One year ago today: February 20, 2018, colorized western reruns.
Five years ago today: February 20, 2014, unrelated to driving.
Nine years ago today: February 20, 2010, a one-way fishing trip . . .
Random years ago today: February 20, 2007, 15,000 songs, you say . . .
Do I spring for the table saw? Read today’s addendum, the need for it is overdue. I had to make some sixteen cuts to get the shape shown, where maybe half that were necessary. I awoke to commie radio hitting the ceiling over the wall. The circumstances are simple, if the wall goes up, there will be a revolt before it comes down. And the liberals know it. There only chance to stop it is in advance, but they have no sensible alternative to stemming the invasion. Even their own people know it. The fact is, they don’t want to stop the illegals, but they can’t really admit that and claim they are pro-America. The illegals have destroyed the traditional job patterns and distorted the entire economy.
Now, be nice. Anyway, she has an office full of computer equipment that she doesn’t know how to use. Apparently this includes gems like large scale plotters, digital photography hardware, and even one of those automatic embroidery machines. This could take a while to sort out, requiring long hours of her and I being cooped up alone in the house together. Am I up to the challenge? Only one way to know. Well, there are probably several ways, but I like to keep things spicy where I can.
The A/C cutout took all morning just for the base plate. I should not say all morning, since I biked up to the coffee shop. And, see picture, I got sweethearted. That means I only paid for the coffee you see in this photo. Folks, these gals are less than a third of my age, and yes, we sometimes joke and talk about s-e-x. When you got it, you got it for life, eat your heart out, Hippie.
Agt. R finally burned through. Phones do not work for us. He called me every morning for the last week. The phone has been right here beside me on the desk each day between 8:30AM and 9:30AM, which he knows is the best time to call. Yet the phone did not ring, it did not even register the missed calls. The Rendevous is over and there was nobody selling hotdogs at the Wednesday flea market this morning. I told him about that and he said I should be on top of that. I set him straight, no, he should be on top of it. I’ve never had any intention of running a hotdog cart myself. Even the idea was his.
The important item isn’t hotdogs, but that overdue help cutting the tree limbs. That is slated for 9:30AM tomorrow. I spent a hour cleaning the chain saws, checking the oil and running the extension cords up the ladder. The plan is to cut everything we can reach, then call his friend with a buck truck to top the really tall trees down to size.
Inside the Vatican.
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Why did this contraption make the blog? Because I realized after I had repaired it that the entire wiring was done without planning or thinking. I subconsciously wired it up with other things on my mind. Could it be I’ve finally learned enough about electrical to work at this level? That would be welcome, as I’ve still got lots of circuits to finish in the house. This is simply a switched outlet that has a GFCI cable from an old A/C unit at the end of the cable. It’s just an extra safety measure for dry locations where I don’t want a regular extension cable underfoot. The switch is just a precaution. This is wired for 20Amp but intended only for 15Amp. The lag bolts are for coiling a short extension cord, but in practice the compartment fills with all kinds of junk. The fancy handles are drawer pulls.
What’s this, an old Blondie tune, 1979 I think, that fits the rules for bass solo? “Dreams”, if I recall, I didn’t listen much to slow or even medium-paced music back then either. How about a little trivia. I’m reading the book on crime investigation, it’s mainly concerned with the detection of homicide made to look like an accident. It combines scientific detection but doesn’t, I feel, distinguish enough between medical and non-medical aspects. Compare DNA testing with ballistics. No overlap. The trivia for today is how long ago was DNA testing established a crime investigation tool? It was just over 30 years ago. I find people think it dates way back, but it is still a new tool and, I think, not really tested enough to be as reliant as the courts would like to think.
Once again, however, the DNA results are not usually used directly. The suspect is goaded into some minor contradiction. Then the DNA is used to undermine his credibility in all other areas of his testimony. It’s a dirty trick, but the courts have no problem with that. The chapter on poison says it is rarely used any more. Hmmm, that could also mean a new poison that’s undetectable. Um, here’s more trivia but you’ll have to use your imagination. Witches were alchemists and made a lot of their own concoctions in the middle ages. There is a substance extracted from thorn apple and henbane that will produce a “warm, tingling” feeling. Witches would coat a stick with this ointment, and place it where it was most easily absorbed through moist skin, producing the hallucination of flying. That’s where the legend arose of witches riding broomsticks. Who said crime detection was boring?
ADDENDUM
I may be getting the “hang” of these window casings. No single unit in the building is in good enough shape to use as a pattern. But overall, I have enough good parts to duplicate a complete unit. The original window frames were hand-assembled, so each one is different enough to require each piece to be custom fitted. Think around six hours per window fitting time. Here is the exterior stool I build for the A/C cutout. It’s tricky to see, but it is a sill, the exterior part that slants downward to shed away water. The rough finish is temporary. I don’t have a saw big enough to cut the slant, so it is done in two passes which don’t line up.
I’ve put a lot of time into the white shed to discover it is plain too small for my needs. At the same time, from the street it is impossible to tell how long the shed is, and there is a good fifteen feet of space back to the rear fence. I had planned on putting of a canopy as a shaded work area, but now I’m wondering if it’s a better idea to simply build a new “old shed” back there. Just an idea at this juncture. It’s too ambitious for now. I’ve been stalled on this front bedroom for a year, though I was only physically here less than ten months of that year.
