One year ago today: July 20, 2022, little since.
Five years ago today: July 20, 2018, Twood, a quitter.
Nine years ago today: July 20, 2014, the famous camper relay.
Random years ago today: July 20, 2008, the complete absence.
Ah, a dry morning. You’ll have to wait, I’m getting under the house again. Statistic for you. Of the thousands of posts in this blog, what constitutes a “success”. That would be 549 views total. Not in one day, some posts take years to reach that level. Top post of all time is still April 24, 2010, a telling commentary on the clientele of the Internet. Let’s get us some new hot water today if we can.
Moving on to the next round in the squirrel ring, we have the $43 birdfeeder. That’s me pressing down on the piece that moves to seal off the feed ports. If I let go, it springs back up to the part that does not move. And the squirrels have learned to hang on that part and snack upside down. Grrrr. Part of the reason, methinks, I have four squirrels where most yards have two is the neighbors have pellet guns, slingshots, and long-range garden hoses.
This is the progress on the ambient lines. I’m holding a Shark™ that reduces the larger 3/4” piping shown here to the smaller 1/2" feeds to the Maytag. Over the years, when I buy the wrong pieces, I kept them. So how I have all the parts needed to connect the water system here.
The electrical has to wait, it was a cool morning and the ground was still wet by noon, when I knocked off for an extended coffee. That short downpour dumped 1-4/5ths inch of water on my alcove. We heard back from Longwood, the 3D printer guy. He’s working on “smart circuits” that are plugs which can be operated by WiFi. He’s turning out to be a good club member. We’ll follow up and make sure he has the basic components needed to tinker away. Check the addendum for what I researched today.
Later, I have all the lines run in and tested. No leaks, but the not water side under the house is not connected yet. I left the water running for a half hour to fill the tank and clear the lines which, in some instances, have been sitting four years. The plumbing looks a big ragged but that was because I placed the inlet and outlet from the inside without knowing precisely where the tank would go, or even how big it would be. I calculate the setup will provide 100 gallons of hot water per hour, should I ever need that much. I look forward to a big shower to prove that [activity] alone will never drain the hot water faster than it is replenished, a luxury for me.
Europe’s largest model train museum.
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Here is my brilliant double-baffle. See what I’ve done here? This is the other feeder. The squirrels were using a similar tactic of bending down the top baffle, which could tilt the feeder enough to get seeds to spill on the ground by grabbing the bottom edge of the wire. That wire was supposed to halt them but I have smart squirrels and the Reb does not let me forget it. Well, that second lower baffle is attached to the part that will swing. This is where your imagination comes in handy.
The ball feeder in the upper left is for them to land on. The weave on it is too fine to fill with most wild bird seed and the smaller seeds fall through. The heavy rain kept things cool until noon, meaning I got distracted by all kinds of project that I can only get to by chance in the summers. One is my favorite shed hobby, making boxes. Here is the latest process for upgrading lumber that I use, gluing the planks up by hand. Lot’s of labor but quite satisfying. Here you see two plants, there are clamps holding them along the biscuit join. The clamps seen are to keep the assembly flat, as the biscuits don’t have the lateral strength to keep the boards from warping across the grain.
All of this lumber is from the cull cart, yet the extra attention would make them more expensive than buying it new. However, there is lots to be said for taken the route that consumes the least cash, since most people waste a huge chunk of their lives doing nothing. At least in the end I can state I was waiting for glue to dry.
JeePee, the turtle that gets fan mail, issues a damage report. Somebody bumped their car into the mailboxes in Tennessee and the entire rack now tilts slighty backward. The city and post office say the HOA is responsible for fixing it, except there is no HOA. So the last letter with all the schematics got wet and the Reb is drying it out, saying it does not look good.
How about that rapper who got out of prison in Chicago? One minute later he was shot 64 times on the prison steps. Of course, the police were surprised and unprepared and have no suspects. The media says the rapper was on his way to sing in a church choir and then go pick up his college degree. Rap. As one poster put it, “I was at Woodstock with 500,000 White people and nobody got shot.”
