One year ago today: May 7, 2024, still more fun.
Five years ago today: May 7, 2020, still checking out Forex.
Nine years ago today: May 7, 2016, look at that price tag.
Random years ago today: May 7, 2007, a Titanic trip.
Coffee. That describes this morning. I could not get kick-started, so we have two topics to go over, for my own archives. Some music and some navigation. Music was all theory, I combed through various recordings to pick out the best practices for bass tunes as linked with the music we are learning. The walkdowns in “Crazy Little Thing” were child’s play, they are not in the original and really spice up that tune. The other focus was “Sister Golden Hair” which has a quirk. There are several spots where fills and licks are not on any of the sheet music, tabs, or tutorials. I hear them and they are, guess what, centered on musical thirds. I love it, they can be played on bass, just give me time to find the best frets that allow them to be played without hurting the regular bass notes.
No news yet on Marion. It should not be long now, as I’ve kind of dispatched John, my estate manager, over there to get a first-hand report. Let me take a glance and my postage stamp budget. While no records are kept, I know exactly what percentage of stamps are used for her mail. Nor to I know the totals, but we can use this to estimate the number of letters have been sent. Hang on, the files were not designed for this, I’m just curious. Okay, here we are. Some letters are stamped at the post office, others I buy stamped envelopes, but we know for certain the number of stamps recorded since September of 2010 is 170. The ratio is near 50/50 so we estimate 340 letters in 15 years or just under two letters per month. That is about right.
Not wanting to give the impression a slow day here means doing nothing, here is Yeti, which I sometimes call the Kodiak, being bench tested. It is reputed to have advanced circuitry that keeps the unit charged and safe to leave plugged in. However, when used in the van, this has an annoyance. If left plugged in, even to a dead socket when the motor is off, it drains to 0% overnight. And, if you use the CD player, it will drain the battery in 8 hours even while it is supposed to be charging. To give it a fair appraisal, it is shown here being tested under controlled settings.
The problem does not appear to be the battery, which points to something wrong in the vehicle wiring. That, Chumley, is no surprise. This shows the charge at 100% after three days. The CD has not yet been tested in this configuration. That should happen within 48 hours.
This allows you to determine how far you are away from the hourly location you chose, a choice which can be a challenge in itself. The news today is that I read a chapter about a dude who was so familiar with the Sight Reduction Tables, that he was able to take two estimated positions and plot a course on paper without using a map. I would like to get that fluent with the tables as my next interim goal with this fascinating subject. Tell you what, it is 06:11:15 in Greenwich, let’s take a look.
I encourage you to double-check these calculations, as it is very easy to make mistakes. We are in the Bay of Bengal, with nearest landfall a town called Visakhapatnam. It’s a port city with a steel plant and oil refinery. Let’s zoom in and check Wiki. Hmmm, a women’s sports stadium, parkland, and beaches. Properous, it would seem. It was a Dutch trading station. They have an English language newspaper called Yo! Vizag and a museum with a surplus submarine on display.
Still watching “Medicine Man”, they set out to find the witch doctor, who abandoned the village when the White man stole his mojo. They gave a kid with a belly ache some AlkaSelter and totally alienated the “alternative practioneer” with the plop-and-fizz. Now they have to find him and I predict the missing ingredient is the ants who each the wonder flower. Check back. The acting has not improved but at least they didn’t film it on Gilligan’s Island. But we are getting close, as women like to pretend they get silly instead of drunk. At least she has quit wearing a bra in the rainstorms, so it’s close, boys, it is close.
Later, I finished the movie. It was the ants. But we never learn if our only two White folks in the middle of nowhere ever bungle in the jungle. It’s a family show.
It’s day and I can’t get to the interesting part of the movie, but I think I guessed right about the serum not being in the flower, but the ants that eat the flower. Ants farm fungi and that would be the speed of this plot. Snacks are not big on my menu and what I get tends to be from the Mexican import market. No artificial ingredients. This has always been twice as expensive, the point being that I have not noticed any price increases, tariffs or not.
The day quickly turned muggy, at 60% it hits like a wall stepping outside. The Tampa real-feel is 106°F. That means no outdoor work during the day..We are looking at an emergency generator. This is a major purchase that requires alteration to the house wiring, but if the past ten years is any indication, the power grid around here is only going to get worse once this generation of techs dies off.
Edible flowers.
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The heat drove me back. The Hyundai has arctic A/C so let’s get some shopping done and wait to see if it rains enough to cool the evening. We really need to get that water tank cable run in. But this is heat that kills, so we’ll opt for a run into Bartow, where the shops have fresher produce and work is a no-go, Kooters has the best pub A/C. We are really in for it early this year. If all fails, I have never seen “Catch Me If You Can”, the impersonator movie. Hey, I impersonate being retired on a fraction of the money others spend, so I like such entertainment.
Four hours later and I’m melted into a blob. Third hottest day on record in this county since 1955. Don’t be fooled by temperatures on the coast 25 miles away, the real-feel inland is 110°F on days like this. I have no medical warnings about heat but it is plain common sense not to even stand around in such weather. I stopped at the lumber yard and while buying wood screws, I talked with the saw man. He told me that the mines need fir planks cut into exact sizes to measure acid tanks. As ever, if I go on line to find info about this, not one word in the millennial world. But consider this.
He says the sticks have to be cut very exactly from planks, but the mine will pay $100 per stick. Suddenly I’m interested. He describes the yard’s 1947 deWalt wood saw as a totally accurate and reliable beast—until they try cutting these sixteen foot planks into sticks. Around half-way, the saw begins to push the wood away from the fence. He confirms there is no wobble in the saw and the blade is not hot.
I already thought of lasers, but the maximum cut is 3/4” unless you want the wood to catch fire. Two passes makes it labor intensive. They manage at this point by using three men to hold the plants in place, which costs. So, our challenge is to think of a way we can cut one-inch square for planks and make a profit. Shit, now watching the “Catch Me If You Can” movie and although I am not a criminal, thief, or impersonator, the film very accurately portrays the techniques used in, um, making sure people who do wrong things often get, um, what’s coming to them. The only part I disagree with is how he operates face-to-face and leaves a trail. Fantastic movie. But the guy was forging checks while the worst I did was print up a fake company newsletter.
Mind you, he was not very good at keeping secrets. It was the incompetence of the police that let him roam free so long. He left trails that led them to his door several times. And he seems unaware of the danger of giving information to strangers. When you must give answers, have an airtight tale. Interesting movie, indeed. Later, I finished the movie, realizing I have seen the ending somewhere. There are often TV’s playing in a room when I arrive to set up the PA system.
Deciding to proceed with the 3-wire cable, since it has the same voltage rating, I discovered the mounting plate on the heater requires a special screwdriver that I may not have. That I also pieced out the piping needed to affix the wiring against the house wherever it is exposed to the elements. This is conduit rated for underground. That is all the work I got done today.
Trump is about to slash the NASA budget by 47%. Good. Force those bastards to trim the fat and get back to their only mission which is a colony on Mars. Everything else is bullshit that has been going on since day one of that Shuttle boondoggle. And where will Kosmos 482 impact the Earth? Optimists are hoping for Mexico City.
