March 4, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: March 4, 2021, no shortcuts in Florida.
Five years ago today: March 4, 2017, I like real museums.
Nine years ago today: March 4, 2013, timing is everything.
Random years ago today: March 4, 2010, Three cheers for Canada.

                      Start the day off right by sending this photo to people I know who can’t/don’t cook. Mmmm, you don’t need a timer for this dish because the aroma will tell you when it’s reached perfection. This is a cheddar cheese grits casserole. It needs to cool on that rack nearly 20 minutes, this recipe stays hot a long time after the oven. This batch came out surprisingly great. Addictingly delicious. (Did I just make up a new word?)

           To the surprise on no one paying attention, MIT Tech review has revealed a huge secretive police system now operational in Minnesota. Billed as an increased system for police defense after George Floyd, it has burgeoned into a massive surveillance and data collection operation that “scours” cell phone use and social media to match up with facial recognition. This tracks everybody without warrants or safeguards, which is forbidden in the Constitution. Nor was it dismantled as promised w
hen the trial was over.

           You millennials can consider this the prototype for the regime of fear and oppression that always follows such developments. The police tell you it is to catch criminals, but in short order they will turn any such system on the public. The principle here is that you are not required by law to supply evidence against yourself, and that means not just for now or the past, but also in the future. Ask the convoy truckers if legal behavior can be criminalized after the fact. Once this system is in place on a national level, the government can make you kill your own dog and like it.
           Yep, every passing month, these millennials have less and less to hide. Taking the scooter downtown, I checked for pallets, then bought some heavy duty trash bags. Twenty bucks now. Looking ahead, it probably isn’t a great idea to wait until money gets short, which I can foresee. This is getting brutal and inflation is subject to the ratchet effect. Even if costs go lower, don’t expect prices to drop. Although it is supposed to be illegal, all manufacturers know that once the public has accepted a degree of suffering, such as inflated prices, there is no need to lower prices. Just increase your profits and get ready for the next inflation cycle.

Picture of the day.
Shoebill stork.
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           How many times I gotta tell ya, warrantees are bunk. Even if they honor them, the runaround makes it barely worth the effort. We got through to the Kia manager, who of course has no idea what his staff told us, but no way she can leave the car there for three weeks, which they have now said could be a month. They want her to bring the car in for an overnight test, which is difficult enough—the dealership is 22 miles away. What’s she supposed to do? Hitchhike? As if we don’t know this “test” is to see if they can get away without paying.

           Now, they are evidently aware of the defect, the way their work is stacked up a month behind. They admit the motor could seize up any time, nice of them to say when we called in early February. However, the manager, realizing he was talking to a total babe, said if they will repair or replace the motor, that will mean a second trip to leave the car with them, but Kia would pay for a rental car during the repair. I advised the Reb to get the Civic, which we had not planned on buying until the title could be delivered, which is a delay even for the dealership. They can hang dealer plates on it if she buys insurance.

           This picture shows the degeneration of the American Way, built up in ten generations, turned into shit by two. This package of screws could have used computers to improve it in many ways. What comes to mind is producing the same product for a lower price, or more product for the same price, that was how it is supposed to be. Until we got the entitlement generations, what did they use the computer for? To make sure each package had exactly five screws, for the same price as you used to get a spar pack of 24. Five, an odd number that isn’t enough to finish most projects.
           Back to the car insurance. I thought it over and said take it out of the business account. But consumer complacency is directly responsible for this BS. These warranty people used the entire “political correctness” era to slide these dismal policies into place. In my day they would have got flak from everyone. More than once I got into heated arguments with people trying to pull a fast one by getting offended when I insisted on my rights.
           Others, wimps if you ask me, did not insist. And the outcome is the dealership saying it will take three weeks to fix their own mistake and how you get to work and back for that period is your fucking problem. There is further damage, in that because the Reb was expecting the repair to be the 28th or so, she had to cancel engagements, and now, if the State doesn’t get us that title soon, she has to turn down work. Like I said, I could solve the problem. They admitted to having only three “technicians”. So get three repos, insure them, and let people drive those until the repairs are effected. Costs, yes, but not as much as rentals.

           Not much I can do from here, so I got to raking and cleaning the back yard. In the old days, that was the work area, so there was accumulated debris I had to rake and shovel. It’s done, three bags full. If you want to be the first trillionaire, invent a nano-trash bag that stands up by itself for half an hour, then seals up tight. Let’s see, three bags full is 116 gallons of wood chips, dried weeds, leaves, vines, and sawdust. The hillbilly was supposed to help but he never showed up again. He often screws and eyebolt into a tree or fence post but I wondered by they were always misshapen. Now I know. That dog is strong enough to bend the steel.
           News from Mars. The rover has photographed a flower-like object. If it is a flower or coral, it will be a fossil. It’s tiny and crystals can easily morph into such shapes, so no proof of life. It is about the size of your thumbnail, see pic. And hackers who infiltrated Nvidia have demanded the company remove LHRs or they will make public the source code, which would ruin Nvidia. LHR is “lite hashrate”, a feature that limits the cards speed to what produces the best video. However, crypto-miners like video cards because they can process mining info better than CPUs. I believe the LHR brakes the card speed by half. Don’t expect sympathy, I warned businesses since the last century not to put your critical data on anything connected to the Internet.

ADDENDUM
           I’m so easily distracted by my hobbies, a an after-retirement condition that afflicts those who know a real hobby when they see one. I am going to build that XOR circuit, there is no way I should not be able to figure it out and remember it. Remember this gizmo? I dug it out of the shed because it works on a similar principle. Yet I had no trouble building it because what makes it work is the variation in quality of the components. Two identical capacitors in model and size charge up at differing rates. This circuit is dated 2014 and that is my momento of Memphis who is in show-off mode today.

           This is almost a literal “breadboard” circuit. Nails pounded into the junction points. Brass nails, but they worked as well as copper and on occasion I’ve used steel and just soldered the wires instead of the joints. If you look closely, this is similar to the XOR gate in that it is really two circuits connected by the two diagonal copper wires almost dead center of the layout. As shown, this has 2 LEDs, 4 resistors, 2 capacitors, and 2 transistors. If I could build this 8 years ago, I can hook up some diodes. Come to think of it, this circuit could have benefited from a few diodes itself.
           The large number of hits when I talk amateur electronics is already explained away. I attracted a small following of amateurs here back when I complained how badly the available courses and books were. Similar things have happened with this blog, exasperated people who finally found out they were not alone in thinking the material stinks, but did not know how to verbalize it. No, folks, it is not your imagination, the textbooks and on-line courses all suck at anything beyond the beginner’s level and most MicroSoft books don’t make it that far.

Last Laugh