One year ago today: September 9, 2016, purely Elizabeth.
Five years ago today: September 9, 2012, dazzling views, Colorado.
Nine years ago today: September 9, 2008, fresh water, 1200 feet.
Random years ago today: September 9, 2014, Granger is expensive.
I’m safely ensconced in my cabin that has survived a half-century of Florida weather. Is the storm still on? If so, it should go right through here on the 11th, which is ironic in a way. The stats are in and ex except for the loss of my most expensive motorcycle, that trip to Miami only cost me $111. The biggest expense was entertainment, followed by gas. It’s hard to beat that for economy. But that does not include my $130 “cab fare” back from the hospital. And Lee county has a long ways to go to match the food quality at Memorial. They got me a turkey sandwich with no butter, but when you are hungry enough may be their motto.
This is the batbike under a few layers of tarp. See how much I need that shed? The tarps are weighted and clamped in place. The reports of 135 mph wind are usually offshore where there is no dampening effect. You need 75 to 90 mph on land to cause real damage. And if that happens, no amount of tarps will have any say. You are looking at a calculated risk. Everything else is just parked close to the house. The sheds are locked and weighted down.
My stocks are good for three days but I made a supply run anyway. There’s evidence of panic buying and the radio says 3,000 complaints already on the price-gouging line. That’s another warm-fuzzy of the government that makes things worse. They flash a number you can dial if you see anybody charging higher prices than normal. Sounds just fine until you discover it means most needed items cannot be had at any price. It assures that no businesses bother to stay open or bother to storm-proof their premises—they would make a killing but the government won’t let them.
Worse, it causes the weakest specimens to flock to the shelters, where they get their first big taste of government hand-outs. After that, they are hooked and the government gets them on file, so the idiots win, the government wins, and the taxpayer gets stuck with the bill.
What about the birds? They are going intense over this storm. You haven’t heard the progress report on the birds. I’ve been training them to come to my whistle but they are either slow learners or I can’t whistle. More likely is that I really only get out there to call them when the feeder is empty. They get used to long stretches and it took nearly a year for the cardinals to react. Even then, it is consistently an hour [almost exactly 52 minutes] before they will approach. However, they will chirp and eyeball it within minutes. The media says this will be the worst hurricane in history to hit the state. Worse than Andrew. I never saw Andrew, but JZ and I drove through the neighborhood years later and it was still blue-tarp city.
Next, meticulous type that I am, I rotated by emergency grub. Hmmm, not as much there as should be. I like to keep several months of canned goods. Cans? Yep, they are always easy to cook and provide a good source of cooking water. Funny, how some people pour it out and wind up cooking with expensive bottled water. You can’t make tea or coffee with it, but hey, I happen to like Raimen noodles. Not, it is not from my college days, I didn’t like noodles back then. It is from living overseas in my 30s.
Mont Saint-Michel.
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By noon I have the place buttoned up but no way to be sure. My property is well-sheltered on three sides. Only a terrible wind from the direct south can impact the buildings. But are the sheds sturdy enough? This is the question about to be answered with a big ka-boom. What about the new roof on my work shed? Remind me to put extra nails into that tomorrow. Those special roofing nails that cost 50 cents apiece. Right now, rarely has a siesta been such a swell idea. I’ve been reading more about Arduino “libraries” and confirm they are the same old brain-fart concept that good programmers learn to avoid wherever possible. Unknown modules of code that do things you can’t view directly. The worst coding concept imaginable is mysterious batches written by strangers who may or may not have a clue what they are doing. With C+, it is hard to tell.
This is just a generic photo to show the place is closed up. That’s the red shed that is over 40 years old. The heavy greenery that sprung up in the far back yard is evident. That’s the same spot that was bone dry to the barren sand a few months ago.
It is calm and hot out there, but I can feel the cooling off that often precedes a bad one. I don’t know the theory of why a storm 500 miles away can drop the outside temp by five or eight degrees, but I’ve experienced that before. Yeah, just think of hurricanes as a cool breeze, just kind of all at once, you know, instead of spread over like a week or two. Times like this I miss not replacing my recliner. I’m settling in for the duration. Got my books, my Zohan movies, and it seems, the only time I eat a lot of soup is during these storms. Hot mug of soup, that could be a holdover from sTexas. Must be something because it never really stays cold here. It does chill, but not long enough to make the place a deep freeze.
“If it ain’t broke,
I haven’t borrowed it yet.”
Unknown.
Non-robot and non-computer types can skip this section, allow me to point out how rarely computer coding people protest against badly structured languages. I know I’m a lonely voice on this one. Most coders are badly indoctrinated clones who don’t know any better and that’s the real reason they don’t complain. They rely on the code being difficult to deal with on every level. And that is my conclusion about Arduino “libraries”. The relationship they bear to Arduino code is almost identical to the way CSS style sheets are associated with HTML. Here’s how so.
In both cases [Arduino and HTML], the original concept is flawed. HTML was written by a poorly educated bad speller who lacked the ability to spot the consequences of always taking the easy way out. What? Did I just say the CERN guy who invented the language of the Internet was poorly educated? Yes. It does not take brains to write computer code and a lot of it is done by mediocre people who lack an appreciation of the consequences they are creating.
