April 22, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 22, 2025, $3 a gallon.
Five years ago today: April 22, 2021, owner-operator.
Nine years ago today: April 22, 2017, remember the candle holders?
Random years ago today: April 22, 2018, never a believer.

           What’s this, a top UFO scientist commits suicide and then calls 911? It’s not the first time the first time the Clinton people have gotten that one backwards. That could be today’s headline, or I could present today’s nothingness as a novelty. I fed the birds at dawn and fell back for a snooze that lasted another seven hours. I’ll try to salvage something. Stick around, I suppose I could at least work on my latest box design. Hey, that does not bore me and it’s my workshed, kids.

           Reading is a daily habit and I got some of that in. I talked with the Thrift store guy last day and he says they often get too many radios in. It is really combination decks and here is where that fat book I bought comes into play. It contains many diagrams of the circuitry. I’ve noticed something. The diagram reveal that although the resulting overall design may be less efficient, the components are kept together in groups.
           Also, there is a principle to keep the leads (wires) as short as possible. It could mean items like the amplifier or rectifiers are grouped. I intend to find out. And, moments ago, I think we may have another generation of red cardinals. I’ve lost track but they have plainly found this locality to be a long-term habitat.

           More reading, and in this case an instruction page with notes in the margin I have been referring to it for sixteen years. It finally begins to melt, instead of just flipping there to get the directions, I grasp it. Proof again of my theorem that people who write these manuals themselves don’t really know what is going on. There is also a tendency to think themselves clever at the wrong times, like the author who uses different words for the same things. Threw me off for years, calling the AP (assumed point) on one page and then the benchmark on the next.
           I would very much like to find my blank navigation charts to practice some LOPs. When I tore up the kitchen floor a year ago, I piled a lot of gear up on the old sofa. That is where it sits today. It’s there, but sleeping sixteen hours is not helping me dig it out. Would you listen to those happy birds!

           To wake up, yes I was groggy, I read some of the latest Arduino code. I don’t like it. Sure enough, it follows the old “C-code” garden path, instead of fixing what’s wrong, they start to plaster over the bad spots. In C-code, it is called “CSS” (short for cascading style sheets) and in Arduino code, they resort to what they call libraries. Segments of code that are written by strangers, often unqualified, that are blindly imported to do important things like operate sensors or servo motors. It means suddenly new and unfamiliar commands appear. What is “elif”?
           I see scary things, like how the libraries are not just imported, but some are now installed. This changes the operating system of your computer and should be used with extreme caution. And in the news, Noah’s Ark has been discovered for the 600th time. This one for sure.

Picture of the day.
German quiz show hosts.
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           I can’t make it more interesting than it is, but I can report a busy afternoon. With no immediate consequences, I worked at my normal pace until past 6:00PM. Here is a view of my output, but not all of it. At first it looks like Box City, but you have seen some of these before. Today, I built only the three units, two on the left side of the stove. What? Why the stove? Because it has the best light in my unfinished kitchen, Chumley. Two of the boxes have knobs.

           These are gifts, the third box has a defect and will be the blank for cloth lining. This design is super easy and benefits from existing tooling. I could probably make a profit selling these for $6 each. To test the utility, I’ll see if JZ can use them for his spices, though that is his decision. The dude is a great “control” group by himself because he employs only the practical.

           The new design is showing, with five boxes already. They resemble earlier work but these are far more streamlined. You may also notice the two spice boxes (with the knobs) look a bit like a matching set. Darker wood, which I will account for. The picket wood is quite inconsistent, meaning an obvious match like these is a rare event. What’s happened is I’ve learned to watch for this effect. During shipping, the outside layer of pickets can get wet and weathered.
           Other buyers will sift through these boards. But I go through and spot the good ones that are straight and have few knots, hang on let me go get you a better shot. Here we go, the two on top, the bottom unit is not the same hue. I also run these lightly over the belt sander since the raw wood often sheds sawdust.

           Now’s a good time to mention these boxes are not just rattled off. They are the result of experience, mostly dozens of small rules applied during construction. The joints are tight because any cups in the wood are facing outward, where they are easier to clamp. The knobs are not centered vertically because that makes laser labels easier to zap, (these boxes have no labels). And so on, the boxes are very sturdy.

           The box lid I thought of filling with epoxy or similar got put on hold the instant I saw the $225 price tag on the gallon. Odd by this time somebody hasn’t come up with a far cheaper, but the lowest price I saw was $60 for a half-gallon kit. I wish my big can of water putty had not got wet, I would have tried that. By dark, I was not the least tired and considered dropping by the old club. Then decided to stay here, with coffee and toast. And my Egyptian raspberry jam, my thinking is one good day is no longer a sign of anything. This operation means a change of lifestyle sooner or later. Ease into it, they say.
           Later we have news that a court has overturned the vote in Virginia. Like many people, I don’t follow how courts can bat stuff around—but this is one sure sign that the ballot fraudsters are not going to have an easy go of things come the midterms. Even a non-player like me can sense this time is different. My understanding is the Democrats tried to “redistrict” voting boundaries give themselves majorities. I still contend that Trump is holding back, knowing his opposition are lethargic at reacting to sudden moves. News today is that he has enforced issuing rebuild permits to the people burned out in the California fires.

ADDENDUM
           That’s interesting. The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center), the outfit that tracks and reports on “facist groups”, has been caught funding some as fakes.to justify getting government grants. The rumor is they spent the money to have their agents infiltrate the organizations, but that creates a problem. Take the Patriot Front. For all the right-wing accusations by the SPLC, there is not a single incident that the Patriot Front is not exactly who they say they are. None.

           I stayed up to study the new smart servos. Regular servos are controlled by PWM, one of my pet study topics. I have a box of them somewhere, anyway, they do not provide any feedback of their own operation. If the PWM signal is lost, the servo returns to zero (I think). The smart servo must therefore have some sort of microcontroller of its own, allowing them to be connected in series. I’d like to see that. It says here the servos are controlled by a UART signal, a system that uses unique addresses to control devices so fast you think they are all operating at once. It says here the motors are less than $10 each—but does that include the now-necessary control mechanism? Or is that relying on an honest price quote from a millennial?

Last Laugh