One year ago today: July 15, 2018, poverty checklist, ha!
Five years ago today: July 15, 2014, I prefer facts over characters.
Nine years ago today: July 15, 2010, Reggie Roughshave.
Random years ago today: July 15, 2012, the doggie bra, ha!
Welcome to the blog that has the guts to show pictures of a floor-less bathroom. By 7:30AM, I have the final set of support blocks mostly complete. Shown here, this raises the bathroom floor over an inch back to level. And supports the bathtub like it never was before. Once more the monkey-talk radio drowned out Boss Hogg so I listened to the investment channel. They target small businesses and it is one of the classic depictions of how degenerate American practices have become in our credit-based society. The blocks have to be dug in with a hand trowel and set in place to within an eighth inch of final position. I’ve learned to get it close and shim the final fit. Yes, you have to squat down in the pit and work around the existing joists wherever you can find room.
What’s happening is time after time, you get people who plug their programs and services to these businesses to “increase profits”. That’s the joke. There is no one among us who does not recognize the advantages to having money. It’s how the system works, so in the end, every one of these people have one solution—to throw more money at the problem. And that involves credit, which distorts the marketplace. The practice of competing by borrowing money is highly questionable but it clearly seems to work in the short run. Yet, it works best when nobody else is doing the same. That raises a flag.
Every one of the “solutions” involved borrowing. This is a significant change from the time when efficiency implied better use of existing plant and equipment. You don’t require and MBA to figure out an unlimited supply of money will quash the competition. There’s been a bozo on all morning about how a company came into his office with a $500,000 budget, and by countering with a $10 million offer, he got them to accept a $2 million solution. The man is a genius, any millennial can see that.
For comic relief, every thirty minutes, we had the Tampa commie news report. The socialists cannot possibly win the next election when their chief tactic is criticizing Trump. They might as well pin a medal on him. The roundups have begun and the Democrats have no battle plan worthy of the name. This morning the liberals put their foot in their mouths by complaining how taking back the first batch of 1800 illegals caused Mexico “displeasure”. That is music to most Americans who feel Mexico has been getting away with murder. And human trafficking, and drug dealing, and car theft. Squirm, Mexico, squirm.
This creates a colossal obstacle for the socialist movement. They have a penchant for making claims that are difficult to disprove. Top of that list is that illegals are good for the American economy. Sorry, the average American knows they are not. So the Democrats may soon be forced to show their true communist colors because they now have to make a move. They have to react before society in general, including their own votership, are able to spot improvements in the economy first-hand. I say there will be a fantastic gain, at both the local and national level. And just you wait and see how the Mexies react when we start emptying the prisons.
For those who believe in such things as political science, the pressure in America for both big parties is toward middle ground. That’s where you get the most votes. The big parties compete for that vote for different reasons. Over time, the differences have morphed into opposites. Either you are for illegal immigration or against it, type of thing. Still, the two big parties are content as long as the bulk of that voting block can be split and shared along established lines. Then along comes an outsider, dang!
This new situation, if not checked by the leftoids, will push the critical votership out to the fringes. Not the majority vote, which Trump has already. To refresh the Democrat’s memory, Trump got two votes for every one for Hillary. Exporting the illegals instead of American jobs will have a boom effect on this country, if only due to a contraction of welfare and prison costs. That pushes not only the middle, but most of the fringe vote in a direction that terrifies the socialists. It breathes profit motives and margins back into society as a whole and that spells dread and panic for every Democrat out there. They have to try something, anything, before Joe average sees the results for himself.
This could be the showdown the left has dreaded since day one.
Triton Deepdiver.
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The only break so far was downtown to get more plumbing supplies. My goal for today is to get that old sink removed and the pipes capped. It gives me space to work, since I have to stand and kneel in the pit shown here. I’ll worry about the connections later, since I really need to get the new counter wiggled into place. At this point, the entire perimeter of the bathroom is shored up, but not any of the wood you can see here. Hopefully this is the last photo you will ever see of this sink where it is.
Over the previous while, I’ve bought most of the materials on sale or at the Thrift. Good, because prices have skyrocketed. I’ll have a bunch of 3” fittings left over and that’s the expensive part. Peach tea consumption is up, nearly a gallon a day and coffee isn’t far behind. I’m an old union hand and I need my coffee breaks. The sink is “hard-wired” in place with no cutoff valves, so the whole house has to be cut off at the street. The piping is iron, which is its own set of problems. As I got plenty of exercise unseizing these rusted-together pipes, the last one broke off at the threats. Rather than attempt that repair, I hacksawed off the whole piece. I bought new pipe and put it back together with a PVC compression fitting.
