One year ago today: December 5, 2023, from railway tracks.
Five years ago today: December 5, 2019, remember less than $500?
Nine years ago today: December 5, 2015, in regular use.
Random years ago today: December 5, 2012, I remember . . . .
I got up hours before dawn and drove straight down I-75 until the Bushnell off ramp. By now it was reasonably warm, so I rolled down the window and took the route through Clermont. It's nice countryside and adds only 17 miles to the trip. I was planning on sleeping most of the day to return to this time zone. No luck, I had $1,616 worth of bills in the mailbox. The good news is that cranky mailman behaved this time. This is my fault, I was away 18 days longer than planned. Today gets the original blog format, I'll tell the world what happened and let them decide what kind of day it was.
Here's an LED “neon bulb” lamp donatedby Lem for my workshed. The same size and shape but you can see the twin rows of diodes and this unit does not flicker, plus it is even better at eliminating shadows. I may put it in the silo since that is the most dust-free work bench around these parts. I have most of the quirks fixed on the new Garmin GPS and what do you know—they have sort of fixed several defects mentioned in this blogwork. They how have a sidebar that lists towns up ahead, so they finally figured out that is useful. They also have a mode that moves your vehicle icon done to the bottom of the screen, this maximizing your look ahead. They've eliminated the non-scalable ATM and restaurant icons that used to block the screen in street zoom. There is still too much screen clutter.
One more thing. These items mentioned above have an uncanny connection. They are the ONLY items that have have changed in this GPS model and they are the EXACT problems that have been listed in this blog. Pure coincidence, right?
Who remembers the squawk I had with the Boost store in Lakeland? The fat-ass lady I told off a couple years ago and everybody figured I was being mean. She just got seven months in the slammer for embezzlement. The owner was in today when I paid the bill and he filled me on that and their relatives at his Wahneta store. He's only around 35 and owns four stores. He's the one who got my phone working minus the contact list. He reports cell phones took many of those options away because like computers the SIMM cards got all clogged up with games, nonsense, and making the the phones idiot-proof. If you are not sure what I'm talking about, the early SIMM cards had a few megabytes of storage and you could download you contact list to a new phone. On some phones the option is there but is greyed out.
Araripe Manakin
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I didn't get back until late afternoon, at which time I built the basic box shape for the turtle, JeePee. I know little about how they react to relocation but Florida is a natural habitat. Nothing else happened today, so I'll record some items of general interest, to me anyway. My peach tree has dropped its leaves and there must have been a windstorm while I was away. The manifold noise in the van is getting marginally louder and I cannot find out what is coating my windshield. There is a slight tug in the transmission once in a while. But the A/C and heater work fantastic. The downside is they have two settings. Too hot and too cold.
I sent out the usual confirmation of a safe trip, a standard for some years now. This afternoon I received a nasty note that 24 of the transmissions were undelivered due to a “potential security issue”. The issue disappeared when I sent them a second time, but keep this kind of thing in mind if you still trust Google and MicroSoft. I don't, nor do I trust the outgoing system. News just in they have arrested yet another grandmother, this one mostly blind, as a J6 insurrectionist. There is something especially funny about this one. Possibly the Feds figure people don't hate them enough already.
I've got the latest (Win 11) computer now set up as my primary interface with the Internet. What a piece of crap, full of gimp features. If you are new here, gimp features are those idiot settings on your computer that cannot be disabled. It's for people on guilt-trips who figure the rest of us aren't doing enough to prove we love gimps. My stance is if you want to help them, build a computer for them yourself but leave mine alone. This unit has the smallest font display twice as large on my monitor, negating the value of a larger monitor. Right now, I have to change the setting to 75%, but it will not retain that, I have to change it every time.
Jeepee has taken rapidly to the change in daily temperature. Here he is, inspecting the portholes on his new yacht. There is a greater daily range in the Florida daily winter as opposed to summer when it is deathly hot 24/7/ He gets bestowed a rare honor today, that is, he gets to watch me work in the man cave. Thinks like cooking and puzzles, does not bother me if others watch, but not in my Fortress of Solitude. I will be building more of the Turtle Palace today, incorporating this viewports. He will have at least two separate living quarters in different parts of the yard, a far more enriching environment than the old terrarium, which remains in Tennessee. There may be some truth that we are looking into computerizing parts of his environment, mostly monitoring of temperature and humidity.
