One year ago today: October 2, 2020, St. Augustine.
Five years ago today: October 2, 2016, remember this work?
Nine years ago today: October 2, 2012, 50,000 strikes.
Random years ago today: October 2, 2014, quality dropped immediately.
Most of the day on the van, but I cannot find the problem with the A/C. So I looked at that small leak in the radiator very closely. Dang, it is right in the plastic housing where it cannot be repaired, although I might try some epoxy due to the shape of the crack. I took time to go over the song list and to relearn Conway Twitty’s “Make Believe”. I tend to write him off as a showman but he can belt it out when he wants. Hmmm, so can I. Today is Name Your Car Day.
Later, I can get the van to behave but that radiator is going to let me down. True, I can just stop every couple of hours to check the water, but that means waiting for the engine to cool down. Minimum half an hour. Up to now, the short local trips means I can check it before I leave, but those a incidences I can plan ahead and when it isn’t raining.
Some real horror stories are coming out of Australia. The authorities there should be ashamed of themselves, but that’s part of the problem with left-wingers. They are trained to shrug off such feelings because they know it is your neck on the block. Google has announced they will disallow their users to have ad blockers. It’s a sign of something going wrong over there. Google claims they “mistakenly” tracked millions of users. By mistakenly installing the updates on their devices, I suppose.
Blog rules say tell you what I accomplished today, even if it was nothing. I did marginally better [than nothing] by repairing two drawers. That’s the cheap-arse drawers in my single bed. Not wet, not stressed, just not build to handle anything. One drawer was empty because it could not be opened against the dresser and it still fell to pieces. That’s the $30 kit slapped together so JZ didn’t have to crash on the sofa in 2016. Still, even IKEA grade furniture should last five years if not used.
So, let’s find what is notable about this job. Well, foremost, I now live in a clamp-rich environment. I own 16 clamps and it is true, you never have enough. Word to the wise, always buy them in pairs, or at least in even numbers. The drawers have a dado groove around inside perimeter which forms the only support for the bottom plate, itself another form of manmade pressboard. It must warp in the Florida humidity and eventually worked its way out.
Thus, it was into the shed and in record time for me, the reinforced plates are now clamped and glued into drawers with reinforced inside corners and extra screws where needed. The plates still have a bow but I hesitate to add a spar until I examine how they fit back into the base. Every square inch in the rooms is precious as both bedrooms serve a double purpose. One is an office, the other is a studio. If you see pictures [of the drawers] then I got mobile. Or tomorrow, since I already locked up the shed. This is the blog that knows how badly you want to see pictures of clamps squeezing and glue drying.
Mexico City.
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Here’s the first decent photo of Mercury in how long now? This is one of six planned fly-bys intended to slow the spaceship into orbit in around four years. Mercury is too close to the Sun to make it much more than a curiosity. I doubt much useful is there in the way of discovery, but am not discounting the impossible.
I reluctantly yanked that fuse and the problem has not recurred, but then, there have been periods of a week before so we shall have to wait and see. It sort of makes sense, since the motor of the van has been replaced, why not the CD player. I sometimes wonder why there is such a powerful motor in a van, forgetting it is a replacement. That’s the 4.0L V-6 that just honks.
Who remembers “Rub It In”, the put some motion in your hand song? It’s on the list, a simple I-IV-V progression. I’ve glommed onto it though this band is strangely non-committal about what we will actually play. So I don’t knock myself out on a tune until they repeat it a few times. The point is, this tune lends itself to those “semi-spectacular” (my wording) descending bass runs that I transcribe from a piano. These are my four octave specials on the three octave fretboard.
So instead of practicing what I should, I was two hours into devising these runs. Plural, because the effect can be enhanced by playing them over chord changes. The trick is to make it seem like you can’t get out of it. When you are low man on the stage totem pole, every such draw has worth beyond usual. We’ve had enough rehearsals now to have personalities begin to interact and although not all is perfect, and it normally isn’t, this band is not full of dynamic entertainer types. Trust me, I’ve toned down considerably already.
ADDENDUM
Politics. Crazy Hillary is back in DC, thrashing around. She cannot accept she not only lost to Trump, a lot of it was due to her own lunatic machinations. Trust me, I grew up in an environment where others could never stomach being bested fair and square. For sure, I know every symptom of that head-case disease. It can be slowed, but never stopped and never cured.
She’s running about the place lashing out against Trump. I’m reminded of the pure hatred of Churchill for Hitler. Winnie spent a lifetime clawing upward and kissing butt, then along comes this Austrian with zero political experience and gains power seemingly overnight. It is now generally known that all the skullduggery she accused Trump of to get elected are the methods she and her cronies have been using for years. Such is the American power structure, based on wealth, that nothing has ever happened to her. Yet, I mean. You don’t expect people whose parents died because of government to ever forget that, do you? I know plenty of people, who, if they were in charge, would give her the firing squad.
