One year ago today: April 18, 2023, biggest offenders:
Five years ago today: April 18, 2019some television guy.
Nine years ago today: April 18, 2015, the ultimate female fantasy.
Random years ago today: April 18, 2016, $14 a foot.
Is it good news? My most ancient investment, my employee pension plan, as announced a raise due to inflation. A massive $20.49 per month, hooray, now we can go on holidays again. Seriously, it is good news and bad news. Sure, it is only a pittance, but it is also solid as one of the two fully-funded pensions left in the western world. The other good news is Mitch has left for a month in Mexico with a 46-year-old girlfriend. No, wait! This just in. It is two 23-year-old girlfriends. American women can shove that “age-appropriate” dating up their shigeekals. He’s got the right idea.
This photo added later, it is the cutout where I will put a vent window for the silo.
Next, we browse the Interpol most-wanted list. It is a location service, they don’t arrest people. I disapprove of Interpol for a number of reasons, but mostly because they overstep the role. One would expect that maybe 300 master international criminals might be on the list, you know, Lex Luthor types. But when numbers reach over 10,000 you know they are sticking their noses where it does not belong. They are simply going after the wrong type of people. I draw the line at non-violent or victimless crimes.
The sheer volume of people being tracked is your classic tale of bureaucratic bullshit. Some Interpol flunky wants ever more money and power, so the lists continue to billow. It would help their reputation to go after violent types. I have no solutions, but I further don’t like the way the list focuses on Americans or people who are not formally charged with anything. Yes, our most famous fugitive, Jason Derek Brown, appears. There is also the matter of non-violent sex crimes. It would appear there are still a lot of crazy people who think teenage women don’t.
Here is a novelty item we know was going to exist before ever seeing on this morning on Etsy. A vacuum tube night light. This informs us that an Etsy account is on the way. I’m still looking but straight away I like their simpler bulling structure. I’m sttill running spreadsheets and already my own accounting system is better than theirs, called A2X. When you add in that A2X wants $50 a month, my system is even better, since I don’t plan to sell every month. The snag with accounting programs is they are less designed to provide information (which is their purpose) and angled more to comply with tax regulations (which they are not).
Oh, and before I forget, on the first day of his New York trial, Trump’s campaign fund-raised over a million dollars. Myself, give me a good book on navigation and a quiet afternoon. This isn’t really a matter for discussion, but the money has not yet arrived for the Civic, and let’s just say I don’t trust the insurance company as much as others. I think they are still trying to play for where they have the car before we have the money. This is a risk, and I would not care if you know them or trust them. Nice people don’t constantly try to get you over a barrel.
The Honda Civic is one of the highest sought-after vehicles for parts and I’ve never felt that unit was totaled. The only damage was the frnt passenger fender. I only agreed to a settlement because I was not personally nearby, but it was on the verge of going to court. And let me tell you, by that time, there is a marked difference in my experience than most. When you are the victim of unprovoked attack, it is not enough to merely win. You must destroy the enemy’s ability to attack, or you will wind up fighting the same battles over and over. This has nothing to do with who is right or wrong, it is a lesson in cold, ard fact. Just ask Israel.
The cat-and-mouse with youTube adblockers continues. I’ve found a partial solution by tweaking the settings on two apps which won’t do the job independently. I won’t say which for now, but I’ve got it to stall the ads as follows. There is a stretch between the onset of the ad and the appearance of the “Skip” button. What I’ve got is a setting that freezes the last frame of the movie until the time the button appears, whereupon the movie starts up again. So you never see the ad itself. Let’s see if this works well enough for now. One hour later, nope, it is only a partial solution for some of the ads. This parallels the situation in America, one party wants to be left alone, the other constantly trying to push their greedy money agenda on others.
So, I am not a minority when it comes to [dislike of] paywalls. (My main objection is that they cannot be filtered.) The Atlantic reports 80% of on-line readers, upon seeing a paywall, will attempt to get the news for free. This makes sense if you ask me, I was there to see the Internet take off because of the terrible and expensive way other media were behaving. I never pay for news and I don’t use products or services that are advertised intrusively, no matter how good they are.
