One year ago today: July 24, 2025, finding its limitations.
Five years ago today: July 24, 2021, bleak Okeechobee.
Nine years ago today: July 24, 2017, the stench.
Random years ago today: July 24, 2012, the latest blog protocols . . .
Show of hands, how many recall that a gig-less Friday for me is a day off? Hmmm, that’s what I thought. To make amends, you get to learn lots more about boxes today. Here’s a box I’m about to cut in half because of a tiny sawing error y’day. One edge of one piece was off by a kerf width.
Another PPP, poor people do not stock up on business-size envelopes and I just ran out. I have to waste more gasoline, and because my security and scanning equipment is here, I have to return, then go back downtown to mail the letter. You watch, Wal*Mart will be out of the security tint peel & stick, so I’ll either have to drive to Winter Haven or buy a whole box of the wrong product. Florida is the leading edge of PPP, but you know, other places like Mexico and Canada are hopelessly worse.
Meanwhile here are two assembled button boxes ready to be stained. One is the “naughty box” and a “radioactive” box. Don’t be too critical, they are both prototypes and I cannot find a good font for the lettering. This view is the two logo patterns suggested by Bryne at this is the photo he will get via e-mail. Along with a reminder to get into town for a jam session, you cannot go wrong in East Texas for that.
Even if you succeed, the result is apt to be inferior. So why do I do it? May reasons which include I am not rebuilding the box, I am repurposing it entirely. I am dissecting looking for the source of the error. I’m saying until you have and experience eye, don’t bother trying to correct mistakes. Adapt, not correct.
Next was more banking and more PPP. Because everybody was “too busy” to get me the updated ATM cards, I’ve had to make the deposits by mail. The bank slow-walks mail-in transactions because they are AOLs about it. Not a problem every other month, but this month ten deposits and they have begun holding back funds. Because other people are too friggen busy to go get me that new ATM card I asked for last April. Hold it, on this account, it was last October.
I had to get downtown to verify the clearing dates, fortunately the money place had a business size envelope (for 25¢), which gave me time to get home, process, and get back downtown hopefully before last collection time. If I missed it, that is another PPP and the pieces are not even added up on that one yet. I’ve put 178 miles on the van, and tomorrow means another trip to Winter Haven.
Driving the Dolomites
(Italy)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Another thing about data cables is they can go bad for no apparent reason. Slow Friday’s are a bit of an unofficial “test every battery in sight” day. And the blog rule to record anything unusual reports today we had 30 dead batteries. I have a load tester and the most dead were the most important. The back shed has a combination lock, and if the power goes out, trust me it is dark back there. I have dozens of those old plastic lights Harbor Freight used to give away (shown here dismantled) in excellent operating condition. Enjoy the view, that, folks, is your fancy picture for today. What other blog entertains you with dead batteries? Hey, if you like to see only the good parts of a video, there is always BitChute, har-dee-har.
By late afternoon I just sat down. Man, am I pissed off. I opened the Caltier page and the friggen password has been changed again. And not to one of our standing password keys that would let me change it back. I’m not a happy camper. Neither is Norway, on whom California is trying to copy their wealth tax. That’s where certain things (such as a speeding fine) cost, instead of a fixed amount, a percentage of your net worth. Problem, rich people don’t hang around for that bull donkey. They move away. In the case of Norway, they took $50 billion with them. Now Oslo is going bankrupt because they can’t fund their precious social programs.
Stress is something I avoid, so I sat down and put a layer of the pecan poly on a bunch of small boxes, including this morning’s. Time to think. I can’t fathom the Enigma mechanism yet but neither can most people. Did you know that after the war, the British kept the codebreaking a secret for another 30 years. Why? Because other nations like Russia began using the Enigma machines believing they were secure. I never said they weren’t, I said I find it impossible to accept that nobody anywhere suspected a thing.
News, the MSM has a new tack, putting about that America is in danger because Trump has destroyed trust in their journalism‽ Apparently one does this by pointing out they are liars over a period of ten years.
Here you go, the recycling of this morning’s box. Left frame shows the tiny lip difference in the cut, meaning the box cannot be made “square”. Middle frame shows the two small boxes resulting from the cut. Right frame is the “short bank” trays being placed into the staple box. This has to be done right before the saw cuts, or the lid won’t close. I’ve switched to a smaller but no cheaper 7/8ths staple for these smaller units. They must also be spaced properly.
In that same vein, let me mention more about the pneumatic stapler. This is the tool I drove all the way to Parrish to buy on sale for $19. It is now an essential and anybody can use it with a few moments training. However, by learning what’s going on, I’ve discovered it is possible to make the staples look much better by positioning the tool carefully. Sorry, no close-ups, I use Vivitar, but I’ll bet you can’t even see any staples here.
ADDENDUM
I began a casual look for what those casings [from y'day] might be. They were there for a while, and I found more, but doubted they were termites for the simplest reason. There was no source of water or moisture. Here is a photo of more specks, and do they not look like they could once have been ovoid, but are now dried husks.
Around 7:30PM, I scrolled through some 800 pictures until I found this one, labeling the specks as “frass”. First time I’ve heard that word, and me over 25 years in Florida. It is termite poop, in this case a “drywood termite”. The literature says they do not require open dripping water, so that explains one thing. It also means if I want to live here until the end, it means another tenting, which is conservatively priced at $1,200. But there are bait controls I will try first. Termites are year-round in subtropical places, so I will start looking tomorrow. I will hit the attic first. I have not been up there since last summer.
