April 17, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 17, 2025, $110k isn’t much.
Five years ago today: April 17, 2021, $14,367.
Nine years ago today: April 17, 2017, second-most often.
Random years ago today: April 17, 2008, a village called Corkscrew.

           Drat, here is the failed windscreen repair, or at least failed so far. I tried several on-line sites that claimed to give instructions but as usual, they were a-hole sales pitches that showed ideal conditions. Only after I did the job shown here did I find a video that explained the need for window jacks, q-tips, and a resin curing device. Up yours, GenX. You people are really going to stew in your own juices as you let the empire collapse when it all starts going wrong on you. I regret I won’t be around to witness you lot vote and protest the system into maintaining itself.
           Nearby should be some birdies at the feeder. My presence is enough to keep the rodents away, but later I fix what I can so the birdies, large and small, can feed in peace. At this time, there are three regular visitors. The cardinals, the woodpeckers, and another tiny pair, maybe wrens. This is important, as the squirrels scare away my preferred morning company.

           It is past my statute of limitations for real names, so this morning I have a true story from around 30 years ago. During a silent period, when there was no journal. I was living in Venezuela, south of the Orinoco in Cuidad Bolivar. It was all the adventure I could afford, and one of the characters I met was Anselmo Gilbert Montez. You’ll find a few mentions of the guy, he was an American Apache who when AWOL in Alaska during the Vietnam war. He was hiding out in Venezuela convinced they were after him.
           I explained to him many times about amnesty and that he qualified for American pensions, but he was trapped, working as a travel guide only because he spoke around six languages. I was in no financial position to get him out, but was able to get him to the America Embassy in Caracas, that was the last time I saw him. He had a brother in Arizona, who I contacted, but the brother was an ex-cop who took everything I said as a lie and refused to even consider contacting Gilbert.

           Well, I am now the same age as Gilbert was then, and Gilbert is the first person I knew who had this type of heart operation. Except his was in a Venezuelan hospital and cost 1% of mine. Watching video of myself from the game camera, I see the similarities now. I have the same behavior patterns. What reminds me most was Gilbert was always asking if I could buy him the building materials to make his own house, which I thought at the time was well beyond his physical capabilities. Today, I realize he could have done it at the same speed as I am moving along.
           Odds are all the hundreds of photos I had are long lost. I clearly see his motive—he had passed his prime earning years still paying rent. He was stuck, and anything he could do to quit that drain would have been a godsend. He was already not in the best of health otherwise and that was some 25 years ago. I wished I could have helped more. I chummed with him and often looked him up for breakfast because I knew he was not eating. All the priceless photos are gone, I had no secure place to keep such things until I bought this place. But Gilbert, I recognized the necessity of a place of my own two decades before it caught up with me.

           Now look at myself. I’m the guy who decided 23 years ago to document “my remaining life” and to put it on-line, a somewhat new concept at the time. Everybody was trying (by 2004) to be famous or first as the initial round of billionaires became household names. A digital camera was part of the deal, I did not know how much time I had, and a million views was not even considered. I do believe that will be achieved next year, proving again it takes twenty years to be an overnight success.

           Here’s a view of the squirrel tube being emplaced. This [area of the yard] is the focal point of the night critters as well. What will we find? My double is fitting the tube to be sure it is long enough and can later be floated rather than attached. Visible are the metal flanges on the arbor posts.
           I got out to the shed another two hours, finishing some boxes and repairing my latest small caddy. I busted a piece drilling brittle lumber too hard. I’m slowly gaining on the mess that accumulated over the previous year, I realize now I was gradually winding down to where I found myself needing heart work. I see it now.

Picture of the day.
Off season at Disney Cruises.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           So much for these nocturnal creatures, our first raider is not what we expected. This is raw footage from just moments ago. He or she was looking at the birdfeeder, but that was always an impossible leap [for a raccoon, not a squirrel]. Then he checking out the tube, which is too long for any yard-size animal to get past without sliding [off]. The plan is any fauna that tries to position for the leap will have to let go of the top rim. That will land his arse either on the hard ground or in a satellite dish of water. Watch how even the raccoon decides to have a swig before giving up. A classic view for you.

