One year ago today: June 3, 2018, the empire in decline.
Five years ago today: June 3, 2014, 5x more accurate than needed.
Nine years ago today: June 3, 2010, bridges of New Jersey.
Random years ago today: June 3, 2009, shoe tags & Andrew Malchon.
I’ve had it with Harbor Freight. They were an okay concept, mediocre tools at good prices. But lately they’ve scraped the bottom of the staff barrel. It’s become rare to find an employee there who is not inconsiderate and stupid. Stockout shelves have become common so you more often have to deal with the rank and file. And they are mostly those low-IQ types who think it is funny to waste your time. I may still shop there, but no more special trips. It seems every other time you go there, something takes twice as long as it should.
Here, I found some pictures related to y’day. This shows one of the tractor wagons and I finally saw the cut-down buses my clinic told me about. Nashville may be the country music capital, but downtown it is just a drinking theme. But it is lively, and worth a dozen Miami’s and two dozen Ft. Lauderdale’s just in the caliber of the music. Another thing you quickly notice is there are no ugly people on stage.
The competition is too ferocious for that bunch. No fat broads, no unkempt men, all those went to work for Harbor Freight. I was easily the oldest person in every place I entered, something I’m getting used to. I got here 35 years too late. Tourist towns are a great place for a young man with a little money, what a pity I missed out. Which is not to say I didn’t do fine with what I had.
When it’s dry outside.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I put the carrier box together. It’s too fragile for the intended purpose, particularly if it is dropped once. The original hardware was missing, so you can see the steel screws I substituted. I have a plan for a better unit, which is why I was trying to buy a miter box. I foolishly didn’t bring my crash kit along this trip, since last time I only used the drill. It’s the way busy guys think, ladies. I have not heard from the lawyer concerning the music, but I’m slowly learning the list. To me, this means he found somebody for the June 8th gig. I’m wisely sticking with the program. We’ve seen all this before.
Here’s something from back home. Recall that dickhead building inspector from last year? I told you he’d get himself in some kind of hot water. We don’t yet know what that could be, but get this. He’s been going round town trying to “make friends”, even showing up at Agt. R’s with some bull story that he was checking for kids driving those toy motorcycles. Since I had taken the liberty of warning about 20 key people around town he would try this, he isn’t getting anywhere. Key people? Yep, the guys at the hardware store, the lumber yard, the coffee shop, the real estate lady, and every barkeep I could find.
I’ve gotten enough feedback to realize something is afoot. I didn’t so much warn people as describe to them what to expect. And one fact sticks out above all else. That he was doing his enforcing on single white males only. If he hopes to redress anything now, he’s going to have to start playing favorites. And I don’t rightly know if that is possible any more. He’s just made too many enemies. Let me explain something. Saying you are just doing your job doesn’t fly any more. If your job requires you be an a-hole, that makes YOU the a-hole for taking the job. What, he thinks we are ever going to treat him like a buddy?
There is only one reason I’ve ever see why anybody gets treated like an a-hole. I’ve got two brothers who, later in life, learned to confirm that.
Here's a happier note. A clip (no audio) of the Nashville band from last Sunday. My kind of band.
ADDENDUM
Ha! You did NOT see this picture below, you hear me? Open it in a laugh-and-forget tab. (See, if the Reb ever finds out I posted this picture, the missiles on that submarine will only seem mildly ballistic.) Ha, but I’d like to talk a bit about something that could shortly have real impact, so I should hold one of my mini-lectures that hopefully makes some things a bit more understandable. It’s those FPGA, the field programmable gate arrays from last week. They originally interested me for being similar to the ROM card I built and mused about how I’d like to replace the diodes with transistors. This would produce a type of RAM.
The way most microcontrollers work is to program them with logic and connect their leads by wires to a breadboard. You’ve seen many of these in this blog, a mass of messy wiring, and these are not even complicated circuits.
The breadboard is the roadblock. They are mechanically fixed and many a time I’ve had to resort to confusing wiring to make things fit, often resorting to multiple breadboards. An FPGA takes things one step further. Instead of programming individual transistors, you get to program entire logic gates. Think of a single breadboard, but now a square mile in size. Squeeze it down to a chip and take away all the jumper wires. That entire breadboard is “programmable”, an amazing concept. Instead of programming the microcontroller and wiring it up, you go on-line and download a set of instructions that takes up a tiny part of your chip and programs it to perform like a chip, a circuit, or even a hard drive.
It becomes like having a huge blank “chip” that you can rearrange to your liking. Want a math co-processor or a gaming chip? Just configure it right onto part of the array. Where I see the most improvement is that you can prototype an entire integrated circuit without having to pay a factory engineer or place a minimum order quantity. What attracts me is that, as a programmer, I may have a knack for this type of work. But I fear the programming will be done in C+ and another grand opportunity missed to have C+ properly defenestrated.
Here I am, in this quest, academically alone again. Nobody to ask, no sources for the information I need. You hear a lot in the movies about the independent guy who tinkers with complicated gadgets. In real life, you rarely find anyone with a habit more complicated than picking his nose. I think I’ll see about buying a budget model chip once they drop in price. I hear they were $1,000 each, meaning I should check again. For now, I’ll check if there are any instructions on how to do the configurations, and if so, hope they can be read in plain English.
The technology is not new, it’s been here since and ominous 1984. To make it work, you need an on-board memory. Each time you fire it up, this reloads the configuration. That is how EEPROM chips worked, but you need a zillion-dollar X-ray machine to do it. Or at least that is what I thought in 1984. With FPGA, you just upload the entire array code and software at once. I found a booklet from Makershed on-line, hopefully it gives examples rather than instructions on downloading the code. If I can build, I can code arrays.
[[Author’s note: I see two types of future here. The FPGA custom programmed for specialized use, and FPGA that evolve on the fly. Self-programming FGPAs would be a roboticists dream, but check back. Because where FPGA should be a new beginning, I already see signs the bastards are turning it into another C+ nightmare.
What a disappointment that would be. If that is the case, I would rather program in machine code.]
Ah, here were go:
How to program Your First FPGA Device
FPGA Programming Step by Step
A Gentle Introduction to FGPA Programming
First timers may disagree any of the above links are gentle, or step-by-step unless you mean quantum steps. I told you it was complicated. Um, the last one on the list talks about punching paper tapes, which might be a good starting point for a complete novice. If you find this too complex, we can always go back to nice, easy celestial navigation.
