May 15, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 15, 2025, brazenly prancing.
Five years ago today: May 15, 2021, step one to riches.
Nine years ago today: May 15, 2017, one massive crime zone.
Random years ago today: May 15, 2026, an evolving art.

           Aiming for a quiet day, will they let me have one? It’s been a few days since I’ve seem granny raccoon, so I set out one of her favorites—potato peels. Nothing. So I set the game camera and now we wait. The day was a little too quiet. I fell back asleep until 4:00PM. If we have any pics today, it will be after that time. India is out of town, Karen is visiting grandchildren, and from that ten days in the hospital, I have an extra $60 I can spend on anything I want. This photo is the 3-gallon tank off my ex-favorite compressor. It is planned to use it as a saddle tank. It made today's blog because it took so damn long to strip down.

           The recent attention to my chest makes general movement easier, including lifting. I’m still feeble, though not that bad, and my short-term core energy stays longer, as in more than a day now. We pass the 1/3 of a year mark this week. Just in time for the summer heat—say, there is a project for me. The double window faces east, so I could leave them open in the shade if I had some small screens. There are the full window type already hear, but you need a ladder to install them.

           Let’s check the news. Ouch, the Trumps are suing MSNOW for slander, and it’s a bad one this time. The whole MSM structure has been shaking for months now that the USAID welfare tap has been shut off. The good old days when they could invent the news are gone, but MSM has no tricks left in their bag. California moves to ban barbeques because some folks cook pork. Remember when they banned starter fluid? There’s backlash against data centers, while proponents envisage a State where all citizens are “on their best behavior”.

           Here’s video from a week ago, the day summer officially arrived. It’s easy to tell here, the walls get hot enough to re-radiate heat into the building. I made up a jar of sugarless lime-ade, shown here, and send out a few dozen copies. It was popular, so you get to witness the process. Where else in the world are you going to get this mix of topics per blog? Stay hydrated in these parts, my coffee intake has leveled out at eight cups per day. This is the American style—not the $11 pseudo-glop they serve the gastrozombies are Starbucks.
           Since I was already sitting down, I read 14 pages of information on using plotting sheets, including directions on using the navigation triangle. There are several common uses for thee sheets that I’ll sidestep for now. It’s enough for me to find a single location, I don’t need to be adding wind, current, tides, and bottom soundings. There is a certain satisfaction to charting that data as a final step to confirm you got through the entire process close enough to be happy.

           Electioneering, it’s better this year than ever because the libtards need to pull a fast one to even survive. We have 6 suspected cases of the rat virus the world over, yet they are ballooned into 2,700,000 media reports of “outbreaks” and “deaths”.

Picture of the day.
After hours go-kart.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           It cooled rapidly by 5:00PM, sending me outside work at least some. Nobody wants a day to go by without getting a bit done, do they? So here is my production for the next three hours. One generic box and a set of “spice” boxes for Karen. They are not done, one of the knobs is cross-threaded and I ran low on propane. I’ve run into a predictable snag—the best boxes now require cuts of lumber that cannot be sliced from a single picket any more.

           But that is a management concern and decision that I’m too out of sorts to deal with. Did you know there are now 41 boxes in my bedroom and another 18 in the hallway outside? As I set these boxes aside, I noticed they would, if the knobs are removed, fit inside each other. Not a good fit yet worth investigating how that happened. Coincidences are a very suspect commodity in my life, and rarely are they much good.

           Back in the cool with three fans operating, I looked over the mess I made of the navigation plotting sheet I tried to do from memory. It’s late, but I just made some potato mushroom soup and got to thinking.I should do the math that leads up to the plot, paying more attention to the figures that get placed and labeled. Could I then chart something like the position of the Sun? It would be a start—you don’t have to see the Sun to chart it. Let’s get started.
           First off, how typically millennial the clock that shows on a search of GMT does not show seconds. What difference does 1/60th of a degree make to stupid people, anyway, it’s not like you are traveling to Mars. I’ve not 03:43:25 at Greenwich, Saturday May 16, in the year 2014. That puts the Sun at -236.6720° and I’ve encountered a problem. I have only trained my self to select meridian angles (local hour angles) in degrees and minutes, not decimal degrees.

           I think I got it, my assumed position is near Mulberry, Florida, at 81.6720°W by 27°N with a meridian angle of 155°W. It plants us near the northernmost mainland of the Philippines, the nearest town is Santa Ana, but then, wherever the Spanish have been, the nearest town usually is. I used and assumed point in Florida, so I can’t measure the Sun. The exercise has been an eye-opener per the relative importance of each the figures needed for the calculation.
           As a study aid, I found I could place a blank plotting sheet on my desk and bring up a tutorial on-line. Then follow the tutorial in real time marking the same information on my sheet. The worst tutorials are the unrehearsed, usually with Captain Hindgrinder trying to wing it and draw his diagrams on your time. I found two handy tidbits. One is the identical charts my readings can be 60 nautical miles different from the demo—plainly somebody is mucking up. The other is the quality of the chart paper. It is crappy. The charts are printed on both sides, but anything heavier than a light pencil mark shows through. Any type of ink or marker makes the other side unusable.
           And don’t skimp on your instruments. Get a real set of bow-flex dividers, for example. The compass school brands are not accurate when spread past 45° and often the tips cannot be closed closer than 8°. The sheets have many applications, I suggest you pick one and learn the hell out of it before moving on.

ADDENDUM
           The 3D printer has to be tethered to a computer and I don’t have one ready for the task. What I can do is read the manual. I don’t like what I saw. To print a simple object, in this case a 3-inch tall money figurine, I quit watching after some 15 pages of settings and instructions. I counted some 70s option needing attention just to feed the plastic filaments. I know most are one-time tweaks but this is not what I have in mind for just now.

Last Laugh