One year ago today: September 16, 2022, Happy Birthday, Craigslist.
Five years ago today: September 16, 2018, thousands not reported.
Nine years ago today: September 16, 2014, drawbot was a fail.
Random years ago today: September 16, 2020, therapy tape.
I’ve seen the future of computer repair shops and it is ugly. Last day, as I was looking for any leftover parts, I stopped at one joint run by millennials. They knew what I wanted and they could have helped without any skin off their teeth. They likely had exactly what I was looking for—I was partners with a computer shop for 8 years. I’m aware of what costs are and what is involved at every stage from the front counter to the back of the repair shop. I regularly gave a break to the young and old who came in and needed something that was not on the menu. But not these bastards, you could tell instantly needed to milk the trade for every penny they could.
This is the box lid that glued up overnight. It is a retrofit onto boxes I started out with and I now have some experience with those hinges. No, they are still not easy and recurrently take as long to install as make the box. Next is a view of the process as pertaining to this box. I’ll point to the items that took time. First see the chisel. I no longer use a mallet except when a knot is in the working area. The chisel is wiggles to produce the slot, shown in the next panel. The hinge rarely fits or sits right first try, and this is the simplest type of recessed slot. Time permitting, I’ll get you a short video of the pilot hole process. The next shot shows a “clocked” set of screws. It just means they are finished by turning the screw slots to the same position. It’s entirely cosmetic and makes no difference to the working.
Next shot is the lid closed with the hinges showing. On these odd-sized boxes, I no longer bother with full-size lids. Instead, you see that strip of wood along the top at the back? It is to space what wood pieces I have that sort of fit the lid opening. I found the exposed hinges don’t get in the way much when the boxes are stacked and they will still slide easily over each other. The final panel shows the box lid being tested. These use a simpler latch, not installed yet, than the draw clasps I prefer. Hey, it is just a storage box. For any spots that don’t fit too great, haul out the power plane.
The morning was indeed cool, so I finished running the last of the red shed and scooter canopy electric cable into place. It was still dark so it will have to wait until I can turn the main breaker off. The wire is fed to the subpanel and puts the red shed outlets, A/C, and the canopy on a separate 15A circuit. That should be plenty, the canopy has only two outlets and two overhead light sockets.
Grabbing a refill, I watched a news report on tanks knocked out in the Ukraine by the Russian Kornet missile. I checked and that 1990 beast of a rocket is still around, but with claimed longer range and better guidance. Reactive armor on Western tanks gives a statistical equivalence to armor thickness in the near-impossible thicknesses of 1,000 mm. The Kornet defeats this by using a small charge to detonate the reactive plates, then a shaped charge to puncture the exposed armor. That’s what the Ukrainian wreckage looked like to me.
The Kornet is slow and adapted to laser guidance from a wire-guidance model, I won’t review that old history. There is a problem with wire guidance because they are wires. They can short out in wet conditions. One aspect you might like the layman’s explanation of is how the laser system works. A computer follows the bright flare caused by the missile exhaust while the operator keeps the laser dot on the target. That means the missile can’t fly direct or the aimer can’t see the target. This is why the missiles fly in a spiral that gets smaller once the exhaust gets further away.
It’s fascinating to watch, but I can’t find any examples on short notice now that I’d like to link to one. Take my word for it, the missile only narrows in on the dot at long range—and the Kornet claims 10 miles. Ha, that’s crap. Even with the best optics you can’t see something that far away to aim at it. And the long the range, the slower the missile. That means, Petro, you better make that first shot count. There is no data on if the Kornet can defeat tank anti-missile systems and rumor is the Israelis have a laser unit that’s working well.
Grand Hotel, Vienna (from $626/night).
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Later, here’s the tap & die box, fitted with an insert to stop the pieces rattling around. I know, I should have been installing that circuit breaker but boxes are more fun and it’s Saturday. This is where I get to make a management decision. Hey, Miami, are you listening? Management. Do I go to the Pavilion tonight or leave it until tomorrow, when I know the Sunday bartender is working?
I went over to the Pavilion. It’s not a pavilion any more, hurricane Ivan kind of took a way the famous tent. They have a couple “car-port” tents and tarps set up roughly in the center of the old dance area. No big deal, I’ve played in frozen sheds in Montana where we had to chop the firewood, so moving a picnic table or two is hardly a challenge. While nobody present to night remembers the band, lots of them know us by reputation. The manager was not in again, instead we have 50 people in the room expecting us. Plus, the Karaoke dude did not show up, so one of the bar maids ran the show and I gave her a top-notch crowd-pleaser.
Unless something goes boom, next Sunday is a go. The head guy was not there again but he has nothing to lose by going along. I confirmed Sunday afternoons are his worst cash time, and I’ve changed that before. I negotiated nothing, let’s play this one by ear. Judging the crowd, this is an ideal opening night for the Prez. He has the benefit of a song list known to grab this audience. I’ll target the late afternoon slot, say 4:30PM to 6:00PM. Give the church-goers a chance to work up a thirst, type of thing.
