One year ago today: November 1, 2021, what went wrong.
Five years ago today: November 1, 2017, worst money order design.
Nine years ago today: November 1, 2013, a record 448 miles.
Random years ago today: November 1, 2006, ink is expensive.
My appetite for lime juice is back, Florida is the place for the real thing. It’s still pitch black outside so I’ll opt for a big breakfast and meet my blog rule of randomly mentioning food. Today, home made potato slices with cheese, which goes by a number of names. I’m pondering if I should finish the sheathing on the silo today or start more important tasks. An hour later, now past 7:00AM, it’s still dark. Tell those daylight savings people to start doing their jobs.
Here is a view of the pieces of perf board now sliced into 16” strips where possible. These are destined for the north side of the silo, finally making that as secure as originally intended until I get around to some real siding. Come over and give me a hand and it will all be done in an hour. Otherwise, I’ll need the better part of two days. And this post contains nothing but dreary pictures because that's how it goes today.
Moments later I’m bitten by the Florida tse-tse fly and got nothing done. I’ve had this before, it is noting to do with age or condition. Mind you, I did push a little last evening as it got dark on me. I’m staying put and watching documentaries from England. They are higher quality by a few degrees and ask for donations rather than interrupt you with advertising. It’s more civilized. Never will I learn the exact history of England. It is too complicated and there are so many Alberts and Egberts that I lose track. How many kingdoms can one island hold? One good thing, if you ask me, was the Vikings kept out the French until 1066. Enough time for the English culture to hold their own even after losing at Hastings.
Gossip, but not really since everybody knows. The lady across the street is in a pickle. I’ve mentioned but never seen her daughter, apparently in her 60s. She shows up and steals things from mom, in this case some lawn ornaments, Halloween decorations, and the footing around the base of the house, I am against stealing, but I can’t take sides. My office has moved to the back so I no longer see the street. A pity the older lady has to watch her property instead of relax for the duration. All this commotion while it is so unseasonably hot. She does not like the hillbilly, who is temporarily in the picture here. He has to get his stuff out from behind the motorcycle. Today is the anniversary of my record daily sidecar driving distance.
My reasoning is that the media keeps pushing that by 2030, most Americans will be renters. It’s the catch-phrase you will own nothing but you will be happy. A huge step in the wrong direction, but that’s not stopped the hoi polloi before. My sneaking suspicion is that they will push this rental scenario and give people no choice. So now is the time to decide which side of that fence you want to be on.
Speaking of fences, here’s a shot of my fence as knocked over by the hurricane. I still have no means to pull it back into place. Plus, on the north side, I’ll have to move all that material out of the way. That spot has become the catch all for spare lumber, tin, and ladders.
Thunderstruck 333.*
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It dropped below 85ºF later, enough for me to get the old siding off the north wall of the silo. The other neighbor came over to talk and there is a small dog on the loose. A collar but no tag. I left a big enough space between the silo and the fence to work easily and the dog barks constantly. I removed the siding and tarpaper, put in all the remaining insulation and tacked the tarpaper down for over night. This pic is a bit hard to see, but that’s the bare tarpaper. My total output for the day was thus 90 minutes. Everything is locked up and the batteries are on the charges. Should I go downtown for a brew?
Wisely, I stayed put, reading several different books and thinking how glad that I never got into watching TV. Since the last time was in my teens, I’ve essentially lived a lifetime without television and, from what I hear, the bad effects of that device. I’m talking old news about TV, but a big article got my attention, how it went on about how TV was bad,
“BREAKING NEWS flashing across your screen every 5 seconds while a round table of women and visible minorities scolds you for not wanting war with Russia while you’re interrupted every ten minutes for pharmaceutical and race mixing ads really does something to the noggin. It’s literally scrambling your circuits.”
How soundly can I sleep? Well, the hillbilly came buy and cleared all his junk out of my canopy without waking me. This photo shows the cleared space with the canopy attacked by the weather. Since my siesta was an hour and there was around that much work, it looks like he never kept quiet, so I must have been zonked. Anyway, time to get rid of that canopy and build a small shelter to house my nice air compressor. Plus, I think my estate executor wants to park her travel trailer in that spot. I’ll let you know about that. She’s welcome to stay here as long as she wants, but not until I finish the trim in that front bedroom. And replace that air-conditioner that got struck by a lightning surge.
ADDENDUM
For extra reading today, I took a closer look at the MiG 19, the fighter that first appeared in combat after the Korean war. I remind the reader my interest is the weapons, not the war. The MiG 19 was, for all its advanced features, a dog of an airplane built by copying German concepts, and we know how well copying works in the analog world. The jet would often flame out when the guns were fired and pilots say it was very heavy on the controls. I can’t add much to the volumes of material out there, so I was distracted by other articles, the closest I usually get to surfing the net. I’m more likely to get distracting walking to the shed and forget where I put the hammer, which historians can speculate as absent-mindedness. Now, what was I saying?
The MiG 19 was also short range due to high fuel consumption, which every writer I found today ignored. I know in a piston fighter, the correct mix of air to fuel is 19:1. No such data is easy to find on today’s subject. It seems the MiG 19 had to use afterburners to keep up speed. It had been designed around an earlier jet engine and rushed into mass production. Afterburners are fuel hogs. Being satisfied with that answer, I stopped reading up on the issue.
We are far into the millennial era of intentional misleading statements. So be careful when you listen to them talk. In this example, five of the short videos I watched gave the deliberate impression their pilot was the only one who shot down a MiG while flying a prop airplane. In fact, this feat was done many times. Take this misleading statement: “Folmar was the only decorated US carrier pilot in history who shot down a MiG 15 while flying a Corsair prop aircraft.”
It’s factually correct, but ambiguous past the point of deception. The reality is quite a number of other prop aircraft shot down jets. But, they were not Americans, they were not carrier pilots, they were not decorated, they were not flying Corsairs and the jets were different models of MiGs or Yaks and so on. Even with a background in military history, these sort of narratives are hard to follow, so much so that it [misleading presentation] is clearly intentional. So, allow me to make a claim in millennial-talk.
“This is the only most famous blog in the world written by a bass player who owns a sidecar.”
The majority of idiots and certainly every member of my immediate family would swear I just said my blog was the most famous in the world.
* today’s Pic is an eight-shooter. It has 8 bullets, which are fired two at a time. This is for close in defense and designed to be fired with one hand. It is heavy for the size and the 333 is derived from the statistic that most gunfights involve 3 shots in 3 seconds at 3 feet.
