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Yesteryear

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

December 25, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 25, 2023, skilful fakes.
Five years ago today: December 25, 2019, JeePee’s spa appointment.
Nine years ago today: December 25, 2015, training future enemies.
Random years ago today: December 25, 2023, nope, no insights.

           My 25th year in Florida. The e-mail arrived that JeePee’s remains are ready, so he'll be home for Xmas. This trip is very sad, but he was happy and comfortable. He’ll stay with me a while, then back home to Tennessee to join Sparkie and Sammy. I don’t regard years as good or bad, but if I did, 2024 has not been one I’d care to repeat. At sun-up, I’ll drive to the vet the long way around and back. Time to reflect. And lots to reflect on. The Reb sent a message, this is also a pivotal time in her career.

           I could have been back before noon. Instead, I put JeePee on the seat beside me and took the extra long trip via the Old Polk City Road, past Lake Lowery. We talked most of the time and saw Holliday, I think. At least we saw the abandoned truck park and what might have been a gravel pit. Lots of traffic for a Xmas Day, we got back here at 2:00PM.
           Yes, I’m saddened by the loss of a greatly loved pet. I will not mope and have scheduled a busy day as a memorial. I plan to build things, including a use for those sanding belts that were too small for my device. (I want a 12”x12” flat MDF sanding surface.) I contacted the Prez for a possible rehearsal. Unless we pick up something, I will have a total budget of $148 left until the first of 2025. But, if it’s just JeePee and I here, we’ll be quite fine, better than some, I’ll wager.

Picture of the day.
Tropical island yacht.
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           Reading and dozing, I made an Xmas feast of almond chicken fried rice, and got around to lots of reading. If I didn’t mention, last day I tried something new, chicken fried quinoa. Wow, amazingly good. I’ve never made it, but I enjoy the aroma of carrot cake. I may have a go at making it from scratch. I’ll kind of take it easy for a while more. It seems unfair that JeePee is gone, I need closure on that.
           We listened to “Guest Room” in the van, and it’s a no so far. Far from a mystery, the audio book is not over half-way and mostly concerned with people’s feelings. The wife is a school teacher and now we know more than we need to about facing her class. The husband is a wuss about everything. The one interesting element is that he’s the one who didn’t do anything and now he’s the one up the creek. The mafia types said no cameras, but one of the kid brother’s jerk friends got him in the guest room talking to the stripper. Blackmail. That’s pretty much the one development that kept me listening. The title means something. The one twist that could make things worthwhile is if the stripper, who is on the run, shows up on his doorstep.

           I still need adjustment time. None of today’s activities let me concentrate. I watched a series of videos on transistors, mostly how to combine them into the logic and memory circuits. I grasp the material, but five minutes later it gets indistinct and I must have read 30 articles on latches, full adders, and gates since 2011. I watched what I could find on that Great White Shark feeding ground off the coast of California, discovered some twenty years ago. But there is nothing new about it since. It is interesting, because to feed, the sharks have to rely on a food supply that is significantly deeper than usual.

           Turtle tanks. No relation to JeePee, but he'd appreciate that he's never to be forgotten. these are regular tanks with a steel frame and canopy bolted on top. They are a counter to drones, which have changed the nature of warfare. The idea is to shield the tanks and to stand off incoming munitions. An old idea, it is probably just barely effiective. The tanks seem to include some form of jamming mechanism, since videos of the Ukrainian front show lots of near misses.
           This photo shows the result. At bottom left you see the tank treads, the device in front is a mine roller or plow as the military calls them. This turns the tank into more of an assault gun since the turret cannot rotate. These are battlefield adaptations. It will be curious to see what these morph into.

           Later, upon looking at the logistics of making even a basic carrot cake, maybe I’ll find a good bakery and just buy one. I like it, but not if it takes too long. I don’t trust mixes but maybe JFK will do something about that list of chemicals. Check tomorrow for some year-end conclusions. I rarely publish my resolutions, but I’m great for taking stock of what’s really going on. Let’s say 2024 has not been my best year. And if I’m wise, 2025 should be dedicated to shutting it all down. Finish what I can, toss out the rest, and step everything down a few notches.

ADDENDUM
           Even this day, politics cannot be separated from any news. The Democrat party is heading for extinction but don’t see the writing. Their current tactic is to drive a wedge beteen Trump and Musk, but both men are admired by their followers for different reasons and the overlap covers most Americans. The drones disappeared at the end of the work week. Trump is wavering on his voters, going soft. People want the maximum penalties for treason. Biden is out of his mind, releasing convicted murderers into the streets of New York. After what the system did to the man who stopped a subway crime, everybody including the police stood back from the fire killing. The MSM said only that a woman “caught fire”, referring to the murder as “arson.”
           It seems many people are just figuring out now that their cars can be shut down by the government. JFK is going after drug advertisements on TV. That could be a fight, since Big Pharma spent over $15 billion on ads in 2023. That means the MSM loves them. Here’s your on-line instructions how to build a single-use remote control airplane. Here’s more than you need to know about gear threads.

Last Laugh

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