One year ago today: March 5, 2023, a take-off on IQ.
Five years ago today: March 5, 2019, try this brand!
Nine years ago today: March 5, 2015, once gone, it’s forever.
Random years ago today: March 5, 2001, a long-lost day.
And we’re off. This morning there are 97,536 ads for vacuum tubes on eBay, of which 18,405 are the RCA brand I’m beginning with. I’ll be taking and editing pictures most of the morning. It’s just dawn now and here is a picture of my peach tree with only one leaf remaining. It’s just left of dead center, very light green and dangling. It does this to me every year, but this time I’m hoping that cold spell was enough to actually grow some fruit. Some non-papaya fruit, of course I mean. As soon as it’s light enough, we’ll get to work with the shadow box wer’ve got. At this time I’m examining how others advertise their wares.
That may not be so, some of these sellers are real space cadets, advertising tubes as “tall” or “pretty” with no indication of the brand or model. Welcome to eBay. I have 15 of the highest priced tubes to begin with, carrying a total asking price of $463. If the photography goes well, I’ll cherry pick the General Electrics., so stick around for some pictures. A closer examination of the existing ads shows a curious consistency in the pesentation methods and errors. As if it is the same core group of semi-literates who don’t understand order of precedence.
You know what that is? If English isn’t your first language, it is a subconcious way you line up your adjectives Example, you would say, “A big, tall, round, heavy, red object.” If you said, “A heavy, tall, red, round, big object,” everyone who speaks English from birth would know you’re not from around here. (The sentence still makes sense.)
I see eBay has been through the wringer and setting up an account now involves several tons of bullshit. So, I will negotiate with the shop to use their existing system. This is not to imply eBay does not have a right to protect themselves, of course they do. But it is they way they go about it I don’t like. Things go wrong in any business, so what’s my beef? Well, all too often what goes wrong is the fault of the business, not the customer. The business should accept the loss when it is their fault. But like banks, eBay is avoiding self-correction and continually conniving to make sure anything and everything that goes wrong lands on the customer. Just read their terms and conditions, you’ll see.
While we’re here, let’s look at a picture of another plant in my yard, the agave cactus that grew the fifteen-foot stalk. Here it is, turning brownish pink and slowly fading. There is a breed of wasp-like bee still attracted to the stubs of the flowering parts. The leaves at the base are also losing color, I’m leaving it be to witness the entire life cycle. I’ve never living in the desert long enough to see this before.
You should hear the howling from the leftoids over the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that States cannot prevent Trump’s name on ballots for Federal positions. T’is music to my ears, how I love it when liberals have to eat one of their own. They are screaming as if the ruling is pro-Trump, but it is an interpretation that affects all candidates equally. Trump just won the North Dakota primary with 85% of the vote and the MSM is calling the race as close. Then I looked at the news in Germany, where they have replace the beauty contest with the ugly contest. I see the winner needs a shave.
Upper Missouri River.
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After a leisurely morning working the camera and the database, I have the first batch of tubes ready for eBay. It was easy to pick the best, that’s everything above $10 per tube. The asking prices on eBay are nothing to go by, you get too many non-sensical quotes. Identical tubes listed at wildly differing prices, I’ll simply make sure I’m never the hightest. I don’t know the top strategy so we’ll let others take the chances. I have $776 priced out from generic sources. Who has the time to look them up one by one on eBay?
It also likes to sieze up randomly. It just stops, I think it is the auto-save feature. You can wait five minutes for it to reset or lose all your data since the previous reset. It took me a while to spot that one happened, I kept blaming myself for not saving often . Wait there’s more. When you click on a cell, you have to get it dead center. This is even after the cell as displayed a blue border to indicate it is the selected unit. I don’t often look after I click on such a cell but then it will choose one of the surrounding eight cells. Screw you, LibtardOffice.
Remember Catfish Country, JZ’s favorite local spot? I was thinking they didn’t much want my business, the way they were closed or something every time I came by since last Apple Sunday. With memories of Beale Street, I wanted a catfish dinner, or lunch really. It was always something, like closed Mondays or getting there a half hour too early, or too many cars in the parking lot. But finally, I got there today. Well, the place has gone downhill. It is no longer catch of the day, but Gordon’s Food Supply. The battered catfish was more batter than catfish and the fries have lost all quality. Brunch cost me $20, probably the last time unless JZ insists. He knows he has to get out of the city this time around, he’s been in that same spot close to twenty years and his condo fee has gone from $67 (I think) to almost $400.
It’s a pretty day, I had the windows open and got another batch of tubes priced. My eBay account is long since expired, but I tried. Tampa radio is having a conniption fit. As I see it, the rule applies to all candidates and those who think it is pro-Trump are up to something. There are other items that show the Left is unraveling. As November approaches their people are getting worried and flipping sides, lamely hoping it will save them. Nope, thanks to the Internet, every liberal is known to somebody who hates their guts. Worse, an appeals court in DC has determined the J6 sentences were unnecessarily harsh, dealing a huge blow to the insurrection hoax people. C’mon, Joe, I mean 20 years for trespassing?
While the military strains over low recruitment levels, Texas is awash with National Guard volunteers to help with the border crisis. More than four times as many volunteers showed up from Tennessee alone. It’s not so much tthe numbers as what the photos show. If recruitment posters are the standard, the men showing up are a liberal’s nightmare. Everything the woke army is not. Young, tough, fit, White, and probably Christian, educated, and patriotic. They would not obey orders to fire on citizens and woe to the other side if they try it.
Nine hours was my busy stretch today, but it was not an enegetic pace. My gumption about now would match taking the doggies for a couple hour's walk. It would be nice to just pile in the van and go, like the good old days, but wait, these are the good old days. Mitch is helping with my booklet, finding the angle very amusing, that it makes people think about things they did not notice but should have. I got an e-mail from the Kaiser, maybe we’ll hang out for a few hours this time and catch up on band information. He should be finished his album by now, and JeePee and I need to talk philosophy, business, and politics.
The reality is my health and core drive moves in long undulating waves and I’m at low ebb this Spring. The old "sleep without feeling rested" situation, and yes, over time it catches up with you. It’s a good thing the Reb & I have synergy—but it’s 750 miles away. Actually, that is the wrong word, the correct term is consilience. We have little in the way of common methods but our goals very often converge onverge. This is difficult to describe, which is why I need some turtle-time. She gets free turtle-time, for me it's $350 in gasoline.
ADDENDUM
Success with even the small circuits I wire up is rarely successful without much more effort than planned. The little amplifier circuit from last week is maddening. That’s how you learn things with electricity, I think. I tested every potentiometer in my bucket and the one that measured right was the last one. In case they are that rare, I only clipped it into the circuit. Nothing. Aha, this is the learning part. What I noticed was there is a sweet spot on the pot that causes the pilot lights to waver. I often add an LED into a circuit as a sub for a piece of wire. It tells me what’s flowing and that is what struck me today.
We have another transitor quirk I have not seen in any text book. The input voltage varies just as much as the output. My vision of amplification is a steady current into the transistor that gets a wave form induced by thetiny base current. It just seemed to me the input should not have such a strong effect. You could not tie any thing into it without throwing the current of balance. The input is either off or on so nobody around hear measured it during operation. Something for me to think about.
