One year ago today: February 19, 2024, pubs, birdies, porn suicide.
Five years ago today: February 19, 2020, Trump remains popular.
Nine years ago today: February 19, 2016, more housing near-misses.
Random years ago today: February 19, 2012, zero marketable skills.
What is that aroma? It’s chicken. I told you breakfast was grits and there are few things better than grits made in chicken broth. But you got to make the broth and I got up two hours ago and put ten pounds of chicken in the slow cooker. With that “all purpose garlic herb” spice from the Dollar Tree. Except now it has one purpose and that is to whet the appetite. That has worked out rather well. I’m back in commission so we should see some sort of progress today. I had a lot of fun building that box y’day, it went without a hitch.
Shown here are the makings of four identical boxes, using some slight modifications. This is not yet assembly line work, these pieces were cut one-by-one and hand fitted. Even with precise cutting, you’ll find there is always one way each box fits together better. I also learned 30 staples per box is optimistic. Even with such exact measurements, there were variations. I took notes and kept track. There are other things I should have been doing today, but what the hell.
This is not to say I got underway at first light. No way, I got to reading some Assembler commands and fell asleep until noon. After a hearty breakfast, of course. I checked the ether but it was all losers who don’t understand the concept that Trump Won, and did so with a mission to bulldoze the Deep State. My favorites are civil servants who claim Trump “stole” their jobs, like their job wasn’t stealing a paycheck from the taxpayer for producing nothing. I don’ think America needs 27,000 “forestry workers”. More like 270 would be fine. Or 100,000 agricultural employees who don’t grow any food.
Yes, I gripe that there are no arrests, but I recognize Trump is wise to strike the support mechanism before going after the crooks while they are still in power. Once the money supply is cut, they won’t last long. And this is America, people without money can’t fight back.
Sunshine at -30°F, Montana.
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This view shows some variations and a slightly larger box. The original did fit the tube boxes, but it was a very tight fit. I would need some 30 boxes just to store the tubes that are inventoried. I still have hundreds of unboxed tubes. That extra half inch makes the box harder to assemble. Left to right, box with divider, box with finger holes cut on sides, box with space in center and box with spacer on edge. These are the larger tube boxes and not the easy-build unit you say y’day.
What happened to the sawhorses I had plans for? I repeat, all the projects are for testing the potential only. I have no retail outlet lined up. Turns out a number of drawbacks cancelled the sawhorses. The orange lumber place put them on sale as a loss leader. The horses were large and had to be manhandled. Assembly took longer and they were bulky to move. I use all I built [for other purposes], so nothing is lost.
These took roughly 15 minutes each to assemble and there were some ill-fitting joints, but for storage, these are hard to beat. After three hours total, I’m whooped. I updated the database, in prep for calculating a pending payout [from the tubes]. Caltier is still paused so I’ve been lax with the money--but this is where any sales profits are pegged for. All of it goes to Caltier anyway, but I’m on the lookout for something better. There is a pending $5,000 reimbursement for saved tax money in the works, from DOGE. For now, all I want to do is curl up with a book on Assembler and doze off. Some way if you read textbooks, it puts you to sleep. Sometimes it does.
Later, I’m back awake knowing a lot more about how MicroSoft messed up Assembler. I’ve read enough of their manuals to surmise the way they do things. You gather a team of non-entities and explain what the input and output look like, then give them free rein to code whatever it takes to match them up. Now, these people are not total idiots, they know the Employee of the Month Award goes to whomever is first to crank out anything that appears to work regardless of the underlying process. Prime example is your Garmin GPS. It creates job security as the next few years will be spent fixing bugs and issuing updates.
This goes on until it simply cannot continue and she starts all over again with the next “new” release. They are shameless, there has been nothing new since the mid-80s. I can’t guess how many chapters I’ve read of workarounds and patches that could have been avoided by Redmond insisting each coder have to prove he knew the logic before he started. By the way, this is the basis of my claim that coders cannot be programmers. Because to be a true programmer demands a wide spectrum of general knowledge that is just not there with most coders. The more you know, the better you can program, but the slower you will produce results.
The rain came and stayed for hours. I used the time to peel and boil five pounds of spuds in the chicken broth. I see gold is approaching $3,000 with no corresponding silver movement. I did not know how severely silver was manipulated, making it the worst “traditional” investment I ever made for my retirement. If you consider the opportunity cost (not just the money tied up, but what you would have made investing elsewhere) it would have to hit something like $150 per ounce for me to just break even.
Musk has stopped the outflow of money and it is piling up. He’s wisely talking about a payback, but unwisely has suggested everybody get the same. Nor is it clear he means only taxpayers. The figure mentioned is $5,000 but that is like a down payment on the down payment. There are questions about distributions, for example, to me that does not address the just-mentioned opportunity cost. A higher court has ruled that the Democrats never had the authority to cancel student loans. Good, make people who either buy or sell votes suffer—however, the existing student system is rotten. It still blocks poor kids who have the ability.
ADDENDUM
This is only a note to keep score. One of Trump’s advisors or people is reading this blog and lifting material out without giving credit. I don’t know who you are, but you should at least change the wording a little. It is not the wording alone that gives you away. It is the order in which you plagiarize my work. Top to bottom, left to right, in chronological order. If I could be certain it isn’t Don himself, I’d salt a list or two and smoke you out.
Massgrave has my support. This is the group that hacks MicroSoft activation codes. I agree with them as they are one of the few entities that keep MicroSoft in check. And MicroSoft so desperately needs it. Top on my list of MicroSoft evils include:
Disabling forward compatibility, so that older software won’t work.I say again, this computer is my property and that makes it separate from the Internet. How I use it or what for is not anyone’s business, and anyone who puts anything on it without my full knowledge and permission is the enemy. This includes the American Blight: advertising.
Permanent unfixed glitches in their operating systems.
Unintelligible instructions and manuals.
Backdoors, disrespect for privacy, and fake “free” offers.
“New” versions that just rearrange the command menus.
Intrusive support for DRM using spyware.
Questionable updates that include unspecified changes.
