August 6, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 6, 2021, new “XP” computer.
Five years ago today: August 6, 2017, house A/C work.
Nine years ago today: August 6,2013, toothpaste vs silver.
Random years ago today: August 6, 2020, weed whacker anniv. coincidence.

           Another packed Trump event last evening. This came from England, featured as “picture of the day”. These unbelievable crowds are a signal to the bad characters that there will soon be a day of reckoning. Events like this set woketards shivering. I notice there are fewer cries for justice than there are for revenge. Hopefully, I’m far enough from Tampa not to worry, them city folk know out here people target practice for fun. Elsewhere, in Australia, one guy hunted down the doctor that vaxed his relative who died. In America they fined a podcaster $45 million for something he said they didn’t like. And I decided on a fine breakfast of grits and sausage. Plain grits, with butter, salt & pepper.

           Continuing my read on Andrew Jackson, he was quite the yahoo in his day. Gambler, soldier, lawyer, politician, I take it careers were somewhat easier to come by in that era if you knew how to read and write. He killed a bigmouth in a duel and married a divorced woman. That takes understanding of the times, as back then a divorce took an act of legislature. That’s correct, for a divorced woman would inevitably become a ward of the State. No jobs and nobody would marry her. Jackson did. That’s wha the fatal duel was about. I’m up to the part now where he sold all to pay his debts except a log structure around five miles from my digs in Tennessee.

           The focus of this [next] picture is hard to capture with a camera. Note in the early morning most colors are subdued. But at the base of the tree to the left is my wild-grown devil’s backbone. When trimmed back it returns this bright green color. The trick is, you never know when to cut it back. Today I’m getting the base put in for the water heater. I notice a slight amount of damage to one spot that got missed when I inspected the unit, but for that price I could afford to throw it out if it gives trouble.

           It’s a cycle I have to leap in somewhere. The tank needs pressure which I don’t have unless I replace the feed line which I won’t do until the tank is ready and so on. Everything works, so I’m taking it slow and double checking on-line for helpful hints. The plate says 30 gallons with an additional 43 gallons the first hour. I don’t know the existing tank but I want it out of the kitchen. During the move, I may take a look at the heating element. This old tank is to become the pre-heater ambient holding tank.
           This will be right next to the new washer. Did I mention the washer has a quirk? Yeah, if you throw in your underwear, when it comes out of the tub, it is inside out. I only began to notice after around the first five loads. I’ve tried tricking it by turning all inside out ahead of time. Nope, some phenomenon is at work here. Anyway, I’m a fan of hot washes and I don’t believe the “tests” that say cold gets just as clean. Anyone who’s washed a car knows warm or hot gets it cleaner.

           In yet another woketard demo of lunacy, the NYT is advocating that symphony orchestras cease blind auditions. That’s where the prospective musician plays behind a screen so that the music is the sole criteria for selection. According to the Times, this means the orchestra does not “reflect the community” and thusforth, the orchestra needs more gender, race, and something known as “other factors”. Great, now we get to hear “Minuet In G” beating on a hollow log.
           Later around noon, I watched the highlights of the Trump rally pictured above. He’s punching harder, now referring to DC as tyrants. And this J6 committee is a laughing stock. I don’t think anyone with a functioning brain cell believes a thing they say. Even if they have something, they are weak people with weak characters with all tvvv met them in church.
           What worries me is they know they cannot win in the polls, so they have to try something drastic. Time is running out. Even theDemocrats know it is political suicide to let Harris anywhere near the White House. I don’t know the issues or the people, but I know trouble when I see it.

Picture of the day.
Stone wall final exam.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Not a thing got done on the water tank deck. No, I didn’t fall asleep, I can explain. One hesitancy on clearing the brush is two of the larger limbs hung over the road. The city is adamant you cannot cut down trees that fall on the roads without getting a permit to seal off the approaches. As I strode out to the van, my back not hurting this afternoon, I spotted the city works crew. They were repairing something and sure enough, my street was blocked off. Scrounging every extension cord I could find, I was out there with the new electric chain saw for 3-1/2 hours, hardest physical labor in years.

           It is difficult to photograph brush piles, but this one with all the green are the branches I lopped off prior to cutting the limbs. This pile, one of two, is the larger at twenty feet long and nearly five feet high. Nowhere could I find something for scale and it was 91ºF in the shade so no, I didn’t go looking. If I was standing in the center of this picture, this pile would be chest deep.

