One year ago today: July 15, 2022, the meaning of BLM.
Five years ago today: July 15, 2018, my arm still hurts.
Nine years ago today: July 15, 2014, onward it plods.
Random years ago today: July 15, 2004, happy birthday, margarine.
Here’s something you have not seen before, the next round in Squirrel Wars . Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the latest in anti-rodent hardware, the “Squirrel Hex”. Based on an original idea from Florida, let’s define original as being something I have never seen before and could not find mentioned on-line. This is the frame, now imagine the “onion rings” filling in the spaces. This is as stirring as things will get this morning, but this is the blog that dares. Besides, the double meaning of “Squirrel Hex” was enough brainwork for the day, which I’m sure had already crossed your mind.
Put on your thinking cap and I’ll give you the clues. The hillbilly knows I lock the tools in the silo. What if he decided to be helpful and put the saw in there? I do recall him saying the silo was already locked, but that was for the grass whip, which hangs outside beside the door. A few days earlier we had dug the trench for the silo power line. I had thought it wise to put sawhorses along the pits near the ends where I had run out of PVC glue, remember that? Now look at the next picture.
Here’s what I conclude. Not knowing he had the saw and the shed was locked, he sat the saw on the sawhorse. Overnight we get lots of wind and critters scurrying around. Did you notice to the left of the saw is the open pit for the electric cable? It took a while to got downtown for glue and some of the sand used to fill in the walk area fell down to partially fill the hole. I took the shovel handle and poked it through the dirt. Clunk! Guess what I found? With a quick air blast, it is good as new, with a now severely rusted blade.
However, he is not off the hook. The fact he was the only suspect is revealing. I had warned him never to bring other people onto the property and he did. They would not have the same respect for my property and other items have gone missing. Thus, I’m putting him on suspension while I take inventory. It’s the smaller items I don’t use every day that tend to disappear in this situation, and finding them is often dependent on me getting around to needing them. By happenstance, most everything I have gets used within a two-month period, so it could be that long.
The late start this morning is due to FastFrets. He is persistent, though I suspect that may be due to meeting a ton of the musician wannabes that teem Polk County from god know’s where. I mentioned a couple tunes that a compatible guitarist would play if I chose them and he send me an MP3 of him playing “Love Me Two Times”. He definitely overplays the part but that is a good thing. He’s used to covering for weaker band members, so bring it on. Taking months to catch on he had to send me e-mails directly, I was finally able to talk to him this morning.
We’ve seen this before, the other guy evolves to rely on the tracks instead of learning the tune. Then they meet me and realize they don’t need the tracks or even a drum box. So I’m more convinced that we should meet up and jam through enough tunes to do a set (usually 8 or 9 songs). Duo work transforms music from a solitary endeavor to moving at a decent clip. He many not realize he could be in a band by end of this month. I went over his song list and he even plays “Six Days On The Road”, a tune I’ve turned into a bass specialty where I play the horn section on bass—before anybody even notices what is going on. Do check back.
Fortified Zydeco album cover.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
By noon I ran out of steam, just like you said. I got a lot of the tools and materials ready for several days ahead. That includes the base for the shop vacuum, the base for the water tank, and we are going to have to re-dig some of the silo trench due to caving. The cloud cover is increasing so we may get back into it before dark. Otherwise, how about we sit right here between the fan and the air conditioner and see to some desk work I’ve been putting off. Earlier I described the squirrel baffle as designed on the run, but can we allow a little for what experience I’ve managed?
An anonymous but “full vaccinated” author has been quoted by People’s Voice as blaming the non-vaxxed for the health problems and deaths of the jabbed. The unvaxxed, he says, had special knowledge and insight that they failed to share with “good-intentioned citizens” who took the jab. They failed to take a pro-active role in warning the vaccinated, who now deeply regret having it done. Wait, there’s more.
The unvaccinated should apologize to the vaccinated and beg their forgiveness. There you have it, folks. Telling a libtard to their face they are blind, stupid, uneducated, sheeple obeying a tyrant is apparently not warning enough. And the latest euphemism for illegal alien is “a migration background”. And how about that faked Biden scene where he gets off the stage to a crowd of admirers. Or so it seems. Except when one obvious FBI agent turns his head, none of the people’s faces are visible and all their phones were blackscreen, that is, turned off.
No pics, but the downtown Karaoke was a smash hit, but with a twist. Some new people showed up that had done some rehearsing but not enough. That is, not enough to dominate the room as they had apparently planned. They were good, but the music was off some hit parade that the locals are not listening to. That meant even though I showed up after 10:00PM, the gal behind the bar and I did duets that brought down the house. You well know I could analyze the crap out of this. Naw, aint’ worth it. Play what the crowd wants means forgetting what you want.
ADDENDUM
Who recalls years ago I wrote a critique on Arduino libraries? Peg it around ten years ago, and idogendel has finally agreed. My objection was simple—you had no control over the libraries, you could not read the code, and you were reduced to trusting the IQ of the person who wrote them. Actually, my dislike of C+ code goes back much further if you include the lack of standards I pointed out in the 1980s. And that is precisely the problem. I’ll elaborate.
These so-called libraries are really subroutines. Mind you, calling them subroutines is an undue compliment, as subroutines must follow a strict protocol or they won’t work. The danger is that libraries are written by somebody else coupled with said lack of standards. An example serves best. Suppose you want to program an Arduino to use a new sensor. There are two major routes you could take. I would learn about the sensor and program the code to make it work. The other path says link to some code that purportedly has done all that for you, that is, a “library”. Then all you code is how to turn the thing on and off. Think of that when you hear about airliners that disappear and electric cars that burn people to death.
This is the built-in flaw with micro-processors. Once you get beyond the stage of blinking lights, you either have to know your stuff or rely on strangers. That is the dividing line between programmers and coders, or I should say one of the many dividing lines. The Arduino code is called a “sketch” and whenever a project catches my eye, the first thing I usually check is for any links to a library. They are easy to spot, they have an “h” suffix, as in arduino.h and available on-line.
Yes, that means if the Internet goes down, 99% of Arduino coders would be stumped. The other sad aspect of libraries is it allows people to code who fundamentally don’t know the subject matter, or even sometimes what is going on. Think of your GPS and you know the results. To be fair, some of the libraries work fine—but that is mostly the more common ones whose function has been honed over time by removing what doesn’t work. And that, folks, is the world the “Greatest Generation” has created for themselves. As it returns to bite them, they already know who to blame it all on.
That is the end result when the people who date and play games on computers think they are smarter than the people who invented them. Take enough time to read the link above to develop an inkling of why external libraries don’t work. One aspect not made clear is known as “scope”. Real programmers tightly control the scope of their variables, which are either global or local, you can get the meaning from context. The entire c+ language family has no such distinction and that goes for naming the variables.
A programmer would name a variable by its function, as in “varTemperature” or “varVelocity”, but a coder is likely to call it “My_Variable”—and reuse that name or call it from different areas of the main module, blindly trusting it contains the most current value. This, by the way, is where I get my statement that C+ code maxes out at 8,000 to 9,000 lines. And most code is much smaller for this reason, but I’ve yet to hear any coder admit it. You’ve heard me state that sooner or later each new line of code throws something off. It usually happens when some coder changes the order in which the sketch (main program) calls the library (subroutine) while it still contains the value from a different call. End of lecture. $180 each, please.
