January 25, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 25, 2023, I’m still a 5 wpm Morser.
Five years ago today: January 25, 2019, he stole sandwiches on the ferry.
Nine years ago today: January 25, 2015, the great Aztec invention.
Random years ago today: January 25, 2008, the Belkin boondoggle.

           Sometimes it’s said I go too far choosing who I chum around with. So anyway, Bryne sends email in which he details his dislike for dash lights. Motor lights, brake lights, washer fluid lights, tire pressure lights, he hates “em all. So he’s selling his Dodge pickup (it always was junk) and buying a 1980 MBG. That’s the year they quit making them. Stick shift, I warned him Brit cars are not rugged enough for Texas roads, Texas weather, or Texas women. But he’s a marine mechanic and can keep anything on the road. Forget Texas, they got enough problems, let’s get to the important stuff. This electric motor.

           I can’t recall what it is from, but it sure does have plenty of torque. It has the correct size mounting holes for that toy saw from Harbor Freight. The saw the will not cut cardboard. There are fifty other things I should be tending to, today I’m taking a look at the potential here. I will require a shaft coupling of some sort, which locally may be quite a challenge. Nor do I have any accurate way of measuring RPM, which I hear is important with these saws. Why a small saw? You see, I’m getting closer to applying interior finishings to these boxes. The hand saw is too slow and the bigger saws leave ragged edges on small parts.

           Time to update my filters. Reddit posts are getting through. Reddit is okay if you don’t mind five minutes reading for five seconds information. Today we have an article on hotels, what do travellers see as red flags? For me I’d say the lack of posted prices, but here’s what others had to say:

1) over-strong air freshners
2) bullet-proof glass around reception
3) no employees over age 23
4) hidden charges
5) the beds have plastic sheets
6) your hotel is in China
7) bullet holes covered with tape
8) panty vending machines
9) dark colored bedding
10) a number in the hotel name
11) the caretaker is Jack Nicolson

           That was the Reb on the line, 18 minutes, how does she do it? (My average phone call is under four minutes.) My letters to JeePee have been getting wet in the mail box, which neither the subdivision or the Post Office will repair, each claiming it is the other’s problem. I need a way to waterproof letters. Turns out they are not that easy to find in letter size and I can’t afford U-line. I’ll check around. I meant to waterproof that mailbox last visit but it was so damn cold.

           Turkey burgers. All I’m saying is things are heating up. The Reb has a girlfriend from Poland, where they eat turkey a lot. The urban myth is that if it rains, you have to round up the birds or they will look up at the sky and drown. On-line says that is a myth, but if they do look up it is because they have mocular vision and that’s the only way they can see what’s coming, as in raindrops. We have an offer on the Civic, but we will hold out for full price. I think she should claim another $2,600 for pain and suffering, a badly misunderstood legal term. It does not just mean physical hurt. For example, I’ve had to stop ten or twelve times, sit down, and deal with issues related to this claiming.
           My time is worth what I got paid for my last job, at the least. In today’s money, that is $55 per hour. Reb’s speaking fees are five times that. But, it’s really her call and she does not want to hit them for things like the time and effort to get estimates and shop for a replacement, much less the interruptions in our lives. Interrupting people like is is not a good way to save money.

           Before taking measurements, I thoroughly tested the mini saw. It seems to work very well for what it is designed to do. Cut thin plastic and balsa. Now that I can check my work with calipers, anything over 1/4-inch or solid lumber will stop the saw, that is how it is designed. So [put a] hold on the motor plan, it might be better to use that motor for a custom router bit or something. The mini-saw came with a useless miter guage (it wobbles in the slot), and if I throw together a small slide, this may be handy as it is.

Picture of the day.
Private island, Scotland.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           I finally got off the phone and moved the air compressor. It was placed in the shade for convenience, now I had to move it against the wall for efficiency. That footlong move was twice as much work as the original install, that goodness I’m stocked up on coffee. This photo doesn’t show the hard work, but revelas some Florida concessions. The tank is up off the ground, away from the wet. It’s also sitting on concrete blocks so it cannot walk. And it is tucke almost against the wall, where I’m considering a sound-dampening box. It’s done and the hours of work gave me time to mull over some investment moves. We talked about the 7% with Caltier, but the bottom line is because of inflation and taxes, we lost money. Why invest? Because I learned 50 years ago you can get ahead by not losing money as fast as those who don’t invest. Caltier remains the top performer at 6.72% after a rough year.

           Another way I look at returns is hourly rate equivalency. It seems easier for non-financial people to understand and it’s become a favorite here over time. Assume you work 2,000 hours per year. Divide your investment return by 2,000 and add that on to your pay. Caltier paid $756 in 2023, so that is around 37₵ per hour. Anybody who thinks that is trivial does not comprehend the miracle of compounding. They are also stupid, because very, very few people ever manage to save 37₵ per hour. In 2024, I’m shooting for 87₵ and 2026, $1.14. These are minimums. If you’ve guessed this money is just reinvested, your are right, it takes the pressure off having to save to meet goals.
           Did I hear someone mention that is consistent with my statement that you must invest $300,000 to make $10 per hour? Ah, and this is why I’ll planning the booklet, to write all this down in one place. I’ve got nothing to lose. (Because most of it isn’t in my name, see?)

