One year ago today: August 22, 2023, DropBox – Beware!
Five years ago today: August 22, 2019, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: August 22, 2015, or something similar.
Random years ago today: August 22, 2006, the 1532 A.D. version.
I’m the proud new owner of a fridge in Tennessee. The older units are hard to come by, everybody wants the chrome double-door models. They won’t fit in the Reb’s kitchen. You know that appliance place over near Phat’s. She found one but they want $45 for delivery. I got them to hold it till end of the day to see if I can get some help. There you go, it is easier to arrange things from almost a thousand miles away. I’m restricted to say what I want about that, but you know what I’m thinking. That fridge never wore out when it was just the two of us.
I spent all day working on the tubes. If you see any photos, they are either explained in today’s text or here mainly for decoration. It was popular demand, not me, that put so many pictures in this blog. Here’s good chance to remind you almost all pics here are originals by myself. Just not today.
A bit of phoning around and we got the new one delivered, installed, and the old one taken away for the same $45. In the end, we got zero help from any source. I doubt if the company (crashing at her place) even held the door open. How do I know? I had family like that, they are there to use the fridge, not to move it. That chore is done, but honestly, the entire process was really no faster or easier than in the pre-computer pre-Internet era. Way to go GenZ. And it will never get any better because they don’t know any better. Seriously, they think the way they’ve screwed things up is an improvement.
The Trump-bashing has reached a new crescendo over at the DNC, but it is the paid on-line help that coughs up the worst. Claims that Melania stole a speech from Mike and that Trump is only pretending to be married. Enough, I said, and decided to watch a video on amplifier circuits, and to my surprise, I understood this explanation. It also drained my brain, so tonight I watch a rerun of “Step Brothers”. So much room for activities, that movie. Transistors will keep my gears turning for a while. Fascinating. Why does this topic intrigue me? Let me define my interest, it is the “biasing” of an input signal into a transistor at the correct strength to cause it to amplify. Any signal too high or too low will make the transistor switch on or off.
Mustang junkyard.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
A lucky overcast had me putting in three hours this afternoon, I’ll be nice and not post any photos of the tubes or the she. During my breaks, I grab a cold drink and usually read. This time I’m looking closer at transistor bias. This is the process of using a voltage divider to vary an incoming signal only within the active region of a transistor. How strange that here is almost no beginner’s material on this, leading me to suspect most builders just follow the schematics and leave the details up to others. That’s place a lot of faith in others. After years of reading, I’m just now able to follow basic amplifier circuits in some detail.
There’s an increase in the number of on-line diagrams that can’t be downloaded. That only stops dummies, the workaround is of course to take a screen shot, open it with your Paint app, and save it in your format of choice, which should be anything except PNG. I’ve built two amps so far but they barely work. This time I double the number of transistors.
Watching A.I. which by now should have taken over the world. Instead, other than chats, some graphics, and some improvement in presentation, I see no real-world effects. But, could that be because I don’t interact with a certain operations. What I watched closely was the way A.I. can be used to code and I’ve drawn a conclusion. Yes, it will replace most manual coders—but that the opposite of appearances. It is the lousy behavior of coders that causes the replacement. The fact is, when you consider the caliber of individuasl churning out today’s code, then yes, A.I. is already better.
Reddit ran a question, what makes you instantly hate someone. Thinking this could be an eye-opener, I clicked. Expecting personality failings, it was most violence and crime, and everybody hates psychopaths. What would cause me to instantly hate someone, personality-wise? Three things come to mind pretty fast. Demanding a share of what is not yours. Inability to leave people alone. Over-opinionated about none of your business. There’s related spectrum of these things that make me backstep. Socially, loudmouth show-offs would lead that list.
Space news is something I’ve learned to avoid until some action or activity actually takes place. Such it is with this private space walk, called Polaris. Remember how NASA told us they would bring soil samples from Mars? That got pushed back to 2033, and now back to 2040. Worse, NASA now wants over $10 billion to do it. How much more proof do we need that all them should be fired and sent home. It’s cheaper and wiser to start over from scratch. The current bunch are plainly only in it for the money.
You know what is wearisome? Space movies that center on one of the crew members going berserk for whatever reasons. I want aliens, not some nincompoop from the Carolinas having withdrawal symptoms. In a real life situation, there is only one solution to a person on board a space ship going off their rocker. Pack them into a pod and get rid of the problem. Aha, some good news, that horrid talk show with the fat ugly women has been canceled by ABC because nobody is watching it. “The View”, the anti-Trump show, that’s the one.
In consumer news, replacing the water pump on a Lexus costs $2,750. Disney & other companies have finally been called for slipping arbitration clauses into their service contracts. The Shaken/Stir anti-telemarket move has reduced robocalls by 22% but the service providers refuse to stop transmitting the calls from overseas. The latest design of $25 insulated coffee mug will not fit in your car cup holder.
ADDENDUM
We have a problem, my other eye is slowly developing the same problem, a loss of peripheral vision to the far right. I can still easily compensate by simply turning my head, but this is not going in the right direction. I have no plans made for the eventuality that I might some day be unable to see or drive.
