One year ago today: October 11, 2018 stoop art.
Five years ago today: October 11, 2014, Windows 10 sucks.
Nine years ago today: October 11, 2010, India? I’ve been there.
Random years ago today: October 11, 2008, hey, those same flowers . . .
Is there anyone here who recalls when changing a thermostat and hose on a Ford was a twenty minute job with one wrench? You haven’t tried it recently. There’s the old thermostat. Notice how the bracket is recessed in behind a snarl of wires and hoses? Oh no, not another modern improvement. Shown here the old thermostat is pulled out but that wasn’t the challenge. It was the radiator side of the hose, indicated by the yellow arrow. You can see it, but you can’t get at it. I fiddled with it until I dropped by 1/4” socket adapter and lost it down in the frame somewhere.
I finally had to remove the battery, the battery bracket, the fuse box, the fuse box bracket, and bend several gizmos out of the way to get that last hose clamp off. Then carefully reverse the process to get the parts back in. This was where I notice the gasket did not come with directions. Is this the gasket you are supposed to soak in oil, or the one you avoid oil. How nice of them to let you know. I opted for no oil and it leaks. However, that might be because until I replace that lost socket adapter, I don’t have any tools that reach far enough into the thermostat housing to ensure those bolts are snug.
According to Boss Hogg, this is National Egg Day. The Aloha Friday Morning show is one of their more inspired features. I’m not a regular listener since Friday is my day off, but I’ve got a film of polyurethane drying so I tuned in. I didn’t get far. That damn monkey-talk station that’s usually an evening pest was cranked right up. It can’t be unknown to the people who license these stations that the frequencies overlap. By 7:28AM it was so bad I had to stop. But I did get some of the trivia. One was that in 1933(?) today was the first radio quiz show. Prize money $25.
In isolation, that’s a factoid, but they went on the give samples of some of the questions. It was a millennial horror story. I would be amazed to meet a college graduate of today who could understand half the questions. What is the Latin name of the dog star? What is the difference between a meteor and a meteorite? What is the Chinese name for the Yellow River. It was pretty funny, actually, since this station anybody can call in with the answers. Nobody called. And those were the easy questions.
Kaleshwarham irrigation project.
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Today I pick up the final supplies for the new bathroom floor. The cat is back. Who recalls last time I had the floor up to get at the electrical? That same nervy tomcat has found his way in. This time, the bathroom door is taken down as I straighten the frame. The cats get fed plenty over at the neighbors but here is where you get the chicken bones. He keeps knocking over my trash pail and he’s too fast to catch. Sorry gang, pets are one thing, alley cats are another. The good news is I heard the feeding chirp of the red cardinals this morning. Still no sightings but they are back. Yard-wise, they are my indicator species.
I got supplies in Winter Haven. Man, it don’t take long to spend a hundred bucks at Wal*mart on basics. That sum may be absurdly tiny by the time this blog gets famous, but still. Everything is Halloween themed, I have no explanation why this ridiculous holiday has become such a big deal in America, but hey, look what they did with Christmas and Mother’s Day. Boss Hogg has a broadcast where they play original music by recording artists in the Plant City area. The weakness there is that it is dominated by Blues. This is beginner’s level music, so simple that I suspect 99% of every possible lick has already been overplayed by a factor of thousands. For originality, the score is D-minus. It sucks.
Worse, it has the same defect as new country. The lyrics are computer-generated. It’s like the writers went to Blues school and were taught a set of shallow rules. They’ve now graduated and fill in the blanks. It comes out with stale lines like “I’m not drunk but I’ve been drinkin’”. The harp solos sound as alike as all the turnarounds on guitar—so monotonous they make the whole song monotonous. I don’t think I’ve heard an original harmonica solo in thirty years. I don’t mind live performances on the instrument, but keep the rest.
ADDENDUM
I remain a middle-of-the-road libertarian and am often amused by the faction that regard any degree of libertarianism as dangerous. So is anything taken to an extreme and that is not my leaning. I was reading a few chapters about the Cato institute, which is regarded by liberals as their worst enemy. Why? Because libertarians believe, as I do, that all participation should be voluntary and liberals want it to be compulsory. I believe in a mix of socialism and capitalism, with the socialist part focused only on public services like building highways because it would be impractical to have them privately owned. Any look at the Cato means a look at the Koch brothers, who are no angels.
There is a recurring theme with the people who investigate the Kochs. Time and again, they talk about being tailed and harassed. They talk about phone taps and their garbage being searched. Bugs in their offices and moles in the legal department. What gets me is not that these things happen, but the attitude of federal employees that they are immune from it. They have the attitude because they work for the government they can root around people’s affair looking for evidence to hand out million dollar fines and expect the people are not going to fight back. It’s amazing.
When A.I. gets applied to the situation, this imagined immunity could turn deadly because of the way it will be warped. While humans can miss details, A.I. will gradually but methodically looking for patterns that might be years and miles apart. The other day driving to Miami, I toyed with the idea of a driverless car horror story. The fate that befalls a man when he rents a driverless car. The A.I. police computer decides he is wanted for questioning over an incident forty years in his twin brother’s past. He is innocent but knows the situation looks bad, so he tries to flee. But he was staying in a hotel.
The hotel has his identification on file and he’d paid for meals with his credit card. He’d used his cell phone and the ATM. He punched his room code for purchases at the gift shop, made reservations at a kiosk, and checked his e-mail. He booked a flight on-line and in general, had used all the modern conveniences without a second thought. Even the fridge in his room was wired and he had been flagged by both the hotel and car facial recognition as a bad tipper. His wait time for everything increases exponentially so he decides to go get the pizza himself. He gets into the car only to find the windows roll up, the doors lock, and trap him. The car initiates a “seatbelt arrest” and begins to drive him to the police station.
However, the car has been programmed in C+ code. He desperately tries to enter his exit code and advertently keys in his room code. Suddenly the car allows him to take over and drive manually, but only for twenty-one minutes at a time. Then for the next four minutes, the car tracks him, but cannot pinpoint his location. Since all driverless cars are the same make, model, and color by law, the police get flooded by false sighting reports from citizens seeking “FacePage” reward points. A good plot, but I don’t have time just now.
