February 6, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 6, 2019, 11,491 days late.
Five years ago today: February 6, 2015, remember “the Trump”?
Nine years ago today: February 6, 2011, Urban art, FL.
Random years ago today: February 6, 2010, on ‘clock arithmetic’.

           Our noble experiment appears to have failed. The chickens are gone. Around 3:34AM I heard a single squawk and by the time I got out there, just a few feathers. The hutch was sealed up to regulation and the entryway covered with 1/4” mesh hardware cloth, that’s above regulation. That raccoon instead ripped the 1-1/4” screws right out of the wood, tearing the screen itself half off. I’m sorry to report this but everything reasonable was done except build a big and right now unaffordable chicken run. I checked again this morning and it was only white feathers, but I cannot find Matilda around anywhere. This is a sad day for me, I’d grown fond of them. But, I suppose, not too fond. The Reb will be heartbroken, that is my concern.

           Trust me, everything reasonable was done, but it is commonsense the reason the gals lived as long as they did was their old yard had a vicious dog that kept all the predators away, human and otherwise. The trees in my yard are excellent cover. Just so you know, when I heard the squawk, I was out there in less than ninety seconds with a loaded pellet gun, not that I could have gotten off a shot in the dark. But it was all over by them.
In memory of the gals, I’ve placed a marker near the garden. It’s the little wooden lady in the blue dress next to the collard greens. This was also a learning experience. I would not be able to afford the wire mesh for a chicken run until after April 27, but it would have been a grand affair. I’ll soften the news to the hillbilly by lending him the Jamus. I thought he had a truck, but who knows. That house he rents has no decent kitchen and I think the stove is broken.

           My priority remains the new bathroom. Here is a photo of the sample flooring I went with. It is fake wood as the price was right. Originally I’d hoped to use some of the oak, but that would not allow easy access to the piping. Remember, I’m only guess that I did things right. I read the manual, but what’s the title of that book something like, “You can’t learn to ride a bicycle at a seminar.” The floor “boards” are not fastened down yet, this is a mockup. But I’d say it is a go.

           Flooring is one of those dumb-bastard departments, you know. The stuff is priced by the square foot, but it is not sized or manufactured in that dimension. The pieces shown here are 1.9 square feet each. I know the price per dimension needs some basis for comparison, but they are avoiding the supermarket example of a price tag for the whole item, with the comparison in smaller print for the minority who need that information. America leads the world in pricing scams. There is free, and then there is Internet free.
           Another goof situation with flooring is “underlayment”. You get from context it goes under the finished floor, but try asking what it is. All I could get from the flooring people was that it depends on what I want. I did no know what I want because, I told them, I do not work in the flooring department. With practiced quickness, they, in unison, pointed out that it was not flooring, but “underlayment”. Well, pardon me all to blazes.

           They could not say if it was required, either by code or for comfort. Maybe, like the price, it is some kind of secret. I asked if it came in a roll, a box, or a can. Again, it depends. They could not grasp that if it was required, I expected to know how much it cost before deciding on what flooring material to purchase. They said I had it backwards, that I should not only decide, but buy the flooring first, then later get taken by surprise on the price of this mysterious “underlayment”.
           My decision is to chance putting the shown panels directly on the plywood. They called this a “floating” floor. Floating on what, you stupid bastards? Talk English or get out of my way. My rational is that the sides and back of my toilet are not heavy foot traffic areas, so I’ll opt for what’s cheap and looks okay for now. Anything to get the hell away from flooring department staff. Do I think they are a bunch of semi-retarded azz-clowns? It depends.

Picture of the day.
Australia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           I finally bought a portable DVD player. It is one item that has really dropped in price. I used to use them for my bass act around 15 years ago. They made superior CD players, plus the on-screen display could not be beat for navigation. It was crazy the number of people who told me that could not work. Today they are, of course, all computer geniuses. I got a small portable unit to replace the finicky CD player I used in the car to listen to audio books. That made a lousy all-or-nothing music player with buttons that invariably did the wrong thing. The unit had to be held a certain way to open, so you had to pull over to change the disk. In that sense, cassette audio books were far superior.

           I’ve got the new tube for the Jamus happening. We got a blasting windstorm most of the afternoon that kept dust flying around. About all the got accomplished is Agt. R and I standing around talking. He’ll pick up the fence panels and drop them here, along with the peach trees if they go on sale. He lost thirty chickens in one day to a raccoon ten years ago and says they have learned to peel screens off from living near people. The breeze was enough to deter driving the scooter. I’ll wait until tomorrow to assess the damage.

           I used the old robot club tire tube trick, shown here. Double tubing. Don’t waste your money on the so-called heavy duty tubes. If I didn’t say before, they are only a couple mils thicker on the tread, not the location of most Florida pinch flats. This is an excellent shot of the semi-inflated new tube surrounded by a donut of the old model. Be careful, this is not as easy as it looks and has to be done in a specific order unless you have three hands. It has to be careful tucked under the tire, not around the rim, but if you try it you’ll find this out quickly enough.

