One year ago today: April 10, 2024, they prefer recorded . . .
Five years ago today: April 10, 2020, I like my sheds.
Nine years ago today: April 10, 2016, Trump’s firing list predicted.
Random years ago today: April 10, 2001, Xmas in April.
This is a SAM 2 missile, captured from the Egyptians by the Israelis in the Yom Kippur War. It was an outdated design by then, the world learned of it when the Soviets downed a US spy plane in 1960. The transport tube is also shown. It is a somewhat primitive missile. I did not know the Soviets deployed them in batteries because they were so inaccurate. This is a later model, the originals had visible rocket booster sections and more add-on winglets. The first kill was when the Chinese downed a Taiwanese spy plane in 1959.
Normally launched in groups of 3 at a single aircraft, they were guided by radar waves emitted from a ground station. This radar, the S-75, was good and was also used to aim conventional anti-aircraft artillery. In this role, it accounted for twice as many downed US planes than the missiles.
The yard critters and I ate good this morning. Besides the obligatory random mention of food, this meal was another of those I cannot make without remembering incidents from fifty years ago or more. In this case, it was this gal I did not care for and her likewise. She was a friend of my sister, so I knew what she didn’t like about me. It was common then that many women had the opinion that certain social behaviors were only acceptable in men over 6-foot-2. I’m just as bad in the sense that she was already a shapeless hag at 14—but I was content to just ignore her and she hated that. She was what today would be called a woketard.
Watchorn, that was her last name. But she was about as English as my big toe. Anyway, it is a slow morning and I can’t make hashbrowns with chopped chicken with remember that broad, whose only claim to fame in that tiny town was something I don’t care for, namely pendulous breasts. We caught the squirrel living in the silo and he is now at the bone orchard. I stopped at the Texan’s place, then to the Treasure Chest. That’s the big old building that rents floor space to small operators. From nearly empty to nearly full, I took a half-hour walk down the aisles. It is all new retail Chinese plastic junk. No used tools, furniture, or parts.
I’m not into lifting the floor today. See, I told you how I slow down once everything ir rigged up to work and I get comfy. It’s that magazine I bought in Brandon partly to blame. I mentioned the schematic for a variable lock, and it is (for me) fascinating reading. It works using registers. These are the same type of “chip” in your computer RAM. Most have one input and a lot of outputs. They accumulate data from a serial input and change it to parallel. Years ago I built a circuit of around ten of these to slow down the counting of a QBASIC program I wrote back in 2014. You can view the code and results, the experiment was over a few days, if you like reading.
The thing is, each of those chips can be programmed to reset before reaching it’s maximum output. This fascinates me, because every time I’ve used registers before, the input was hardwired. Yet, here is a circuit where that input can be controlled by another register. How I miss not having the chance to study this when I was in school. Unable to get moving by noon, I stopped at the Mercado for some orange cookies and bread for later.
China is playing hardball. They think Trump is kidding. He’s slapped them with tariffs in th 145% range but they are not getting the message. The popular mood is they are about to find out how fragile their economy is, how it is based on theft of American intellectual property and with sales to America they will not long remain a superpower. As for Trump placing and removing the tariffs, I think there is a pattern to it. Is he beating the inside traders at their own game?
He is also going after the law firms that defended Dominion in their voting machine case. It is widely accepted the machines were hacked. Trump cancels the law firm’s security clearance, government contracts, and entrance to government buildings. They sure do not like it when the shoe is on the other foot. And the SAVE Act (proof of citizenship to vote) is being decried by Democrats who (get this) are saying it stops 70 million women from voting because their names changed when they got married.
Are we witnessing the end of the Democrat party? They have opposed every public safeguard against non-Americans voting. That tells you something. It says here taking a taxi is now called “hail-riding”. The average Uber driver makes $513 per week. That just over $12 and hour and operating a car is not cheap.
More Texas bluebonnets.
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Cancel today. Y’know, the government is one of the reasons the wildlife in this yard eats well. I’ll tell you but you won’t like it. Welfare. The politicians make a big deal out of jobs Americans won’t do. The reason they won’t is two-fold. One, they aren’t hungry. Two, the government subsidized food banks. And that’s where the birds especially eat good. When these welfare cases hit the food bank, they get two shopping bags of foodstuffs. They carry the bags away, then go through them and take out anything ready to eat. The rest they leave on the sidewalk.
This is a day like I imagined retirement was supposed to be. No pressures and plenty of relaxation. So I looked up the Sun’s GP at 19:15:35 to be 108°38’W by 08°08’N. I was about to say the nearest last was the Galapagos 1500 miles SE, but then I notice a dot just 150 miles northwest. It’s the weird French island called Clipperton, that rained six months and smell of ammonia from all the bird poop the rest. During the guano age, it was claimed by many countries, but it was Mexico who put 100 colonists ashore.
Most of them died of scurvy, a horribly painful death. All the men died trying to row to a ship that passed on the horizon. A typhoon blew down all the houses and the light house keeper established himself as King, abusing all the women until they bashed his head in with a hammer. Now, I’m going read more about PWM register circuitry and with any luck fall asleep.
