One year ago today: May 28, 2016, a use for nanochips.
Five years ago today: May 28, 2012, the energizer bunny.
Nine years ago today: May 28, 2008, look again, it’s water.
Random years ago today: May 28, 2013, 3D printing on Mars?
Ah, it’s nice to have a place sort of in the country. Then you can get up at 6:00AM on Sunday and play bass with the birdies. How can I tell when the birdies are happy? By how much the bird feeder tilts when they land on it. A well-fed bird is a happy bird. I missed some priceless video of the northern cardinals, that’s the bright red bird that lives here. They are not known for antics, they rather seriously go about their business. Yet they were playing on the yard perch I set up for the finches. It was
momentary, but they were running back and forth along the branches and rubbing beaks. They are not tame and fled when I slowly reached for the camera.
Minutes later, I’m drywalling and taping again. This tape makes it a breeze. And it gets easier once you realize new drywall will never fit perfectly over an old wall, and the tape makes sure there is no such thing as a mistake. I’m taking a breather to go get supplies in a bit, so here is a nice photo of my handiwork. I found why that one spot of the wall bulged outward. There was a block of wood forced into the window frame. I removed it, but I hate out-guessing the guy who put it there in the first place. There’s always a reason he took the trouble and removing it, well, that one’s going to come back on me.
Here’s a bit later in the day, the mud is drying before I go over it and feather the edges. Make it duly noted that although I need practice, this feathering came pretty natural to me. The onlookers said I must have done it before. Nope, the once before I drywalled was pretty long ago and I didn’t know about going over the mud a second time with a big trowel. I had put just one coat and sanded it smooth as I could. You can see from the mud pattern where the old window used to be. And, you can tell by the new photos that I broke down and bought a new camera. It’s a Vivitar clone with all the Vivitar shortcomings.
It’s neither.*
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It’s not finished yet, but here is a nice photo of my recycled lawn chair. Those are the wooden slats I stained and covered in poly. It was already painted green so I think I’ve got a nice sturdy chair to feed the birdies. Difficult to see are the 18 carriage bolts and nuts that hold the structure together. This hardware is another product that, if it is true what they say about the capitalist system and increased worker production and innovation, should be going down in price.
Because it is now a bureaucrat’s job to hand out welfare, the system swells to gigantic proportions to where not enough tax money comes in to pay for it. But the government never dares to take away a welfare benefit, although just before he leaves office, I’d like to see Trump arbitrarily cut welfare off for a few months. It’s harsh, but so is income tax. Right how, to pay this “entitlement”, the government simply prints up the money. The money supply increases without any increase in production of goods and services. What happens to supply and demand when there is more money chasing what the system produces? Inflation, they call it. And it robs you by destroying the purchasing power of your dollar. But what the hell, I’ve got my comfy chair, I’m all right, Jack.
The solution is always to make welfare pay less than a minimum wage job—considerably less, because there are always those who prefer to do nothing. When welfare gives you a house, food stamps, an Obamaphone, and free cable TV, it’s idiotic to work a job that pays just enough to have the same things. Also, it is foolish beyond the extreme to give people on welfare cash money of any kind. My guess is only about one person in ten on welfare in America legitimately needs it. Our society has four classes because we’ve created the permanent welfare recipient. Don’t laugh, they have everything you do.
What’s this, Trump touring the Middle East when the wall isn’t built yet? Don, get your priorities straight. And where in the rule book does it say the president is supposed to be taking nine-day breaks and gallivanting around when there’s work to be done back home? C’mon man, be the one that shows the working man you are serious about putting in a real day’s work back at the office. You should be behind the desk, tracking down and naming every politician who is opposing the wall. That’s what you were elected to do and that makes it a requirement for civil servants to obey job orders.
Empty the jails and put the gangs to work on the wall. Pay them. But leave the southern border unguarded in case any of them choose to vote with their feet. See how Mexico likes it, type of thing. Or how about those slightly inbred Englishmen and the Manchester bombing? If eleven people knew about it, then a thousand knew and they all have but one thing in common. Says an English politician, they believe there may still be “one or more” terrorist cells out there. D’think? Hey, it’s not like all the insanely stupid Englishmen fled to New York in the 1800s. Some of them stayed in London and passed that country’s immigration laws.
“I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
Prentice Hall business book Editor-in-Charge, 1957.
Y'know what this is? Adding too much pepper to a pot of rice? This is the second run of the stones through the polish tumbler. Those are the little “tombstone” plastic pellets to cushion the action and that’s a tablespoon of aluminum oxide. I’m rolling the drum a little overfull for a few days to check why the smaller stones didn’t polish so well during the maiden run.
It’s hard to believe, but the “pumpkin” plant is flourishing in the front yard. Shown here, the leaves have plumped up from a nearly shriveled condition. Still no ID on the species but I helped along today by giving it three fertilizer sticks, the kind that prompt root growth. I’m now curious to find out what plant this could be. The photo of the chair above is not really the finished product. I replaced all the bolts with the expensive matching set and it was like working in a sauna. Add in the Florida bugs which can spot you working barechested from two light years away and I got maybe half done before dark.
Another item is that I’m so old, around this time of year I usually call all my old phone numbers to check in on the old gang. I’m very lucky in that not one of my crowd has ever kicked the bucket yet. It’s my way of keeping in touch with the past, which includes writing letters. I’ve got one party out west who isn’t answering. the guy is a home-body and always answers on the second ring. This is the kind of thing that can get mentioned in the blog when I’m waiting around for mud to dry. I’ve read evey book in this house so many times, I need a shopping trip. Did I mention, the Goodwill in the south end has gone through and removed all their technical books. It’s all romance novels and cookbooks.
