June 20, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 20, 2022, a church, $52,000.
Five years ago today: June 20, 2018, blather of a TV addict.
Nine years ago today: June 20, 2014, like they invented it.
Random years ago today: June 20, 2010, 27,035 bullets.

           Oatmeal. It’s a good thing I like it. Today, we tackle the feeder problem, the say the squirrels can hang on to the sliding part without it moving down to seal off the feed ports. My plan is the hang a weight underneath, which makes the assembly trip with less squirrel mass. Or failing that, a small tray the squirrel will stand on and cause the same effect. We got a soaking again overnight, so help yourself to another coffee while we wait for things to dry out. According to Greta the Elf, tomorrow our five years is up. The world will end from climate change on June 21, 2023. I know she wouldn’t lie, but I also thought Scandinavian women were supposed to be good-looking.

           The Titan is missing. That’s the mini-sub to take millionaire tourists down to the Titanic. The Titan contained 5 paying passengers at $250,000 each. The loss of such people is no big deal in America, but what a gruesome way to go. They have some reserve oxygen, meaning by now the weakest ones have already been strangled. The craft had many safety issues.

           Good news for West Virginia sex predators, the state has canceled their “Catch a Predator” program. You know, where they post videos of men showing up to meet underage partners. The problem was they kept catching their own mayors, senators, police chiefs, and clergymen. Outside stayed wet so I went to work on the air lines. I have a leak at a joint that was soldered on the bench, so it should have been nearly perfect. I never did get to shopping so we have SPAM™ noodle soup (quite good actually), coffee, and salad to keep us going. I lack one coupling or I’d be finished.
           Okay, I’ll list the soup ingredients. Diced SPAM™, chicken broth, carrot slices, onion, spiral noodles, pepper, hot sauce (optional), celery, and salt. There is a secret ingredient, but don’t overdo it. A tablespoon per cup of tomato sauce. It turns the soup slightly brown, if it’s red you put too much. I’m perpetually dieting, so if you feel the soup isn’t “heavy” enough, add half a can of baby corn. And there’s the picture of the Texas chicken corn pie, fresh out of the defroster. Whoops, you must have blinked.

           Since we know the expensive 3-wire electric cable has gone missing, I took some time to do inventory. Yes, there are a number of small items missing, but it does not make sense. Small stuff that is no good to anybody even in combination. I’m remembering when I let the hillbilly crash for a while last year. Rule one is he could have nobody else in the yard, but he did come by a few times with that punk-looking girlfriend. I can’t prove anything, so I instructed him to stay away from the yard for a couple of weeks because I have no work for him. He is always gone on Tuesdays, which around here is court day. He’s in some kind of situation so no hanging out here until it is resolved. And get a job, the orange juice plant is hiring and they send a bus downtown to pick up workers.
           Pirates on the Great Lakes? Apparently so. Mostly Lake Michigan. Geovernment policy meant locals had a great time stealing lumber and venison. I got this because the unusually high blog readership from Singapore left that filter off. And there was a town in Michigan called Singapore. It was a boom town after the fires that leveled cities like Boston. But the locals cut down all the trees, causing sands to drift that eventually buried the place. I’m not making this up. Anyway, blog traffic from the other Singapore is 20 times higher than usual, if anyone over there knows why, leave a comment.

           Once in a while I check the list of the 500 most visited sites. Today I scrolled past the half-way point before I recognized any except search engines, news feeds, and crap sites like dating and Canada. The first one I’ve actually visited was ScienceDirect.com, but the most commonly searched term there was “appetite”. That ties in with the tale of the fat lady who demands skinny people pay more for airline tickets because the airline “discriminates” over fat people. “Thar she blows!” Don’t diet, fat women, demand others change their perception. Yes folks, it’s time to cull the herd.
           There is an island, Meighan, in the Canadian arctic that is known for only one possible famous reason. It is the only island he saw that Captain Cook specifically denied that he saw.

Picture of the day.
Pound of Tea Island, ($529,000).
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           It’s Gunsmoke Tuesday over at the neighbors. The hillbilly and him both remember the episodes between them from the originals or the re-runs. They are all new to me. It’s interesting during commercials because they ask what I figure and seem incredulous that I can guess the plots to such accuracy. But script-writing has not changed much. It isn’t hard to guess about the $1,000 bills torn in half. All series, if you ask me, start off great and quickly sink to grinding out repetitious plots. Besides, I’ve seen enough Clint Eastwood movies to know all hookers have a heart of gold, I mean, that’s why they became hookers.

