April 21, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 21, 2021, the guitar that never was.
Five years ago today: April 21, 2017, smells like Guitar Center.
Nine years ago today: April 21, 2013, Gump Park.
Random years ago today: April 21, 2010, it’s 27 letters, pal.

           Too lovely a retirement morning to work. Pancakes (the kind with raisins and almond milk) and coffee. The double window is open, a slight breeze, who wants too work? Oh, before I forget, a red-headed juvenile woodpeck has appeared. And he likes the cardinal food. Finally, I have a clip, albeit a short and lo-res clip, of Grandpa Red. He will actually tolerate me in the yard sometimes. I’ll work away and see him, but he’s still jittery. This pic is time lapse through a window, taking 147 minutes to capture these few frames, along with another bird I cannot ID from this.

           Once established the bath becomes a regular visit, so once the yard is fixed up, I’ll have better shots. Included in the plans is a camera blind for real close-ups. In the background, you can see the Roman A/C pipes being painted and some of the plants near the base of the bath. This has to happen before this beautiful late winter weather turns into the Sahara.

           The Picture of the Day feature has many bad links. I’ll explain why I do it that way. I know those links often disappear. I could copy them and just link to them other ways, but that is deliberate infringement. Linking to the original is not, it is legally the same as pointing a finger at it. So the links dry up regularly. I leave them, as they are an incentive to read this blog before they go bad, and that counts for a measurable segment of my readership. Why change what is functionally even reasonably well. Enduring blogs are too rare to alter matters even a little too much.

           We can’t let you forget the peach tree, here it is with all kinds of leaves. I gave it the 12-week light fertilizer slightly ahead of schedule as per instructions. I can see two blossoms just starting. A lot of logistics work today over five hours, during which time I baked a spud, chicken & cheese casserole. We working men need a lot of calories, see, ha-ha. I took the hoe to 20% of the front yard, which is now bare of all decorations. No chair, no swing, no elm tree, no ornaments.

           They are all in the back yard now, where only good people get to see them. In fact, can you see the lean-to with all the hillbilly stuff in this next picture. It’s eight feet long and most of it is visible. If you can’t see it from here, the inspector can’t see it from the street. And we have become experts at aerial camouflage. I tended to all the plants and laid out some of the plumbing pipe and such. For example, all the exterior hose bibs (water taps) are just a pipe under the house. You have to kneel down in the dirt to connect anything or get a pail of water. And it won’t be long now for a great pic of Grandpa Red. He’s okay with letting me work back there now.
           The thing is, all this busy-work is keeping me from bigger things. It turns out the yard is convenient for small chores, so I’m walking past to check the mail and get distracted 15 minutes washing the van windows. This kind of thing has defined my daily routine for most of this year so far. Next thing you know I’ll get another programmable coffee maker so I don’t have to get up in the morning as much.

           Double-ha. Have you seen the latest stats for CNN+, the offshoot of CNN that was supposed to work miracles. Polls show they could not pull in 10,000 viewers, but lack of info tells us even that figure is optimistic. Warner Bros. is pulling the plug and few forget that Trump called this years ago. When they no long had him to attack during the Democrat-fueled “orange man bad” sucker job, he said they would regret when he was gone. If ratings had declined at the same rate another seven months (a statistical impossibility but still), they would be less popular than this blog. Neflix is also plunging as fast as Disney, but unlike CNN+, those companies have at some point done and provided some good, at least.
           My interest is where all that audience is going. Habits change slow. The troubles at other media companies show they are not picking up those paying customers. The real America hates Twitter so the rest of the world will soon do the same. No reported increases in any of the other outlets, so my guess is these people are going places that don’t report such things. Alternate media, like Rumble, Gab, even crazy BitChute are growing, but not fast enough to pick up the slack. We’ll, since I’m pretty sure not that many are buying newspapers again.

Picture of the day.
Chiloe Island, Chile.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           More yard work, plus tidy up the original lean-to. A lot got water-damaged before I build that, so I when through to see what survived. It’s okay. No progress on the lighting since the hillbilly arrived. Here’s the new hose arrangement, from the old tap at joist level up to the working reel now at far left. See that open bedroom window? That cuts down the logistics by half. Without that, it is a walk around the other side of the building to get anything from the junk drawer. The siding looks rough because it is. I spent a lot of time years ago scraping and sanding to see what could be done. Not much, it is 80 years old.

           Most of the bad pieces are near the bottom, which prompts me to consider that brick or stone siding. I would then keep the best lengths of old siding and use it to replace anything else I don’t like. All this work is designed for somebody half my age.

           More silence on the Webb telescope and careful of SpaceX hype. They announced tying their own records of launches per year (18 launches) in a manner that you might think they’ve launched them this year. Nope, only 8 this year. How about those smart chopsticks that cause salt to ionize on the surface of food. This makes it taste 50% saltier. That’s iffy for Americans but the Japanese diet is beyond salty.
Keep an eye out, this technology is very new. Musk denies that Starlink can be jammed, but the system was down for a few hours after they claim Russia was the cause. But the fact it only occurred in the Ukraine is too suspicious. Google announces they are opening an office in Africa to improve the locals smart phone experience. This could mean great things for goat herders and rebel factions alike.
           A just-in report lists 22 large food plants that have burned down or had explosions. Here’s all I could find, all since January 14. Biden is blocking grain and fertilizer shipments, so the impact will happen next year. The Democrats no doubt have plans whether or not Trump wins.

