One year ago today: January 12, 2023, raccoons & electricity.
Five years ago today: January 12, 2019, a busy day or what.
Nine years ago today: January 12, 2015, 50 acres for sale.
Random years ago today: January 12, 2007, the guitar-player blues.
I started the air compressor at 9:00AM sharp. It’s noisy until I finish the door on the lean-to, so any late sleepers in the area could probably at least hear it. What’s the connection? The day after Super Bowl an estimated 16 million Americans call in sick for work. Since they are not sick at all, let them enjoy the sound of my hard-working compressor as I cleaned all the pallet lumber in less than an hour.I have enough this time to experiment with making shingle siding. I also tested several options for building the RAM circuit, none of them worked out. I may neeed to sandwich the wires in channels cut into plywood to get it to stay in place. The only item that tested okay is the battery pack, at 3.26V.
Back before noon, I’m grabbing a coffee and crawling back in the sack. Last evening I wrote another eight pargraphs on how to make sure you can do the same when your time comes. The link here is that tomorrow, for the first time I will actually be withdrawing money I invested almost forty years ago. It was hopeless back then, I think that first year I made less than $2.00 interest—but I left the money in and kept it rolling. It was the discipline to do that while the world gobbled up my entire paychecks that I wrote about. My original investments would best be classified as survivors. No, I never got rich but I shudder to think what would have happend to me if I had not invested.
There is another rash of silver ads hitting the investment sites. I caution everyone that buying precious metals is easy. Selling it is not. Except for small daily amounts sold to strangers, don’t plan on just taking it back to where you bought it, a coin dealer, or on-line. For now, it’s nothing. But in a crisis situation, you would just be asking for trouble. Don’t be lulled just because nothing has happened yet.
The tech industry layoffs continue with nearly 35,000 jobs gone since January. What’s the deal? A.I. Even though it isn’t the real thing, it is capable of outperforming 80% of humans and they should have seen that coming. I view the change as no different that the invention of the bulldozer, which can outperform any human. However, this time I see a significant warning light. Unlike laborers, techs are supposed to be paid not for what they do, but for what they know. Aha, see the irony? There is a pathetic self-destruct message when you get canned from that sort of job, and it says you had no business being there in the first place.
Everything woke turns to shit, said Trump in 2022. This stems from their rotten attempts to stop Trump. The enact or enforce weak law that backfire on them. This time, they ruled Biden is too incompetent to stand trial. If that’s so, he can’t be President, if he stays President, he can be impeached for taking classified mateirals. He can only remain where he is if nothing happens, which is only possible with a completely corrupt and complicit Civil Service.
The Chinese stock market is not on my watch list. I’ve always suspected it was being manipulated at the State level. Forbes reports $7 trillion in value has disappeared since the artificial peak in 2021. I don’t know if that includes the Evergrande fiasco. Imagine them, trying to duplicate American style wealth based on the valuation of privately-owned real estate in a place where nothing is privately owned. Rumors are the government is using A.I. to track any negative comments. And I’m not really sure what to make out of the attacks on driverless cars in California. Maybe they think the cars are taking away the jobs they don’t have?
Czech EV assembly line.
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Three hours out there, I built another box when I should have been doing repairs. But hey, and I finished cleaning the pallet lumber, the punch doesn’t drive all the nails right out. Blog rules say tell you the high or low points of the day, good or bad. And the box is the only item I’d say makes the grade. It’s a half JeePee, in that only the bottom is a floating panel. I want to build a box for my spare soldering iron so let’s take a peach tea break and see if I have the energy to stand up again.
Ha, now I can’t find my microscopes. Not lost, just not where I thought I put them. This is why I like having my special little boxes, innit? When I find them, I’ll build a box special for them. By the way, this box represents the latest upgrade in my building experience. This is the standard to which I build boxes now, this one I slapped together in a couple hours with no plans. It does not yet have any hardware installed. I can now make the boxes fit square without a lot of fuss and notice the pieces are cut to exhibit the best lumber pieces.
Now that the Marscopter is grounded, a series of crazy publications are about, that the people that built it were “brave” as they fought “enemies” who tried to “kill” the project. Wrong. There was zero bravery involved and it was politicians who withheld funding who knew little or nothing of copters and drones. Now don’t go saying it’s the same thing, because NASA is a bloated bureaucracy who is now holding back the space race. The taxpayer is not your enemy when you want $80 million dollars to build a toy helicopter. Yes, I’m aware of the challenges, but also think private contractors should have been given a crack at it for that kind of money.
I mulled over the events while wiring up my $1.25 string of lights. Thinner atmosphere? It’s not a million-dollar hurdle. You will need some combination of bigger blades, faster motors, and better batteries, each of which will shave something off your payload. And in the end, that’s what happened. Ingenuity flew a total of just over two hours, averaging less than 2 minutes per flight (72 missions), discovered nothing and never strayed far from the lander.
NASA is now pushing the Mars Sample Return, which involves flying enough fuel to Mars to launch back some dirt. This $10 billion dollar project ensures high employment for NASA well into the 2030s, plus operating costs of over $1 billion per year ongoing. Since experiments to date show returned samples are extremely unlikely to discover evidence of life, the price tag does not make sense to the taxpayers. And if it does not succeed in finding life, it will be perceived as a monstrous failure.
Turning down an invitation downtown, I got back here to learn “Rocky Top”. Not much of a bluegrass fan, I’ve never played it but I know I’ve heard the version I like many times. Then along comes the Internet bastards, you try to find that version. Dolly Parton butchers the song and the Osborne Brothers sound like nine-year-olds. Every farmer and his dog played a version and to be fair, the dog does a better job. John Denver puts you to sleep and Conway Twitty thinks it’s a love song. The Nitty Gritty Band makes to many changes and people who play it in B or Eb can stick it. I don’t mind watching the Petersens as long as the rest of the band gets out of the way so I can see the babe.
You know the one I mean, when she reaches up to brush her blonde hair out of the way, her banjo keeps on playing by itself.
ADDENDUM
Here is your progress report on the RAM circuit. Shown here are the salvaged parts from the novelty toy. We have ten LEDs, one of which I will try later to throw under the microscope. Why? Because I don’t know how come these don’t need a current limiting resistor. Ordinary LEDs will fry if you hook them direct to 3 volts as shown here. Later, I will crank up the volts to find the destruct point, and calculate the needed resistance from there. The gadget yeiled these ten LEDs, note that nine have four wires, the last on the end only two.
This is called “series” parallel and similar to why Xmas bulbs are wired to one doesn burn out the whole string. I don’t know that is great for this project but it’s find for the budget. I’ve decided on a four light demo as proof of concept. I can’t find my small tray of I Cs (integrated circuits), so I may wind up building something myself. But they will be needed for the array, where the planned 8x8 grid will have 64 transistor junctions. Neither Wilford or I have the lerts or experience to figure out the wiring.
The schematic will probably be up to me, being the only one around these parts who has ever built any ROM. I have the theory, but part of the working model is due to the difficulty of drawing the required 3D plans. Also shown is the power supply. It has the plastic casing with the springs and contacts with a tiny switch.
I also watch a promo for the Monesto electric generator which flies a kite underwater. It generates electricity from the tidal flow. The claim it has no impact is false. The tide basin generations already in use measurably slow the rotation of the Earth. The kite is tethere to the ocean floor in island channels that focus the tide action. It repeats a figure-eight path said to maximize performance.
