One year ago today: July 8, 2019, with squeaky voices.
Five years ago today: July 8, 2015, no straight answers.
Nine years ago today: July 8, 2011, “sexy boots” - made you look.
Random years ago today: July 8, 2013, anniversary coincidence, “stockouts”.
I bow to pressure and will review 3D printers in more detail. This has happened only annually around here since 2014. The improvements have been so unimpressive that the reports rarely made the blog. Fact is, the nozzles still clog and require a technician to repair. The club has nobody willing to take the tech training, including myself. FarmBot is not a new idea, it’s been around ten years and the lack of user-end feedback tells me all it has done is spawn a new era of super-weed operations. But the original concept is good, to grow food without the need for pesticides and a million-dollar tractor. Here are some of the attachments.
A couple hours later, still no definitive videos on the use of FarmBot and the home page is no better. No prices quoted, but it didn’t take me long to notice the control unit leads match a good old Arduino Mega. The only pricing method seems to be to contact them, where they say they will get your information to put in your “pre-order”. WTF is a pre-order, you AOLs? The logical next step is to see if there are any used units. Ah, here we go, it opens a back door to the website. Here are some prices for new kits.
FarmBot Express $1,995.00
FarmBot Express XL $2,495.00
FarmBot Genesis $2,995.00
FarmBot Express Max $3,295.00
FarmBot Genesis XL $4,995.00
Seriously, I could probably build one myself—if I had a 3D printer. I was able to find a BOM (Bill of Materials) for replacement parts. Except for the printer, every part that counts is already in club inventory in the red shed. The RAMP shield, the stepper motors, the power supply, mounting plates, solenoid valves, vacuum pumps, and we have a box of Arduinos. (I prefer to use ganged Unos rather than the larger Arduinos that have been marketed recently. Nor am I necessarily after a full service model. One that would water and weed is probably fine, since the box is located directly outside my work shed entrance. I’m thinking.
For those interested, a lot of ownership problems can be inferred from reading FarmBot’s offerings and operating procedures. For instance, the seed injector has trouble with seeds that are irregular size and shape, so you may be hand-planting seeds, plus any bulbs or starters. FarmBot has other products for items like water tank monitors, cattle gates, automatic feeders, and even something that controls water depth an flow in your dam, should you own one of those.
Who besides me hates the latest millennial brain-fart? Normally, you want a two-click command. First click selects the whole page, second click selects the item you want. It’s worked well for 30 years, so of course the millies ware going to fock with it. If there is an auto focus, it should default to something the average user wants, like a search box. Well folks, the millies have “improved” it by removing the focus and changing to one-click.
Now, you land on a page and nothing is selected, so you have to click on a blank spot to get focus. But the millie-bastards have made the whole page a hot-spot. Anything you click on sends you to advertising, which you have to close to get back to the page. This is proof that New York City is nothing but one gigantic stack of assholes, piled one atop the other. How do I just “know” this idea comes from New York? I don’t, I’m judging the entire concept by its aroma.
The lumber yards are indeed out of loose fence pickets. I had the guy check their inventory and some of their locations have not had a delivery in over two weeks. Here’s the view of their outside storage lot, a place you normally have to walk down aisles between the stacks of materials. They have the 12-foot 2x4”s that I need. I’ll plan to work with that. Oh, and thanks to the fat ladies who, when they see you on a motor scooter with rain clouds in the vicinity, slow down and block you in behind them. What the hell, they are inside a comfortable compartment and it is secretly fun to see you get caught in the storm. There is no sense tooting at them, the lumpen proletariat has perfected the “what did I do” face, the one that makes them look like stunned apes.
It could be a few reporters are peeling the veneer off the carona virus statistics. It’s a problem with direct relation to government control of the health system, or to be more exact, the payment system. It seems more and more doctors are coming forward with stories they’ve not only been paid to classify all disease deaths as COVID-19, but those who refuse to falsify records are being threatened with cut offs in Medicare billing. Don’t confuse these reporters with doing good—that is coincidental. They are only after the “one big story” that makes their reputation for life. Whether or not you die is of zero consequence.
Final item for this morning is I guessed right about leaving the sell orders in place and overnight made, on paper, $211. There is an important distinction here, heads up. I guessed right about the mindset of the application coders, NOT the Forex market. For clarity, by getting into the logic of these millennial coders, I surmised they would code their software to flag the plunge as a buy opportunity if the price fell below the floor. It did near closing time in Sydney. This was gambling on my part, I do not intend to repeat it unless again taken by surprises.
I’ve learned to keep the trades within a range that suits me, but during the process just described, I had me dismayed by the ratios. Example, if the Margin Level falls below 1,000%, a totally bad day could wind up with you owing them money. At times it fell to 300%, that lets you test your mettle. I’ve discussed with the Reb about opening a real-dollar account, that my goal is not to risk money, but to find out how the international brokerage part of the system works. Once again, it is up to me. Sigh, and you wonder why I don’t share much.
More Victoria Falls.
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I’ve located a new ignition for the scooter, it was simple enough to change it to fit my old key, but I don’t know if any parts are missing. I also found a new seat latch, but not the retainer ring that holds the lock in place. Come on, guess which part is going to be impossible to find? Some idea of the kind of people who stole the scooter can be gained by noting the person who filled the tank put on his own locking gas cap,, shown here. Yep, I’ve lived in houses myself where you could not trust anybody over stealing $1.50 in gas like when the tank is full. I’ll have to use club keys to see if any will take the thing off before cutting it.
Another nail in the coffin of anonymity, Amazon now follows Europe and Japan in demanding third-party sellers reveal their names and contact info. Ostensibly to “help customers make informed decisions”, it is a crackdown on counterfeit goods. In itself that’s a good thing, but there are dozens of better ways they could handle the problem. Top of the list is to let the police, not Amazon, determine who is breaking the law. Like Google, the hidden agenda is to get everybody’s identity on file. The claim they are fighting “fraud, fakes, and unsafe products” is bogus, corporations don’t give a shit about such things except that they don’t get sued.
Facebook and Google continue their vigilante shutdowns of all sites that are not pro-Democrat, showing you the power that control of the media can exert. Sites simply disappear for reasons as shallow as being a Trump “ally”. The growing desperation of the radical left as the election approaches could very well become their death throes. I hope so. They can’t change people’s minds, so they’ve resorted to shaming them into conformist behavior. What’s this, another study on anxiety? I tend to view that more as a social than a medical condition. That’s based on the degree of concurrence between their “attacks” and things they don’t like. I have just the therapy for anxiety, a week of Forex trading. By comparison, they will love to return to the relative calm of ordinary life.
As trading draws to a close, this week showed a final return of just under 8%. That’s an annual rate of 351% but you just know that isn’t going to happen. The upcoming week should produce the go-ahead to invest real money, but this is not related to any enthusiasm over performance. It is to test the other side of the formula, Putting money in is easy. Taking money out, we shall see. I want to know the details. How it is paid, where, how long it takes, how it is taxed, and so on. Knowledge is power, but find out about the money part anyway.
