One year ago today: May 1, 2024, the turtle chateau.
Five years ago today: May 1, 2020, it’s gettin’ burned.
Nine years ago today: May 1, 2016, 17% maximum.
Random years ago today: May 1, 1981, once-famous Pt. Roberts.
My executor (John) writes there is a new band in her area called, the “Hip Replacements”. Very funny, took me a sec. I have some potential good news, in a way. When I paid for that transmission, I applied for the rebate. It may have arrived out in Seattle and according to the attached literature, there is no obligation to install or use the transmission. You recall I sent it back. She says it is mine to keep, $909, and she does not make many mistakes. Yes, John is totally a lady. The nickname comes from when we worked at the same company, where even platonic relationships like ours is best kept discrete. May I speak to John?
Today’s first picture is all I have for you. It’s the top and bottom of a new birdfeeder. This is the one I told about last day, designed for shelled peanuts. Expect pictures.
The rulebook says I can take a day off any time. So let me play some bass and take another look at that NOR gate. There is a possible failed resistor that is easy to fix and I’ve narrowed the memory problem to an input wire in the wrong place. I’ll patiently wait until later in the day to start chasing that down. We have a travel budget, so I’m taking ideas at this time. The budget also allows for meals, so if you want to just go up to Catfish County, that’s fine.
Noon rolls around and I’m still at home, making up a batch of beef fried rice. Ah, somebody said I don’t eat beef. No, I said it is not on my diet. But when the guitar player gives me half a fridge full, that’s different. I’m cozy, in my office chair looking at the NOR gate. Sure enough, I have a question that will NOT find an answer on-line. This is reflection of the low quality out there, here is the question, you decide.
You remember how 99% of the experts did not know what Vcc meant? The question is about this common cathode. Does the circuit know or care about the path? Up to now, I always tied them to whatever ground was convenient. But this time I look back and forth between the schematics.
Normally a test circuit like this will have the LEDs as output, to signal the state of each the two NOR gates that form the latch. And it is one of those LEDs that will not “remember” its own state. When I trace the diagram, I notice all examples tie the LED to ground on a separate wire. This should make no difference—but is that not an assumption? I’m going to nip the single ground wire and run each gate on a separate path to ground. Every schematic I find shows this but without any explanation. If I’ve made assumptions, so have they.
Who remembers John Chow? He was the Chinese guy that nobody could understand, his accent was so alien that people could not work with him. The company, in its sublime wisdom, put him next to me, since they knew I had been in Hong Kong, and all Chinese are alike to them. I’m going to repeat this story, as it would have recorded twenty years before this blog began. I could not understand him much either, but he asked me to read a legal form as he was going through a divorce. That’s where it dawned on me the guy to hear, read, and write perfect English. He had written that legal document himself. Beyond incredible, he could even “think” in Engish, and I mean much better than most native speakers, including all idiomatic expressions, . He just could not pronounce the words.
This was a source of great amusement to us. We quickly learned if anybody was listening, that I could lapse into street-slang. “Yo, dude, chuck me that doo-hickey and put a little spin on it.” Best were off-color jokes because eavesdroppers couldn’t complain. “Whoa, JayCee, seen the new shape on Floor 7? I’d plow her shadow on a gravel road.” By 1995, to confound people who figured out when we were talking numbers, we had switched to pig latin in Cantonese. This was truly unique, as by then I had learned to follow his accent.
And this mall cop movie, “Observe and Report”. Don’t waste your time, unless that is your thing. The one portrayal I liked was the coffee lady. I know the type by the dozen, nice, but unexciting. Reminded me of Theresa, who needed a man who she could spend quality time with watching afternoon television.
Beautiful north-central Georgia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Have you ever heard of the octobass? This picture shows one, but it never became a popular orchestral piece. The musician operates the frets with levers using his left hand. You can just see them where he is reaching. The notes are so low you more like feel them. Today such sounds are produced electronically. You’ve heard them “Jaws”.
