September 17, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 17, 2024, ‘introductory offer’ CDs.
Five years ago today: September 17, 2020, it’s a hurricane.
Nine years ago today: September 17, 2016, ha, neither will admit . . .
Random years ago today: September 17, 2007, why I love Mation.

           Florida summer weather report. High 90° with 50% chance of showers. Best snooze in weeks, but I was out so long my override timer shut down my entire system, just doing it’s job. Took half this morning to restore enough to see silver is dawdling around $42. Here is the promised feature on the fancy box, which got put through the paces at the WPM last evening. Notice the embossed pattern. We remain undecided if this was branded or lasered, there is evidence for both. If laser, there are mismatches along the edges and the depth seems too even. If pressed by heat, it would be too hard to make it match while disassembled and would crush this wood if done after.

           The investigation took nearly an hour, so here are just the highlights. Most impressive to me is the bevel cuts, shown here in two lid positions. Closed, you can see only the hinge barrel, not the flaps. And when opened, this bevel hold the lid upright if you can see where I’m pointing. The box has been lined with a lighter wood, which I appreciate must be expensive. The open box shows how this lining is pretty as anything, and also provides a lip into the lid when closed, obviating the need for a clasp.

           As for the purpose of this, the inside has an aroma of cedar, possibly artificial. But not a hint of tobacco any of us could detect. If it is a cigar box, it was never used for that. Plus, it does not make sense to me why expensive Polish labor would be used to construct this. However, and this is a big however, I was unaware there are cigars that cost $400 to $4,500 each (or in their lingo, per stick). Here is a link to the cigar source used in this study.

           One restriction is that the cigars that would be used in this box would be available. Some sticks more expensive would at least have their logo on the wood, I would think. More expensive cigars are messenger-delivered, or will fly you by private jet to the factory where the product is hand-rolled by blind-folded or limited to 300 sticks per year. I did not know they grew tobacco in the Himalayas. Even if you are as disinterested in smoking as myself, I recommend you follow the above link out of sheer curiosity that some cigars sell for $1.36 million each. Later. When left outside to warn in the sun to 89°F, the cedar-like lining gains a very, very slight aroma of chocolate. What is this box?

           Next up, I got that LG portable AC up the steps and into the kitchen. It’s a heavy and substantial piece of equipment, I should probably have gotten help. If fired right up and all I can find wrong is it is stuck on 72°F. If that’s the case, that is well within my comfort range. I left it on in the kitchen and if is just enough to cool the whole room to comfort level, no more. We’ll test it a bit more, but the hot part of summer is over. So maybe this will save me buying a new unit over this winter. The website says it can also heat, which would save me buying a overhead as well. I have hopes for this unit. While it does not blast cold, an hour later it kept the whole kitchen an even temperature. This isn’t easy in Florida. I normally have to run fans to keep things constant.

Picture of the day.
Gran Habano #5
($185,000 each)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Keep active, they said. This afternoon I did a five-hour tidy up and a zero-beer barrel burn. All I had in the icebox was a Heineken 0.0 that must be two months old. I left it and dove into the yardwork knowing the rain wouldn’t be long. In this case, it waited until 5:30PM, is yeah, I got a lot done. Since that’s the top story, here’s roughly how it went. First the recycle materials, that’s tin and plastic, then with the electric chain saw to slice linden limbs (I have lots) into barrel-size. I moved the scooter and wagon out of the way for the fence who’s main purpose will be to hide the back yard and hang tools.
           At a loss to make this interesting, I’ll go over what got accomplished. The pallet wood is all cleaned in record time. The scooter shed is forty paces closer to the center of the yard and the burn barrel. Makes a difference when you’re over 50, and hey, at least I have two things my detractors don’t. One, my own yard to clean up and two, the stamina to do it. The scooter shed is central but it has no windows and is dark enough to require electric light during the daytime. It’s wired well, so there will soon be fans, tools, music, and I ran in a temporary air line.

