February 26, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 26, 2023, the emerging America.
Five years ago today: February 26, 2019, so, some walls do work . . . .
Nine years ago today: February 26, 2015, colleges pass everybody.
Random years ago today: February 26, 2011, my blue, blue eyes, ha!

           After a hearty fried eggg sandwich & coffee, it was off to the repair shop in Winter Haven, slowed by every red light on that highway. How do they know? If you like this blog for things you’ve never seen before, this is your lucky day. See this contraption, it’s from 1890. I’ll have to get you a better photo as somehow I missed the two wands. It’s a medical device from the Safety Electric Signal Company, used by quack doctors to deliver a tingling electric shock. The hattery is hidden in a compartment underneath the mounting board. The coil converted the DC to an AC shick delivered by the two wands, each around 5 inches long. Why does it not surprise me this bogus machine is from New York?

           We got to see a warehouse right out of the 1970s. However, most of it is curios and unsaleable items he’s collected over the years. It’s a gold mine to the right person, but other than the electronics part bins, the only thing of value was the boxes of vacuum tubes. All RCA, made in America, but I know nothing of these. I will ask him if I can go through the cartons, around 30 of them and take inventory. Then an afternoon pricing them out using eBay. Like many a tech, he does not know the functions of the tubes. You take it out, you put it on the tube tester, and if is burned out, replace it.

           The prize for me was a nearly new General Electric cassette tape deck, made in Indonesia. Model 3-5301B, it’s popular on eBay if you want to spend $40. I got this one for ten bucks. It’s a rare enough find that I’ll build a box and 6V battery case. It has superb advantages over crap on the market these days. Best feature—one button one function. Are you listening SONY? My favorite millennial buttons are the ones that require two hands. That’s really modern thinking, soi-bois. Two hands? Yep, one to push the button, which requires so much force, you need the other hand to stop the object from sliding away on you.

           He does have oscilloscopes, but they have to be dug out from behind. While most of the warehouse is full of repaired machines, there are all kinds of vintage parts, mostly things like antennas, connectors, and lots of power transformers, the kind we don’t normally use. There is a lot of material there, but not enough to start selling it off, though I would like to take inventory of the tubes with the thought of selling them as sets. I’d estimate there are aound 1,800 tubes, all made in America. He’s even got one of those cases that TV repairman brought along back when they made house calls.

           He’s got a rack of real medieval and Japanese swords, gadgets from back when things were made to last, and a workstation to die for. I’ve only heard of some of the tools he’s got, and nope, they are not for sale. His prized ones are a capacitor testing machine, and a “sound scope”. He explains that most of the signals an oscilloscope can display can be converted to tones. Instead of bothering with the scope, he connects it and listens for the correct tone. I know I took a picture of this, but where has my smart phone put it?
           Once again, we encounter items and ideas that have no search results on-line. That says a lot about the caliber of information out there. He showed me a box of what looked like large periscope lenses, except these would not be waterproof. Nothing in the case to hint what they are for, big 45 degree lenses, maybe for photography? Another month-end means a Caltier fund dividend, which I’ll be monitoring closely because performance is somewhat lackluster. I know housing sales have slumped (but not house prices), but that should not affect Caltier because their income is derived from renting the units. And I have not heard of any vacancy issues. The fund, by the way, stands at around $18,500 with another $1,000 earmarked for March as other investments continue becoming even less attractive.
Picture of the day.
Rio de Janiero.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
           Finding myself exhausted by this easy morning, I’m taking the afternoon off. That could mean anything around here, but one constant is I won’t get much work accomplished. I’ve got another book on navigation I haven’t read deeply, that’s a plan. My hobby of calculating the ground point (geographic position) of the Sun and finding info about the nearest lan mass didn’t not last out a year for a dull reason. Most of my calculations were done in the daytime and the Sun does not pass directly over many truly interesting places.

