One year ago today: November 20, 2024, is Mars still on?
Five years ago today: November 20, 2020, what a funny “election”.
Nine years ago today: November 20, 2016, the youngest person ever.
Random years ago today: November 20, 1984, hello from Delhi, India.
I didn’t say Strait of Formosa, but I’m not the only one noticing NATO has stepped up torpedo practice. An 18-year-old babe was found murdered on a Carnival Cruise ship. That narrows down the suspect list. The MSM announces first photos of a Black Hole, but nobody can tell. In Canada, 100% of the television ads concerning assisted suicide show only White patients. If you wonder why the Democrats kept the Epstein files locked up, now we know. Of the 28,000 e-mails released so far, one fact dominates—Epstein hated Trump.
Sigourney claims she is “self-reliant”, and her mother the actress, and father, then president of NBC, whole-heartedly agree. Then again, there are some who say with reasonable good looks, a near-unforgettable name, and cash to fly from New York to the kibbutz to Yale acting school, that there exists (at least in theory) some point beyond which success becomes unavoidable.
aftwe Tampa radio played a tune this morning I’d hoped to never hear again. Buried deep in this blog is the tale of how Jerry, the Yakima orchard guy, used to torture RofR and I in the mornings to wake us up. He’d put on a 45 of Anne Murray’s “Snowbird” and lift the stack lever, so it played over and over until we got to the breakfast table. I hate that song and that is not her playing guitar on all those CBC videos. Another airliner turned back because a laptop dropped between the seats can catch on fire. Send them the bill.
An early morning knock on the door, it’s the caretaker from the nursing home passing out the warning. The city code ass-clown is making the rounds again, the one who, as far as is known, only cites single White men. He is so unpopular he has to ride around with the garbage truck but he’s so far this hardly fools anybody. Good thing I put the fencing, since I know this is an election year. Somebody at City Hall must like that guy, though I can’t really see it. I’ll move the Town & Country just in case.
It has no tag, which I know is a no-no, but that cannot be seem from the street. Still, I don’t want them guessing. Where am I going to put those boxes of tubes? I’ll figure something. Later, it’s all done, both parked vehicles are spotless which took some time with the leaf blower. I salvaged the clock from the T&C, but the radio and disk had separate control cables, hell with that. Howie was over and we moved the new fridge to the back, I’ll throw another tarp over it.
Careful as I was, the van is parked near Spanish moss and I got myself two terrible chigger bites to the belly. In this age, there is still no treatment except anti-itch formulas. I’m lucky, the spots will be gone in a day. I’m probably lucky, as at one point I had a whole clump of moss fall on me. That was today’s only excitement.
This next one has to be a joke, but I hope it isn’t. Trump announces the $2,000 tariff rebate will only go to those who voted for him. Does not make sense, because they would get $10,000 each. The thing is, even as a joke, it lit some of the weaker-minded Democrats on fire. They spend decades setting up USAID to buy support and don’t want anyone else doing it. Years ago I read the first couple chapters of “Brave New World” and didn’t care for it. Found it to be boringly based on the obvious, so today I tried to watch the movie. It was just as crappy. Or maybe I saw a TV serial, but no way I could finish that junk—but I fully understand the appeal it would have for the semi-educated masses.
Camp Amache today.
(WWII Japanese internment site)
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Using the hot hours to finish the small box from last day, the jigs seem to work fine. The smaller boxes have to be hand-assembled, which gives them a personality. They attend to get the lumber that is slightly thinner, which keeps the jigs working right, as they work only on the outside box dimension. Next, I devoted two precious hours to the laser etcher, experimenting with multiple and layered cuts. It really is a dumb machine, here’ what I learned.
This is something I have never programmed, but I have created graphics built up from “dots” and vector files use the same principle. These files tell your laser or printer or saw or drill where to operate via a series of commands to the servo motors. The first time I ever saw this was the dot matrix printer I bought in the 80s. I was first, but that just mean I had nobody to work with it. I have used machine language to display 7x9 matrix characters. If that is any indication of the work needed for lasers, I would gladly turn such tedium over to those who enjoy it.
