One year ago today: December 13, 2016, on Trey Gowdy.
Five years ago today: December 13, 2012, at the Ft. Lauderdale library.
Nine years ago today: December 13, 2008, silence is as answer.
Random years ago today: December 13, 2011, on musical competition.
Here’s a tale from the trailer court. I built and tested a water level today. The hose is cheap air line, around 76¢ per foot, with clear flex tubing swaged onto the ends. This is attached to a four foot pointed ground stake with zip ties. One end of the tubing has a funnel attached. All this activity attracted a lot of interest from the neighbors, who consider it ingenious. I got free help [out of them because], they were so interested to see it work. Duh, maybe I should rent the thing out. This was the high point of the day. If you are expecting cartwheels, this is not the post.
One unknown is the amount of colored water to mix up. My apparatus is around 38 feet long. It uses surprisingly little water, just over a quart. The challenge is filling it to the desired mark. This is a fussy process, with often the difference being just a few drops. I have one of those big syringe things out in the work shed I’ll dig out for this purpose. If you overfill, that entails pulling up the stake and draining it by estimation. I took four tries until I figured out to use a large measuring spoon.
By this time, the hillbilly was mesmerized by the process, so I got him to help me spot check a few sections of wall until it got too dark in the afternoon. It was bang-on, I’m kicking myself for not doing this the first time. Ah, offset that with my satisfaction of having learned something new. I called up JZ and gave the report. He’s used a water level before, it turns out, but as the guy holding the stake. There’s more to building one and getting it into position, so I got not much help there. It’s not JZ, it’s Florida. All talk and no action.
Now I’m a mite apprehensive about what else this is going to reveal. I didn’t use one on the back of the house. There are eight major points in the foundation that I’ve marked out as having to be level. I’ll get myself a set of landscape stakes and use those for height markers. Them videos showed the actor making the level mark on the side of a convenient house or concrete wall, must be nice. My situation is a little more involved. The holdup for now is the cold weather. I’m not your rough and ready construction type. Ladies, think of me more as a sprinter than a weight-lifter.
Two more tidbits with the water level. Take every measurement twice. And watch the water level at your reference point often. Without any visible leaks, the overall water level has dropped by itself over the course of, oh, say, an hour. Other than that, as shown in this photo being checked by a carpenter’s level, the device is capable of extreme accuracy. What you can’t see is that it is too cold to work and I have no winter clothes.
Early Cindy Crawford.
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AI (artificial intelligence) is shaking up the legal industry. How this came into focus was over the past couple of weeks I had cause to file a few documents at the courthouse. It was a nightmare trying to find out what the deadlines and procedures were. I think most of us have experienced that frustration. The way things are done seem opposite to common sense. I’ve been a critic of how the system is set up that way because I personally feel it is done as a form of job protection by and for lawyers.
This COIN on my news feed got my attention. Why? Because this software does nothing much but sift through existing material, and in this case, it works on contract law. Ha, if you needed something to test AI software on, you could hardly find anything more artificial than legal procedures. I read that JPMorgan used the software for document reviews at in seconds completed tasks that formerly required 360,000 hours. That says it all.
The article went on to describe how this type of reviewing was an important part of a new lawyer’s training. If, they say, that aspect is taken away from humans, it will cause untold hardships on future law grads as they hit the market. There are already 1,300,000 lawyers in America. Just don’t be thinking the use of this software will lower prices. Every time something like this comes along, the profession involved just re-complicates their procedures back to the same intensity this time using the tool. It’s the nature of capitalism. The only time prices drop is when a new factory comes along and bankrupts the old ones. And DC has proven to be experts at preventing new factories from being built in this country for half a century already. Instead, we bail out the old ones.
What I would like to see is non-lawyers using the software well enough that they can lower prices and accept the odd software glitch as a cost of doing business. This blog has touched on this subject before, I wrote my first artificial intelligence program back in 1981. The real profession I’d like to see brought down off its high horse is doctoring. I’m serious about that. American doctors have access to the best equipment and clinics, but that does not make them better than overseas doctors who charge a tenth as much money. It’s been said if you finish last at the Olympics, they call you loser, but if you finish last in med school, they call you doctor.
Speaking of legal matters, I have sent The University of Houston their second notice concerning copyright infringement.
ADDENDUM
Question. What’s happened to Craigslist? I never heard a thing, but I had a series of locations I’ve followed for years, locations that had surprisingly good content. Like Portland, Oregon. Some of the posts were works of art, but this week something changed across the board with the pictures. I quickly checked a dozen other locations and same thing. Sites that used to post hilarious pictures, some of the best you’ve seen here in the Last Laugh section, have completely dried up.
Who wants to take a break? Me, me! I’ll make you a deal. I have some change buckets in the cabinet I have not emptied in a year. Here’s the arrangement. I count out what is there and you decide what can be done with this amount of money. To make it easier, if there is not enough gas money for a nice day trip or train ride, I’ll get just as much out of buying something I always wanted. (The first guy who says buy a change counting machine gets a smack in the head.) Okay, you start thinking and I’ll start counting.
Did I say buckets, as in plural? Yes, I have separate jars for each denomination. I just counted the nickels only. Not including the stray quarters and dimes mixed in there, we’ve got $18.60 so far. That’s gas to Orlando, but no sense wasting the money. Coffee in Ybor City? Royal tour of Dade City? Shopping spree at the Sebring Dollar Tree? Come on, work with me here.
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