March 3, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 3, 2021, but they consistently lie.
Five years ago today: March 3, 2017, I support Right To Repair.
Nine years ago today: March 3, 2013, they define “public” for you.
Random years ago today: March 3, 2015, Florida road art.

           As ever, things move along pretty slowly when I’m not around. That’s for anybody who thinks I take forever to do things. Today I built a small fence. Talking with the hillbilly, his best option is to get out of town. He faces a $500 fine, which he cannot pay, or they put down the dog. It is clear they are taking the side of the lady who complained, although two witnesses say it was her dog who attacked. It would have admittedly been a one-sided fight with Cash. Now, soon I have to go to Tennessee to take care of some paperwork. I made him a deal. If he gets all his junk out of my yard and rakes the leaves, I may leave as early as next Wednesday.

           Yep, he still has a pile of stuff near my back fence. It’s been there two months. Animal control told him he has to keep the dog confined for ten days, and wear a muzzle whenever not fenced in. He is not equipped to do that and the bottom line is Cash is untrained, rambunctious, and has nipped at people before. I know it is playful but he often charges right at strangers who do not know that. Such was how I met that dog. If he wants to keep the pet, it cannot be around here. The town is small enough that even if you win an argument, you are marked.
           This curious sign is from the recycle yard. It tells you how third world Florida has become from all the diversification. It tells us they had a real problem with stolen car batteries. Things like that never used to happen in small town America. How does one prove you own a battery? But mailing the payment, that always slows these thieves down.

           My idea of pets are the cardinals. The two male juveniles are now fully grown and aggressive eaters. I checked with Publix about the pallets around back and the manager said they are not for the taking. Hey, I asked. He says most people don’t and recently they had to send the police after a lady who was paying people to swipe them. Talk is they found her with huge stacks of stolen pallets in a storage area.
           Ten years ago I quit shopping at Publix because of their prices. They are Florida-based but everything is half again as expensive as the competition. How do they stay in business with Wal*Mart just up the road? Nobody who is aware is paying $7 for cake mix and $9 for coffee pods, twice what it costs elsewhere.

           And this morning brought news that undoubtedly strikes terror into the heart of the woketard Democrat minority. Texas elected the so-so guy but it is how it happened. The Democrats were always able to get more voters out than the Republicans, enough to turn their minority into a decisive edge. Well, this time Democrat numbers stayed the same, but Republicans came out by the hundreds of thousands more. The Democrat tactic of demonizing the other candidate did not work, and that is extremely uncomfortable news for November, which is only some 5800 hours from now.
           Nor does it take long to figure out the “stagnant” number of Democrat voters means not only are the polls being watched, but that the resource of fake voters has dried up. There is mounting evidence that the Omicron variant of the virus is produced by the vaccine. Reports out of England show that 9 out of 10 COVID deaths are fully vaccinated.

Picture of the day.
Bamboo café, Viet Nam..
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           This is a wire-wrapping tool. They were a bit cumbersome, but when working the frame at the phone company, this was the only way to get any speed. I use a hand model, but I came across this on a Makerpit commercial. These were too heavy to carry all day, so you slipped them into a pocket and invariably collected a desk full of them at work and a drawer full of them at home. Same with phone company stationary. Anyway, I left them behind when I moved east. I wish I’d known they were worth $140 apiece.

           I’ve decided to make time to build some diode gates to see if they can really do the job. My hesitancy is because they are so much cheaper than transistors, but computer makers don’t use them. That usually means anything from latency to susceptibility to magnetic flux. But I’m only interested in their use as gates. I also found a bag of wires I thought were breadboard compatible, but they have a clip on the ends. Maybe I can pair these up with diodes.

           For what it’s worth, I took another day off and finally made progess back west. The system I set up before I left had no permanency, certainly not on the predictability scale I was used to. Back then, you set up a bank account or phone line, nothing changed for years. Today, everything is “secure” because they insist on being on-line, even for things like death certificates. It is entirely geared to get your information on file, when I only want to know if a certificate exists, not what the hell is on it. Fortunately, my people out west are trained to scan everything and after four hours failure on the phones, I got 4 contacts in five minutes with my executor.
           As a result of things dragging on out west, I must update my scenario that I would live until the age of 91 at the latest. What’s saved me is my private pensions, which I paid a fortune into in my 20s and 30s, but you bet now I’m glad I did. But I never allowed for 30% inflation on the things I buy. I’ll advance my plans 8 years, until I’m 99 or I will run out of money. I never planned to begin making investments once I passed 50 or 55. Now it may be worthwhile again if I live long enough for another payout. What say you?

           The biggest change I warned about some time ago. The Democrats have to do something faster to get their hands on the IRA tax-sheltered money than waiting for people to die and taxing the estates. At 71, you have to start cashing in even if you don’t need the money. My system is more flexible so I don’t care how the laws change and the amounts I have to make are not that much. For example, playing in a band and making an extra $400 a month lets me bank money. Time to take another look at any investment which pays a monthly amount, it would not have to be that much as for now I could plough it back in until well past my 71st.
           The US Navy claims to have recovered that F-35 from the ocean. Why would they make announcements over what should be a top secret operation. Do you even want the enemy knowing you can raise planes off the ocean floor?

ADDENDUM
           Maybe we’ll get these diode gates built yet, though I had to resort to on-line searches rather than the proper method of thinking it through. Good, because when I found it, the XOR circuit had several features I shy away from, such as turning a light out by supplying two equal and opposite currents. The answer involved two separate grounds with also use opposing currents to act as switches.

           Okay, since you insist, here is the diagram. The lure for me is there are no "smart" components, these work by arrangment, something you can physically see. What is tricky to see in this diagram is the points at which direct current will not flow because it is routed back to itself. It will seek a different path to ground in that event. I was frustrated because I could not imagine how to build this circuit on my own after an hour of deep thinking. Well, deep for me.
           The working principle here is that direct current can block itself. What makes this an exclusive OR (XOR) gate is what happens when both switches are on. Current will not flow, but unlike a light bulb merely being off, it is because the entire circuit is fully charged. If you can imagine this, leave me a comment, I'd like to meet. You can explain to me what that second ground and resistor are at the top, unless it is to create a pull-down.

Last Laugh