One year ago today: April 24, 2022, still not painted.
Five years ago today: April 24, 2018, the last paint job.
Nine years ago today: April 24, 2014, nothing but potential.
Random years ago today: April 24, 2009, more like ex-army brat.
The frozen battery quick fix worked. It is just symptom, however. That camera is another item with a pampered existence. Why would the battery so suddenly give? We’ll investigate. Meanwhile, here are pictures of the nearly perfect papaya. Karen will have to wait for another day, quite the gal, I say. But like papaya, it’s something best enjoyed occasionally. Here’s that overcast morning we’ve been waiting for, let’s get some work done. I already got flak for the cream on my papaya, though it seems to me I deserve more luxury than I’ve been allowing myself.
Another 2-1/2 hours on the door lock. You are right, it should have taken 15 minutes. Now blog rules say the explanation takes more of my time. My lock drilling tool would not release the old blade. I thought it was rusted but it may have not been a matching set to begin with. I finally got it and installing the required ring meant completely taking off the work done y’day. Three defects in the design took the rest of the time. First, three of the screws were missing, but an extra useless pair were in the package. This causes a wild goose chase, but the three finishing screws for the interior cover plate were indeed not in the package.
The real time-killer was the lock itself. Nowhere on the instructions or on-line does it mention the bolt throws itself three times and locks on the third try. So you finish all and go to test the lock. It sounds exactly like the bolt is not lining up with the strike plate. Of course, you can’t see this because the door is closed. So I repositioned the strike plate and widened the bolt hole. It still sounds like it is jamming, but any more wiggle room and the door would be loose. I finally tacked a cover over the bolt and sure enough, it made the same sound. That’s the way it works. I programmed in the master code and eight of the passcodes.
Shown here is the final interior pieces in place, pointing at one of the missing screws. These are tiny flathead Phillips and probably difficult to match up. At one time it was understandable that the instruction sheet was outdated due to design changes. In this age of work processors, there is no excuse for the bad instructions, and the missing parts show a callous disprespect for the customer. Put them in the box first. This chrome finish does nt match the brass color, I think one of the extras I bought will match. If so, let’s see how long it takes me to swap these out, if not forever. There is a feature you can set where the lock operates itself after 30 seconds of inactivity. Probably nothing but trouble but nice to know it’s there.
The lost time I tend to relate as money and I would have had to charge $160 to make anything doing this kind of work commercially. I’m of a mind to build a fake demo piece like they show on-line and install a few of these locks a few times until I can do it right. But that is dependent on finding the times. The only company I had was the red cardinals, who were feeding late today. It is a pleasant 80°F even out there and they are playing in the bath.
There are two new birdies who visit, both appear solo. Neither is identified but one is a tiny but fearless grey bird, finch-like, with a splash of yellow near the cheeks. The other is a larger bird, a dark grey with slight bluish accents near the tail. It is noisy, curious, and perches with its tail up. It will raid the suet cage when the Downeys are not looking. Allowing for a twelve foot radius, the cardinals and woodpeckers will finally feed at the same time.
The last Type XXI.
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Here is the breakfast that took so much flak and focus this morning. Nutmeg, papayas and cream, coffee, and a mouse at the ready. Looks perfectly normal to me. Monday mornings you eat what you feel like, and this was my choice. Could be carrots or sweet potatoes, but it is papaya. I’m assured that this fruit is so healthy for you it isn’t funny. The objections were to the cream and sugar. Jealousy knows no bounds. It’s now past 1:00PM and I’m hungry again. What was that sound? My tummy or distant thunder. Please be a storm so I won’t feel lazy taking the rest of the afternoon off.
The books are closed for the first quarter and this has not been a great year so far. It’s inflation. On the surface, things don’t much appear out of whack but the damage is creeping. In broad terms, I ended the period just $71 better off, the worst since 2009. Mind you, if this set of books was applied to most people, they’d show a drastic loss since January, mostly due to gas and food. Inflation is 5% says the government, who nobody likes any more, but everybody knows basics have doubled and tripled. A dozen eggs is $4.50 where it was 95¢ before Biden killed all the chickens.
What’s this, Fox News fired Tucker? That was probably not the smartest move, considering their rock-bottom ratings. What America can’t understand is why all these popular figures don’t get together and buy their own station. I know there’s reasons, I’m say people don’t understand it. There have been a few false starts, but I mean they team up and buy an existing operation so as to not start from scratch.
I listened to “Country Breeze”, claiming to be country music written by A.I. It’s terrible, but country music itself has sunk to such simplistic levels, this could spell real trouble for Nashville. As for rap and what’s on Tampa radio, A.I. is already a vast improvement. Get me an A.I. guitar player. More cries for Internet privacy out of California, with tracking blockers. Funny how they are now begging for something they called down for so long. And that’s the problem for them. Block all you want, the information is out there and you can never get it back. Serves you right.
Listening to several A.I music generators, they are all junk at this stage. Plus, they create the music from canned sounds. It’s more of an automated process of piling tracks on top of each other and calling it original. The term LoFi keeps appearing, I’ll guess it a corruption of WiFi because that is what the music sounds like. I check out every announcement concerning automated or robot guitar and so far every one is a dismal failure for stage work.
I’ve test Strum Machine on-line, but it is meant as a practice aid. It’s disheartening, th elack of good musicians in this area. The cloud cover is increasing but I’ve already done plenty of work for the day. Trivia. I read that until the very end of the warm, the Germans were able to recover and repair 75% of their tanks that broke down or were damaged in battle. That’s remarkable in that they spent the last half of the war retreating. Did they launch special local attacks to get these tanks. The tow vehicles would make tempting targets. It says they converted large numbers of captured T-34s by lopping off the turret and adding a crane.
By 1944, the average age of a German tank crew was 19 years 10 months.
ADDENDUM
It was 27 years ago today I signed my resignation and retirement papers with the company. In another 30 days (May 23) I walked away from the bullshit called working for a living. Oh, I still work, but not to pay tribute to the credit card companies, banks, and landlords. I never struck it rich, nor did I waste my life trying. For that matter, my odds were greater than most because I was out there when opportunities came along. Can’t do that when you’re in a cubicle and I can tell you the most awful part of that is you know you don’t know what you’re missing.
Still, I spent a total of 20 years working for wages, got nowhere, and to this day do not have a circle of friends who are right on top of anything. For example the one person who knows anything about computers in my life, a programmer, does not know how to type, is a terrible speller, and can’t much use a word processor.
That sounds like profiling, which I just finished reading a chapter of examples. It more than ever smacks of very lucky guesswork, safe assumptions, and as the book explains, that if you make enough predictions people will forget the bad ones. Hmmm, what I’d call the Nostradamus Effect.
