One year ago today: May 17, 2023, already enough.
Five years ago today: May 17, 2019, walked the dogs.
Nine years ago today: May 17, 2015, remain slightly suspicious.
Random years ago today: May 17, 2006, the Mexican hit parade.
Caltier is still down for compliance. I sent them a nasty note, like what’s with that? What is so out of compliance it takes two weeks to sort things out? We now have two Caltier funds, the one you get to follow is Fund 1, which, by the way, is not really a REIT, but a vast limited partnership. I have not yet really invested in any REITs. Caltier Fund 1 now stands at $20,620 and likely to stay there a few months unless I sell some vacuum tubes. And that could be happening because we found an underused eBay account that just has to be linked to PayPal.
I’ve learned a bit more about tubes yet I cannot find a definitive source of information about what and how they are used, sold, or anything. This is common with electronics. After you do all the duplicate work of figuring it out on you own, they’re all like, how come you didn’t just ask. Most “6” tubes are pre-amp and a “12” is power output. Let’s see how far I get with these new boxes. They have to be sorted first or I have no place to store them.
Tennessee called, I must be there in the next short while. Sadly, little Sammy is not doing well, suffering seizures that he cannot understand. However, that trip has tripled in price and I can’t really drop everything like I used to. Another factor is that the Reb & I have different musical paths. You cannot make me like working in a recording studio. That’s where the crazy people are.
Allow me to say more about that. I do not believe in any special status for crazy people. You heard me. This idea that America won’t put crazies in jail or execute them holds no water for me. It is not society’s job to make sure that criminals comprehend why they are being punished. The goal is to prevent recurrences of the crime, or if that cannot happen, to remove the problem at source. If someone is causing harm, they must be stopped and I don’t’ care if they are crazy or just very good at pretending they are, same thing to me.
I found some of the tiny 5kW potentiometers specified in many small transistor amp designs, but these are trim pots with no stem. I have 14 of the 100kW type which I’ve never used. These pots can be faked down, but not up. (There is a way by hooking up all the pots in parallel but that gets expensive quickly.) For example, if you need a five and only have tens, just add a 5kW resistor to the out pin. I’m unaware of any such trick to turn the gauge downward. I may also finally go out and buy an honest to goodness good quality fluke meter.
Google’s office in Moscow.
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We also found an oscilloscope. I’ll check if Wilford still wants it, but it appears he may be as bad as me for allowing new incoming ideas to eclipse other work in progress. Finally, we found a tray of small potentiometers suitable for small amplifier circuits. The rest of the shop over there has to be cleared out and pretty darn soon. Any cash realized is better than paying it to be hauled away. It should take only a day or so to get the eBay account up and running and it will be in the other guy’s old company name, which gives it a lengthy good history.
Later, updating all the books took hours longer than planned and I will need to go to Tennessee for a few days. That’s at least, you know what a few days can turn into. Is there some way I can combine selling tubes with such a trip? They have to be shipped within three days. Caltier, and most other financial adventures are at a standstill, the situation in Tennessee must be stabilized while I’m around that that takes moor oomph than most people keep lying around. Here’s JeePee at chow time, the pets cannot be kept waiting. Is this a repeat photo? Who knows, the boys must be fed every day.
I’ll wrap today up by entering more tubes into the database. We will need a better storage system and I have learned not all boxes are the same. Standard size USPS boxes have no shape that works right for tubes. When there is no trivia to keep you entertained, sometimes I have to create it. So here some things I doubt you’ve seen before. In any order, this is a case of dial cord. Remember old radio knobs had pulleys? These are the cords that kept them working, I suppose. And more gear I don’t know what it is. My guess is a pair of socket templates and two special adaptors for testing “triacs”, a word I’ve seen but do not follow.
A host of smaller lessons are learned along this path. Example, the best way to count and inventory these items is not compatible with the best says of sorting and storing them. I’m thinking the easiest way to find anything is not by the box it is in, but picking all the brand names, such as RCA or Sylvania and putting those all in one spot. Then using the database to determine where to go looking for it should an order come in. Another obstacle is the way to mark tubes which have already been inventoried. I’ve been putting a small dot on the boxes, but the boxes are in pretty bad shape. Nor do you want a mark that disfigures the original boxes as I’ve spotted that is a selling point. Forget marks on the tubes, although I will mark the more expensive tube with both an obvious and hidden mark to prevent inevitable returns of swaps.
There is a new algorithm that finds unique occurrences, but I could only vaguely follow the logic. The problem of uniqueness isn’t new, for example, it is almost impossible for the a web site to know how many visits are not repeats. The standard method is to take all the info and check for duplicates. This requires almost as much memory as the original list, which can be an expensive problem. This new method takes batches of words and works by randomly deleting half. Hailed as a “new way of counting”, I’ll wait to see if I hear of it again before learning more.
ADDENDUM
Halfway through the “Navigator” audiobook, I’ve taken a real dislike to this Gore Vidal. I did not recognize it as a common Irish name. The issue is his typical obsession with being a faggot. After he has mentioned around 15 topics ranging from warfare to hospital stays, you spot the pattern. Now some could say I mention bass playing a lot and it is because I am a bass player. But stop right there, because it is not the central theme of every conversation, it is not lurking in the background ready to be triggered at any opportunity. I do not expect you to treat me special, or make allowances, or [that you must] like what I do because I am a bassist. And I do not begin and end everything with that theme, and where I do, it is clear and not some undercurrent.
By disc five, Vidal has become insufferable. He’s now on about how the artistic world has suffered so greatly by not openly embracing all his homo lovers. It’s gruesome now he goes into details of how his boyfriends die from one malady after another but without really mentioning the real cause is AIDs. If I continue with this audiobook, it is morbid politeness, since we already know where every thread he mentions is going to end.
I’ll tell you who else has had it with these wierdos, queers, and envious bunch. The Dutch. They’ve elected people who are cutting immigration to zero, canceling visas, rejecting EU mandates, and cutting social programs. This is a telling blow to the gang that think you cannot vote your way out of tyranny.
