One year ago today: July 3, 2022, robbed & looted, they did.
Five years ago today: July 3, 2018, a busy day.
Nine years ago today: July 3, 2014, everyone has the flu.
Random years ago today: July 3, 2008, the Cracker Jack decline.
Lot’s to read today, I got to working here and did not notice the sun came up until nearly 10:00PM. JZ was also on the phone, he has the 12th penciled in for my next visit, but my calendar shows that day blank. Have I missed something? That’s nearly impossible. What was so absorbing this morning? My squirrel baffle, I’m telling you, this is getting personal. The white glue did not hold up overnight and we’ve already passed the kindergarten level of the XYZ millennial “experts”. This is as far as we go before hauling out the robot club gear, that’s what is shown here. We will find the problem, you need only keep reading.
Fireworks since Friday. No sense celebrating at the last moment, even on New Year’s. I was out of the loop so long that July 4 is really just another holiday, but it is one I don’t believe should be substituted to make it a weekend. The don’t name it after a day for no reason. I’m ornery this morning because we have a new yard pest. Whenever I walk out to the new north garden area with bare shins, I get some kind of ivy attack. Or rather itching attack. Nothing is obvious and the path is well worn, so the squirrels are on the suspect list. I’ve resorted to keeping a jar of calamine lotion at the ready. They are up to something with those beady little eyes, for I’m not normally very bothered by poison ivy. It’s a squirrel cabal, a tree-borne faction, plotting over my birdseed.
Up late last evening, I watch previews (I never liked the term trailers) of action movies. Everything new is stale, no new themes, even the aliens are starting to look alike. Am I the only one who chuckles at the things these movies portray as dire threats to humanity? I could almost care less if all communications were cut off. So what if the airports shut down and the Internet stops working. So what if their credit cards don’t function? Apparently enough people are so dependent on those things that panic is their nearest option. Start living decent. And don’t read me wrong, I was there and worked my way out of it. I know exactly what it takes.
My non-working circuit featured y’day morning, let me say that I never had cause to test a diode before. So head’s up, we are about to learn something.. There is some kind of problem. Fluke meters have a setting for testing diodes. But beyond that, the diode should test open in one direction and not the other—I think. Now that I want that information it is exactly what the on-line experts avoid talking about. The meter shows a reading of 615. What? Ohms. I tested the diode and it shows a resistance of 108,000 ohms in the forward voltage direction. I plucked it randomly from a bag of identical units and the next one tested 111,000 ohms. That’s consistent enough and good to know, but what am I dealing with here? Later, this 615 is in millivolts. Or .6 of a volt, which is the voltage drop across the diode and readings between 500 and 700 are normal. The resistance is not a valid reading but I’ll remember it. So what does that leave? A burned out LED, but that is the first thing I checked. So, the failed circuit so far remains a mystery.
How do you figure the bad news coming out of France? The armies of immigrants they let in are smashing the place to pieces. Fires set at 2,500 locations, 200 buildings burnt down and 40 police stations attacked. I’d say that is an organized terrorist attack and the French only called the police. These people are taking it lying down. When they try to protect themselves, the television cameras focus on small crowds of liberals, probably hired help, screaming “facists” at them. This just in, the French government banned the Internet, particular social media. How do they enforce that? Watch it as a test case of what the Democrats have to pull in America. Did you get that Biden lawyer who says Trump as to apologize, show remorse, and mend his ways? He must think he’s in juvenile court in front of a diversity hire lady Judge.
Rocky Flats nuclear waste dump.
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There’s more proof invasive species do well in the sub-tropical Florida summer. The package said 21 days to see a sprout. If you look closely (it’s not so great a picture), you can see dozens of seedlings. This is the morning of the second full day. They do strain toward the light but the tradeoff is they stay suitably moist. They are from that package with all the weird names, Rubicon and Staphyl and Anorexia.
Y’day morning (no link, scroll it, man) I portrayed the incomplete circuit board showing a better view of the nails. These are tiny copper clad nails for attaching some special parts I don’t know. These came from a small jar donated by JZ and since the copper coating was obvious, who bothers to check. Turns out today I discover that ordinary copper wire will not stick to these nails. Somebody’s lying. While they conduct electricity like all metals, they do not form solid solder joints. We know steel and aluminum will not solder. What are we up against here?
