One year ago today: January 1, 2023, the $70 went to Caltier.
Five years ago today: January 1, 2019, everybody had the flu.
Nine years ago today: January 1, 2015, his prototype, not mine.
Random years ago today: January 1, 2001, a gig at Churchill's.
It did not take long to spend the $200, I had to replace the small propane heater and buy more PVC cement. Add a new electric blanket and I was lucky to have money for breakfast in Winter Haven so early this morning. Welcome to 2024, the year the US will either be reborn or die. The thing is, if it is reborn, a lot of smart-asses are going to meet with woe and these entitlement people may find out the hard way what real work is all about. Lumber mill and coal mine work. Personally I hope it happens. This four day cold spell is going to continue past the weekend, so I’ll have all the extra heating gear tested before tonight. The audio-book, “The Last Patriot” is almost done and it finally got interesting.
The computer shop was closed so I can’t pursue anything until that upgrade is complete. More RAM and a Win 8 repair, this is Wilford’s gaming computer. I no longer read the specs, but I know good ones when I see them and this unit was modified for graphics. I’m hoping the extra RAM turns this into a great computer for making my short moves. You get to see about one in twenty of those, y’know. That reminds me, the dude at the shop swears by HitFilm, he’s got a library of tutorials already downloaded.
This construction-type work is healthy but hardly invigorating after you hit 55. Walking out to the van, my right thumb started aching like a sprain. Except I did not sprain it, so “arthritis” snaps across my brain. I really don’t ever, well, some people I worked with years ago had it. This mean grab a good book until this afternoon and it is finally going to be “Around The World In Eighty Dasy”. Find out what all the fuss is about what sounds like a balloon trip. Plus, the accounts are $4.70 out and I have to find it. Not now, I’m opting for the siesta. I know the problem is likely the most difficult to track down, a wrong account number on one of the postings.
The new heater works great, it is the same principle as the last one that broke for no reason, but this is a better design. Less like to fall over but play it smart and never leave a burning heater alone in a room. I have no Internet until the computer is back, unless I hit the library, so I can’t check to see where to buy pizza crusts. The Prez recipe is begging to be sampled but I walked down several aisles today. And Wal*Mart, there is nobody around when you need to find something. And some creepy old lady started following me, why do they hum to the overhead music when they are on the prowl? So I made a beeline for the tool department. She developed a sudden requirement for duct tape, but I got away.
Seaweed house, Denmark.
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I’ve got the new electric blanket, what’s blogworthy is all the models I found contained a warning. Do not use with an inverter, such as I have in the van. No explanation. I mean, for $30 I’d be tempted to just give it a try. We know the 110VAC from the inverter is faked from a DC battery current, so the principle has me intrigued. Late afternoon was warm enough to get out in the shed, though just an hour. Mostly, I spent the time putting that 16 foot 2x4” back together. I need it as a ledger for the saw shed, which I can’t work without now that I have it. The mystery remains why these millennials, with access to resources that were only dreamed about forty years ago, have not designed a cord that does not tangle and a self-gripping chuck that will actually hold a driver bit until you intentionally release it.
But I don’t feel sorry for them. I watched as they wide-awake went for the fly-now-pay-later lifestyle. I knew people back at the company who had chunks of their paychecks committed to time payments five and ten years into the future. That was the security of a phone company job back then, I worked with people who I suspected paid out 80% of the take-home pay on time payments. You could tell because they would do anything the company commanded, thus forcing matters on the rest of us. But that’s a different tale from the trailer court.
Cancel my movie plans. Have you heard of the DVD “Death of a Dentist”? I left it for a frozen evening like now, but the DVD player in my XP unit won’t pick up the disk and I’m in no mood to start with repairs. The plot is about a womanizing dentist by a detective (I think) who drove 120 miles to see him in an emergency. It’s a Brit movie, so anybody with a name like Hamish MacBeth has to be a detective. No go, and I discover I am also down to my last good external DVD player. Time to treat myself to a Blu-Ray, you know how reluctant I am to adopt new technologies until a standard is established. Blu-Ray has already been superceded. I tried to repair my old G2G unit, the plastic power jack casing was cracked. And I managed to have the only crazy glue brand that does not work on plastic. So my Dentist disk is stuck in an old drive with no eject port. Yes, folks, they’ve screwed with the crazy glue too.
The alternative is “Spy Game” with Redford & Pitt, these are better made if you ask me and still great action way past their best-before date. Every movie has all the clichés and there is nobody alive who doesn’t know every American Embassy is a CIA front. Helicopters, car chases, Vietnam flashbacks, reluctant heros, token black women who know what’s really going on, and a choice between a military ball or a traipse through the strip joint.
