One year ago today: February 21, 2022, hippo-bottom women.
Five years ago today: February 21, 2018, curse docx format.
Nine years ago today: February 21, 2014, new & different.
Random years ago today: February 21, 2001, 8¢ a mile.
As I’m shutting down last night, I used the remaining light to mount one of those magnetic tool hangers. I have one already. Totally useful, I wanted one for my most-used drill bits. Forget matching sets of small bits around here, it ain’t gonna happen. I carefully measure and drill some pilot holes and hold the unit up to the wall thinking, man this thing is heavy for a magnet. As I tighten the screws I wonder, why won’t this thing fit flush to the wall. I take it down again and you remember that bastard file I lost a week ago? Yep, right along the back, parallel where one could just not see it. I’m off this morning to get my cruise control looked at for the third time.
I have a new theory. Only certain types of women visit the KIA dealership. Physical types, I mean, since I do not engage with these people. Discrete looking is still free but the bodies on these women don’t make looking any easier. Face it, America, the day of the young together smooth tightie babe is over. Even seeing a nice on these days is rare. Going to campus cafeteria isn’t even a good bet any more. Do you know what Aztec ass is? Probably not, unless you’re a long term reader, as I made the term up.
Good news and bad news. They replaced the faulty switch, but the cruise controls still does not work. It is going back in the shop Friday next. I spent five hours in the KIA showroom except a break over at Dunkin, the was used looking into power supplies and another stab at timing circuits. I’ll never lack 5VDC supplies as long as they make computers but for most of what I need, a switch is required. That is where the circuits come in, see addendum for a quick example. Ft. Meyers is just going to have to wait.
Here’s the handiwork of the Downeys. These woodpeckers are really serious about enlarging the bolt holes from the old tree house. Are they nesting? I can’t see them feeding because of the proximity of all the free food they could want, yet the book says this isn’t breeding season yet. Do I help out by enlarging the holes? I will move the bird house from near the laundry deck to atop the pose shown here. I notice the squirrels don’t dare tangle with the Downeys.
Cape Merry, Manitoba.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Years ago I wondered about that abandoned laundromat in the southeast end. Some say the building was condemned, others say the asking price was just too high. Wilford told me about the place but until I found an article in the paper, I was not even sure where the door was. Um, that’s not surprising, it is around the side, near the alley. I stopped in to check it out. What a sterile atmosphere. These are my thoughts. First, the sign says Bar and Grill, but folks, it is totally a dining establishment. Remember the “holding bar”, a 1970s or 80s concept where they always steered you to a counter while there was a two-drink “wait” for your table. Not only did they get two tips out of you, but for most, the meals tasted better.
Well, it was not long before this holding bar moved to a location smack in the middle of the dining area. And became one of the major reasons I don’t like stopping for a drink in these joints. Maybe there’s something about having a family eating five feet away that says you can’t tell an off-color joke or make certain snappy but appropriate wisecracks. You tell me.
I asked the staff where the live entertainment set up and they turned up their noses, saying maybe outside on the deck, pointing out there was a grand piano in the Trump room. The Tampa newspaper says it is often played. By whom? In the half-hour I was there, I saw several people enter, look at the menu prices, and walk out again. To their credit, the owners fixed the place up nicely and the formal dining, in this picture, is in the old 1890s Masonic Lodge. So let me find the middle-class menu on-line and decide if I’d take the Reb out there. Here we are. First noticeable, even dollar prices. They are not aiming to bother with nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Nope, those are not sandwiches or burgers, they are “handhelds”. The cheapest is your veggie burger for $12. That seems to be the base price for many items. Now let’s find the most expensive. It something called the seafood duet, which includes sausage, for $23. Nope, the Reb would never go for that. So, let’s check the Trump room. Here we go. Though neither of us would eat steak, the “NY” is only $65. Each. We might settle for the Chilean Crab Cake, at $60.
ADDENDUM
Here is a typical gated circuit of the sort I’m studying. This one uses four NAND gates, a very common integrated circuit. This is not a lesson, rather a description of what is confusing me. The purpose of this arrangement is to sound a piezo buzzer, the kind you might use to receive Morse code. I think the chip is called a 4011 or something, I have a box of them. It uses the “raw” signal from a resistor capacitor pairing to operate the buzzer. This design is chosen because it is adjustable by use of a variable resistor in the upper left.
The confusion is like this. When you have a digital circuit, you are told there are two conditions. Off and on. But there are four, look how each of the NAND gates has two inputs, in this case they are all tied back to a single input. If they were not tied, that means there are four conditions that could act as input. 00, 01, 10, and 11. It is the last set, 11 or two “on” switches that throws me. Two ons can make an off. It seems to me wrong to apply power to a circuit to turn it off.
One day, I will build such a circuit in isolation and take it off the shelf when I need proof. Basically, if you had a light in the middle of two DC circuits, with current in opposite directions, the light would go out. I called it the powered off switch and its existence has befuddled me despite having used it a number of times. Back to this circuit, the arrangement seen here works because these gates are “sloppy”. That is another concept my brain finds buggy, but I just accept it. It works like so.
Each gate has, from the manufacturing process, a slightly different internal voltage at which it switches off and on. And that point can move around due to temperature and other factors. On the left, you see one gate tied to three gates on the right. This causes output to become an average of all three gates before it reaches the transistor base. This is where I get to remind you this blog was the world’s first Internet source of information on whether the transistor was an amplifier or a switch. In this case it is a switch. (I said Internet source, the info may be out there but you could spend a lifetime looking for it.)
The net effect of this is less of a chirp from the speaker and more of a tone. The smoothing capacitor also makes the transition less abrupt. Remember my need for a Morse key, how I was looking to build a “tapper”? Well, one of the switches I found was loud enough by itself, so I’m just using that. Oddly, tapping out code yourself is an excellent way to learn listening to code, because you learn why some of the letters (like L and F) have to sound like they do.
What’s the hardest part for me? It is listening for each letter to end before you react. Example is W and P. They both start the same, so you can’t write it out until you hear whether there is a final dot. This means the next letter has begun sounding before you finish writing. Yes, there is a trick to it. Call it “practice”. And full speed code is faster than I can write. They say if you reach that point, you recognize whole words. I’ll never get there, I still struggle with 10 wpm or run into wild errors. For those who might ask, as a safety measure, I never transmit with my right hand.