           News from Tennessee, the smaller doggie, Sam, has had a seizure. She was giving him a bath, which he doesn’t like that much, and he is now on the way to vet. You’ll know when I do. That’s the eldest pet (except for the turtle). I’ve been listening to the Dillinger audio book, now on disk 5 of 8 and he’’s still running around the desert chasing or being chased by Apaches. The narrator is great with accents but half the main characters are Mexicans and if I want to hear that accent all the time, I’d move to Miami.
           And he still has not done the wild thing with Rosie. He’s driving a Chevrolet convertible around the desert without getting stuck.or running out of gas. I wonder if GM is paying him? If old Johnny doesn’t get back stateside and start robbing banks, the book will need a better title. By now everyone knows the women in red is the half-Mexican half-Chinese Rosie and she’s hot stuff, has Johnny humming the hit parade.

           Here it is, the TV guy’s emergency tube kit. Neat stuff, keep replacing tubes until the set comes on. Good for three channels. What’s black & white & red all over? Russian TV, hardee-har-har. I’ll talk to him soon, let me take inventory of what he has and sell the whole lot. What’s the name of that shop in Hermitage that has the big tube tester? On eBay, the tubes vary in price from $3.39 each to $250 each. I have no idea how to market these, but finding out what’s there would be a nice place to start. Ah, here’s the news back from Tennessee. The little guy did have a seizure but all else is fine, so the vet gave him a shot of doggie valium. Normally a picky and hesitant eater, the Reb reports he’s digging in. Food, man, this is great man, what do you call it? Alpo? Greatest chow ever, man, gimme more.
           The Japanese lunar lander that toppled over managed a couple of pictures from the antenna still facing the Earth. That means it survived on lunar night, something that it wasn’t designed for. It needs sunlight to charge the batteries that keep the instruments warm during the dark periods. So, short of a miracle, it’s a goner. But why are so many nations sending expensive craft up there just to take pictures? That’s fifty-year-old technology.

           I watched a video of Dolly Parton and her two sisters sing in nearly perfect harmony. That was from 54 years ago. These displays always make me wonder what it must be like to grow up in a musical family, or even a musical environment. Hell, I’d have settled for an ounce of encouragement. Dolly was one of twelve chldren, most of whom had careers in entertainment. Dolly must be pushing 80 by now. Here I am, still contending with tsecond-rate guitar players in Nowheres-ville, USA, with no future in it but a way to have fun later in life.
           So much for the computer age. It now requires a minimum of 40 days to get money by mail (the only secure method left) from a foreign country. That’s minimum by assuming the item can be process the day it arrives. I send the request which takes ten days, the other end makes a deposit, ten days to clear. Then they write the return check, another ten days, and I deposit it here, ten more days. The upside is you had better plan well ahead. In 1990, the same action required four days, tops.

           Still up at midnight, I took a failed experiment off the shelf and tested every junction. This is the circuit that had that unspecified 5kpot (potentiometer) that said only that it should be adjusted. It is engineers who write like that who need to be adjusted. These components have a 5k resistance when the two end pins are connected, but the middle pin taps between 0K and 5k. I ifound the pot itself would test on the bench, but failed when installed. I’ve seen this happen before when using recycled parts. It was too cold outside, so we’ll wait until tomorrow to test it properly out in the shed.
           The good news is the earphone jack on most audio gear is just enough to power a small speaker if you hold it right up to your ear. I do believe with a good new pot, I have myself my first working amplifier. Further up the learning curve, I found the best way I have to get at small wires is a pair of tiny cutters sold in the jewellery section. I think they are for bending wires for earrings or some hobby like that. And I discover a brand of tiny nails that look and feel like copper, but don’t conduct well. I suspect an oxidized coating. Whatever, throw them all out. They nearly gave me a headache.

ADDENDUM

           After losing the copter, Mars photos from the rovers were released, with astonishing clarity. And I’m not sure these are the best photos. Certainly not the best narrator, he’s got a very grating accent.
           I don’t know enough geology to interpret the photos, but I recognize marker bands, erosion patterns, and what to me plainly is sedimentry rock formed by an ocean, no doubt about it. This is a still from a video of a Martian solar eclipse, the irregular object is Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. These photos can capture small variations in the orbits that can be used in calculations of the Martian mantel, which is part of why I think these photos have been detuned for public use.

Last Laugh