February 27, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 27, 2019, 1957 car radios.
Five years ago today: February 27, 2015, Craigslist, I’m the guy.
(and may soon be again . . .)
Nine years ago today: February 27, 2011, veryatlantic.
Random years ago today: February 27, 2009, mine was a redhead.

           It was quite the tour this morning, trying to get a flip phone connected. Turns out the place that said they could only had bill-paying access. The next place wanted me to buy a $50 card. The last place had never seen a phone without SIM card. And in all three, the staff had significantly less knowledge of how the system works than I did. I wonder if this last flip phone might be worth a lot of money in the near future. Nor had these places ever met anyone who protected his privacy. I took a few minutes to explain what was going on with the phones, and all three places sincerely thanked me.

           I’m not here to educate the world. I took the critters on some extra long walks. Here they are, wearing their winter jackets. Orders are orders. The new diet kind of loosens them up a bit, which must be a lot more comfortable. I am still getting that baked fluid odor in my car while the transmission warms up. I fear that may be the death of this vehicle. Even though I have a budget, as it stands the only bargain with this car is that I did not have to come up with all the money on day one. It is now my $6,000 vehicle and that’s about what it was ever worth.

           I found time to watch a documentary of the Israelis bombing the nuclear reactor in Baghdad.. That was back in 1981, so the records have only become available a few years ago. I did not know that, quite by accident, when the Israeli jets crossed into Jordan, they accidentally flew right over King Hussein’s Royal Yacht. Busted! He telephoned his people but apparently they did nothing, hmmm, read on. Also, I was wondering what happened to all the F-16s that the Shah had ordered just before he was kicked out. The Zionists got them.

           They also, via the Mossad, got some twenty Iranian scientists, along with any witnesses to the murders. But reporting such facts could intentionally be misinterpreted as anti-Samsonite, so I won’t say anything. But I’ll tell you what I think. The official story is that them French bastards sold a nuclear reactor to an enemy of the Israeli State, so there was no choice but to bomb it just hours after it was completed, but days before any plutonium could be extracted. Now, that’s too many coincidences for me, the Iraqi air force even turned off its radars that morning. My version says they were in cahoots from the start. Business is business.

           Only the Reb will fully appreciate the news, but this new diet totally agrees with the dogs. I read the label, the basic protein ingredient is trout. The small dog rarely finishes his whole ration (the big dog knows this) but now he licks the platter. They spent five hours outdoor y’day, mostly overseeing my work. That is an unprecedented stretch for the turtle in many years. He seems to like the outdoor cage though I can’t speak turtle. Overnight, Lily attacked a little mouse on my table. I found it on the floor this morning.

Picture of the day.
Blaulkham Hills hairdressing salon.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           This is another box, this time an instrument case. The picture is cluttered but you are looking for the box under the scanner wand. What makes this top story? Glad you asked, quite a number of things. Well, this is my first specialized case. The others were general purpose or tool boxes. This one is for the scanner and required some close tolerances. Another first was this represents the first box built with a jig. And, it is the first real jig I’ve ever designed and built. It’s so I can use the small laminate router to rabbet the joints.

           One day, when this blog is recognized as the only true and definitive record of this era, historians may say no big deal, it's just a box. Wrong. This is not about the box, it is about learning new things at my age. You see, historians will be no smarter in fifty years than they are now, what with the public school system being what it is. This project taught me plenty about the different characteristics of small boxes. Top of that list is that they are stronger boxes.
           I did not bring a table saw, and I see now that is a much-needed tool for customized box work. Up to now, I just used standard lumber sizes, for my interest was mainly learning the corner joints. And I further state that it is better to mark than to measure. This entire box was built without any measuring tool except a small square to set the router depth. Smaller boxes are strong enough on their own that I’m using ordinary Wal*Mart white glue.

           Much of the evening I spent waiting for glue to dry, which gave me time to toy around with Javascript. It’s a total hipster creation, fixing things that aren’t broken. One example says most of it. They’ve “improved” the classic “print” command (5 keystrokes) with “document.write” (14 keystrokes). The language, or script actually, follows the C+ pattern where everything is contained within something else, a style that causes untold scope and variable name conflicts. It’s called OOPS (nowadays misspelled Oops) for object-oriented programming system, It’s as convoluted as it sounds. Characteristically, MicroSoft made it a standard.
           I am already easily able to crank out applications. This is something I mentioned back in the 1990s about this type of code. Anybody, given enough time, can get it to appear as if it is working. This is almost impossible to troubleshoot in reasonable time because the command words are not usually linguistically or syntactically related to what is going on. The coder can also produce long-winded structureless file, command, and function strings that he cannot read back to himself in a month. I've seen it, in many cases, they cannot even recognize their own work, sometimes severely criticizing it.

           The structure is not only encapsulated, it is circular. Elements behave as much on how they are coded as to where they are located and other invisible considerations. There is a ridiculous function called “casting” because, say the pundits, there are often times when you need to use a number as a letter. I’ve never, in a lifetime of computer code, encountered such a situation, but if I did, I would create two different variables with relevant names.
           As you read the manual, the authors have the same old circular thinking problem. They can’t define things in isolation because everything depends on something else. You might say OOPS is the liberal left of the computer world. You are supposed to know what they mean, not what they say. Just when you think you’ve got something down, another layer appears. My fear, that’s right, fear is that most coders out there who do this for a living have as little grasp on the language as I do. And they think they can fly to other planets using this crap code? Always remember, the vast majority of Mars probes failed. I can tell you why.

Last Laugh