January 18, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 18, 2023, eggs tripled in price.
Five years ago today: January 18, 2019, brunch at the Olga Mall.
Nine years ago today: January 18, 2015, squeezed the tube.
Random years ago today: January 18, 2010, I scrapped the Cadillac.

           Am I the only one who finds it ironic that Teslas now have an app to order replacements for their own malfuctioning parts? What a pure example of millennial-think. The news is plastered with photos of Teslas abandoned at the frozen charging stations. Rows of tow-trucks hauling them away, and it serves them right. The electric car was invented back in the late 1800s, it is not an emerging technology that just needs a critical mass to catch on. If it could be made to work that easily, it would have been done. The sad part is even the coventional parts of these cars, like brakes and windshield wipers, don’t work worth a damn.

           I suspect the lady across the road is a goner. I have not seen here in weeks, now there are two different cars parking in the yard. And this morning they put out several large loads of old clothes, furniture, and junk from inside. She used to mention her daughter, the one over 50 with a restraining order. There is now a fat lady matching that description over in the yard all the time. My guess is they are getting the place ready for sale, so who knows what sort people like that would sell to. One can tell by looking this isn’t going to be something nice.
           Paperwork kept me busy most of the morning, including helping the neighbor fill out some elaborate forms. I told him should let people know he charges a fee for filling out forms full of information that they could get on their own, such as medical records. He’s one of the Boomers caught up in the old world where you did things for yourself, and now cannot adjust well when goofs start dumping things on. They will try to dump the data entry on you if they can, ass-clowns. Plus, they are avoiding a potential fee the other doctor may charge to forward medical records, but the say I see it, that is between them.

           It showed every sign of rain, so I did not start any big projects. I cleaned a small load of pallet boards and slapped together a small box for my riveting tool. I was pretty amazed that I could build a box in a couple hours with no plans or measurements. Every dimension was an estimate or I had a jig prepared. I call them panel boxes, because the top and bottom are pieces of thin board that fits into grooves like the bottom of a drawer. I find them the easiest to make and as for hinges, practice, practice, practice. This is just a butt-joint utility box with a couple of finishing touches, like a rope handle, sanded corners, and matching hardware. Here is a picture of the Citrus Tower back when there were citrus trees to see. Another pic shows the punched rolls for the bell tower, I was surprised the phone camera would focus throuth the glass.
           Tampa radio was on another anti-Trump tirade. It’s laughable because they’ve overused all their shady takes and angles. They’ve also had some pretty high profile supporters change sides in disgust. There is another station coming in these days, a curiousity in that they say some pretty ripe things and tell “adult” jokes over the airwaves. They are also corny, telling jokes that were stock by 1960. “If it’s true crime doesn’t pay, does that mean my job is a crime?” And, it turns out I do not know any person in central Florida who can drop everything and give me a ride to the train station next week. I’ve pointed this out before, it’s not that they couldn’t if they wanted to, but the system has everybody tied up trying to survive. Food is so expensive and gas is nearly $100 per tank.

           We got us a fiesty new junior squirrel. The young ones have the agility to leap onto my window feeder. The first line of defense is ordinary mouse traps on the window sill, where the birds won’t approach. I watch the birds anyway, don’t worry about that. The last resort is hanging the feeder further from the window, but that defeats having the birds as company. And requires a stepladder to refill.

