One year ago today: November 23, 2024, slow-walking Lebanon.
Five years ago today: November 23, 2020, laced with pepper.
Nine years ago today: November 23, 2016, beware the Trans-Pacific.
Random years ago today: November 23, 1981, 44 years ago today.
This morning we talk tools and plans, it’s a fine Sunday for it. And we have time, I’ve got a ham/onion potato casserole in the oven for breakfast later. Um, I’d show you a picture of the tool tote, but it’s gone. Did not last five minutes last evening. I made a late trip to the old club (dead, six customers instead of sixty), terrible Karaoke dude playing pseudo-rap.
Brought his own table who were his only fans. Did I just say “only fans”? Anyway, I was there to deliver the circular saw, but Josh was an hour late, so I wrote two letters (Hersh and Ten, the new contact). I didn’t care for the tote (the mini-tool box) so I threw some accessories in it. Pencil, pen, ruler, clips and took it along with me.
Let me elaborate somewhat. India is the sort of gal that in movies before my time would be tagged as willowy. I never knew what that meant, apparently smooth and flowing. And she was dressed for that tonight, a very light beige dress letting the world know she still has a dynamite figure. We have yet to slate a sit-down to go over the marketing system she has, but I’ll tell you what I think in the addendum. She insists I show her the yagisuki prodess, having picked up it is not quite as easy as it seems. Take this to mean she has a use for the technique. I’ll find out, women always talk, kind of like I always write.
Here is the dowel cutting device/tool mentioned. It’s a crude design but at $30 for the best, I’ll buy one soon. I see Harbor Freight is selling a countertop plasma cutter for $99, don’t rule it out. Wilford reports he has seen one of those fancy laser cutting tables, but recalls it was not automatic. Why, months after getting a laser and having watched a dozen tutorials, is this product never mentioned? It never appeared until I independently found I had a need for such a contraption. Of course, I want one that can be programmed or at least easily adjusted in place. It never even appeared in the “people also liked” banner—tipping us off most people never get much beyond their unboxing. Figures.
This page needs a picture here. How about this breakfast casserole bake, or make that with spuds, cubed ham, and onions. Ah, the aroma, look at this feast. Oops, you were too slow again. The oven is back. Yes, it does take ten minutest to preheat, but that’s you signal to use extra time with the ingredients. I doubt I’ll move far this morning. Howie is off the DisneyWorld, they don’t actually go to the exhibits. It’s a birthday party and they meet at a renowned café, what is it called? I think I had a beer there one 20 years ago. Bierhouse, no wait, Biergarten, hey, this is the Internet age, look it up yourself. I recall it was the only reasonably priced eatery there. The buffet is $50 a person, reports Howie. Make it $60, with tax and the un-American custom of tipping.
In Googlespeak, that is -90.8144°W by -36.4208°S, way off the coast of Chile. Nearest land of any note is the town of Coronel, where the Brits got their arses kicked for the first time since the Napoleonic wars. The outbreak of WWI caught some German battlecruisers from their base in China, where they could not return because Japan was a potential enemy.
Von Spee opted to sail for Chile which has a sizeable German population. Neither his fleet or the British squadron were major warships, it seems neither was anticipating meeting the other in force. The upper hand went to the Germans who had all their ships using the same call signs so the British thought they had found a single light cruiser. Oops! To make matters worse, the crews of the larger German ships were recipients of the Kaiser’s award for expert marksmanship.
It was not the big battle that history tries t make it, the Germans lost not a single man. But, they had shot off half their remaining ammunition and there was nowhere to get more. Another part of history I intend to look at is the middle of north Africa, along the Mediterranean coast. If you examine the population, you see mostly the coast. I never did accept the reasoning that these communities lay claim to such huge swaths of the interior. Algeria, for example, is separated from what they argue is theirs by a chain of mountains most of them have never crossed.
In fact, it was the French, not any native Algerians, that began to extend control south into the Sahara. It was a European age of conquest and discovery and any Algerian who claims otherwise is talking through his turban. It’s one of the few communist led revolutions that had no real basis in land claims anywhere, there was no real tribe of Algerians. And I think the audiobook I’m reading is heading toward claiming that there was.
This prodded me into finding that old Quinn movie, “Lion of the Desert”, which I am now watching. And I must commend it on remarkable attention to detail, right down to the medals on the uniforms and the official angle of the salute. It’s a war movie so I would almost naturally spot most flaws and so far, nothing. This movie is uncanny in a lot of ways.
Illegal pinball machine, 1930s.
