One year ago today: November 3, 2022, let’s talk birdies.
Five years ago today: November 3, 2018, testing my camcorder.
Nine years ago today: November 3, 2014, talking about 1976.
Random years ago today: November 3, 2016, now that I own trees . . . .
I was useless for the last 18 hours, but never bored. Mind you, the movie, “Queen of the Desert” was no help. It took Henry the first 31 minutes to get anywhere with Gertrude. But I understand the lack of privacy out in the desert. When you are under 30, somebody will always come along, who knows what I’m talking about? Mind you, there are some parallels I can relate to in the more formal structures in place back then. I was on my knees when I proposed to the Reb. We have as much history as what is being portrayed in the movie, so I’m still watching it in segments.
Actually, Hank doesn’t get the goods until 37 minutes and even then she’s wearing half a closet full of clothes. (Her father refuses to give his consent and Hank jumps off a cliff.) Howie was working on a tractor this week, I thought you might like a gander the results. Many westerners have not see this type of rig, called a “peanut tractor”. It was sold to “the farmer with less than ten acres” because the design is meant to be driven down long low-growing plants, such as peanuts, potatoes, and so on. Look at the picture and see if you can spot the engineering. Most of this, I learned today.
Next photo is the front of the unit, showing the wheel tracks to straddle the crop rows. Fifth panel is not clear, but I am pointing at the throttle lever. Just above my pointer is the two brak pedals and below is the clutch. Last panel is a better show of the hooks for various different tools. Known as the G model, I could not find a list of the blades available, but saw photos of plows, disks, harrows, dozers, and a lawn mower version.
Now because of watching the Spitfire documentary, a movie title, “The Spitfire Grill” showed on the side panel. I began watching and got hooked. The themes were highly relatable, like having nothing, showing up with nothing, repeatedly working for nothing, never getting a break. I was never in prison, but there’s some irony when circumstances shunted me into such a job, I found myself completely surrounded by so many people who had screwed themselves. The plot reveals the wasted years spent building a life that, in America, is expected you got for free or it is your fault you came from a bad family.. I know it is all relative, but I compare myself to contemporaries, not those above or below. There’s too much good luck in the story, but I find the characterizations eerily accurate. We just found out she can’t have kids, so there is lots of movie left.
Near the end, Percy dies trying to save the hermit son of the Spitfire owner. The plot is illogical enough that I’d guess this was based on a true story. There are a number of outcomes that barely fit however, so the “happy ending” seems to have been injected. I truly enjoyed what I found to be deeper messages and the acting for the parts was superb. However meaningful, it is just another movie. The movie misses one hard fact of life: There is a point past which happy endings don’t mean a thing anymore.
The movie left an aftermath with me. I don’t identify with anyone in the movie, but I did spend two years working in the lumber mills. I met other people who had nothing, but each one I met bore outright responsibility for winding up there, something in their past you could point directly at which put them smack where they are. It wasn’t always prison, but it was always bad behavior. Dropouts, drug users, social rejects, gamblers, boozers, I even met people who had managed to get kicked out of the army. There was certainly not one of them who could begin to claim they were there totally due to bad luck, it was too small a town for that.
There were certainly no third year university drop-outs. I’ve heard the urban legend of people working their way through school, but I have yet to meet one. And by third year, most others had connections to get job experience in their careers (though that may have been unique to the faculty I was in requiring computer courses). There were no computers in the lumber mills of 1982. I made no major mistakes, I did not fuck up, yet the highest paying job I could find put me totally in the company of highly-opinionated deadbeat losers. It does not matter that I got out and most of them did not, it was wasted years. That was some movie.
MSNBC control room, NYC.
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A morning in the shed and here is one of the panels of the doll trunk, finished on the inside only. The outside is still rough pallet lumber. Think of this as the stealth box. It looks cruddy, but the interior is sanded and finished to a gloss shiny satin feel. That’s not accident, after it comes off the belt sander, it gets three more treatments. That’s the three power tools shown to the right. The 1/3 orbital gets anything the belt missed, then a 120 to get it smooth. Anything above 120 I often call polishing, and that final tool is 220 grit. This is for the Reb, so do it right.
