One year ago today: December 23, 2020, a freezing day in Georgia.
Five years ago today: December 23, 2016, over at Dadeland.
Nine years ago today: December 23, 2012, 3,850 years.
Random years ago today: December 23, 2008, grunting noises.
I spent the first six morning hours flattening my learning curve. (I learned locating people on-line is not the job for me.) Concluding that I will have to use better sources to find people now, I looked at a dozen comparative examples. I guess why I never updated my best practices is simply because I’ve never had any reason to locate stupid millennials before. But I did warn about the nightmare they’d inflict on themselves. On-line info is now a big part of that mess. Again, it is the direct result of sheer stupidity. In the rush to be first to market, many of the players made no provision for on-going upkeep.
Ridiculous as it seems, Wal*Mart is out of coffee again. They are explaining away many stockouts are the product being “out of season” except Florida only has one season. Fortunately, I have my coffee nest, shown above, to ensure daily infusions of caffeine, which I have been immune to now for over 100 years. Dig deep enough and you’ll find hot chocolate and that tea with the cinnamon. If you find any French vanilla, you can take it all home with you.
It was bitter cold again until past noon, so I used the time to get a feel for what skip-tracers do these days. I’m not buying the tale that Internet searching has made it easy. Per search, it was not that much faster than having the phone books from the 50 biggest cities like they used to. I also encountered some new site I would otherwise never bother with, like Newbur. At this time, I’m not interested in sites that demand too many details about the searcher.
My house is central in the vicinity, so when the neighbors get into a gabfest, I hear all, usually from behind my fence. And that is where I was working soon as it warmed up a bit by noon. I would advise my overseas readers that regardless of what you may hear in the news, amongst the populace, Jews are very unpopular people. I would not say many of the things I overhear, but let me just say never get the impression that most Americans support Jews or Israel. At street level, I’ve never met an American who doesn’t hate the Jews, but they own the infrastructure and can hurt you.
Christmas Island crab march.
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It looks like little progress today. I had to wrestle with some pieces that warped and make a few design changes. The deck is now longer than 12 feet, but not much. I never did find the right flashing. I focused on getting the joists finished and lining up work for next day, when things will go fast. The work all around here is going faster than because I’ve finally passed the phase where most things are ready to go. By that, I mean most jobs I can now do in the shade, or under shelter. There are outlets near most work areas, the lights let me work past dark. Tools can now fit all in one area, same with supplies like hardware. It sincerely took a long time to get there.
Physically, I’m experiencing a type of tired I thought was long over for me, the tired of good old sustained labor. I piled lumber in Montana and other manual labor when I was young, so I know the difference. Labor is not good exercise but it wearies the same muscle groups. I’m glad [today] because I thought such days were over but I’m now in the third month of an energy plateau. What do you think? Will I have that laundry deck done before Xmas?
No word from the band for a number of days. I’ll take that to mean the holidays but recall my warnings that this band suffers from lack of leadership, or in terms of what I know to be needed to move ahead, it lacks discipline. My original agreement with the rhythm player who died was that I’ll play bass, but if they want me to sing I am not versatile. He said he spoke for the band that they would learn my material because singing was something they valued. To date, they have only played four or five of my tunes they already knew. They have not learned a thing.
ADDENDUM
One area that’s new is the study of exoplanets. These are usually found by detecting the tiny differences in light intensity as the planet crosses in front of the star. Webb should be able to detect the arc of the planet’s edge, which in turn means if there is an atmosphere, it can be analyzed. Note that telescope time is first given to scientists who helped in the design. Only after that are outside requests taken.
Don’t get anxious, the first 5 or 6 months will be occupied aligning and calibrating the mirrors. Makes you wonder if the delay is the mechanics or the millennials. If you want to know how stars looked 3.6 billion years ago, you are going to have to wait until June, 2022, minimum.
