One year ago today: September 11, 2023, 386 anniversary coincidence.
Five years ago today: September 11, 2019, ask both questions.
Nine years ago today: September 11, 2015, what is fair?
Random years ago today: September 11, 2004, even then, I worked.
Traveling back from rehearsal, I took the scenic route via the downtown east side. It looks like they’ve closed the massive Amtrak station. It’s a brute of a building with what’s the name of that poured flooring. Tell you what, it’s still dark out so let me visit one of the worst web pages ever and try to find the Amtrak schedule to Tampa without entering my life history or having to pretend I’m buy a ticket to get the price. Later, no luck, see addendum. Instead, let’s watch y’day’s debate summaries. Ha, Kamela is wearing weird earrings, which might be NOVA H1s shown in this picture.
Trump aced that one though it seemed to me he had frustrations gearing down to the level of the people at that debate. So little policy was discussed it is flattery to call it a debate, it was plainly staged for the benefit of Kamela and all three staff members kept searching for ways to needle him—and he knew it. I have some experience having to deal with people like that and it’s aggravating because they are much better than you at rolling around in the muck.
Trump did not point out her copycat agenda, but mentioned she had 3-1/2 years to do all the things they are promising and that they will not do if elected. Told ya, some polls show a solid Trump win by 98% while the best claims for Kamela range around the predicted ballot-stuffing range of 50%. Based on the debate, November will be the greatest landslide victory in our history. I disagree with calling this Patriot Day. I don’t like New York City and I don’t care who dies there. I stick with my statement that nothing ever comes out of there but shysters and tax collectors. They let grandmothers die and turn violent felons free. They give illegal immigrants cash money and bankroll fake charges against political opponents. The whole city, in my opinion, stinks.
By this morning the MSM are tripping over themselves trying to glorify Kamela. It began, they say, when she confidently strolled on the debate stage and put Trump on the defensive by shaking his hand, a gesture from which they say, he never recovered. Sadly for her show, but it was evident by the ten-minute mark she knew the questions and had prepared answers.
The most inane of desperate leftoid tactics is articles that point out how wrong the 2016 polls were saying the Hildebeest was 98% certain to win that election, now saying polls that show Trump to be ahead can therefore not be trusted. However they you can have 100% trust in any poll that says Kamela is ahead.
Here are some patents pending by the Ford Motor company. These cannot be disabled and you may find them in cars purchased in 2026 model years:
Monitors speed of nearby vehicles and relays video information to police.It amounts to turning the use and control of your vehicle to the authorities, which will cause an excellent surge in used car prices for about ten years until we reach Havana-like conditions. We need some good news. I found the best place to get a real Venzuelan cup of coffee in Lakeland. There is a market in the north end just to the east of the Kathleen bend, You have to time it right, you want it made by the baker. She’s quite the gal, although not my type. She’d make an excellent wife if I was looking. She has the coffee touch. But don’t buy the bread. It’s mostly flavorless. Like the mini-croissants. No butter in the recipe, just leftover bread dough rolled into the familiar shape.
Pick keywords from occupant conversations to target advertising.
Vehicle will “self-repossess” if customer is late on a payment.
Remote party can lock steering wheel, brakes, and A/C if insurance expires.
Conservation measures means we have another $65 budget for a trip. The last jaunt to Orlando was actually the August budget. But where to go? What to do? I’m not driven by emotion over practical matters, but I no longer have any concept of going to a movie without the Reb. Yet, I should get out and most of the $65 comes from cutting out going for coffee when it went over $4 per cup. The biggest price increases have been at retail level due to minimum wage laws. The famous $5 Foot Long (sandwich) now averages $18.35.
Ker-whap! Another flash rainstorm, this time we got hit. It came on fast this one, rattling the siding on the cabin.. It’s happy and cozy, so let’s do some reading and research, see what we touch on. IMAX first, but the only feature is “Beetlejuice”, which I’ve never seen because any ten minutes of it puts me to sleep. There’s a big production coming up, “Megalopolis” but the trailers reveal it to be just another decadence movie based on the fall of Rome. S’matter, old Francis Ford, is that the best you can come up with? I mean, chariot races? Next week features “Transformers”, another one I’ll pass. There is a re-release of “North by Northwest”. Such movies are worth no more than $3 to me, even then only if the popcorn is free.
What’s that airplane museum that changes its name every year or two, last time I was out there it closed for a wedding or something. Wow, that storm was a real flash, I could barely see the van in the driveway. I’ll bet half this city was taken by surprise. They may get another. On October 1, the Homeless law goes into place, and this one has teeth. No sleeping or camping in any public place including streets and parks. I’ve always advocated that these people should have to leave the cities as a condition of getting any form of welfare.
This new law fires any city officials who do not comply and allows citizens to sue the city, but alas, not the individuals who cause the harm. The immediate impact will be where the downtowns have become shit-holes. Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa. They best not plan on shipping any near here, the public won’t stand for it. How about that uninhabited area south of Orlando? True, the place is an old bombing range, but as they say around here, so what, the outcome is the same and it’s quicker than fentanyl.
Deciding it would rain until dark, I did some research. After years of keeping an eye out for an unsung hero of WWII, I’ve concluded the event has been scrubbed from all but the oldest history books and the Internet. This is the sentry to shot a US general near the war’s end. Apparently the general did not know the password and figured he would pull rank on the sentry. To me, it is the sentry who deserves praise for doing his job and I would like his side of the story. I recall reading the story seated at a kitchen table in Montana over fifty years ago, too long to recall the details. I even tried to find the reports by elimination, seeking every US general who was listed as killed in action as a cover story. Unless I chance upon it somewhere, I don’t think we’ll ever know the facts.
