One year ago today: June 22, 2016, on attic insulation.
Five years ago today: June 22, 2012, my top five degrees.
Nine years ago today: June 22, 2008, Marion moves to Colorado.
2009.html> June 22, 2009, I dabble in Karaoke.
(Thank goodness I didn’t go there.)
Here’s a morning mystery. What is this picture all about? Hint, this is a modern operation, note the cars in the background. It has nothing to do with funerals and this is a small family-run business using traditional methods. Give up? My, that was quick. It is a storage lot for making soy sauce. Soy sauce is fermented, read the label, and these are the fermentation vats. I had real soy sauce when I lived in Thailand, and the commercial brands you buy at the Wiggly Piggly are quite good, but by comparison are a tad ‘watery’. Most authentic brand: Kikkoman.
Say what you want about equal pay, in the pay-per-right-answer test, men completely blasted women out of the water. Every time, hundreds of times. I would consider the difference innate except I’ve met women who were able to switch that conduct off and get the job done—and what’s more, they expressed disdain toward other women who refused do the same. That means [to me] that if women want to, they can control the behavior that creates the pay difference. Ah, but why should they when it is easier to insist on having their own way? In that sense, all guitar players I’ve met in Florida act like women. Old women. Old women with their panties in a knot.
[Author’s note: Superfreakonomics has one of the best definitions of practice I’ve yet seen. The now-common rule is that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. The weakness of that is it has dumb-asses calculating backwards that if they have put in 10,000 hours, well, you know. Anyone who has ever worked in a lumber mill or the DMV can testify there is something totally wrong with that reverse logic. Damn penguin-think.
Psych prof K.A. Ericsson (Florida State U) says the difference between work and experience is “directed practice”. For the effort to be directed, it must have specific attainable goals, it must include self-critical feedback, and there must be as much concentration on technique as on the outcome. Or he could just be criticizing guitar players.]
The few days of living without the scooter woke me up. It is my local workhorse without which even grocery shopping is difficult. One major problem that has always existed is the electronics, which I have essentially re-wired except for the headlight. For some unknown reason, the expensive halogen bulbs don’t light up, instead you get a dull glow. It must be some incompatibility or low amperage consideration. I avoid night driving because in total darkness, it doesn’t throw the light very far ahead.
Now, I will find the solution even if I have to wire up a complete circuit off the battery. The first challenge is the halogen lights have three posts. That makes sense, a ground and one each for low and high beam. But on the robot test rack, all nine combinations test as a dead short, none light up the bulb. It isn’t inadequate battery power, that battery is ten times better than your average car version. The old 18 gauge wiring has been replaced with 12 gauge. So we have us a regular mystery here. But not for long. If need be, I’ll tap a proper switched circuit into place.
Kewl subway entrance.
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During my research into wills and trusts, I’ve already found a book that spells it out in plain English. It’s blunt title is “Why Wills Won’t Work” and it goes into just enough detail to keep you interested. I recommend it because the author doesn’t get cute with the angle that bad laws are sometimes necessary for the greater good. He published in 2007, so he is well aware of how viable businesses and concerns have been forcibly liquidated to pay inheritance taxes. This disastrous policy does not surprise me, as I’ve said, the only reason it was not done before the computer era was that it took too long. In the age of credit, wills are not longer a private family affair.
This is how the state controls your life. Although morally the house is yours, the state does not recognize your ownership until the deed is transferred and registered in your name. This can take up to a year because although the slash and grab is new, the administration system that grinds along was designed eons ago.
My yard is green again, but none of it is grass. The rains brought out a lot of clover. Did I mention, the red-headed woodpecker is back, but only once in a while? The birdbath is a winner, but it is the splashing sound that gets attention and I’ve more than once thought of a fountain or spray, only to get distracted. Maybe I can do something novel because I kept the old swivel mechanism from a junked table lamp. It has a 1:5.8 reduction gearing, creating the possibility I could use a small 12V motor, or less, with one of the small solar panels that Harbor Freight sells as battery recharges. I have two of them around here somewhere
I like the idea of a little waterwheel arrangement best. Something powered by the sun. This is for distraction only, I’ve got real work to do. I test fitted the slats for the larger bench, I want that finished to give space for the incoming radial arm saw. I also found a 1/8” piece of aluminum to test the glass jig, so we might see some advancement there. I’m completely out of shed space already.
[Author’s note: never connect a solar panel directly to your battery, either wet or dry cell. The output of the panels is enough to seriously damage your battery or vice versa without a directional voltage controller between the two components. In bright sunlight the over-voltage can heat and damage your plates, in darkness, back-current can ruin your panels. As far as I know, HF never warns you about this.
Hint: as far as electronics projects go, a voltage controller is a very easy build. Plans can be downloaded, but it is really a power diode and a 7812 voltage regulator. My design would be somewhat more elaborate, possibly with a small storage battery and a lot of capacitors.]
“A fool and his money are soon elected.”
~ Will Rogers.
