One year ago today: November 22, 2021, heading for Valdosta.
Five years ago today: November 22, 2017, Google security & blackmail.
Nine years ago today: November 22, 2013, some old gas prices.
Random years ago today: November 22, 2002, I liked that car.
As promised, here is the nail gun test with the portable tank. Complete success. The plan was to test if the nail gun can punch out more than 49 nails in a session. That is not an ordinary number, but that many nails as can be taken out manually with a claw hammer in twenty minutes. Did somebody say that is too slow? Try it. With the pallet wood, the nails are not all nicely lined up at the angle you can just pull them. You have to be at the right angle for each nail and thus, every few seconds you are moving the board or shifting position. It is not my imagination that this was taking too long. Let’s go over what is seen here in light of the process. With the nail gun, you pick up each piece of lumber once and staying in the same position, you move the lumber along, never having to work one side, then the other.
Now watch the punching operation. Notice the relative ease. Each board is handled once during the operation, with the nails see instantly popping out the other side. The pallet bar is great for drawing the nails out straight, but the shank on the tool makes it a snap to true and bent nails. Most pallet slats have ten nails. These boards had the nails counted in advance. Did I get to 49? Yes, I got the full 100 nails out and the pressure gauge shows still 38 psi in the tank. In other words, I ran out of nails before I ran out of air, and the gun was still blasting the nails down at tire pressure.
How goes my Japanese sea monster movie? Well, it borrows heavily from western styles right down to the classical style piano backing track. Same sequence of scenes and appeal to western values. I notice this, because I’ve always thought it hypocritical of cultures who denigrate the west do so using the technology of the west. In one scene, the grandmother stands on a cliff using semaphore flags to signal the departing battleship. Anyone who has seen the price tag of a battleship knows you don’t sail away in broad daylight, especially in a nation where it is considered a sin not to take bribes.
“Green crack” weed.
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Once again, in the process of tidying up, I got to cleaning lumber. It’s such casual work that time passes and before you know it I have piles of matching pieces, often produced faster than I could ever use them up in an equal period. Shown here are 26 pieces of 18” wood and 12 pieces around 36” long. I’ve got used to calling these matching sets “etsy lumber”. This is from a direct comparison of what is for sale on that website. Check the addendum for more details.
Finland has announced that Leopard, their super computer, is up and running. These records don’t last long any more. The current architecture is not, in my opinion, an advance in core speed, but accomplished by attaching modules that basically take the pressure off the CPU. I’ve long quit following the progress. To me, this is not different in concept that the peripheral cards of the 1980s. Prime example are video cards and math co-processors. They free up the CPU. The result appears to run faster because it is doing less housekeeping. It is up to you if you consider doing this the correct approach. I’m less than sold. More ominous is that the top computers speed-wise are no long in the USA. And wastefully, too much of their power is being wasted on climate change. They can’t predict the weather a week in advance but think they know what will happen in 50 years.
In other news, this is the 59th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. They still won’t admit he was the Trump of his era and the Deep State killed him to hush up what he was going to expose. One-bedroom apartments in eastern Canadian cities are not over $2,500 per month. I’m informed that the smaller burger for the same price reported y’day has a name: “shrinkflation”. I don’t like that term, I prefer the more descriptive “rip-off”. It did not suddenly begin costing four times more to raise a turkey last month. And Sweden awakens from its stupor and cancels 300,000 immigrant visas. It may be too late, but they should at least never quit trying to get rid of these fake refugees.
ADDENDUM
Here is what $70 will buy you on etsy, described as reclaimed pallet lumber. These are twelve boards, the seller says they are pine, a skill I have not yet developed. The comment section says they arrive with the nail heads left in. I find these a lot, they are sheared off and a hassle to get out by hand. They will punch just enough to grab with a bar. Some reports say the nails are just bent over.
It’s tricky to make comparisons because of the variation in offerings. Some, like the ones here, include shipping which can’t be cheap. Some are selling the new pallet lumber, that is no nail holes, for $35 for six or seven boards but don’t specify the shipping cost until you’ve entered your credit card info (a 1990s asshole thing). At this time I merely do the calculations to see where I would stand. I have no way to sell the boards, but I could quickly build up quite an inventory. The difference is I don’t have to make a living at it. That’s what is possible when you have the infrastructure. Any money that comes in is gravy.
For all I know, these could sell locally. There is a shop in Brooksville that cranks them out, but again, high prices. On-line for me is iffy because you can’t deal in cash. Years to late, people are waking up to that danger, but indirectly. For example, that Alexa voice system is failing because it is only used for searching. People don’t trust buying something by voice or without a picture. I heard Google will lose$10 billion on Alexa this year. Yet no outcry that it was spyware.
While mentioning Google, it is clear to me their recent announcement to classify 10,000 employees are “poor performers” is just a preliminary to layoffs. That will add to the roughly 120,000 that big tech has let go this year. There is no groundswell of sympathy like back when the auto or lumber industries began to lay off. The reason is simple, the average American feels these tech types abused their positions to support an unpopular leftist agenda. It invokes no pity that few of them will ever find such work again. Myself, if it stops coders from spewing out their usual junk, I don’t care if they become mall cops. For the record, the average Google employee makes $295,000 per year, which is $5,600 per week, or $162 per hour presuming they actually do anything for 35 hours per week.
