One year ago today: December 31, 2024, the mahogany apology..
Two years ago today: December 31, 2023, like an avatar?
Three years ago today: December 31, 2022, me, on yacht repair . . .
Four years ago today: December 31, 2021, a sort-of gig.
Five years ago today: December 31, 2020, I don’t mind port.
Six years ago today: December 31, 2019, $71 worth of TV.
Seven years ago today: December 31, 2018, a workday.
Eight years ago today: December 31, 2017, a thing of beauty.
Nine years ago today: December 31, 2016, home, but wheelbarrowless.
Ten years ago today: December 31, 2015, misplaced notions.
Eleven years ago today: December 31, 2014, nothing, anywhere.
Twelve years ago today: December 31, 2013, this ambitious project.
Thirteen ago today: December 31, 2012, bezoar stones..
Fourteen years ago today: December 31, 2011, a thousand of them.
Fifteen years ago today: December 31, 2010, my very first part.
Sixteen years ago today: December 31, 2009, it’s beginning to show.
Seventeen years ago today: December 31, 2008, cool hat.
Eighteen years ago today: December 31, 2007, Angelface.
Nineteen years ago today: December 31, 2006, 300 pounds, easy.
Twenty-two years ago today: December 31, 2003, the Internet sucks.
Ah, a tube sale. Zenith power amp. It’s too late for a New Year’s gig, which this is the year I formally give up even hoping for. That’s a mid-grade tube but still half a tank of gas, so I’m happy. Tampa was right, it was freezing cold this morning. Due to finances, my kitchen does not yet have the planned overhead heater. This means a cozy morning in the back room except for mostly coffee runs. By 9:00AM it stayed cold, so let’s finally get around to reading what’s new in magnetohydrodynamic propulsion. I may talk about roller ships if there’s time. The Miami trip was a mini-holiday and thoroughly needed break. I drove most of it with the windows down
Here’s the end of year photo of the birdie yard. There is work going on—the bird’s have long learned to ignore me moving around this space. So you see the tripod and the wall of the silo with the pipes. Just below center is the birdbath. It is late afternoon and quiet. I may spend the day reminiscing, which I don’t have to do that often because I have this blog thing happening.
New Year’s, in my heyday, was a big deal for a band. I recall 1999 so well because as th century ended, bands were commanding $5,000 for last minute cancellations. What used to be the brass ring for small bands now passes without a flutter. I have had one such gig to speak of,in twenty years, a café in Little Jamaica and it was hardly a sell-out. The Hippie booked it, and he as never filled a room that I know of.
Elliott, the brake inventor guy, is my biggest critic over this issue. His stance is the reason I don’t have a band is because my bass playing isn’t good enough. And the reason he is not in a top band is because other’s aren’t good enough. I’ve met a lot of Elliott’s since then. Think of it this way, Elliott. Over the past 50 years I’ve had 50 great times playing in 50 bands that were not the best. Over the same period, you have had 0 good times in 0 bands. The message is clear, it’s like all those books that never get written. You will die without ever even a taste of the pie.
I’ll be entering my second year without a plan. It’s not unreasonable to suspect 2025 went well due to momentum. But today’s changes are real and they are not positive. I can see if no cure is found for my hands, my bass-playing days are numbered. JZ says I’m slowing noticeably, but then, I’m the only person he has ever known that likes coconut. What happens when I can no longer drive? I am going to have to make plans in a vacuum, a balance act between keeping myself here and being thrown in some nursing home.
Either way, I foresee a tight-budget era. One saving grace is that I’d planned spending ever more time here with my hobbies—and that does not cost much. But this was partially luck, I did not know if boxes and lasers would stay in the mix. Tomorrow the town is closed, so I picked up these five pickets, shown here, all destined for Z-boxes. Experience has taken over every step of the process now. Look again at the pickets.
