One year ago today: August 26, 2023, wiring anniversary coincidence.
Five years ago today: August 26, 2019, gloom & rain.
Nine years ago today: August 26, 2015, a devious plan.
Random years ago today: August 26, 2007, blog videos must wait.
Sure, I goofed around with the guys when the teacher wasn’t looking. All the time, in grade school, elementary, and high school What, you think I was a nerd? I had two brothers for that. My gang were the kewl ones, the “Pink Panther” patrol. But, there was a major difference. I onl goofed after the studies and work was done. I just did it so fast, they hardly noticed. So I was amused watching a documentary poor student performance nowadays. Same goofy stuff, but they have the formula backwards.
Zero sales. Nobody burns out tubes in the summertime, maybe? I have gotten zero progress trying to find families of these tubes. I have not asked around, mind you. Other priorities, such as firing up that Dell computer. It turns out the hard drives require a special mounting bracket that bolts to the drive, not the housing. So whoever has the former drives has them still attached. The massive shift in money since July has caused me to reflect plenty on how this upset happened.
I’ll be driving this 2007 Hyundai for the foreseeable future. The price tag of $2600 jolted my memory as the price tag of my first car, a Ford Maverick. Sure, this van is used, but it is in reasonably good shape. But I walked until I was 21 for lack of the money to have something like this when I was 18—something that would have changed my life. But I was born poorer than white trash. How is that possible? Easy, destroy the infrastructure. How much does the inflation calculator say this vehicle would have cost in 1975? $445. I was so poor, for $445 I walked. Remember, it was not the vehicle alone. It was the infrastructure to operate it. Gas, oil, papers, insurance. Sigh.
What’s this, Trump wants to appoint Musk to trim departmental fat and Kennedy Jr. to oversee the three-letter agencies? Be careful Don, you have already won and you might consider saving such surprises until after the fact. Right now the only hope of the Democrats is some kind of miracle. Let them destroy themselves. At some critical point, somebody will change sides and blab. There’s what, 70 days left for them to pull an iron out of the fire. They are already fielding one of the most loathsome characters in American history, the memes say it all. And they are getting unprintable.
I’m watching “Blood on the Crown” again, a tale of Malta independence. Can you guess what holiday is celebrated by the most countries in the world? Independence Day, independence from Britain. The British brought law and order as they saw it and build a lot of railroads. They also learned that British customs and bureaucracy also create a new class of enemies that become dictators. I was raised in an area where what was English was right, so much so I did not begin to question the official versions until well into my teens. After that, I will tolerate the English but never trust them. They taught the World how to twist democracy into an empire.
We nagged another wee mouse, this one barely a few days old and, dang it, a different color than the others recently. We have a new family moved in the traps are set again. Another reason I want to see these tubes finished is because they are taking up space in the meanwhile. And I like to leave projects a while, sometimes months if I feel like it, then get back. Having tubes in every cranny makes me lose track where I keep things. Right now, I cannot find any of my transistors. I usually keep a large bag of 2N2222, the most popular hobbyist model. Now they won’t show up until I buy a new batch, just you watch.
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Comfort, Texas.
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Here’s an item. My last “big band” has another gig. That makes two in the past three years. That’s the bund who told me they were a working band, but the lead player worked nights and could only play if the gig paid more. By 2014, such gigs were indeed in rare supply. This is also the band that got a first-hand demonstration of good bass playing, an instrument they had always downplayed as a necessary evil Their mood changed once I started getting standing ovations and in the end, great as that band was, all they ever did was rehearse.
So much for our modern, wired, light-speed millennial world. I believe I have my last backup unit in the silo to use until then, but it involves a trip to Winter Haven to activate the unit. Yep, you millennials sure took advantage of computers to improve the old manual systems out of all recognition. Don’t you worry, however, somewhere somehow there is somebody looking out for all these things so you don’t have to.
ADDENDUM
Finances. I recorded all the transaction since last month, but I dreaded having to do the books. Unable to put it off, I stayed up last night. And you know, we did not do to badly. A reminder, I was ready for one disaster, but not three. It was not just the van, the tow, the fence, the fridge, and the bank freezing my commercial account. There is a significant social side to all of this, some of it not on the blog okay list. But you can draw all the inferences you want. But when I add up vet bills, gas bills, pet food, restaurant tabs, movies, and a dozen other costs, I must ask if the Reb & I shouldn’t just get married, ha-ha?
Getting back to money, it was close but not one of the accounts was drained below minimum balances (to avoid bank fees) and we did not have to cut out anything. The first thing that would have been cut is entertainment. Both of us properly view going out as a super-treat, still a special occasion every time. What really happened was at top-level, the total costs punched a great big hole in my investments. That is really my department, others don’t seem to regard investing money as a real business that you can learn and get better at.
It may be a couple days at home to get everything back course. Be patient and stay inside. The forecast for the rest of the week is real-feel daytime temperatures of 105F. The summer Gulf air is muggy and you would not like it.
The good news is in another 14 days, all those accounts will be topped back up to where they were. Sure, they are still behind, but that is not regarded as a negative because the balances are all good, just not where they should be. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in three months, but I am convinced the regime is going to cause trouble. There are three major accounts that got hit, namely Caltier, my CDs, and my “funeral” account. All will be replenished to pre-disaster levels. The Caltier fund is still on hold, so we don’t miss that. Actually, the CDs went up $2,000. What declined is my emergency backup fund, which makes sense since it was a series of emergencies.
We’ve talked it over in some detail (the Reb & I) and my backup got gutted, I could not afford a further extraordinary expense and that remains a fact until at least December. Keep those fingers crossed. But my property taxes (October) and auto insurance (December) are taken care of though I will have less than a $5,000 buffer, easily in the danger zone in America. That’s maybe a third of what is needed. After that, I would have to cash in long-term investments from which I will not live long enough to recover.
&n
bsp; Yet, I will plan for that because I’ve learned that investments, like anything of value, must be protected. My plan is to draw up a defensive posture of planned cashing-in that will preserve my most valuable assets until last. I learned who my real enemies were in 2004. The bank, the DMV, and the Titles office. That’s who really will sell you out. It is them, not you, that decides what information strangers can have. I follow my own advice on this one, and since then, have never had any of them “assist in paying” my bills.
May I add that I regard them as evil. While they did nothing technically wrong, they enabled the bottom-feeders. If you were not around back then, after other clinics had told me I was stable and I had told the original clinic not to do anything that was not covered by insurance, they sent me a bill for $8,500. I flat refused to pay it. Their story was I had given them the right to conduct any test, my story is that was overridden by my blanket statement restricting that clause, which, in any case, I had signed under duress.
To repeat the tale from the trailer court, which is where I had to begin living after all this, I lost my life’s savings and assets. Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in America. All I had left was such money as I had socked away, hidden. (It says here okay to tell you it was $26,000, which had taken me four years to save up.) Thank god for that, in the end I had to live on that for over six years, until February of 2011. (But as it turned out, I picked probably the best trailer court and I turned it into an amazing adventure. I just don’t recommend it.)
