One year ago today: November 15, 2020, Sparkie at rest.
Five years ago today: November 15, 2016, still reading “The Rose”.
Nine years ago today: November 15, 2012, my last birthday “party”.
Random years ago today: November 15, 1982, Byron Bay, Australia, and Sonja.
This morning I drove through Tampa. The place has a detestable road system. The freeway linking it to Orlando is one of the busiest in the south, and they botched the job. The road (Highway 4) goes into the northeast quandrant of the city and stops. You have a choice of another freeway (SR 274) which was designed to be inadequate and runs across an even worse causeway with no shoulders. Even a flat tire can block the lanes for hours.
Oh, and to clarify a remark in the yesteryear section, my last birthday party refers to the last time I had a formally planned-in-advance party in the week of my birthday. Any time in a week because this blog does not specify my actual birthdate. Hey, we know about consequences over here. You might as well point out how well this blog, in the long run, cancels itself out.
Here’s Hot Girl, who I now call Lady Girl. She has not been around for a few days, so maybe the hillbilly left town. Alas, even if I wanted to take he with me to Tennessee, the van is so unreliable, I would not want to be caught on the road with a dog to take care of. And this is no watchdog, she is spooked by anything. Sad to see her go. The ride out to Tampa and back shows the van can function if taken really easy. But I’ve lost confidence in it. Mapquest said the trip was 53 miles. It was 71. And I got boxed in so I had to take that miserable causeway.
Up on the shed roof, I finally tacked the metal pieces down, though I will later have to caulk any damage I did. The pending road trip means I did not want to leave them as there is always a nice windstorm here every few weeks in the winter. And winter it is, I had to haul both space heaters out of storage. After that is was comfortable. I never did invest in those room heaters. One offshoot of that is I have some spare budget dollars to help buy the new van. My cap is the $10,000 IRS reporting limit. But I should get something pretty nice for that kind of bucks.
A new word has entered our local vocabulary. Without a lot of explanation, here is the term: FFWOTHk ***. It appeared, possibly in error, in an e-mail reply from the pet turtle, its meaning lost in translation.
Farmer Ladies Tug-of-War Team.
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None of the dealerships would give me the requested $2,000 trade for the van. Most of them did the unbundling trick of adding back “dealer fees” and such to the most I could haggle down prices was around $1,000. My goal is always $2,000 because I know that is the margin they build in. I know I can get $2,000 for it selling independently, plus the old Taurus should pull in at least $1,000, I may be able to swing a sweet deal yet. Here’s a so-so picture of the shed wall a few days ago, to liven up this page.
As things heat up in Australia, the government doubles down—they must really think their strong-arm police force is enough. I don’t understand how a minority can rule in a democracy, since most have provisions for removing unpopular types. Look at Virginia, who lopped off the heads of the Democrat hydra and they’ll make history if they start arresting people. Take note, woketards, Kamela is MIA, Biden is wondering what hit him, and Pelosi is packing her suitcases.
Wyoming Republicans vote to purge Liz Cheney as a member, Fauci tells us our concept of “freedom” needs upgrading, Bannon scores a huge publicity win, and a dozen more confirmations of what Trump said about everything woke. My hypothesis they have to be mentally incompetent to be a liberal in the first place, so mucking up economics is, for them, a given.
Music. A small but unexpected development. I was not intended to do harmonies, but there are spots that need treatment. Usually at the insistence of Randolph, I do my best. Turns out my singing tends to be smoother than the others and with the keyboard guy, we get quite a good sound. I can’t do the job without memorizing the notes, which I’m devoting time to nowadays. Some credit is due, since the effort is challenging to me. My role seems threefold, playing bass, remembering lyrics, and singing them in an unnatural range. For now, pick any two.
How do you like working around people who don’t do their homework? I find it exasperating, the more so when they expect extra for the hoops they go through. Parson hands out the song list, but he has no concept of title structure, or sorting. Some songs are listed by author, some by date, others by performer. You have to read the entire list to find most items, hoping you land on a near-duplicate. Printing up a proper list just emphasizes the mess and no sense making waves.
That first gig changes bands. If anyone else has noticed this, they’ve kept silent. One change is it stamps the band as a working entity and this removes the simplest problems. At the same time, it brings up the complicated ones. Some members now want to move on to their favorite orchestral arrangements, while others say whoa, you still can’t play the bulk of the existing song list and that material is simple as shit. Soon enough, we’ll have the perennial go-nowhere discussion of song choices, where there are two camps. The one that says play what you like, the other says play only what the audience likes. There really is not as much overlap a many people, especially mediocre musicians, think.
While few bands want to be like other bands, yet they gravitate to many of the same songs. This band has not yet had the “Hotel California” argument, but it’s coming. Watch the audience. For that song, fewer people will applaud, but they will do so very loudly. Greenhorns at crowd-pleasing will crow about the volume. The wise man will point out the majority of the assembly had turned back to their beers. The only formula that works is doing the greatest good for the greatest number.
ADDENDUM
One of those ideas that keeps coming around is the centrifugal satellite launch. Here’s an interesting video of a 1/5th scale model. This idea makes the rounds like the blimp and flying car, but I think with enough computer technology, the centrifuge has a chance. The speeds and tolerances have to be incredible, as the maximum speed is reached on the ground before launch. It would continue to slow as it fought gravity to reach altitude. That is the force at which the payload would be scrunched against the rim of the centrifuge, ruling out anything alive.
To break free of gravity, it would still have to be traveling 17,600 mph when it reach 60 miles high, the layman’s definition of outer space. The video shows the ground crew celebrating a test, but the accompanying literature says the payload reached tens of thousands of feet. Guys, that is nothing to crow about. The kite-flying record is over 16,000 feet. The article specifies it was a scale model but these things expand geometrically in mass and performance.
They specify small LEO (low Earth orbit) so maybe there is some hope. However, I expect most of these standard ideals will be what is still circulating the world for another fifty years. That is, until there is a breakthrough, which will not happen when the brainwashed millennials are a majority.
