One year ago today: January 2, 2025, fewer imbeciles, anyway.
Five years ago today: January 2, 2021, the latest in non-beef
Nine years ago today: January 2, 2017, that’s correct.
Random years ago today: January 2, 2005, oops, no blog.
Wow, the baby woodpeckers are full grown in two weeks. I set aside a small peanut feeder for them, which I’ll now enlarge for two, as they feed together. I looked on-line for a used compressor, no luck. I may instead take a closer look at that control mechanism. Work with me and find an excuse to go downtown, for example, I’m out of onions but that isn’t quite good enough. I need more thinking time as I enter my second unplanned year. Well, unplanned as for activities and holidays, I am at my work station laser cutting wooden labels and planning to build another demo circuit. How about a trip to SpaceCraft? Remember, we got a big $33 raise from Uncle Don.
When does hair make the blog? When it appears unwelcomely, that’s when. You see, I have now lived longer than any other male in my entire family tree, so I have nothing to go on with such features. I never had hair on my shoulder blades before age 60, nowadays I have a game camera that says I do. Relax, it is blonde and nearly invisible, ladies. And today, I see I now have it on the backs of my hands. My bass-playing hands. It’s sad when things go that way. The good news is when I’m on stage, no lady is watching my hands. Not much, anyway.
Yep, big layoffs on the way. Watch them try to pin that on Trump. It is a “corporate recalibration” event. Why is it so hard, when viewing videos of offices, to tell who is working and who is not? One downsize I can support is NASA. What were they doing operating a 100,000 volume library? Trump has slashed their budget to the Moon and Mars. NASA has stalled those missions over 50 years while collecting their fat paychecks flying DEIs around the Equator.
As for the caliber of their engineers, launches are still being delayed by fuel and vapor leaks they have had half a century to fix. Nor are people impressed by the choice of crew. You will never convince me a Canadian, a housewife, and a person of color represent the best America has to offer for the $50 billion so far pumped into this mission.
Without taking it off the mount, I cannot find anything visibly wrong with the compressor control mechanism. I’ve nothing to lose dismantling it, but first I’m going to try a few quick fixes, such as a new power cable. I drove downtown for supplies, a trip I know takes an hour. Today, two hours forty-five minutes. And I forgot to buy coffee. My raise was only $27, the Ukraine needed the rest. In another example of needless, useless changes, the post office will no long postmark mail when it is received, rather when they get around to processing it. They claim it is to improve their efficiencies so screw you with your taxes and deadlines.
There is a way, you can ask for a manual datestamp, provided you have time to stand in line and wait for it. I will begin adding a date to my return addresses. Yet another case of millennial efficiency that boils down to another cost passed on to you.
The preliminary budget numbers are in for 2025, that’s to year-end, not my fiscal year. Let’s take a peek. My entertainment budget has ducked from $3,100 per year to $1,300 since 2021, largely reflecting changes in Tennessee. Gasoline, at $1,900 has moved to second place and my hobbies of electronics and box-building, which are based on skills, not materials, means a total annual budget for the year of only $735. Utilities have climbed to nearly $200 per month, of which over half is electricity.
Cahawba, today.
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Why are people from North Carolina looking at my music profile? I’m not that good. No progress this afternoon. Instead, I heard another couple chapters of this horrid audiobook, which strikes me because this author gets high ratings. He takes 40 minutes to describe how he “feels” driving his car, that it is his symbol of the “overgenerous” share of things he’s got. He opines that people who sweep the streets for a living are “unlucky” but actually they are very lucky because the streets need sweeping.
After several disks of this farting around, he gets in a fender-bender. What bothers him most is the insurance paperwork. Of course, the whole car needs replacing because it is now blemished. Then we get to the core of the plot, what I see as the real appeal of the tale. Weak-minded people love to thing there is something mentally wrong with those who don’t think the same, and our boy is a brain surgeon. Now I get it, the book is for people who buy that theory. We all love being psycho-analyzed by people who don’t like us, am I right?
