One year ago today: May 1, 2022, talk about prosperous.
Five years ago today: May 1, 2018, thoroughly agreed.
Nine years ago today: May 1, 2014, the Ariston.
Random years ago today: May 1, 1981, famous Point Roberts.
This is traditionally my best month, what adventures do we find or create this time? It’s barely documented because it is mostly my recollections. A couple examples. It was in May that I quit my job and retired so long ago. I began writing this journal in 1970, though the originals are long since lost. But the first line was a poem I’d heard, “Hooray, hooray, the month of May”. The last time in my life I’d ever date a 21 y.o. woman was May of 2010. Judy Blue Eyes and I broke up in May I was 21 years old. It’s psychological, I know, but as an old flame used to say, if you think it is, then it is.
In a note to myself, Caltier is late this period. The statements and disbursements are already twelve hours overdue. This would not be the first time they behave as if they think nobody is watching. But they always catch up. So take that either way.
That Mary Hopkin tune, “Goodbye” stuck in my brain so I learned the bass line. It is a study in walking bass following along to your classic “western” chord progressions. Sources are in C, but the original key she sang is E. I changed it slightly from a following bass to a leading bass, it’s subtle but talk about giving that ancient tune a contemporary feel. Yes folks, Mary Hopkin. Propelled in one day from nobody to immortal. And I can't even find anybody who will show me how MIDI works in a way I can understand.
Grilled turkey sandwiches for breakfast and I’m at the moment baking more banana nut muffins, from a mix. But with my ingredients added. I will be paying much more attention to food labels now that the American poison companies (Monsanto & Cargill) have bribed their way to another euphemism, a label that hints the product includes bio-engineered ingredients without naming them. Last time I’ll ever buy any, even if they change back.
People with mental problems who started using ChatGPT for medical advice are complaining the bot isn’t telling them what they want to hear. NASA posts a photo taken by the Arab orbiter, showing “never before seen” features on Mars. With Arabian names. When German brought out €49 country-wide transit vouchers, they were quickly sold out. To people who resold them for €99. Green, my eye. Australia has lab-grown woolly mammoth meat. Still in the works: crocodile.
According to the State of Florida, my property has increased in value by $3,000 in the past year. That, combined with local school taxes, for children I don’t have in school, pushes my tas bill up by $31 this year. You know, people who own houses don’t make that much. But they can save lots by putting their minds to it. In my day, you had to both rent a house and pay around half the mortgage if you rented it out. These days, the rent is geared to cover the entire cost. Not a whimper from the genxyzers. Serves them right. No guts, no glory.
The windstorm took down all my air rifle targets. I had to print up more Antifa silhouettes. Taking a look at the area I want to set up in the shade, I said to mayself, “This is a task for the hillbilly.” It’s a mess back there but it’s invisible from most of the yard. That’s a huge plus, folks. I’m in the mood for building a birdhouse using my nice table saw. I hate to burn anything except small sticks and I have a pile of short planks accumulated. Half the day is done and I’m still here, sipping coffee. Hope you are as well.
Mont St. Mike, France
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Yep, I’ve got a lot of scraps. Saw them all down into 3/4” strips and you’ll find a use for them. If so much had not got done y’day, I’d feel guilty. The bad people in DC are rapidly passing laws designed to forestall election losses but they are alienating themselves from their own people in many cases. People who voted against Trump often admit shock to find out their vote is used to groom children and launder money.
For the record, I don’t know who this broad is. She’s some sort of media personality, but I assure the world this is NOT what American men find attractive in an older woman. She looks as plastic as the eyebrows, fake lashes, and botox lips. This is the face that confronted me when I clicked on a Rumble link, there was no warning. I’ve recovered enough to post my dislike for that look. As for the impact on Fox of firing Tucker, on-line games and recipes are getting more views than Fox and CNN.
A couple of hours later, I cleaned up some of the north yard, found some good lumber, an took measurements. I can do this by laying planks overtop of concrete blocks so I don’t have to dig much more than post holes. That north fence needs replacing but I can salvage most of the pickets to keep the street side looking ancient. The hillbilly must have picked up my planer wondering what it was and sat it down on the power cord.