           Walking back from the Gunsmoke show, we passed the church dumpster. They throw out such neat stuff. In this case, a Bissell carpet sweeper in perfect order except a fan belt, a metal fire grate (destined to be a planter), and a mini-basketball hoop with netting exactly the right design for a squirrel catapult. I’m not sure about the planter, but it looks okay. I did not do a shop so we are out of all but the essentials. This is like being back in college.
           Here’s the metal burn pit in my yard. Turns out several neighbors had their eye on it. Too late, I spent a lot of years to get to front of the line when opportunity arises. I was born poor enough to remember how many times one had to let things slide because it was too often not good enough just to be there. You needed some way to haul stuff and no way—they’d steal your hauler.

contact near the Titanic wreck. The crew included the man who said such subs were “obscenely safe”.

           Trivia. The HMS Victory, among the best sailing warships ever, required 7,000 trees to build. I learned that reading about the Titan, the mini-sub that's lost. One of my favorite news mash sites has changed its page, making it impossible to find the videos I used to enjoy. They include a search box, but it does not go to the same destination. For an afternoon break, I wired up a one-transistor amp according to an Internet diagram. It makes sense, though I have no immediate way of testing it. This is a second separate circuit from the one mentioned below.
           This patio log thing is not to be confused with the regular burn barrel. Shown here with the wood piled up ready to go, that’s a four or five beer fire. And nobody wants to go downtown to buy the Yeung-Ling. I’m the only one with the cash and the furthest I’m going tomorrow is downtown for some eggs.

ADDENDUM
           Here is the promised working circuit. This accomplishes the task of the failed unit y’day. The difference is this one used capacitance rather than inductance. Ready for your free lesson? This circuit is designed as a science fair project, so let’s go over what is learned. Normally a light goes off and on instantly depended on the switch position. This one fades on and off. It could use fewer components, but I use six including the LED so that it is not too simplistic. The challenge here is to get it to work using only discrete components, maybe better understood by saying I won’t use any “chips”. Is this important?

           Yes, for learning. It would be possible to program a chip full of logic gates to do the same, but that causes an undesired side-effect. It produces coders instead of programmers. A coder need not learn anything practical about the hardware, his focus is on the computer code. A programmer would insist on knowing how each part works first. These are, of course, generalities, but coders are the reason we have Three Mile Islands and cars catching fire.

           If you watch closely, and you’ll have to as this is a gif produced off the training video, you see the LED (light) fades on and off and different rates. It’s because the capacitor-resistor pairing produces what is called a “sawtooth” wave form. Many of the nails on this board are test points, which are not important to me but I don’t want any science teachers chewing my ears off. While this circuit could be built “blind”, the student will quickly spot it goes easier if you learn the components, which is the object here.
           The current follows two paths, one through the LED, the other through the base of the transistor. The base requires a current to “turn on”, allowing the LED to glow. The unseen lesson here is that it requires only a very tiny current to control the transistor, and the “switch” could be replaced by a variety of sensors or other sources.

           Here’s how it works. When you close the switch, the electricity can take two paths, but the transistor (type NPN) must be “on” for the LED to light up. As the current goes to the base of the transistor, part of the juice is bled off to charge up the LED. This means until the capacitor is full, the transistor takes its time. When the switch is closed, the capacitor discharges through the base, which also takes a moment or two.

           There’s more to the plan. I could have designed this circuit ten years ago, but that was when the market was full of kits. Most of those did flashier things, you know, bells & whistles. The projects also had a slick look and this stuck in my craw. I grew up in an era when that $50 science fair prize always went to the kid whose parents bought him the best kit. It’s only a plan for now, but I wonder if there is a market for the opposite. A “kit” that looks like this, with less than a dollar of parts except for the battery and holder. You tell me.
           What about my “pinch switch”. There’s all kinds of these on-line, but take a look. You want to spend $70 on a button? Here’s my plan. Using an old tape measure (with the numbers worn off), a cut two small pieces. Wire them up with a gap. Glue a couple bingo chips as finger pads. To operate the switch, you just pinch the pads so the metal makes contact. Seventy bucks, huh? Yeah, I could go for that. For you, it’s free.

Last Laugh