One year ago today: November 24, 2023, the Al Gore chapter.
Five years ago today: November 24, 2019, a Mars anniversary coincidence.
Nine years ago today: November 24, 2015, we foune the Magnolia.
Random years ago today: November 24, 1981, I'm so tired.
How about another breathtaking view of the railway bridge in Clarksville? I've decided the place is worth a second look, maybe in the summertime. I'll check the local colleges, more out of habit than interest. I used to check local newspapers so long ago, back when they had local news and I don't mean climate change. Later, I see that there are a number of tech schools, all with very limited choices and only one with electronics.
The only unique offering is a correspondence school called Austin Peay. It's an old institution, the web page details how the partician between the girls and boys dorm was double-walled and filled with rock wool. The dorms were $8 per month and had "the convenience of running water." Their creative writing course logo features a typewriter. I'll look at their offerings because they now have a Masters program that was an Associate degree back in my day, namely Military History. See today's addendum. There's a course called Music Performance says they can, in one year, prepare me for solo recitals.
Robot density. Have you heard the term? It's a new one on me. It is the number of robots per 10,000 human employees. In the USA it is 295. South Korea tops the list at 1,012. Insert joke here about how hard it is in Korea to tell the difference. Anyway, the pace is drastically quickening. And I say it will smack the USA hard during the Trump recovery. Why? Because up to now, the semi-retards coming through our schools have been getting a free pass under the DEI umbrella. Companies didn't dare not hire them. Don't hand me the bull that it is the system because it was the same fifty years ago. Then as now, things work fine for those who want to learn. Back in the day, we had a lot of students who didn't want to learn, in fact, they were a majority. But back then, the stupid did not demand equal rights. There, I said it.
And it's Sunday, so we bang around in the kitchen as early as we please. The company knows that by now. Everything here is home-made except the bread and butter. We soaked the lima beans for chili later and made a round of Frech toast. They've find it on the counter if they ever get up. I baked banana muffins and fed the pooch one of his favorites, tuna. I did not know I was the only one who fed him tuna. JeePee got all the veggies he wants and later he gets one of his best-liked fried chicken skins. Sliced with blueberries on the side, if I can find any in this town.
So the big doggie sets the pace. First, he crawls onto the office sofa while I read a chapter each on navigation, Delta Force, and Lewis Grizzard. I went through the chapters and made a notation on every mention of latitude, specifying whether the writers meant the circle or the line. It's trickier than it sounds because there's times when they use both simultaneously. I think I have it in mind, I think the points all line up at noon. I may get a large sheet of paper and diagram a day of the readings. If so, then I get it. I have this mental image of what the Sun would look like if I was standing at the AP with a movie camera instead of a sextant. Why somebody has not invented a sextant that can do all this automatically is curious. As it stands, you cannot even buy a sextant with a clock built in that displays Greenwich Mean Time.
Then the doggie wants a nap. Until noon. Hey, it seems I needed that as well. Then he wants a walkie, and this time it was the full hour. I do believe the warm day, first one since I got here, has kindled all the aromas of interest to the lad, meaning it took an hour to loop around the sub-division while he stopped at every pile and post. It gave me even more time to reflect on the changes I did not expect and what could still change if I make it another ten years. Mike was the last person I knew long-term before I migrated to Florida, and he's been gone over five years. I said my original plans are now ended, but you know I've been investing again, led by Caltier which is still paused. I've made decisions and created spreadsheets that reach ahead to 2046, so who am I kidding that I'm slowing down?
If the doggie decides on another nap, I'll follow the leader. For now, silver has struggled up past $31 and Caltier is still paused. I may have access to a coin wallet, I see what I think is an existing account that appears on various of the Reb's monthly statements. It's usually the result of using the wrong debit card, but I believe I saw the name on the transfer on one of the Lofty ads. Lofty turned out, for me, to be too difficult to get answers out of and they would not quit with the jargon. They may actually believe they are doing something financially new or novel, but they've just renamed the ancient procedures and complicated the process. Computers are supposed to make life simpler, Lofty.
My quest for a vacuum tube buyer continues as today I found a short video on the G15. It's one of the few tube computer, all built in the 1950s. I was surprised somebody is restoring one to working condition. But could not find if they needed any tubes. There were several mentions of a computer museum called System Source. It's weird web site, they want an appointment to even look at it and accept food stamp cards for admission. Ane last news this morning is pure sulfur has been found on Mars by cracking open rocks. Not to be confused with sulfates, which are common, sulfur only forms under very unique circumstances, most of which involve liquid water.
Somewhere in Ireland.