           While working, I was thinking about voltage dividers. You can do your own homework on them, but the reason they aren’t that useful is that adding a load for them to do any work changes the resistance, and therefore the voltage. I’ve designed (but not built) a simple circuit that uses a potentiometer to compensate for the load. Yes, Elliott, I’m fully aware I am not the first person to figure this, for those of you who know what I’m referring to. This led me to wondering how constant power supplies work. My guess is they use a comparator, the one device I do not understand—but I could pass the test on the theory part. Moving along this path, I have a concept of how a microcontroller could monitor the output and adjust the resistance, though I imagine that to be one expensive way of solving a problem that doesn’t need a fancy solution.
           And neither do the medium-tech countries who are glomming onto drone technology at a dizzying rate. They are so cheap they can overwhelm US defense systems. Have you seen the Jackal, about 1/400th the cost of a Sea Stallion? Originally built by some college grads in Turkey, it is a hybird of drone, copter, VTOL, and UAV. Flown by a game controller, the unit took less than a year to design and build and has successfully launched a variety of missles. No pilot and a ground crew of two, I predict these will drop in price to around $80,000 each. They will, in my opinion, put the US Navy out of business, render the Abrams obsolete, and ground 95% of the US Air Force within the next 36 months.
           Unless. There is always an unless. These are drones, they are unstable, and best countered by other drones. It does not take much more than a nudge to knock them for a loop. The US is expanding it’s drone fleets but the focus is on attack and surveillance. My guess is they will quickly develop a laser simply because they have to. Another prediction is that mass attack is the game plan, so ever cheaper drones will begin appearing and they are getting closer and closer to looking like ancient V-1s without the pulsejet. How serious is the threat? Check out this DJI Pilot app that uses Google maps.

Picture of the day.
How to build a fort.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           The rain stayed away until nearly dark, so I got the afternoon to putter, the little box is almost done and I’ve had plans for some time now to read up on radio control, the theory. I am curious how it is done in detail. As a kid, I read in the encylopedia that the German Fritz X needed two radio operators, one for each axis. I knew these were analog signals and had some notions, now I’d like to find out if I was even close. For example, I figure the signal worked on frequency, if the operator presses on button, the vanes steer the bomb that way until he stops pressing. Later, here is the box, now nearly done with a dedication to JeePee. I may call these boxes my JeePee era.

           Finding time, I got the repair of the neighbors saw crank underway. I looked up the model number, has had that saw for 35 years. And even back then some dork-brain made the crank out of plastic. Of course, such people should be nutted. It was a tricky repair, see picture, and I found out that dollar store epoxy has around a four month shelf life. And I pulled up the piano music for another tune I would normally have quit playing also 35 years ago. “Lodi” by CCR. Tomorrow I make arrangements to rehearse with Keith, a direction I did not want this duo to go. Things will now stagnate, but you know, that has proven to be an acceptable circumstance for so many Florida musicians. Yet my instinct to play in a band is such that I will tolerate this but be on the lookout for better.

           That riff in Lodi is pano all the way. Neither of them can play it, so like it or not, you guitar-types, I will play it on the bass. The equation is unrefined, the simpler the bass line of the material you want to play, the more I will outplay you. (Elliott, that outplay, not overplay, and that is fair game.) If you are better on guitar than I am on bass, here is your chance to prove it. Because these guitarist are so predictable, I’m going to review tunes I know they are hung up on, such as “Wonderful Tonight”. That’s another tune I have at some point played all the lead riffs on bass. By the way, there was a local dude who rarely comes in, dropped by on Wednesday. Don’t know him but I’ve seen him around.
           He at first glanced over at the band, then became rather, what’s the word, thrown by what was happening. He began watching what I was playing, so he know what was going on and I hope he’s a guitarist. But, he was the only one, I saw him look around to notice nobody else knew I was playing the lead breaks. He was there less than a half hour and gone, but he specifically pointed at me when applauding, so who knows? The Prez, of course, pretended to not see a thing.

           I see we are headed for another copyright battle with A.I. Let’s hope a few lessons were learned about digital rights from the fiasco that music has become. Lawyers and non-musicians wind up owning everything and original creators are sued if they play their own creations. No longer content to go after those who copy the music for a profit, they constantly seek to make mere possession a crime and just listening a billable event. Barely mentioned in the news, the number of people who identify as Democrats began plunging after Obama (now widely recognized as a fraudulent election) has now reached a record low of 27%. Since is was a Gallup poll (which plays favorites), it is probably really a lot lower, as low as16%.

Last Laugh