September 21, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 21, 2023, glorius.
Five years ago today: September 21, 2019, get a list.
Nine years ago today: September 21, 2015, walls work fine.
Random years ago today: September 21, 2009, the immortal Fender.

           Ah, waking up to a $120 sale puts a good spin on the day. See addendum for in-depth analysis. I also woke with an unfamiliar pain in my knee joints, not much, but a warning. If I was wise, I’d take the day off and putter in the shed. I have more boxes built that I have hinges. I felt like visiting lately. No dice, the hard facts are there is nobody left in town to visit that promises an interesting time. Karen has moved back to the north end, Agt. R now lives in Brooksville, and my real estate lady spends most days in her house out near Clearwater. Ray-B doesn’t like much any more and the Reb is 745 miles away. There are a few people I have computer matters in common with but they are around a third of my age, lacking depth on every other topic.

           So, come up with something. I made this same mistake with women, thinking after some of them would smarten up after a few hard knocks. That’s well-documented, same as my mistake that people would develop interests and hobbies so they would not wind up bland and boring. Tell you what, let me glance on-line for any clubs or associations in the area. Return in a half hour and I’ll have a report for you. Meanwhile, today’s photos are mostly for effect, hope you like them. They include a dramatic tube photo, a gas can, a terrible computer, and some cooking spuds. Read this afternoon’s entry for some details, this is supposed to mirror my daily life now that the race is run.

           You’re back. Nope, nothing out there. True, I have music, but it took six years to find a guitar player on the same frequency. My major hope is a club where I would learn something. I spent most of the time filtering out terms like soccer, sports, rugby, shuffleboard, astronomy, wrestling, and gardening. Still, I came up with nothing. No one single club, society, or association in the State of Florida with any form of academic or intellectual bent. (Astronomy does not count, they are observers only, don’t even know what a spectograph is.)

           One unknown got answered. I knelt to add some birdseed and ouch, my knees. Now I remember, I was lifted lots of lumber y’day in the dog pen. I’m grabbing a good book and hitting the mattress, to give my joints a rest until noon. Years of experience have taught me the best way to deal with such things. So there.

           Ha, I watched a series of videos claiming to be the “easy” way for today’s consumers to mix gas & oil for their mowers or chain saws. What a hoot, most of the formulas only work when the units are the same on both sides. That’s not going to help Joe Dropout when his gas can is in gallons and he’s trying to mix fluid ounces. Now, this ratio, usually 40:1 pr 50:1 is touchy. If there is not enough oil, your pistons will score. It there is too much, your plugs will foul and you may pop a seal. I mix one batch a year and the measures are marked right on the can.
How tough is this arithmetic on some people? Well, a premixed gallon of the stuff will set you back $23. That’s a steep price to pay for not paying attention in the sixth grade. If you really want to throw them for a loop, remind them that the final volume is not 40 units, but 41.

Picture of the day.
Unknown location.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           It’s nice to move around in my room again, I opted to read the latest space news. First time, a video of the bubbling surface of another star. Around 300 times larger than our Sun, this one is 180 light years away. This is three stills from the video, which I cannot find. Different thermals are at work, as seen in these surface spots. Never thought I’d see something like that. The scenes were taken in the Atacama desert, in Chile. This photo show some of the antennas which can be positioned as much as 10 miles apart. It has taken pictures of galactic collisions as far as 7 billion light years away, an unimaginable distance.

           This had me doing a review of celestial navigation, or the part of it that interests me—plotting a line of position. I can now do this fairly easily, though I admit taking the measurements is not something I’ve practiced enough. But give me the date and time, a sextant reading, and your dead reckoning position and I can do the calculations. In a real life scenario, I’d insist on taking the readings my self. Until then, let some hero get out the on deck or at midnight. This is not an idle undertaking, I’ve only plotted maybe six or seven lines of position in my life.

           The side panel on the video led me to a type of presentation I’ve not seen before. It’s straightforward, a narrator tells the story to a set of stills that change every few minutes. This example (Poor Alien Twins) represents my least favorite brand of science fiction. Soap opera plots in outer space. It’s big business, writing schlock. Does anyone believe when we encounter intelligent aliens, they would have the tribal customs of Apaches and an economy based on bartering space vegetables?