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Hibernation, what a concept. By the time I got up, it was sunset. I got the chapter on navigation done again, it is too faulty to use as a guideline. There are too many spots where it is obvious the authors either thoughtlessly memorized the material or don't want to explain. The ancient stumpling spot, known as the cor'n rears up every time. Now, I've done this step before, but my purpose was never to memorize the material, but to grasp it. Cor'n is a correction applied to the slight amount the Sun's geographical position changes ever so slightly north and south. You probably never noticed that on a daily basis, but it's there. All of my books gloss it over, just do it they say. But to get it demands practically a chapter on its own.
However, there are a series of errors, ususally rounding errors, that follow the arithmetic to the final stage, which is where you compare your sextant reading to the reading you would have gotten if you had been on an exact integer latitude at the time, which never really happens. So it is wise to make the final comparison as accurate as you can by allowing for the fact the Sun does move north and south. And this photo of a corner building in Clarksville is just to brighten up this part of the page. Carry on.
I've concluded looking anew at ferry systems on the west coast and Hawaii. Several time while living in the area, I had planned to take the trip to Alaska, but to see the sights. I have no interest in anything else in that part of the world. However, the trip just to the first Alaskan port was 38 hours and could not be done in a long weekend. For that matter, I always had some place cheaper and warmer to visit. You cannot sleep in your vehicle and you find people pitching tents on the deck. That's in the summer, you do not want to be outside on a boat in the Pacific winter. In today's money, one-way walk-on tickets can cost you $600 and you must regularly show ID to buy tickets and when boarding. There was no such requirements back when America was undiversified. For the record, the Alaska ferry service is 75% subsidized by oil revenue, which I disagree with. Expensive or not, no taxpayer should be hit so others can take 19 foot RVs up the coast and lounge in a four-berth stateroom for less than a hotel would cost. It's unlikely I will ever use a Washington ferry again unless my old business partner shows up.
Curious which colleges will prostitute for money? Take a look at Georgia. Soon as Trump won, all 26 colleges and universities dumped their DEI agendas and brought back studies of the Constitution, Federalist Papers, and Bill of Rights. It's amazing how fast they started wiping their asses. Cut off all funding to public schools who do this, I say. Once a suck, always a suck and they will use your tax dollars to posture themselves for another commie curriculum the moment the opportunity ever arises again. One place that may never rise again is MSNBC, who based their pro-Harris programming not on the political issues, but hatred of Trump. Word has it they are broke and likely to stay that way. Did you see MadCow break up over the popularity of the Trump dance? (Again, I am not all that political, but I live to see libtards getting their own medicine.)
I'm watching a DVD, "The Death and Life of Bobby Z", with the frumpy actresses. But the plot is just interesting enough to make up for the so-so acting all round. A drug dealer dies in a Thai prison so the cops find a convict to impersonate him to nab a Mexican drug lord. Except he isn't dead, they want to kill the double so the case is closed. Everybody is a double-crosser. Audiences already know when identity is involved, so is a dirty cop. And if I was a 30-something drug dealer, the last thing I would do is buy a 30-foot yacht and park it where everybody could wonder where all the money came from.
ADDENDUM
It was with some interest I reviewed the course requirements at APSU, Austin Peay State University. Most interesting is how the programs avoid most any type of lab time or experience with actual operations which smacks too much of trade schools for them. The military history course list includes such gems as HIST 5850, the role of African Americans in war, HIST 5021, Islam as a world force, and HIST 5033 where you can learn how air power lost the Viet Nam War. There is even a credit course for studying war films as a reflection of our society's values.
The remainder of requirements are typical of American schools, they want your life history on file and commitment to a full degree. The website is laced with woke implications and photos of black males next to white females. It's coincidence I'm reading Delta Force, which purports to use military history to defeat modern terrorist attacks. From my reading, they have never countered a legitimate attack, in each case I'm aware of, the intelligence community identified the threat and they were in some way forwarned. Even the Israeli pre-emptive strikes are carefully planned using an extensive spy network.
To me, this is not the correct approach. If you know the enemy, his location, and battle plans, it is propatating conflict to repeatedly do nothing but wait for his attack. It's as if the warmakers have stocks in the armaments industry.
The B-52 (now the J variant) is still flying, pretty incredible if you ask me. Currently some 70 years in service, the projected retirement date is 2050. That's 96 years since it entered service. Boeing built 744 of which 72 are still active, all the H variant becoming the J with new Rolls-Royce engines. With that upgrade, almost every part of the airplane has at some time been replaced. It carries a rotary weapon launcher so the crew can change mission tasks in flight, but with the downside that the launcher takes half a day to reload. The B-52J, once fueled and loaded, requires around ten minutes to start and fly, as the jets are still individually started by ground crews using a great big firecracker. The B-52J retains the 75,000 pound payload meaning it can flatten any surface target. (A Boeing 747 as a payload (all-cargo version) four times larger, at 260,000 pounds.) The plane shown here, "LA" is the most modified, with a retirement date of 2060.
