One year ago today: April 13, 2024, reverse colonization, Scotland.
Five years ago today: April 13, 2020, early Mars-copter news.
Nine years ago today: April 13, 2016, I don’t have cancer.
Random years ago today: April 13, 2014, remember Bingo Breakfasts?
I decided not to drive to Punta Gorda this morning. Instead, another GP calculation. Where this fits in is that up to a while ago, I did the calculations of previous years by following the equations. This time, I am deep-learning, and at this time it is 13:28:13 GMT. Where is the Sun? It is 21°56’W by 09°08’N, about 400 miles into the Atlantic off the west African bulge. Nearest land is Cape Verde, the island nation of about a half-million.
It is not in Europe, it is an African nation. It exports bananas and castor beans, with a third of the population living in poverty. The only significant event I found is it was Darwin’s first stop. It is also a station for undersea cables. On Russian maps the island is known as сбросить бомбу сюда.
This included the sticker on the faceplate, shown here. The battery has a rather strict set of rules to keep charged. The part I meant by curious is that all of the people I know who have one of these are, get this, the type most likely to get dead batteries yet the most unlikely to follow any such guidelines. So, market-wise, maybe these XYZ people are on to something. Yes, if you sharp-eyed types noticed the security breach, that is today’s blog in the background.
While researching the factors that let to such a hard time with the KIA van, and a look into how a gentle driver like myself could have broken an axle, I stumbled on all manner of information. The KIA six cylinder engine, for instance. The original design was from a blueprint for a twelve cylinder power plant for a WWII tank called the Churchill. Like the man, the tank was slow, overweight, and belonging to a previous era. It seems the engine was very over-designed by a factory called Vauxhall. It is still in operation, automated, and producing mainly vans.
And that is the connection to KIA, but not a very strong connection. But it may explain the longer than usual lifespan of this brand. Now this has me watching a documentary on the Churchill tank, which seems to have ignored all the battlefield lessons taught so well by the German panzers. If I find anything unusual, I’ll blog it. Interesting, they built over 5,000 of the Churchill, but toward the end, the factory was not longer producing them. It was fully employed fixing and upgrading the older units.
I have a conclusion. The only time the van axle could have been even strained was the trip through the Cherokee forest roughly two years ago back in 2023. It was rough, but I was raised driving gravel roads and I straddled every obstacle. Besides, it would not take another year for such damage to surface without warning. Yet, this what probably happened.
Belgian “climate-resistant” hotel.
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As daily life here returns to normal after seven months of austerity, here’s the present I promised myself. The thickness planer. It is a specialized tool so do your research before buying. This unit was on sale, fifty bucks off. Prices have stopped climbing and in some cases are dropping, so this was a rock bottom $350. It is a heavier than it looks and I have to make of a stable stand for it. That won’t happen instantly. I have planned out some more of the kitchen wiring that has to happen first. It’s true, I’m comfortable so the house renovation has again slowed to a crawl.
Facebook, or X, or whatever these days is censoring again. All the claims aside, it is on an anti-Trump campaign. In America we don’t get a lot of news from foreign sources, but it seems their press like to give the impression the support for Trump is 50/50. This is a traditional ruse. It is now accepted fact the left strives to give the false impression of an even contest so when their minority riots or protests, it seems more popular that it is. There is talk of legal action against the parties who hire professional protesters for these staged events.
In fact the support for Trump is overwhelming. He has cheering crowds everywhere and that is precisely what X is trying to downplay. Interesting. Colorado is emerging as one of the worst of the Democrat holdouts against voter ID and for enacting controversial gun control. The platform is familiar, using black murder rates (about 22 times higher that White murder) as a reason.
Heeding the slight warning signals, I plan to take tomorrow very easy. I cannot find the specialty bit needed to cut recesses for small hinges. I has a collar at the bottom of the cutter. My box of bits has nothing that could even be modified. I need to make up a new song list, take it slow like that for the day. Alaine reports JZ has left for Miami al ready. Under the floor I found what looks like 30 feet of extra 12/2 wiring. I vaguely recall a little extra and that might just save me another $100 here.
All the accounts are normalized to where they were in July last year, I still have catching up to do. But meanwhile the small budget (averaging $75 per month) for weekend trips is no longer frozen, so we have (let me check) $566 in there. It doubles as auto emergency funds, but now we can go somewhere. We don’t have to spend it all, we just want a mini-holiday mostly to anywhere except Miami.
And I’ve also had it with that Panasonic camera. It is the internal battery going dead.
ADDENDUM
Y’day’s band rehearsal was a winner but it also struck me hard in the reality department. I look ancient now and compared to the new guy, I could be his father. On the other hand, Roberto knows there is not another bass player like me in Florida. He heard the whole band playing when it was only the three of us. He spotted instantly the experience that cannot be faked and was somewhat overwhelmed by the sound. But there is no denying that I am old and still playing in the same kind of band as when I was 16. Hey, why tinker with a winning formula.
Not knowing the new guys story, it was easy to tell he has run into quite a number of the local yahoos. These are the itinerant losers-slash-timewasters who answer every ad. There are, my guess, at least sixty of these wannabes floating around at any given time. Roberto has said several times that his goal was just to entertain people and have fun, a very familiar sounding echo, wouldn’t you say? It also tips us off he has run into the big-mouth small fry operators who have no such goal. Their goal is to recruit you as back-up as they soar to guitar stardom in today’s musical pyramid scheme.
Socially, we get along great, this is evidently what he was looking for. Oddly, the Prez and I have opposite politics. But I don’t take my differences out on band members, so we got along fine almost two years. It’s just curious because from jokes and expressions, the world would likely rate the new guy and us as rednecks. If you are new here, let me point out that I am not a true redneck because I would never stop others from giving all the charity they want. But I would stop them from forcing others to do the same. When it comes to welfare, I would prevent robbing Peter to pay Paul.
So you be careful around me you are not condoning a police state by thinking since you pay “your share” of taxes, that others should be compelled to pay theirs. Dude, there is not such thing as a “fair share” of taxes. At the music level, it means I can probably now crack jokes on stage I would avoid when the Prez was around.
If you’ve followed my history, you know that the factors just mentioned are more than my personal take on band playing. There are music band disorders that are toxic if you don’t avoid them at the start. While my priority is to find if we have “a sound” (and we definitely got one this time), I am naturally watching for deal-killers like ego-maniacs, Jesus freaks, spongers, cling-ons, dopers, and libtards.
It’s too early to know the new guys motives. However there are signs. He’s been in the area nine years, I did not know that. He’s been learning guitar for 18 months—an almost sure sign he has had his fill of finding others to do the job. Now, while he as a ways to go with guitar, he’s discovered a shortcut—strumming. As soon as we can do 30 songs, we are ready to go. He knows it, so I’ll wager he will be talking to his VFW people before long.
