One year ago today: May 17, 2025, getting up again.
Five years ago today: May 17, 2021, 67 cents a pound.
Nine years ago today: May 17, 2017, this means you.
Random years ago today: May 17, 1998, a book review.
It’ already half-way to noon, I slept in, but I found this old footage from 2012. It’s a sidecar jaunt through beautiful Coral Gables, Florida. That was also a Sunday, rare because a few weeks later I rode all the way to Denver and stayed there for months. It is not adventure that lacks around here. But even the right spirit needs money and youth—the best I can do is claim I never wasted a opportunity. How I’d live to have the sidecar back on the road. With the right equipment, even Tampa becomes an exciting town.
I made up pancakes and spent the morning as it should be. One neighbor working on his tractor, the other building small wishing wells. Did I say about that? He builds novelty lawn ornaments and why don’t I? Because he has a house full of wife and kids that can ring up sales 24/7. The neighbor behind is painting pictures, and across the way no sign of life in months except the porch light at times. About as far as you can get from GenX America as you can get without going hermit.
It’s a new set of rear tires for the Hundy. It’s within budget but I see the a battery light. Not good, this is a new $165 battery. I’ll check the alternator for voltage, the only test I’m equipped for. Um, alternator testing was one of my first gripes about stupid millennial posters. If you go on line and search for this test, 90% of the responses will be from dumbtard millennials. The very reason a consumer would want to test an alternator is to see if it needs replacing. Yet these videos show some gimp testing the unit on a work bench. That, folks, is a special kind of stupid.
This morning was for planning and review. Like most Americans, I’m spending twice as much on food while the government is trying to tell me inflation is 8%. They don’t know I keep tbs and $20 worth of groceries in May 2023 now costs $38. Checked also was the gasoline budget, not looking good. I’ve earmarked tomorrow for vehicle maintenance, it’s news not for the work, but that I feel well enough to schedule it. I could not find any problem with the alternator just said, which means it might be something parasitic. Very hard to find in older vehicles where each department runs its own wires.
In further planning, I have a 180-day supply of meds, which are the standard heart pressure, thinner, cholesterol, and water, plus what I now know is permanent anti-gout and diabetic. That let’s me keep a half-year planned. My condition still wavers but stays consistent over a day or two. Well more than enough for me to look right through this summer and to November. Nine years past my planning horizon. That is, zero long-term plans that did not originate before that time, and I’ve been living mostly by budget guidelines in a world changed out of most recognition.
I’m playing Green Day tunes, a band I never cared for, driving two vehicles, and where I once wrote down PINs and data I didn’t want to lose, I now etch the information by laser into wood keychain strips. This is now some 30 years since retirement, that is since I got up to go to work. I obey my own rhythm, I wonder if history would rate me a success on that? I did not plunge into youthful debt and waste my life on payment plans. But I still paid.
Wat Samphran, Thailand
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It is 3D printer time. Allocating 2 hours study time for each 30 minutes hands-on, I have examined the apparatus and found all parts there—so it seems. The print nozzle has a temperature and positioning gauge not explained very well, but we have not yet turned the printer on. It is under a blanket in the red shed lean-to. It needs a better roof over it and a sturdy bench to rest on. I’ve talked with Mason, the student, and explained the rules to him.
Hmmm, the literature I have read tells me there is, once more, far more capability in the machine than most people ever use. Unless I have a superior college grad, experience tells me there is a classic mismatch between the dude who sets the machine and the one who operates it. I’d best be careful not to wind up being the one with the headaches. I was not impressed by the mass amount of filament needed or the price tag. Mind you, I did learn to like my laser, did I not?
Here are some cautions in the printed matter: Do not print anything illegal. Never make food storage vessels. Don’t make any electrical appliances. Do not put printed objects in mouth. The hear impossibility of inventing anything new with the device means I have allocated only enough money to figure out how this thing works, not to put it into production. Here’s a view of something I found rare – useful items printed in 3D. A fuse holder, desk vice, model train boxcar, and stackable ammo boxes.
Next it makes sense to investigate what could be printed. Like the laser, the market is already flooded with all the easy, corny, novelty, and impulse items. Hence the conclusion these tools are only good for prototyping, requires a lot of brainwork. Can you thing of a small, useful, sellable item that could not be produced more cheaply in China once you invent it? My thinking is I would like to see about printing some plastic gears. I scrolled through a thousand pages of on-line designs without seeing anything with real appeal.
For me, the hope is to combine these technologies with other things I can do that others might not find so easy, but that’s another chapter altogether. But, no need to convince me it only takes that one good idea, though for me it would be fifty years too late. But I am stunned why nobody has yet invented things like a sextant that reads automatically. (There is a Korean model with a digital read-out but that’s not what I mean.)
