away at this stage. That’s a lot of rock and I’ll have to see that before I’ll believe it happens in a week. Shown here I have one of the smaller freckled rocks and they are beginning to show signs of smoothing. There’s a long ways to go. Other than checking what’s going on, the operation runs itself, which is nice. If I get results, I’ll move it into the red shed where it can carry on in isolation. Once I know what to watch for, why not rig up the old solar panels and let that work the rocks for free?
I’ll try for some close-ups of the stone surfaces but really, this project is as about as exciting as, well, as watching stones roll around in circles. Let’s wait until I get the new guitar player up to speed and the very next week I meet Suzi Sexpot at the Polk Country Trailer Park Dance and Pot Luck Singles Mixer Bingo. She’ll have a double-wide on the banks of the Suwannee, where she’ll make my life complete and a year from now we’ll all wish for the good old blog days. Where at least once in a while something new happened and we learned a thing or two now and again. Suzi is already profiled. She’s a skinny blonde, past her prime, disillusioned with men, divorced, permanently 39 years old, two daughters, both married, and so happy I came along that she’ll actually cook supper every day.
Now, Suzi is from Florida, so she can’t sing, she can’t dance, she’s missing 3.7 teeth, drinks Miller Lite, thinks all men are liars, and likes her mayo on the side. She’s been to Disney world twice and “thought it was neat”. She gets a monthly support check, doesn’t need a bra most of the time, and has four cats, one of whom is named “Elvis”. There was once a tattoo but she had it removed, and she considers cable TV “a necessity”.
Back to work, I sketched out and priced the building of a 4-foot sluice. Amalgamating a number of sources, I’ve put together plans for a “Hungarian” trough, doing the best I can to get the water to tumble the silt over baffles, grates, and carpeting. I’m forming the impression you should build a generic gate and then, by examining what works more or less, customize something for each location. I may have R convinced it is wiser to build a unit while dumb and blind than to borrow something or to incur any returnable favors. I can build this pilot model for less than $60.
That’s roughly my share of the bed sale, which somebody paid full cash for last Friday. I don’t need the cash so I’ll roll it over to building the gold sluice. I read up enough to know it is the tumbling action, which I have no way of measuring. I’ll make the baffles either large or adjustable somehow or regulate the water flow. It has to be fairly brisk, but still allow the rocks to get over the baffles.
“Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet."
Hewlitt-Packard to Steve Jobs, 1972
Why did I bother dropping in to Karaoke? The guy running the machine is too slow to learn anything. He doesn’t know the job, like how to balance the music behind the vocals when the singer doesn’t use the mic right. I’ve mentioned it to him three times to be helpful, so tonight I let him screw it up. It’s not that he’s out of sync, it’s that he isn’t learning. His major blunder is making new people who walk in later wait up to an hour before their first turn. By that time, the moment and their crowd are gone. I know when my turn came around 45 minutes later, the gals I wanted to impress were long gone, so I declined. He made two of the best singers wait so long (nearly an hour) the place was empty. So he’s even unclear on the concept of people wanting to sing for their own crowd.
Yard report. The shady mix flower compound is either working half-way or not working the other. I scattered the seeds as directed but got a little too much in one corner. There are a few dozen new shoots in the flower bed, but they don’t match the way the seeds landed. Yet, the seedlings are all a uniform height and are mostly in the right pattern, so I’ll keep up hope. If there’s a photo nearby, then it was a nice day. The summer heat is already making life less than comfortable. My black oil sunflower grew only so big, then kind of wilted and now it’s looking a little yellow. That yard, I’ll find something.
I saw a video on a tool by Kregg that makes installing drawer glides look easy. I’ll see if I can get specs on that for you as well. All tools by that company are twice as expensive as they should be, but what the heck, I’m going to be the guy that strikes the first gold mine in Florida. After all.
Can’t see the little green shoots cropping up in this photo? Neither can I, but they’re there. I saw a video on a tool by Kregg that makes installing drawer glides look easy. I’ll see if I can get specs on that for you as well. All tools by that company are twice as expensive as they should be, but what the heck, I’m going to be the guy that strikes the first gold mine in Florida. After all.
The next rehearsal is this upcoming Thursday, we shall see how well the new guy learned his lessons. He definitely put in around four hours last time, that’s incredible by the standards of the other yahoos who wasted my time. But, except for the CCR rain song, he hasn’t let me know what he can sing. I need him for ten songs. He is hesitant, possibly, because now he knows a lot of the standards are not suitable and if he’s had the same experiences with guitar players as myself, that might be all he can play.
Tunes that are NOT really suitable for bass/acoustic arrangement would be anything by the Eagles, most Neil Young, and specific tunes like “Before You ‘Cuse Me” and, methinks, anything on a song list that belongs to anybody from New York. That last bozo could play the walkup from G to C, but no others. When I demonstrated why, if he played that one, in a duo he had to also play the others. (Because if he plays them, I position my bass patterns where I can’t do them.) But he could neither learn the others or stop playing the one he knew.
I should invite him to a gig, but it wouldn’t sink in, his skull is too thick. Like most guitarists, he over-remembers how wonderful his last band was. Speaking of what’s available, I also notice what doesn’t work with all resident bands I meet in a new area. And that fancy piano player, well, I got his number. His trick is to start the song with the guitar so people will recognize it, but switch to the keyboards by the second verse. He’s good at it, but it is still a trick. But his delivery is impeccable and he’s one of the most expensive entertainers most places hire.
Bear in mind, though, this is precisely the type of solo guitar or keyboard act that I’m aiming to compete with. If I play a bar, I want it to be something classier (ha-ha) than the local veteran’s saloon, although I have nothing against those except there are never any alpha women present. I regularly go through my song list to make sure there are combinations of bass-acoustic notes that a soloist cannot duplicate. I also train my people in various techniques to keep the songs interesting the next gig, a severe shortcoming of all the guitar acts I’ve seen in Florida.
And right now, I’m going to polish up Willie’s “It’s All Goin’ To Pot” because I promised the guitar player I’d have that one aced by Thursday rehearsal. Meaning now he’ll have to learn it.
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