June 27, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 27, 2025, he now has duo experience.
Five years ago today: June 27, 2021, expensive and terrible.
Nine years ago today: June 27, 2017, your chore, in Miami.
Random years ago today: June 27, 2006, rare meirl photos.

           A pretty typical Saturday around here. Auto insurance, the only US driving product you are required by law to buy. But something is screwy at my Allstate office. They send me reminders of the next due date, but the total price keeps going down with each notice. I was about to mail them $419 and today got a reminder fo $389. Does this mean if I wait long enough, I can afford it? Dang, I left the compressor running overnight again. I really need to put that on a timer. It would not be bad, but there is a slow leak in one of the overhead (difficult to fix) pipes that will eventually put too many hours

on the motor unless I crawl up there.
           One I got outside, I staying in the shed long enough to make a box for my fluke meter, here’s the video. Giving me uninterrupted time to think in the mornings has been a game-changer my whole life. This box marks a long awaited milestone. Yes, I’ve built boxes for my tools before, it was one of my first incentives with boxes. But they were tool box size and that does not scale down to sizes less than (from experience) boxes less than 5-5/8” x 4-3/4”, the depth determined by maximum saw radius. Today was my first box built, though only slightly smaller, it was built to something else I learned the hard way—inside measurements.

           It was built from scrap, yet does not look bad at all. The scrap is from the neighbor’s bedstead lumber, which I’m having a hoot recycling. Yes, the boxes occupy a huge central section of my life which I had no idea would happen. But I could hardly have chosen better, here is a clip of the meter box showing the scrap origin while also revealing how the cuts, assembly, and finding a board the right length to make things match plays a part. You know what to look for by now, I’ll bet.

           A note from the Prez, my mandolin player in Pennsylvania, has completed a small series of children’s storyboard booklets based on his own experiences. Like all his themes, the stories based on real life don’t all have happy endings. But he has now solidly a member of the rarified club of people who do actually get things published. I texted him for a sample panel, since I know he is using A.I. to generate the storyboards, something I’ve been planning for how long now.

           Can you imagine this blog as an illustrated e-book? Good, because right now that is all imagination. Moments later, here is the panel. It is based on the input “boy chasing cat”. A.I. or not this is a superior product to what most amateurs could manage. I think he has two full sets of these stories ready for publication. Making him the most computer-advanced contemporary I know, even if we know he has grandkids who learned this in school. So did all the other parents I know who have never learned past their own e-mails.
           The Reb called and we put off the trip until next week, or at least a few more days. I think we are over the broke spell, which turned out much as planned. We may have time for dinner this trip, as usual I’ll be sleeping with the cat, Lilli. I must smell like catnip, if so, make that caramel-flavored catnip.

Picture of the day.
10559 Choctaw Bluff Road.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           As we slowly return to normal, I placed an Amazon order for my arrival in TN, but shipped to the studio for security. I snuck in a couple of toys, including the Lucida drawing device and portable bass amp. Moments later the amp is canceled, that’s the one that said cordless, implying battery power. Nope, it was a millennalism for needs a plugged in wall wart to work. I heard a neat phrase today that sums up a millennial screw-job. “If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.”

           Following up on plans discussed, I spend the midday downtown. The budget until November is in place and the turnaround time if halved. A meeting with my banker changed the hold period when I showed not once in 11 years have I not been able to cover any deposit. Thik of it as me granting the bank a credit card. There was enough cash to treat myself to a couple new toys and here is the more useless—but you never know.

           It was also budget day, the household operation here is kind of a budget within a budget, a sub module, a subsidiary budget. And we came out ahead enough to set aside the property taxes upcoming in November, or is it October? I pay it when it comes in, I didn’t work my whole life to worry about taxes when I retired. (Mind you, except for medical, my lifetime taxes paid have been a negative. I’ve carried slackers on my back the whole time.) Tampa radio said zero chance of rain, so get ready for it. Let’s use the time to review budget items.
           Normally my household budget shows I keep running over, but this is not a bad thing. I could just adjust the budget—but that removes its function as a warning mechanism. This is also the winding up of the “lockdowns” of money since last August, where even my doggie bills had to be approved here one by one. (He’s better now, not limping, but turns 13 or 14 this year.) The only mistake God made with doggies is they don’t live long enough.

           Here is your view of emergency Carnation. This shows two quad-packs, the result of a special trip because I almost ran out. This is just not allowed, running out of coffee creamer runs second only to coffee itself. In fact, look around here for a snap of the coffee motherlode complete with K-cup maker. Yes, I normally brew my own but am influenced by things like medical conditions. I don’t want any morning delays and everyone knows what makes up the central point in my kitchen.

           My gasoline bill is $240 per month, four times the motorcycle allowance when I moved here in 2016. What’s surprising is my grocery budget has not changed all that much while the rest of the country bends under the costs. My average $270 per month, up only $35 since 2025 and down slightly from 2024 when pet food was quite a factor. My entertainment budget has dropped by 2/3, due to how I just don’t go out any more unless I have a gig or to see specific entertainers. And beers are now $5 or so, which we all knew would happen.
           My telecom bills soared from $36 to $133 per month, all due to WiFi bandwidth, which I should reclassify as entertainment. I now download and stream instead of buying DVDs, which I have by the hundreds. I committed to a more sedentary style way back last year but it was really the stay in the hospital that got me to obey. No other budget surprises and I’m looking again at a small investment account in the market, on-line of course, to keep abreast of how the Internet has screwed that up by pretending they know computers.

ADDENDUM
           Forget that Fortran job listing. The job was in Dallas and the on-line questionnaire was enough set off my alarms. One thing to watch for in all computer jobs is what they expect you to do when there is no work for the skill you were hired on. Aha, as Pete at the phone place used to say, they want to stick a broom up your ass to sweep the floor while you are walking around. I liked Fortran but it instilled a fear of privately owned compilers. To this day, I won’t look at any software that does not include the compiler.

           I was 18 when I first saw the language, or just after I turned 19. There was much talk about how it could create its own code, yikes, a computer that wrote its own programs. What really happened was the Fortran syntax and rules were exact enough that the compilers would reject code from stupid programmers, and that part I remember split my computer home room into unequal camps. The dummies were the majority and that horror story took over and still exists to this day. The losers outnumber the real programmers so badly, the world accepts crap as the standard.
           Fortran is 1950s but you have seen it recently. Climate change is politics, not meteorology. But the language of the super-computers used to model things like weather pattern is good old Fortran. The job ad I looked at was nuclear plant modeling and that’s the connection to Fortran all of a sudden. Mind you, it isn’t real Fortran, it is Fortran 18, which reverts to using punctuation where it should not be. But when it comes to parallel processing or quantum speeds, I just might recognize what’s going on. Fortran is an excellent language for high-speed core. Yes, I have, in my time, programmed Fortran on punch cards.

           Way down here, I report that today was completely symptomless. That’s the first this year and it is day 150 since the procedure. A nice round number. If I had my way, I’d admit that it was boxes that saved me and I’d go build them all day. But I have to be ready if the call arrives from Franklin. By the way, I put the photo of Coffee Maker Central in the addendum because it fit better there, visually. It's a hark back to this blog being meant for coffee breaks, and as far as I know, the majority of my readers (in hundreds of thousands) still view this blog on an office monitor. So it is formatted for a large screen. Why, myself alone, I must be responsible for a million hours of lost productivity. (That's nonsense, anybody who reads a blog like this long-term is above average, knows things the rest dont, can tell you about making decisions, and thus productivity soars when they are happy.) It's lonely at the top, but so is it at the bottom.

Last Laugh