1) 4/19/22 - Fire destroyed Azure Standard headquarters in Oregon
2) 4/14/22 - Taylor Farms packaging building in Salinas, CA deemed a total loss
3) 4/13/22 - Plane crashes into Idaho potato and food processing plant
4) 4/11/22 - Crews battled fire for 16 hours at East Conway Beef and Pork, New Hampshire
5) 3/31/22 - Massive warehouse fire at onion packing facility Rio Fresh in south Texas
6) 3/24/22 - Massive Potato Processing Plant Fire Burns In Belfast, Maine
7) 3/19/22 - Fire destroys Walmart distribution center, Plainfield Indiana
8) 3/19/22 - 50,000 lb of food destroyed after fire ripped through Maricopa, AZ Food Pantry
9) 2/22/22 - 7 Injured in Explosion as Fire Engulfs Shearer's Food Plant, Hermiston Oregon
10) 2/16/22 - Louis Dreyfus reports fire at largest U.S. soy processing plant, Claypool Indiana
11) 1/14/22 - Explosion and Fire Reported at Cargill-Nutrena Feed Mill, Lecompte, LA

           Which makes me glad I still have the chicken coop. The space is still there, I wound up using the other lumber for the laundry shed. I’ve measured out enough space for 8 potato plants in the best part of the back yard. I’d plant, but I need to know I’ll be here to weed them. Six weeks at a time in Tennessee lets the whole yard turns into a government policy statement.
           My 4G service is up with no apparent improvement of anything. No new features, same old service. Now I truly dislike Boost Mobile. Virgin was not that great, I just liked it better because I was used to the quirks and the rest made no difference. Boost staff is also a pain in the neck. I know, I can be accused of being a crusty old guy, but let me tell you something. Unless you lead a do-nothing life with zero accomplishments and intend to spend your retirement at Panera, there is a lesson you learn. Woe to those who don’t learn.
           It’s as down-to-earth as it gets. The world is 5% winners and 50 shades of everything else. And the lesson is that once you turn 55, your time becomes more important than the all but that 5%. And you’ll know that tiny group whenever you meet one. The rest are, as far as you are concerned, worth what they are being paid. That makes you time worth more than any filing clerk, any flunkie, any bank teller, any telemarketer, and so on. Waste not a split second of your life giving them any more than due for your purposes. Be polite as possible, but don’t get roped into political correctness.

ADDENDUM

           Here is the inside of a little solar-powered plant light. For the heck of it, let’s take a closer look The functional parts are, left to right, a resistor, battery, LED, transistor, and not shown, a small solar panel. These are sold so cheap for a number of reasons other than mass production. The circuit is simplicity itself. The transistor is a switch, not an amplifier. If any of you budding robot types wondered about that, yes, it can be either, but not both, a wee discrepancy that 100% of textbooks I’ve ever seen bother to mention. But, I said a closer look, let’s see what that means.

     The resistor: it is a military (gold strip) grade 290Ω unit. Probably surplus.
     The battery is a Ni-Cad 1.2V.
     The LED is a special low volt model with a small plate wired inside.
     Not shown is the solar chip, they are cut from broken larger panels.
     The transistor is a specialty product, you can view the datasheet here.

           What’s intriguing (to the curious) is the novelty of the workings. There are no actual moving parts or smarts. First, the reason these things go on sale is that 1.2V battery. They have a shelf life and they are about to go dead, so they sell them to you. This is millennial America. The LED design, I’ve not seen before but I’ve seen the concept. Those LED lights you get from Harbor Freight no longer have a row of LED “bulbs”, but a yellow plastic strip. If you look at the photo again, you will see instead of a diode, assemble that tiny round yellow dot.
           Under the microscope, it is that same yellow material with two tiny filaments near the center. I need a better microscope, or at least one that is easier to use. I took a series of photos but the rest don’t make sense unless you know what to look for. The focus was too sensitive so the best I have is this overhead view of the two filaments.

           The working part is the transistor, it has four pins rather than the orthodox three. There is no logic, no smarts, no gates, no fancy circuits. It works on characteristics the transistor had since it was invented. It activates itself on at around 0.7 volts. The logic works like so. First, we choose a starting point. Noon. The solar chip generates full voltage, turns on the transistor, and channels the tiny incoming voltage to charging the battery. There is no controller, so this eventually burns out the battery. But meanwhile, the sun goes down and turns the transistor off.
           That’s where the fourth transistor pin comes in. It opens a path to discharge the battery though the LED, via the resistor. Once the transistor is switched off, electricity takes the path of least resistance and you get light, which will gradually fade the longer you leave it. The resistor is needed as usual to prevent the LED from burning out, but also to respond as a kind of block current when the transistor is switched on. Ingenious.
           I’m not going to include the circuit diagram because it exists in two states, the transistor on or off. Static diagrams have trouble conveying that. Look it up yourself, already.

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