One year ago today: November 1, 2017, in England, the crossbow.
Five years ago today: November 1, 2013, the middle of nowhere.
Nine years ago today: November 1, 2009, the villlians are Yankees.
Random years ago today: November 1, 2006, four of the tallest.
We begin my new fiscal year and what is the first thing you notice different? I mean, other than that I look and sound a year older. Well, since I told you it would eventually happen, I’ll lead you right to it. Have a gander at the quality of these pictures. That’s the $18 (plus tax) router bit I ruined by not checking if it was tight in the colander . See the chipped and damage teeth on my dovetail template, and the corresponding damage to the wood I was cutting at the time. It was all over in a split second. I suspect I’m using too powerful a router for the job.
You’ve got it. New camera. $202 invested in delivering better pictures to you. Not more pictures, you can get those anywhere and this blog is primarily for the more literate anyway. The loosening money situation is all over the upcoming trip, which is still pending. If I get away at all, it won’t be until the middle of next week. Agt. R is changing jobs, and I believe it is for the better. Regular hours is important to getting anything done besides work, I know this from direct experience. I quit my former career primarily because the company put us on shift work. To hell with that.
The red scooter repair may not be worth it. That brings up another situation. Agt. R bought that little red Yamaha scooter, but he can’t afford to pay for it, register it, or operate it. And he’s going to need some cash money to last until his first paycheck at the new job, usually two weeks. So we are talking at least $500. As you have long since figured out, I have a cash reserve precisely to jump on these situations, but it was never meant to be used against a colleague. I say it that way because the fund was meant to take advantage of people who, shall we say, don’t manage their money as well as others.
But, what if I don’t take advantage? There are several options. I could offer him a fair price, which depletes my fund. Or I could register it to the company and let him use it. There is never a good time to make this sort of decision. Glance back for a moment here. What’s happened to me in the past two weeks? A $450 water leak, a $1,250 sub panel, a $600 check charge-back, a $100 GPS, a $200 camera, and now a broken scooter. Pretty soon these things start adding up to real money. Nobody has a fund to help me out, in case that has not been duly noted.
As for the hotdog business, it has played out much like I predicted on day one. There are not easy locations and it is a lot of work for one man. Our friend and ally from the commissary has now been president-elect of the downtown business committee for two weeks. We have one standing engagement, the third Thursday craft show on Main. We lost money on that first show. We have the strong possibility of that sidewalk in front of the commissary. They close early, but there is no rule they cannot stay open via a food cart on the sidewalk. I likely told you about this long ago, but now I’ll get you some pictures.
The large expenses have stopped, the cart is in tip-top condition, and Agt. R has not lost enthusiasm. That’s significant, if only because he knows the other people were mostly hot air. I want him to run the cart himself where possible, since I think he still has that concept. It can be done, although that is not so much a business as buying yourself a job. More on this in the addendum.
Flower seed farm.
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All day chasing around Winter Haven, but that’s not a bad way to spend a day. Coffee at Rickies, I chanced upon a used book sale. Later at the Thrift, I found this object. Now dubbed ‘the Liz Thingee’, nobody is sure what it is. The stem that fits inside is some kind of diffuser. It is very well-made. It’s hard to make out, but there is a tea candle at the base. But that candle is much to small to heat this sufficiently to steep tea. My guess is some type of potpourri gizmo. The diffuser is made of plastic so it isn’t meant to get really hot. A dozen photos of this go out to Liz later today for an appraisal. She’s the artsy one on the crew.
Another annoyance is it doesn’t use the popular road names. Good luck if you don’t know that Hwy 17 is also 3rd Avenue, because there are no street signs or road maps that do so. The robot voice will tell you to turn on a street that has no sign by that name. Just you try to turn on Van Fleet Boulevard. One thing has changed, and you saw it first in this blog back in 2013. Recall the Birmingham incident, where a GPS detour led me into a black neighborhood? I said I would not buy a GPS again until they had a button that said avoid such places. Somebody may have been listening. There is now a setting to avoid areas or roads set by the user.
