One year ago today: June 13, 2023, the art of birdfeeding.
Five years ago today: June 13, 2019, ah, 2019 prices.
Nine years ago today: June 13, 2015, the Zimbabwe dollar.
Random years ago today: June 13, 2021, COBOL made the list.
Looks like I’ve got myself a part-time job with these tubes. Two hours this morning just to list nine for sale. That’s eBay’s fault, but still. The delay is filling out the descriptions. I’ll provide one example, but eBay has become so bastardized that almost each text box has altered editing characteristics. This is about their quantity field, the only thing it does right is default to “1”. Try changing it to “2”. Now you are in for some work. You see, you’d expect an editable text box to highlight itself when it gets focus, either selecting the entire contents or placing the insert marker in the space after the last character. And you’d be wrong. Try it.
The truly pathetic aspect is when you realize how many millennials have been using this screw-up every day for years without ever suspecting it is a coding problem that an educated man could fix in five minutes if they’d pay him. Today’s “power users” don’t even seem aware the computer was designed to prevent such messes from getting into the system.
Yes, I’m aware there is a way to work around this (which is part of my dislike). It involves changing the setting of your “insert” key. But there are much better ways to let the planet know the user is semi-literate without going about disabling defaults on a word processor. I just wasted another half-hour of my retirement finding the eBay command to end a listing. I was millennialized, it kept saying to click on an option that never appeared. Turns out it is well-hidden near the bottom of the tiny “edit” button next to the picture. Right where one of them would put it, wouldn’t they? And now, to relax I’m going to go saw a log in half, wishing it was the coding department at eBay.
Another annoyance is that you cannot switch eBay between buying and selling per the incoming emails. I regularly look at other items to compare prices and the dorks at eBay flood my mailbox “similar” items. Not very bright those boys. Part of the problem using their algorithm to research prices is you cannot control the criteria. So the average price displayed is often grossly distorted by rip-off artists like BangyBang. They have a fancy website, but I supposed overcharging people a hundred dollars per tube makes such things possible. They remind me of that battery store that charges just under the price for a whole new gadget.
Now it’s past noon and I don’t have the first cut complete. The picture above shows only the cut that felled the trunk, revealing the multitude of cuts that required. Part of the log is so solid it’s not cutting, just steaming the chain. The interior has decayed into a fine dark orange powder that has now gotten into everything. I’ll try the electric chain saw later. Muggy and dusty, yes folks, the joy of home ownership. Still no sign of Howie, the tractor guy. Now we know something is wrong.
By 1:00PM it’s still below 80°F but the muggy got me. I’m inside by the news feed and too tired to reach over and change it to science. So we tog politics, and it seems the EU supreme overlords, who are rapidly losing traction in the elections, have decided on a show of force. Trying to levy a $200 million Euro fine on Hungary for not participating in illegal immigration. That tells the world who is running the show. Said a “data expert” at CNN who learned Trump has a 20 point lead in Hispanics, “Oh my goodness gracious”, I got ten bucks that’s not what he said.
Army “Morse Encoder/Decoder” set.
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The wind and sky cooperated. She clouded over without rain at 4-ish, and yes, I was out there. I got most of the log sawn into pieces, the termites have been busy. I loaded what I could on the cart, working the electric chain saw is just as much effort. This gave me space to put up some permanent braces, I've learned to brace most walls in Florida. Thinking ahead, I’m going to install a window on that north facing wall. This is consistent with every other shed or lean-to now having a window, often a large window. This section is now big enough to be either an indoor laundry area but it will quickly become just more storage.
It’s rare, but the rain stayed up there until past 7:30PM. This gave me time to rake, fill the burn barrel, and get some pickets in place. The exterior of the new addition will again be pickets that match the fencing of the whole yard now. Today was a lot of work, I surprised myself a bit so I plan a big evening of coffee, a comedy DVD, and some light research.
In response to a few comments, this mornings picture does not show cuts made by the electric chain saw. Heaven’s no, I burned out my first electric not knowing the internal gears were plastic. This photo is the electric resting atop the felled trunk in preparations. The trunk is rotted enough that I can kick and bash in into long narrow pieces, then get it with the electric. That is all done. The pieces are still lying in my pathway as the rains came. Caught me outside good, there is no shelter between the sheds and the house. Chosing not to wait out such a thunderstorm, I made the dash and I’m inside soaked but feeling fine from the workout.
The flood reports show they really got hit again in Sarasota. That place is like nine inches above sea level. But I’m high and dry and tried to watch a documentary on youTube. The ads are creeping through, meaning youTube has figured some way to defeat the channel markers or the timestamps (most injected ads are the same length). I get part of the first ad, but can get past the rest by hitting the skip button soon as it appears. Once again, I am not against all advertising. But I’m against intrusive advertising, and to do what they do, youTube is tinkering with property that belongs to me. If only VPN was anonymous, I’d get a address in Albania, where computer ads are banned. For every measure, there is a countermeasure, so the ads are always temporary around here.
There is talk of injected the ads at server level rather than manipulating people’s home computers. Try it, youTube. That would make the ads part of the stream—but that in turn means you will need some mechanism to block the ads for your paying customers. Such a set-up would be cracked in no time.
ADDENDUM
This is the Army Racal Morse machine. It is too easy to crack and limited to 127 characters. It has a encoder and decoder that must be worked in pairs. The encoder shown here has an Arabic keyboard. Long outdated, this low-tech gear is enjoying a resurrection because the latest crop of military recruits lack the basic education that’s used to “crack” the messages. It can be set to “squirt” the code at nigh speed, but you just record it and play it back slow.
I found this contraption while looking for a circuit diagram. Having learned that PWM should not be used to drive a motor, rather just the motor controller, I thought to find one to build. Ha, not so, once again we have asked the wrong people the wrong question. If you think it took me a while to learn this, it seems to be taking the so-called experts who are supposed to know all this are taking even longer.
Eventually, I found one example. I wanted a PWM controller that was not dependent on the 555 chip. It’s a common available by the millions that has never been improved on. It takes a variety of inputs and produces a sharp square wave output. And I find it challenging to build circuits that do not require an integrated chip.
Some years ago I built a flasher, actually two, that I did not understand. They used the discharging of one capacitor to fire up another, somehow causing an LED to flash. It never crossed my mind this could be sped up and varied, but I think some guy has done it.
