February 12, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 12, 2022, I got it running.
Five years ago today: February 12, 2018, the unquantifiable “widespread”.
Nine years ago today: February 12, 2014, is this cheating?
Random years ago today: February 12, 2014, rambling, but informative.

           I grouchy and I know why. Statins. What’s this, Disney lost over two million views, but tried to downplay it saying half were because they quit broadcasting soccer games in Pakistan. One thing the Internet does right is peel the lid of these type of lies. The only known defense is for big media to claim the truth is misinformation. After all these years, silver still hovers at $22 an ounce. Today’s high is less than 70°F so shall we see about some electrical wiring? I’m going to cheat a bit on the heaters. Code says a dedicated circuit, and each room has one of those for the AC. A duplex outlet, right—and nobody would turn both the AC and heater on at the same time. At least not without popping the breaker, ha.

           And you can pat yourself on the back for being twenty years ahead of the lies about A.I. these days. It has become a child’s trick to fool ChatGPT and Dan into saying the wrong things. That Chomsky guy who’s written a hundred books describes today’s artificial intelligence as nothing but “high tech plagiarism”. Wish I’d thought of that phrase, but my own wording (advanced pattern matching) is just as descriptive. He also points out ChatGPT is a way to avoid learning. There you have it, folks. Millennials will never achiever A.I. because of the old maxim that the one thing you need to know before teaching a dog is more than the dog.

           Not able to get kick-started, I paused to watch some on-line documentaries of the Sahara. One interesting video was trains that cross the sand dunes. Weird to see diesel-electrics with these massive air conditioners. They make tea with a foam head and carry a lot of iron ore to the coastline. The dunes are nice to look at. The documentary sinks into blabber about customs and people instead of about the geology that interests me. The oases are drying up but don’t hand me crap about climate change. They’ve been drying up for 5,000 years.
           The latest round in the birdfeeder raccoon war goes to the varmints. Last evening they took down my newest and most heavily reinforced unit, the woodpecker feeder. The food cage is secure, but they knock the whole assembly off the stand. It is secured with medium chain, but that is far stronger than they can break. They attack the hooks and eyebolts, which I will now replace with carbines in yet another counter-maneuver. The food is suspended in the small wire cages, but if they can get it on the ground, it falls against the wire where they can get to it.

           It was a real task to get a picture of the chain. You can just make it out against the leaning tree in the background. This was the smallest chain size I was certain they could not fool with. All they did was attack where the chain is attached. Drop back in a half-hour, I’m going for a detailed investigation.

           Examination shows they raccoons are still able to get above the feeders and pull them up by the chain until they defeat the hook by pulling up on the links. It is not an easy matter for changing to eyebolts, as the hooks are needed to take the feeders down for refilling. The raccoons must also have discovered a way to walk along the crossbeam, which is covered with rounded metal sheathing. I’ve determined this metal has a slight protective finish which is just rough enough for the critters to get traction. Or at least traction to get part-way along the beam to where they can leap. In the alternative, could they be crawling along the beam upside down, sloth-style?
           By 11:00AM I’m still inside. The temperature is fine but we’ve got one of those winter windstorms making life uncomfortable. My guess is averaging 30mph. The wind here is the opposite of Texas, where the ground heat is stifling but there is a nice breeze fifty feet up in the air. Today, I watched the wind whipping the yard to pieces with some birds soaring around not too far up there. These days are more disruptive than hurricanes, which tend to be from one direction and steadier.
           And it would seem these “unidentified” balloon objects have become a huge and unexpected distraction for the mainstream media. They are all jumping on the bandwagon.

Picture of the day.
Curry ingredients.
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           It was perfect for electrical work, which does not strain anything. So I put in over four hours. We have an outlet, a switch, and a new junction box ready for the red shed and scooter lean-to. Here is the box cutout, it sure is nice to have the right tools. The pace is the same, approximately 3-1/2 hours to get a single fixture done. Mind you, that includes running wire from the breaker panel and often building a reinforced frame because the tin siding won’t suffice. I got this finished but any photos here will likely just show the progress. I may have learned a thing or two, and once again, a brand new install worked perfect the first time. I miss the robot club.

           This outlet will be entire old salvaged parts so it will look like it’s been there. I had an entire coil of 14-2 wiring underfoot for like a year now. Today I could not find it. The price of even a 25 foot roll is up there. This circuit will consist of a single duplex outlet and an overhead light. For now, the light will be attached to the side of the building.

           The neighbor was over to talk, he is donating me that John Deere lawn tractor. It is on its fourth carburetor and he was just going to curbside it. No way, I said, let me have a go at it. Even not running it is worth over a thousand dollars. Don’t get optimistic, since it was the dealership that repaired or replaced the carbs up to now. I’m just hoping I’ll get lucky. He’s lost without his wife, she was from Washington State. He once saw a flying saucer out there. Him and a work buddy were driving all night and a light followed them. They stopped three times and so did it.
           I’m leery of UFO sitings from inside moving vehicles simply because of autoglass reflections. It would be pretty hard to fool this guy. The topic came up because it was nearby the weather balloon incident. I’m particularly suspicious of sitings that parallel vehicles driving across the prairies, especially lights that disappear when they stop and get out for a look. He reports the raccoons are also foraging in his yard.

           Here’s a view of the inside work, showing the cutout and the blue junction box. This box will serve the new wiring in the red shed plus the underground to the scooter canopy. After dark, a chill set in so I got busy with my Morse code clacker design. I looked on-line and it seems nobody makes the real thing any more. The few good models are antiques and priced accordingly. My goal is to get a clicker like heard in the movies, not the beeping sound. This requires electromagnets. I had some noisy relays, if I can find them I’d like to try that as an option. A clicking relay works on the same principle.

           I’m in luck, I have a microswitch and a relay, both salvaged. The switch is heavy duty and makes an excellent clicking noise by itself. It is normally closed but I can invert that. There’s my practice key soon as I mount it on a piece of wood, though I’ll likely add a light and power supply. I was right about how the clicks work but I’ll need hours of practice as the touch is not natural at all to me. It took years for me to get over my habit of “over-listening” to incoming signals. The reason I chose to learn to receive was the known tendency to send faster than one can receive and I wanted to avoid that. Besides, listening is passive an these days that’s wise.
           The relay is quieter but the click is sharp. This would let me avoid building an electromagnet and any sound can be amplified. There’s something I like about being able to construct these items as well as just use them. While it varies depending on mood, alertness, and a host of influences, I am out of practice. It’s like dancing, there is nobody to do it with so practice requires a solitary form of motivation. If I had to, I could receiver at 10 WPM, but I’d be more inclined to record the code, then slow it down and decode it later.

           How about that Japanese professor from Yale who concludes the way for Japan to balance its payments is for old people to commit hari-kari. I’d write it off as fake news but this report is from the New York Times who have a negative sense of humor. Justin Trudeau worships the man with an envy.

ADDENDUM
           Minnesota is considering changes to their laws to allow child labor. Yes folks, this is why the Atlantic Northeast needs to be sealed off and left to themselves. It’s getting so Bill Gates can’t go anywhere in public without an armed escort, same as Trudeau.

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