           Ah, you made it this far. Here’s the rundown on these photos, take my word for it, this was the mo
st interesting crap that came down the pike today. We are talking central Florida here and the snowbirds are late for the sixth year in a row. That green container can is the fuel/oil premix I mentioned. It is the patented stainless steel liquor can now primed and painted to a smooth finish. This mixture stores for 252 days for lawnmower, but less than 11 days for use in a larger motor. Next is Wilford’s old Win 11 computer, never did work right, as you see it requires attached disk readers and such, it is slated to move to the silo, where it’s only purpose will be inventory control and maybe a bit of music.

           Skip the space photo, you already know that one. Next is, well, it’s what it looks like. A 1/10 scale useless plastic model of a clog. McDonalds is giving them away as the toy with a happy meal. I tried to think of some use for it, like storing drill buts, but like a real clog, it is full of holes. Remember when the toy was something useful, even electronic? These Zoomers, they’re not going to make it, are they?
           The next photo is spuds on the stove, actually tomorrow morning. They are a reminder that, except for some cheese and baking mixes, most hoof here is prepared, not processed. The two most common vegetables here are spuds and onions. I’ve had no luck storing tomatoes and I can’t eat the whole things at once. Finally, below is a dramatic tube photo against my east window in the rising sun. It shows birdie paradise, but the diagonal crack across the pane tells us how far behind I am in the repair of this cabin since Tennessee came along. Sigh.

ADDENDUM
           While I gotta like extra spending money for the weekend, time for a quick review of the tube sales. Nothing for weeks and this is the first sale since I changed the format. The newer presentation has not had time to take effect and the sale was not from one of the postings that contained a table. It is notable as the most expensive tube sold to date. Let’s review some facets of the enterprise.

Total sales have been less than $670 (tubes, not including other items).
Hours put in so far approximately 200 (database hours)
My potential cut of the action totals $7,000 – if I can sell them all.
The count of expensive tubes, the ones worth listing, is less than 200.
The tube storage takes up almost half the silo.
The closest mail slot big enough is a one-mile round trip.

           There is much more information available thanks to the database. However, early in the process a decision had to be made about the structure of that database, and I guessed wrong. One of the new things it cannot do is produce an easily updateable master list of all the tubes. Each change in the smaller tables will not update any master table design without being more trouble than it is worth. I’ve been off and on pondering this for a week or two.
           Around 200 loose tubes have yet to be entered, but I doubt there are many real gems in the lot. I’ll allow the weather to say when those will be completed, which would take about a half-day. I also need to reorganize some of the existing boxes into handier units. If you are curious about logistics, read on, otherwise, get yourself an extra cup of something.

           At an earlier point in time, I tested a method of alphabetizing the tubes. It was partially successful because I knew how to parse the tube labels. It only works on single digits, but the largest category of tube names begin with the number 6, which I quickly changed to the letter 6. For the curious, the 6 stands for the standard voltage of the “heater” inside most tubes, which is actually 6.3 volts, I don’t know why. The high voltage warnings you see apply to the collector plate, the one designed to attract the free electrons. This is often more than 500 volts.
           Why not just have two tables? One for the 6 volt type and another for all the rest. Several reasons, first is that doubles your logistics workload. The alphabetical table was for ease of look-up and not meant to change. Any sales would still need to be entered into the separate inventory table. If you’ve worked much with tables, you know they don’t manage themselves.

           Later, I put in another couple hours with the tubes, mostly sorting odd & ends. It’s the usual tangled up mess with a system to it. Part of my goal was to get another pile out of my office and into the shed. There’s five small boxes left and they will be a headache, they are the ones that got missed or just don’t fit any pattern. Maybe throw up another shelf and put them in that category we all have called dad’s drawer. Er, I mean, miscellaneous. But soon, I will take a break from tubes, the more so that unless I invent a new way to sell them, it’s another experiment that failed. Hey, I’m working on it.

Last Laugh