One year ago today: October 23, 2020, 72 useless pre-installed apps.
Five years ago today: October 23, 2016, temporary bookshelves, my eye.
Nine years ago today: October 23, 2012, they are losers, anyway.
Random years ago today: October 23, 2008, a fake Nigerian check.
Top story of the day has got to be the five bodies found in the search for the murderer of the Petito woman. All were simply listed as missing persons and it leads to a lot of questions. That’s America. You don’t file you taxes and they find you nab you within ten minutes, but you go missing and it could be years before they respond. I’d say good morning, but I slept until almost noon. I’ve got the $3 sheets up in the shed and have begun installing the shelves. I was going to start on a door but called it a day. Including band rehearsal, that’s almost a 35 hour week put in.
I fed the doggies again, but warned the hillbilly not to let them get dependent on me for food. I’ve got enough to do and now there is a baby possum trying to find a way into the house. In these older places, there are any number of ways he could get in. I found my Hav-a-hart trap but it is missing the treadle. So I jerry-rigged a latch with an old bicycle spoke. Possums move slow, so I’ll listen for the trip. I baited it with a chicken bone. Moments later, here he is, just a baby. I let him under the house where the dogs won’t find him.
Working in the shed is now comfy, there is a fan and shelving. If you see a picture, then I got out there just for my blog followers. I can’t find any of the fence pieces I used for most of the rest of the shedding. Is it off season or are they not carrying it any more. It was cedar and easy to work with. Many of my early boxes were from that material. And now the Biden admin is hitting us with a box shortage of their own doing: cardboard.
My beauty of a sphygmomanoter quit on me. This is the brand new unit I got for nothing, with chrome fittings. I think it might be the stethoscope, which would make repair easy. This reading is very touchy for me, even if I miss a day. They told me the treatment would be for life but you think they’d have made advances since then. How this ties in is I take my readings regularly when I work more than a few hours at a time, but not out in the shed where the heaviest thing I lift is a hammer. I’ve worked out there nine hours before even noticing.
Call me old fashioned but I still believe in daily physical labor of some sort. It’s that or millennials start posting your Wal*Mart jpegs. I finished the novel, “Stigma”, and it could be three shorter books, really. Toward the end the plot becomes less believable as they get out of hopeless situations or seem able to move 150 mph. For it’s length I cannot recommend this book at almost 500 pages. Mercifully, there are only around twenty names to remember. The plot is barely there and seems almost subsidiary at times. Worse annoyance is the characters were being developed for on-going books rather than the story at hand.
Dave Can’t Dance (UK group).
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By 2:00PM it was siesta time and I took full advantage. Blog rules say I must record anything unusual or any changes. You know about my work hours, a huge incentive for me. The band info is up-to-date. The Reb has succeeded at getting me to talk more on the phone, where even getting me on for twenty minutes is no mean feat. It’s amusing how many people think I don’t talk on the phone because I find it new-fangled. Ha, I was on the phone for nearly 15 years and had my fill. Bryne, the luther, bought this truck. It’s in fairly new condition for a 2003. He had a Lexus which he sold as it was too difficult to get in, if you’ve ever had surgery.
Unusual, let me think, oh, I know. I don’t care for flavored coffee. Last week the sampler boxes were half price, which included five K-cups of French vanilla. The first one I thought was coincidence, it was for me like taking a sleeping pill. It was great. Same thing next day. Now, I’ve got one brewing to see if this is for real. Speaking of prices, my silver price app gave a jolt today, but was just a preset alarm to watch when the price hits $24. No, I’m not buying silver, but neither is anyone else. There isn’t any to buy. Right after the housing bubble of 2006, they said it would hit $1,000 per ounce.
Instead, it stayed below $20 for the longest stretch I’ve ever seen. Is it a pressure cooker? My plan always was to do a Kennedy. The problem with silver is selling it, as only specific places, such as coin dealers, know the ropes. And they are required to report any large transactions. So, instead of selling it to a dealer, you sell it to a collector. If it hits $1,000 you sell it to him for $800 cash and move on, letting him deal with any authorities that get involved. The sad news for me is it may never happen yet.
I dozed for a couple hours and thought about starting the shed door, but thought maybe not push the envelope. My energy could be a spell. Take the rest of the day off. I scanned my movie collection, nothing I want to view a second time. I’ll opt for a youTube documentary, although decent material is getting tough to find. I purposely do not buy or patronize anything advertised in this manner.
In other news, SpaceX successfully ignited a vacuum engine at sea level. It is easy to fire a rocket it space, where there is no atmosphere to interfere with the fuel-oxidant mixture. The traditional way around this was to build surface engines on the lower stage and vacuum engines on the upper. The answer is variable nozzles, but nobody has solved problems of building such a contraption.
ADDENDUM
My e-mail provider, Proton, from Switzerland, has been under constant attack by the authorities because it does not record IP addresses to their satisfaction. The Swiss have made an industry out of privacy and simply ruled that Proton is not a telecommunication company under Swiss law. Tipping you off that every other country with any skin in the game does consider e-mail subject to surveillance laws.
Brazil is another leader in privacy protection. While I’m unclear on what and how they protect personal data, the important change is that this law, if passed, will make it illegal to try to reverse or lower protection standards. Under Brazilian law, all future changes must expand, improve, or safeguard the protection. In the USA, the Bidenistas would declare them to be domestic terrorists.
A.I., or artificial intelligence (note the punctuation when I use the term) is scary. That’s because the garbage they are calling A.I. is not the real thing at all. It is more like tons of code designed to rapidly outguess 99% of human opponents. It cannot recognize or react to novel situations but it will handily best most humans if only because they are such predictable creatures of habit. So it was with interest I note how the government reacts to the path this is taking. Look for example, at the UN proposal.
They don’t want a repeat of the early Internet days when people did whatever they wanted. This time they are clamping down in advance. They want A.I. to be governable. They also want it traceable and accountable. Remember the black eye they got when they complained that A.I. profiling was identifying blacks as criminals eight times more than whites. And what a laughing stock they became when their investigation proved the software was working right.. They had to move fast to bury that story.