After a few years of early HTML, coders began to spot the serious shortcomings of HTML. But instead of fixing it, they tried to separate the style from the logic, calling it CSS for cascading style sheets. They were heading down the same dead end. I spotted the defect instantly (read all about it in this blog) and now finally, ten years too late, the CSS users are drawing the same conclusions. They tried to patch up a failure with another failure and wound up coding themselves into a corner.
Same with the C+ version used to program the Arduino microcontroller. C+ is so gawdawfully bad that programs of any real functionality quickly get big enough to crowd the available memory. Instead of streamlining C+, some doofus addicted to diet Tab gets the notion of “libraries”. Why, let’s put snippets of repetitious code in a separate files and call them as needed. Of course, all real programmers spot this is nothing more than subroutines. This “library” concept points out the idiocy of “majority rules” programming. They never bother to check how the roadblocks they create themselves have already been tackled successfully in the past. They are paid for making changes, not for obeying historical perspectives.
The problem with that approach is that libraries, like C+ itself, have far too much overhead. They gobble any saved space. It also makes the code a nightmare to maintain. Any modifications to the main module [called a ‘sketch’ by Arduino] necessitates checking to make sure you don’t have to make corresponding changes in at least two other files. Note I said at least two. Because libraries are like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without knowing how many pieces are present. Don’t count on reliable comments either; C+ programmers are notorious for poor documentation. But this I understand, because I’ve seen the results when they try. You can’t write down good instructions for bad ideas. It’s been tried. Insert religious joke here.
Here’s a parting thought. There is already prime example of degenerate group-think that has been around most of our lives. People who are doing a terrible job but refuse to start over. They don’t want change because it means they would have to learn new ways of doing things. No, I’m not talking about guitar players again. I mean a huge and bloated government bureaucracy of goof-offs who brought you the despised Space Shuttle. You got it. NASA.
[Author’s note: my dislike of object-oriented languages does not stop me from writing programs. It would be wrong to think that. I could write sketch libraries any time I want and that is a confident statement because I’ve written all kinds of code in my life that ran first time. My natural hesitation to playing new music or building things without a ton of practice does not apply to lines of computer code.]
ADDENDUM
As for why I was thinking about it, I dunno. I got to wondering about the few relations I ever did meet in my family. A few cousins, two aunts, and one uncle. It was the cousins that got me wondering. I know the stats about how few people in this life every accomplish anything or experience success, so I’m not referring to that. I was wondering why all my relatives were “problem” children. I think something to do with how they would get sent out to spend their summers “on the farm” to get them away from whatever it is they were doing that was causing so much trouble.
They resented being bussed to the middle of nowhere and I resented them for getting priority on already preciously low resources. All my nephews seemed slightly retarded and all my nieces were not crazy but batty. None of them were good company, I mean, no fun to chum around with at all. I’ve already told how I have no relatives who travel, write, play music, or have any academic pursuits. I would mention, though, that all of them are excellent copy-cats, but that runs in my family. Let’s not start any challenges as to who has the worst relations, but I’ll bet you’ve got a few with table manners and who at least finished school. Maybe even have some with their natural teeth. That beats my relatives to hell.
The first few times, I tried to befriend these kids. All it did was teach me that what was lacking was a damn good whacking. These kids were brats who needed some rough, painful times to straighten them out, and that was not my job. I also noticed that like my brothers, they were always lacking in the education department. You cannot fall behind because you cannot catch up. How is it put, you soon quit planting flowers that you know will never be watered.
They really could not learn anything worthwhile because they couldn’t read the manual. Thus they were bored by everything I wanted to do. By the time they realized reading was important, they were too far behind and tried to cover it up by bravado and fancy talk, which can only fool more of their own kind. But once any kid goes that route, there is no turnaround and they become disgusting adults. You know, by way of passing, in my entire huge family, there was only one good-looking gal. My kid sister. Yet, that was a freaking thing, because she looked great in isolation. But if you put her around the rest, you could easily see how each feature was the same as the rest of the bunch but it was a fluke they looked good on her.
I am not saying I am by any means good-looking, but I’ve never had any complaints either. My sisters and nieces are not anything to look at and my brothers, well, they look like me. There is one thing I can claim, however, and that is I am by a large and unbridgeable margin, the most photogenic. While my brothers appear weak and indecisive, I take a decent picture and look like I belong on stage. Probably because I do? And I had better haul out my guitar if I want to stay there. I was distracted by learning the bass line to “Keep Your Hands To Yourself”. All the tabs on-line are wrong. And I know they were written by guitar players, who mostly play things only one way.
They can all pick out how the song is played off-beat at the intro, but when it comes to the bass run, they can’t hear their error. It’s there, but if you don’t play bass, you won’t hear it. So, if you do play bass, I’ll tell you what it is. The bass uses a note that clashes with the guitar, and this is what gives that song a distinct boost. In the key of A, the note you are looking for is B. Your guitar player will tell you it is a C, but it is a B on the bass. The first few times you try it you will think it is wrong, but then it will click. Ah, your brain will say, that’s how they got that sound.
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