One year ago today: March 31, 2023, Tennessee tornado warning.
Five years ago today: March 31, 2019, remember my slashed tire?
Nine years ago today: March 31, 2015, the saddest part.
Random years ago today: March 31, 2005, early mention of “the shop”.
That was JZ on the phone for an hour. I knew nothing of these bone growth stimulators and had been asking questions. I examined the Reb’s unit and found nothing perceptible. No heat, no sonic, no pressure, no vibrations, nothing. But JZ says they work on “biometric” principles, and he’s never been wrong on medical issues. I wonder if the guy would have made a career out of some medical-related field. He was in Princeton, for crying out loud. He’s quite aware of all this, he often jokes if his family had known me, they would have put me through.
In fact, this morning would be a good example. We were on the phone for 42 minutes, during which time I never mentioned his name once. He would not see that as a plain and wise habit, he said my name 22 times. True, when you don’t enact measures at the beginning, it becomes impossible at the end, buy my point is the people who wind up getting slammed by the system do not have an inkling how surveillance operates.
Here’s something, this is the first Easter of JZ’s life that he is not spending it with family. My take on that must seem off-base, since my belief system recognizes but does not celebrate the day. I like the food, I made up a huge helping of chicken fried rice, the kind with sesame seeds and walnut oil. To me, Easter is like any other day when everybody I know is busy with their own situations, so I naturally have things to do. Take my advice, get a productive hobby. Has JZ finally recognized the high value I place on the option to not participate.
JZ, who does not manage his money with a budget, has an amazing ability to keep running totals. Casually mention the cost of groceries for a couple months and he can instantly tell you the total on the last day. He knows how this cabin was bought with a down payment, so it was with interest I heard him comment the same thing is possible again in Tennessee. If somebody absolutely had to sell some place for cash in that window where no bank will lend, I could come up with a good amount now and double that in three weeks.
As it is now, I occasionally sift through the properties near Nashville but they are still triple what anything is really worth. I found 441 houses for sale that met my criteria and the distance is closing on Nashville. Crossville is still too far to commute, but 3 acres and two bedroom sounds nice for $84,000. But I threw in a lowball offer, see photo. Yet another grounding of a Boeing airplane brings the March total to 14. A database hack got 73 million AT&T user passwords, a complete shock to those of us who did not know AT&T had that manny customers left.
Dollar Tree, which had a maximum price of $1 a year ago, now has a $5 aisle, and has announced by year’s end they will have items at $7. As Ann Coulter says it, remove women’s right to vote and you’ll never have to put up with a Democrat government again.
Sierra Leone, 225 years later.
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With the pending settlement on the Civic, my travel budget looses a little. I’m looking at Machine Gun America, a place that lets you live-fire various models. America has around 750,000 privately registered owners of fully automatic weapons, and another 20 million with semi-automatics. That’s the “assault weapon” category the Democrats would love to eliminate, now with record sales ever since they tried to jail Rittenhouse for a clear case of self defense. Closer to home, we have another batch of bad coffee. I’m trying this IHOP restaraunt brand because these chains get first pick.
Yet another revelation of the difference in mindsets emerges with the gig economy. I find it to be a millennical concept for the simple reason the skilled full-time traditional jobs are still there, but a degree in gender studies doesn’t fill the bill. The tendency to blame Boomers for this carries the implication tthat he move to gigs is necessary to fill jobs that Boomers can’t. Supply and demand. Uh-oh, we now have an emerging harsh reality.
The old, out-dated Boomers who are returning the workforce due to inflation are out-performing the gig-masters. Experience, work habits, attitude, and education seem to have importance in the workplace after all. What’s more, increasing numbers of seniors are finding the gig jobs simple and easy compared to what they know to be hard work. Interesting and a big “oops” to those who think computer jobs are the exclusive realm of the post-Internet bunch.
And reconciling my own funeral account is revelation between reality and the way that coders go about their jobs. They seem to know nothing about banking, they behave as if doing exactly what they are told is a substitute for understanding what in Sam Hill is going on. It’s as if they were told to faithfully make one number look like another regardless of how it got to be that way. It is the result of a shortcut somebody else took and the people who came later, not having the brain thrust to correct shortcut, began a series of patches to see what might work.