These plastic fittings do the job, but I find they always develop a slow leak. Even if it’s one tiny drip per minute. The temptation is to over-tighten the caps, but that makes it worse. I put in my first twelve-hour day since 2003. Physical work, and everything aches. Tomorrow I may have to install that cabinet without finding the iron to CPVC connection method. I need the cabinet out of the way and as for the pipes, I’m going to presume I’m not the first person in history who has had this challenge.
Last evening I read a book on college math. It is my worst subject, but I try to see if age makes it easier. Some of it, sometimes. But I still cannot do calculus. Book after book tells me how it works, but not how to solve the equations or what the answers mean. Did you know there isn’t a Nobel Prize for mathematics? What? Oh, that’s physics, not math. You see, Alfred only knew one mathematician and they hated each other. Myself, I tend not to make enemies with people who invent things like dynamite. But I can tell you who needs to be run out of town. The Nobel Prize committee. It’s become infected with liberals who give the prizes to pet causes instead of the intended true advancements for mankind.
Come to think of it, why haven’t we heard about a moon landing? Bush, the beady-eyed President said we’d get there again by 2020. If anything was underway, I’m sure I would have heard of it by now. Chances are NASA has priced the trip out of the market. Besides, what politician who has made that promise for 50 years running has ever kept it. And Bush, who is also shifty-eyed, changed the wording anyway. He didn’t say put an American on the moon, but a “human”. Either way, he represents the worst IQ in a national leader in our modern history. The sort, if born without money, you’d find mowing lawns for a living.
As for music, I’m on schedule. The one that shows October as the goal. Today I took apart “Blue Suede Shoes” and put it back together. The original is full of what would today be amateur studio errors. The bass never does settle into a good pattern and the band messes up every turnaround. I amalgamated the passages that sounded best and came up with a generic pattern that sounds great. And a generic turnaround that matches anything the rest of the band plays, including when they muck up.
ADDENDUM
My music completion index today is 26.250 %
What I learned today is that I don’t much like twelve-hour shifts. It was your typical stretch of working alone, where everything went wrong at least once. Metric threads, dead batteries, dull tool blades, fifty trips back and forth, even the handle fell off my rubber mallet. If you forget something, it waits until you crawl under the planks. It boils down to this being a two-man job. But once begun, you have to restore matters to where the water gets turned back on. And the meter pit always fills with sandy dirt that has to be cleaned out first.
The next priority is to get that counter installed, which means the water lines are next on the agenda. As the design worked out, there is a five-foot ceiling space above the counter that would be ideal for storage. Except, it is too high to reach without a stool, and anything there will be subject to bathroom humidity. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That it would also be accessible from the bedroom side. First things first, we need that counter installed. Then the matching sinks. Then the medicine cabinets. Don’t forget to replace that joist and cover the floor. It’ll be fun, they said.
Even Boss Hogg didn’t help. They were re-broadcasting that 19-something music I’ve never heard. I tried switching to the money channel, but they were on about foreign millionaires. Let me tell you something, in America, millionaires from other countries are viewed with lingering suspicion. We know our system is not like others because we have class mobility. For all its defects, this country makes it possible for people to get ahead in their own lifetimes.
Every American tourist abroad sees that other countries lack this feature, that the poor are oppressed and their hopes consist of buying lottery tickets. We have poor in America, but not because they are forced to be that way. Remaining poor in America requires work. Forget for a moment inherited wealth and consider only the self-made. When you meet an American millionaire, the assumption is he did something right. Foreign millionaires? You need a different set of assumptions.
Last, I’m reading a chapter on the evolution of kings. This type of leader is not natural or good for mankind. It is associated with war, taxes, avarice, and favoritism. I find it fascinating. Going back in history, you find there is no rational development process that makes one man better than others. I find no justification or event that turned any ancient society toward a supreme leader and the rest into followers. There were tribal leaders but these tended to be elders in rural communities who led the group only for as long as they did so successfully. This system is called a republic.
When cities arose, things changed. Cities concentrate a lot of relative wealth in a small area. It would be almost natural for a city that defeated an attack to want any leader that arose to continue on into peacetime. It beats relying on a new leader to appear for every incident. Thus began the process of giving up a little freedom for some apparent form of security. However, I did not know that ancient societies only honored dead leaders.
The switch to worshiping living leaders has a very distinct beginning. The Jews, but I leave you to look that up yourself. And living leaders create new problems. One is what happens when he dies? Civil war, that’s what. So the obvious solution is to make a law that his son takes over no matter what. Now we have a leader not chosen by the people and not based on any performance or merit. He could be a child, or an idiot, or insane, no matter. The king has now been invented.
And my best definition of war is the outcome when any one person is allowed to become too powerful.
