One year ago today: June 7, 2024, first sale.
Five years ago today: June 7, 2020, still checking out Forex.
Nine years ago today: June 7, 2016, early mention Trump-NPR conflict.
Random years ago today: June 7, 2012, Obama harasses Arizona.
I’m wide awake. Last day, Sandy asked me if I liked hot salsa. She gave me some packets and I put it on a ham sandwich without testing this morning. It’s the kind that gets hotter if you drink water. Here is one of the few pictures I still like of Mars, because by now humans should be on the surface themselves. It’s a volcano above the cloud cover early last month. The interest is these are water clouds, not the usual carbon dioxide. Called Mt. Arsia, it is also different in that it was photographed by Odyssey, which had cameras pointing downward only.
It runs on an Apple Mac chip and weighs around 1,600 pounds, If mankind ever gets to Mars, the transponder could find new life as an Internet link, since it is already used to relay the rover and copter data. Odyssey has orbited Mars around 100,000 times in 23 years, no other spacecraft comes close. This new series of pictures was accomplished by using the hydrazine “fart rockets” to tilt the downward-looking cameras toward the Mars horizon. It’s about the same height from the surface as the Space Station.
Observing that NASA uses the same navigation system on Mars, you know what I’d do if I had the time? I’d find out where all those failed Soviet and Russian (not the same thing, folks) have crashed or landed. Then I’d see if any of the US Mars rovers were ever nearby. Then I’d be famous for cooking up a story to sell to National Geographic.
I was too young to follow the original space race. Later, around the Space Shuttle time, I recognized immediately we were not going to Mars. Over the years more data means the Soviet’s early lead can be examined in detail. And what detail it was. They lost the Moon nut then focused on Mars. That story may never be told. They launched something like eight missions, all failures. But it is the intent/content of those projects that is fascinating.
The machinery failed, but every concept of the trip, from detachable landers to orbiting relays was all in place by 1970. I remember them sending Mars 2 without saying what happened to Mars 1, read it in the newspaper on my paper route. I sat in the downtown hotel lobby instead of at home so I’d have peace and quiet. It was not until 2021 that I saw a photo of the craft. My conclusion is that NASA copied that Soviet design, including a soil probe and a small rover. My overall disappointment with NASA means I quit wasting time on them between 1975 and lately.
Much of my current attention to all this space stuff if a spin-off of my decision to read up on navigation some 11 years ago, was it? It is inherently complicated and is likely to remain in the realm of magic to most people.
Completely off the topic, but during my research on the Odyssey, I hit on this link about raising pigs. It’s 20+ minutes long but the narration is gimptard-paced, so you can 2x the speed and get all the facts. I knew nothing about raising pigs until I saw this video. Do not let the Reb see this, she considers the pig to be a very intelligent and happy animal. I rarely eat pork now and never when she is around.
Brown recluse spider range.
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What’s this? An 800-person standoff in Los Angeles. The illegals have blockaded some ICE agents in a warehouse. Since it is impossible nobody saw this coming, is this the incident that calls out the National Guard? Why not, they’ve been playing weekend soldier since Kent State. This is some sort of key event that will cause a lot of fence-sitters to choose sides. It’s one thing to feel sorry for illegals, another to watch them streaming down our streets waving foreign flags and demanding the right to stay here. I’m with the side that hopes this is the trigger.
Out in the shed in the late afternoon, I put the finish on five more boxes. I’ve learned to split production into phases that match my energy. I can build six a day, but why? Six every two days is a nicer pace. You just have to get used to partially finished product stacked around and to know precisely where you left off each box so as not to miss a step. There was a slight breeze and I had put a lot of chicken on to boil, that added a wonderful dimension to the shed forty feet away.
Finding the white fir planks too heavy for Zboxes, I built a tool box with one Golden Ratio side twice as long. It seems to retain the appeal. So I’ll see if it is suitable for tools, adding that it is also easier wood to work with. It cuts more evenly, less dust, and does not seem to cup when sliced into shorter pieces. I know I’m covering the ground same as a million other carpenters, my comportment is that having it as a hobby beats having it as a job. The nearby photo is here to show I have not been neglecting the smaller E-box. This is a build from y’day.
I’ll point out the differences from last month. Note all the joints are exactly perpendicular and tight. This uses the newer TiteBond glue. This unit was built without fussing around with clamps or jigs, other than cutting. The build time is just under 20 minutes, and this unit has a tiny gap in the bottom panels you can see in the upright view. What’s happened is this older design benefits from all the experience gained with the Z-box and I think it shows. No thumbholes when the box is meant to be used for storage only.
And there is something else that affects production. I’ve gotten comfortable again. This slows the renovations down and I still have not finished the wiring. My excuse this time is the rather constant pain over the previous months means I have not done things just for fun. And I require that just as much as anyone else except for television addicts. At this point in time, building boxes is the most fun. Then, making up ten pounds of chicken, then five of spuds, and now some coffee. It reminds me that I bought this cabin so that I would eventually take it easy. Did you know I partied almost every night from the day I turned 18 until I was 58? Never missed a good time—and met only one keeper in those forty years of looking. Between 75 and 80 came close, mind you.
ADDENDUM
At the time, I owned a small taxi company in the city. By the 1990s, GPS and satellite maps had barely reached southeastern Venezuela, so a printed city map was a prized possession. Gilbert had found this copy in an abandoned dentist’s office, a real treasure at the time. It was already ancient when I received it, already a candidate for restoration. So I did not dare to unfold it when I found it in storage here this week. I scanned what was left of the cover and mailed the map to the museum west of the old Colonial Hotel.
Alas, 9/11 stopped me from travel to Venezuela since. The picture of the waterfall on the cover is Angel Falls, at that time a two hour flight by DC3 to a base camp. It was another six hours by canoe to the falls. Incredible, but nowadays you can take hang-gliding lessons off the top. Sadly, the trip is not that well-documented, but if I find anything, for sure I will blog it. The map carries no date of publication, but the fashions and original street names put it around 1965. It could be as early as 1935. Venezuela had telephone service before most of the USA, so the advertising on the map does not date it well.
The real center of activity in the city is the road along the riverbank just off the right side of this view. Renamed Paseo Orinoco before I first got there in the late 1980s, every inch of waterfront property is now owned by Arabs and Japanese for another 200 miles up this river. The local beer is called “Polar”, made by Germans who form a measurable fraction of the population. And son, they sure know how to make beer. Nothing like it in America.
When I lived there two years in the 1990s, I dated an 18 year old actress, what a beauty. Memory fades, I believe her name was Yanista and she starred in a “movella”, the equivalent of our TV soaps. The family insisted she get an education so they shipped her off to a college town on the Caribbean. Barcelona, that’s it, 43 feet above sea level, not yet hit by my navigational crosshairs.
So there. Don’t let anyone tell you all I did with my life was play bass and build small boxes behind an old cabin in Florida.
