January 23, 2021

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 23, 2020, a generic post.
Five years ago today: January 23, 2016, I discover Mulberry.
Nine years ago today: January 23, 2012, productivity has surged.
Random years ago today: January 23, 2011, bicycles & batteries.

           The Mega Million jackpot approaches a billion dollars. Later, I missed the ticket deadline and anyway somebody in Michigan won. So I had a second cup of morning coffee and so should you. That lotto is blog news for a couple reasons. It starts with what is happening in Australia. I go that lottery information from the Internet and I repeated it here. I did not pay for the information or receive any payment for the republication. It would seem others have a problem with that. Publishers generally have to pay for original content and social media does not.

           I see both sides of that coin. The publishers were flooding the market with substandard material with increasing smugness by 1985. I quit buying textbooks by 1995 unless the content was available on-line. You don’t have to waste $60 on a book with two good chapters very often before you catch on. Part of the early success of search engines was the poor conduct of publishers coupled with the premise of the Internet—to exchange information for free. There was no determination made of where that information came from.

           Australia wants the tech companies to pay for content the use—creating the instant problem that it is not always the tech people who do the publishing. Nonetheless, they are responsible for searches and often openly copy and present the work of others. If Google had behaved responsibly, I might have sympathized with their stand on it. Not now. They abused market power and they can suffer. Recently they lost in France on the same matter, but like most people, I don’t follow that because I don’t speak French.
           The Mega Million payout would be, lemme figure this, around $715 million. In a game with the odds of 300 million to 1, even I will buy two tickets. Over a dozen people in history have beat these odds before. I would spend the rest of my life in school. A fancy upscale coed school, mind you. Especially since Biden is only going to forgive a piddling $10,000 in student loan debt. Just enough to buy their votes. But he’s going to send me another $1,400 of my own money back and call it a favor.

           Biden has to move fast. His party wrecked the economy to get rid of Trump and now there is real danger of hunger and collapse. And all he does is sign orders mandating masks and extend agony of eviction. (The good news is at least some of those people living on debt will have learned a lesson.) There’s always the Ulm nests, the frostproof shelters being put in parks for the homeless in Germany, a problem not that widespread until Merkel came along.
           Let’s check the stats for the Biden “immaculation”. Inauguration for Biden, 380,000. views Farewell speech for Trump, 6,297,000 views. And you know that phony “attack” at the White House, with the guy wearing the horn helmet? How they were let in by police along with a team of professional photographers to follow them around? Ha, somebody has apparently found and uploaded an old mural “The Sacking of Rome” on which they orchestrated the “insurrection”. The left does not learn from history, but they sure as hell study it.
           Could it be these loony leftists are waking up to the fact they’ve been played for their blind hatred of Trump into selling their souls to the communists? Naw, that would be crediting them with too much introspection.

Picture of the day.
English tobacco shop. Shoppe?
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           Give me a hand with this window. The one pane, weights and all, will not slide up, but track is so loose I can see daylight through it. There is still a lot to learn, but I have the magic bullet. It’s called a power planer. I can always add back if something can be made to fit. I finally removed the old strips that held the window flush to the frame, which freed it right up but gave me a ton more sanding to do. Plus, I think my table saw has problems. I’ll try a new blade first, but it will not cut a 2x4” lengthwise without tripping the breaker.

           The most challenging piece is the interior sill, I guess you call it. The part you set your coffee on, with the horns that jut past the frame casing, as seen here. It needs to be cut with a recess that forms the bottom seal of the sliding window. Part of the this time-consuming effort is due to having to adjust and repair tools. The only disappointment has been that saw. I’ll swap the blade, but after that, it may become another router table.

           Remember the Vivitar LifeCam? I still use mine for time lapse, it can be set to that mode. It has one speed, that is, a photo per minute. But it is not intuitive and I missed a spectacular sunrise for you, I pushed the wrong button. Nice cloud cover clearing just as the rays emerged, around 6:30AM local time tomorrow. There’s some trivia for you today. You may have seen a variety of ways to set a radio clock. This include a national time signal, in the case of the USA it emanates from Colorado. We are looking at the other two standards, GMT and UTC.
           Respectively, these are Greenwich Mean Time and Universal Time Code. Rather than get too technical, tempting as that is, I’ll point out the difference in plain English. Right away, UTC means Coordinate Universal Time, but who calls it that? It’s easier to point out what GMT is not. It is not the correct time except by coincidence. The word “mean” refers to the statistical mid-point and in this instance regards every day of the year as being identical. They are not.

           As the Earth orbits, it moves closer and further from the sun. It also moves slightly higher and lower than the orbital plane. And it does not move in a perfectly forward direction and speed, but it slowly spirals. Thus, noon each day isn’t at the exact same time, and that is how the GP of the sun is listed in the Almanac. The next time you look in a real Almanac, you’ll notice a small table on each page giving info on how to offset this reading. If the time you are taking involves the use of time zones, you are using GMT.
           UTC, however, is an atomic clock that has no time zones. What? Oh, I can explain that. UTC instead of “coordinated universal time” is because that is the phraseology of most European languages. UTC is a very precise time standard and is called Zulu time when used by the military. If the time is 1800 hours, that’s UTC.

ADDENDUM
           When it comes to dating, after 40 the shoe is on the other foot. So when over 60 women get pushy, I’m on to it. Sure enough. I stopped at the old club tonight knowing it would be quiet, with my scribbler and a major disinsterest in my surroundings. This lady who looked a lot like Queen Elizabeth decided to scope me. What am I writing got the normal “chicken coop” tale from the trailer court, but his lady was determined. Did I believe in God, etc? Kind of intense for a broad trying to shortcut her way into a husband in Polk County, never a great game plan.

           I take it she had some fancy place, as she kept on about where I was going to spend the night. (I said, maybe in my camper.) Bottom line, this gal was not my type and should have known it. She was truly the kind of gal that most men her own age, of any quality, would be looking for—but not me. I don’t need another person to look out for. Bottom line, if she had been more interested in companionship than husband-hunting, okay. Just before I left, she walked up and took five cell-pics of me. I was faster and posed for every shot. My god, I hope Biden doesn’t mandate age-appropriate dating. Making older women wear masks may have only been a preliminary.
           I’m not sure how this kudzu attack on my back yard is related to any of this conversation or that lady. But first chance I get I’m pulling that stuff up by the roots.

Last Laugh