One year ago today: November 25, 2024, me, the pooch, & the highway.
Five years ago today: November 25, 2020, Sparkie is gone.
Nine years ago today: November 25, 2016, it’s salvageable.
Random years ago today: November 25, 2020, . . . that don’t cost money.
I keep an eye out for new Arduino publications and there is a myth that can wreck your microcontroller that I warn against. It is the use of PWM (pulse width modulation) as a power source. Folks, it is not for power, it is a signal. Folks, get your info from the Arduino site on this one. The PWM signal is barely powerful enough to blink and LED and should never be used to power a device, such as a motor. You would use the PWM to control a transistor, which in turn could power the motor, but PWM is not a power source.
Aha, a light cloud cover and I was in that back yard, hacking back the jungle. A fire in the barrel for three hours and I got most of the hard part finished. This photo shows the new work bench taking form ever so slowly in the scooter lean-to. Past noon, it got too warm for steady yard work, so I cleared up the shelf area of the scooter shed. I’ll need some more lighting in there. I put in a good day but my back is not cooperating.
I kind of left it, so it must be attacked in two stages. I did this, and it got me back, a sneak move by Mother Nature. First stage, use pruning shears so you can get close to the stems. The large clippers to trim down near the stump. That’s where I met grief. The plant grows high and overhead, and I trimmed the lower twigs. Thus I was under the higher branches when I cut the stems. This caused a shower of burrs, and I was working in the heat without hat or shirt. A cloud of burrs descended on me. Around 60 of these got into my hair. Chest, arms, legs, head, beard. Nasty little buggers.
They would not rinse or shampoo off, I spent an hour picking them one by one and most caused hairs to be ripped out by the root. The sneaky plant, I had seen the burrs but they were in little clusters like small blackberries. I’m happy enough to be able to walk back there, this photo shows the old target shelter. It will become an integral part of the fence back there, a fence that has never stayed perpendicular on its own.
Texas dove hunting.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Including the time with the burrs, I was busy six hours and read for Gunsmoke. It’s true, we’ve seen all the good ones. All that’s left are soapy dramas, this week about a Marshall that turns into an old drunk and warns Matt he’s in for the same. As the neighbor operates his TV, we get glimpses of news. It is so strange to know a die-hard Democrat. The propaganda works, because he firmly believes the 20 million illegals were let in by Trump as Biden valiantly tried to block them with all his might, but Trump was just such a dictator.
India did not text to confirm the jam session. This confirms she is unreliable, so I will move on by myself. If she sells anything now, there is no free inventory. I get it, she is going through a lot, but she is also doing Wilford, which is fine except she will get dumped for a younger version with no kids. Like I said, her use to me is whether she can sell boxes, but I do kind of like her as a person. A person who has brought immense personal struggles upon herself.
Myself, time to get ready for the big day. Nope, not Thanksgiving. I don’t usually give a lot of thanks to things that I had to work my ass off for. I mean the first bird in the oven of the new stove. Here’s four pounds of spuds getting ready for the big boil. The chicken is going into the fridge to thaw even though I have the microwave. Because the micro will begin to cook the outer layers and that is a no-no for the Reb, and Taylor, if she ever shows.
No, she is probably unaware of this extra step. She does not habitually read this blog, and when I’m in Tennessee, she already knows everything that’s going on. They got winter there and down here in the tropics that translates to medium cool. That means rest up because if it is below 70°F tomorrow, I’m in that back yard again. Get ready for a quiet winter in my own back sheds, doing stuff, like it was meant to be.
And remind me to get coffee again. Same as back Seattle-way, this kind of weather takes my consumption up to 8 or 10 cups per day. That’s why I’m preparing for a cold winter, spend more time at home, spend less money, and wait. The real climate that needs to change is the economy. Will it be an AI bubble? The stock exchange again? Real estate?
I ran enough numbers to know that I cannot ever invest enough to gain through interest alone—and interest is the primary method to survive on after say age 70. Unless you want to try living on social security. Not one box has been sold, though having such a hobby has taken things like my travel and entertainment budgets down to manageable levels. And who knows, I may stumble across something. This has background, because I’ve read many tales from the trailer court about people who’s hobby paid off. I just did not realize how few people had a productive pastime. Factoring that in, the success rate is significantly higher.
ADDENDUM
Since I won’t have time later, here’s a quick review of some budget items to date this year. These are a few major items that are tracked, relatively fixed expenses like insurance, property tax, and utilities are not usually included.
Groceries: $2,396Any observations? Yep, the biggest expense is groceries, but still less than any of the previous five years because I’m not spending as much time in Tennessee. Entertainment is lower from playing out, where mostly the drinks are free and I’m not taking the Reb to the movies as much at $60 a pop. Gasoline usage is also down correspondingly. A surge in office expenses is totally from increased costs of telecom/WiFi which has almost doubled since February.
Entertainment: $1,256
Gasoline: $1,770
Household:$1,165
Office/Phone: $1,298
Vehicles: $476
Books/Hobby: $742
The vehicle figure does not include regular or large repairs. But notice I spend much more on hobbies than vehicle maintenance. Entertainment is more interpreted than any other category because it is also a measure of life quality. In the past ten years, my most expensive annual cost for this was $4,800 back in 2018.
Other factors? Since 2018, I tend to not go out unless the Reb is present. From that time onward, there is a real decline because neither of us need to spend money to enjoy. Another shrinkage was after COVID, then the “Las Vegas” era after 2023 that killed the last local club around here you could just drop in for a quiet bottle. Two other influences are the return to austerity measures forced by growing inflation and the now complete downfall of the last local club. That is a curious one, it is the aftermath of the Vegas bunch bleeding the place dry.
How that worked was the how the club went from a quiet weekday bar to crushing crowds of outsiders on weekends. The rest of the week, I described how no locals worked there any more. And how the Vegas crowd left when the bar returned to locals, who are admittedly a boring lot. So now, you have no entertainment except canned shigga-booga on Saturday which the current staff, being under 35, think is the way things always were. And the place is empty the rest of the week. Many a time, at the WPM, I am the only local person, often with fewer than 5 patrons. Since the club owners get no real feedback except maybe noticing revenues have plummeted.
