One year ago today: January 18, 2024, voltage divider, hmmm.
Five years ago today: January 18, 2020, assembly-line college.
Nine years ago today: January 18, 2016, I hated yard word.
Random years ago today: January 18, 2001, Bob’s surprise party.
We slip quietly into the most important weekend in our lifetimes, as Trump moves the inauguration indoors due to the weather—they say. It is well known the Democrats are the party of violence and they have been strangely quiet for some weeks now. In the news, the Starship did not disintegrate. It “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly”. Get your catcher’s mitt, Ken. Tomorrow is apple Sunday, but I don’t think anyone minds if we move it up to today and have a pancake breakfast. No bacon, however, even though I don’t eat pork since 2018, bacon has been off my menu for at least twenty years. Have you seen the meme that they are printing jokes on the back of bacon packages? “Serving size: 2 slices.”
In the distant upper right is the Tsawwassen Ferry terminal, in Canada. Pt. Roberts was a Washington State community strangled to death by Canada. Imagine the look on my fact to see this vacant lot with a $2.1 million USD price tag. How? Here’s the quick background. Because there are corresponding communities in Eastern Canada on the US since of the border, there was a standing agreement that resident citizens could travel unimpeded and items like groceries were not taxed. However, on the US side the pubs were open on Sundays and hundreds of carloads of Canadians headed south, from Vancouver it is only a twenty minute drive.
Here’s something that might renew my interest in that 3D printer sitting in the corner of my kitchen. It’s the world’s first 3D printed microscope, and apparently the price tag is low enough to cause concern for the establishment. Even the lenses are printed. The gerber files, it says, are free, though I have not found them yet. Yep, that was kind of a big breakfast. I’m going back to bed for a big. Only 40 hours to go before D-day, deportation day. Out you go, all of you. I hear the Mexican cartels know you’ll have access to enough money to get home. Serves you right. Rumor is the smart ones are self-deporting.
There’s something I never expected to see in my lifetime—a successful libertarian government. The poor reputation of libertarians is undeserved, it stems from both extremes left and right calling it down. Libertarianism is the belief that the government is best that governs the least. Nobody could prove it, because it has never happened in recorded history. Until now, and in of all places, Argentina. A couple years ago the place was doomed, but today they announced a budget surplus.
It’s too much to cover here, but the label libertarian was a recent description. On the way up, Milei was accused by the communists of exactly the same evils as Trump. He was called Nazi, fight-wing, and a threat to democracy—all the things you’d expect from people about to lose their cushy government jobs. The point is, Milei followed through and axed 24,000 government employs and abolished departments like Transport and Education. Gosh, suddenly he’s a libertarian. He was the first world leader to meet with Trump instead of Biden, He also got rid of the departments of tourism, gender, and sports—entities which should be bone if they can’t stand without government support.
So there you go. Now, after it is said and done, Ker-poof, you become a libertarian! How about that?
Fort Rock, Oregon.
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Times Magazine has published guidelines for woketards distraught over Monday’s inauguration. They have published a list of 11 “science-backed” methods fto avoid “spiraling”. Aimed at the fragile minds of the leftists who were told if Trump becomes President, it means the end of the world, the recommended therapy is “forest bathing”. It means to walk slowly and aimlessly through the woods. Another suggestion is to form “crying groups”.
I didn’t get the boxes started, they are planned to be a matching set of three which incorporate the best techniques I’ve learned to day. And to see how close I get to a match. Instead, I got some light work done in the far back yard where I still need to chain saw some limbs and such to fit the barrel. That’s when I heard the racket. We finally nabbed the silo super rat. He’s in the cage and a feisty one. Has not settled down in a n hour. Guess he really loved stinking up my shed, so he’s lucky to get the little ride.
How about the latest in A.I. traffic cameras? They can isolate and follow drunk or stoned drivers. Who could have a problem with that? Well, potentially everybody. There re no safeguards that it will not later be used for nefarious purposes. Sticking to the immediate problem, the cameras are being cut down and vandalized. The leftist protestors have started already with one significant difference from 2016’s inauguration. The numbers are gone. A few dozen where there were hundreds, a sure sign the Democrats have disappointed even their own. Trump’s performance is already proof how well he has learned the political game as he tells England the ambassador they are sending is unacceptable.
Again the neighborhood fell into complete silence. Other than the odd faraway downtown noise, it is eerily quiet, not even any wind. I heard a faint popping noise in the kitchen 35 feet from where I’m sitting, and this down a hallway and around two corners. Thinking maybe a mouse, I went to see. It was small bubbles in a can of soda I finished an hour earlier. I was reading some warnings being issued about VPNs. Finally, two decades after I mentioned it, the greatest generation has finally figured out if you pay by credit card, nothing is private.
Instead of the boxes, I opted to install a dusk-to dawn security light at the main shed entrance. Once again, an expert job with no delays and it still took a full three hours. Strange how nobody has invented a modular system that everything just clicks into place. This time, I tapped into an existing duplex outlet which reminding me the shed is not some simple slap-together wiring job. It is very well designed, including different lighting runs so a single tripped breaker doesn’t black the place out. But the fancy layout has a trade-off in complexity and that was part of the chore today.
When I originally wired the shed, I found several times I needed a wiring splice. Instead of just using a junction box, I would install an extra duplex outlet. The result is there is now an outlet fairly near every light switch, which has proved immensely handy. Over time, these boxes get crammed full, but easily within code. Here’s a view of both the expertly wired lamp socket and the finished product in operation by mid-evening.
ADDENDUM
This assignment is one of the standard tests to determine who makes a good programmer, and who will be a coder at best. I should add that in my teens, computer time was expensive, so the shorter your program, the higher your mark. So just getting something to work, or look like it is working, is not good enough. The dumbo’s approach to this program would be to divide every number and check to see if there is a remainder. Such people would fail the courses I took.
Later, I took a peek at the satellite over Pt. Roberts and was surprised to see my old apartment building is still there. That makes the structure at least 85 years old and it was never that solid to begin with. There were four units, usually rented seasonally to fishermen visiting the area. It was nice and this is where I lived when I met Sonya, owned a Laundromat, and started commuting to a job in Canada across the border every day. Here is the best photo I could download. Point Roberts and I go back a long way.