Chalk today up to yet another stretch of long hours with little visible result. I’m getting used to it finally. Here’s a picture of Larry the Lumber Lizard. He likes the nice warm lumber piles in the mid-morning sun. These guys have a very low survival rate in the wild, so I’m happy he’s gotten to this size. Larry is lucky. I’m fairly certain we’ll meet the guy again. Today’s DVD was “Disturbia”, a teen under house arrest who begins to spy on his neighbors with results. But the main attraction in the movie remains the shape and face of Sarah Roemer. Remind me to find out what happened to her.
I see a few people jumped when I quoted welfare equivalency rates. Hawaii remains solidly at the top. Getting on welfare in Hawaii is the equivalent of a $30 per hour job, with all medical and benefits. The observant may notice that it is very difficult to have an illegal immigrant problem in Hawaii. The federally funded welfare dollars go a lot further with fewer Octomoms on the payroll. Doctors who give single mothers fertility prescriptions should have the licenses revoked. Permanently.
I’m still reading the book on crime, coming away with my usual impressions. They are that people today just do not know how recent and untried our police and justice systems are. Any sense of permanency is a result of having grown up with it, but the last fifty or eighty years is vastly overshadowed by how crime was treated over the last two thousand years. The only lesson learned is that deterrence does not work. I’m with the theory that man is a natural killer who bands together in society to protect himself from each other, the opposite of why animals form herds.
A) The concept of rehabilitating the violent criminal is new. It is only being experimented with because torture, transportation, hanging, and confiscation didn’t work. Most death penalties were abolished only in the middle of the last century.
B) Crimes involving sex are a recent phenomena, caused mainly by the encroachment of law enforcement into this area of human activity. The fact is, police and courts have no business and no right to interfere in matters of sex. (Where there is harm or violence, other laws are already in place.)
C) The best deterrent remains long sentences for the tiny percentage of violent criminals commit most of the really bad crimes, and that sentence should be served by transportation as far from society as possible. Even primitive tribes know banishment is the ultimate punishment, society by and large is not interested in rehabilitating repeat offenders.
D) The use of “scientific” evidence is still too one-sided to be trusted in the courts. There is no corresponding lab for proving innocence and the result is growing numbers of convicted innocents.
E) There are inadequate curbs on police as collectors of evidence and the performance of judges to deal out similar punishments for similar crimes.
F) Evidence is to be presented verbatim, not manipulated to discredit the testimony of the accused.
What would I change? Immediately, I would codify and standardize the behavior of Judges within certain parameters. No more passing sentences based on temperament or the impression the accused presents and blantant leniency toward females. I would place serious restrictions that the police may only gather evidence, they may not interpret it or opinionate on it in the courtroom. I would outlaw the practice of police attempting to get search permission, they may not even ask, much less apply pressure. I’d add restrictions on “plain view” crimes in private dwellings unless there was prior suspicion. I would make those who sign warrants responsible for police behavior enforcing them. I would allow convicted innocents to sue the individuals who convicted them and the sources of any faulty evidence.
The whole area of law enforcement needs massive improvement, but history teaches us each positive change requires a hundred years. And I would force police to do their own work by outlawing plea bargaining. The field is too vast for me to solve anything in detail, but the biggest abuses have gotten steadily worse in my lifetime. Worse, I suspect the Internet is only beginning to intrude into people’s privacy as connected to becoming suspects. Soon everyone, by proximity, biometrics, or spending patterns will be a suspect of some sort.
Crimes will not be solved by investigation, but by elimination. You will be questioned no matter how remote you are from suspicion. In the process, you will be completely investigated. You may have forgotten about that speeding ticket in North Dakota in 1972, but they haven’t. Even if you are eliminated, your file is now updated and the fact you were questioned yet another time will notch your credit score, become associated with any job applications, and flag you for an income tax audit. That’s correct, people questioned a lot by the authorities are usually audited. In case you’ve forgotten, that’s how they caught Capone.
My personal synopsis is that the Internet has passed the data collection phase. Without social media, it would have been cost-prohibitive to populate the databases. But sheer stupidity got millions of willing idiots to voluntarily enter their data on-line without even being paid. Now, the data is there and being farmed. The hold-up is that there are not a lot of people who are good at spotting patterns. I can, but I am anti-evil. These patterns cannot be seen by the naked eye or by people who stand too close. I am, or should say was, an expert at seeing the patterns and associating them, but one again, I was twenty years ahead of the market for such skills.
I am certain this ability was what triggered my alarms the first time I web pages with “required fields” and I was issuing warnings long before social media was invented. Now, I’m beginning to see the second tier of data abuse rearing up. The formation of search and sort algorithms by people who are not qualified to interpret the results. Remember the guy who had his face to the pavement based on songs he asked the taxi driver to play on the way to the airport? That’s just the beginning.
The tertiary level, or third level is still a few years away. This is the situation where surveillance by strangers is so ubiquitous and behavior so channelized to avoid hounding that human conduct becomes permanently altered. It’s also called kissing your freedoms goodbye. As a warning to any millennials reading this far, it is not you who should be laughing that I still use a flip phone. It’s not me who is living in the past.
