February 16, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 16, 2022, theoretically, 12,000.
Five years ago today: February 16, 2018, copyrighting live music.
Nine years ago today: February 16, 2014, dabbling in BASIC.
Random years ago today: February 16, 2020, the growing of potatoes.

           Morning, coffee, news, in that order. What’s this, the Federal government is ignoring the plight of the families near the poison train wreck. That will cost them, since the area is White Christian Trum-voting Republicans. Even if that is not the connection, it is the one most people will make. Like GAB says, no FEMA, no Greta, no AOC, no Biden, and no Al Gore. DC is going to have to spin this one something fierce, it may already be too late for that. The CDC reports 57% of young women experienced “depression” in the past year.

           According to some, I was harsh on Tahnee, Rachel Welch’s daughter. I was unaware Tahnee had famous feet. You heard me, feet. This bothered me so much, I went out and filled the birdfeeders. I’ve removed anything the squirrels can use to get to the window feeder, including cutting off the branches of nearby trees. It’s temporary and all I’ve done is create a family of very angry rodentia.
Here is an toy I found intriguing. It’s a coloring book that uses water to activate dye. The colors disappear as the water evaporates. The literature says the pictures can be used many times but I doubt that’s a selling feature for kids. Yep, the guy who invented that is laughing all the way to the bank.

           I’ve begun designing a better catapult. The most common complaint is that the thing does not reset itself. Near perfect weather means I had four hours work in by 1:30PM, most of it electrical. It will be rat season soon, so remind me to get extra traps. You have to leave every used trap outside for a couple weeks or other rats won’t go near it. I now have a sheltered working table saw and a backlog of projects that have been waiting on it.
           That was the Reb on the phone and I will repeat my advice. These days, every investment must be checked regularly for balance and for reasonableness. Ordinary transactions that used to take an hour now take up to five weekdays. Regularly means you check each investment twice a week minimum, including your bank balance. And not the way most people check, which is to see if you have enough left. I mean to check if it matches the balance you keep in your ledger at home. Yes, we just had $486 go missing but we have the complete paper trail with scans of the deposit slip, envelope, and ATM slip.

Picture of the day.
Florida swamp rainbow.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           The electrical is going to sidetrack me for a bit. I measured out 41 feet of new wiring that overdue, including the kitchen light that I left in place with its 50 year-old cloth insulated wiring. Out it comes while the weather says okay to work in the attic. I had to report the return of my symptoms to the Reb. Like most folks, she does not have an elaborate system to track banking. But it is something that has to be looked at in case I kick the bucket. It’s not that serious, but I’m not happy with how quickly the little things all came back from a situation that seemed under control six months ago.
           Surprisingly few people know what those little notches on the cap of a WD-40 can are for. So here’s you picture and your trivia for the day. I made it downtown to buy the wire and some extra outlets. I have a habit of just installing an outlet where many people would use a junctoin box. They’ve dropped in price to less than a dollar. I avoided the ones that were 47¢. You can never have enough outlets and the wiring up time is around the same.

           Have you ever heard of a boutique bank? The Reb reports there is a new one in Nashville that getting a lot of traction because it caters to creative people. While it is on-line, it has no ATMs, no affiliates, no advertisers, and seems to be pushing the privacy concept to the limit. I’ll take a look. I know by Federal law a bank customer cannot limit sharing of certain types of data, and of course that is the data you least want shared. The point is, the bank may be able to do the limiting by simply not having anything to do with the credit bureaus.
           This is hardly any big deal compared to my idea for a “real bank” but merits some investigation. Imagine, a bank that simply says no, we will not tell you any credit information or for that matter even if a given person has an account here. That would get my interest.

ADDENDUM
           You can usually tell when somebody isn’t learning. Their perspective on things does not change. Thus, here’s my latest description of how celestial navigation works. While I’m dismayed at how long it’s taken me to get this far with it, I’m glad I did not just memorize the steps. That’s the way most people did it, including the ones who wrote the instruction books. Here is how I’d describe the process today.

1. Make an estimate of where you are, called dead reckoning.
2. Measure the height of the Sun at a precise time.
3. Look up where the Sun is using the Almanac, the geographic position.
4. Look up the height of the Sun from that location, called the assumed point.
5. Compare that height of the Sun you measured to the height you looked up.
6. Find the direction of the Sun from the assumed point in the Almanac.
7. Draw this information on a chart, following the rules.

           The way it works is not every place you could be is in the Almanac. But there are many fixed points in that book with all the math done for you. The trick is to find the point in the book that is nearest to where you think you are, and compare two figures. The height of the Sun you measured with the sextant and the height of the Sun the book says is at that point you chose. Except by luck, there will always be a slight difference. There is no good way to find the direction, so fortunately, the Almanac has done that for you. The distances are so great, you can assume the direction is the same for your location.

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