ADDENDUM
Teleconferencing with JZ, he agrees the self-adhesive tape and premix drywall is the way to go. And once again talking a visit after the new month. He wants to be here to help tear up the living room floor, which is going to really be fun. It may or may not match the rest of the house. It’s all part of the adventure, so I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been informed from every angle to put the best primer on the walls once the drywall is sanded, so I’m following that advice. This is the product, Zinsser Bulls Eye. U I have a habit of painting over all joints and spots before I put on a coat of primer, so JZ says that will suffice for any interior job.
He doesn’t understand my lack of a rush to paint the walls right after. Why? The primer looks like white paint, dude. It says on the label ideal for drywall and all wood or metal surfaces, new or painted. Forms a consistently porous enamel-like surface so consistently smooth it “increases the coverage of top-coat products”. That’s good enough for me. Why, is there some law that says I have to paint a wall after it is primed? If he brings it up again, I’ll remind him of that patch on his old Mazda that never got painted in ten years.
We have a problem with the new key. The blank is a copy of a Ford key, but the Ford key is half again the metal thickness of the scooter slot. It will not fit and there is no substitute available. So I had the duplicate cut and I will try to use the robot grinder to shave the business end of the key to a compatible thinness. When I looked through the blanks on the rack, I noticed some keys were in lock-down. Inquiring, I was told they are keys that contain a transponder. Really? And they charge $75 to cut a copy. Double really? Folks, this is the type of bull that makes lawbreakers out of ordinary citizens. Who is going to pay that kind of money for a lost key if they have any other choice?
When the jackpot is over $50 million, sometimes I buy a ticket. And I have one for the $275 million powerball. I’m looking at the format of the tickets, no less than eight groups of control numbers. Say, looking at my watch, it is past the draw, so maybe I’m filthy rich. The ticket says no power play, whatever that is. Some come-on to the compulsive gamblers, one supposes. Drawing 6 numbers out of 54 is just on the inside edge of impossible. But, as Freakonomics points out, some dozen people in the world have beat those odds and won the big one. I guess if you take the payout and pay the taxes, you’d still walk with $150 million. That’s really not that much money these days, I’d counsel most people to get a good lawyer and accountant on board. Like fast.
If I won, the biggest change around here would be hot and cold running maid service. I miss a woman around the house, but other than that, I dunno. Paint the house? Oh, I know. I’d drive over to some little town full of old mansions and buy a big one. Five, six bedrooms. Get it all spruced up. I always wanted a special music room and a special library on the second floor. But my new lease on life would be to turn that $150 million into a billion, just to show it could be done. And to really embarrass the hell out of these weaklings who win millions and think they’re old ideas are good enough to keep their fortune. Yeah, and they are back at work in five years if they can even get their old job.
And I’d buy a building downtown and put in a used book store. The funny part is that because those things rarely make money, I’d probably succeed at it. Would I give any of the money away? Yes, some, because there are people I care about, but give away as in charity? Not one red cent. Hey, they got their share in taxes, so why give extra? Are you nuts? Let me run some numbers. I would not touch my principle, only the interest or income, so let’s presume I’m astute enough to get 10% per year. That’s $15 million, and lop of a third in more taxes. Still got $10 million. So how much is that per hour?
Let’s presume I mean the 16 hours a day I’m awake to enjoy things. That works out to $1700 per hour—and as I said, it is not that much. I’d have to save up for four days just to buy a decent car. You could easy spend $1700 an hour shopping for clothes. The bottom line is you’d still have to be careful. You would not have to develop very expensive tastes to burn through $27,000 per day. I think I would like a chauffeur driven car, but not a limo. More like a really nice Lexus or even a Rolls. And, I would dedicate the rest of my life to getting to the bottom of things.
Like where people like Zuckerberg learned to program on the Internet. I’ve done it with HTML since the 90s, but as far as large, interactive sites, nobody can tell me even where to look. Trying to learn on your own becomes like the Russian dolls. Every time you get one thing, another appears. Nobody appears willing to list everything you need, raising the suspicion that they don’t really know. There’s still potential for the Internet to produce more billions. Any time you want, you can come over here and look through my library of expensive books that promised to teach me interactive programming, but failed.
I’ve got a few hundred pages of program coding [where I began learning “Internet” code”], each written to spec, but then buried deep at the end of some late chapter you’ll see where I found a half sentence casually mentioning that to make this code work, another 600 page manual and another discipline must be acquired. The worst examples are PHP and Apache. At the time, both appeared necessary to make the program work, but neither made much mention of the other or how they were to be made to mesh. It is hopeless to convince me this type of skullduggery isn’t done on purpose.
Oh, and I’d hire a tutor, someone who can explain to me how differentiation works. And another to teach me how to connect Internet service right. For years I listened to the nonsense on topics like this, but nobody could teach it to me. And I think I’d buy my own night club so I could go there and hire myself to play in the band. For a guitar player, I’d hire Taylor to play the odd Tuesday. She’s a sweetheart, but that Chinese eye makeup has got to go. And maybe another night when known guitar players aren’t allowed. I’d be okay with that.
*it's neither, because you don't know if x is odd or even.
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