June 25, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 25, 2022, NASA: “potential water”.
Five years ago today: June 25, 2018, just by showing up.
Nine years ago today: June 25, 2014, Win 7 is fake.
Random years ago today: June 25, 2008, barely encouraging.

           Good morning and Sweden has dumped its immigration policy and green programs, with talk of mass deportations of criminals. That means most of the immigrants. I found my books on physical computing and integrated circuits packed away in the shed. Taking an hour to flip through them, parts that confused the daylights out of me eleven years ago now kind of make sense. In the box was the biggest gears I ever made out of wood. Now think of some novelty we can make with them, see photo. It only has to look good.

           My first idea was to connect these to a wooden propeller that drives the smallest gear. As the gear train turns, it moves a dial on the largest gear that shows total “wind-hours”. The gears are big, the largest nearly a foot in diameter. This morning I’m not making any noise until the first neighbor does it first, so to fill the time I’ve earmarked a chapter on Bluetooth™. It’s main selling point is that once two devices make contact, they ignore all other nearby signals. That’s a fairly novel accomplishment that alone justifies the time I will spend learning it. Novel, because it could not do this except digitally.

           So I said to myself, sure they don’t make butterfly capacitors any more, but where have I seen stacks of thin metal plates? Then it hit me. I also recall these cooling fins were also very difficult to cut. We’ll soon know. In fact, we know some of it already. Here is the aluminum cut in half, which required nearly ten minutes on the grinder. Look how solid that metal is. The fins don’t match very nicely and once bent, forget it. The metal won’t cut, but it will grind. See also second picture of progress with the other piece.

           Today is destined for light duty. That kitchen floor gets swept, mopped or vacuumed 365 times a year. But you remember that tiny glass shard that went missing a few years ago? A half-inch long and pointed on one end? That one. Right as I was fixing my vegetarian breakfast. Spuds, carrot, onions sautéed in coconut oil and any spices you like. You are allowed two potatoes a week, but no saving up all for one day. You can have one egg a day, and yes, you can stockpile for Sundays, and things like muffins. Eggs have dropped to half in price from a year ago, but are still twice the price from when the fake shortages began.

           I know. Let’s see how far we get with the squirrel teeter trap. And maybe frame my favorite picture of the Reb & I. Taken 35 years ago. Seems a lot of things, but does not seem like y’day. What a life this has been. Hey, at least I wrote most of it down. Of my closest circle I know of only two people who dislike my writing. Elliott and some lady you never heard of. Wait, that isn’t fair. Elliott is like my family, he thinks highly of strangers who accomplish things, but if anyone he knows does the same, they need to be shot down and set in their place.
           There must be a psychological term for that, where some people cannot accept success except in strangers. They put down anything close to home, it is their God-given duty, you know. He shares another trait with the non-academic element in that he assumes if you see his point of view it means you agree with it. We’ll continue this topic, but first have a boo at my squirrel-proof feeder. It’s difficult to see, but I circled three small fishing weights. We are trying to find that sweet spot where the cage closes easily on anything heavier than a bird.
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           Elliott’s still dropped out of the picture for the oldest reason in my book. I’ll tell you the reason but you have to listen very closely to what I’m not saying. Ready? Elliott can’t abide by the fact that I am a better on bass than he is on guitar. What did I not say? I never said I was great on bass. I never said I was good on guitar. I never said he could not play bass. There’s another way he’s like my family. If you show him videos of crowds dancing in front of me or cheering at Karaoke, it’s all phony. Elliott has never been on stage in his adult life, but he knows a “real” crowd when he sees one. Apparently.

           You’ve just got to quit paying all those auditoriums full of actors just to fool Elliott, he’s not falling for it. He’s also a great discounter of personal experience, again, unless it is strangers. He’ll quote somebody he doesn’t know that Canada is a freer country than the USA, but when I way the opposite it’s because I’ve lived and worked in both countries, well, he says, my perception is all screwed up and I’ve been indoctrinated by the government and I’m also biased and anyway, he knows somebody who knows the facts.

           You think he’d know I don’t care for guitar players. He still thinks of bass as a “support” instrument and does not believe any of the videos I once sent him regularly. No word from Gary yet, but I played a good hand talking to the women, who are good at prodding old hubbies along. It works like this, which I’ve described many ways. A lot of people who think the same I do about guitar players often feel they are alone in their dislike. They react with great relief when they hear me put into words what they’ve thought all along. Many especially like the slang terms I use in that it shows I’ve got mileage dealing with azz-clown guitarists. Funny, I still play out more often than 99% of them. Gary would be compatible, even though he does not sing. (He can, but his guitar playing instantly suffers.)
           I put in three hours this morning, mostly what you see here. Nap time. The weather report is scattered late afternoon thundershowers. For the next four months.