           The relocated air tank left enough room for a small utility shelf for my spray paint, shown here. I’ll add another shelf or two soon to get all the flammable out of the main work area. Turpentine, mineral spirits, the whole lot, out into the lean-to. I also have around 8 of the one-pound propane bottles that get rusty-looking if not stored warm and dry. How did I ever get such a bright picture of the compressor shed? I spent three hours running in some light and wiring, but no outlets yet. And the lighting shown here is temporary. I’ve decided that although the area will have a switch, it is controlled by the master switch on the entrance to the big work area.
           Next, I finally strapped in the copper piping to the compressor. Since the compressor lean-to is secure, in the sense it is locked from the inside, it frees up work space which is always nice. I am thinking of taking down the shelfving in the silo and making that place pest-proof. It has no ceiling and a variety of rodents have spent luxury time in there. Over time, I’ve collected lots of odds and ends, but these projects lately have really taken down my stockpile. Even my “used once” boxes of hardware are dwindled and screws, bolts, and nails are not cheap these days.

           The calipers make another noticeable improvement. I always associated those with measuring metal, but I found myself using them to check cut depths, thicknesses, and offsets. At first, just for practice but then I realized I was following up with all kinds of adjustments. Building even a crude box requites a lot of “things to watch for” along the way and it took me a couple days to realize the calipers were helping me avoid small errors produced by kerf cuts and trim where the base lumber isn’t as square as they’d have you believe.
           It’s amazing watching the Leftist party repeat old tactics that no longer work. One is the media fait accompli, the way they talk as if something is already a given. The “known insurrectionsit Trump”, or the “discredited election deniers”. Now we have Poon talking like she won the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, when in fact, she came in a distant third. Like many Americans, I was surprised non-registered people are allowed to vote. It seems 70% of the people who voted for Poon at the Republican caucus were Democrats. How does that work?

           This evening was planned to watch a video of expensive articles made in the USA. It was a pleasant surprise to find it was an actual well-made documentary instead of millennial docutainment. There was no lisping, no nonsense about likes, and the video actually showed the processes that made these items so costly. As in $5,000 for a Stetson hat and $186,000 for a Steinway piano. I recommend this hour-and-a-half video, though it weakens near the end.
           Not all the products in the video are pleasing. One is space suits, originally costing $22 million each, designed and built around 1974. These are not the originals custom designed for the Apollo missions, but a batch of 20 for the Shuttle program. Some were lost by testing and crashes, others are being refurbished, I imagine a used space suit to be like somebody else’s underwear. So the margin is 4 suits in reserve. These are for EVA, extra vehicular activity, and not the safety suits worn inside the capsule.
           The replacement cost per suit is now $250 million, a situation not helped by NASA’s insistent on tacky stunts like “the first all-woman space walk” which involved sending a custom built liner up to the ISS so one of the women could fit into a man’s suit. Spectacularism, and pitiful, really. NASA says it is because of “changing expectations”, yeah, theirs, not the taxpayers.

ADDENDUM
           Relating still to space suits, it is notable that many of the parts are no longer available but also the skilled labor. I’ve described before how other countries want American goods, but not the responsibility they create. Plastic cups are convenient, but third-worlders don’t have or want recycling plants, so they dump them in the oceans. Well, I see a similar problem in America over the past 20 or 30 years. I’m not an expert, but I figure the American lifestyle at its peak required a core group of hyper-talented skilled workforce of 8,000,000 people to keep the system operating. And probably 95% of them were highly-paid White men.
           These people were educated, motivated, and expected to be paid a lot of money, the embodiment of capitalism. But around 1985, these people began dwindling in number without being replaced. I became aware because I was born poor and was just entering the workforce at the time. I had no option to find work I enjoyed, I had to take the highest paying job I could find. For the first few years, it was a pro learning environment, this blog tells the tale how I reached the top of the pay scale in 13 months, a process that normally took seven years. I’ve explained this before, I’m not smart, I’m educated in the classical sense of the word. I have the resources that makes learning possible, you might say.
           By 1990, the change was obvious. They were hiring new people who could not read or write or solve abstract problems. That’s a terrible situation in the communications industry. And it was different than just some old guy saying these new guys don’t know nothing. They were the same age as me and were untrainable except by rote. Many a day passed when I did six or seven line-ups (two is average) and the rest of the department, 17 people, did maybe five between them. It’s all documented.

           I totaled up the occupations I felt kept the nation rolling forward. All the doctors, but not the lawyers. Plant technicians, engineers, plumbers, electricians, I included waste disposal, bridges and tunnels. I did not include (amusing foresight) journalists or bankers. I find oil production and food distribution more important. It was a rough look, but my estimate was 8,000,000. And they are now retiring and dying without hope of replacement.
           When I left the company, they had to hire seven people to replace me. I know first hand what is going to happen because America’s infrastructure is too complex for the people coming on-line. There will always be a few good ones, but look what the colleges are graduating. I estimate the entire XYZoomer class cannot between them come up with even one million capable people. The system will slowly decay, I said, in 2006.
           Cars that explode, empty store shelves, and computer batteries that only last a couple hours. The rot has already set in. I read on-line a post that said most of the current generations “inventions” were held together with hot glue. If I was a millennial, instead of ragging on Boomers, I’d be praying they live forever.

Last Laugh