The belt sander is the neighbor's, sometimes just knock on his door and tell him to get outside. Fortunately, he gets company a few times a week but he doesn’t get out otherwise. We need the guy around for a long time. Good neighbors are rare.
Do we have time for any news? Yes. Seimens, the big wind turbine supplier, admitted the turbines are crap and lost 37% of its share price overnight. The Bud Light company continues to lose business by refusing to deal with their transgender screw-up. MSNBC aired a clip saying "put a bullet in Donald Trump” and the FBI did nothing. Twice as many voters feel government agencies are favoring the Bidens while going after the Trumps. That means a huge whack of Democrats are admitting it. The vote for Trump has risen to 76%, a rate that means election rigging won’t work. And a court has ruled the New York gag order on Trump is null for now. Biden has announced A.I. software must be coded to include Marxist “equity”.
ADDENDUM
My concept of the $50 anti-weapon weapon. I didn’t have time to elaborate, but other criteria a chose were using the Arduino to disrupt enemy surveillance. I have no doubt the miiarty have such devices, but my point is that the civilians don’t. They may have 400 million guns, but they do not have organization, support, logisitics, and anything much bigger than an elephant gun. There is a site I peek at regularly because the guy devotes a lot of energy into keeping thing simple, and here he builds a radio-controlled airplane for cheap. I may build a replica out of balsa wood as part of my idea.
If we knew the general location of the enemy, the GPS could bring the robot plane into visual distance. But we shall assume GPS is one of the first systems knocked out. A camera is not a passive device. It is however, quite small, mounted on a stealth wooden frame, and would not have to be turned on until the last few moments. That’s a far as we’ve gotten at time of writing. And normally where I would call a stop. But I still have that model flight simulator I built in 2014, though not working, it is all set up. I’ve no intention of building this device, though I’d reconsider if I had time and money. But let’s look at what the robot club does have.
This is a design we can easily build now, including the motors and linkages. We know how to code the Arduino, power the motors, work the aircraft controls, and what tools are needed. We are aware of the challenges, materials, logistics, and assembly procedures. The systems exists to procure and track all supply costs and we have the shed space and tools. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye. For example, the flight simulator I built does not have you looking at some millennial flat-screen display, hoping the graphics artist who knows nothing of pitch, roll, and yaw, got things right. With me you are looking at a real 3D model of the airplane. I’ll see if I can find it in the shed.
Later, I’ve got stain drying so I tested the small system I have for mass production of the model airplane shown above. An on-line calculator says to carry a 16oz payload, the design needs a frame only 1-1/2 times larger and a wing-loading area 2 times. I stacked and glued some scrap wood together and determined if I had some assembly help, my shop could turn these out at 30 per hour. With jigs and an assembly line, probably twice that. As for the software and electronics, both are for sale on-line. May this be as close as I ever get to the armaments industry.
I definitely earned a siesta today, and some movie time. I can take up to 20 minutes of the lady in the desert movie at a time. Anyway, she’s back in the Levant and we know Churchill is aware of her strategic value. What a corny actor they chose for Winston, but I’ll admit he’s a tough call to find a double.
Who recalls my lock-miter bits, an expensive experiment? I’ve concluded there is not easy way to get these bits to work on the end-grain. There may be some way, but the demonstration videos show the cuts along the grain or with special close-grained wood. I use pallet and cull lumber and the bits kind of shred the pieces. Funny not a single Internet “expert” mentions a word about this. If you ever need proof these “experts” are cucks, this is it. Not one of them mentions the problem with end cuts, yet that is precisely the shape of lumber that newcomers who would be watching such a video would need to know. You get the same issue with electronics.
I’ve seen a few videos using MDF and plywood, but that is not an out. These do not warn or specify the specialty and expense of using this type of lumber. I have an idea to make up some pieces that might work, but I know in advance that will not be economical even if the supplies were free.