Peanut butter in plastic jars is bad enough, but somehow one jar got hauled out of the shed and out by the fence. How’d they manage that, I never left the shed door open even by accident. Well, there it was, and the way if tell, any other way it would not fill up with rain water and stagnate. Wait, this is Florida. By the fence, it lay on top of a fallen tree branch, which you could not see because of the leaf cover. So, when four feet away, as you walk past and step on the other end of the dead branch, catapults the peanut jar into the air. Up over the railing and down on the exact spot where that stinky water lands right in that tiny gap between your shoe and your ankle. The good news is I think I found the squirrel hole. They spent an hour today circling around the silo without finding a way in. The only remaining opening has a wire mesh covering made from an old birdcage. So, this round goes to me.
Next, here are some general pictures referred to in the writing. I have extras so I threw these together as a treat. This blog contains so many pictures I’ve given up most thoughts of calling it a journal any more. Most days, a third of this blog is related to a picture. Here’s the rundown on these views, this is what I mean. There is the screen window in the silo, the squirrels did try to get through the fine mesh on the front, to be met by two more layers. Next is the north fence. The pickets are old and brittle, but I’ve pried them loose before This was once a fancy design, so I’m hoping to get enough to finish a single layer.
However, my logic was okay. These remain the tightest and strongest of the old joints I’ve built. I have not yet lined up and tested my lock miter. That day is getting close and from what I now know, that will be the last and most advanced type of joinery I intend to pursue. If I forgot to mention, Trent had company this weekend anyway, so the trip would have been a no-go in any case. Caltier is now 18 hours late with the posting.
I put in an hour with my demo circuit on capacitors. It’s simple, until you see one in action, a lot of it does not make sense. Plus, I’ve mentioned how so many on-line tutorials for capacitor focus on how they work rather than what they do. I admit rather than use or memorize charts, I go on-line to find colors and values. I need a brown-black-orange resistor to make a 150 micro-farads discharge in around one second. Is it new, Make has articles on “super capacitors” which are rated in farads instead of microfarads. (The farad is quite a large unit.)
Agt. M built some big units from banks of regular capacitor, but these appear to be a relatively new item. He had the right idea, that they could be used to replace batteries with the added bonus they did not take hours to charge up. I felt the electronics needed to control that kind of discharge was iffy and certainly beyond anything we could build. Digging through my bin, I think I have a 4.7 farad. Where did I get it? On-line these cost $20 each so I did not buy it.
What I figure is these are being used nowadays instead of batteries for long-term power backup. Somebody has solved the issues with controlling the discharge and I read somewhere if attached to RAM, they can preserve data in the event of power loss. That would be something, because capacitors can be recharged many more times than a battery. Strange how this late in life I’m just hearing about these now.
Later, it is not a supercap. Just a large regular unit. One easy way to tell is the rated voltage. The supercaps have small voltage limits, usually less than 3V. The capacitor I’ve got is stamped 440V. I don’t trust large capacitors of any kind.
ADDENDUM
Hard on the heels of Buzzfeed, yet another ultra-left media outfit is filing for bankruptcy. You can hardly swing a dead cat around these days without hitting some leftoid MSM clone biting the dust. Amazon will sell you glow in the dark pebbles for your driveway. Or the Killer Key, which once inserted into a lock, permanently disables it. (They say, there is no such thing to a trained hand.)
Over the years articles about film digitalization will get my attention. It is an obscure but ongoing challenge to take an old roll of 35mm camera film and squeeze an entire minute of digital movie onto it. Some guy finally did it with a 3D camera. It takes Edison’s old technique of frames and prints them onto the roll by dividing it into four strips. My interest is not the camera, the result is chintzy films that look like Super-8. But the fact all the camera gears have been replaced by stepper motors and my fascination of where do these people learn these things? But that is another tale from the trailer court.
