November 18, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 18, 2021, insulation anniversary coincidence.
Five years ago today: November 18, 2017, Nashville breakfast, Lakeland nightcap.
Nine years ago today: November 18, 2013, Beale Steet, Memphis.
Random years ago today: November 18, 2016, the last turkey for me.

           At first I smirked hearing big companies are getting rid of their human resources people. It made sense since nobody is hiring. Then I find out they are canning these departments because they are costing the companies through counter-productivity. I had a lot to say about this twenty years ago, how no matter what your skills, getting past HR was more important. Mind you, I have a knack for it. Most people don’t, but the difference is I can also do the job.

           Post election gas prices begin climbing and last night at closing time all Twitter offices were locked up and card access denied. As one Laurie Chen puts it, thousands of Twitter employees were fired and it continues to work just fine, proof they were never needed. In Maricopa, Arizona, turns out 48% of the machines (not 20% as reported) had trouble on election day. Most Republicans vote on election day. The vax mandates are back for air travel and lockdowns will begin again shortly. It turns out the malfunction was they “forgot” to put ink in the printers. Way to go, America.

           An Australian doctor claims to have found microchips in dried Pfizer vaccines. In a cost-cutting measure, Canada has approved assisted suicide of seniors and teens seeking the same path will no longer require their parent’s permission. Socialized medicine. What could go wrong. Chalk up two more Tesla casualties, making the total 18. The cars are no longer “self-driving”, but reclassified as having a “driver assistance system”. As big tech continues laying off batches of 10,000, Google is categorizing 10,000 employees as “low performers”. Insert obvious joke here.
           Anyway, it’s the first step to canning them as they will no longer get bonuses and options. Add to this news that Target stores are reporting the worst Xmas sales ever. I find that hilarious, actually.

           A frozen morning had be braving the cold to get my last heater out of the shed. I’m in the back office with both on full and a breakfast of eggs, coffee, and my cold-weather friend, cream of wheat. Above is a picture of the messy area where the hillbilly canopy used to be. This photo proves that it does get below 50°F in Florida once in a while. Say, that thermometer mounting I built gives me an idea.

           After some thought, I’m replacing my large incinerator with a smaller unit. I’d use a wood stove but they are rare and expensive. Monitoring the operation, I realize I’m accumulating the scrap wood in small batches and burning it in big ones. This means standing there watching, which I don’t mind but it isn’t efficient. So what if I have to cut the pieces to fit [the burn barrel], I have the tools.
           I’m looking for a closed system that I don’t have to watch, with a stovepipe to cool off the cinders. Don’t expect results soon and I’ll be looking for alternative ideas. I may consider a modified metal trash can for small loads in the meanwhile. It’s a lot of trimmed ends, here is a picture of a typical piece of wood I would save, with the lumber brand. If you are new at this, it’s saying the board is heat treated and the original log has been debarked.
           Otherwise, my big project for today is a pants hanger. You’ve heard of clothes hangars and coat hangers, well, I want a pants hanger. I have two pairs of work shorts, a pair of long work pants, and whatever I’ve wearing that day. Four hooks, but to be careful, I’ll make it five. See, I don’t wash the work pants every time, and usually alternate depending on if I’ll be kneeling on anything. During that, I need somewhere to hang my other pants. So, it makes sense. Five fancy pants-hooks and I have just the thing in mind. Check back later.

Picture of the day.
Suicide prevention coat hooks.
(In Japanese executive washrooms.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s the pseudo-fence, now spliced up to look like the dickens. The gap at the bottom, not visible from the street, reveals this is really a blind for the hotdog cart. The fence is not quite done but both drills battery drills drained power at the same time. It’s freaky how that can even happen. Mr. Red Junior is back, now fully grown and super plump and healthy.
Welcome home, young fella.. A slight chill in the air got me doing all the small chores I’d rather not do when it’s sweaty. That included finishing the north wall of the silo with perf board, putting metal straps on the chainsaw case, and trying to get the old drain plug off the bottom of the air compressor. It’s been seized a long time.

           The area along the old sheds facing south is due for cleaning up. It’s been a mess since I began traveling back and forth since my convection chimney experiment. It failed, if I did not say, because the angle of the sun is not steep enough in the winter, when you’d want it to work best. I may try it laying down, but a long time from now I mean. There’s another bad crop of coffee, I can tell because it affects all the brands I drink at the long-term rate of just under 3-1/2 cups per day. It doesn’t seem to matter what brand or type, not every crop is a good one.

           Here’s an angle of the completed perf siding on the silo north wall. This still has to be covered with something weatherproof. This photo was too dramatic (relatively speaking these days) to pass up. There is enough work space to maybe test out how to shingle a wall with pallet pieces. For once, I’d be doing the worst side first, thus having experience when it comes to the remainder. This shed is a hardened hurricane shelter, well-stocked with emergency food. Right now, however, it has no soffits. If you look closely, the light inside is on and along the roof you can see the light shining through the rafters. The shed walls are also insulated, at least as far as that is needed in Florida.

           Can you see the drain plug? The compressor is stood up at an angle so I can get at it. I’m considering a better system than this tiny valve that seems designed to hurt fingers. As it is now, I would have to walk outsde the shed into the yard to drain the tank, which really should be done every use. That never happened with the previous owner, as the valve was not only seized, the part that turns was corroded off. When I dismantle the bathroom plumbing I’ll have all the parts I need to rig up a real drain system, should I get that motivated. Thepicture wouldn't fit here so I put it in the addendum.

           It seems not only is there a blood donation shortage, patients with the money are demanding young, unvaccinated blood. No prices quoted, but if it’s $400 a pint, I may have some. The young part is a persistent believe that blood from young people makes old men young again, duh, though there may be some minor fact in that one. Tyson recalls 5 tons of meat containing flecks of glass-like material. Holmes, the security fraud lady, could get up to 80 years. I hope she does because she played the gender ticket. The media does not publish her age, which is 38 years I’m pretty sure. What’s this, the Washington Post admits the raid on Trump’s house was not about nuclear secrets? They waited until after the mid-terms to announce that. How does that paper even stay in business, we don’t want to know.

ADDENDUM

           Later news reveals Musk closed down the offices due to the threat of disgruntled Twitter people sabotaging the system. That explains why he brought in his own coders last day. Also, the Biden law legitimized queer marriage is not new, but what is new is the wording contains a law that, if a given church does not comply, they lose their tax-free status. Ah, now it makes sense.
           My scoreboard lit up (a metaphor) so I went over to see what is with Gab.com. It’s fired Twitter employees, by the dozen. They are checking out what they don’t want to see. They’ve live in a far left environment so long that the very mention of any opposing view to them is ultra-right. I guess they sort of morphed into thinking certain topics were verboten and to them even casual mention is facism. I wonder how long they will last because it usually is not very long. Water seeks its own level and they’ll find some corner where they are a majority.
           America loves the sound of moaning & groaning leftoids who get their comeuppance. Canned by the shitload from Twitter, soon to be in the wake of massive tech layoffs, let them squirm. Let them eat quiche. Such a roar it was, shrieking Twitter could not exist without them. White people are always a majority where it counts. You can tell, because the rest of the world goes insane trying to get there.

Last Laugh