December 20, 2025

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 20, 2024, Miami and back.
Five years ago today: December 20, 2020, chores and such.
Nine years ago today: December 20, 2016, talk about bug-eyed.
Random years ago today: December 20, 2008, about data recovery.

           It’s been a while since I coded any Arduino, so that’s what I did this morning. Sure, I never got to any useful robotics, and these are very basic programs—but I don’t think all that many blogsters got to running microcontrollers before breakfast. For that matter, I’d guess 90% don’t code at all. They download factory-wrapped sketches, which is not at all the same depth of IQ. My sketch is running now, it just blinks the on-board LED.

           However, I got mine to run at a random on cycle varying between 250ms and 1,250ms, and got it to print out the variable. A few moments on-line show there is a wealth of Arduino support for the asking. Add a big caution. Most of the sites say if you encounter a coding problem, Google for answers. That’s precisely how errors compound themselves. Do not proceed. The classic definition of a coder is one who cannot figure out his own logic errors.

           Interesting to me, here is a prototyping breadboard being offered by Arduino some 15 years after I developed the same concept, show in the bottom picture. Theirs has more bells and whistles, but the shield gets a little more worn out every time you use it. What Arduino needs is portable power pack that holds different sketches that can be uploaded on the fly. And I’ve re-discovered one of the more glaring inadequacies of the system, the COM ports.
           These are the connections used most in DOS to communicate, I believe most computers have several. The hangup is that you cannot reliably get devices to use a specific port between computers. The next computer might have a printer, or even a laser, connected to COM 3 and the result is a software conflict. Even if you know how to set these ports in control panel, the port has to show up on the menu and it may not. Tell you what, let me look at this actual Arduino to see where it defaults. There you have it, COM 3 but it won’t work but it was working y’day.
           Here is a typical message, these computer people have never mastered meaningful comments. The system changed by itself from COM 3 to COM 8 while I watched, and if that port won’t work, you get this gobble-de-gook that the sketch (program) will not upload. I must have used the laser and clobbered a port. Frustrating, because my program will debug, compile, and upload, but not communicate.

           Fulton County, GA, has “failed to deny” that their vote counting machines were set back to zero at the end of each day. This resulted in a total of 315,000 extra votes for Biden. That’s the votes Trump made the phone call over—and now Fanni lying under oath about this. Face it, Biden lost Georgia and therefore lost the 2020 election. My attention is on Canada, where the voters are just beginning to realize how broke the country is. Trudeau left it a third-world dump and is now partying up in Japan with Katie Perry, a non-blonde.
           Canada is no longer a White majority. But if the West splits (BC through Manitoba), they are since brownies don't like cold. My conclusion is that it won’t happen fast, as Canadians are indoctrinated from birth that at least they are not American. But, for the West, that is fast becoming their only hope. Ottawa is repeatedly sending out stats that show by 2040, there will be two classes left in the country and one of them is going to have to learn to “make do with a lot less”. It took just ten years of immigration to destroy their White society and not one leader emerged to fight back.
           It’s no better here, the US launched a major military strike in Syria to kill five terrorists. Five. How many millions each is that, when the Hildebeest would do it free for practice.

Picture of the day.
Soft landing instructions.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           How are you enjoying the non-box topics now that I’m housebound? I planned this, you know. The snag is that I planned it for when I was 80. Here we go with the Moon base promised again from yet another appointed head of NASA. Put me in charge and we’ll be there next July or about 10,000 fewer goldbrickers on payroll. They know each success they have looms a layoff and that, not Mars, is their priority. Did you know of their 18,000 staff (all civil servants), somehow 3,100 so far have managed to get themselves declared excepted? Do not ask me how they pulled that one off.

           The house up the road remains a renovation mystery. They how have a dumpster throwing away more interior wood than the place was built with. It looks like every partition has been ripped out. It is now more evident it was originally three smaller buildings. There are a lot of those in Florida, I found out on my own. Confining myself to one project per day, that can mean as little as picking up an extension cord for the trickle charger, shown here, hanging on my “don’t forget” position by the exit door.

           While I suspect Windows, I cannot dismiss the chance I have three bad data cables. Many folks don’t know there is an invisible difference between the data USB cable that came with your camera and an ordinary dollar-store USB power cable. That last one will not transmit data, that is, will not let you download your pictures. Yet the cables are almost impossible to tell apart. That is what is going on here. I’m performing a loop-back test. Do not do this unless you know what you are doing. Hint, you don’t.

           I learned this test at the phone company, it is a check to see of some remote piece of gear is communicating before you send a man up the mountain. We used a signal of 2713 Hz, which is always present on old phones, but filtered out. You take off the filter, send the tone and see if it comes back. The usual failure was a log falling across the phone lines after a storm. Next May, I like to point out, is 30 years since I quit that career. As Pete used to say, it would be a good job if tey left you alone to do it.
           I have a communication failure on both boards, I’m going to try reburning the bootloader, but that means having to find a working Arduino in the silo, which at this point is full of vacuum tubes. So full I’d rather not start poking around in there. Tomorrow I have planned to build two boxes and begin sorting some components. Let’s see how that goes first.

           Let’s quick check the news to see if anything affects or amuses me. Nope, instead I read another fifty pages of the booklet on Privacy Rights. More crap, of course, people want to know what to do to protect themselves. Not another five chapters on assisted suicide. But one incident did stick in my craw. This nursing home refused the wishes of the husband that his comatose wife be taken off life-support. So he quit paying their bills. They unhooked her, she died. End of story? Nope, the nursing home sued and won $100,000 for life support. Yes, it was in the Atlantic northeast. You had to ask?

ADDENDUM
           This Xmas I will not be in Tennessee at all. The years have changed how I look at the holidays, at least in the sense that I will celebrate. For most of my adult life December 25 was just another day off. Or, double-time and a half, that works for me. I worked every Xmas day from the time I was 26 to 38, the only single guy on the crew. When I think about it, I care most about Xmas because others do. So now I miss not being with the Reb and the pets, diminished in numbers as we now are.

           No big Xmas visit does not mean we don’t celebrate. Here is a helping of the toppings for my special curry fried rice. Cannot make that any more without recalling how the hillbilly polished off five cupfuls one time. He really had never had home made before and I found out that, although his mother was feeding him, it was like sandwiches and black tea. I like back tea, no sugar nothing, but most people don’t. Cold, I mean, as in iced tea. Hot I like it with turbinado.

           Hidden down here is another of my idiosyncrasies. I like to inject made-up terms into social media to see if they catch on. Does it work? Yes, unfortunately well enough that I don’t dare take credit. This one is different, will post in advance. It is the substitution of three asterisks for a swear word, as it “Go to *** hell” and “What the ***?” Yes, these are small deals and may have been used before. But this time it is planned and deliberate. My very first “success” was a plastic banana. So if you *** see all over the *** place, that was me. Do your part
.            Here’s a repeat explanation. Some of links in this blog go back to pages that have a “Home” banner across the bottom. Google is big, not smart. In the early days the Home button did not take you to your home page, but theirs. You had to program your own, and I did. By the time Google smartened up, hundreds of my posts had the feature. There is a nearly $1.50 spread on silver between bid and ask, which is the largest I’ve seen. What could be the reason? Occam’s Razor says people with real silver are not selling for the paper silver price. Some sources say $120 is no within reach as the Japanese have quit giving interest-free loans, something I have never understood.

Last Laugh