           I heard a new term for Flat Earth adherents, I think it is “fligger”. Up early, you get lots of reading today because I’m already played out—after making coffee and an onion mushroom omelet. And writing two letters, Hersh & JZ. Nobody else left except the e-mails and that is too industrial for long acquaintances. The back yard is again full of birdies and a funny thing, the neighbor cannot hear the owls. I think his ear has tuned them out, they are very active almost right outside his back door. I’m going to improve the new anti-squirrel tube so that it sways instead of bolted to the tree. Today, I’ll probably write about every little thing.
           The game camera has caught me walking around the yard, is that old man really me? Stooped and waddling, half-speed, and looking like he needs to have a chair. Has not had a haircut since January and wearing that [medical] harness plain adds ten years. No, you don’t get a see. I hate the way I’m looking these days and it happened to me instantly. So there, I said it.

           Let’s not let surgical emergencies dampen our spirit or ambition. Two refills and I’m going outside for a while. Once more there is that heavy machinery pounding sound a long way off and and there must have been some big air show over the last week, lots of jet sounds. And that old WWII airport at Eagle Lake has been busy. I did not like the slow evaporation rate of my satellite dish bird feeder, so I found the smallest drill bit and made a tiny drain hole. It works great but took less than a day for a swarm of wasps to find the drip. They don’t bite or I’d know it. Mrs. Red Cardinal is becoming somewhat tame to my presence.
           Ha, we got a lucky shot, this is not a great shot, but you can see the squirrel land partially in the dish. There are only a few drops of splatter. He wisely takes a sip as he ponders his future without his stolen breakfast.
           I’ve also been reading small sections of a big electronics repair manual from the Thrift in Clewiston. It is accurate to say one aspect I like about electronics is there is nothing like it in nature. A circuit must be designed entirely from scratch if you want it to function. Need a pilot light or a signal? You must build it into the circuit, again, nothing is there by itself.

           Nor is there anything much in the news once you quit following the nonsense about Hormuz. I like playing the “Circuit” word puzzle but lately failing because I don’t know about brilliant and original new games like disc golf, duh. Who recalls my recent look at phased array radar? Sure enough, an open source (free) version has appeared on Hackaday. 3D printed, it has a twenty-mile range. And how about a 3D Stinger (anti-aircraft missile) for $96. I told them this would happen.
           And hold on to your old 3D printer. Seems the new ones will soon be full of surveillance software to monitor if you print things like gun parts. (The issue is NOT gun parts, but of non-elects telling you what you can't do.) There is also some kerfuffle over gate arrays, which I have not learned. FPGA, that is field programmable gate arrays, a fascinating development I just don’t have time to study. But I can tell you that it centers on how many electronic operations are similar, like a register or flip-flop. You could program each logic gate (the simplest flip-flop requires 5 gates), or you could use a standard array of gates, and “program” them to do your bidding. It’s nothing new and you can visualize it.

ADDENDUM
           One cannot avoid politics since the day Trump arrived. There are problems now that voting won’t cure and the one I find most curious is the reaction to war. Not the war, or wars, but the reaction. As mentioned, there is no common visible effects of a war going on, just gas prices and even then there is no evident cause and effect. The gas prices have soared over most any excuse. This war is different in one sense—it upsets a lot of notions about the whole good guys vs bad guys dichotomy. The Chinese were paying for Iranian oil in yuan rather than petrodollars, and that is just the first indicator the NWO would get into the act. It is China, not the US, that gets most of it's oil from Iran. Strange how the two places on Earth with no oil, China and Israel, are involved.
           Closing Hormuz cuts of the Chinese, not the world. Expand this to society and some say what is really happening is Trump destroyed the New World Order. He did it in America, Europe, and now the world, say the pundits. I’m more cautious, saying he has not yet crushed the liberals, but if they don’t steal the next election they may never recover. So, are we witnessing just another Gulf war, or the final throes of the Deep State’s New World Order? Don't ask me, I'm just a bassist with opinions on what's interesting to myself.

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