But my favorite news item of the day is A.I. Remember how last year there were reports that when properly allowed to run its course, A.I. would become racially prejudiced against non-whites. So they recalled the software and re-wrote it not to do that. Now we read that A.I.dropped from solving 98% of simple math problems to 2%.
ADDENDUM
Mercury bulb ballasts. I thought they were a type of capacitor that filled up, then kick-started the gas to start glowing. Today I took one apart and found a small glass ampoule. Apparently this is outdated tech, the newer models have a different ballast, which I’ve seen a lot but am not interested. Agt. L has directed my attention to the Sonoff, your poor man’s Internet smart plug. Around six bucks, it is a module that you hardwire off an existing outlet and operate by remote control. I found it disappointing and also, since it involves downloading an app from Google, a likely security risk. Do you really want to find out the hard way Google knows what you are doing and undoubtedly has the option to bypass your commands with their own? Let’s examine the item.
Now, calling this thing smart is a bit of a stretch. Yes, it can be operated remotely. But that is it, off or on. No feedback, no confirmation, you are trusting the unseen. But, like millennial high school grads who cannot read cursive, it means the bare minimum standards for smart. Um, I should mention besides the obvious concerns about Google, this has no safety or anti-hacking provisions. If Alexa can turn it on, that is not rated as progress over here. I don’t have a powerful need to randomly turn appliances off and on when I am 750 miles away. Here’s something even scarier.
While the device is easy to wire up, it was unsettling to watch several videos of people pairing their phones to it. None of the users appeared to have any deeper knowledge of what they were doing other than pressing phone buttons to make it work. Some of them were unaware it was a radio device. It was shocking to see older men who thought they were sophisticated users because they could get the thing to operate using on-line apps they plainly knew nothing about.
This should not be compared to say, driving a car while not knowing anything about mechanics. The car is a physical entity that answers 95% of the questions about itself, you might say. But WiFi, Internet, radio waves are invisible and give the operator no clue what may be going on besides turning on the TV.
This is not to say this does not have uses, just that it is a disappointingly simple design for this late a time into the Internet era. It’s a remote control relay that is a lot cheaper than having an Arduino do the same thing. That’s where the thinking part comes in. Say, for instance, could the thing be paired with an Arduino so that some form of sensor could operate it? Or could it be used to activate a remote Arduino or some feedback device? Does it make some older technology more saleable?
Speaking of sales, Disney is being forced to sell off its TV networks to raise cash. That includes the ABC network. The boycott is hurting Disney big time and I say they will never recover. I also say it serves them right. This led to a documentary on actors who have died this year. Around fifty of them, some I never heard of. Probably because they were television people. Raquel Welch died? She’s the only one I’d recognize because all the older guys at my school figured she was hot stuff in the day. I figured she was okay for an older lady.
Others I recognized when shown in the roles they played, like all those Italian guys from the Godfather and Goodfellows, and some of the characters in Harry Potter and others I would not know except from the role they played. Like the Uhura lady from Star Trek who I never found attractive and thought she could not act. What got me is my own approaching mortality. The majority of these people died in their 80s. And lots of them died from heart conditions, cancer, and various organ failures.
Any musicians I recognized such as Harry Belafonte but he was pushing 100. What got me was the ones dying in their 60s, close enough to my age I should know them but I don’t. This one guy goes hiking in the mountains at 65 and they don’t find him for five months. Kirstie Alley, who I never thought should be in the movies is gone, along with Nurse Ratchett. What’s depressing is not the people, but that it eerily tells me I don’t have that much time left. I thought some were already long gone like Gina Lollobrigida. Many, I had never even heard of their movies. It was remarkable how many actors in the 40s dies of “natural causes”.
Some I vaguely remember from re-runs, such as LeBeau from Hogan’s Heroes, and Leave It To Beaver. I saw those on TV on Thursdays, which was collect day on my paper route. People who had to hunt around for the money would let me stand inside when it was below freezing. That’s mostly how I watched television, folks. I was surprised to learn most of the Bonanza cast were in their 30s at the time. To you from flailing arms I throw this blog, I guess. At least you know I didn’t waste a lot of life watching TV or playing cards.
