One year ago today: September 29, 2024, tube economics.
Five years ago today: September 29, 2020, my long-awaited workshed.
Nine years ago today: September 29, 2016, medullary rays.
Random years ago today: September 29, 2015, silver fraud investigation.
Does anyone know about this site called “Buy Nothing”? It appears to be a swap community but there is no real info, just A.I. Two no-nos for me a membership required and it is backed by Facebook. But they have 11 million members and I have things I would trade. Check later for any follow-up. It’s computer people not having a party, they are struggling for jobs. I told you so, they are coders, not programmers, and Business Insider reports what I think is a clever point. That A.I. won’t put lawyers out of business, but lawyers who use A.I. will put those who don’t out of business.
I did have a sort of blogworthy event after all. I scored this faux leather office chair brand new for $5. I’d been meaning to get a replacement nearly a year and this unit is superb. Shown here, it’s outside because my kitchen floor at the moment does not exist.
Since this place won’t be ready by Thursday, I mailed JZ a final plan on how he can get here in time to visit for this weekend or next. As stated, this outcome is unlikely as JZ is not one for tight schedules and coordinated timing. Still, it would be nice to visit Alaine again. The point in most people’s life when visiting become important is just when the visiting slows down. I have some friends saying it stops all together. It doesn’t affect me much, as I’m usually the visitor—and I can tell you how even that becomes expensive over time.
Two parts of the economy are getting Trump’s attention. The furniture trade in North Carolina and Hollywood movies. Both have been practically wiped out by foreign competition. Too bad for the copycats, their sales were largely dependent on the US market. Trump has placed huge tariffs on these industries.
Moving plywood around is not that bad, what’s getting to me is being stooped over for so many hours a day. It’s unnatural for me, I’ve never worked in a rice paddy. My vision is marginally worse, a little more trouble seeing long narrow articles in around the 3 – 5 foot distance from my right eye. Be careful the lay the hammer down crossways. What an odd condition. Also, I may finally be experiencing minor hearing loss on the left, but not all the time. What’s with that?
Locker room in Finland.
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8:30PM and I’m exhausted, which leads to extra coffee consumption to I’m down to my last six cups. Will I make it? I have now reached what I used to call “Situation B”, and for me that can be a big nothing. It’s the condition where everything works, so I am comfortable, but none of the work is complete. The most recent task was the electrical wiring. As of ten minutes ago, all service is restored, and I’m now relaxing in a very comfy high-back chair. Later, I found a small tin of tea bags, so I’ll husband the coffee.
I downed a gallon of limeade, that freshly squeezed so there’s no scurvy on my watch. I’d hoped to get the new fridge into position but one of the floor panels lifted dangerously if you stepped on the corner, so I had to make the right, taking half an hour. Plenty of time to think, as the work goes 10% as fast as my brain molecules process the data. I’m disappointed that I found no truly useful articles produced by a hobby laser etcher/cutter. The world has enough keychains, trinkets, and wall plaques.
What I came back to was the idea of original design. Back in July, I toyed with the idea of a birdhouse with a pattern burned into the wood. This link shows I did a door and window. I could to logs and I successfully printed brick patterns. I did not know this was incredibly original compared to the junk I now know is out there. While that is so far the only idea I got for this device, it is at least a 3D product, one more dimension that the rest.
Watching some news on-line from Portland, I can tell you right now most of those rioters are not locals. It used to be a peaceful place when I spend any time there, mostly ’85 to ’95 when the losers from Frisco started creeping north. They found unconquered territory full of easy welfare and entire complacent cities. This time they are protesting the use of the national guard to deport illegals, conveniently forgetting they pioneered that move at Martha’s Vineyard. I know a few people who say it is regular army troops, but those people are known TV-watchers.
More to my frequency is the rising of metal prices. It could get brutal as one site shows how, if allowed to self-adust, gold would be trading today at $15,000 per ounce. More moderate sources say $7,000 as the decade closes. Nobody is allowing for panic buying, which is what I’m watching for. If I had an extra $30,000 right now, I’d put new shingles and siding on this place and do nothing for six months. (I’ve made myself such promises before.)
True, the military was snooping, and MicroSoft reacted, but that’s not the point. The community had MicroSoft’s sold word their data was safe, encrypted, and secure. This is how promises are made in the computer age. Your data can be all those things, while your account is being blocked. Ha-ha, you fell for it, zoomers.
I called it right about posture. I sat down in my new chair and fell asleep, waking after 10:00PM and the last two days of bending and kneeling got to me. No pain, but predictable fatigue. I felt like sitting there all night. Nice chair.
Drone radar, an upcoming field. The electronics are beyond my build level, but I know the theory. They use phased array radar. It works on the same principle as ripples on water. Some waves cancel, others complement. As the combined beams get further from the emitter, the more they become flat and like a straight line. By carefully timing multiple emitters, you can steer the spot where the phases are strongest. Called beam-forming, a strong beam means better, but narrower detection. So you build a whole array of small antennas to cover a wider field, firing the beams off in carefully planned patterns. Make the spectrum wide enough and powerful enough, and you have invented Starlink.
ADDENDUM
Thanks, readers, for three record-breaking blog hit days in a row. No rhyme nor reason, I call these a “bloom” and I know the averages. The past three days are twice the average. Since I’m certain I have not developed a winning streak or won any popularity contests, I will check a few of those dunce sites that rate other blogs. According to them the closest competition or similar blog to this one Pakistani eye clinic in DC and a video posting site called ehootz with 38 members. For all the big talk out there, it is rare for any non-promoted or personal blog to get 30 hits per day. I’m unaware of the current stats [of today] but when this blog began, only one in 10,000 was still posting a year later.
The draw, I theorize, is content. The others run out of steam in a week or ten days. There is also a discipline to posting daily. You probably know one of my premises is to record the extreme event of the day, good or bad. That’s a constraint, since I never have any way of knowing what others would consider appealing. I looked at the blogs ahead of mine in readership and it’s mostly sports, politics, porn, and gossip. While I will quote politics, it is because of the barrage since 2015, but as for the other blog categories, they are below my dignity.
