One year ago today: July 18, 2019, the great stapler scam.
Five years ago today: July 18, 2015, tellilng off the owner.
Nine years ago today: July 18, 2011, no minimum age.
Random years ago today: July 18, 2009, complete subdivisions.
This photo looks like a repeat, but it isn’t. It marks a milestone for me. For the first time in my life, here is a larger object built entirely in my own shed. This is a custom-made critter screen for my planter box. When I got out this morning, it was too wet to work on the roof. This would normally bring the day to a standstill, but instead I was out there three hours (not just on the screen) and worked straight through. This indeed is a happy occasion for me, may my productivity soar. Shown here, the wood is not treated, so it will get a few coats of paint to resist Florida conditions.
Mind you, I like the way avocado trees look and what luck, he has a three foot tree he has to get rid of. I have not seen it but that’s a two year head start. I think I’ll put it outside the south kitchen window. I hear the peanut gallery, “It will undermine your foundation”.
To which I reply, what foundation? And even so, not in my lifetime. Face it, whoever takes over this property is just going to bulldoze it anyway. No more news yet on the triple homicide in Frostproof, but here’s something. Pull up Frostproof on a news site and you’ll find the place is a Bermuda triangle for strange deaths and accidents. Weird train crashes, families wiped out, inmate deaths, unidentified bodies, drownings, and disappearing runaways.
My gumption is used up after another couple hours. How did the sky know to clear just when I was tired of working? Maybe I’ll try but I’ll be satisfied just to have built that planter screen. I need a second planter which should not be long now that I’ve learned the lauded potting soil is not needed for growing what I need. The planter design, somewhat smaller than textbook, seems successful and not to heavy for me to budge. What I did not like was the cost, around $50, a lot of it the hardware, lag bolts have become an expensive commodity. My budget for five planters can now build only three.
A half-dozen e-mails directed my attention to some newscasts. Amazing how the leftoid media is reacting to its own reports of destruction and mayhem. Trump is wisely letting it ride, but the tone has changed, things are more uncomfortable as the politics sinks to truly sub-intelligent levels. My least popular are the heavily leftist news commentators who no longer want to be associated with the tactics the Democrats are using. So they try to appear as fair and balanced—but they can’t help slipping in their anti-Trump remarks while never questioning the radical left.
USS Texas.
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Another unimpressive photo, this is the 12-foot work bench. If you can see it, there is no counter top on it yet. It’s the two long pieces across the middle of the picture. It presence was enough to make the work on the screen a pleasure. Cool, in the shade, and importantly, waist-height. Siesta found me another documentary, which are not bad once you learn to avoid BBC and NOVA. I watched clips from the Soviet movie “Tanker”, the one that shows living-room size tank interiors. The commander shouts orders in the microphone during the defense of Moscow, two years before any of their tanks had radios.
Before I get frisky about the workbench, I developing pains in my elbow joints, not related to the work I’m doing. Is this the predicted flu pain? It’s not that bad but it isn’t going away. Let me take a look at tech news for the afternoon. What’s this, the border patrol, biggest user of license plate scanners, says Americans who don’t like being tracked this way can go to hell, only they used slightly different wording. What, a VPN crisis? Virtual private networking is a bad idea trying to cover for an even worse one. The club has warned that there is no such thing as security if you have to pay for the service on-line. This means somebody, somewhere, knows it is you, so you are wasting your money.
These free VPN services are also suspect. The passwording and account records are kept on their computer, not yours. I’ve been on the lookout for a VPN that you pay for cash, install on your own machine, and control your own privacy. Red pill--the tech employees of all current computer companies are the deadbeats who don’t have the schmarts to gig for themselves. I forget the stats, but since it became an everyday problem, nearly a billion private messaging and password files have been compromised. That’s all the proof you need that a millennial ISP staffer will sell you out in a wink.
It has five years now since Imgur fell out of favor with this blog. Did I ever give you a reason? I don’t think so. The problem is Imgur images are such vast overkill that it just takes too long to download and display them. Even the hyper fast computers and massive broadband service at the library only grabs the photos in stages. There should be two setting, Imgur. One optimized for Internet display, and a link to the mega-pixel files if somebody clicks on it. And I’ve not mention the Cato Institute much lately, since I am a libertarian and Cato have been taken over by uber-conservatives posing as us. They tend to conduct poles, which is fine, but they do a New York Toilet Paper Times with the results. That is, they only release those with a showing in their favor.
Well 63% of Americans want to eliminate what is qualified immunity. This is where police and public officials can avoid liability for wrong actions if they can show they were performing their duties reasonably. The problem I have with that is, over time, it is they and not the public who define what is reasonable. I would not defund the police, but at the same time they deserve a lot of the shit they are getting. Why? Because of the way they have systematically chosen the wrong model for law enforcement for such a long time.
Too many people dying in custody, too many cops standing in front of cars that have a right to leave, to many baiting questions during warrantless roadside stops, the list goes on. I’ve always maintained that instances of wrongful convictions should allow the harmed party to personally sue every cop, judge, lawyer, and lab assistant that was involved since they necessarily must have acted in collusion at some level. I further dislike the way a plea of guilty becomes the ultimate score. Pleas can be coerced and beaten out of suspects, therefore should be considered nothing more than another piece of evidence. I’m not so much pointing out these individual circumstances as how the police have wrangled qualified immunity into an excuse to get away with things, like murder. And that ain’t right.
And how about electronic snooping. The Constitution is clear, a warrant is required to look at people’s privacy in any shape or form. The wording “personal papers” was an example, not a definition. People are landing in court having to argue at their own expense that their computer files and passwords are confidential. And the police want respect, too? Their policing model has progressively worsening for fifty years and it ain’t going to correct itself from the inside out.
ADDENDUM
Just after 6:00PM, I got motor-vated. I have all the rafters moved, what a dusty, sweaty task. It’s not the same as when you’re 18 with all the lusty lasses across the street at lunch hour behind oversized sunglasses. I kept finding one more screw, one more hurricane strap and they no longer make a good tape measure with an end that will clip securely. Must be a millennial design, to save than tiny sliver of metal that will hook over the 2x4 when you slip it over from six feet away. They are moved but only tacked in place as I want to view them in bright sunlight tomorrow.
Next, I got up on the roof and took out the 100 or so screws except one that would not move and I had to break the board to get it. This time it’s done right so there will be bloggable photos in a bit. I would have continued but for the dark. It was also spitting rain so I wasn’t up on the roof getting a tan. If all goes well, I could have half the roof done by the time I run out of lumber. That means a trip down to Mulberry. Did I ever tell you why I never bought property in that town?
It’s like this. I bought this place cash, but that does not mean I landed in the midst of others doing the same. For a similar price, I could have bought in Mulberry but, and here’s the big objection. I would have been among people living in similar properties who were renting. That would have been a mistake. Renters don’t make the best neighbors in the parts of town I can afford. This cabin was an unexplained stroke of luck, the best explanation is the people selling it were afraid of what might show up if they didn’t take my offer. I’m still stunned I got the place half price.