The catch is how do you know what those areas are if you have never been there? It’s not like the political bastards will let anyone post a website that spells it out. Thus, the setting is a good feature that doesn’t go far enough. They could have at least linked it to what information is out there, such as the crime rate, or income brackets, or even house prices. The on-line atlases already list ethnic make-up, unemployment ratios, and education levels. What is some people’s problem with using that information to protect yourself, especially considering the almost 100% correlation between these statistics and ethnic crime.
It’s not like Americans don’t know when crime statistics are separated by race, America is as safe as anywhere else in the civilized world. What? Oh please, don’t go calling those places civilized. Same as where you live, Americans are nice people but they become two-faced liars who praise racial diversity whenever the television cameras are pointed toward them. What you read in the newspapers and what really goes on never match up in this country. I didn’t say rarely, I said never. The USA big media is the biggest liar of all. Totally libtard infiltrated, left-wing, owned and operated by communistic Zionists. I didn’t say that was wrong. I’m saying I don’t like it when news reporting becomes monopolized.
ADDENDUM
My dash is starting to sprout too many gadget mounts. And the sloping design of contemporary dashboards is, I think, intended to prevent use as a ledge. That is awful nice of the designers, I must say. The Taurus has a non-functional tachometer just about the right size. Tomorrow I’m going to give some thought to making a clip or clamp that holds the GPS in that position. I say again, nobody yet has designed a glue that sticks to a vinyl dash in the Florida sunlight, so don’t be the thousandth person to advise me on that. Did you mentally lisp on that word ‘thousandth’.
I have a picture frame or two around the right size, but the trick is getting it to fasten solid to something. I replace the dovetail bit and the tri-blade drill, which gave Agt. R a laugh because I wrecked both of them the first week. Hey, I told him, I’ve spent a lot more on lessons that could only be learned the hard way. And recently, too.
Here’s the Virgin Orbit launch vehicle that will make this the first blog in orbit. It looks like a two stage assembly. Didn’t I read somewhere that the stages are listed from top down, so in a three stage rocket, the booster is the third stage. There, I’ll leave that for you to look up. I look at that payload and the shape tells me that there just has to be enough volume left in some launch to shoehorn my little Arduino-based transmitter in there. If there’s one thing better than being rich, it’s being famous. As I said before, they can’t take famous away from you.
In an unrelated tale from the trailer court, I responded to an ad for a bassist. But I backed out when the reply came from Sarasota. Then, this morning an e-mail arrived from a studio down the road from the Boss Hogg radio station. Normally I’d ignore something that far away (34 miles if I recall), but this guy sent a song list and an explanation that he was a former rhythm guitarist in Sarasota. He quit because big bands are a headache and said he wanted to form a duo, but could not find anyone. He owns the studio and said he can sing and strum but doesn’t consider himself up to doing a solo. This guy knows nothing about what I’m looking for, so the fact he’s even writing to me tells us he’s been through the band-forming meat-grinder.
That is, he knows what he doesn’t want and has become frustrated enough at the status quo to state it up front. What’s furthermore, I recognized around half his song list, the unfamiliar tunes are no doubt new country of some ilk. But, what if he can sing that crap? I don’t think I can rule this one out, since there is a definite attitude match. I sent back my song list and within the hour he was back saying he could learn that in an afternoon. I’m aware of that, as I am also aware the last 24 guitar players who said the same could not learn it in months. My intentionally easy song list.
So, what have we here? A guitar player who takes pride in playing rhythm and is satisfied with being in a duo? If he’s got a studio, that means he’s computer savvy, and I happen to be quite good at remote practicing. That’s correct, send me a copy of what you want and I’ll have it ready by next meet up—one rehearsal and we go play. I know it’s a major round trip, but is it more mileage than I’ve wasted on the pack of local non-starters?
And did I just say “what’s furthermore”?
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