Here’s a quick attempt at making labels. These are six wooden tags that should be identical, but they are not. Not the shapes, those missing chunks are just scrap wood from other tests. This shows a now standard message, the laser burns the letters quite well enough. But there is a second laser cut meant to slice the tags, and that’s where this small unit fails. This has to cut through the wood and I use five passes. Very slow production, plus I do not have the slicing table that allows the hot trimmings to fall down into a base tray.
These cuts are done in a separate step which turns out to be almost impossible to get exact. Back to trial and error, which is not a tactic that should apply to computers. The technique is to draw a rectangle around the lettering, then turn off the lettering layer and cut the rectangle layer. But too often, the square, which you copy to keep consistent, will not paste exactly, rather choosing the nearest pixel. Result? Each of the tags in this photo is etched slightly different, something I was hoping could be easily avoided.
Caltier is still in operation and still tight-lipped about this “requalification” process since last March—and the fund closes on December. I have been unsuccessful finding out what that means, but I have signed contracts that I am a partner-owner in each piece of real estate they own. And those properties are still up and running. Yes, I keep an eye on them, however before we continue, you should realize this is risky business. I do not know what Caltier is doing but even in the absence of the dividends, I opted to leave my money in place. Why?
My contract says that as part owner, I still am entitled to a share of the operating revenue and one reason I chose Caltier is I could never otherwise afford even a tiny corner of some of those pretty fancy properties. You can look at the Caltier website yourself. Presuming only $36 million of the $50 million “shares” sold, I own slightly over 1/2 of 1%. And the properties have been almost 100% rented the entire period since March.
So, while I do not know the exact source of the money, since that time, value of my holdings has increased by$1,836.07. Which averages over $280 per month, which dwarfs dividends. Another word of caution, these are number that appear on the website. They do not match my books and I do now know where their numbers come from.
ADDENDUM
Elliott, remember that guy? He has now dropped off the radar for five years. What’s his beef? Canada. He’s a Brit who lives in the Fraser Valley, which the world calls Vancouver. I met him because he was the parking attendant when I worked for a Canadian-owned company, so we spent quite a lot of long spells comparing the two systems. He was convinced, as were most Canadians, that their system was superior to the “degenerate” US. I was not so convinced. He loved to point out that “we Canadians” have everything “you Americans” have, but without all the violence, which they mostly see on TV. And Ottawa owns the stations.
Money was a big topic for us, how he was always saying food and gas was cheaper. He was big on price tags. The reality was, when I earned a dollar in Washington State, I got to spend 93ȼ of it.. When he earned a Canadian dollar, he got to spend 61ȼ. (This is not a take-home pay comparison, because the Canadian dollar was only worth 78ȼ in those days.) In reality, prices were much higher in Canada—but as usual, there is much room for argument on the details.
He was sold on the concept that Canada was safer and was a world class nation so smart they never had any of same problems as those dumb Americans. I would counter that Canada was a third-world nothing without the USA, that the eastern government was glossing over the problems that were very much there, and the nation could not forever sustain an economy with 2/3 of the population living off government paychecks and handouts.
But the fact that they had apparently gotten away with this for his lifetime proved him right. When I pointed out that Canada existed by selling off their unearned natural resources to a hungry neighbor, and that the country was owned 200 families and he did not even know their names, I was the conspiracy theorist. I quit that job in the 90s, he thought I was giving up a steady job for life, I thought I was getting out while the going was good. By 2010 Canada was well on the way to becoming a shit-hole and I had been in Florida over ten years.
The real scrunch started around 2018 and it has been a downward spiral since. House prices in the millions, eighth generation welfare families living in condos on the island. Government control of every aspect of life, and no way out. But it was past the point I could say I told you so, and he quit speaking, then quit e-mailing. And I’ve not heard from him in six or seven years. It’s rare I’m 100% right, but I was right how Canada turned out. And he knows it. I’m not even a hockey fan but I know no Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup in over 30 years.
And yes, 40 years ago today I was in Delhi, India.