           Above is a view of the redundant fence, now properly weathered. It is the far left side that we don’t need, the right side forms the west wall of the scooter shed, but it is not affixed to the frame and can be removed. Ignore the mess, everything is being moved about. The second panel shows the section no longer needed, revealing the “truss” arrangement of anti-sag bracing. This does not show a fail, the braces were added after the sagging began and arrested it.
           So the pallet work went fast. Pop out the nails, slice out the good skid lumber, the rest tossed into the barrel out the east wall where there is no wall. It’s a firing range but I may seal it off as I’ll need tool storage when I move the planer. I cleared the space in the big work shed. It will probably fit, but again, I don’t know how much space is needed around the work space.
           I dismantled two old microwaves for the electric motors. The remaining components have no real use for my projects beyond that. I do not need the west wall on the scooter shed and it is comprised of a single large factory fence panel. It served as the original blind to the back yard. The new blind is 25 feet closer to the house, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll just move the old panel and use the lumber I save to make the scooter shed a bit nice to work inside. I’m back inside due to rain but I see the neighbor got flooded out again overnight. I slept right through, must have been a real doozie. That was my big day, proving you are never really broke as long as you have something to work with. Sure, I know it isn't always exiting, so I settle for informative--and that beats the my-cat-had-kittens bloggists, of which there are so many. See how nice I am to the world?

           There is a upsurge in media posting that people should grow their own food. I agree, but the movement does not consider the cost. Most people do not own a garden or the tools. I tried twice to grow potatoes in my north and east yards, where the textbook says conditions are good. Nothing sprouted but if I price my labor at $25 per hour (less that I was making in 1995), that first potato would have cost me $830.60 and the breakeven point was some time in the 2030s.
           I set the camcorder up to watch if the rain quenches the fire. Then spent an hour trying to convert the format to WMV when I decided on a coffee. I stepped out into the hallway and what a shock. That church AC had the entire kitchen and hall cold. The unit is substantial but I was not prepared for it to work so well. There must be something wrong with it or they would not have tossed it away. I found the reset button and now can set the temperature, but left it at 72°F. I was truly surprised how it set half my house cold.
           Mind you, this is the same church that threw out the two AC units that I still use in the worksheds when those get intolerable hot. They only crank out full blast but that is pretty welcome when you need it. This is an LG1415 and it has a heat setting I have not tried. The weather is dropping into the 70s at night but it was colder than that just now and that kitchen is the hottest part of the building, having no shade from the direct overhead sun. It’s missing the remote control, hardly a concern if keeps my kitchen both hot or cold.

ADDENDUM
           Ha, have you seen eBay pricing? The Trump tariffs are a percentage of selling price, so to get around it, foreign sellers have cranked up shipping fees. Your camera lens still costs $300, but they want $1,800 to ship it to the USA. I don’t imagine this will get them very far. NASA is shifting strategy toward claims of “life on Mars”, an obvious public relations ploy. They are dribbling out announcements about trace samples of organic compounds. On Earth at least, there are certain signature compounds that can only be produced by life. That fact is, we do not know that is true everywhere. I do hope life is discovered in my lifetime, and not life that can be explained away by the anti-Darwin contingent.
           Lately youTube has taken a real dive. There is no way to filter A.I. generated junk from real battlefield video. And the A.I. versions just parrot the propaganda long after it’s been exposed. Serious historians know that Montgomery was a loser and Patton’s big three “victories” (Kasserine, Sicily, Bastogne) were all over territory the Germans had recently abandoned except for rear-guard units.

           You have to really dig for facts, worse now than before computers, a telling commentary on how the quantity ousts quality. I was looking for action use of Soviet Sagger anti-tank missiles and was surprised by the lack of a large explosion when an Israeli tank was hit. You could see the misslile flare being guided right into the tank armor, but no big boom. This suggests and internal explosion but the tank does not always look knocked out. I could not find any video on the SAM missiles in action against the Israelis. That does not surprise me as you’d have to be standing beside a SAM and the Egyptians would not like that.
           The Arabs knew one thing, that their SAM sites take a long time to set up and after that they cannot keep up with advancing armor. They begin losing the moment they step out of SAM range. And the Israelis won’t release any footage of losses attributable to enemy weapons.

           One more thing, this test video proved popular enough that I'm including it here permanent. (That's blog-permanent, so supply your own grain of salt.) The test was to see if I could capture a file that had massive anti-copy protection. There is a surge of such antics every few years, but they never last. If it isn't free, does it belong on the Internet. Don't ask me, but if you do ask, wait to see what changes should I ever make money off this blog. If you must know, this video attracted an extra 732 clicks. But it isn't that kind of blog. It does, however, make me think past my Internet Golden Rule, that is, "If something makes money for you on-line, NEVER change the premise." Look at eBay, although they did such a shitty job to start with.

Last Laugh