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Kooters, as we knew it, is gone. The place has been in trouble a while and the word is a new owner has canned the entire staff. It’s closed with rumors of a new opening day in December. I admit to going there once every three months or so and did not like the price increases. The common objection to the place is the heavy aroma of decades of smoking. The place is beyond fumigation. I’m watching for a simple reason—I don’t think the place is worthwhile for anyone unless they can get that elusive liquor license.
One can almost hear the roaring laughter as the X account location displays the hypocrisy and blatant lying behind some of the big influencing sites. What a joke, with countless fake sites advocating “racial tolerance” and a host of such issues all based in India, Pakistan, Israel, or Bangladesh. That white guy from LA who converted to Island to many his wife? The English Lord he felt is countrymen were intolerant? The Vatican official who promotes interracial everything? Yep, all paid actors.
I never did learn what pressures led X to this. I suppose it to be a reaction to A.I. and spreading of misinformation. One critical field tells how often the user has changed names, but what surprises me is people are still dumb enough to do that. But my biggest laugh was reading how almost all those Japanese “cartoon porn” and feminist sites were almost exclusively Koreans. The Japs worship their cartoon porn, it’s as close as they ever get.
The most significant revelation to me is how the son of George Soros has fled and is based in Niger. Trump recently announced the use of anti-racketeering laws to go after Antifa funding around the same time. Niger does not extradite to the USA.
China and Korea now build 75% of the world’s ships, with the US a distant sixth place, building just 48 last year. The higher figure of 98 ships includes military and that distorts reality. The US has 60 yards capable of shipbuilding, but for how long now? There is also a new presence on-line, called “Podium of Liberty” or similar. The shift is real, with the Clinton’s being forced to testify, the Epstein people pleading the Fifth, and the latest round of indictments are not melting away like before.
Now I’m facing a crisis. I just drank the last coffee pod and I am not driving to town in the dark. I have tea, but that is like starvation rations for this cowboy. I’m ending a lazy day reading a bit more about G files, the nickname for the vector files that guide the laser and CNC cutters. That’s when it hit me, I’ve seen this sort of positioning before. I once looked at a stream of GPS data and saw that it had to know where B was before it could get there from A. This is different than seeking out the target and I always thought that is a very vulnerable system.
But it also told me not to pursue any electronic projects that calculate vectors, because I am no good at that sort of arithmetic. In other news, X and others have deactivated their translation software for Hebrew, claiming it was over Gaza, but actually because it was translating the Jewish Bible and infuriating people. A historic first, I think.
ADDENDUM
Marketing to me means a large amount of patience over people, not my strong point. India has mentioned she has some experience with Etsy-like selling, which could work but is likely on a very small scale. She quite understandably wants to be shown the process rather than learn it herself. Ah, if only I had such luxury in my life, somebody to show you the easy, best, and right way to do things. How off the wall that this late in life I still lament that those who have such an advantage are least to appreciate it.
What I do know is she has kids but they seem school age and she can come and go as she pleases. This reminds me of Marion and the immense struggles we had trying to find some work she could do at home—but this was prior to the Internet and we failed. Back then, you needed a fortune to start anything or strangely, you’d run afoul of some law or bylaw. Back then the city even had restrictions on how many vehicles could pull up in front of your house and the utility companies were always on the lookout for any unusual usage patterns.
The Internet did impact the whole scene, but it hardly democratized small business. Instead the usual pattern of 1% success, 99% barely making it. And that 1% caught in the never-ending spiral of constant growth to survive. The largest unspoken factor working against any startup is competition from those who do not have to make a living at it. Media tends to lump competition together as a beneficial large process. But that is not the case, there is a silent form they don’t even mention, and it is a barrier I did not really know until I crossed it.
Here’s the difference. My competition is not the multimillion dollar factory that can churn out boxes for less than my cost. It is the guy up the road who does not have to make a living at it. He has all he needs to fire up and build a bunch of boxes if he feels like it. He can give them away for all he cares, and I have now become that guy. This is also the basis of why I say most cottage industry investment amounts to buying yourself a shitty-paying part time job.
That’s not changed by the Internet, just grown in scale, Having said that, another factor comes into play. It’s how you get to not having to make a living at it. Years, money, sheds, are all barriers to market entry if you don’t have them, and are a loss unless you have some way to sell your output. I sell on eBay and told you what a hassle that is, far from the list-it-and-forget-it process they would have you believe.
Enter India. She gets a listen because even the potential of someone to do the sales is rare enough. She evidentally, like myself, does not have pay the bills with it. In fact, most any money I make is infinitely more likely to get invested than spent. This is why I need a bit more information about her situation, if only to ensure she never develops a dependency.
