One year ago today: February 9, 2020, javascript sucks.
Five years ago today: February 9, 2016, coffee at Gladys’.
Nine years ago today: February 9, 2012, early “stimulus” comments.
Random years ago today: February 9, 2014, no oil in Guadalcanal..
Physio [therapy] for me tends to be slow and leaves me lethargic, but not enough to get nothing done. Couple this with some warm weather and I stayed inside watching some old documentaries. The one from Utah was a hoot, it actually made it look like a nice interesting place to live. No thanks, but maybe if I spent some time there. The newsreel was corny, showing scenes acceptable to the audiences of the day, which my guess was the 1950s. The actors were horribly overdressed for the roles, including mink-fringed stoles and suitcoats. But I do remember from my youngest days when people dressed up in their finest to go meet the train.
It’s my arm getting weak, not the brain. I made up my mind to find out what a double derivative was. Sure, I’m still unclear on slopes of complicated curves, but methinks that’s due to lack of any practical use in my life. And I’m still leery of formulas that have equations on both sides of the equal sign. Get it together, math types. This photo shows cutting tin flashing. It’s a chore I never could do right. Something always goes wrong or I get a metal cut. This piece went okay except for one crimp and that with my weak arm took three spaced session to cut this six feet.
I should be out there today, instead, here I am with my fourth cup of coffee. I’m not built for sitting around, I need results. The Reb says to put clove oil on the injury, so let’s see if I’m okay with smelling like a toothache. Here’s a still from the Utah show, with the two gals in matching outfits (I can confirm this happened a lot, I have an older sister.) To me it looks like they are wearing surplus army nurse uniforms. There’s no accounting for taste, I’m sure that is what these two were thinking as they road “The Panorama” westbound into the Utah sunset.
I reported the stimulus money but it turns out the neighbors did not get money, just a notice that it was on the way. Yep, I come from the “your check is in the mail” generation. Don’t spend it until you get your hands on the cash. And how about that liar AOC, who’s time-line at the alleged “violent insurrection” puts her in the wrong building an hour too early for her wild tale to fit. She let out a carefully worded version that if you don’t listen closely, claims she was part of the “we” she’s talking about. Got that?
And the big Tucker Carlson story that the Bank of America, the one I warned you about in 2003, handed over bank records without a warrant. If you were in or around DC during the recent troubles, the bank scanned for anyone who paid for hotels, used ATMS, debit cards, credit cards, or may bought guns or ammunition. And the argument is exactly what we’ve discussed here many times. When you give information to someone for a specific purpose, and they keep it on file, is it your information or theirs? My stance is that it should be used for that single purpose for which it was given, and then destroyed. If they need it again, [they should have to] ask for it again, giving you the option to size them up and re-assess the situation.. The Second Amendment says I’m right, the people behind the former vice-president say I’m wrong.
But, as I’ve pointed out, you can’t get any of this information from my bank statements. I withdraw fixed amounts in another town and spend cash for everything. So even if random trouble erupts. I can point to a consistent pattern of being nearby for a different purpose. This policy has been in place since 1984. While you cannot fly under the radar, you can make it easier for them to track others, and that works exceptionally well because all bureaucrats are lazy by nature. Or as I said forty-some years ago, when you work for an hourly wage, your profit is the slack periods.
Russian ghost town.
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Another coffee, or go work on that flashing? I flipped a coin and it landed on edge. Let’s do both. I wrote JZ, Marion, and The Reb real letters. The kind with ink and paper, and for unknown reasons, at a pesto sandwich. How was your afternoon so far.? I just can’t get up enough steam and it is awful comfortable inside, you know the drill. Later, I managed to get mobile. I finished drilling the frame pilot holes and countersinks, then drilled the frame into place and patched the holes smooth before dark. Dark is also mosquito time, so forget working too late, which is around 7:30PM local time these days.
The shed is a godsend, not only for working late but working privately. The neighbor, back from the hospital I believe I mentioned, is apparently selling off a lot of the tools and such he’ll never use now. Alas, I can’t afford any of it. He’s really got top level stuff and most of it has barely been touched.
Either way, that window is finished this week and I’m not sure what the next move should be. Work with me here, if I fix the wall in the red shed, I can move stuff out of the bedroom, giving me space to begin finished that room completely. It still needs all the trim, some electrical wiring, and I would like to finish the last corner of the floor, intentionally left loose to get at the plumbing last year. The putty is drying on the frame, I’m going to paint it white for now, or maybe just white undercoat. Because even this minor activity strains the arm. I might add that the therapy tends to address the old shoulder injury along with the new, saying it’s all one big deal. But the old injury doesn’t bother me.
Have you seen the new electric cars making a big deal overseas? They have economies that don’t involve high-speed long-distance travel. So far, no big deal, but the price of the electric car has potential to upset the market. If the performance is more that adequate for the third world, several sources say the price could be under $3,000. I’d be tempted.
ADDENDUM
Mark my words, the millennials are going to muck up the algorithms for these self-driving cars. Instead of opting for the proper best practices approach, they are going to go for the cutesy something-for-everybody feel-good approach. We’ll have a different ethnic code how to make left or right turns and back up. A different gender will write the code for each tire. Those who can’t decide what the hell they are can program the spare, am I right?. And if you have an English accent, it will override your voice command and drive on the left side of the road.
I predict the first batch of these cars will be a roadway disaster. Like what they did with the natural speech software, they will go for average rather than optimum. And anybody who’s tasted Starbucks' coffee lately knows how low averages can sink. Natural speech, as in talking to the computer to word process, was a flop because it revealed to people how boring they were. But the other failure was instead of making it force people to use English and pronounce it properly, the correct solution, they watered it down so it now barely understands the language of commerce.
The rightful approach to a self-driving car would leave most drivers out of the loop. It would force the car to drive safely, carefully, and I dare say, politely. That will never happen. Why? Because, for example, that would annoy the hell out of 95% of the drivers in Miami which also makes it racist. And we can’t be offending the entitlement crowd lest they have a collective sissy-fit.
