June 5, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 5, 2024, a busy day.
Five years ago today: June 5, 2020, rumors of cell phone tracking.
Nine years ago today: June 5, 2016, first quiet morning.
Random years ago today: June 5, 2009, today was dead then, too.

           When is gossip not gossip? Around here that is when you either read it in the newspaper or get it from the source. Yes, we still read newspapers because sometimes they come wrapped around crossword puzzles. When I include the units returned for re-work, it was a zero month. That does not tell the whole story. The original display had a mix or z-boxes and e-boxes with early manufacturing discrepancies. They are now replaced with matching new inventory and the latest improvements. But I don’t have to ask to know May was a brutal month for everyone around here. Silver went up $1.40 in one day, some sort of record. High price was $36.14.

           So, remember the ruckus across the road? It was the daughter again, the one I thought was a troubled teen. Well, she’d be 74 now and she was running from the cops. Family being what it is, mother let her hole up in the small barn behind the garage. Mom is living in since the daughter set the main house of fire a couple years ago. Mom, suspecting something was up, told her she could stay, but no lights at night, no parties, no visitors. So what does the daughter do? The opposite. She was having food delivered, duh.
           Here’s the Prez’s new digs up in Pennsylvatioa. Mini-mansion, twice the size of his old place here. Love that attic and I didn’t ask but I’ll bet this cost a third of what he sold for here last month. Including the finished attic, five bedrooms.

           Today’s morning paper says she got 7-1/2 years in the slammer. Since I doubt she’ll be a model prisoner, she won’t get out until she is around 82. Then, it is welfare for life, something I am totally against. That should be dealt with by charity. My stance is in this day an age, Americans expect to be paid to listen to the world’s sob stories. Myself, I’m craving coffee and a bowl of pasta. These are the things I should be concerned with, to hell with the rest. Now, the Reb can tell different pasta blindfolded, but to me it is all the same. And I made plenty, help yourself. That wonderful aroma? The sauce has fried onions, not raw. Fried in butter.
           That $3,360 MRI I hand on Monday, I asked them for a copy of the CD per my doctor’s request. They billed me $25. That’s the state of Joe Biden’s America. The only people still making money are rip-off artists. In other news, Tinder has launched new software that “helps women avoid short men”. Some smart aleck asked if they had a filter for fat women and if they could have found him, he would have gotten his arse chewed off.

Picture of the day.
Heiroglyphics chart.
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           The Treasure Barn lady, Tracy, and I, had around a twenty-minute meeting. She’s relieved I’m hardly like what she must be used to in consignment sellers. She likes the new design and my lack of urgency over sales. Like myself, she has never produced anything by assembly, but I have the advantage of knowing what is involved thanks to accounting. I know the money is not made on the production line, that entire phase is nothing but a cost. Oddly, my old pal Elliott had this backward. He always thought in terms of making this or that much per hour. Which reminds me, he still owes me $55.

           I calculate hourly rates sometimes, but these are for comparison, not set goals. Today, I was out in the shed for 90 minutes and made seven boxes up to the stage of fitting that last custom-cut bottom slat. I made two if the e-boxes which now seem like making a toy. According to traditional thinking, I’m only making around $3 per hour. That’s based on sales. I know people that would quit, but they do not understand business. That’s $3 more per hour than doing nothing, and selling at “a loss” is still revenue. If she lowers the price to get sales, I told her I would adjust my rates accordingly. I’m not expecting a goldmine off my first product.
           Here’s a stupid gif. I really do not have anything better to offer today.

           The different navigation tables are much better reading once you know what the columns mean. I have never calculated any ground positions except the Sun. I want so give Aries a try, to say I’ve done it and to discover if calculating a fixed object has any surprises. It is 03:45:18 GMT. Let’s look up the position and leave it at that. It’s late and I’m somewhat tired. And let’s choose a star, Canopus, because I see Aries in just an hour angle, and we want some coordinates.
           Assuming I’ve made no mistakes, Canopus is directly over S52°43’ by W214°44’. In Google/Garmin, that is -52.6830° by -214.7040°. Nearest land is north, a 6 acre rock some 16 miles off the south coast of Tasmania named Pedra Branca. Called an erosional remnant, it separated 15,000 years ago, not very long at all. It is bleak and cold in the Antarctic currents and often hit by freak waves.
           It stands 200 feet out of the water, but a Japanese fishing boat managed to hit it in 1973.

ADDENDUM
           In yet another sort of mystery of the kind I do not know if I am the only one who notes such things. I make up a monthly deposit to my funeral account by rounding down my income and adding any full rolls of coins from Found Money. I found there are a disproportionate number of entries ending in $27.50. Glancing back, I see this to be also the same for $47.50, $57.50, and so on. Both my income and Found Money are, within parameters, random numbers, what is happening? Aha, because if you take one roll of each coin (quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies), you get $17.50.
           Since I round down to the nearest ten bucks, adding back $17.50 explains the constancy. That in itself is no coincidence. I’m getting to that. I empty the change bucket once a month, and roll the coins, with any leftover coins go back for the next month. The amount in the jar almost fully comes from change while shopping, so that should also be random, correct? It isn’t. Since March of 2020. most months show that I have exactly one roll of each coin.
           All checks and money orders here are tracked with precision, it was easy to pick out this pattern. If, for example, there had been two rolls of, say, nickels, the telltale number would be $19.50, and so on. How is it I seem to get one roll of each consistently? I don’t know, but I imagine there is some factor to it that was once worked out.

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