One year ago today: March 2, 2022, desperados.
Five years ago today: March 2, 2018, peace & quiet.
Nine years ago today: March 2, 2014, remember Pussy Riot?
Random years ago today: March 2, 2008, we saw one babe.
I owe it all to planning ahead that I never have bad days, meaning in the sense of what I hear other people go through. This morning, I could not get started, so, is that a bad day? We’ll see, but it was not a lost morning. I’d flagged a couple of obscure reports on the old German Tiger tank I’d wanted to read, as they are not material the winning sides like to publish. It was video of Tigers in the African desert knocking out Allied tanks at a range of 1,800 meters. This belies the sources that say at maximum elevation, the range was only 2,000 meters. It’s hard to find such facts as fifty years later so much propaganda has become so many people’s fact. See addendum for more.
I hauled out the 220V wiring to near the new hot water tank. In other puttering, I got another couple avocado plants started. No success in years, but others manage, so I keep at it. I added small ledges near the table saw to keep items up out of the way and rigged up an FM radio just for fun. Taking 15 potshots at the targets tells me there may be something wrong with the air rifle. Maybe that’s why it was on sale. Even with the scope set and using a yoke and sandbags, it is 3” out at 30 feet. Yeah I know, move the target to 15 feet, but at that point just use a slingshot.
Mr. Squirrel chewed a hole in my silo, I finally snuck up on him and saw the rascal get up under one of the eaves. No room for a catapult, so it is going to be a trap. Then transportation to the old cemetery, where he has all the room to roam he could want. No bonfire tonight, plus they had no Yueng-Ling. I had to substitute Miller High Life, which is hardly in the same league. The Downeys are happy but not using the relocated birdhouse. The cardinals are so well fed they ignore me for days. I set out some boiled peanuts they used to like but no takers.
What it looks like to me is Caltier has very limited clerical staff. And their system is set up to take one big in-transfer per month. My system is two smaller transfers. I’ve already mentioned how any transfer locks up their system for five working days. That’s why I canceled the monthly plan they push so hard and now may have to reconsider. They may have no choice but to put things into a holding pattern until they get around to doing the books. I know I do. Caltier may like one transaction per month. I’ve been averaging five. Hey, I don’t like to accumulate; I like to invest when the money comes in. Move it along asap, you might say.
Biden is harping on student debt again, his tactic is to promise them forgiveness until they vote for him. Then once elected, claim his promise is being frustrated by Republicans. Each new incoming crop of public school leftoids keeps falling for the lie.
1907 Silver Ghost.
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Love those exterior lights, they extend the work day an hour. I have a second productive stretch between 5:00PM and 7:00PM –ish. I get to finish stuff and today it was actual cabin work. Minor stuff, but the real deal. I got the kitchen A/C canopy foiled and tarpapered. (The foil shown hanging here just needs to be trimmed away, you are looking for the nice new roofing piece covered here in tarpaper. The plywood cap was just about to go on when the stepladder decided to sink into the sand. Anyway, there’s a piece of metal flashing I’ll need to bend out of the way and I’m not doing that until the ladder is rock steady.
While working on the table saw shelving, a guy on the radio said he was looking for a lawn tractor, practically describing what I have for sale. I left him a message saying “half price”, so he can check at Lowe’s (selling for $2,600). That would be a boon to Caltier if I could have that much money invested this month. I’m suspecting there is something wrong with my air rife for sure. By later today I had the scope set perfectly and shown here is the grouping. One bull’s-eye out of my standard 15 shots. This rifle is plenty heavy to keep steady and I’m not giving up. You can see the vertical is all within a much narrower scale but adjusting any further makes it worse.
His latest is Yoakum’s “It Only Hurts Me When I Cry”. No pun intended, this sort of music plays right into my hands. I know I’m way better at keeping it simple than people who don’t work as hard at it. I confess that song is hard to play. If you listen, there is no line that plays the 6th notes early in each bar. So that’s exactly where I focused and it is “opposite” to bass logic, kind of like trying to play a guitar upside down. I’m slowly getting it, I love to play those type of lines on stage because there is always some bozo who thinks, “I can do that.”
ADDENDUM
There is a handwriting service advertising in Tampa. They will, for a hefty fee, train you to have a better signature. On they go about readability, but that is where we part. My signature is highly unreadable, but very distinctive. Why? So you have to ask me if it is real. You see, I learned early around 90% of things I signed were not voluntary. Oh, they feed you the line that it is required, but since you don’t have to sign, it’s your choice. Yeah, right. Canada-think.
Google, which lately has been losing money by the billions, just laid off 100 robots. This spells further woes for the $15/hour bunch. But until we see them protesting at the border crossings, they can go to hell. Too bad I won’t live to see what happens to that lot once the taxpaying Boomers are gone and there is nobody left to vote money out of.
It is known the Germans target practiced on a six-foot-square at 1,000 meters, but the hit probability was 100%. (Tank gunner practice.) So they moved it back to 2,000 meters. And still got over 85% first shot.
One example of historic fiction is that the Tiger was in response to Russian designs. Nope, the basic design was handed out to two companies in 1939 before hostilities. The Germans were well away of heavy tank design, they just didn’t think they needed them. True, some features were copied from the Russian format, but the entire Russian tank force was itself a copy of foreign designs and sloped armor was a very well-known concept. What’s overlooked is that the German tanks were not built to fight other tanks, but to prevent a repeat of the barbed-wire and trench warfare of the first war. All they needed was a way to break through the enemy lines and shoot up his supplies. And the early German tanks were excellent at this task.
There is also no reliable data (on-line) about the ratios of these tank battles. The odd time they will say the Tigers were always outnumbered two to one. Now calculate the mid-war production figures. These tanks never just disappeared on either side, they were sent headlong into battle. Since the totals of serviceable tanks didn’t change much, I find that a more reliable way to compare kill ratios. The Allies required six or seven tanks to keep a Tiger busy
hile they called in airstrikes. And the Soviets had a twelve-to-one advantage by these production rates.
