One year ago today: January 20, 2023, happy birthday, saw shed.
/> Five years ago today: January 20, 2019, sellout Karaoke.
Nine years ago today: January 20, 2015, a lost love letter.
Random years ago today: January 20, 2011, Mach 1, in scooter terms.
What have we here? Biden as “ordered” Texas to reopen Eagle Pass by saying it will “take action”. At times like this, you remember Ft. Sumter. The Feds would have you believe it’s law and order, but there is no moral dilemma here. The individual States have the right to reject any Federal law the State deems unConstitutional. Even the local Sheriff in Eagle Pass has that right. If the regime tries to use force, they will find other than their paid agents, the rest of the country has already chosen sides. Or the French scientist who published the picture of a distant star admitted it was really a slice of salami. A senior Pentagon official is arrested for hosting dog fights and executing the losers with jumper cables, yes, he’s black.
Talking to Wilford, it seems he has an interest in electronics. Be careful here, he also had an interest in guitar, ha-ha. I can’t find my box of Arduinos and my two bags of red LEDs. It looks like I may have to completely empty two sheds until I find them. Since the recent look at 595 serial-to-parallel register, I’m going to search through my supply of chips. In this process, I found that string of PNP transistors Hacktronic sent me just before they pulled the pin. I dislike PNP types because, well, they are not as it would seem, the opposite of NPN. Everybody likes NPN as the more logical. You add power it turns the thing on.
I have to relearn PNP logic every time I use them. That’s where this second pic comes in, the first arrow in the upper left shows a circuit that will not work, the second arrow shows the same circuit that tests okay for continuity. You can see a whole array of meters and test probes to get this circuit working. PNPs should turn on when power is taken away. Not quite, and that’s what makes it a bitch to use. I will get it, as I have a few strings of these and there are around 30 per string.
You see, now, I get to just stand there and play bass. And you know how that is going to go. I’ve been a stage darling for half a century, the second half iwill be no different. I had time today to begin picking apart the Clapton tune and some CCR, you know, to make the bass sound “more like the original”. Once again looking fo those spots where the guitarist can’t play both parts, I take it one step further. Anticipating what the guitar player will do whether he likes or hates it when I play what he can’t. I’ve had the book on this technique half-written for years. Another method that comes to prominence in this band is what I call “lingering”.
This guitarist tends to leave out intros and endings. That’s not right, but rather than argue, what I do is play some characteristic melody line or riff from the song over, or after the endings. Not clear? Think of the steel guitar riff at the ending of “White Liar”. As the song ends, I can now play it over the final three chords. One of two things will happen, either the guitarist will try to repeat the ending, or hate it and stop playing. If he plays it, so do I and get double billing. If he stops, I can move it up to the highest note on the bass. That’s the last fret up on the G-string.
The effect is dual if he stops, that’s where I linger. This is my term for playing a small roff to blend with any audience response response. So the last thing they hear is an echoing bass melody. Works like a hot-damn. Hey, the guitar player always has the option to sit down and learn the parts, nomsayn? Nor did I stop there, I went back and completely aced the lead solo to Haggard’s “Momma Tried”, something neither guitarist in my band could manage under any theory. In a dumbfounding way, Keith has still not really caught on it is me playing all the breaks. Like he said last week, “we” are starting to sound pretty good. I’m glad he thinks so, because it is only going to, in that case, get better.
I wound up playing until two in the afternoon. My experience is that sharing band management does not work, so if I’m not in charge, I just do my job, and I do it as best I can. It’s no secret every tune that Keith does the Prez knows, they both knew before. Neither of them has learned one single new thing since the jam began. There’s something so familiar about all this, I’ll let you connect the dots. And Klaus, the whack-job from the WEF says elections are no longer necessary, as A.I. will predict the outcomes. Some people you don’t have to know to hate them already. I mean, is that Republican A.I. or Democrat A.I. With freaks like Klaus, you just know.
Atlantic island storm.
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The afternoon sun got high enough that I was out in the shed a couple hours and built most of another box in record time. That was possible, because I went over to the neighbor’s shed to see if the plastic glue had set. It did, and I crawled under the table saw to find the problem. The tilt is by a threaded rod connected to the motor housing and a flywheel. At some point in the past, the clamp on the housing got turned past its limit. I can probably fix that on a warmer day, the reward today was I got it running perfectly otherwise. I was able to hobb a set of rabbet joints in just minutes, shown here. Since the saw is otherwise in great shape, I may build a box joint jig.
