One year ago today: September 27, 2022, Rommel anniversary coincidence.
Five years ago today: September 27, 2018, help yourself.
Nine years ago today: September 27, 2014, “Otzi”.
Random years ago today: September 27, 2004, another jet crash.
A cool enough morning, I put hinges on this box. I’ve devised this way of attaching a lid to existing boxes. Back at the beginning, I had enough trouble just making the sides and bottoms. I’ll looking at better decorations. I cannot get the lock miter bits to work right, they damage the wood long before making the cuts that firt. I suspect I’m using wood that is too brittle. I had this old laminated leather belt, the Chinese kind made of cardboard with a leather skin. Here’s partially what I did with it. These are my song lyrics.
I ran in the second birdbath, the former satellite TV antenna. The birdies found it pretty quick. The hydraulics of these small “mist” hoses is weird, I had to get a small in-line tap to get water to flow out both nozzles. And I’m getting very close to a mist cabinet slash incubator in the birdie area. They will flit through a spray, so why not kill two—wait a minute, I’m not going to say that. I transplanted five potential papaya seedlings, now in a wire cage. No more raccoon papaya salad bar. And the squirrels have disappeared. No sign of them three days in a row. If they were chipmunks, okay, because they are a bit funny to watch. But the are not native to Florida and cannot be tamed.
Presenting the little T adapters because I could not find a Y. These are for the birdbath dripper hoses and they used to cost 50¢ each. Now they are 49¢, before you say hooray, you have to buy a minimum of 10 to a package. So around here, that makes for a 500 year supply. Maybe, with luck, they will also fit the misting hose. Even then, I only need one. And the surviving avocado plant is doing fine, time for a bigger pot. Remember those big clay pots, the ones around a foot in diameter. Those are now $26 each. Except for people on credit cards, things are grinding to a halt.
Russel Brand, the commentator-narrator guy, has been blacklisted by the mainstream and social media. I have no idea what it’s about yet, but I will since I think he’s pals with the Reb’s circle. It will be the usual dig-up of some ugly broad in his distant past claiming some brand of sexual attack. The Democrats can always manage to find some old lady, a Snowy Daniels or an EJ Carroll. It strikes me odd, because Brand isn’t old enough and rich enough by libtard standards.
You may have heard of the German Enigma code machine, but have you heard of the SZ42? Likely not. All the fame and glory went to Bletchley Park and the radio codes. But radio codes are limited to short messages. The Germans developed a rotor code machine that could send teletype. Funny you never hear about that major advancement, and in fact it was kept a secret until sometime around 1962.
Mars rock ring.
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Aha, there’s the other half of that belt. This gets blogged because it is the most unusual or interesting thing that happened around here today. Let’s see why. This is an old box to which I’ve added a lid. It represents the edge of my learning. You get two closely related photos, one is standard blog “informational”, the other is the version sent to the Reb. For reasons. Here’s the explanation. As built, this was just a box, what has changed?
Three changes. The lid, the decoration, and the technology. It isn’t the fanciest method shown here, where I add a strip of wood along the back to the box and attach the hinges to the strip. This piece is super-easy to mark and cut and allows me to use a standard size of wood plank for the lid. In the top panel I’m pointing to the strip, which has three wood screws holding it in place. They are under those wooden buttons. This box has several such featues I’m trying out. You may notice the small nail heads, they are actually leftover shoe nails.
Not shown are handles on the sides of the box. They are wooden drawer knobs once again stronger than really needed, but it makes the box easy to carry with one hand. I could have mounted the strap so the buckle was on the side, but opted for what would be fastest to operate. My bevel slicer is still on the drawing board.
For a break, I watch a documentary on college students decrying capitalism. The same shallow arguments but the one they favor these days is that corporations are “undemocratic” because they have a hierarchy of different employees with most people at the bottom. It’s the same argument I had back in the 1990s when I worked for a Canadian company. Like these students, they thought because they were right and you were wrong this somehow changed things. Let me explain something about America.
What these students don’t appreciate is that they are free to start an employee-owned business any time they want. Under capitalism, the most efficient businesses will be the ones that win out. If employee-owned businesses were best, you would see them all over the place. There are, in America, about ten rules you must obey to become successful, and in this country if you are successful, being rich is a byproduct. Now, I don’t know all ten rules because they vary a bit by region, demography, and order. But I can name you some. Stay in school. Get a steady job. Don’t get addicted to anything. Don’t have kids until you are married. Make education a life-long process. You get the idea.
Later, this box has become popular. It is roughly finished because it was built years ago. I’ve learned things since, so the box is coming back apart to be finely sanded and stained to a dark walnut. The edges and corners get planed and rounded and many of the cracks and old nail holes filled. The hobnails may get straightened and the interior wood mildly perfumed with cedar or pine extract (Dettol). This box has already been retrofitted with splines and I may add a small internal tray. I’ll see if I have any decorative router bits, just as a thought.
Another idea is storing old coffee grounds inside to see if the aroma infuses at all. The box shown here is a foot in the longest dimension. Half this size to twice this size seems to be the practical limits, since my entire system evolved t use three-quarter inch lumber. Consequently, these boxes are very strong and out in the shed, I regularly stand on them to reach things. I’ve build around twenty boxes so far.
ADDENDUM
I left the word Rommel in my search list and found a series of newspaper headlines giving the Allied version of El Alamein, strained to the limit to glorify Montgomery. The laugh today was the portrayal of Rommel’s Afrika Corps and the British 8th Army as being equal opponents. Rommel was down to 35 tanks running on fuel captured at Tobruk. Montgomery had 800 tanks. The same goes for most other comparisons, this was one of the most unequal fights in history.
The audio-book “Raid on Rommel” never once mentioned the Rolls-Royce. I found that odd, as it was one of the mainstays in the desert campaign. Many had a small cannon in case they met enemy armored cars and were much faster over the desert than tanks. Mostly, they were mobile machine gun carriers, usually the old Vickers guns left over from the Somme battle in the first war. I suppose they were an aging technology by 1943 and the Rommel raid just never used them.
For those who have never driven in the desert, the truly impassable parts are usually quite small and you can drive around them. The problem is the sand is like grains of salt. It forms a crust that the first vehicle breaks through and creates a mess. The rest of the desert is rock rubble and you can drive it if you are careful. One design difference with the German armored cars was the fat tires. The Rolls seemed to use ordinary truck tires.
Curiously, the cars first appeared back in the First World War when military commissions were sold to the highest bidder. It was customary for rich generals to show up in the Rolls with their families and picnic baskets. They soon acquired armor, usually for delivering ammunition and the Royal Navy used some to patrol the coasts. Units in France worked no better in the mud than any other vehicle so the bulk of them were shipped to the Middle East. That’s where they got the most use, against the primitive tribes in the deserts.
It makes sense, the desert nations consisted of dirt roads connecting towns. The armored cars were like mobile pillboxes. The Arabs and Turks were helpless, kind of like today, where if you find anything useful over there, it was imported. Not so in Ireland, where the Republicans quickly learned to set them on fire. You mix dish soap with the accelerant, so if the fire does not get inside, it sticks to the armor. When the slimey limeys decide not to roast to death, they crawl out head first, a bad move. An interesting historical note, Rolls Royce still builds armored cars on the “silver ghost” chassis, but this time for jittery millionaires.
