One year ago today: August 19, 2016, you like kandy korn.
Five years ago today: August 19, 2012, on luck and war documentaries.
Nine years ago today: August 19, 2008, meet Benjamin.
Random years ago today: August 19, 2014, wrongful death, my eye.
There’s the bathroom wall piling up in the old living room. A morning run to the yard and I spent my last $104. That I had on me, I meant. I’m going to frame in the bathroom before I level the floor and shim anything that doesn’t fit later. I never did like the bathroom here, you have to walk around the sink as you enter the door. And everybody has noticed once I get some lumber, I disappear for a few days. Lumber keeps me busy.
The bathroom is the only part of the house that represents a major renovation. The second bedroom is of more use to me than a huge living room. Guess what, I can’t find the plans I drew up eight months ago, nor can I remember if the article I read said how to frame the wall without getting the studs in the way of the average plumbing fixtures. Was it 14” on center? 15”? 17”? Why me?
I do get jealous though, driving around the older parts of town. You see these houses for ordinary people that were mansions compared to my upbringing. If I ever get the time, I’d show you some pictures. Houses with like 18 or twenty rooms. I always wanted a house with a library and music room. No dice, and what I have by the end of this year is basically it. I will have missed the boat on those things. These other house though. There are vacant houses in town that in top-top shape used only to store old books and old furniture. The family archives.
I’m about to tell you my plan, so if I’m in the obits this week, you’ll have the facts. I will be taking a section of bearing wall six feet long out of the side of the house. The rear wing was added on later, this is actually an interior wall. It is moving back 18” to accommodate a double sink and some cupboards. There are not even any storage racks in the existing bathroom. The obvious plan is to shore up the wall and tear out the section, adding a header. I’m going to cheat a little.
Since the new wall is only 18” back from the existing wall and the new wall is 2x6”, I’m using that to shore up the exterior span until I can shoehorn a header in there. For clarity, even though it will be in the way, I’m building the new wall first, so there will be two bearing walls before I remove the old one. This is going to give the impression the new sinks are sitting in a cavity, but the walls are 8 feet high and it may add to the effect of newness. Okay, just be ready. I’ve never done anything like this before and I have 0.00 hours of carpentry training. If you drive past and see a big pile of old lumber collapsed on the ground, see if you can pull me out by a convenient arm or leg, which I will helpfully extend during the tumble. If you are Taylor Swift, I would like immediate CPR. Miracles do happen.
Lake Powell.
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You know, it is difficult to get a cup of coffee in Polk County. Unless you go to a franchise, and even then some of them like Burger King never put the coffee on except in the morning. So I had to go to the library. They were out. Knowing this puts me in a grump, I went to the back of the building over there and read trivia. Did you know that paper can be recycled up to eight times? I wonder why the limitation. My guess is the cellulose fibers finally break down. I thought maybe the color went bad, but would they not just use that for wrapping. Or tarpaper.
Next, I took the Rebel over to Winter Haven. The ATM was not working, I had to pay the rip-off fee at another bank. I should tell my people I should not be charged if the reason is their unit is on the fritz. But they have women managers these days who have no such authority. Speaking of millennials, did you notice the big “counter-protest” up in one of those acid-rain states? These left-wing people are shooting themselves in the foot. Using hate and Nazi-tactics to stop those who they say might use hate and Nazi-tactics. Using force to quash opposing political views. It’s an irony that escapes me at the moment.
What’s next, libtards? Book-burning?
“Welcome to Tallahassee,
set your watch back 20 years.”
AUTHOR
Another rehearsal and we have progress. Teach a guy enough chords so he can learn to play a song he likes on his own and you won’t have to chide the guy to practice. The chord changes are still shaky and the timing unsteady. However, he is able to calculate out the circle of fifths, still without realizing how important it is. This is a musically significant juncture. Right about now, he’ll find that one or two songs that he likes which fit what he’s learned. It’s actually the other way around, but the discovery process on this is always backwards.
[Author’s note: moments after the above passage was written, he found that song. Waylon Jennings’ “Good Hearted Woman”. He’ll now enter the phase of hardly believing most songs are really that simple and that in a real way, he can already play them. He is also developing a strong sense of where the chords change, and never underestimate how difficult that is for beginners. And he’s kicked the newbie habit of changing chords on the downbeat. It’s a bit like learning to walk again.
One more milestone, and a crucial one in my book, is that he reacted positively to what I was playing. We only had guitars (no bass) so he can learn by example, but he picked up the Jennings song quickly enough that I began playing the bass line on my guitar. That’s the big deal. He’s never been trained to ignore the bass as “background” so he instantly heard what a difference it made to his playing. It was the “aha moment”, the old “you mean that’s all I have to do” look. Yep, and once he works that out, we will be an unbeatable team.
Just remember, the odds of this, or any startup band, getting to paid stage work are vanishingly small. It’s the nature of the music trade.]
ADDENDUM
This is an Arduino-controlled combination lock picker. The other novelty is that the unit was produced on a 3D printer. There is nothing new about the technology, but I’ll explain in a moment why this one gets blogged. The way it works is due to a defect built into these locks. There is a slight change in resistance as the tumblers engage if you rotate the dial while pulling on the shackle.
Not so with other people. I read the comments under the post and was surprised to see the number of dodos that berated the device. It was the nature of their attitudes that got my attention. As I say, the idea is not new, but who was it that said, “What good is a new-born baby?”
For crying out loud, you critics, this is a prototype. Once it is miniaturized or weaponized, who knows what could come of it? So stop pointing out it’s been done and bragging how you used the same manual methods to nick your brother’s bicycle when you were eight. Evidently the lot of you are missing the point here. This is a beautiful and functional design using the latest production techniques by an inventor who is evidently a masterful programmer.
The unit must be capable of sensing feedback and the way Arduinos are programmed, it must have ingenious loops and subroutines to perform the task. I say all the critics are wrong, and it is precisely this type of apparatus that, coupled with the sloppy but emerging field of artificial intelligence that will define both the job market and their lives by 2030.
Millennials are the seeds of their own destruction for they have been brainwashed instead of educated. The government knew exactly what they were doing when they took over the school system. Former generations just called it ignorance, apathy, and lack of foresight. Nothing has changed and this is the primary reason the 1% exist.
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