Reminds me of my upbringing, where no matter what your marks were in high school, the highest paying job within 120 miles was a lumber mill. You get to work right next to ninth-grade dropouts who cannot read their own paychecks or the safety posters. What a great initiation to the world of high finance. Having the use of your higher education judged by a moron collective. Did you know a full third of the Mennonites in West Texas are not “registered” with the government.
I’m also another chapter into the privacy book, again hard to follow because it is about people who did something “wrong” and not about methods for the rest to protect their privacy. In fact, the book avoids even mention this can be done. It concludes that privacy is an individually-wrapped affair that must take its chances in the courtroom. It also supports the concept that opinion is neither true nor false under any circumstances. I say the does not apply to airing personal matters on the six o’clock.
At long last, I found a video on the right way to cook collard greens (I had to remove the link due to youTube arseholism but you can search [Sign in HOW TO COOK COLLARD GREENS - FULL VIDEO! -Larry Dickem] , It’s a half-hour long. The chef gives a blue-ribbon description, including how to protect your collard greens from uninvited guests, something lacking in a lot of culinary telecasts.
Last for today, and this is serious to me. I am slowly regaining use of my hands. I have that tingling numbness down both forearms into my small finger of both hands. It prevents me front exerting enough force to play my best bass runs. I can easily pull things apart but not press things together. (As in fastening my pants button or zipping up my fly) without great effort. My right hand is worse, I cannot even slice veggies except by pulling the knife toward me. This slowed but not stopped my putting the finishing touches on Lennon’s “Imagine”. I will describe.
The answer turned out to be ignoring the original bass line, which is a standard boring guitar riff, one note per measure. Of course, I could play that, but I prefer to stay awake on stage. It is a one-note per measure slog that sounds like some studio hack threw it together on his way to pee break. However, listen to the piano—it is all inverted triads. Almost impossible to play on bass. Almost. What if you knew a bass player who knew which notes the guitarist had to fret and blended a pattern to match the guitar thirds instead of the bass thirds? In fact, it is so difficult, here is the piano score I resorted to learning on bass. You can see the bass clef is extreme simplicity. You’ll have to “imagine” which notes I’m playing in the treble cleff.
It is exceedingly awkward to play because it is opposite to muscle memory, but I did it. The idea is to not play bass lines, but a mid-range group of eighth-notes and let the listener’s ear play the roots. I do not know that I would play this on stage without okaying it with my guitarist, who would not be reduced to an accompanist. But I would sure as hell do it with any other guitar player like the Hippie who thinks solo grandstanding is a great idea.
ADDENDUM
The book on privacy has become bathroom reading. One page at a time. Far from being a book on how to defeat an anti-privacy system, it is a complaint manual. A large collection of stories about people who had something to hide and either got caught or got exposed. But it drives home the measures needed to combat the press—if you are prepared. In most cases the problem was records the press was able to access after some other incident triggered a look.
A house fire, rape, heart attack, even an auto accident, all too often resulted in a background search and the damage was the publication. Only the police need bother with warrants. The figment concept that the press and police have a “right to know” has caused untold suffering and woe. Worst were the times an innocent victim was scrutinized for no good reason. I view this as significantly different than people who are concealing something intentional, as in self-inflicted. I do have a right to know if a co-worker is a convicted killer or has an incurable “social” condition, but not necessarily any outstanding traffic tickets.
What I do not have is the right to publish the info as a newspaper headline, and neither should anyone else. Nor should the have any right to publish names or photos unless there is a conviction. To me, even the narrowest interpretation of the Fourth (Amendment)“to be secure in their persons” would include any information they would not want published. What a court needs to hear and what a reporter needs are not the same. I spotted a slight increase in favorable judgments because the press is not a “necessary person” in a courtroom or accident scene, but by then, the damage has been done. It should be the person, not the press, who determines what is private.
In other words, the records may belong to a government office or credit bureau, but there should be massive curbs on what they do with the information. We need a body of law that establishes it may be theirfile, but it is your information. Also, the book directly contradicts the fact that truth is not a defense in a defamation case. That’s not what I was taught—that you cannot harm people even by using truth as a weapon.
Did I just say ‘unwelcomely’?