I was in the mood for Karaoke, first stopping in at Kooters to see the after-pool tournament proceedings. Yes, the crowd leaves as there is really nothing to stay for. Once the games are over, it’s like any other Texas bar. Entertainment drops to darts and the juke box. I need some reassurance the Prez will work well on stage. That is an unknown, I’ve seen countless people who are great at rehearsal fall into a shell when in front of strangers. They have a spritely new lass working there, it’s always been high turnover at entry level.
Then to the old club, where it was payday at the mines again. It’s just a bar, but it is handily the best place to show up anywhere nearby. And tonight it was packed with women. Outnumbering the men six to one and dressed to the nines. The show-stopper was the lady in the pink-orange clingy dress, what a sight for sore eyes. Don’t make the mistake of thinking any of them were single, this joint is all over 25s and 30s, that’s the “youth” crowd in Florida unless you get into the no-parking zones of the biggest cities.
There’s an on-line discussion got my interest. Time to time you get some controversy over really tough points and I love to see the humor that emerges. Other people’s passions are fair game in Etherland. This time, it is people who do not return shopping carts to the corral. There was an article published last month that showed the correlation between success in life and whether you returned the cart. It was pretty condemning to the segment of society that least likes having their shortcomings pointed out. I can’t find the link for you, but here are my top ten favorite posts on the matter in the past 24 hours.
1) I never return the cart because it is a public service to infuriate Karen & Ken.ADDENDUM
2) Never, because the corrals take up parking spots near the entrance.
3) No problem at ALDIs because you get your quarter back.
4) Naw, fat ladies, just dump the cart and go to the gym for a workout.
5) Forget returns, I don’t work for the grocery store.
6) Not if there are “scholars” hanging around the parking lot.
7) If you are near people who don’t return carts, get out of that neighborhood fast.
8) At least don’t leave it in a parking spot, Tyler.
9) You can tell by the carts how many Democrats are nearby.
10) Odds are they did not wash their hands either.
Here is the cheapest place in Tennessee that matches my search criteria. That means it includes the land, is habitable, has no HOA, and among other things is less than 150 miles from Nashville. The appearance of this property in Linden indicates prices have fallen. Makes sense, there is nobody left to sell any houses to. Asking $90,000 this two-bedroom mobile home is on that particularly difficult area to drive to in the center of the state. It is the first listing within “striking distance” in nearly a year. There are two sheds and it looks fairly new. But too far out of the way. Although just 70 miles from the outskirts, that is a know two-hour drive into the business district. It’s that last 20 miles in from Franklin that makes it a headache.
The economy sucks, that is noticeable right away Nobody is fooled by Biden causing 9 million people to lose their jobs, then trying to claim credit for creating 9 million jobs when they get hired back. Institution buying seems to have slackened but the effect is still there. Prices remaining high but nothing is moving. There are no “starter” homes which were once a big chunk of the market. The biggest factor is interest rates. Biden has causes runaway inflation and has raised rates to slow it down. With house prices starting at nearly a half-million, nobody can afford the payments.
This paints a picture similar to 2006, where droves of house flippers got wiped out. Easy credit upsets the law of supply and demand, creating a class whose “wealth” depends more on what they make rather than what they own. That’s a tap that can be turned off. If the government had not stepped in with that lame “pre-foreclosure” measure, I’d likely own a few houses by now. If you have time, you can read back then how I had $30,000 in cash ready for the $100,000 Ft. Lauderdale market to crash. My plan was to wave it under their noses until somebody grabbed. Instead, thousands of people were able to stay on in foreclosed houses not even paying rent.
America is too wealthy for a complete meltdown—although all those up to their necks in debt would see it that way. If house prices fell, I’m ready again, but only to bottom-feed. I have no mercy for people who lend or borrow money. It’s just that in 2006, prices would have to drop by 2/3rds and now they would have to drop by 9/10ths before I could pay cash—and I would need up to 90 days to get that together. It would wipe out my Caltier fund, although I’d be back in less than a couple years just in rent savings.
Not much news from Caltier lately, that’s due to everything being fine and all my curiosity assuaged. They had some teething problems but seem to have flattened out to paying around 1% per month. And as long as that stays good or better, it will attract the most capital. The mechanism to make this investment ties up a lot of cash, for example, the account which provides the transfers has to keep a minimum balance of $1,000 to avoid bank fees. And the bank knows [keeping] exactly $1,000 isn’t easy, so they lie in wait. Instead, I keep $1,300 because that exceeds the largest annual auto-payment should that happen during a lapse.
One year with Caltier should result in a balance of around $15,000 of which a projected $750 will be income before taxes. This outperforms everything else I've got. In the pre-computer days, the deposits and transfers required two days to clear. With computers, it now takes ten days, the millennial version of progress. One laugh is how, upon each transfer, the system asks you to confirm your net worth is ten times the transfer. I limit the amounts to around $1,000 and it still insists I confirm although my balance in the account is now more than ten times that. But to me, that it keeps asking is the hallmark of how millennials refuse to learn from the past because they consider all that as “old” information. It’s pathetic, really, and it appears they are not learning the lesson when it swing back and hits them in the teeth.