Seems I’m going to spend more time inside, and a topic I’ve meant to go over is called PLC. It’s an industrial-strength setup, Programmable Logic Control. The Arduino is somewhat capable, and I set out to cover what that entails. What is really needed is a real-time working circuit app. Here’s the rub—this things may already exist, but they do not have descriptive names. I’m also looking at a CLI app because nobody will explain why a Command Line Interface is different or how and when to use it. Ha, one look and you can keep it, I’ll stick with using the IDE. Mitch might enjoy command line programming, but it was created by idiots.
Another look after ten years is the standalone Arduino board. Once a program (called a sketch) is uploaded and running, there is no need for a full-blown (and expensive) Arduino to operate the chip. It can be removed (provided you wisely avoided the SMT versions) by removing the ATMega328 (the big chip) to a smaller board with a power supply and a timing crystal. I hoped to build this in 2016 but then I went and bought a cabin.
What I did manage back then was a grasp on how the ATMega328 chip operates, so relearning it after this gap should not take much. There are at least two small “programs” that can be burned to the virgin ATMega328 using any existing Arduino. I doubt they’ll make it easy but I was about to order the parts when events took over. These blanks are about $5 each and though I’ve seen full Arduino Unos on sale for $9, I want the technology.
I found the chips on eBay, but none of the ads featuring many chips specified if the price was per chip. It’s kind of an important thing, you people. I estimate the raw chips are worth about $4 each, but there are ads asking $24. Some of the ads show SMT (surface mount technology) but describe through-pin models. It’s tough to “buyer-beware” when the seller is a gimp to begin with.
Spring in Oklahoma.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
In addition to my budget (which slates all of 2026 as recovery mode), I have the same issues as others who follow the calendar. Let’s not forget my big $33 pension increase, since we know the rest was shipped to the Ukraine. After 26 years in Florida, I remain surrounded by a very familiar type of people—like my family, they have a sincere loathing for those who possess super-powers. You know, like the ability to save money, finish things they start, and play musical instruments. Careful, I did not say such folks were assholes, rather that they behave exactly like other unnamed people who are assholes, that is, for all the ways it could be worded, even though I’m not saying they are assholes, other people who act like them are. Got it?
The sparse traffic noise and anemic fireworks decided I wasn’t bothering to check downtown. Replace them with drone displays. Besides, fireworks are so last-century, the sound people want to hear these days is firing squads. You heard me, many Americans are for public execution of traitors and I would not be an obstacle to that. But, as some smart aleck posted, executions need to be led by an asshole, but the average American is too much of an asshole to be an asshole, and that makes him an asshole.
I’m still torturing myself with the audiobook “Saturday”. Could be morbid curiosity over how many clichés per disk are even possible. He’s already used up all the standards, it’s not water, it’s mineral water; those are not mere musicians, those are jazz musicians. The book is a study on those pretended behaviors that people with inherited wealth fancy makes them look like connoisseurs.
Of more practical use, I noticed when the fence panels dry to my standard of 11%, they will absorb any oil that gets on the surface. The aroma of that oil persists long after the wood ages and forms a less absorbent patina. A year ago April, I painted a box of wood scraps with a bottle of that essential oil from the dollar store. I notice even left in the open all this time, the lavender scent is still evident. I’ll look into it, but not to be creative, I’m sure it has been done, but hoping it adds to the product. I have a bottle of cedar oil around somewhere.
Same goes for my space heaters. They are in the silo and it is too cold to march out there and get them. So now my fingers are cold from making muffins in a cold kitchen. Real bass players don’t care for cold fingers.
ADDENDUM
Roller ships, those bizarre vessels, are not as far-fetched as they seem. Mankind has long known it is easier to push a ship across the top of water than to plow through it. Why not roll a ship across on wheels? Can’t. The wheels just sink into the water like any other shape.
Another weird engineering oddity was the US Black Widow, a WWII night fighter. If you read the pilot accounts, they had to fly it with one eye on the fuel gauge. The engines burned fuel fast enough at combat speeds that it limited fight times to minutes before having to head for base. Crazy engineers, imagine designing a plane like that after these parameters were known.
