March 1, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 1, 2021, real A.I.
Five years ago today: March 1, 2017, not because it is good . . .
Nine years ago today: March 1, 2013, world’s best planned accident.
Random years ago today: March 1, 2004, early on-line scam revealed.

           What odd news, patrons of a Nevada restaurant chased the Governor (a radical leftist) out. But just watch Democrats, who did the same with Trump supporters, use this as an excuse to vote themselves taxpayer-funded security. On that count, this could even be a setup. The WHO (World Health Organization) is pushing its “Constitution”. It would require all countries to allow WHO to take over their government in times of “emergency or pandemic” and place the local Minister of Health in charge. Let’s ask Pastor Pawlowski of Alberta how well that works out.

           Another day planned for yard work, which explains the extra picture of food. Today’s big breakfast. Toast, eggs, and spuds with sour cream. Got to get started right. What’s with all the radio ads offering to buy “unwanted” silver? Funny, innit, they don’t want the silver certificates. I’ll sell you some real silver, but the price is $400 per ounce or you get sweet nothing.

           That quick trip east to Winter Haven became a six-hour trek and that’s the end of this morning. I see Wisconsin has determined the $9 million Zuckerbucks for the 2020 election is in the nature of bribery. It is, but as usual, nothing will happen. Announcement after announcement that amounts to nothing, another Arizona. A Russian rocket hit a radio tower near Babi Yar and the Jews claim the victims were killed a second time. We see where they are going with that.
           If you see the meme about the SOTU speech becoming the STFU speech, I’m the one who started that this morning. I’m taking the remainder of the day off to drink coffee and read, which is what everyone should do. I’ll be looking at the BASIC stamp, a microcontroller I don’t use. This address by Biden is predicted to be a gigantic flop and further expose his incompetence. I agree Trump should have scheduled a rally for the same time slot just to see what happens.

Picture of the day.
The other Chile.
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           Giving a scam a new name because it is on the Internet doesn’t make it anything new. What’s amazing is in the so-called information age, so many deadbeats still fall for them. Catfishing, pig-butchering, these are nothing new. Just the old confidence tricks and anyone who thinks somebody overseas is your true love lacks the brains to do a few simple clicks.

           Here’s a closeup of the new window hardware. The brass handles to lift the windows, which are now all back in working condition, and the new latch mechanisms. Show here, they would not match up where the upper and lower frames meet, so they are relocated down on the sill, where they also look better. These locks are quite sophisticated for the job they do. They have three setting, off-on-lock, the last one where the latch retracts and pulls the window tight to the frame. I got them on sale somewhere.
           My filters brought up 16 job ads for COBOL programming, The sites both had a pay range setting, so I clicked in $60,000 or more, the least I would consider to do real programming these days. Nothing came up, so I lowered it to $30,000, still nothing. That’s America, they want a university education to make $15 per hour. Salary.com lists the pay as $66k to $88k, but as ever, none of those jobs are listed. A Big Mac meal is now priced at $13. Biden plans to distract you from his blundering by announcing a war on cancer.

           I was quickly distracted by new on FPGA developments, Field Programmable Gate Arrays. Maybe I should look into them at least far enough to describe behavior. Later, okay, enter a new word in my vocabulary. Alchitry. It’s an outfit that makes good videos. In their run-up to how an FPGA works, they got me to finally understand how and why flip-flops and clocks behave as they do. At first I thought it was a clever contraction of alchemy and electronics, but I think that’s the guy’s real name. The first pieces I ever looked at had price tags beginning at $5,600, but now a kit has come out similar in size to an Arduino.
           Happy I was reading the description, for while engineers have still not gotten over their self-infatuation with jargon, I was able to recognize 90% of what they meant. And Sparkfun has the kit for sale at $140 and they are continually out of stock. Judging by the size of known components, I’d say it is roughly same dimensionally as an Arduino. It requires special connections and the programming language is once again needlessly complex and over punctuationalized.

           The process is similar. You write your code on a computer using a IDE ‘word processor’ and upload it to the board via a USB cable. After two video lessons, I’m glad I learned the basics of the logic circuits. I got sidetracked by this absorbing (to me) topic long enough to build that ROM circuit, which contained not less than 120 components and hundreds of solder joints. Here, I dug it out of the shed for this picture, its primary function was always to quit working by itself whenever moved the slightest.
           The FPGA board can be programmed to duplicate this logic. At any given time, there is only one circuit path working in this entire jumble and I chose it because it was easy for me to imagine the logic gates that would be involved. This design was worked “backwards” from knowing how Arduino code would accomplish the same task by programming pins to active the digit on the far right. The FPGA uses a hardware development language (HDL) that entails learning a new set of terms. Don’t rule anything out. One video showed how to program several Arduino emulators onto what is called the FPGA fabric. I have no doubt the Webb telescope is loaded with these appliances. That goes double for BitCoin mining, but I have no clue how that is done.

ADDENDUM

           What odd news, patrons of a Nevada restaurant chased the Governor (a radical leftist) out. But just watch Democrats, who did the same with Trump supporters, use this as an excuse to vote themselves taxpayer-funded security. On that count, this could even be a setup. If this is for real, I hope it is a precedent. These leftoids are only around 20% of the population and they are trying to tell everybody else how to behave.
           While you are here, let’s look at the cheapest detached house in Polk County. This excludes condos, mobile homes, or anything without the land. It’s in Lakeland, $174,000. Not too bad a part of town and near Lake Parker. But with other prices starting at $256,000, you can bet there is something major wrong with the place.

Last Laugh