One year ago today: November 2, 2017, already moaning about gas . . .
Five years ago today: November 2, 2013, lunch in Vail, CO.
Nine years ago today: November 2, 2009, a generic day.
Random years ago today: November 2, 2007, two whole days.
There is no convenient place in my car for that GPS, except where I’m holding it now. And that leaves precious little room for the shift lever. I still want to build that recharging center over the console, so maybe I can mate these up somehow. Note the other clamps on my dash from various gear like cameras. Nothing will happen today, I don’t have any proper materials. It has to be wood and all I’ve got is a lot of 2x6” planks. I slept in till daybreak, reading more of the “Lethal Circuit” never-ending tale of narrow escapes. There’s something annoyingly consistent about the plot, like maybe it keeps adding chapter after chapter to try to cover all the known spy-movie capers that worked in the past.
Next, I stopped for coffee and was amused to see that MLM marketing schemes are still around. There was a meeting going on in the north end of the restaurant. I guess I just thought the concept had been so thoroughly debunked that nobody would fall for it any more. But there were two couples eating it right up, the most prevailing sales pitch of our era. I wanted to tell the guy, look, if the prospects are so wonderful, why don’t you hire me for a year to see how it really goes? If what you say is half true, you’ll make all kinds of money just having me on your team. One notable aspect is that all terms like “recruit” and “downline” have been purged from the spiel.
The ambient noise was such that I didn’t get the product, but it has something to do with office work at home. It must be for parents who don’t have enough things to do at home already. I planned as best I could and finally decided the GPS has to fit over the top of the horn on the steering wheel. This had to be ergonomically approached, with thumb cutouts and a power cord strain release that keeps it away from wheel at full turn left or right. It’s a crude looking piece, but it works and that’s good enough for now. There wasn’t any clear way to make it strong enough out of wood in the clearances on the dash, and I’m not equipped to work with metal.
Trivia. Or is it? Sixty percent of house fire deaths happen when there is no smoke detector, the battery is dead, or it has been disabled for false alarms.
Swiss mountain-finder.
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I also slapped together that power center over the console. It is definitely not for looks, the purpose is to keep the cables from tangling all over the passenger flooring area and provide a handy spot for plugs without having to reach the port under the glove compartment. Now, I’ll be able to connect chargers when the car is moving. This is a work vehicle at all times, so this is also an attempt to make it so a passenger can get in without me first having to clear a spot.
As for the fiscal year, it went fine. Even October, one of my traditionally worst months, was only $40 over budget if you allow for the extra $404 for Miami trips, partying, and eight extra drives to Winter Haven. And I finally got hold of Rick the Plumber. I had always called Debs, but they broke up and danged if I could find his number. I left a message. The deal is he moves in here and does the work under the table. Actually, it’s under the house, but he knows that. We are looking at probably some time in December at the soonest. It’s going to amount to basically a new bathroom. I found the water leak and it is a crack in the old iron piping. It’s at the joint, so is it even repairable? I think it needs replacing.
Here is the battery cavity on the tailgater amplifier. It seems a custom fit to that old battery that I could not find a replacement for. You can see there is some space around the box, and the cutout itself is larger than it needs to be. I still have that spare brand new motorcycle batter in the shed. We might get some more mileage on this amplifier yet, considering the entire rest of the unit is likely one circuit board. This may also wait for December. Because I have a years statistics on the station wagon to work with. And I know it costs $160 in gasoline to 1,000 miles. Towing a wagon will increase that, but not really by much.
Stay tuned for that expedition, it will be one of my last. I may see some winter but won’t complain if not. Cutting my siesta short today, I navigated most of the menus on the new camcorder. It’s a mature Sony product, although it produces only HDTV and MP4 video, two formats which I have no edit capability. The camera has some extras I like, such as a setting for the microphone sensitivity. Most cameras record my bass really loud and drown my vocals. It has a fixed 10 second delay timer.
The manual gives the impression you remove the SD card, but it is a micro and I find that inconvenient. They are easy to lose and you must have the adapter. When you plug in the USB cable, it opens up a drive full of advertising, but I figured it out. Close that drive and look for any other drive that wasn’t there before. Then find a folder named 199MSDCF. How computer bozos are supposed to know all this, you’ll have to ask Sony.
Other quirks are you can set the photo mode to VGA, the normal setting for computer pictures on-line. But it makes them much larger that 640x480, the standard. When you are shooting video, it will snap stills, however these are not settable and the pictures are huge. There is a feature I’ll try soon, it is apparently a mode that selects one color, then records the rest of the image in black and white. Sounds positively military. And as for the GPS, it has rotten battery time when not connected. Less than twenty minutes, so taking it inside for coffee to program something is hardly an option.
The next book on my reading list is “The Yellow Admiral”. It’s apparently about some ex-sailor type who can’t get anything right. However, the author is acclaimed for historical accuracy, so on that count alone I’ll see what it’s about.
ADDENDUM
These are the giant African snails, an invasive species. Face it, some Americans are awfully slow about learning not to import things from Africa. The snails are a generalist, feeding on anything and crowding out native species. In fact, I think they eat them, too. Nature usually deals with these problems better than humans. Who remembers African killer bees? Weren’t those supposed to be up to the Yukon by now, attacking the caribou? Then again, there’s not many life forms can pit themselves against the Canadian mosquito.
In my never-ending quest for anything new to me, I’ve decided to look into biscuit joinery. It’s just something that I’ve wanted to know more about since I first heard of it. More than likely, it will be like the dowel kit and other items in my shed, in that it is often that I do it once. No need to become an expert, not me, it’s enough to know I could do it if I had to. I cannot do finishing carpentry, although I would take classes if they were available. Back in my day, you had a choice of classes, but I don’t see them any more. Anyway, the article I read said biscuit joinery can be used to make up wide pieces of wood from smaller strips and sure, I’d like to know how that is done.
However, the battery compartment itself is made of cardboard, a very tough sort, almost pressed board. I’m going to try squeezing two six volt units in series into the space, even if I have to shave it bigger with a chisel. Tomorrow night is a street festival and I just may want to be ready for that. The gung ho guitar player from Plant City suddenly quit responding. Did you know that gung ho is Japanese for ‘work in harmony’?
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