Sleeping elephant family.
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That was Trent on the phone, he’s got some contacts for selling the vacuum tubes. But neither of us know which tubes are used in amps and other guitar gear. His eldest, now 6-foot-four, is breezing into college on a full scholarship. We mostly talked semi-legal stuff and would really rather be out there playing music. He recalls Rab-B very well from the dynamite duo sessions out on Hollywood Beach in the 2005 – 2014 stretch. Ray-B, Broward’s top guitarist and teacher, and moi, the consummate local bassist, those were some sessions indeed.
No relevant picture was available, so here is your view of the Pilsbury millennial packaging, where the wrapping cannot be torn open without obliterating part of the instructions. Way to go, Tyler, Dough-boy of the Month.
Trent had some suggestions on moving these vacuum tubes. I’ll follow up having learned there are places who make distortion pedals and other guitar gear with tubes. There are so many tubes that if they could give me an idea of what they want, I’m willing to pick them out. Strange, innit, that on the illustrious Internet, there is no single set of instructions how to set up an Etsy account that is covenient, up-to-date, and spells out exactly what you need and what steps. There is no incentive for an independent party to maintain such a page and that has emerged as the single biggest defect of the modern era. Everybody is a systems creator expert, not some damn maintenance man.
Stress. I avoid it at all costs, to the point of cutting people off, breaking promises, and permanent avoidance. Stress almost killed me and I’m not interested in a repeat. Today I received news of a delay that should not have been. I’ll sort it out, but I can assure you it will not be to the satisfaction of the people that sprung this on us (the Reb & I). So, I’m taking the rest of today off to unstress and asked the Reb to do the same. She has the pets for company, for me the best solution is to read or play music. I choose reading.
Persia. I think that is a much better name than Iran. Modernization is rarely a smooth metamorphosis and thus it must have not been fun for Pahlavi. He was hated by the hard-line tradtionalists and probably could not have acted without a ruthless police force and the odd execution. Once again, it was over money, I read the history of British Petroleum during the period when the Royal Navy switched from coal to oil. Persia had been a nothing-burger for close to a thousand years at that point.
Like Khadaffi, Pahlavi brought in railroads, modern cities, universities, and cultural reform. And he was equally hated for it by some. Much of the Persian infrastructure was German designed and operated during World War II, so I’m aware of the military moves by the Soviets and British. That’s only because it was a dumping ground for bad weapons. Ancient Brit armored cars and droves of Soviet T-26 tanks were space-age compared to the Arabs. Any action by 1,000 tanks gets my attention.
Not much new was in the documentaries, but I did learn that one of the issues was BP, then known as the Anglo-Iranian oil company, was paying Persia 16% of the profits. Even a Beduoin gnawing on a camel bone knows that doesn’t sound like much for “his” oil. Duly noted is that although the Persians hated the British, the hardest battles were against the Soviets. Seems they hated communists even more.
I lost most interest in the whole circumstance after 1979 when the Islamics took over. Nothing good happens after that step back into the Dark Ages and it’s been nothing but trouble since. If you think that is evil, what about the Canadian doctors who’s vaccine paralyzed that lady. To make up for it, they volunteered to euthanize her. And two-thirds of US colleges, no matter what your field of study, require you take and pass DEI courses or they won’t graduate you.
ADDENDUM
This morning the Democrats voted that felony is not impeachable. This is to protect their border security director from becoming a felon. Just you watch, the Democrats will scream when the same law is used against them. In 2020, these same people voted to impeach Trump before any crime was even specified. America hates the Democrats, but suffers from 40 years of Balkanization. You can’t fight against the Democrats without supporting other issues you do not like. Think about it.
Quietly, or as much so as possible, the scared shitless Democrat clone judges in DC are letting J6 people out of jail after mere months into their sentences. They are releasing the worst enemies a political party has even made themselves in American history. Even if they become only indirectly involved, they will be a rallying point. Tucker is going th have a field day.
