One year ago today: April 20, 2024, a no-plan day,
Five years ago today: April 20, 2020, JeePee.
Nine years ago today: April 20, 2016, not just any stick.
Random years ago today: April 20, 2012, mid-life career shock.
I see my blog has gone through another bloom, readership is down to 1/12th of a week ago. Don’t matter, blogs with content survive. And here’s a clip of why. This is the latest juvenile woodpecker, caught on the deer cam having a sip this morning. A morning windstorm kept me inside and left the town nice and cool. Just right for an extra nap, I mean, the birds got the right idea. A bit more info on the RAM, the tiny chip in the upper right is called a SPD, for serial presence detect. It seems even memory needs memory. It tells the computer what speed to operate the RAM chips. This parameter can be altered. So that’s how those people claim they can speed up your computer.
Ten years ago, JZ and I were in Immokalee for the first time. He’d heard the place was chock full of saloons and friendly women. Instead we found a drive-thru liquor barn and a taco kiosk. But I wish for half that much energy. We had been the day in Naples. That reminds me, I have $71 day trip budget for this month. After taking one peek at ChatGPT and uninstalling it, it comes as no surprise that users are being creeped out when the app begins calling them by name. The Webb space scope shows a day on Uranus is 28 seconds longer than thought. The Mars rover has detected a 12-atom carbon chain. While not proof, such chains are overwhelmingly caused by life as we know it.
Later in the day I undertook the exciting activity of reviewing Sight Reduction Tables to find the ones with the fewest columns. After much input I opted for what looked most simple. There are two rules on the Internet: nobody will give you an honest complete answer and all women over 30 have an eating disorder. My choice was HO249 for air navigation. HO is for “hydrologic office”.
These tables are designed for fast lookup made necessary when airplanes began to travel faster. The books are also smaller and they are static, you don’t need new ones every year. What I wasn’t ready for was the number of books that go by that title. As soon as I am 100% comfortable cozy with GP (I still make mistakes in eastern hemispheres), I will tackle Sight navigation using estimated sextant readings. There is no open body of water nearby to get sample sights. Modest practice and good instruction wins the day.
Sometimes I glance at sailing magazines and I was surprised that only very large ships are required to carry sextants and practice their use. The surprise is that I would never sail out of sight of land without this device now that I know how fragile and unreliable the electronic systems are. I have yet to see a Galileo device on the market. Galileo is the European GPS and it is seven times more accurate, down to one meter. It requires more satellites per fix, but last I heard, there are 27 of them in operation. Galileo is the only system not under government control and some places in the world do not allow it.
Custom build Mississippi riverboat.
(cruises begin at $4,000 per person)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
This afternoon begins with a salute to the ethnic burglar that stole a security camera, then took it home and set it on his table. With the transmitter still on. And once more, I have managed searches on what should be simple matters that the Internet cannot answer. Six years ago I read an article on how to take multiple sextant readings and average them. But where is that book? It’s a hard cover so it’s here somewhere. This is when you have only one object to shoot, so you take several rapid readings. There is a trick to averaging them.
More than once, I’ve said to hell with the cardboard and used my own method. To mask the glue small, give the interior a zap of spray adhesive. The dust it with any cheap powdered dollar store spice. The right amount stick, you need only do the bottom an inside of the lid. When it is bone dry, glue give the felt a quick spread of ordinary white glue and press it right on to the wood. This photo shows a piece I pioneered with this process, you can see felt on the lid only. This covers any wood splices, as the side that looks best if facing outward.
The aroma fades but never goes away. I’ve noticed that people who handle the box often purposely open it to inhale the scent. I wonder if other powders would work? I don’t smoke but I love deep tobacco and I’ve wondered if the large amount of coffee grounds I produce could be put to better use than fertilizer. Where is that little electric coffee grinder I never used? What I do not know is if the glue or the material will last. I don’t want sachets, rather the wood itself to have the aroma and I want something more distinctive than the store brands of those oils.
Not a single word in the feeds about tariffs. We know one thing that stops the MSM from bellowing is a complete failure of their accusations. The US was supposed to crumble and China’s counter-tariffs would propel them to heights of untold wealth. Hmmm, reports out of China show empty malls and restaurants. The trains are empty, same with the grocery stores. The Chinese government has obscured facts and stats. Their economy is based on exports, while the US is based on consumption. As soon as exports stopped, the factories began to close within hours.
Few things show better that China is one massive sweatshop with all the money in the hands of an elite. Stories are leaking how people can only afford one meal per day and what does the government do? Tells us 1.6 billion people have “decided to lose weight”. Word is the Chinese, rather than admit the tariffs are a reaction to their unfair practices, are telling their citizens the tariffs are an attack. Where have we seen this tactic before?
I don’t follow the trends much because I’ve felt for years that the system over there is drastically imbalanced. I spent a lot of time in Asia and their systems are not compatible with the concept of “middle class”. The Chinese would have done well by following the west, but instead the rich either kept the money or built factories for more exports, reducing the workers to wage slaves. Since there is media silence, we know something is boiling that big US media don’t want to talk about. That usually means Trump was right. Again.
West coast airlines report 80 cargo flights a day to China have been cancelled. And did you know that there is no requirement in the US that Supreme Court Justices have to be lawyers or have any degrees at all?
ADDENDUM
I get 11°39’N by 87°56’W, or some 60 miles off the west coast of Nicaruaga. Nearest shown place is a port named Corinto. Never heard of it, but satellite photos show a prosperous area with an old colonial layout. There are large oil tanks and freighters unloading. It is in the middle of a coast swamp, a relatively safe vacation spot. That’s if you are into touring old churches, bubbling mud pots, and a banana plantation. It seems nice and I can see facilities for docking cruise ships (berths too small for tankers). This is interesting, let’s peek at Wiki.
With a population of 18,000, Corinto is the Spanish version of the Greek Corinth. It became important in the late 1858 when a port further inland silted up. It is Nicarauga’s only Pacific port and I did not know the US mined the harbor in 1980. The CIA went in there an blew up 3 million gallons of fuel in 1983. It’s a little too far northwest for a canal terminal, but the map shows there would be no major mountain ranges in the way.
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