One year ago today: June 27, 2021, establish the college fund.
Five years ago today: June 27, 2017, no more old ladies.
Nine years ago today: June 27, 2013, Remember the Lanai Kai!!
Random years ago today: June 27, 2010, bookstores & coffee.
A galleon shipwreck in the news, the San Jose again. It sunk over 300 years ago, in 1708, but did so in a spot now considered territorial waters. Plus, it was a military vessel and maritime law treats those differently. Alas, I fear an age of treasure hunting will end as endless lawsuits tie up the spoils. This is why I’ve always said, if you find treasure, don’t tell a soul. I feel without the profit motive, people will stop searching and that is always a loss. This picture shows Spanish cannon cast in 1655 from the wreck. If you must see how the robot found things, look at this actual grid of the site.
How’s it going for all you people with nothing to hide? There are already warnings that texts, emails, location tracking, and any info entered into on-line “period apps” will be used as evidence in States that outlaw abortion. Anybody rounded up by this, all I can say is it serves you right. I’ve been an advocate of on-line anonymity since day one. What’s more, a group of lawyers have been busily drafting “space law” so even if you escape Earth, it’s not likely you could claim a spot on the Moon or even an asteroid.
The “new” Israeli techology that can see through walls is not new. It is laser-radar, discussed in this very blog long ago. They’ve just made it portable. I was mockingly amused by an article about how to be influential in the workplace. That anyone would suggest you try that without really being influential, I mean. My years at corporate America showed employees quickly weed out anybody trying anything funny along those lines. It’s partially why my first plan was to get out of there.
I disliked there was no middle ground. The corporation figured after seven years, they owned you, so it would seem the decision was comply or not comply. Well, there is a narrow third option, and that is do as they say but otherwise distance yourself from taking sides, fully aware in a crisis both sides would gang up on you.
By now you’ve figured out where I fit. But was I influential? Rhetorical question, because I know I was. They regularly sent the problem cases to work beside me until they straightened out. The company computerized while I was there. I openly made it a point that anyone, even people whose politics or office behavior I detested, could always ask me for computer help. It was quite the ritual. I would have them quietly tell me the problem, fully understanding they came to me rather than ask their coworkers. Then I’d make some serious faces duplicating and diagnosing, “why, your unit is not responding to interrupt connects, so it isn’t your fault.” And so on.
This picture is my redneck clock radio. See? It’s one of them modern wonders, all electric. You just turn the wee dial to what time you want to get up, set it on top of the radio, and hope the battery does not die. The radio is on a timer, 5:30AM to 10:30AM, 12:00PM to 2:00PM, and 5:30PM to 9:00PM. You don’t gotta do nothin’ except listen. What a marvelous age we live in, once you get rid of all that Sony junk between 1990 and 2020, you know, the crap with all the controls on two buttons and won’t come back on by itself after a power outage. That crap.
Who remembers the light bulb cartel? Are they still around? Once again, in my bedroom chandelier, four of the five bulbs burned out within a week of each other. Every two years, it seems. That’s another thing, how do they know when I’ve got a crick in my back and can’t reach high? At the rate I’m recovering it will be Friday before I can take things out of the freezer. You don’t miss the ability till you can’t. No lifting coat hangers, adjusting the sunshade, lifting the trash lid, reaching the A/C knob, hiking on a shirt, slamming the van hatch, or setting the bird sprayer. Not easily I mean, and allow a minute to rest up after.
Kakslauttanen arctic hotel, Finland.
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Spry or not, I’m having a go at repairing that washer. So far, on-line is useless, since the intellect out there cannot grasp that a “tub not filling” can be caused by a faulty drain as well as a faulty water supply. Smart phone use does not require mastering such skills. Here’s view of some of the plumbing along the laundry deck. Eventually, it will be painted. But you can see electrical outlets and water lines ready whenever I am. The washer is pulled away from the wall while I investigate why it isn’t filling. My work isn’t that handy, but all the wiring and tubing you see here worked right the first time, and that’s good enough for me.
That was part of the “America Way”, where certain things were done at the customer level to, I dunno, to make the customer happy in ways that did not translate strictly into lower prices. In my teens, when I was down and out, there were times I would have had a 10 cent coffee for breakfast if a waitress had not gave me a free sandwich. But once the third world became a noticeable influence Main Street, it made any losses all the more glaring. The efficiency experts began to have traction with what used to be theoretical exercises.
That individual coffee refill to the individual who needed it was replaced by a billboard out on the highway screaming lower prices. And forget sleeping sitting up at the bus depot unless you had a ticket. Yes, I’ve been there. It never hurt me, but gone were the standby flights to Europe for $79. We’ve been assimilated and contrary to what we’re told, it did not improve a thing except for the newcomers who had nothing to lose.
A phone call got me up from a late siesta, Wilford the guitar player was downtown and invited. Finding the place dead, I gave him some pointers on rhythm playing and we thought that the end of it. Except these three ladies over near the piano led to me sending Wilford out to the van to bring in some guitars. We wound up playing 16 tunes, many of which he did not know but was following the guidelines I’d just supplied. Lots of pics, but none by me. They bought us drinks for two hours to keep playing. Wilford, who has never played a full gig before (surprise to me) could hardly have had a better initiation.
By simply following the rules, he entertained the whole bar, who apparently could hear us from sixty feet away. I did the vocals and had to call it quits when my shoulders said, “Whoa”. There’s your clue playing guitar is a different process than bass. I can play bass all day. And one of the top ten rules is quit playing the instant it becomes work.
ADDENDUM
Time to take another look at refurbished DC-3s. It’s been enough time since I last looked to find out if the concept is good. They rebuild the design, adding turboprops, new avionics, and an extended hull. The result is a very recognizable airplane. The difficulty in searching for material is the original “Great IBM Screw-Up”, which made three idiotic errors that will plague a hundred years of computer users. They are listed below. Back to the DC-3, there are reports from South America that the turbo airplanes are crashing.
My guess is there is inadequate turboprop maintenance in the jungle. The older DC-3s, are rugged and cost $300,000. Stack that up against $8 million for a turbo (called a “Basler”).
The “Great IBM Screww-Up” is three amateur mistakes you make when you hire the cheapest people possible. They are:
1) Not inventing unique characters for program controls.
2) Ignoring the 27th letter of the alphabet, the space.
3) Making capital and case letters the same, and ignoring punctuation.
You can got through on your own to see the hardships caused by this initial round of stupidity. People who cannot type or punctuate should never have been allowed near computers, no matter what other technical merits they possessed. Now the world is stuck with a zillion errors a day all so the uneducated have a slight advantage when typing file names. MicroSoft compounded this stupidity with gimp-features, especially all those “hot key” combinations that cannot be disabled without losing something you want. Both companies chose to ignore that long row of function keys that now sit useless atop most keyboards.
Let’s see if anything new & worthwhile showed up in Atlas Obscura Dot Com. What’s this, the menu of an old English King? Let’s compare it to what I have. Can’t say, as the title is misleading. Based on analysis of nitrogen content in skeletons, they ate a grain-based diet supplemented with beef and mutton. Vegetarians have low nitrogen. There’s more to it than just taking a chemical reading. If you eat beef, your nitrogen level goes up, but not as much as if you eat a carnivore, which itself eats other meat. I learned something.
