One year ago today: October 21, 2016, “an intellectual too”.
Five years ago today: October 21, 2012, under what circumstances.
Nine years ago today: October 21, 2008, I’m not bothering you.
Random years ago today: October 21, 2013, cozy cPod interior.
Lesson one on how to throw a scare into a dude like me. So this morning I ripped up another 32 square feet of oak floor. Don’t fret, I’ll get you a picture. This was easy but messy work that nicked my hands. So I see this first aid spray on the cupboard and douse my hands in it. It said stingless, that’s great. Except a minute later my hands are numb. What’s the first thing that crosses my mind? I grab the bottle and whew, it is just alcohol with a topical, what’s the word, analgesic? Had me going there for a second. The morning was productive, listening to the Watchdog, I like it when he names names.
Taking a break to go over the grocery budget, I see most of the increase in the past 18 months has been processed food. Even without adjusting for inflation, it is ready-to-eat items tat account for most of the change. You notice this during panic buying spells, all the potato chips and soup disappears, but there remains lots of flour, lard, and milk powder. I wonder if it’s caused by laziness or that overall people no longer know how to cook? Both make sense. Add a remark here that I am not a purist when it comes to food, but I do cook and bake a lot of my own simply because I am against chemicals and altered foods.
It’s scary if the reason is people can’t or won’t cook, it implies they also don’t know how to use basic ingredients. So even if there are ingredients available, what good is that if they can’t use them? Even my emergency food is around a third raw ingredients. When I read these ads for preppers, they have packaged items like baked salmon and such. Do these people even know what to do when that runs out? Funny I ask, since the same question applies to me when my ingredients are done—but I’ll last a lot longer in the lurch.
Jackie Evanco.
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Looking at the now-exposed plumbing, I wonder if I can estimate everything I need by simply examining what’s there and pricing it out in copper or PVC. I see how that I may as well replace the whole iron pipe array. I do want a dishwasher and garburetor, as well as a better shower system and hookups for a washer and dryer. It won’t be that long now before I’m too old to be carrying out the trash every day and hauling loads to the laundromat.
Budgets are strange beasts because they work right when they alter behavior. It’s sad how most people only institute a budget when they are already in too deep. It’s a daunting task and like resolutions, they all too often fail. The way I like to explain it is such a budget involves three key changes. First you have to work to get out of “behind”, then you work more to get into neutral, then you work even more to get ahead of the game. If you’ve ever got behind on your phone bill, you know what I mean.
This rather high resolution picture is rust. That’s what pitted metal looks like before the vinegar bath. I thought to look at it, mostly for curiosity since I don’t know what I’m actually looking at. I believe the slightly reddish scales are the oxidized particles, since this is a natural color photo. I’d like to examine this same spot again after the treatment, but I don’t have the equipment to find it a second time. Anyway if you’ve never seen rust on a Griswold rosette before, you say it here first.
I was also reading up on PWM, that’s the feature on microcontrollers that rapidly turns a DC current off and on to give the analog equivalent of a desired voltage. The Arduino is mainly a 5 volt device, so if you needed 2.5 volts, you’d set the PWM for a duty cycle of 50%. You can fine tune this very precisely because that 50% is really 128/255 of the internal counting sequence. That’s what I was really after, information on the counting. It turns out it is identical to ring counters, the count up to a preset number and start over again. I don’t expect everyone will follow this, but there is an exception. There are three PWM counters in the chip, and the one that is different counts up to 255 and back down again.
That is, it doesn’t count up, then start again at zero. It simulates sawtooth signal, which halves the frequency but, the data sheet says, provides for better control. This won’t be on the exam. But you can run into problems if you don’t stick with using the marked pins. The technical reason is you can control the duty cycle, but not the frequency of the unmarked ports. An easy way to visualize this if flipping a light switch off and on. If you do it fast enough, you can make the room seem dim. But if you slow down the frequency, you perceive the light as off and on. Two different situations, but both a 50% duty cycle.