           Um, you know, there is a way to tell if the tire has been double-tubed. Normally, a nozzle sticking out of the rim at an angle is the sign of shoddy workmanship. But with this method, there is usually a shift of the “inner inner” tube, which is lined with talc or something. It slips into place on its own, resulting in a less than perfect alignment. I remembered the problem with the Jamus. No brakes. They are there but need some kind of adjustment I don’t know. But I do know they require a rather large Allen wrench.

           This is the thing about that workshed I need. Right now I have no space to really organize spare parts, so I waste time looking for things. My growing collection of tools has had priority since I moved here, but not spare parts inventory. When last in Tennessee, I built a special wooden box for all my Allen wrenches, but now I can’t find the box. Maybe I left it there. I’ll check tomorrow, since it’s less difficult to misplace a box rather than a wrench. Where is that damn thing?

           Let me tell you about the luck that character has, that Agt. R. A month ago, an old vacuum cleaner fell of somebody’s truck in front of his house. People kept driving over it, so he scraped it up and shoveled it in the recycle bin. Right, plastic and metal are on the list. The city didn’t like that, so they confiscated his bin, but still charges the monthly bill. Now he throws everything in the regular trash. I hope they don’t zap him on that one as well.
           That’s the robot club compressor shown in the same picture nearby, still in perfect working condition. The hoses, that’s another matter. They just don’t hold up to storage. Getting ahead of that bathroom renovation has also freed up time for other small chores and I just may rebuild that birdfeeder design that thwarted the bluejays. The $100 on the henhouse is not lost, as I learned a lot about smaller scale building and discovered the cedar fence panels for more general use. Next is me pointing at the crape myrtle, if you can see it. Dead center are six cuttings simply dipped in rooting powder and set into the ground. My landscape booklet says avocados will grow without the usual kitchen starter. It says put the seed directly in the ground and if it grows, it will spring up in three years. I must try that.

           Which reminds me, build that birdfeeder. I have the wood but I had reverse engineered the design from a picture. I’ve long since lost that file. Is this my excuse to drive out to the Fubar for a couple cold ones and design the new model and mourn the gals over a couple of cold ones? Plus design the wall to be disguised as a fence. That should be done as best possible the first time since I don’t have any backup supply of weathered wood.
           I don’t exaggerate my yard is for the birds. We have four new visitors, all of which arrived when I was not wearing my glasses. These are thus tentative identifications. Eventually I’ll rig up a camera. The new feeders are near windows so you get the full show until any movement scares them off. We have what I believe is a red-breasted nuthatch because it catches worms in my yard. Such large worms, it has to swallow in sections, which is where I see it on the stump I planted. I hear but have not seen the chickadees and that woodpecker has returned. It is small much more red than a downy woodpecker which my guide says. Lastly, there are a pair of larger raptors taken to soaring above the street. I can’t see them well enough to say. They do not flap their wings.

ADDENDUM
           Hackers can be good or evil. I’m neither, but I do like to set things straight once in a while. Kind of keep things from getting too far off kilter. Reading the advanced chapter in my new booklet on Javascript, it seems the way it interacts with the server means there’s a possibility that some of the files are editable. This is how I upset the whole shitteree on Craigslist back in the aughts. I’m the guy who hacked their entire system in retaliation for them not fixing their flagging rules. I said it should be one post, one flag, but they did nothing. They’ve now lost most of their patrons for the exceedingly popular rant and rave segment because of auto-flagging that they could have avoiding by listening to me.

           There were some real crackpots posting in the early days and I used to target the libtards just to infuriate them. If you think Trump got them popping head veins, you should have seen how I was yanking their chains. One of my favorite tactics was to change the destination address in the flagging link to the “best of”, then post something seriously abrasive. I had not yet associated millennials with being a distinct category, so I was more aiming at pointing out, shall we say, inconsistencies in the way many of the younger posters had been educated. Calling people stupid is one thing, if you really want to incense them, make them prove it to themselves on-line.

           Craigslist eventually javascripted almost everything. For the computer-minded, javascript is embedded in the HTML script and links to most of what it acts upon. I had not studied the process as I am now, and left it alone. But you know, they have not done anything about the gang that has attacked the rant and rave and they should have on principle alone. I see that javascript has a couple of vulnerabilities, the worst being that once it is operating on the client-side, it can interact with data directly with the server. Put in plain talk, when your browser picks up their web page, some of that code must be, at least temporarily, resident on your computer. And anything on my computer belongs to me, particularly anything put there by others without my specific permission. That is my message to the Internet and maybe it’s time they got a demo on the topic of who can do what.
           The last picture is just a rare view. That’s my north wall without the fence. This is the shady part of the yard that hasn’t seen sunlight in 75 years. The fence must be replaced to prevent people looking into my laundry area.

Last Laugh