One year ago today: October 12, 2019, chicken false alarm.
Five years ago today: October 12, 2015, finally I buy a tablet.
Nine years ago today: October 12, 2011, when they arrested mobs.
Random years ago today: October 12, 2017, every imaginable way.
Ah, winter weather, I was out there for a few hours. Recognize the table under this saw? Yep, it’s the old chalk table. The particle board sections began to deteriorate. What you see here is the sold pieces resting on concrete blocks. This is my substitute for excitement and I don’t mind at all. In some six hours of activity, I got one of the second bank of lighting roughed in, but I ran out of sockets. The time consuming bit was the switches. Keep reading, there should be pictures. What’s not shown is the improving live-ability of the house not that most repairs are now done outside, where the tools are.
The electrical went slow again, or I should say apparently slow because I tend to follow the rulebook closely. That means a lot of the work does not show. This single light was the outcome of over three hours, if I was being paid by the fixture, I’d have to fire myself. Connecting the socket and bulb were just the last twenty minutes. The shed wiring could have been sloughed through with a couple of pull-chain lights. Instead, wiring is arranged so most of it is controlled by switches near the entrance. There are two independent switched banks of ceiling lights, a total of eight. Each half of the room can be illuminated without any shadows. All lights on makes it comparably bright to being outside.
While digging out my spare toaster oven, I found the plumbing goop. Told ya, but things are getting progressively smoother as I can not build custom storage spots for the things I use most. But it doesn’t work, the elements take forever to heat up, longer than the timer can be set. No problem, that timer works and toaster ovens are a Thrift store specialty. I have to do a lumber run tomorrow anyway, we’ll use the drive to do some planning. Note, there is no electrical near the newly placed saw table, and chances are I will build another layer up , as shelving is always a premium around here.
Sad news from the north, Sparkie has the onset of kidney malfunction. Let me take stock, he’s either 13 or 14. He was a rescue pet, and knowing the Reb, she chose the one that was the worst off. That ended same day. He was almost a goner but she had noticed his eyes still sparkled.
Paper snowflake, 3D
(requires computer cutter)
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I may have to move the planter. It was position before the wild growth in the other neighbor’s yard began to throw shade in the mornings. My weeds can grow eight to ten feet tall while I’m away in Tennessee. He’s got a small wood lot back there and I can see where the plants had to strain for the morning rays. And his hedge can grow twelve feet in the summer. That planter will have to be emptied to move it, a significant chore. The scooter shed makes it easy to work in the shade and see the whole back yard. The east shed has to be secure, so when buttoned up there is no view. See this great picture of my chrome plated switchplate. Fancy. It was the only metal one I could find in my spare parts bin.
Then I find some of 5” floppy disks. Are they still good? These are labeled in the early 80s and I no longer have any way to read them. These were as cumbersome and fragile as they sound, but they were my first storage. You needed two drives, one for your program (no, not an “application”, but real program”) and the other for your data disks. At any volume of work, you’d be constantly changing disks to get at your data. But these disks were a godsend over what went before, which was a cassette tape that could only be read sequentially. For that matter, I found a box of what look like new 5” blanks. They made a 7” I think, but I’ve never even seen such a beast. Some of the disks have names like “Math Demo” and “phone lists” which could be a blast to look at again. For siesta, I’m re-reading lessons on celestial navigation. I could do the exercises before but this time I want to grasp the theory. Before I just memorized that the equator as 0 degrees and the poles 90 degrees north and south. Maybe I’ll discover the reason for this, so far nobody’s talking.
I think my keyboard just gave out., I getting double line-feeds that won’t format back. You would be correct figuring I go through a lot of keyboards. They still make them like they used to. Anyway, the basis of navigation is knowing where you are in relation to a geographic position, called GP, which I also call the ground point. Any given object in the sky is directly above only one spot on Earth at any given moment, and can look that up in an Almanac. In fact, it is easy to know how far away you are from the GP. Use a sextant to measure angle above the horizon of your chosen object, and subtract that angle for 5,400. Easy enough to memorize, but I’m looking for reasons. When the Chinese shoot down all the GPS satellites, I’ll be safe and sound in some bunker calculating that point, because I know the why part.
For example, why 5,400? Because each degree has sixty minutes, and in navigation, each minute is a nautical mile. So if you were directly on the GP, your object would be straight up (90°), but at the poles, the same object would be in the horizon (0°). The difference is 90 degrees. And 90 x 60= 5400. This is the part I’m striving to learn. Back around 2015, I spend six months calculating the GP of the sun at random times of the day. Since the location was often on the ocean, I’d find the nearest island. I don’t know why such things interest me and I only quit because I could not find a decent stop watch in my price range. Well, that, and moving here wiped out almost every other hobby but playing bass.
This is weird, I brushed the pie crust with milk and sprinkled on the cinnamon sugar mix. It came out of the oven like this, sort of a marbled effect. It’s still delicious but what curious physics. I just heard Facebook has banned Holocaust denial, which to me represents the final removal of the Internet as a medium for the free exchange of ideas. It’s happened in stages, but with this rule, it has become no better than the propaganda fed to us by every other source. The Zuck gave the usual double-talk reasoning, to the effect that Facebook is not stopping anyone from saying something untrue, but to stop them from using Facebook to do it. Duh. The Zuck will be the judge of what is true and untrue. Facebook will determine which version of all things is accurate.
ADDENDUM
Who remembers that guitar player from Wisconsin who shows up every November looking to stand in with a “full band”?. Him and fifty more, except the other 49 are mostly here year round with no better luck. Anyway, he’s advertising again so I sent him an e-mail asking how many gigs he had last year. One, I think is what he was trying to say. He’s just another Craigslist non-career I like to follow. I keep telling him, duos are the way to go. But like other wannabes, that doesn’t fit well into his ego-space.
Looking over the records, Trent and I have actually played 41 different songs. He won’t know any of the “new” country tunes I’ve been working on. I still tend toward three-chord specials with no lead breaks, so that is not a barrier. I stand in a lot for jams and easy sets, which rarely get reported here unless something great happened. The point is I know the circuit. And I know the stance of those who don’t really do more than stand in. It is not uncommon to find guitar players who have never managed more than that. Didn’t I just mention non-career?
Three of the last five guitarists I duo-ed on stage with quit after a few gigs. No real hard feelings, but they sooner or later figure out they are not getting the prime cuts. And no matter how kewl they initially pretend to be, no matter that they are doing better than before, it’s never good enough. Usually I can tell when they are going sour because they will try to outplay me, a form of trolling. This does not work well because I know how guitar works. Showing off is a net gain of zero around me, which is why I never personally do it.
The Hippie can hold his own, he’s good, but that is solidly based on his refusal to play anything he has not hand-chosen. Ha, I once saw him trying to learn a new song, it was not a pretty sight. Nor is it a gender thing, as the lady cop quit for the same reason. I’ll say it again, as politely as possible. No guitar player will ever be more than 50/50 while I’m on stage. To me, that is only fair, to them it is not to be endured.
For those who conclude it must be something I should blame on myself, I have some sage advice. Don’t ever get on stage with me, it will be your Waterloo. I never play loud, I never play fancy, I never overplay the band. .It is guitar players who cannot stand it when the audience chants for the bass man to turn up, I have video after video of proof. Drummers, even singers, usually find it amusing, but for guitarists, it’s a bug-bear. They perceive all bassists have the same weaknesses and are helpless when they find otherwise—and that they can never close the gap by riffing.
