One year ago today: January 10, 2024, an eye for pallets.
Five years ago today: January 10, 2020, east to Cookesville.
Nine years ago today: January 10, 2016, makes Trump great again.
Random years ago today: January 10, 2007, the original Trudeau.
Today’s plan was a drive to Lake Wales to visit the museum. It’s in an old train depot, but isn’t a train museum but I figured it worth the $5. It was to make up for a frozen day off. However, by mid morning it was balmy and I’ve decided on a day in the yard. Tidy things up a bit, do that extra laundry, and I’ve a couple boxes that only need some assembly work. And I need the practice on getting old. I keep forgetting. By late morning it is over 60°F, let’s get some work done.
Let me record what I did while I still remember. I ran off a box and chatted with the neighbor. He’s got a Masters in something but I can’t guess what. Likely some ology, which I don’t do or much recognize. But he’s got some incredible memories. When he was 29, he knew this Chinese cook who worked on the Canadian railroad. One of the big lines that ran coast to coast. So he had a chance to travel free any time including free food. But, he never took his friend up on the offer. Now, we old timers would like to travel by rail car, but they’ve turned that into an expensive proposition and warning stands that most if the good scenery is lost because that’s where the train travels at night.
The toughest work was moving my disk storage cabinet into the silo. It was taking up too much room. And that sucker is damn heavy, kind of like a wooden vault, I recognized the need for hard drive security ages before the rest of the world and now have around 16 hard drives from over the years that I no long know what is on them. Or if the drives will still work. I also have trays of 5-1/4s and 3.5s that have never been inventoried. You think there is a lot in this blog? Ha, the blog is a hobby. I have computer files that were old before most of you were born. There was a time I had the computer in town, and even when the rest arrived they were primarily used for playing solitaire.
Knowing the cold will return, I put some fancier hangers for the blankets. Unlike back on the prairies, there is no reason to leave the blankets in place half the year so I tended to hang them on nails. This being the fifth year in a row with cold spells, I decided to install some proper hooks. When I’m home, I heat just the bedroom and bathroom heater is motion-activated. The kithen, leave it cold, it will get warm enough from making chow. Which I will bring into the bedroom because meal time is when I check the e-mail.
Which I did with delight finding $180 in sales today. I take it there is a preference for RCA vacuum tubes, which is nice because I have about a thousand of them. There was a time when I was curious what the more expensive tubes were used for these days. One tube alone counted for half of today’s total.
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Appetite gone wild, we got up a double helping of pork fried rice, the real thing. I chopped the onions and pork myself, the rice is the recipe I learned in India, but not the jasmine rice. And yes, long grain rice tastes the best. Since the cold spell arrived, I’ve gone through 55 cups of coffee and I triple-deserved every one of them. I took a short break at 3:00PM and then worked straight through until almost 8:00PM, taking it easy. I sure could have put the hillbilly to work. I’ve gotten used to having to work every job by myself.
I repaired eight feet of fence and that, sport, is a two-man job. I got it done and this time I reinforced the rails with 2x3” cross-braces. Next hurricane those picket will sail away long before my posts and rails even get wiggled. I’ve switched to using landscape posts. You get three for the price of two 4x4s and they are just as easy to work with. Whew! Only thirty-two feet to go. For even more fun, I crawled into the brambles along the SE fence, which is overgrown with small vines (not kudzoo) and hauled most of the underbrush to the burn barrel. I’m taking down my target board and salvaging the fenceposts for a better canopy over the sidecar.
By 9:00PM I’ve finally settled in, with fudge brownies and peanut butter cookies in the oven. I’m finished “Computronicon” and they are still chasing around the countryside finding nothing and obsessed with hookers. Reminds me of old Wallace, who could spend all day talking about hookers if you’d let him. I figure two things. The guys that hire hookers are the ones who can’t get it any other way. And once they go that route, they lose the aptitude to ever form healthy relationships with any other kind of woman. More importantly, here is the best photo of the cookies. My crappy Panasonic camera again. Always lets you down unless you check and recheck every setting every time. This was supposed to video me putting on the crisscrosses with a fork.
I put new rubber washers on all the water hoses and dug up some old patio pavers I used for stepping stones. I’m building a better lumber rack. Right now my shop looks like most carpenter’s areas, with humdreds of bits of lumber I plan to use someday. It’s messy, so I’m going to stack in up against the leeward side of the silo. The news from California is bad and you can add in a ton of suspicion on how the State is handling this. Some smart ass suggested they ask the Amish to build them some cabins. My concern is that vie Caltier, I own property out there but have never looked to see where it is located.
Folks, I have had no use for California since the 1990s woketard infestation.. I feel sorry for the long-term residents who were there before, but they never turned out in force to vote down the takeover. Now my concern is are my properties safe, are they insured, and how will this affect the resale value and the rental demand. I care as much for Californians as they care when they support climate and queer laws that trample over the rest of us.
America loves the approach of January 20. All National Security Council (that’s the United Nations staff) appointed by Biden have been told to clear out by one minute after noon on that date. Sixty firetrucks sent from Oregon to help fight the fires are being help up in Sacramento for emissions testing. The arsonist, an illegal immigrant, who set the fire was let go with a warning. He was carrying five cell phones and a prepaid UN credit card.
ADDENDUM
For most of my video editing, I use the universal best known player, VideoLAN. Mind you, I still use one of the oldest versions. I’ve tried the newer releases and they don’t work as well, plus are filled with quirks. What I’ve wanted for some time is to add subtitles. Problem. All of the how to videos show how to add a file containing the subtitles. That’s now what I wanted. Something is haywire. If I have a video, why would I download somebody else’s subtitle files? Also, there are not instructions on how to create your own subtitles. Maybe it is another one of those millennial things you are “supposed to know”, like how to drive a standard or read cursive.
I may give this a try using their SRT format, which is typed with a text editor like Notepad. It looks laborious but then again, it will always be there. The library in Tennessee has the right app but it’s not freeware. VideoLan does not automate this step. You can’t preview along, pause, enter a subtitle, and then continue.. It should display a text box where you type in your message, and tell it how long you want it to appear. From what I gather, this does not burn the title into your video. Instead, you must upload the SRT code into the same directory as your files.
Later, I finally just did what I thought this SRT file had to do in order to work. And it did, mostly. It is a tedious process, the subtitles are unoutlined white which often clashes with the background. Ah, it responds to basic HTML tags, I got it to print in yellow. Yep, tedious, but also very portable and easy once you catch on. Alas, there is no real time line displayed in VideoLAN, close enough has to be good enough. There has to be a way to embed the titles, as sure enough having two files to do one task is a formula for screwups. Up to now, all the subtitles you’ve seen in this blog were by clever handling of batch gif files.
At this point, using Handbrake is not an option. The reason? Handbrake will not work unless you download and install two very suspicious MicroSoft products. Always hesitate and think twice about any after market software that requires non-standard MicroSoft downloads.