“I would rather start somewhere small,
like London or England..”
~ Britney Spears
Okay, are you ready for a world class article that you cannot buy anywhere in the world at any price? Here goes:
Gene Hackman does it again. “Enemy of the State” joins that rare but growing group of movies that I’ve watched twice. The millennial flavor-of-the-week actors have found a copycat for almost every icon of the past century, but none have come close to the immortal Hackman. The last few crops of indie actors are so bland I can’t name one of them. They are so unoriginal that I saw an academy advertising specialty courses on how to act like not like a cop or a spy, but how to act like Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery. Mind you, I am finally beginning to appreciate the newest James Bond, but mostly for his perseverance so far.
[Author’s note: if women ever wonder why a man who loves them for years will finally just dump them, watch the roll played by Regina King in this video. She’s more than convincing, if you know what I’m saying. Women don’t seem to understand there exist situations where their feelings and instincts are not the most important damn thing going on.]
My point is, if you remove sex as the incentive for men to become casting directors, you are not going to attract the top people to that field. I say to hell with those women, they know what the score is. Put out or get out. Look what happened to the caliber of American corporate management when they took office sex out of the boardroom and into the courtroom. (Think Enron, AGI, Lehman Brothers.) The incentive to succeed had to change to other forms, like insider trading, greenmail, and Ponzi schemes. Why? So the men now stole money in order that the extra-marital romping could take place elsewhere, duh. Psychologists understand balance, they don’t understand motive.
How do you like the statistics that three out of four women claim they were molested? It’s simple, you define molestation as “unwanted” sexual advances. This campus re-branding is normally enacted by uglier women prior to finding its way into the liberal media. We’ll ignore the fact that “unwanted” advances are part of life. Telemarketers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, panhandlers, the Census Bureau, web site memberships, and bloodmobiles that block library entrances. But for women anyway, sex is special, you see
Radio Bushnell provided a statistic of similar validity. They reported 7 out of 10 people said their priority in life was a better relationship with God. This brand of response you get when you conduct a public survey on the doorsteps of a church. On Sunday. With cameras rolling. So, ma’am, have you ever been molested . . .
ADDENDUM
Music. Damn, I wish I knew the magic formula for getting a good guitar player. The ones I know are just not good enough. My mood is rough because of last evening. On the way back, I stopped at a place that has entertainment on Fridays. That means a guitar player, and the guy was pretty bad. But he fits the 1970-80-ish concept of the guitar player to a tee. Every song, every motion, he even looked the part. And nobody was paying any attention to him. The juke box would have had a better variety.
To understand my stance on that, think of putting some other kind of entertainer up there, say a mime or a juggler. If the entire room ignored him, they’d fire the guy. But solo guitarists are the roaches of the entertainment kitchen. They are there, you can’t get rid of them, so you put up with them once a week. I think it might be some CIA compound they mix into the varnish at the guitar factory. When anybody with an IQ below 101 touches the guitar, the drug infuses through their fingertips into there cerebral cortex. Once there, it alters their synapses to make them believe they are better than other musicians and makes them obsess over the same anal retentive songs for the remainder of their boring, nothing lives. Did I leave anything out?
And while I’m griping, there’s another guy that needs to be sent to the camps. The guy who builds vacuum cleaners with no place to store the hose. I know the hoses are bulky and cumbersome, but there should still be a hook or something for them. So, let the jerk who doesn’t put one get in the same line as that prick who makes power bars that latch onto your plugs that you need to pry the prongs out. And the guy who makes headlight covers out of that material that turns yellow. There is a place for these people. Throw in that prick who makes those stupid third-width newspaper pages and his equally retarded twin who puts the crossword puzzle on the back of the page with the cartoons. Um, like, two different mentalities that don’t mix in real life, so why do it in the newspaper?
Last Laugh
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