One year ago today: October 31, 2023, Gunsmoke, inflation, boxes.
Five years ago today: October 31, 2019, you little rascal.
Nine years ago today: October 31, 2015, materialize & fall.
Random years ago today: October 30, 2016, probably figures I’m slow.
Say hello to Mousie #2 of this batch. A lively one, spending the past six hours trying to know through the cage wiring. I tend to release them before dusk, so they have a fighting chance. The neighbor is back from the hospital and doesn’t look like the stay did him any good. He’s in seriously weakened condition, but says other than being tired, he’s fine. I spent two hours trying to get through to the government office and decided I’ll spend the day in the shed.
I’m still foggy so let’s check for pre-election antics. Then start loading up the truck. Target time is right on next Tuesday, election day. I plan to be back before the property taxes are due. And Tuesday is either goodbye Trump or goodbye America. If Trump wins it will be by simply swamping the votes so bad they cannot cheat—as they have already started. And he may cancel property taxes. One would still pay, but there is a chance if they charge the fees separately, unpopular items like the green tax could be rejected.
Here’s the best wildlife from the Florida non-petting zoo. No sign of the raccoons for two or three days means animal control may have been around. Little birdie was such as small part of the picture I amost missed her. I thought leaves were setting off the recorder. I poked around a bit in the yard to discover my shoulders have stayed loose and the tiny muscle complaints have also diminished to almost nothing. So I took the sander to the box shown y’day to carefully look at better ways of adding tops and bottoms. I may have come up with something, but check back when there’s time for a trial run.
As my quest for learning cryptocurrency gains momentum, I’ve found a potential explanation of why the system uses so much electricity. Don’t quote me on this, but the blockchain system relies on information being spread over thousands or millions of computers. Each transaction is subject to being verified by every other computer on line at the time. Data mining deals in fractions of the currency, but each tiny transaction requires the same countless computers involved as larger amounts. Each computer in the blockchain requires energy and this taxes the electrical grid. Anyway, that is my understanding of what’s going on.
Connor Hotel, Jerome, AZ
(Haunted.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Another nice part of a private back yard is you don’t have to worry about fashion when you walk around. I fully admit I need a whole how round of work clothes. But here I am waltzing through what should have been the raccoon highway. You’ll have to wait for action since I’m taking the deer cam to Tennessee where I hope to get footage of some real deer. The pathway I cleared for them is now the only easy thoroughfare they have between the two large subdivisions on the Nashville side and their daytime haunt, the steep hillsides along I-40.
Not knowing how long I’ll stay this trip, I have to plan well. Enough is needed to keep busy up there, but not so much if I get a breakdown I’m stuck with a load of gear. The last time that happened set me back $1,520. That would buy a lot of birdseed and good coffee.
The Iranians are preparing a retaliatory strike against the Israelis. I loathe all sides in these Middle East wars. But them Iranians have some kind of death wish. They get their asses kicked up past their shoulders every time and never seem to learn. I read a few articles on their air force budget. If they quit, within two months their peasants would be herding goats on the runways.
Time in the shed had me test a few new techniques. One that I liked was instead of cutting the rabbets first, build the box and cut a router channel as shown here. It is not a good plan for anything fancy but is it fast and I got it to work first time. I had to piece together the route bit needed and see I need to buy something fancier. The router bit leaves rounded corners so I just used the sander to match them up a little. This is a scrap piece of wood. Turns out most of the thin panel wood I have is scrap and crappy to work with. The piece shown here sets just a hint recessed into the wood, a nice effect. Even nicer if I can talk myself into buying some decent material. How do you like this effect?
I’m into reading “Cryptonomicon” and already do not recommend it. While very slick and well-written, it transfers back and forth between past a present. Confusing if, like me, you do not read the whole book at once. Plus, I don’t think most readers need to be reminded any details of the whore houses around US military bases or that rich people in Asia are corrupt as hell. The book promises to give insight into code and cipher matters and after three chapters that is the only reason I’m still on it. It’s a 900 page book, but fortunately it follows the Clancy format of intertwining separate plots. So you can gloss past chapters on the parts you don’t care for.
An excellent example of bad teaching is the definition of Class A. Every tutorial I’ve seen specifies the output signal is inverted to the input signal. But not one of them explains what this means or what difference it makes. I’m getting closer but the path is indirect. I know that it has something to do with the circuit voltage and a line you can draw across those graphs of on the datasheet. Then you kind of work backwards from the output parameters to the resistor values by re-arranging various formulas to isolate your unknowns. We’re getting there. (Here’s my reminder code which means nothing to you: ghV6hC74.)
