April 18, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 18, 2021, consumer finance protection, huh?
Five years ago today: April 18, 2017, a gal to spoil.
Nine years ago today: April 18, 2013, Steinhatchee.
Random years ago today: April 18, 2007, I decided against CLEP.

           I plowed through the latest song list. I’ve got the material but I’m getting past my prime. I make mistakes if I don’t pay strict attention. That’s no big deal in this trade but I sure notice. I’ll drop a note or play an entirely wrong string and what saves me is years of experience recovering mistakes. My point is ten years ago, I didn’t have to recover so much. Grits and cheese this morning, a few refills of coffee, where is my gumption.

           Today, I’ll throw up a temp shelter for the hillbilly’s gear and maybe go ask his mother what’s going on, but she don’t like me.. Well, that’s unfair to say, she don’t like anybody. So be patient and I’ll get you, oh boy, more yard pics.
           It was yard work, but I also built a temporary lean-to and put all the hillbilly junk under it, with room to park my scooter. A good wind will bring the whole thing down, but it’s the best I can do for a $20 budget. Another project is those magnetic letters I need for video titles. I had originally played with the idea of using a robotic sequence. Too complicated but not out of the picture. The lettering you saw earlier this month, in all kinds of gay colors. I sprayed them black and took a video of it. It’s not yard work, so watch the video, dammit.

           It’s amazing how in this time of turmoil the price of silver is so stable. I read the news feeds today and decided it was more productive to use up my spare lumber and build a lean-to for the hillbilly. Took me nearly three hours. And the utility bill arrived. It has essentially doubled in the past six months. There is often little direct cause for increases in regulated utilities, yet this will be blamed on Biden and it serves him right. I just spend another $9 on a $3 tray of chicken. Since I’ve been here, I spent $10,800 on utilities. And $780 of that has been just this year.
           It’s probably just coincidence, but the FJB flags are appearing on front lawns all over Florida. I’m telling you, get ready for trouble. There isn’t an American alive who believes there is a food shortage in America. They do see the senseless slaughter of chickens and the way the Democrats are blocking grain and fertilizer shipments. That one is going to backfire on the Biden people something fierce.
           Just in case, though, I’m going to invest in 52 packages of mashed potato mix. This departs slightly from only stocking food I normally eat myself, but I’ve found a brand with minimal additives and it supplies 500 calories per package. Meanwhile, a federal judge has upturned the latest mask mandate. You can tell she’s Republican because she’s good-looking. Sure, some libtard judge “up the chain” will undo her ruling BUT the point is far more people now pay attention when that happens.

Picture of the day.
German table setting.
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           Here’s your yard pic, this is the flowers I’ve described. The top photo shows the pampered seedlings in a special drainage tray. The bottom panel shows the seeds thrown on the ground. They are not only busting out, the coloration is better and they are necessarily already hardened off. I avoided a picture of lean-to for now. It used all my spare lumber that was slated for other things, and my motorcycle tarp. Let’s just say I may not need the boards as quickly as I thought. Things under my concern elsewhere have stabilized more quickly than anticipated.

           I picked up a contraption at the Thrift to see what it was. Turns out to be one of those wireless recharging stations for a set of fancy headphones. I took it apart and sure enough, it’s as I figured, but much simpler. My guess was there would be some sort of coil inside. The recharging works on the principle of moving waves past a metal wire. Many people presume, like an electric motor, it is the wire that moves. The principle here is opposite, a stationary wire emits electmagnetic waves, and a another wire converts the wave back into electricity, in this case to charge a battery.

           Now a view of the innards, showing a single strand of 22 gauge copper wire upright at the center. I’m going to cut away the molded casing for a better look. My studies got me thinking that this principle would not work well unless the magnetic waves were so strong they would harm nearby life forms. Yet, here we have something that must work, considering the fancy brand name on the front. I now think the receiving antenna must charge up a capacitor or something to a strength where it can recharge a battery.
           That is because of how rechargers work. They have to “push” electricity back into the battery until the battery pushes back equally. In that sense, the battery behaves like a large, slow discharging capacitor itself. I want a closer look at what is under than metal shielding on the motherboard as seen here.

           Yet another newspaper has fired off an article warning Earth not to draw attention to alien technologies. Remember long ago this blog pointed out how Intuit, the TurboTax people, were cheating. When the IRS agreed to accept their taxware, it was on the agreement TurboTax was free to low income people. Intuit immediately embarked on methods to make that free version hard to find or get. Years later, the politician known has Pocahontas has taken up the issue, just before the midterm elections, of course.
           And how many times do people have to be warned about Win 11. It is spyware. And the US Navy reports downing a drone with an “all-electric” laser. Since lasers are electric what the Navy means is for the first time they had an electric power supply large enough for the job. Lasers have been around a long time, the problem finding a power source that lets them do real damage.

ADDENDUM
           I sparked some interest referring to the Volera V-One, the printer that used melted solder to produce printed circuit boards. What I wrote at the time was accurate, the projected price was $1,500. The actual price is $4,200 plus tax, shipping, and handling. The unit has an added drill attachment, that much is new. You still must drill the component holes and anybody who has mucked with tiny drill bits knows you buy those by the carton. Lead time is a month and a half. They’ve addressed the clogged nozzle problem by making the whole assembly into a disposable tip.
           In space news, the Webb telescope has reached operating temperature around five days ago, but not a peep out of the agencies, who tend to regard the equipment as their private property. And NASA reveals again how far it has fallen behind when fueling their latest rocket had to be called off. This procedure was effectively perfected forty years ago, but NASA still regularly screws up on the basics.
           Amazing, it is, how your average American can no longer afford a house but they won’t just stop buying them. Sure, you gotta live somewhere, but that’s the point. As long as you pay rent beyond your means, you’ll never rise above where you are. I had this problem when I was 20, house prices rising faster than I could save the down payment. The answer is easy, just put off doing things like getting married. That seems to be a tough one for the entitlement gang.

Last Laugh