           To get the branches, I had to cut while standing on a ladder. Not my favorite work, as the ladder moves when a branch falls. These were twenty to thirty feet long, close to ten inches in diameter at the tree end. You can see a couple pictures of the logs cut, stacked along the road and the other lying in the yard. I don’t have the fondest memories of this sort of work as a child. All the really hard parts are done so after this it is mostly tidy up, which I’ll wait for clouds.
           There are actually two types of shade. I had hoped to work in the cool shade of the north wall, where the laundry deck is. It’s significantly cooler than the open shade where I worked on these trees. If a breeze comes along, it is just as hot as the still air. Not knowing how long that city crew would be busy, I had to work hard and fast the entire stretch—and I did so with no consequences. Mind you, like most people over 30, it’s amazing how one can get winded just bending over and straightening up.

           Working with the new saw is where experience makes things better. The chain only came off once. I learned to let the saw cool after a long cut and I like that new quick-release chain knob. Also, the chain from my now kaput first saw fits the blade. I figure I must have sheared the gears on the old saw so now nothing thicker than my wrist, with a few exceptions. Towards the end, the city crew saw what I’d done and gave me the thumbs up. I lifted more than a ton of wood and though I’m fine, I’m wisely stopping for the day. I got a big bag of store-bought cole slaw and some ice cold root beer. Time to put up my feet and find out how Andrew Jackson is doing, now that he’s a General.

           Let’s check the news feeds again. I’ve got this feeling somebody is going to royally mess up and trigger something drastic. Nope, not today, but some guy got a model rocket to land same as SpaceX. That is something incredible because I know how the microcontrollers had to be programmed and coordinated. Watching the early tapes of his failures I could see his development of the winning formula. Over a period of eight years you could see him slowly drawing the conclusions I described around the time I stopped building and focused on learning. Wish I’d known the guy, I could have saved him seven and a half years.
           The site is BPS if you want to follow the progress, he documents everything. He mentions money casually, but the fact is he’s got a ton of it. My little robot club balked at spending the $20,000 to assemble a basic apparatus. I cannot imagine what it must cost to be launching rockets of the size he’s got. But I can say one thing for sure, he isn’t building them on that skimpy workbench behind him in the videos.

           I’ll describe the winning combination. One controlling chip that does nothing but call subroutines on as many other chips as are present, the Arduinio limit is around eight. The subroutines are programmed directly into the subroutine chips, moving all the controls and sending sensor data only back to the main program. In other words, the controlling chip never stops to issue controls or commands to devices, it only calls subroutines. You may recall some of the programming (called sketchs) I posted, though I doubt I would have revealed any of my advanced work. The first thing a coder would say is, “That doesn’t look like programming to me.” Exactly.
           Fred and I back at the old computer shop used to discuss this manner of programming at length, but for us it was only theoretical exercise. I never got my first microcontroller until the year we decided we’d have to eventually close the store. We’ve both met people who call themselves programmers that never get to that level, which we considered the starting point. For anyone who wants the short description, my MAIN program looks like nothing but nested DO loops that call subroutines. The RAM project had a loop 28 layers deep. Ah, some say, the limit is 8. To them, I say, get out of the bush league.

ADDENDUM
           I finished the Jackson paperback. I’ll never understand how these people were constantly in debt yet you find they have big farms, houses, horses, and a trade. Jackson was a lawyer. I did not know he pretty much stopped the Civil War from happening in 1830. The same old clash—does the Fed have the right to tell States what to do? My answer is no, not unless it is spelled out in the Constitution. Thus, Federal income tax is a criminal act.

           A late cloud cover had me outside again, this time to completely bug spray the perimeter. It takes a day to clear the mosquitoes, which now I’ll need being behind on the water tank. I have no way of testing the unit. This is more oregano trimmings destined for the stew pot. No, not for making stew. Just the right size pot to simmer the cuttings.

           Still having enough light, I fired up the lawn mower. Problem, but this time I know exactly what the problem is and what is needed to fix it. The gas line is broken or plugged. I need to build more wooden boxes. Smartest move I made recently was building sturdy boxes for my tools. The plan was to make them big enough to contain spare parts, any small tools, and space for the extras you normally would need. Screw the idiot engineer who makes the plastic cases so small you can’t even fit the power cable back in after one use.
           I don’t like the new Trulia website. You cannot narrow down what you want. Instead, the site blasts you with every house for sale in the state. So typical of the millennial mentality, they will tell you what you want to do. Just because a website can do something doesn’t mean that you should. The page no longer lets you navigate by county or by radius. Okay, maybe there is a way, but it is not plain and obvious and that’s what I’m talking about. You know, there is a way to tell if you are a website loser. It’s following links that say things like “other visitors also liked . . .” But, I once knew Ken Sanchuk, so I accept there are people to go on-line to see what other people who go on-line are doing. Duh.

Last Laugh