One year ago today: March 8, 2022, telegraph men stayed home.
Five years ago today: March 8, 2018, what’s in demand.
Nine years ago today: March 8, 2014, the important lesson isn’t there.
Random years ago today: March 8, 2001, I failed tax law.
This morning was a drag, I’m afraid the day is lost. Here is a model pushbutton off-on switch you’ve seen a lot of times. It’s cut from the base of those el cheapo flashlights that use 3 AAA cells. Soon as they malfunction, this part gets salvaged. I toyed with the idea of converting the whole flashlight to a self-powered switch but for electronics, the batteries are just to unreliable to bother with. Instead, I’m leaning toward transformers from old wall warts.
It’s spring and all the bass players are quitting. I get an upsurge of hits on my add, but mostly from larger established rock groups. Such bands are too much like work as they have to constantly push to stay alive. It’s been so long I often recognize the band names but not the players, yet I’ve likely jammed with 90% of them.
One curious repeat [visitor] is a Janet from Tampa, who lists herself as a 32 year old expert bassist. Would you join someone that age who has only been playing 12 years? I know, it doesn’t figure. My guess is 45, knows the clone classics, has tattoos. I scroll through all the ads religiously. All I will say is that if the Reb & I ever formed up around here, we’d handily take the prize for the over 30 most photogenic. Crestfallenly, there is no category for slimmest.
The 12V drill is now replaced. I doubt it’s been nicked because it would have been lying without the charger next to more valuable items Still, around here these things just do not go missing this long. I stopped in for coffee at the Mongolia, chatting with the owner. She knows someone interested in hot dog cart. I would rather be in Tennessee just now, I’ve hit a listless spell that cannot be shaken. And when I’m that way, I play a lot of bass, design circuits, read technical material, and fix things. It’s still winter up north and maybe that would get me off my tush. I poked through the shed and cannot find my box of LEDs, that’s how long it’s been since I worked with them.
Here is how progress often happens around here. Most of the prototyping I do is making pieces fit, and the switch above proved to be 1/16th of an inch to big or too small to fit any of the hole drill sizes they make in this country. You can see I made it fit and the board has a spot for a small plastic project board. These are hard to work with for beginners due to the pin layout. And pins are what this board is all about. I’m currently pondering a better arrangement for the nail holes, a better match for some of the common IC sizes.
Which got me thinking about power the power supply. I realized how the back of the board could have channels the right size cut by the same saw settings I’m trying to make work for rabbets. The right-side panel below shows some experimental channels, cut wherever I thought they seemed okay. Most such projects can be broken down into two segments, the power supply and the circuit. This arrangement would make it look better. And overall it is more attractive than a plastic breadboard, which is really only needed for chips and preformatted pins. If it looks better, somebody will buy it.
March 20 is declared S. Africa Day by the thugs of that country. “We don’t want to see a truck or a train moving”, says the video which shoes a she-boom arranging tire necklaces on a pickup flatbed. Not sure what that is? They soak the tire in gasoline. Then handcuff the victim, place the tire over his neck and set it on fire. Happens all the time. Australian school children are being trained how to pray in a mosque. The victims in East Palestine can now buy “wellness” coverage for $1,250 which includes testing for negative vaccine effects.
Austrian “6-color” flower boxes.
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Since we’re not busy, shall we take a look at a famous photo that is often mis-captioned. They like to say this is the gal who did the coding for the Apollo landing and this is the printout of her code. That is probably not the case. For openers the computers of the day could probably not compile that amount of code. What’s more likely is that is a core dump. What’s that? When the computer center ran your code overnight, when the computer wasn’t busy with more important stuff, it printed out a listing of every operation at machine level. Page after page of digital printout that was meaningless to the untrained eye. And I say that is what is shown.
Things got busy when it cooled down unexpectedly at 40-ish. I worked on the electric in the laundry area until dark, most of the pieces are wired up. The power isn’t connected and the wiring isn’t tucked into the boxes yet. Otherwise it is done. Part of the late start was the lawn tractor. Howie and I got to talking and the consensus is the carb, brand new or not, isn’t getting steady gas. Upon examination, it seems these otherwise well-built tractors have one of those idiotic bladder fuel pumps. Like on a cheap-ass chain saw.
One day soon, we will bypass that device with a small electric fuel pump. Howie has one he never used, so the experiment will take place soon. If that turns out to be the problem that tractor is instantly worth $1200, which around here would have no use except the Caltier fund. I’m still enthused with the numbers on that which can only get better. I’ve made up my mind that if the fund passes a certain level before November, I may look at other similar investments.
Not every idea makes the blog, but some become notable along the way. One is a rubber stamp. I don’t want to pay the custom price and they don’t make a “For Deposit Only” quite the right size and shape for money orders. So, I’ve been keeping an eye out for one and in the process found a stamp place that has their own. These machines are not expensive, they use a laser cutter these days, yet for unknown reasons most places farm the job out. Is that important? Could be, depending on what you want the stamp to say.
Will I get up early tomorrow and get you pictures of the laundry deck lighting progress? Only time will tell. Later, yes, here is a picture of a socket and a switch, notice the wonderful improvement in the quality of work? No? Well, I do. I call it “experience”. Funny thing, this is a typical day [around here] when very little got done. I wonder how that compares with other people’s “nothing” days.
ADDENDUM
Mortgage brokering. The business involves finding places who own mortgage notes who want to sell them at a discount to raise immediate cash. The place most people might ever see this is owner-financed property sales. You buy the house for twenty years of payments at, say 8% (higher than banks because you must be a risk or you’d borrow the cheaper money). Anyway, the seller does not wait twenty years. He goes to a mortgage broker, who buys the note for, say 6%, but pays the cash up front to the seller. The buyer continues to pay 8%, so the note has what is called a future value.
If you read this blog back far enough, you’ll find I studied this subject for eight solid months back in the 1990s, at evening school. This is the class I got 99% because the college computer could not print 3 digits. Again, no promises, but I may take another look. One downside is if anything happens to me, no way can the knowledge be transferred. Our system is superbly set up for this type of venture. At end of this month, Caltier will have 20% of the funds in only 5% of the time. Caltier is slated to end in November, 2030.
Caltier is projected to begin producing $100 per month internally by December of 2024. It has always been a waypoint for me when an investment gets to that level. However, because I have other investments that mature between now and then, stay tuned. Caltier requires $16,997 invested to reach a $100 per month payout based on their historical return. If things go right, I may have that amount invested by this September.
For the curious, if you go far enough to the right on my spreadsheets, you’d [often] find a column called “TER”. It stands for “tertiary” and is the amount by which each months additional investment causes an increase in returns. Put another way, it is the compound amount of compound interest. For Caltier, the magic day, which I peg at $3, won’t happen until April Fool’s day in 2029, I’ll be long dead and gone. So if I want it to happen, I’d better get mobile soon. That’s where this tractor comes in. It will push Caltier into the five figure range.
Did I just say “crestfallenly”?
