One year ago today: August 18, 2023, reverse engineering.
Five years ago today: August 18, 2019, my only Beatle’s song.
Nine years ago today: August 18, 2015, my typical brand.
Random years ago today: August 18, 2007, where’s the fat?
I plunked down and stayed there. Now if there is one thing IBM did to shaft the world, it was get into computers. For a challenge, I thought I’d try to see if I could alphabetize the tube listings. Just the straightforward way people have been doing it for hundreds of years. First the numbers, then the letters left to right. We already know the IBM collating sequence is about as useful as their mission statements, but I figured I’d have a go at it. By parsing each tube by each character in its label, I made some headway. But ran into weeds at the end.
What I did was use text functions to peel off the initial character. That only partially solves the problem because is it the number 1 or the letter 1? Then the next character, then the third. But without evoking special formulas that only work on new versions, the sorting limit in Excel is three columns. Since most tube designations have one or two leading numbers, you get instant errors. You are okay at 1 through 9, but what is the next character? It’s the letter A. I toyed with this for a couple hours while listing tubes.
That’s only five tubes, the rest of the time was consumed by hours for cheap ($3 dollar) tubes, box after box of them. The end is in sight, I could use a laser cutter to make up some cardboard dividers for the loose tubes. If I rig up another shelf, that will be the most ambitious time I’ll spend outside today. Do I write a note hoping your day was more exciting, or mention that at least I have things to keep busy with all day instead of watching television or similar.
The picture is the cactus plants alongside the silo. So, it is not strictly true nothing grows in this yard, rather nothing particularly fancy grows here. Notice the PVC tubes from our solar experiment? They work, but we’d need 40 more to make even a 5°F difference. This photo is several months old, there are some new sprouts now taking root. This growth is the fastest thing that moved around here today. I walked out to the van to bring in a magazine and needed an hour’s nap to recover. And this morning, I was out of oatmeal. That is unacceptable.
I did talk to the Captain and confirm I am dead broke until December. That does not affect the budget items, there will always be food, electricity, and gasoline. Hey, I can plan ahead enough to take car of basics. Caltier has not paid out this month yet but I don’t think they are about to spoil a nearly perfect record of dividends. I’ll check later if they’ve announced any sales. They’d best get a move on, not that I have anything to invest.
Okay, I crawled back in the sack and slept in, while watching some Hollywood newsreels. You know what I think of the guy in the paratroop airplane who stands at the door yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”. I found his counterpart in the land army. The British spend months and millions digging artillery positions in the desert. The Germans fly spotter planes over them every day but can’t do anything. The troops on both sides regularly trade rationed goods and the Italians retransmit secret German messages in plain text. But when it comes time to go to work, some Bristish nimrod stands there with a stopwatch and yells, “Fire!”
Guthrie’s Alley Cat, I’ve been there.
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China necessarily grows a lot of food, so I watched several documentaries. Strange how their great civilizaton never invented any mechanical tools to help with the chore. I saw thousands of combines, tractors, trucks, and tractors, all invented and designed in the USA. They even grow 250 million tons a year of that ancient Chinese crop called corn, second only to us. It was unintended, but you can spot the various stages of production that pick out only the finest produce for export.
It took time to answer the question what China does with all this corn which is not an item on their menu. The answer is they use the corn mainly for livestock feed and are a net importer of the crop, mostly from America. Their farms produce around three tons per acre versus the American standard of five tons. Then, the video switches from grain to citrus fruit and you step back a century. Fruit is still grown and picked by hand. I prefer that method, plus most Chinese fruit is sold fresh at the market. While they may target Central America for their corn, I saw no evidence of big processing facilities. And not a word about fruit juices.
China grows most of the world’s apples (over half) but it is rare to see any of it in the USA. They don’t advertise that I know of and you might see the odd label on a can. Then comes the big crop, soybeans. Totallay mechanized, they churn out out by the freighter load. It’s people food and animal food. Meanwhile in America, they are adding bugs to processed food. We do, however, know how to build ships that don't catch fire while at anchor.
ADDENDUM
[Photo delayed] Let’s check some news. You know how Trump picks random pizza joints and such to drop in to the surprise and delight of the staff and customers? Not to be outdone, Kamela and crew descended on Primanti’s sandwich shop in Pennsylvania, where they kicked out the real patrons and replaced them with paid actors. To me, it demonstrates how backward the Democrat party is, in that prior to the Internet revealing that stunt live, they might have gotten away with it.
The political conventions are something I never followed. But this DNC operation has so many things going wrong, this time I must. The streets are deserted and businesses have boarded up like it’s hurricane season. Blue states who bragged of being sanctuaries for illegals lead the nation in numbers of deportations. The sordid practice of cops confiscating cash during searches finally hit Fedex, who are fighting back.
The only Denny’s in San Francisco closed due to dine & dash (people walking out without paying). I know what you are thinking and according to the criminals, that makes you a raciss. It turns out Amazon warehouses are a major user of 911 lines, employees (they say) are not getting strokes and heart attacks. Amazon wouldn't lie about something like that, would they? There is renewed interest in the lava tubes on the Moon. You may hear of these collapsed structures referred to as caves, but they would need shoring up to be habitable. Yet that is still a huge savings over building something. The caves are not actually discovered, rather are detected by ground-penetrating radar that can detect similar caves on Earth. Boeing’s diversity hires might as well admit they have stranded those Space Station people up there.
