One year ago today: February 27, 2023, Starbucks hates normal people.
Five years ago today: February 27, 2019, radio brands from 1957.
Nine years ago today: February 27, 2015, my ‘frozen screen’ hack.
Random years ago today: February 27, 2007, no category for smart.
Looks like another morning trip downtown, which tends to kill half a day. I thought some space news would cheer me up, but NASA is back to their old tricks. Instead of a decent documentary, they shift everything down to infantile levels on what should be a scientific exchange. “Leave a comment kiddies if you think the rover should go left, or should it go right?” Time to disband the whole crew and start over, space exploration has not been their priority for 50 years. That’s correct, they are again launching Moon missions with 1970s technology, even the computer systems still use 50-year-old technology. They’ve invented nothing, gained nothing. Send them packing.
And before I start driving, blog rules say I record certain incidents. One is an error on my utility bills since the Biden horror story began in 2021. I had to alter certain budget categories, which resulted in fairly instant improvements because I cut out all luxury items. That’s by my definition of luxury, such as buying coffee at Dunkin every day and fewer car drives. I tend to pay my utilities ahead, always having a few months buffer. It got recorded wrong. It’s no big deal since I’m always ahead but some of the worst budget months on file over here are now reveled to be even worse. In February of 2021 before the change of habits was complete, I was over by $1,461. That’s double the projection. But hey, I have a working budget that provides me well.
Since January, I’ve spent $2,571 on budget items. It’s neither as good or bad as it may sound, as my categories are often offset by extraordinary expenses and band income. But no good will come of this inflation matter. That is more likely to cause another tea party than any climate change propaganda. Maintenance on this cabin is now averaging $134 per month. But that’s like 10% of paying rent nowadays—and much of the money is on improvements, not just repairs.
The secondary issue is the pattern of payments are now a security breach. While there is nothing funny going on, remember what happened to our guitar player in 2022. The guy who drove to Jersey using credit cards and ATMs all the way? Part of protecting your privacy involves anticipating what the authorities are planning in the future by what information they are collecting today. I’ll stagger the payments just to be on the safe side.
My GE tape deck is a charm. It has no auto-stop, no microphone jack, and no auto-reverse, but a smooth sound at low volumes. These days new cassettes still in the package are free at the library. American radio sucks, unless you enjoy listening to 180 drug company and law firm ads per hour. Did you know big pharma in the US spends 17 times as much on advertising than they do on research? I have an wonderful collection of old Chet Atkins instrumental tapes that match that 1970 sound fidelity of the tape decks before the SONY Walkman arrived and changed it all to headphones. I spent half of one paycheck on my first Walkman which sold for $459 plus taxes in 1984. Note, the GE does have a microphone, just no jack.
Here’s a look at the almost-working amp circuit, my first success at this type of electronics. Up to now transistors have been only gates. The circle shows where I removed the potentiometer. I have a large drawer of spare and now that I can detect the amplified signal on the pins, I’ll just strap in one after another until I get someting that works. I know the wiring is hard to see because I used jumper wire, but this is one of the simplest of circuits. I don’t quite yet understand how two transistors can be coupled, as the base current must be kepr within the quiescent area. <
Antique brass metronome.
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By early afternoon I’m back home taking inventory of vacuum tubes. We loaded them in the van, I felt like creating a database. The situation is nobody knows whats in the boxes. Over the years they all got co-mingled. It would take hours to find a specific part in most caes. Now, at least I can tell you which of the boxes to look in. I’ve counted aroun 241 parts, getting used to readng the parts numbers. It’s a typically whacked out US system with each manufacturer acting in isolation. For pricing, I use eBay, but only loosely. I would not have time to make exact matches. The average price per tube is running around $4, so I’m thinking to offer the whole batch for a lump sum. It’s a bit distressing to find most of the tubes are single examples.
There were 22 boxes, not 30. The ones in the back turned out to be full of cookbooks. I still guess there are 2,000 tubes, all uncounted, unsorted, and impossible to find. A database is the only logicl way to maximize the potential. One could guess and sell but knowing what’s there would at lease allow bargaining for a far better price than that. Most of the tubes are priced near the $5 with one outlier at $25.99—but there is a compatible selling for $6. I compared these only to American manufactured product. By the looks of things, there is no shortage of vacuum tubes in this day and age. But there is a shortage of low prices.
I’ll have more on this but I want a long break, just lay back, a good book. And the book I have in mind is on celestial navigation concerning site reduction tables. I thoroughly get the concept but it still has not melted. In the old days you calculated two great circle arcs. These day you look up a spot nearby your dead reckoning position and measure your distance from there. It is easier to memorize than to understand, and I’m working on the latter. We still have the cold spell but the Florida afternoon sun is enough to get us back to nearly perfect afternoons, which spells lethargy.
The neighbor is invited to dinner, so no Festus this evening. I’m okay wi th that. I bought a SONY blueray disk player at the Thrift, looks brand new. I want to set my old player up in the shed to follow documentaries scheduled for my work times. Did you know the average room in my house and sheds, including the bathroom, has three clocks. Let me add here, not including my wrist watch and clocks in the car, I have 14 clocks. I never could understand why car radios could not be easily programmed to alarm both in the regular mode and a countdown timer. For safely, allow it only to be set when the motor isn’t running.
Here’s a box of vacuum tubes, on average every box is as jumbled up, making it impossible to guarantee finding a given tube. Unless I think of some way to organize things, the best I can do is find which box it might be in. I made some attempt to alphabetize each box, not so easy considering the whacked-out numbering system. Quick, find me a 6CD7GT11. What’s taking so long?
I wonder if a simple set of trays might be a solution. The largest boxes are not much deeper than slats of ordinary pallets and even boxes of up to 50 tubes are not at all very heavy. The only feasible way to get to each tube container is if they are displayed in a single layer. This is something I have experience with, twenty years ago I build a single-layer display case of 1,000,000 toothpicks.
How about that Indonesian guy in Australia who got something like $500,000 deposited into his cryto-account by mistake. He disappeared. They’ve tried everything including seizing his assets (such as they are) and ordering him not to leave the country. I’m not sure whose side I’m on. Ir it happened to me, I’d give half back, no more. Because I know how banks work. If they forced me to give it all back, it might accidentally catch on fire.
Actually, the way I would really have handled it is to send, by mail, a letter reporting my ATM card was stolen. But leave off the postal or ZIP code, knowing the post office intentionally delays such mail for several days. When shown videos of me withdrawing the cash, I would say it is an amazing likeness, but I can’t be sure because the person in the video is wearing sunglasses. I didn’t say I wasn’t there, your Honor, I said I don’t remember being there.
ADDENDUM
I finished the Dillinger book. I thought it was 8 disks. The last three were advertising and samples. So near the end of disk 5, he gets back to the USA, steals a car, phones J. Edgar Hoover to tell Ed he was nothing except what Dillinger made him. Then he gets gunned down in 1934. That all happens in the last three minutes of the disk. It’s really a story of Dillinger fighting Apache’s in Mexico and driving his miracle car across the desert.
