One year ago today: December 10, 2023, remember KeePass?
Five years ago today: December 10, 2019, the get-along crowd.
Nine years ago today: December 10, 2015, he got lost.
Random years ago today: December 10, 2006, Presto, early podcast fail.
The robins are migrating early this year. By the sound, the flock is around 1200 this season. I feed them dry grits on the lawn but I could not begin to keep up with so many. The bird bath is left on permanently and they will all be gone by tomorrow. This is the third major visit while I've been home at the time. It likely means this is a standard stopover in their flight path. The noise is teriffic, but odd quiets down to nothing by mid-morning. I have no camera equipment that can capture good images of this. Calculated last evening how broke we are until early January, whence we will be semi-broke until May. But this is hardly the toughest times I've been through, believe you me.
Here's an off-brand of coffee that turned out better than my best Maxwell House. And I don't remember where I bought it. Harry & David. When in doubt, try Wal*mart I use bulk coffee but keep these K-cups for road trips and at the neighbor's for Festus Festuval. The guy does not drink coffee so I bring my own. Only since I got to Florida have I met groups of people who do not drink coffee. No wonder the state lacks morning people.
Later, around half the birdies have already moved on. I got around to all the business this morning except going into the one country music venue that I am positive would know the two female vocalist I need to contact. I withdrew the cash for the house taxes and they were up not the $150 I first reported, but $173. So I have now paid half in taxes than the purchase price. Welcome to America, the scary part is most people blame a single entity for all these taxes. But I studied Canadian tax law thirty years ago and said to myself the USA would never get that bad. I was wrong about the timing. The Democrats are on a spending spree like nobody's seen before. I'm too busy working on the turtle home to lead any revolutions at the moment, but it's still on the list. I found the utility light clamp at Wal*mart for $7 but they only had one left. JeePee needs two. One to bask, the other to keep the cage warm by infrared at night. His cage is not the aquarium, it is open to room temperature. I don't think he's ever had a blackberry before, he's feasting on it up to his wee turtle eyeballs. I wonder if he'll touch blueberries after this.
Moments later, he went from spirited nibbling the blackberry to demolishing it. The only camera I had handy was the new Summit. I took the videos, but now cannot find the command to download them. Typical millennial piece of work, that. No, I'm not uploading any photos to the cloud. I'm dumb, but I ain't THAT dumb. Where to they even find these moronic coders?
Here's an interesting drone display. Dang, it doesn't work. Sorry about that, it was from Reddit, a ring of drones creating an artificial meteor shower.
Some specs have been published about the Sun research satellite launched in India last week. It splits into two satellites to create artificial eclipses lasting as long as six hours. The plan is to study the super-heated caronas that seem related to radio disturbances on Earth. The technology of keeping the two craft positioned while separated is, to me, the more interesting technology. The simple-minded have a new distraction. It seems Don Jr. has a new girlfriend. I'm amused but not due to celebrity obsession, rather a warm smugness in knowing that at age 46, he isn't getting women as young and sexy as I did at the same age. In fact, a few of them are borderline hideous if you ask me. He's maybe like a lot of men who never learned how women think, often not understanding why everything they do reflects a lack of confidence around them. At least this one is slim and blonde, a local gal named Bettina. These women do tend to hang out in the better pick-up joints, where they become called “socialites”. But if she's ever said or done or written anything important, I couldn't point at it. So maybe she does this stunning Karaoke rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings”.
School bus racing.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog. Dang, doesn't work.
I dropped off my donation to the Sheriff's dog pound, they've finally drawn the connection between the big bag of food and the Robot Club stamp in the visitor's log. My goal with that is to regain the option for me to be allowed to visit the doggies again in the hopes of finding one that matches my situation. As for others, I care not for those who donate for a tax receipt or something. It defeats the definition of charity. I got back here by 2:00PM tired so I combed the database for the 18 tubes in Lem's project. It says here I have 16 of them and the prices make it a fairly even trade for the PA repair. He's restoring a radio he's had since he was a teen, so this set of tubes is like a goldmine. Most of those tubes have been out of production since before 1973.
In the end, price was the determinant. This Harbor Freight unit is priced at $15, which today is throwaway pricing. It is pneumatic, but remember my tiny travel compressor was easily able to bury the nails. My shed compressor is overkill, though I would need to run an extra line over the work area or I'd be tripping over the air line. This one apparently can be adjusted to make the nails flush and has a flip open head to clear jams, an improvement over the ten-minute needed to remove screws and covers. The tool fits my budget for this month, this could be my Xmas present.
In the year 2124, when this blog is posthumously hailed as the definitive expression of an era, some keen historian is going to ask how, if I'm on such a tight budget, can I be buying new tools and planning investments instead of cashing them in. My answer is the same as fifty years ago, namely infrastructure. It was last July the series of calamities struck me, so why am I just feeling the pinch now? Because I've learned with money it is not the possession of it that wins out, it is the ability to replenish supply. There were many signs of this, such as my mentions of how long it takes to get money transactions in this “computer age”. To get money from overseas now takes 40 days instead of the 7 days when it was done manually. There is a lot more to doing this process properly than merely having a bunch of money up front. A credit-based society like this one causes built-in lag in the system, and once you figure how to take advantage of that, you don't have to always guess right over money problems. It's complicated.
JeePee and I have similar nap schedules, which is right about now. I sent a lengthy description of my efforts and results for a gig. I will be in Winter Haven in a day or two near the library, so I can check in for the next jam session. But that is next January and only once a month. Our schedule is more like once night a week and one week off per month. I opted to keep him current on the inside operations of band management, something other guitar players either don't care to know or think it counts for nothing. Check with me after siesta. Being back in the good weather limbers me up and chases away the cold weather aches which kind of accumulate over time if you stay cold.
So, the eye doctor who ran Syria will be setting up a clinic in Moscow. It's telltale that the one truly qualified immigrant to Europe wound up in Russia. It seems the CEO victim was in a lot deeper trouble than insider trading, and few people are buying the story the real murderer was arrested three days later wearing the same jacket and carrying a gun with a silencer. So much for sanctions as Russian drones used against the Ukraine are found to contain American-made computer chips, mainly Texas Instruments. MicroSoft has reluctantly admitted Win 11 can be installed on earlier machines, bolstering my claim that all the so-called versions of Windows are really layers stacked on top of good old Win XP.
It was Festus Tuesday and we found a seriously dramatic episode, “Hawk”. I enjoyed it somewhat less because I knew the true story it was based on. The plot was an Apache policeman tracks some renegades to a house where his White mother now has her own family. I prefer bad-guy good-guy westerns that this does not make that grade. Both the neighbor and I were raised in the atmosphere of these early westerns. We stop the video rather often to discuss the differing viewpoints. It's an interesting way to spend a Tuesday compared to most anything else in this neck of the woods.
