One year ago today: January 7, 2021, the wrong key . . . .
Five years ago today: January 7, 2017, that was then, sigh.
Nine years ago today: January 7, 2013, by taking notes . . . .
Random years ago today: January 7, 2016 , my cousin has affluenza.
No hanging around today. I was up early, did some navigation, made coffee, and got packed for the return trip. After sunup, JZ being the expert chef, got breakfast together while I made up the charts for the Caltier Fund. He does not understand how this investment works and more sadly, neither does his broker. There are parts, I admit, that take a leap of faith. I’ll give an example, reminding you that at this point it is not the numbers that count, but the process. The fund paid a $7.57 dividend that is not really a dividend. The shares are $5.00 each. I chose plow-back so $5.00 buys a share and the remaining $2.57 seems to disappear.
You get this action video of the jellyfish last day because nothing eventful happened this morning even by the very lax standards of this blog when I’m looking of for a single exciting event on days like today. This being a journal at heart, let’s look at some trip stats. The mileage from the cabin to here, all the back and forth, then ready to leave amounts to 353.9 miles, the van is behaving beautifully. Departure today was 8:14AM, we are not taking the direct route back. Gasoline leapt from $2.49 to $3.79 since Wednesday, so there is more political hogwash going on. It also takes a half hour to tank up in Miami for some reason. Anyway, no rush. I’ve got enough to just get home.
Since all the recording devices are in operation, you get stats. It’s a mystery why GPS never uses the voice of a sexy babe. Just these annoying Karen types that sound like the backseat drivers they are. It’s uncannily quiet this morning, I’ll inventory the trucks (semis) on the 26 mile straight stretch of Highway 27. Total trucks, just 30. Extremely light traffic.(Southwest of Lake Okeechobee, no services). One thing this blog can state for sure is that if people are consistently passing you on the passenger side on the freeway, you are an asshole. Yes, you.
More stats. It dropped to 63°F overnight, it is currently 76°F. The warmest it has been in the last 24 hours is 85°F. At 9:07AM, for the first time in Florida, I was passed by a Rolls Royce. Must be a rock star, the paint job was cherry red, and he was turning on Exit 15, Royal Palm Blvc. By 9:18AM, we know something is going on, another bright red car, this time a Lamborghini, flew past. They are burning sugar cane, it creates a horizon-to-horizon smoke haze which looks like the Everglades is on fire.
350,000,000 years.
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I finally figured out how to reliably get my Garmin to display the latitude and longitude, to check against my Hc. JZ reminds me to tone down the navigation terms, but I say anyone who is interested will have learned that one by now. (It is the height of the object, in this case the Sun, that is calculated, not observed.) This morning it was smack in the middle of Madagascar at some town with a 30-letter name. I think looked up a brief history of Madagascar, to discover it was colonized by Indonesians in the 1400s, I think.
Let’s get the geographic position, as I would record them at GMT. This is not a [sextant] reading, but the time I would use to calculate the position of the Sun. That calculation is not shown here.
Y 2023Of the last 990 hours, not miles, I’ve been moving, my average is 51 mph, which seems high. Maximum speed 90mph, as I had to pass some jerks on the two-lane. I stopped for 1,313 hours during that time, so I’ve been on the road a lot. I’m having second thoughts on the handheld recorder for the data shown here. To be reliable, you have to look at the recorder to make sure it’s in the correct mode, which means taking your eyes off the road. This is an typical example of “millennial-think”, they would just argue that Florida is hands-free rather than admit they build something with an unsafe feature.
M 01
D 07
H 14
M 42
S 50
My position, as shown on the Garmin [GPS] is
N 26° 40.8498’
W 080° 44 7215’
Another annoyance is the switches, they work when released, meaning you have to look twice. Yep, Josh & Tyler, play stupid games and you win stupid prizes. I stopped for a break at the Clewison Goodwill (because there are no other Thrifts there) for 23 minutes 2.93 seconds. It’s 86° inside the van but outside? That’s something you don’t get roadside info on. Some sharp dude should figure out a way to turn that into advertising that is at least a little informative. Roadsigns with local temperature.
Nearing home, it is perfect motorcycle weather. 81°F, partly cloudy, mild breeze, 188 miles from start. I was going to take that side road south of Arcadia, but as I pulled up, the two cars on the road boxed me in. The guy ahead turned and it is not a pleasant drive if you are following somebody and the guy behind me was riding my bumper, I missed the turn. I also missed the location, as the Kia has an LED printout on the odometer and clock. They are impossible to read in sunlight while wearing sunglasses. You could disable the feature that turns the headlights off, but then you just got millennialized. Go, Josh, go Tyler!
I stopped at the famous Limestone Country Club, where they let you put your feet on the furniture. It’s normally a biker bar. The main thing it lacks is young pretty women, kind of a problem shared with most of Florida. I noticed this general trend back when I was twelve, so don’t blame the world. However, it has gotten worse since the Internet, which amplified the effect of men chasing the few pretty women left. Before, the real write-offs like my brothers would eventually settle for what they could get. Now they expect beauty queens and that’s created a whole new societal level of semi-ugly single cat-women, most of them on Twitter, I heard.
Finally, on GAB, twenty years too late, a backlash is beginning over intrusive advertising. In the beginning it was me alone, warning what would happen if you patronized such companies. A few got rich, the rest resulted in little more than constant in-your-face ads that featured queers and ethnics. The junk on-line is pervasive and it took until youTube and other types disabled the skip feature for people to speak up. I’d like to think I had something to do with that.
It took long enough, but there is finally an objection to the East Indian domination of US media companies. It is entirely possible future discoveries will show they are not quite the same species.
ADDENDUM
Cruising along, I went over the tunes the new guy, Mike, (pseudonym) wants and each of these pieces can be adapted to fantastic bass lines (fantastic be a relative term that blends the studio version, what can be presented on stage, and a touch of my classical piano). He’s not responded since the audition. I’m not too worried, I heard him play and estimated his capabilities and this is the only chance he has of getting into a working band in these parts.
