One year ago today: July 15, 2025, go boom.
Five years ago today: July 15, 2021, Wal*mart cancels 18V.
Nine years ago today: July 15, 2017, costly indeed.
Random years ago today: July 15, 2008, remember Blaster/Sasser?
I got junk spam, first in years. The Biloxi Hard Rock thinks I consider their single hotel room a bargain at $324 per night. (Mississippi riverboat cruises average $800 per night.) My, you are up early. Good, help me fix the mail box, now that is leaning over. News this morning is that the US teacher’s union spends four times as much on politics than on members. And nine airliners circling Gatwick (London) are flashing “7700” because the main runway is blocked by a ‘technical issue’. 7700 means too low on fuel. Good morning.
I can usually fix plastic, it’s a trick you learn being around any kind of “robot” toys the build nowadays. It involves an old soldering iron and many salvaged brad nails, plus epoxy. What’s even more important than a driver’s door handle on your vehicle is the stamina I mustered to get this done—but I’m not finished yet. I’m also using the time to think. While potential only at this time, we have problems ahead and I will not be caught with my drawbridge down.
Not much later, I had to quit with the door a mess. I can’t get it the panel back on, there must be a trick to it. The interior door latch is still broken, but I have a handle on there that at least opens the door. Beats rolling down the window and using the exterior latch. I see the whole piece has been mickey-moused and Iit is too hot to continue work today. I removed and tested the horn relays, which work okay but I’m not getting a signal from the horn button and I do not want to take that apart.
Which is good, because I ran to the limit and have now plunked down for the day. I could not get that door panel back on, so I drilled two new holes and just hung it in place, knowing Agt. M likes that kind of work. A one-mile test drive and everything works, but that door handle is going to break again in normal use.
Nevada “non-functional” turf.
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Walking out to the Hundy, I see I have a tree branch that did not miss the window by much. There was not a long enough temperate spell to fiddle with the horn, so I packed up and headed for the shady workshed. It’s nothing to grab the tools when you have as many little tote boxes like the one shown here. As a reward I made a foot-long sardine salad sandwich, the kind with chopped onions and relish. You get a picture of the van instead. Note I use van to mean any covered wagon that is not a pickup truck.
As the shadows lengthened, I thought, gee that sound poetic. I got the post-hole digger out to the front yard. And dragged a six-food post to nearby the mail box. The crowd roared, is he gonna try to dig that hole and right that post by himself. That guy is only on day 170 or so, he isn’t even supposed to be driving. I hefted the digger and, if I take it unusually easy, find no reason I should not be able to punch a deep enough hole in that soft yard soil. Just not today.
Another orange grove bites the dust. Almost half the orchards sold were right here in Hardee and Polk counties, with Colorado condo developers buying the best land. Orange groves in Florida now produce just 5% of the fruit as when I arrived here in 1999. The blight is unstoppable. Well, it probably has a fix it the government would stop wasting money on the CDC.
Tomorrow is the big Trump speech. The panic in his opposition is near total. His success will be measured both by the content and the number of people who will listen in. I need another picture here to balance this post, so here is my pro plastic repair kit. Alas, the door bracket was too far gone, but this is now it works (You can find plenty of videos on-line.) Crazy glue the part if possible. The working tool is an old soldering iron that has the tip modified to a flat, blunt end.
Y’know whose luck might be better? Sheba, the 100-pound puppy. She would eat me out of house and home, but I fired off an e-mail to Bryne in east Texas. The area is light forest and great doggie turf. He instantly fired back, wanting more info as in age, temperament, and stuff I would not know such as good with cats. Trust me, if that pooch has been with LizJohn this long she is nothing but a sweetheart. Y’know, LizJohn would insist of drivng there to see for herself. She’s never seen Texas and this might be a chance to finally get her to Florida a while. I’ve advised her for years to sell out and rent a nice cabin near Clearwater.
Today was also kind of my deadline for Ricko to show some initiative. That’s the Ramone’s guitar guy. At neither rehearsal did he show any real interest in taking this project forward. The world is full of musicians who only want to join an existing band. That is, after all the hard work is done. Then, they can set to training “their band” to play only their old guitar music. We’ve seen it all before.
Desperation, not communism, seems to be overtaking the Democrats. I engaged one in an on-line duel and I think I gave her the apoplexy. She posted the opinion that taxpayers who did not like paying for welfare and ghetto babies were cowards trying to avoid “personal responsibility”. Like raising her brood was somebody else’s job. Hey, all I did was list what I thought she was and the reasons for it. I guess I was pretty damn right because she threatened to kill me. Gosh, how can I ever sleep soundly again.
ADDENDUM
Trivia. I was always curious about a rare airplane, the twin Mustang. That’s the two fuselages joined to make the F-82 for the long distance flights planned for the invasion of Japan that never happened. They were used in Korea so I was taken aback to learn they were eventually grounded by lack of spare parts. How could one of the most prolific airplanes ever built lack spares? Turns out, the airframe was mostly new manufacture. The P-51 parts don’t fit.
I mean, I knew it was a new design, but it looks like a Mustang. A parts count got shrugged off because an airplane has so many. But even the fuselage was 57” longer to carry more fuel. This was the pioneering era of airborne radar interception. It was not long before the second pilot was replaced by a radar operator. It always made me wonder why, years later when the Vietnamese started flying MiGs, it took so long to get these night-flying hunters back into action.
Did you know they carried three radars. One sweep long range, another for target acquisition, and one rear-facing for warnings. For the record, the Vietnamese had radar, but it was ground-based for years, relying on flares and searchlights. There will always be something sinister about night flying and instrument stalking. The Korean war produced aces who never saw the enemy.
