One year ago today: June 19, 2020, work at home?
Five years ago today: June 19, 2016, closer inspection.
Nine years ago today: June 19, 2012, a bothersome mixer.
Random years ago today: June 19, 2011, my first 555.
Do I have COVID? Or just a regular flu? I’ve got something and like all flus I had in the past ten years, the symptoms spread out. Today, no taste buds. I’ll plan for work around the house for now, and maybe some reading. Have you seen the Botswana diamond, third largest ever mined? About a thousand carats, about $50 million, I’m curious why they always say “ever mined” every time. I also sought new data on the rocket Bezos is developing but there isn’t much hard data. This led to an update on Mars. They do go on about how settlers would face a dreary, subterranean existence, but hey, people live in New York City, do they not?
While fully admitting the first group resorts to magic when they fail at comprehension, in the next moment he implies that it is the evidence seekers who should be making attempts at understanding magic. It seems to me if there is something they don’t comprehend, it is them that should be doing little “evidence seeking”, they might learn something. But that is not deemed important by that boy. Did I just say his voice was narky? Get it from context.
Unwilling to admit I may have COVID, I took the van on a road trip south of town, along some of my favorite old motorcycle routes. Some software glitch has prevented by VLC player from converting my videocams, so you’ll see fewer gifs these days. If it is COVID, the headache is different than anything you’ve had. Not pressure, not migraine, not noise or hangover, but the sensation of the brain itself in a dull throbbing ache. For me, not bad.
My appetite is shot, so ignore this price tag for Triple Tail. That was at the fish store. I’m not paying that kind of money for what I can’t fully taste. By the time I can taste again, the fish will be stale. From now on when I want to spend $10 on tasteless food, I’ll go to Olive Garden. Since the decline of youTube into an ad agency, I’ve sought other sources of documentaries. No luck so far, all that is available are rehashes of the same old topics. The Great Wall, Machu Picchu, Civil War, all worn-out crap from the 1960s. Not one really new idea in fifty years.
By noon, I’m not moving around. I watched some newscasts—you get better information with the sound turned off. I see the peace-loving inhabitants of Gaza are launching fire bombs by balloon. Duh, if they were smart, they’d launch fake rockets knowing the Israelis will fire expensive Iron Dome missiles. It’s a matter of numbers, the ability to launch enough to overwhelm the defenses. Hamas launched over 4,000 rockets last attack. Drones are getting cheaper, missiles are not. That’s how we know there is a laser weapon in the works. What I would do is develop a radar that calculates the trajectory of the rocket seconds after launch, and calculates the trajectory for a nearly instant counter-strike.
This works same as with artillery, but much faster. Anybody who fires a rocket can expect retaliation within seconds, so fast they cannot get out of the area. Collateral damage? Let them worry about that. Do it optically, the rocket must leave a plume of ionized gasses.
Hindu goddess, I think.
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Write the day off. I could do work but that’s always a mistake. I’m getting the normal sings now, like heavy congestion. But I’ve had far worse. I’m existing on hot fluids, finding I can taste lemon with sugar. That will keep me happy though I stress that I’ve been getting steadily worse by the hour since before dawn. And we are damn near the Solstice. Taking an nap, I notice labored breathing with a big of a slight internal whistle, like people who smoke.
This picture shows the “bird menu” feeder. You can see what they prefer by what disappears fastest. Or in this instance, what I have most of left now that Matilda is gone. The top layer, you can just see them, are chopped peanuts, always left until last.
The difficulty of Week 2 is such that I predict things are going to take a third week to plow through. It’s full of millennial quirks that make everything your fault. Like that phrase about to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. They mean their omelet and your eggs. They’ve designed a grid that changes color as you add additional research results. Ostensibly, you best topics for success will be your choices that turn out green. It’s novel. The real thing I’m learning is how to connect with the people who do the actual production. In my day, it was all or nothing with a publisher, but the gig economy means somebody will freelance.
For example, you can shop for different people for each step, such as narration, formatting, cover design, and promotion. From what I see, just being available on Amazon is advertising enough. Take a look at their book page and the categories. That is the basis of this research. This should set the tone for the day as I am barely able to stay sitting up more than a hour without feeling weary. There is a new documentary out there about the Apollo moonshots I would like to refresh on. Where Neil Diamond, that Putin look-a-like, was the first man to sing a pop song on the Moon.
This was an era I feel underappreciated by the world today. The Moon landings are mankind’s greatest achievements. Nobody else has ever come close. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can name the other two astronauts. It was Nixon who canceled the Mars program and the last three Apollo missions. I was just a kid but he was the first president I never liked. His thinking was the Mars program was too risky and he didn’t want a failure on his record. What a pansy. So he approved the tame & useless Shuttle that set up back fifty years. NASA was already scoring brownie points by milking the landing for all it was worth. The useless Shuttle, which before long was sending Ethiopians into space.
It’s true most everybody on the planet with access to TV was watching, but that’s partly because NASA would never announce the schedule. Just the same endless looped simulations. At one point I had stayed up 31 hours because they kept saying the landing was imminent. It was my personal recollections that allowed me to pick which scenes were authentic. As for NASA’s contest to name the Mooniken, they go on about what each name commemorate. I propose a name that signifies the true contributors, the ones who did the most, thought the most, and took the real risks. Call it SAM, for “single Anglo male”.
ADDENDUM
By bed-time I had a steady cough and feel drained. Age lets you know how frail things can get from an ordinary bout of sniffles. I’m not in big pain, just really thrown. Can’t stand up without grabbing a rail, sleep is limited to a couple hours at a time, and whatever the medical term is for feeling hot and cold simultaneously. Without the A/C, I’m soon damp in a room that is not that warml, but click on the A/C and five minutes later, I so cool I need to put on a sweater. Repeat this cycle every two hours.
