One year ago today: May 2, 2025, OR or NOR, a study.
Five years ago today: May 2, 2021, Steamboat Willie’s.
Nine years ago today: May 2, 2017, one sunflower.
Random years ago today: May 2, 1981, Willie & $15 a pack.
You won’t see it in the media, but “Florida Woman” has been arrested again. This time for leading a conga line through Wal*mart produce chanting “Free the Cantalopes”. My favorite was her kayak in the fountain barking pirate orders at the staff. I’ll plan to be at Karaoke tonight but the really good women are often busy carving watermelon helmets when they could be memorizing my schedule. That’s why I don’t cry when they say the good men are gone. This morning, she could have had biscuits, gravy, eggs, and coffee. Later, I never made it to Karoke, and you came all the way over here just to see pics of old tires. Ha-ha. Off to a good start.
I rummaged the shed for a remote control unit I set aside. Dang, it is AC only, but I’ll do some thinking. While I had that box off the shelf, what do I find but the long missing charger from my old 3G or 4G phone—the one where I lost all the numbers because they were only on the card. Firs thing I did was scroll to find Karen’s number, the lady from the old club. Wow, she’s living in Winter Haven, not Lakeland like they tried to tell me. She’s bartending on weekends at a golf course, but has a cleaning business weekdays. We chatted, there is nobody to hang around with in these parts, so we are planning to meet up afternoon next week.
The spindle on the hand truck axle is some kind of crazy size. I put one on the vise and tried to match up the hubs, no dice. The other option is to replace the tires, as the tubes inside are looking brand new. The tires were originally tubeless, I’ll have to go downtown. Good, I can finally stop for that beer. I need the break as I’m planning some subtle changes to the on-line blog format that make live easier. Now that I need it, I mean, cool it with the jokes, folks.
You only need sell 10,000 copies to be on the best seller’s list, and Gavin Newsom just did it—you need only overlook that one unknown person bought 6,900 copies. BMW reports the pilot project o build cars using robots in South Carolina has been “very successful”. A.I. may be taking entry-level jobs, but at the expense of the company’s future workforce.
Ever wonder what happened to Commodore computers? Bankrupt since the 90s, they are still around as pioneers with the FPGA (field programmable gate array) so they are not quite dead yet. The gate arrays may unlock new game capabilities. Alas, I just don’t have the inclination to follow the trend. And here is something you’ve never seen before. It is a 3D printer that produces metal parts up to 4-inches cubed. Meet the Scrap 1, your’s for $9.900.
Ordinarily metal printers run around $200,000 but prices of $140,000 got my attention last year. The process sprays a thin layer of metal down which is then “welded” by laser. Yes, it can make jewelry like you would not believe. I consider these high-voltage tools dangerous and do not like the way most of the models lock the user into using only in-house software. That means you cannot design anything yourself, they do it for you. This is changing.
From England’s dog collar museum.
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To the untrained eye, this may appear as another box video. It’s a small box prototype that I rate as a fail, and will document the failure. There is a limit to how small the box can be made with this thinner lumber. You may notice a brad nail or two, and the shorter piece warp rapidly after cutting. Smaller is harder to cut, making the edges trickier to align. The box cannot be made to Golden Ratio without extra cuts, which defeats this experiment. It’s still a box and will get used, but without the working model you can never tell.
A short list, five songs, from the guitarist. I need remind all that this is NOT my band, I no longer have the stamina. We play what he wants by default. And that is what he sent me, a sure sign he has never played in Polk County and he’s looking for a big band. The Type A guitar player, looking for a backup band so he can shred away. I’ll play for the sake of playing, but take a look at part of his list.
A) “Time Has Come Today”, a 1966 single by the Chambers Bros that requires a full orchestral presentation. I would not have played that tune in 1966, but yes, I can play the bass line.But again, not my band, I will play anything for the sake of playing. I’m not complaining, I’m used to this whole scenario and the game is to let him think he’s in charge, known in my teens as “doing a John Campbell”. That is, let the yahoo who plays the best thin he is charge of the band. Yeah, but he never got us a single gig. Hey, let’s not quibble, what we are dealing with today is just another guitarist who has never considered what the other musician’s have to play.
B) “Chain of Fools”, an Aretha Franklin blues hit that is all in one key, C minor A one-bar progression, designed to put both your band and audience to sleep.
C) “Little Red Riding Hood”, by Sam the Sham, probably the absolute worst tune they ever recorded, dreadfully slow.
Never conclude my observations are confrontational, I’m the easiest guy in the world to play in a band with. It’s often me mentioning the pitfalls that I see in advance that show attitude—but everything is predicated by how I will put up with anything just to play. It can take four or five guys to make a band, it only takes one to break it up.
ADDENDUM
Some navigation lore. Now that I can read most sight reduction tables, I took a look at some stats on Venus. It’s the object I’m most apt to notice when I’m rarely looking up at the sky the right time of day. It’s a challenge because compared to other readings, Venus has some of the same complications as the Moon. That is, it moves and that has to be compensated for. It not only moves in orbit, the motion can appear forward and backward compared to the Sun.
Around 20:11:40 I did the sight reduction presuming I was in Memphis on this day of 2014, using the star Kochab. We hit land, but barely. It’s on that weird long curved island off the notrth coast of Siberia, at -301.2208W by 74.8001N. We are on a glacier. The nearest town on the map is Naryan Mar, population 20,000. It began as a lumber mill in 1903. Today the biggest employer is an oil company. This photo shows the effect of Soviet era collective housing. Wiki says that driving there from Moscow “is possible”.
