One year ago today: September 18, 2018, breakdast in the oven.
Five years ago today: September 18, 2014, robot stippling.
Nine years ago today: September 18, 2010, I ‘won’ nothing.
Random years ago today: September 18, xxxx, WIP
These are the tunnels through the Cumberland Gap last week. Note the experimental titling and this view spices up an otherwise generic news day. Shown here is near the fork to Spartanburg, which I accidentally called Spartanville in one video. Good, because I was denigrating them for running trains through town Florida style. I understand trains have the right of way, but when those tracks were laid, the average train including the engine, coal tender, mail car, and caboose was only nine cars long. It’s those two hundred cars of freight that could just as easily move at night.
Interesting, that drone attack on the Saudi refinery. Some say they had it comin’. Watch, despite the fact that place only produces 5% of the world’s oil, they’ll crank the price of gas out of proportion. Did I say interesting? Yes, because in a passing conversation maybe two months ago, I had been in a conversation of anti-drone concepts. My concern was the increasing use of drones by cities to enforce building codes. Most people would resort to camouflage, or simply shooting the drones as it is not yet illegal. I was thinking more of a jamming device, and had made a note to look into that.
But I had also joked that if the property was important enough, simply encase it in a giant chicken wire fence. This would work, but since I don’t think many Saudis read this blog, we can assume their solution is going to cost many millions of dollars more. If they want to try a smokescreen, I’ve got a smoke pot they can rent. Even before I heard the drones had targeted vital points, I knew it was an inside job. Syria denied involvement, blaming it on Yemen. These folks have learned to play politics the American way, plausible deniability. (The hitch is the plausible part only works on diplomats, embassy staff, foreign ministers, ambassadors, and the mildly retarded.)
[Author’s note: the refinery attack was quickly down-played in the news and gas prices shot up 10%. Trump has done nothing, he shrank back on armed retaliation after he put that Syrian gas factory down. The leftover Bush/Obama types he failed to fire wholesale bitched that he didn’t go through channels and tell the enemy what he’d do. That is probably why the attack succeeded.
Another thing, Donny, you have left to much of the Establishment apparatchiks in place. Their foot-dragging is wearing the sidewalks of DC wafer-thin. The nation understands you did not have years to pad the payroll with friendlies but we are willing to take inexperienced newcomers who make mistakes over the existing reign of sluggish appointees who will oppose any changes.]
I can’t fund everything between now and month’s end. If JZ shows up this weekend, I don’t have the cash for all the materials I need where he could help. That’s actually okay, since the odds of him being here are nil. The best plan, I think, is to offer Agt. R a payment plan where I take over his weekly mortgage deposits for six weeks. Because he’s not kept up the routine since I’ve been out of town. That, and only plan work for JZ and I that is gronk style. Trim the trees, replace the joist, lay down the concrete blocks for the shed.
That’s an odd one. If you pour a concrete pad, you need a building permit. But if you lay down concrete blocks to form a pad, they leave you alone. I would need $240 in blocks for a 224 square foot area, which is competitive with poured concrete. I got into the calculations last evening and canceled my plan for a Budweiser. Here’s a neat picture of my Frankenfan. It’s made from four other fans.
Some extra reading today, since I got up at 4:30AM. I’m gradually reading the book on silk and silk spinning. I find it parallel to what is happening with A.I. these days. The replacement of human labor by machines, except this time the machines are not just faster than the human, they are already much smarter. (No sense couching it any more.) In my mind, the change in America was during the 1920s and 1930s, where the real switchover from manual labor took place. When touring museums, I’m often astonished by the amount of backbreaking sweat required to accomplish anything much even with the machines of the day.
The few people who seem to grasp this change is already well underway are on about how will humans earn a living? Was not the industrial revolution supposed to bring increased leisure time to the masses? Home appliances were also to fill that role. They talk about taxing the robots to provide the unemployed with an income. That’s fanatically stupid. If you want to see what happens to most humans who get free money and have nothing to do all day, take a bus ride through Detroit.
No side effects.