You know what gets my goat? Finding a duplicate blank for the Rebel key. It is a simple key design, but everywhere you go, they say they don’t have the right design. I’m trying to remember where I saw just boxes of aluminum key blanks not that long ago. The 1986 Honda key is a direct copy of the keys Ford made in those days and there is no chance they quit making them. It’s not so much finding the key as everybody telling me they don’t have that particular blank. The days are gone when keys were made by locksmiths. I’ve tried checking at duplicating kiosks and it’s like talking to a post. Key? What’s that? Oh, you mean “key”. Yes, we have no bananas.
Here’s my setup to test the bird bath mechanism. This is not a fountain, which involves a pump, but a type of waterwheel I have in mind. It would turn slowly, geared down to around 4 rpm. I still have a lot of gear ratio calculations to do. Alas, my array of solar panels seems to have lost a good proportion of its design output. Odd, the were never used that much and were stored in very nice conditions.
It was a pleasant afternoon so I worked outside a bit. For example, I tested the recharged battery on the scooter and yep, it is working fine. The detuned robotics equipment proves its value once again. I took a sample of the acid and it can gobble three times its own volume in baking soda. You be very careful trying this. As with anything in this blog, don’t do it just because I did. I also checked the Amtrak schedules and it is a four to five hour ride to Hialeah station, the southern terminus. That is comparable to motorcycle travel time, but don’t be thinking you can get around Miami without a car.
I ran through my song list as much as possible, I see my wrist strength needs building up. That is not a consideration for bass, obviously. I dug out my music stand and all the guitar solo gear. Everything works great but I’m out of pop filters. I can’t use the ordinary brands for my headset, those are either too big or too small. Last, I shopped around for a replacement 1/8” router bit and it is $21. However, I found a set of “groove” bits for $27 which are a series of toothed wheels. They cut the groove horizontally instead of vertically. I’m thinking.
HERE’S ANOTHER ARTICLE YOU WON’T SEE
IN TODAY’S FEEBLE EXCUSES FOR MAGAZINES.
Having read this far, here is a more accurate description of what happened on June 22, 1941. This has been posted here before, but it is history on a massive scale, so here it is again. The Russians, who controlled the Soviet empire, knew that England and France had signed defense treaties with Poland, and Poland was mistreating their large ethnic German population. Stalin thus signed a treaty to let the Germans invade the western half of Poland, which the Germans saw as their right under the treaty of Versailles which stated all ethnic peoples had a right to belong to the same nation. Remember, Poland had grabbed that same land from Germany after the First World War when Germany was weak.
Here is a map of German speaking areas in Europe in 1933. The Paris Treaty said all people who spoke a common language had the right to join the country of their choice. It is evident that the Poles would never have agreed to such a plebiscite. You may also notice the Sudatenland in Czechoslovakia and all of Austria is also German-speaking. All nations except Germany were allowed to incorporate--despite the fact Germany had not lost the war (it was an armistice, not a surrender). That wasn’t very fucking smart, Woodrow.
Note that between the wars, Poland had the fourth largest army in the world and had attacked Germany (1918) Russia (1919-1921), Czechoslovakia (1919), Ukraine (1919), Lithuania (1919), so it was hardly a good neighbor. It was now provoking war with Germany by cutting off coal supplies to the German city of Danzig (Gdansk), believing Poland was safe from reprisals due to said French and British treaty guarantees. There is good evidence Churchill encouraged Polish aggression. He knew if he waited even another year, Germany would be unbeatable. Historical note: Germany had not planned on war until 1946.
Knowing if the Germans moved into Poland, Stalin correctly surmised the western allies would declare war on Germany. But he was expecting a repeat of the four-year slogging match on the Western Front. Thus, he massed the Soviet military on the Eastern German boundary, poised for attack. There was no defense in depth, because Stalin was waiting for the war in the west to bleed both the Allies and Germany white. Then the Soviets could invade and take over all of Europe. Hitler knew the Soviet armies were making ready to attack because the Red Army and Air Force were larger than the rest of the world combined. Twenty thousand tanks and twenty thousand airplanes, ten times the German arsenal.
It shocked the daylights out of Stalin, and Churchill, and the world, when Germany flattened France in six weeks. The British got their asses kicked (Dunkirk) and were no threat to Germany by late 1940. Hitler then turned east, which was his original plan. His armies punched through the Soviets because the Red Army was deployed for attack, not defense. And they got rounded up by the millions, many more than Germany could possibly feed under any circumstances.
The rest is more history. Churchill knew that by the same token the Germans failed to cross the Channel and invade England, it was impossible of England to cross the other way. Churchill was presiding over a fading and bankrupt British Empire and knew the only way to win was to bring America into the war. In reality, supposedly neutral America was already heavily involved in the war by supplying weapons, reconnaissance, armed escorts, and money to England as fast as possible (Lend Lease). Hitler knew all this so his declaration of war on America after Pearl Harbor was really a formality.
You know what’s really scary? Hitler’s statement. He said, “In a hundred years, the world will know that I was right.”
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