One year ago today: April 18, 2024, the right idea.,
Five years ago today: April 18, 2020, they have found other specimens.
Nine years ago today: April 18, 2016, that constant reminder.
Random years ago today: April 18, 2008, rare JZ photo.
China blinked first. Seems they now want to make a deal. Seems after a month of talking tough, they’ve decided to play nice. Roberto is newer at this music game than I thought. He is already being influenced by guitarists who say it cannot be done—but he jammed practically a full gig already with mostly just guitar and bass. I slated another rehearsal for this weekend, I vote we ham with the Prez as often as possible before he leaves. I was right about Roberto’s favorite tune, Toby’s “Red, White, & Blue”. It has no steady bass pattern and is near-rock music.
One of the longer boards has separated on the bench, shown here. It means the entire assembly is not rugged. The wood surfaces were not ordinary 2x4s, they were planed flat for a very smooth fit. The glue has dried rock solid, so this bench is destined for experimentation. I’ve learned plenty from this project and it’s likely to wind up as a major work bench. I have a thickness planer that is a candidate.
Wiki reports a 40% increase in visits, mostly by data-hungry A.I. bots that will eventually put them out of business. That’s largely because the bots are not pro-Semetic, it seems, and cannot be made so by the same quick fixes used on Google. Dimethylsulfide is a compound produced by life, but that is a deduction, as follows. It is essential to life, but breaks down very quickly, so it can maintain a concentration only if it is constantly being replenished by more life. The Webb telescope has detected it on a planet in the constellation Leo.
And who warned you about using Intuit’s TurboTax over twenty years ago? This morning we had a record-tying six different bird species in the yard at once. I have not identified the three smallest, one even smaller than a sparrow. We’ll collect the deer cam footage maybe later as two of the species may be juveniles of familiar birds. We have another generation of woodpeckers for sure. How they love the bird bath.
Housing in Sydney, Australia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I was on the phone an hour discussing some e-mails from this morning. The whole system needs a reset from the Valdosta Disaster. The first casualty is the planned trip to Tennessee on the 8th of May. There are just two pets left and the Reb has decided to rent the studio downstairs while she is away. That is also next month and it is a big and unpredictable trip, I’ve seen these tours stretch into months and I cannot be away that. And if she’s not there, I lack incentive.
While we rarely talk dollars, she is aware that each trip has tripled in cost and down here are the cabin, I need two new air conditioners, that kitchen stove, and I’m way behind on my house plans. We’ll have to push this ahead, maybe until June, when I have some of my own work to do up there. Another topic we delved into was the VRBO, vacation rentals by owner. The Reb has seen the internal workings of how the money is really made. That’s something I cannot teach by phone. We know we’ll have to spend some time learning what works and how that is going to happen is absolutely unknown. But the old world is gone and we are not ones to be slow in adapting.
Before continuing, here is a box design I found interesting. Other than putting some danceable bass patterns to Keith’s “Red, White, and Blue” this was a nothing day.
The dollar changes we talked have far-reaching implications that may create a different retirement world than the one I’d planned for. This town already has droves of people who had to go back to work. My core values, [that is] a paid-for house, the music, the hobbies, and a budget for food and gas, should be unaffected (but toned down to match higher costs). Caltier’s 7% goal was supposed to supply the $10 per day income that would produce long term success. (This is twice the $5 per day needed to become one of the fabled 4% independently wealthy.) I was struck when I did the calculations and here is why.
That same $5 per day goal was the original “get-ahead” amount that I strove for when I began thinking about this over fifty years ago. It was impossible for the working man in his lifetime without luck or inheritance. Back then interest was 2% and the principle would have to be nearly $100,000, four times the price of a house in that day. It was a useful example only, and a shock to me how same dollar amount came back into focus, not to get ahead, but to survive.
Five bucks a day is still a valid goal, since most people never reach that (hell, most don’t know how to calculate it). Five bucks a day, put away for you, rain or shine, every day and forever. Over $1,830 per year plus interest, I used to think of it as an army marching while you slept. For history’s sake, the best I ever did was the short period leading up to my heart attack in 2003 (the two events are unrelated), where I was making $31.65 interest every day. (Gosh, how did I just know that would not last?) I have not stated the principle or the rates, but I did think it would go on forever when I switched to my dream job in 2005. As we know, that switch never happened.
Zero wiring was done today. But I did get the planer out and under the scooter canopy. It left me winded for five minutes. So as not to waste that amount of time, I looked up how Star Trek created the transporter scenes. It was already know the concept was to eliminate special effects of shuttles or other ways of landing on planets. The original effect was achieved by filming the room upside down and dropping silverized crystals past life-size masks of the human figures, but later the same effect was created by shining a bright light behind a glass of alka-seltzer bubbles. Much more creative than CGI.
One of the few papers I’ll buy any more is USA Today because it is on sale at the Dollar Tree. I want the puzzle page but they have a feature called “50 States” that picks a story from each. Let’s glance through and see what they consider important. Arizona has used A.I. to create a “hyperrealistic” image of a suspect. In the past five years, staffing at DC schools has grown seven times faster than enrollment. The contractor hired to install Indiana’s fiber network went bankrupt leaving the city streets torn up. Wildlife managers say there are now 10,000 black bears living in the Michigan peninsula. Nebraska troopers report catching 318 drivers doing over 100 mph so far this year.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee will begin building centrifuges that distill uranium, a method from the 1950s still used by Iran and Pakistan. Traffic in Wyoming’s Yellowstone Park is reported held up by a major “bison jam” and in Florida, top spot is Pensacola’s widening of its Sun Trail .
ADDENDUM
One of the yahoos that was a regular at the club we played has been arrested for sexual misconduct. I knew he was a creep, I did not know he was a school teacher. Democrats have sewered themselves by siding with MS-13 thugs and have now opposed funding autism research. They know their COVID vaccines are the cause. On top of that, there are rumors that reactance to the vaccines is heavily correlated with IQ. The percentage of jabbed people is inversely proportional to IQ. That is, almost nobody with an IQ above 110 is vaxxed.
Our Geographic Position is 10.896°N by -38.794°W, placing us a little over halfway across the Atlantic heading for Trinidad. The nearest islands are St. Paul’s Rocks and Cabo Verde, which we’ve already covered, so what is next? I do this with a pair of dividers right on my computer monitor, so don’t expect pinpoint accuracy. I see the town of Paramaribo in Suriname. The first thing we notice is all the Dutch place names.
The hybrid image shows those long narrow farms so each would have some river frontage. Around a quarter million people live there, mostly in that single city which consumes 75% of the GDP. Very few Europeans remain, mostly descendents of the founding Dutch Jews. Suriname exports gold, aluminum ore, and exotic wood for guitars. Other than restored downtown architecture, there is nothing of interest I could locate.
