One year ago today: September 23, 2024, planned circumnavigation.
Five years ago today: September 23, 2020, investigative luthering?
Nine years ago today: September 23, 2016, the evolving birdfeeder.
Random years ago today: September 23, 2012, the missing post.
Silver passed $44 at 5:32AM this morning. You bet I’m watching. As Evil Roy Slade said, “Keep your eyes peeled, or we’ll peel them for you.” I did not know some military medals have a minimum age and rank. That sucks. After minimal practice, I can receive semaphore much faster than I did as a kid, now averaging 30 wpm. I sent out a feeler for someone to practice with on-line (there are lots of sites that transmit). I prefer to receive, not send, as it can be done from cover. You see, my age & status probably qualify me for every medal in the book, so let somebody else be the hero. Pure logic, would you not agree?
This place has oodles of nice wood scraps until you need them. I’ve got the shelf in and I guessed right it can support the existing overhead shelf—if I get two matching pieces. So far no luck though I do have a $25 contract. Four half picture frames. What for? For art shows, where the frames and pictures are sold separately. These are painted wood “corners” that are held against the painting edge to determine the best color for a frame. Turns out there are four unofficial colors, white, black, brown, and grey. When I saw the store-bought versions for $85, I agreed to give it a whirl.
I see why they are expensive but they are also pretty basic. Here is small took box from scraps, some dimensions might seem familiar. I don’t really have things for all the boxes I’ve built. Think of it this way, I now have highly organized junk everywhere. The upper shelf I hope to fix was built from wood too weak for books. Live and learn, I may be able to attach spars to get it even again, which can wait for a cooler day. It was 90°F by the time I called it a morning. Let’s see if the world has anything as stimulating as my tool box. I’m bored with bitchute as it has become dominated by docutainment. Hour-long sermons about why the assassin was not left-handed and how this applies to the universe.
Naw, nothing much, even a let-up on the Trump hit pieces. I used the lull to experiment more with the planer. It requires fussy setup to get the boards to a precise dimension. It’s easier to cut the long pieces for each project and feed them through as a batch. If you change the settings, it is nearly impossible to get them back. And worst, the machine produces a mess on an industrial scale, five times faster than you even think you can clean it up. The Bissell vacuum I adapted works—but four or six short pieces and it is full. As soon as it’s full, the shavings blast back out the front of the unit.
Here’s pic of three microswitches salvaged from a microwave just because this post needs a picture around here for “balance”. I’ve got a cup of these devices around and can’t come up with something novel to build with them. I was thinking of some toy maze that allowed a marble to “think” its way out. It would work by have a hidden grid of say, 36 of these switches. A variety of 6x6 wooden maze patterns could be fit on top of this gride, which is mounted on a table that can tilt, causing the marble to roll. It would develop a “memory” of which paths did not work and eventually figure the path out.
I’ve been GenXed by my own phone. For some reason the speaker volume maxes out af barely audible. Before you could lay it on the table and hear it across the room, now you can easily think it is turned off. I’ve again dropped every menu, finding no control for this. Every few days Google locate turns itself on, which is crap, but I can’t play music any more on the speaker.
Camp Amache.
(Restored Japanese internment barracks.)
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Festus was finally the star again, but another drama. I find it cute how Gunsmoke widows all live on a farm and manage to run the thing themselves. The joke is how the ones with children are down to this day portrayed as catches. I’ve said it before, even dating women who’ve ever been married or even shacked up is like finishing somebody else’s saved game. This was a good episode, alas only two gunshots when the bad guys kill each other.
Let’s look at some investment material a lot of people do not consider, or if they do, consider it not important. You’ll recall my advice that are no good invest-and-forget places to park your money. The method exists, but it does not maximize your investment or give any warnings. Example, annuities. I suppose if you inherit enough money, they make sense. But how many people monitor the annuity for performance, check monthly statements, and compare them to alternatives? My guess is maybe 1%. Do you know if your “solid” annuity has been sold to a discount broker in China or Israel? My guess is no.
The other brand of investment is the one you monitor. One month is a good cycle, like the way I do even with my bank accounts. I reconcile after every transaction. And when I invest, I have my own set of books kept that detect any trends or changes. Even my CDs are pulled unless the rollover matches the introductory rate. (It never does.) To anybody who says my way is wrong, ask them if they know anybody who ever worked for Enron.
Caltier is back in the loop. I know the last disbursement was March 11 and they have not been forthcoming with news. I’ve asked repeatedly for a plain-English description of what is going on. However, I do not suspect anything, they otherwise appear to be functioning normally, and that mystery $500 that appeared in my account is par with the expected performance. They have appeared back on the scene with webinars (which I shun) and notes on this “requalification” thing that has gone unexplained for six months.
Let’s revamp a bit about Caltier. I chose them to learn the process and terms of Internet investing. I was met with jargon, form letters, and non-answers. But I boiled it down to classic dollars and cents which many outfits have a hard time admitting that’s all they do. One question never answered was what happens when an “offering ends”. Caltier Fund 1 ends on December 31 so we are about to find out what. No further investment? Or the fund wraps up? The term is even used in their prospectus but presumes you know what it means.
Caltier is sending out e-mails saying this seminar will be about the offering and requalification. But it will not let me register in my company name, so screw them. Their tone tips us off that there are two groups left in Caltier. Those who bailed and those who (like me) have waited it out. From my viewpoint, Caltier owes my group a huge set of favors. The first Zoom is slated a week from Friday, less than 90 days before the end of the offering and makes one wonder why the rush to requality, whatever that means.
How about this. A series of raids by US security departments were reported successful because there were no leaks. The watchdogs quickly pointed out in each case the FBI were excluded from the operations. I continue reading “The Runaway Jury”, marveling at the reasons jurists can be rejected. I’m equally disgusted by who is accepted because I’d hate to have that system rate any of those selections as my “peers”. For instance, where are they going to find twelve people in Florida who read and write every day and don’t watch television?
ADDENDUM
You did not hear this from me, but I have the opportunity to score a massive public relations coup. And it meshes with my October travel budget. It would involve dealing with Amtrak, who have degenerated into just impossible assholes since 2003. It is almost impossible to get a fare quote on-line without a DNA sample, but I know the direct link, and it is Amtrak fares although the screen may not appear that well on some monitors.
Our murder mystery remains top-grade. The Lego thief figures out who the killer is, and gets murdered for it with no clues who it could be. The time-line is moved up at least ten years when there is a referral to an “older 2011 Tahoe”, yet I cannot place the year of this recording.
