One year ago today: January 25, 2022, PayPal sucks.
Five years ago today: January 25, 2018, America’s empty gamble.
Nine years ago today: January 25, 2014, that’s formerly strong ties.
Random years ago today: January 25, 2003, Julie disappeared.
How’s this for a pretty set of baffles? The squirrels now have a full 2-foot wide “Chinese hat” to contend with. The blue paint is still drying. This gives you an idea of the nuisance these rodents cause in the back. The trade-off of bigger baffles is they catch the wind and scatter more seed. That is nothing compared to the amount of see the varmints can eat in a single day. The somewhat larger baffle on the bench in the background is for the woodpecker feeder. The squirrels like the suet enough to pull the chain right off the hooks if they can get to it.
all foods. I wonder if food tasting bland is what causes over-eating? Anyway, my exercise today is yard work.
Those baffles are cut by jigwaw, then riveted into shape. This is now a full set of baffles for every feeder I regularly stock. I have enough sheet metal left from the neighbor’s old pool to cut the planned strips from my sketch last day. This is the experiment to keep the squirrels from running along the rail. This is the horizontal piece the feeders hang from, see picture.
Smart appliances. People buy them but don’t connect them Manufacturer’s are bewildered because they’ve issued constant assurances that only anonymous data will be collected. Ahem, I need another coffee. Turns out half of people don’t believe them. The companies continue to spew out the benefits but it seems half the users don’t want their fridge accessing their credit score. According to the Wall Street Journal, which requires basically the same information for a subscription, customers are not overjoyed at the prospect of a faceless corporation having the capability to shut off their power.
The solution, says Whirlpool, is an interlock module that forces users to connect to WiFi with a company provided password. Along with many, Whirlpool began installing cheaper components, banking on a stream of replacement part orders by Internet a couple years down the line. This was supposed to generate $160 million in annual sales by causing the appliances to flash warnings and countdowns, then refusing to operate. GE, along with Whirlpool is “very concerned” that customers are not getting the “full benefit and insights” of the product. Worse, says Harry Kim, head of LG’s “ThinQ” division, the US is in jeopardy of producing a generation who don’t want updates.
The libtards are now trying to say eggs cause heart attacks. They’ve dug their own graves so deep they can never crawl out. All we have to do is wait say many, the vax will kill them all off within three to five years. Everything woke turns to shit. It is evident they got all their party faithful to take the injection hoping for the bandwagon effect. It flopped and now they’ve poisoned their most loyal lackeys. This could be interesting.
I logged on to a Morse practice site and ran a five minute exercise at 15 wpm. Those who don’t Morse be aware that there are many versions of 15 wpm. The keying rate, the one you need to get with, can be much slower, since 15 wpm can allow for different letter and word spacings. I still prefer a “heavy” key, with the dashes a full 3 dots including the spaces, but I can copy for a while with shorter dashes. My space between words suffers when I do. If you download a trainer, see if you can get one that has options for realistic practice. That would include fading in and out, I think they call that dithering, I can receiver around 5 minutes maximum without strain and some of the recordings are noisy. So it isn’t true the code always gets through, rather it often can when others fail.
The Webb telescope found what I always knew was a fact. The building blocks of life are everywhere in the universe. In this case, it was ice blocks in the middle of a cold galaxy.
Mint oil separation stills.
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A 17 pound meteorite was found in Antarctica, rare indeed. The jet black rocks are easier to find in the snow and some 45,000 have been picked up so far. It’s not completely chance, they have predictive software. Due to metal content, the rocks are heavier than Earth specimens. Trivia, an Earth rock that looks like a meteorite but isn’t is called a meteor-wrong. If you like trivia, did you know which country grows the most walnuts? The Ukraine.
Who’s smarter, me or that squirrel? Over the years, it’s been much of a draw, but he’s got Mother Nature on his side. I cut some pieces of tin and tested the concept of a shield over the top plate and it works but now the tale. It was one of those projects where nothing went right, so I wasted all afternoon. The pieces will have to come down and be replaced. The concept was the only thing that worked. Metal and me don’t mix, I cut the first piece and it fit fine so I went ahead and cut the rest. All of them an inch too short. Then that vine that died years ago across the path.
You can pull it, but it won’t break and it keeps on coming. Every other time you walk that path, it snags your shoe. You can’t cut it with an axe, it just sinks into the ground. Today, I’d had it and pulled it out some twenty feet, where it snagged and would not move or break. I got the bolt cutters, which squash the vine threads down to flat, but won’t cut through. Finally, I got the power saw and a plank on the ground. That cut it, but grabbed the vine and wound it tightly around the saw shaft. The rest of afternoon went the same. Do you think I should go downtown for a cold drink? Good. You knew better than to say no.
What about the weekend? We have almost $200 unspent dollars on budget and it is travel money. Where is there to go? I contacted Trent, who says Cocoa Beach, but I’ve been there by scooter. It’s the Space Coast and things are needlessly expensive. I have not seen the Atlantic Ocean in years. There are very few direct east-west roads across Florida and none around here. The closest thing is Highway 60 to Vero Beach, so there’s a thought. Just a Saturday overnight in the van, check out some museum and chat up a few college babes a third of my age.
Later, I decided against going out, it’s too comfortable here. The Morse code app was still on screen, so I ran my usual three minute practice. For those who have never known the satisfaction of a successfully copied message, me neither. I have never gotten past three minutes with zero errors. And I tend to have a limit at five-letter words. Here are the most common ones: great, about, other, hall, every, these, first, their, could, which, would, there. I believe the longest message I ever received was around 75 words and it was some gibberish about a soccer game.
I’ve got a family of raccoons raiding the yard. I could at least three, probably four youngsters. They knocked over my ladder trying to get past the new baffles and dragged the woodpecker feeder away. I did not go looking in the dark. I have no idea how to deal with this situation.
ADDENDUM
We go another round with the squirrel. I copied the successful design of July 23, 2022. The final budget totals for 2022 are in and let’s take a review. I spent only $318 per month in groceries, a $60 increase that includes pet food. There’s your proof doing your own cooking saves a ton of money. Gas remained expensive at $180 per month and my largest single expense was utilities, averaging $169 monthly. That includes electric, water, and garbage plus the small items every city will gouge you for, like school taxes. Let me scan for unusual items. My two most expensive months were May and December, both in Tennessee. Nope, nothing extraordinary, the budget that makes all this possible is refined enough that nothing has taken us by surprise since May of 2016 when the current format was adopted. What was my best month? That would be July, where not counting my entertainment allocation, I was $110 under budget.
I was surprised at the low figure for dining out, just $70 per month. Then I realized that is entirely the times I’m in Tennessee, where it’s more like $200 per month—and even then because the Reb prefers good food to expensive food. I’m partial to both.
Another incident in New York, using facial recognition to deny lawyers entry to public events where they are part of litigation against the venue. At first glance, I say too bad, management reserves the right. But just like some would play a race or gender card, the lawyers are cooking something up. The business defends the practice saying it prevents evidence collection outside proper discover channels. Good point. Would you want somebody suing you mingling with your crowd after hours?