Ho Chi Minh City.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Tired, that’s how I spent the day. I opted to look online for all these wonderful A.I. apps and gadgets that were supposed to have taken over the world by now. One of the best selling is a smart phone with a camera that will take your picture, but alter it undetectably to give you movie star “highlights”. What a boon to the Plain Janes of this nation. I widened the search for anything new and other than an improved floor-bot vacuum, nothing. There was an A.I. toothbrush and a Stormtrooper electric razor. Oh, I can hear the millennials saying the Boomers stole all the good ideas blah-blah. Tell you what, I will go out to the kitchen, put on the coffee, and when I return I ill have come up with a marketable A.I. product that is useful to most everyone. Ready.
Okay, I’m back and I took an extra couple minutes to put some spaghetti on to boil. Here’s your million dollar idea. You know how your wristwatch battery goes dead. The including the trip to the market, a new battery, if they have the right one, is going to cost you more than a new watch. Think about it, that battery is on 24/7 until it wears out. My concept is the watch would use A.I. to barely keep itself operational until it knows you are looking at it. Only then does it wake up and display. It would know when you are asleep and learn your habits. Result? A battery that lasts what, twenty times longer? So don’t tell me any sob stories that GenZers don’t have any opportunities, when the fact is what they lack is imagination.
Germany is toying with sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine. This is not what it seems. The Leopard has been around since the 1970. For example, the Leopard II requires specially trained crews which the Ukrainians to not have. This is off topic, but the Leopard II has a small air conditioner motor. This lets the crew shut down the main motor when parked to cut down on noise and fuel. So odds are they would ship the older Leopard I, of which I believe they built nearly 2,000. Why would they give away these tanks? That’s easy, to sell the new owners the ammunition. The Leopards use a special discarding sabot round. They cost 11,620 Euros each. War `is good business. Invest your son.
The tube business not so much. I’ve sectioned the tubes by brand name, there are 13 large categories. Shown above are the marked boxes of stored tubes as they look today. Some I’ve combined, Such as Zenith & Admiral. These sections are arbitrary and intended to make picking easy. I’m not about to knock myself out to make it any easier for the buyer because I don’t believe it could be simpler. When you factor in the time it takes to search for tubes by name, this is great time-saver. The categories are the brand names.
General ElectricI may compress some of these categories. There are considerable number of odd-lots, with brand names like Philco, Wards, Silvertone, Ken-Rad, Hallicrafter, Emerson, Mullard, Radiotron, National Union, Hytron, Marconi, Firestone, Bell-Howell, CBS, Motorola, Du Mont, IES, Guide, Sears, Gammatron, Hitachi, Ward, Arvin, ChannelMaster, Amperite, Magna, RadioTel, ProComm, Sharp, Standard, Sonotone, Lowe, Thoro, and plain old US Army, to name a few. I knew none of this when I started. It took a while but I tamed the lot.
Amperex
El Mendo
Lindal
Matsushita - ITT
Philco
RCA
Raytheon
Realistic
Sylvania
TungSol
Westinghouse
Zenith – Admiral
Will this method sell? We shall see. Closer examination of eBay shows others are up against that 250 listing limit, after which eBay leaves an even worse aftertaste. Other than things like phone numbers, this is the largest database I’ve created and it still does not justify the creation of a relational model. While other sellers list by tube, they consistently name the brand in the body of the ad. This practice influences the 13 categories listed above.
Say a customer searches for that common 12AX7 tube. He will eventually find the brand name in the listing. Due to the 250 limit, there is an fairly good chance his eye will catch our unique listings (yes, we have a trick to that, too). If he brings up the listing, the second thing he sees is a series of links to the tables. Hard to miss. The eBay dorks have disabled hotspots, but I’m toying with posting the actual hyperlink text.
I am certain setting up a basic system with these parameters will lead to an idea that pulls all this together. Imagination only works so far in the database business. Until you have a working model, there is nothing in the analog world to help you with the digital. Conceivably I could create one “home” listing that has all 3,000 tubes, but its success would hinge on people knowing it exists. And eBay is no help on that. What if the tube containing the link sells? Somebody has to be in charge.
ADDENDUM
I probably would take a train ride again, if I could find the schedules. Instead of posting the traditional tables on line, the web page only lets you enter the two end points. Looking for any range of times or destinations becomes an exhausting process, not to be endured. You cannot take a day trip to Tampa, as the nearest train from here doesn’t leave until the middle of the afternoon and does not return until next day. And I know better than to pay for a hotel in Tampa.
I’ve posted before one of my retirement plans was to ride the trains a lot. If you missed those tales from the trailer court, I’ll do a quick recap. I would look at the timetables and chose a destination along a route that there was at least a couple hours gap between the outbound inbound schedules. Hop the outbound, get off and look around, then catch the return train home in time for supper. That is how I found Winter Haven. This could be done from any station where I could park my vehicle for the day. What changed?
Practically in the month I retired, Amtrak tripled their prices. Then they began the assigned seating nonsense, where by single travelers were never given window seats. And now they have quit printing the schedules altogether, although I will check at the Winter Haven station. Sometimes they have a map on the wall.