This ties into Caltier, which has not paid anything in April, but released a research blog that details the situation affecting the already-purchased properties. I’m still leery of their incredible silence after years of bragging up their payouts, Next Monday they will have been paused a year, and I know of no legal or formal definition of “paused”. I don’t expect anyone to duplicate the intense year I spent studying REITs, but this link shows why I chose Caltier.
They [Caltier] correctly spotted the growing gap between renting and owning. I point out that gap arises from people who borrow too much. I have no such widening gap, which other sources than Caltier agree is 25%. It costs 25% more to own than to rent. My situation is the opposite, owning now costs me $100 per month in property taxes. Maintenance of this cabin is basically whatever repairs I put into it, the important aspect of that is I can time them. There is no monthly or recurring cost to this place.
Caltier also posted a newsletter annual report. I found in consistent with my own observations. I know that billions in Federal loans are up for renewal soon and a tiny change by Trump can make for huge savings. I believe he will and that will impact housing, however I emphasize there are two types of housing. People who outright own their property, such as myself, and the rest who have mortgages, sometimes phenomenal mortgages. Their houses as a store of value are not so secure as they used to be. Nobody can afford the houses unless they drop in price and a drop means 2006 all over again.
The newsletter questions the traditional 60/40 milx of stocks to bonds. The suggestion is 50/30/20 to include a new category of investment: private assets. My chances of owning diversified real estate would be nil without crowdfunding like Caltier. There is also private credit, which I’ve been eyeing for several months how. The upshot is that I’m miles ahead of Caltier on spotting that shift. But I don’t have $50 million of my own to dabble the way Caltier does. Thus we stop. I’ve halted any new input to Caltier, and should it restart, I’m capping it at half the original target.
This is a bass tutorial I found amusingly ridiculous. While his advice is not “wrong”, it is so full of guitar-player bull donkey that he does not realize it. He claims to have started on the upright bass and his criticism of thirds shows. His guitar-ear has trained him that it sounds funny. But, he is typical of the indoctrinated types that make it to the top in his world. The only example he gives is at the 38:00 second mark, the catch being is that guy is not playing bass.
Recall my rule that the best bass player is the one who can play 64th notes—but doesn’t. If you want to play lead, play lead. But some say I do play lead on my bass. No, I lay lead riffs as fills and you’ll find no rapid fire triplets or bends. I will emulate certain lead riffs but rarely more than eighth notes. Anyway, if watch the link, that is how not to play bass if you want to contribute more than just “your part” to a band. He’s a real guitar-head talking about thirds being weak. Nobody has told him some notes are meant to be that way.
ADDENDUM
Music, other people’s. I finally got around to listening to “Austin” by this newcomer named Dasha. You can’t separate music from videos and I have critical ears and eyes. I don’t like the song or how she’s part of the vastly over-orchestrated “new country” scene, with its A.I. generated lyrics. Bottom line, she’s not that great a singer or a looker. This becomes an irritant when that is what is being pushed. I was not fooled in my day with Clapton being billed as a teen idol and I’m not about to buy that today by some 25-year-old with barroom tattoos.
Trying to be fair, I listened to clips from her album Dirty Blonde. When I rejected the boringly slow numbers, I had a couple left. And they were about depressing themes, typical millennial fare. Hey, you get shacked up, you get dumped. Enough with the plodding recovery obituaries. And yes, they are pushing her as younger than she is, a hard sell for those who know Taylor really was a teen.
As for Dasha, well, her videos show the unsurprising figure that arrived with the GenX bunch. Nice, but already a bit overweight to be wearing those costumes. That slightly squat look that makes the rounds every fifty years, you know, the Marilyn Monroe/Ellie Mae look loved by your average two-fisted types, sons of the men who think Dolly Parton was hot stuff. My overall summation? There was a vacancy at the recording studios and she arrived with a checklist of what worked before.