In another 5-minute experiment, I tested if PVC could be heat-joined. Not with a heat gun, the plastic deforms before it sticks. Even then the bond is weak, certainly weaker than a seed-fed healthy adult squirrel. And I put the mister on for two hours this morning, which is another dry spell but the temperature was in the high 80s before the sun even hit the yard. We had titmouses and bluejays in the morning light but other than check the oregano, I am not going out there.
The next picture is an animation of the 3-Beer fire, made possible by the advent of easy compressed air. I explained to the Reb theyears of experience needed to know in advance how long to prepare the chilled beer. Some soggy wood takes longer and smokes more, like these here. The weather is a factor. I’d say a good yard-man needs 30 years of savvy to know when and how to conduct a proper burn. Therefore, choose Yeung-ling, a company you know will be around that long. Budweiser just closed a bottling plant and canned 600 workers over their Bud Light fiasco. When it comes to your burn-barrel, choose a company you can trust.
The news out of France is bad. The hundreds of thousands of non-Whites they’ve let in since 2016 are on a government sanctioned rampage and the police are tear-gassing any French who resist. It creates the frightening situation that the government must now crush its own people because if they don’t, the people are coming for them. Macron and his hirelings have overstepped the mark this time. What’s got me amazed is the complacency of the Irish. With their experienced IRA cadres and anti-foreign sentiments, why isn’t the country in open revolt? There might be something there yet since all you see protesting in the streets are grandmothers and the odd baby carriage. And I, for one, am convinced the militant factions have arms staches all over the countryside awaiting another chance.
Student loans get my attention. Some woketard on GAB is whining about his debt, so let’s post my favorites from the responses. Debt forgiveness they call it.
1) Welcome to your new baby you get to pay for its care for the next 20 years.One idea for the squirrel baffle would be to drill a 1-1/4” hole in some sheet metal and wrap it into a tube. The largest step drill I have is 3/4” and the size up costs $39. The old GE radio refuses to pick up Boss Hogg, so I’m looking at the antenna. Who remembers if frequency in Hertz is standard or metric? Don’t matter, it’s a linear formula with a constant for each system. A two wire dipole would be L = 467/f. What’s Boss Hogg, 1360AM. Cut me some wire a bit less than 3 feet long.
2) Only if they can write 3 paragraphs explaining why without sounding retarded.
3) stupid Asians protesting to be put at the end of college line due to affirmative action
4) A bunch of lazy ass lefties. No work ethic. No desire to succeed without hand outs.
5) most of the ones at that protest are illegitimate.
6) Scammed by a politician; can’t acknowledge those who said it was illegal were RIGHT.
7) lookie here, just shitskins beaners and fkn gooks with their hands out.
8) Banks were requiring the parents to cosign the loans. Double whammy.
9) just another group of misled Democrat voters who believe the lies they are told.
10) please protest my mortgage company, they make me pay my mortgage every month.
11) That’s the abortion rhetoric: “I got pregnant! I’m the victim”
12) Hillary Clinton was who pushed for student debt to be non-dischargeable.
13) look at that photo, a collection of mongrels, parasites, and dead weight.
14) The suckers fell for the tired old democrat talking points once again!
15) “You want fries with that?”
ADDENDUM
Oh look, there’s the three beers now. Two down, one to go. There are fifty ways to grow a potato. I’ll pick the one I find the least fussiest. Forget that guy who grows them in cloth bags rolled half down. He adds soil as the stem grows up, gradually unrolling the bag. Unless memory fails, I’ve planted spuds as early as the start of March in Texas. I’ve decided to buy some potting soil. First a bed of the best dirt I can find in the yard, 8 inches deep, then the rest the potting soil. I’m going only by what I’ve seen grow in the rest of the yard. Let’s talk a little potato theory.
Like a good boy, I dutifully recorded all the dates for the oregano, flowers, and what’s been accomplished toward the potatoes in my log book. We found out overnight the white glue may be enough to hold PVC in place when clamped. Because only one thing fell off the shelf by itself overnight and landed, or course, upside down on the carpet. It made me think of an alternative, we have several unused tubes of epoxy around here and that chemical hardener may be the ticket here. The white glue isn’t meant to be globbed, which it is if you examine y’day’s picture. So it forms a dry scab and the interior stays wet for way too long. A quick test with PVC cement shows it is totally unsuitable for this task. If you put enough to stick it damages the PVC.