ADDENDUM
I will explain something for the benefit of certain English people I know. They tend to be put off by my tag phrase, “English Syndrome”, or “Elliott Syndrome”, but if it is any consolation, I used to name it after my family before I realized how prevalent it was. This is people who can accept success in strangers, but if they personally know you, they can’t deal with it. Why, you must have cheated or got lucky or took a short cut or inherited the money. You know what I mean. This concept, to me, does not exist in isolation. It is highly related to the process of success. It works like so.
There is a popular misconception that if you are talented, you get a one step rise to fame and fortune. If it takes you too long, you must not be all that talented. Well, I believe another process is at work here. Listen to songs or books of success and realize, as I did so long ago, that even if you are creative, you have to be creative ten hours a day for most of your life to get anywhere at it. Why? Because a single entity owns the distribution system needed to broadcast your work. There are exceptions, but they are rare and don’t trickle down to our level.
What is the effect at my level? It’s guessing when to quit. I feel I got it mostly right, but I said it was a guess. Other people will rate me a failure as I never got rich. To which I point out rich in the formal sense was a goal I saw through by age 20, when I was already saddled with $8,100 student loan debt. Even if I graduated that year, I would have been the equivalent of roughly $100,000 in debt and still have to start at the bottom of that said distribution system. I had no connections, no supportive family, and no experience at anything. And I should add, no talent. What I do musically is not the result of talent, but of hard, hard work. I’ve dealt with both issues if you’ve been reading closely.
This raises the secondary question of whether, should you experience success, is it due to your talent or is it the way that talent gave you something to work at ten hours a day? See, now you are thinking. As a youth, I was surrounded by opportunities to work hard, but same as you, few of them were opportunities to “make something of yourself”, a favorite catchphrase of parents, counselors, and deadbeats who themselves had failed to do so. I was more than willing to work hard—to get ahead, but not just to work hard. My paper route taught me the futility of that. I got to the point where I could do the things I like, mostly costless (like writing and music) without busting my chops, a.k.a. selling out to the Establishment.
But once again, the conclusion each person reaches will depend more on their character than the facts of my situation. To myself, I am a qualified success. Amongst those qualifications are more than 50 years on stage and millions of posted words. A thousand hand-written letters and twenty serious attempts to start a business. A ton of great travel adventures, 6,000 books or magazines read, and at my age I’m still able to invest more money than anybody in my age group. (Mind you, if you can invest $50 a month, so can you.)
There is a further measure of success that may not be so wonderful to point out. I have long noticed nobody around me ever mentions old friends that they are still in contact with. It seems to me if one had a friend for over 50 years, say, it would come up at least once in a while. I know my own family would be very lucky to have a friend who lasted even five years. Myself, I have a dozen who surpass 40 years and four who date back more than 50. Some are still on my mailing list. I just mailed letters to Marion and Hersh y’day. Mitch is e-mail only but I’ve known him 56 years. That is the upper limit for a reason.
Curious about the reason? Because going back past that [56 year time frame] would get into the era of the gossips and backstabbers who also know my family. There, I said it. And while I’m being mean, hey, Elliott, I know you still read this blog, so you recall how you said it was a nothing waste of time? Years later, Dude, every year more than 50,000 people per year overszeas read what I have to say for the past three years. That is more people, more influence, more readership, more fame-if-you-would than you and all your guitar playing pals and their “world class” riffs could ever manage put together.
Unless, of course, they get arrested or something. Nothing the whole lot of you have ever done comes close or ever could—and you know something else, Elliott. That is JUST ONE of my hobbies. Oh, sure, you will write it off saying it took me twenty years to get there. Gee, that’s half as long as you’ve been working on your product, which I doubt less than a couple thousand people ever heard of, metrics or otherwise. You know something else, people seek my blog by name. With yours, they are searching a generic tool name and land here by accident.
You might rightfully ask why I’m not rich. Neither are you, to which you retort you were only working at the parking lot until you got ahead. Dude, what do you think I was doing at the phone company? For four times more pay. Maybe I’m not filthy rich, but I did not wake up on my 45th birthday like you and your pals and realize I had to put in another 25 years to collect a sub-standard government pension.
Okay, that’s enough. It is now 9:00AM (this morning) and I’m going to play some bass. Some world-class bass.
