One year ago today: November 9, 2021, that misfiring piston . . . . .
Five years ago today: November 9, 2017, they were not first.
Nine years ago today: November 9, 2013, I lost $488,000.
Random years ago today: November 9, 2006, on gimptards.
The nation reels as the liberals desperately move to overturn election results. Same as 2020, the initial counts favor the Red, and the Blue now knows the votes they need to edge ahead counting the fraud ballots. Same as before, right in the open. Nobody is celebrating, possibly because nobody knows what will happen. In many areas, the gap is too wide to close by traditional cheating methods. If the Red prevails there will be panic in the Democrat camp. They will have lost hundreds of millions of donor dollars that will be impossible to pay back. And they ain’t gonna like it one bit. It now depends on how many votes they can truck into their losing precincts. They’ve got many people conditioned to believe late night overturns have become normal in the past few years.
Today is slated to work on the silo, as in finish the sheathing. Check in, because the temperature is supposed to be down in the 60s, my traditional working weather. I’ve calculated how Dave the piano player and I could do a guitar-bass duo without fear of having to cancel a gig. Besides, I doubt there is a club that would not understand. It remains to see if I can sell him on the concept.
Facebook-slash-Meta begins laying off the first of 11,000 this morning. I hesitate to say employees, because like the government, they produced nothing. And Musk is changing Twitter so people actually have to come into the office to work, which for reasons unknown is extremely unpopular among a certain category of people.
Here’s a robotic falcon that mimics bird wings. Note drone chasing the flight. The unexpected result was that inert fabric will copy wing-flapping patterns without divine intervention. There was a Firefox article on why Britney Spears had such a controlling father, but the history went back to like 1850 and I gave up reading after five minutes. Then I thought to zip downtown for groceries. You never quite realize until you double-park down a dead-end street in a nothing town like Bartow to pick up some pallets just how many locals will suddenly show up and need to get past. To add to the mystery, the thoroughfare is just a block east and you can’t get there from here.
How’s that papaya doing? First, it is too tall. It keeps getting taller and the lower leaves yellow and die, as shown. There’s one big papaya you can see in silhouette and a small cluster of three up in the branches. No such luck with my peach tree, which I think may be gone dormant for the winter.
My kitchen is not even begun but I will have to consider a new range. I have two burners that take their time and the problem is in the wiring, not the electronics. Do I go for something fancy, or just a replacement unit? Let’s check Craigslist. Now that I want one, let’s see if the prices have soared or there is nothing available. One look and the nearest available is 52 miles away, so same net effect. We wait. And yes, the used prices are crazy. Who would pay $499 for a used stove with no warrantee when it sells new for $800? I’m tempted to build a tray and slap one of those stovetops on top.
BrocolliTree.
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This afternoon was one of those increasingly more frequent perfect work-exercise combos for me. Temperatures dropped to my comfortable working range so I got 3 solid hours in. I finally fixed my office chair, the dowels were lose. I had intended just to move the new pallets into the back area where what happens to them is totally private. I guess this is a repeat of that house my partner and I renovated when I was 24. We finally got all the tools we needed together by the time we were finished. This time, I have 90% of the tools and many of them are electric and pneumatic.
This went so well, I opted to continue. That means extracting the nails and that is where things really flew. I already had the catch bucket set up and the air line is fully operational. Rather than up to forty-five seconds per nail, the AirLocker punched out all 180 +/- nails in no time. Most fly out into the bucket, around 6 pieces stuck with just the pointed ends in the wood, very easy to pull the rest of the way with a small hand bar. Thus, start to finish, all 25 pieces at twenty seconds each. While I still don’t have an assembly area, that means 28 pieces cleaned in a total of 44 minutes in the part of the operation that counts.
Including stacking time (because each piece had to be handled six times) I came out so far ahead I just quit after the last hour-twenty, the rest was unloading the van. I had earlier stopped for lumber and got some other chores out of the way. Overall, I’d say cleaning the lumber was more than six times faster than originally. What’s more, except for the lifting, the entire process was almost effortless. I’d compare it to walking the dogs the same amount. It rained but the cleaning was indoors, the fan kept us from getting muggy, and the radio was playing hits from the 80s. Who could ask for anything more?
In addition to the prying bracket, I will rig up a nail-puller that moves the lumber rather than the lever (I’ll get you a neat pic of that). I have more than enough wood for a better work platform, but no design in mind yet. Right now there is no assembly line for anything bigger than 22 inches, so each bigger piece has to be manhandled to working height and position. One other thing is that jointer that Agt. R brought in. I’ve learned he can’t repair things, but if he knows I repair it, he’ll eventually ask for it back. So I said
nothing. But I can’t use the thing right. I square the pieces best I can and they still don’t fit flush. So, now that it is dark, I’m inside with a coffee. My primary care thinks three cups a day is too much but I reminded them that was not negotiable. I’ve found several videos on jointer use, it seems in our wonderful era of on-line experts, you always have to find a few examples to fill in the missing pieces. Experts, my eye. I sure disappointed my self ordering the wrong router bits but we’ll make do for now because I need at least four more of my only specialty—heavy duty wooden tool boxes.
These are to replace the cheap-ass plastic cases they come in these days. The ones that break eventually and have no extra space for your accessories or an extension cord. Most of them you can’t even stuff in the power cable after the first time you unwrap it. Later, I found the biggest jointer problem in the second video. One of my plates was slightly lower. I continued on to find other techniques and instructions on setting the tool up and feeding the lumber more accurately. I see that a planer is in my future. And I still don’t have that sawdust vacuum I’ve wanted for years now.
Later. I ran into Wilford. He has a blower system from a shop sawdust vacuum, sitting in his shed. He says I can have it. I said okay, but let me take measurements. I learned these systems can cost more to set up than to buy. Then, along comes the next hurricane. I didn’t hear about it in Miami, but by late today that left-wing hurricane drizzle began. Left-wing is the counter-clockwise downstroke of the swirl. They bring down icy weather from creepy Democrat states. I dug out extra blankets and made sure there is enough coffee.
ADDENDUM
Tetrataenite. It’s a nickel-iron compound that comes from meteorites and there is finally news on how Cambridge U has produced it artificially. The real stuff requires a million or so years to cure, but the synthetic is reportedly cheap and easy. It is used in the manufacture of super-durable magnets. Get this, the material is a danger to “rare earth” minerals. Because natural tetrataenite is a product of rare earth mining, the market for these materials is highly dependent on the demand of the total mining output. If even one of the major products is suddenly replaced by a cheap synthetic, the industry suffers.