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Money. Always a great rainy day topic. JZ and I had a near argument on a related topic. Because his income is, compared to the blue-collar bunch, both high and secured, he approaches money fundamentals differently than I do. This has consistently resulted in sub-optimal cash flow whenever he wants to travel, visit, or even drive across town. I cannot become business partners with such a person and promises don’t override the facts. He knows that but has on occasion misremembered facts in his own favor. So, time for a little review and to get the connotations in writing.
I’ve said before it takes five years to get rich. This is predicated by my saying that by rich I don’t mean sopping in money, rather that you live like a rich person by working at what you want to get ahead instead of plugging your life away to pay the bills. Keep that in focus, because I long ago learned it doesn’t take all that much money to achieve this. I’ve been living this way for forty years, never in debt, never worried about day-to-day expenses—because I live within my means. No need to go over that in any detail.
This is now my sixth year and I’m able to take off half the time to visit and JZ is aware of the Reb & I tossing around buying a house. (That sounds damn rich by my standards.) While it factually means I’d be partners with the Reb, this is not an unannounced change of plans. JZ has had more than a decade to demonstrate his reliability and he did say he would help me with this place. The intention was to flip it and use the proceeds to buy another house each in the same area, or something similar. One to live in, the other to renovate and flip. You know the rest of the tale from the trailer court. Yeah, he let me down, but I just carried on and did 100% of the work myself.
His perception is that I’m getting richer and richer. I did say if he did what I said, he could get to that stage himself in five years. The barb is the way I said it. He now contends he didn’t go for it because it meant I would virtually be dictating his financial affairs. But that is not what I said. I said it could only be done my way because I didn’t know any other way. That he was free to copycat but any departures were his own and I was not responsible for any failures. He’d be piggybacking my financial moves integrated with his different lifestyle. Face it, he spends money on things I would not touch.
[Author’s note: this is also the era when I advised him to learn either drumming or the guitar. I would help him, with the intention that he would have something to do for diversion besides spend, spend, spend. Consistent with my other plans, I could only help if he did things my way, with freedom to take on anything else just without my help. The situation has now progressed beyond where I would consider any new startups. Put another way, it is too late for us to enter any business arrangement given his record of doing things his own way.
To me, there is no confusion. The contention is my use of the phrase “my way”. He’s known me enough to realize I was not playing dictator because I meant a way of doing things that I know from hard experience works well enough. I’m not even saying my way is efficient, much less that I’m not open to changes. What I am saying is the person who makes any changes in the way I do things has to bail us out on his own if things go haywire. Fair enough. This turned out to be far more than just talk.]
ADDENDUM
Here’s a quality gif of the smaller wasp nest through the safety of the kitchen window. Millions of years of evolution and they have not learned to avoid man-made structures. This nest was tiny, around golf ball size. Was it Darwin who said if God created all living things, why did he make so many damn bugs? This nest is under the metal awning, and it gets hot there in the afternoon. I think this wasp is using its wings to keep the eggs cool. Minutes later, the pores of the nest are sealed shut with spray paint. They may be hornets or wasps, I don’t know. I don’t have any spray which only tends to rile them up. Paint, on the other hand, forms a coating they can’t get through.
While you are watching videos, here’s a clip of the area Trent and I walked through in Jacksonville. There’s that antique store, plan to spend an hour in there browsing, more if you have a nostalgic leanings. It’s not a place for repeat visits unless you are a collector, but one of the few character places on the strip. Sure, there’s lot’s of restaurants and bars, but to me the only ones that got character have either myself or Taylor on stage. Now, did I really mean that? It was just to the left of this scenery that I saw one of the two good-looking women on this 950 mile trip.
America is not a place to go girl-watching, at least not anywhere the average tourist can travel. Even the beaches tend to segregate by age, marital status, color, preference, income, musical taste, and blood alcohol level. As a favorite meet-up place, beaches rank much lower except of special occasions, such as spring break. In south Florida, beaches attract a lot of the unemployed.
nd that’s a bit of why I’m considering the train for a late autumn vacation. Don’t let what’s left of our cubical class get hold of that term (late autumn vacation) or they’ll change it into “Fall-iday” and history will never forgive me. Tweetsie Railroad, that was the name of the tour company. Are they still there, what hours? What season? Again, I need WiFi. This is a stab in the dark. Web pages are known for failing to say what people want to know. Like hotel sites that feed you a big bowl of fresh farm produce before they tell you any prices.