This is the account that has my CDs. You see, I am again well enough to not die without some warning, so half the money is earning higher interest. The problem was instantly noticed when the first CD matured late last year. I mentioned when the CD was rolled over (I was out of town at the time), some idiot never separated the principle from the interest, creating a CD with the odd amount of $1,015.06. I figure some blithering millennial moron decided he was smarter than 400 hundred years of banking because them old boys weren’t a computer whiz like himself. Folks, there is a reason the face value of CDs have historically been kept at nice even round numbers. It can take hours looking for a figure than never appears on the statements.
Do you really want to hear what happened with this? Okay, it’s not a busy day, so here goes. The CD that rolled over in September with the face value of $1,015.06 matured again in January at $1,029.16. What could go wrong? For starters, millennial A always thinks he is smarter than millennial B. Millennial A records the interest at $15.06 while millennial B records it at $29.16 Wrong. The first figure was already recorded and is not part of the new interest total. It did not help the two figures occured in different tax years. I’ll say it again, these people are not suffering, they are getting exactly what they asked for. Serves them right.
America is getting full of losers who trust other losers to program the button right. Example, most of Florida got zapped with big year-end bills for their electricity. Several years ago the power company went on a blitz that “equalized billing” was the way to go. Yeah, for them, now instead of hiring morons in the biilling department, they could hire sub-morons. I suppose equalized billing makes sense to the sort who have trouble with the most fundamental aspect of American culture—paying the bills.
They pay a monthly bill equal to their average bill of previous years. So when they hear of Bidenflation in the news, they know their bill didn’t go up, so it must be some conspiracy theorists doing all the moaning. Until they get hit with a year-end “adjustment” of $415. I am truly astounded by how many post-Internet people do not understand the process.
ADDENDUM
The Prez e-mailed to mention yet another cancellation of the Wednesday jam, the significance being this time means the number of no-shows is now 50%. It’s a laugh, I suppose, except to people who drive twenty or thirty miles to get there. While the Prez was free to attend, I knew he’d weary of that long trip for nothing. True, it is a luck of the draw jam session, but I think Fat-Boy should have the courtesy to call his regular when he cancels. The question is would I step into the vacancy? The answer is no.
There is an array of reasons for this, beginning with I don’t like to play at the clubs closest to my house. Or places I would like to play for pay. The local clubs have a reputation for not hiring local bands, so I won’t insist. If they called, that’s different. My take on that is they know we would play for money and it is common knowledge the best five or six of these jams were hosted by The Prez & I when Fat-Boy wasn’t there. I”m aware the Fat-Boy is popular there so let him be.
The Nashorn was a self-propelled 88mm cannon the Germans used for anti-tank work mostly on the Russian front. The date said 2015, so thinking there might be new material, I watched the whole 25 minutes. Amazingly, the old propaganda still shows despite decades of fact-finding. While technically accurate, the documentary presented the battle as an evenly matched contest. I know this was rarely the case. Sure enough, at the end of the post, it was revealed the Russians had attacked with at least 32 tanks and lost 14 of them before retreating. The Germans had just 3 an
d lost 1 temporarily. This myth of equal numbers seems to be a favorite of British reports starting in North Africa. It took the entire British 8th Army two years to overcome a single German corps. The documentaries are not reflecting the true nature of these vastly one-sided battles. I had been looking for information on seaplanes, or as they are called today, amphibians. Nobody uses them any more. The increased range of landplanes and the need to have a support ship made the big seaplanes obsolete.
Mind you, a cursory glance shows even the smaller models that remain today draw heavily on 1930s “Catalina” or “PBY” idesign. What sparked my interest was the similarity of the Chinese AG600, clearly a 4-engined copy of the Albatross and designed for military presence far off-shore witnout having to build more of the highly-controversial artificial islands. I believe I rode in a seaplane when I was four or five, but the memory is vague. I watched the take-off through a porthole, but by then airplane flying was so common to me, I went to sleep. But I recall thinking the plane would never get fast enough to take off.
It was a cargo flight and I remember the hull getting very cold during the run-up. The water was dark-grey-green, it looked colder for that and I half-remember how the plane shook. Wait a second, what’s this? An Australian company is building the Albatross from new? In Darwin, that crazy Aussie town that just won’t quit. Says here there restored one and are planning a stretch 44-passenger type. That would make sense in Austratia. I do recall also the boats were quite roomy.
