September 18, 2025

ursday Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 18, 2024, militarily, a master-stroke.
Five years ago today: September 18, 2020, left attacks campus speakers.
Nine years ago today: September 18, 2016, my own kitchen again.
Random years ago today: September 18, 2018, I finally name names.

           A lazy summer morning while I wait for the landscape to dry out and let me work. That doesn’t mean I fall victim to watching TV. That’s for losers, instead, here is another small amp circuit I’m testing. Still assembling the parts, you see a test for continuity. This demonstrates my tendency to include LEDs instead of plain wiring when it reveals a circuit segment is working. Think of them as multiple pilot lights. Seen here, the transistor (a 2N4401) is not yet affixed, meaning all we know here is that the circuit will accept a varying signal, and important test when your input signal arrives through a capacitor. The blurry presentation shows my new Vivitar lacks macro capability, dammit. A warning label should be required.

           9:00AM and the foliage remains soaked, so let’s find the Sun. My clock shows it is 13:01:32 over in England, so let’s choose another star in the northern hemisphere. Yes, the star is invisible in daylight, but that won’t stop us. Our tried and trusted 2014 Almanac says that day had a waxing gibbous (Moon) in the 23rd day of its cycle and the Sun was directly over 16°51’, which is usually over the middle of the Pacific when I’m navigationally active. So we choose the star Raselhague hoping for landfall.

           Where is the sun, anyway? Just north of the Equator southwest of Monrovia, of which I know nothing. The declination of 1.6982°N makes sense, as we are approaching the Equinox on about Sunday. But, where is the star? Aires is at W192° 23.3’. converted to Google-talk, this places Raselhague at W288.7856 N33.5328. We are on a riverbank south of Jarzawa, Pakistan. Spelled Harzawa in the Wiki, this, folks, is why I like to say, “The Chinese should get their own Internet”. The place is of such little consequence, it lacks even a TripAdvisor ad.

           She’s not drying out and I just found the problem with the cooler. The control screen goes dead if you leave it plugged in. Still, it is a valuable asset if I can get it to operate full blast, so let’s put it aside. The long term weather says an early winter and I did feel a blast of cooler air now and again y’day afternoon. That happens when the prevailing switches from west-northwest to north-northwest. That only changes during hurricanes, in which case the wind can come straight down from above your head.

           This damp fall weather brings out the mushrooms, and here is one right in my tire-tread where it best move fast or get run over. Is it edible? How would I know? Pencil for scale, it’s a bowlful if you want to chance it. Nearby see a video of the chore of clearing a space for the planer. This looks sturdy but I’m going add a 3/4" plywood base. Wouldn’t want folks thinking I was sleeping all day.
           Getting the unit into place will not be fun. I barely got it into the scooter shed, maybe I’ll take it out of the box over there, you can jump in and give me a hand. Staying at home a lot has doubled by coffee consumption, I won’t last the week at this rate. I have an excuse to go downtown. Sigh, it must be nostalgia, there has not been a pretty gal in central Florida since 1995, I’m sure.

           Staying under cover, I finished dismantling most of the microwaves, salvaging the microswitches that turn on the light and make sure the door is closed. This was the interesting part of my day, unless you’d like more fence talk. You would? Great, drop back this afternoon. Let’s see if there is any interesting news. Trump wants Omar removed, saying these foreigners have no business telling us how to run our country. The country that used to be England has approved 85 Sharia courts. When Jimbo’s show got cancelled he had less than 130,000 viewers, which does not compare well on some counts with this blog.

           And that latest Zuck demo of A.I. adds confirmation to my contention that it is not real A.I., just very advanced Bayes’ Theorem. I studied that back in the last century and know it when I see it. The shortcut to understanding is Bayes’ calculates the odds of an event occurring once another event has already occurred. See the lightning? It’s gonna thunder. Got it? No, not really, but that’s the premise. Now this is significant: back then, probabilities were based on sample size.
           What’s changed is the sample size. Surveys that once cost a bundle are now collected by methods like invading people’s privacy. On-line samples readily number in the tens of millions, thus diminishing the margin for error AND creating a complete illusion of “intelligence”. Now pay attention here, the next thing I say may be the most important comment you hear about A.I. this decade.
           When you consider the primary available free sample source was social media, it makes sense that all the original apps were chatbots. In fact, if one was to set out to fake artificial intelligence, that is probably the best way to go about it. This is the source of my original “Truth by majority rule” adage. You can no longer believe something is real just because that is the bulk data currently prevailing on the servers. Trust me, if you use A.I., one way or another, this is going to be on the exam.

Picture of the day.
Electric windows, A/C, 8 horsepower.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here you go, the by-how familiar trussed fence rails I sunk another fencepost which isn’t light work. The temperature stayed in the low 80s and other than the post-hole digger, none of it was hard on my back. A two-man crew could make money at this. I had to scrounge around for pickets and ran short. There should be a video of the approach showing you cannot see into the back yard without trespassing. I trimmed all the plant life that was in the way and was scolded constantly until I filled the birdfeeders. Setting up the posts and rails is like 4/5ths of the job of fencing. And my 4-foot level broke again. A sure sign my tools get used.

           Yep we have another raccoon crashing in the shed. He or she will move on once they clue in there is too much activity to settle in. They do not mind the sound of the saws which scatters the other wildlife.

           The book on railroad engineering convinced me I don’t want that job. These are the steam locomotives, not the super efficient diesel-electrics. All those gadgets and pipes need to be monitored by the engineer. There is even a pattern that new coal must be added. I can not tell some situations by the color and density of the smoke, ig you see movies where it is whitish-grey, that does not happen by itself. There is a five page list of how the engineer has to monitor the water in the boiler. No thanks, plus he also has to clean it with “rape oil and paraffin”, even the color of the water has to be watched. I don’t think they were paying those guys enough.

           Here is a video of walking from the street toward the back yard. Excuse the mess, I’m still shifting things around. This took a considerable amount of planning, as I wanted the privacy without the annoyance of a gate. When I’m busy, I walk to the back yard a lot, so I had many factors to consider. Here is what I hope will do the job.
           Large objects, like the wagon, will easily fit around these fences with little extra effort. And nobody can claim they got anywhere near my back yard by accident. In reality, I am years behind others in this city who have done the same. Privacy fences now surround my property on three sides, six foot high. Ownership has taught me the real lesson that most people only want to be left alone.
           The fence only looks continuous from the street. Once inside the yard, the fence supplies no security at all. I first applied this formula on the north side, where a solid fence would have required me to walk entirely around the house to get into the front yard. I noticed the fence looked closed from the street and applied the same theory here. I think it does a good job of it. Yes, that is the old Town & Country, soon to be junked.

           What’s this, a new ladies-only night club closed up after opening night when nobody bought a single drink. Is it a meme? Hard to tell, the report came from several sources. I was looking into wages and salaries when I found that one, but what surprised me is the low pay now common in tech jobs. If this is the result of hiring coders instead of real programmers, that does not surprise me—but the day of big-pay tech jobs is gone.
           Anything else? Yep, the Target boycott for going woke has now cost them nearly $13 billion in sales. Minnesota again claims that school lunches are “free” from the State. And the nearby picture? That is the new Samsung refrigerator that brings gas-pump advertising blasting into your kitchen. Remember when I posted how some millennial got an award for slowing down the gas pumps so you had to listen to the entire ad? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Last Laugh