Picture of the day.
Singapore cityscape.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           This is the heating element out of the broken air conditioner. It does not work, but there is something about it that reminds me of something, so I didn’t throw it out. I did not get to the squirrel teeter, as the fence turned out to have a top row just out of my reach. I had to set up a small scaffolding to reach the work. That took half the day. If the hillbilly was here, the work would have gone easier, but it would still have taken half the day, ha-ha.

           Well, that was another wakeup call. Google again locked me out of my blog. They do this whenever they “detect” unusual activity. It’s another excuse to get your personal information. And that’s the problem, when Boost Mobile acts up, I have to use the library computer to find out if it is their device, my computer, or the connection. The problem occurred yesterday just before the library closed. Google loves to pull stunts like that, but that was not the stickler. Now I can’t log onto my e-mail, and Google is not getting a phone number from me. So, I thought, I’ll call around and have somebody log onto that e-mail for me, it’s not used for anything else. And that is the wakeup call.
           Nobody I know in the entire world, including people who owe me big time, would stop what they are doing and help me out. I know it isn’t personal, but still. You’d think people would make an exception for the guy who saved their house, lent them $5,000, set up their investment accounts, or drove 750 miles to feed their pets when on holidays. Nosiree. The best I got was the Reb, who will call me back later today if she has time. By 7:00PM, long after the damage was done, she never called so I gave up. I can’t even burn the trash because if she calls, she’ll insist she help and I can’t leave the barrel unattended. I’m not blaming her, in fact I had considered going downtown and offering strangers $50 for help, but last time I did that nobody could follow the directions. Here are the directions:

           1) log on to this e-mail and wait about two minutes
           2) when the Google e-mail arrives, open it
           3) read me the six digit number that appears in bold

           Let me pass on some advice. When an old friend who has never asked you for anything before calls you up and asks for help getting an e-mail, yes, it is true, they mean right now. Not next Tuesday after the plane leaves or once the kids are grown. Nor is it an issue that the e-mail is not “that important” to you. It should be enough that it is important to them.

           I should go buy another computer. I’ve wanted an Apple for a while, as it eliminates the computer as being the problem. I’m aware the way to avoid most computer Internet troubles is to follow the pack. I was first into computers in my crowd, now forty years later, I don’t know one person in the universe who can give me a hand. They either know nothing or can only do one simple thing at a time. Like Fred, I can fix a computer, but don’t ask me to follow the logic of a Google coder. Multiply that by 100. I could skip the Caltier investment this month and get an iPad, what’s the smallest Apple that has a keyboard, that one. I notice a $100 price difference between models for some kind of service, but cannot find anyone to explain the difference to me. I fully admit, I don’t know how the Internet handles these things.
           It’s probably expectable, we live in a world where the top sitey on the net today is a one-hour video explaining the new Netflix return policy. You heard me, one hour for a return policy. Well, the damage is done here, so I went outside and finished putting up all the fence pickets I bought last day. Everything is secure though I ran out of screws which will have to wait until next time I go downtown. Because tomorrow morning I have to hit that library to find out what’s going on with my service. It’s not like Boost Mobile says anything when they screw up, which is pretty regularly. But they are the only month-to-month service available here.

           Cancel the beer, maybe we’ll work the burn barrel. First, let’s take a peek at this article best movies of 2023. Somehow they know this and it is only June. Let’s see if there is anything new.

1. M3GAN. Nope, another horror doll twist.
2. Rye Lane. No way, Black lady falls in love in a public toilet.
3. Beau is Afraid. Forget it, mental patient killer-thrille.r
4. Are You There God? Naw, religion mixed with coming of age.
5. Evil Dead Rise. Gag, not another Book of the Dead .
6. Polite Society. Double gag, a Paki love story.
7. Suzume. Japanese sex cartoon
8. Fast X. Revolting inter-racial family dinner story.
9. The Boogeyman. As bad as it sounds.
10. The Little Mermaid. Possibly the worst movie of this century.
11. Past Lives. Korean love story.
12. Across the Spider-verse. Another Marvel cartoon.
13. Asteroid City. Budget alien invited to dinner.
14. Nimona. Comic book art and Anomin spelled backwards.

ADDENDUM
           I have no idea what’s up in Singapore, but they have driven my blog hits to an all-time high. Mobile Safari using Android dominates the 20,000 extra hits so far this month, which only tells me the viewers are probably using smart phones, a technology I don’t understand. I refer to these periodic upsurges as “blooms” but they don’t usually last more than a few days. If this keeps up Singapore will surpass France as my largest audience. Mind you, France has been on-board for years, so I mean monthly visits, not totals.

Last Laugh