Later in the day, news that Biden has given Texas to the end of today to quit blocking Fed access to the border crossings. The public mood is that Texas should call his bluff. If Biden does anything military, he’ll just be confirming what so many don’t want to believe. Myself, I am curious if the military would fire on Americans. If they do, I advise any non-white, queer, or gender-fluid types not to be taken prisoner. Even later, yes, I got the circuit to work. Would you like to hear the explanation? Sure, learning is fun, once you get past the frustration. I wound up testing 8 or 10 LEDs in case I got a bad batch, I suspected a bad breadboard, it even crossed my mind that Hacktronics had sent me this free gift because they were mislabled. The picture show the circuit finally working. The down arrow points to the PNP, the up arrow was the location of the problem.
There, aren’t you glad you stuck around? The temperature is plunging. Do check tomorrow as I have a bold plan to build two boxes in one day. One is slated to have the interior dimensions to hold all by old hard drives, I have around 15 that could be a goldmine of historical data.
ADDENDUM
Who remembers their first girlfriend at random times? The deal is, with me it is not random. There are two things I cannot do without thinking of Pearl. Both are in the kitchen, although her and I never made any meals together. I think the connection is her girlfriend, who lived in the separate farming community south of town. The rural influence was still super strong by 1980 and even though I was not raised on a farm. I just act like it. So whenever I peel potatoes or make fish sandwiches, I think of Pearl. A natural red-head, what a wonderful initiation that turned out to be. We lasted around two years, she moved on and I moved forward, or at least those seemed to be the directions at the time.
We only lived in that small town four years, so I barely remember anybody. I did not keep up, as I seem to have outlived so many of them that I don’t want to know. This was up in the frozen northlands, I do not miss anything north of Denver, don’t even want to think about cold. I have news from Mitch, I suspect he lost money last year. If you recall, I chummed with his younger brother, who embraced my investment philosophy. That’s RofR, who did so well, he outstripped all of us put together. Mitch was more conservative, which meant by the time he retired, around five years ago, he had zero experience doing things any other way than what the system wanted. He never learned to protect what he had.
If he asks, I’ll step in, though I really don’t take on new clients, not since 2005. This same situation has happened so many times that I can tell you the story without a word from Mitch. He retired with a pool of monety from a lump-sum payout or similar. He somewhere, somehow told people about it and lent them money. Mitch plays be the book and would not have questioned why somebody over 50 would still need to borrow money from friends. You see, asking such questions is, to a conservative person, improper. I’m not saying this happened, I’m saying that is the usual pattern.
It only gets my attention to the extent it follows another pattern of those who listened to me and those who did not. Let’s be clear, Mitch no doubt followed every rule, guideline, and followed the advice of experts. What could go wrong? First, and we talked about this just last week, investment advice is [necessarily] angled toward those who have a surplus. Second, I cannot stress this enough, that investing is different for poor people and cannot be approached the same way. You can’t hire financial consultants when you don’t have groceries. You know what it is like to go through months of negative income and borrowing between paychecks. And you know the temtation to take chances or your youth is wasted because every other investment will take too long.
My way isn’t effective for everyone, but it is certainly eaiser to understand in layman’s terms. The biggest hurdle is admitting you will never have the things others got for free. Those things cannot be gotten on your own and there is massive peer pressure from every angle when
you are starting out. I’ve not forgotten when I got out of university and hitchiking to a job,and getting a lift from16 year-olds with nice cars. I walked until I was 21. This is an old tale from the trailer court, but it still applies today. You must suffer to get ahead, while others never have to think about such things. I have an example of how I “think” an investment makes sense when you are broke as hell.
It works the same as my “reverse retirement” calculation, but applied to a paycheck. Consider this, you work an average of 21 days per month. Do the arithmetic. (30 days minus 8 weekends and 1 day off). You entire sequence must be supported by that 21 days, and I remember when I had to work half of them just to pay the rent. The goal is to give yourself a $1 per hour raise—and that raise is not yours, it is so you have the dollar to invest without raiding your paycheck. Calculate 21 times 8 is $168 per month, which is rounded to 2,000 per year. How much to you have to invest to make $2,000 per year? This is how I arrived at many of the figures you’ve seen in this blog, such as my 7% APR. The answer is $30,000. Sound familiar?
If you dig deeper, you’ll find I go back a long way with this. My original goal was 10 cents per hour, which provides a good measure of inflation. I’m investing again with a goal of $2 per hour in Caltier. Why that figure? I estimate that to be the property tax on a $300,000 house. But forget that for now, I’m not buying unless the market crashes or a get another deal. The beady-eyed may ask, well $2 per hour works out to $60,000 and my commitment to Caltier is only $50,000 by 2030. Yes, but add in the projected income rolled over. November 2030 is seven years away. This is where your spreadsheet skills come in, using the what-if button, sometimes called goal-seek.
