July 29, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 29, 2025, welcome, Sydney.
Five years ago today: July 29, 2021, Dothan, Alabama.
Nine years ago today: July 29, 2017, a very good likeness.
Random years ago today: July 29, 2006, the cautious rider.

           This is neat, I just discovered by accident how to make short gifs appear more natural. You see them here all the time and often they have a chunky feel. I’ve long known actors on digital TV are trained to move artificially slow. What do you know, it works the same with gifs. Morning coffee along with the report Fauci, during his first real questioning, evoked the Fifth 111 times. He has been pardoned, but evoking the Fifth technically nullifies that pardon. Something stinks, Anthony.

           Another morning of paperwork, made regrettable is that is the only possible time for me to work in the summer heat. There’s evenings but it isn’t the same. Three hours to reconcile the bank statements and log the developments (or lack thereof) with Caltier. I wound up leaving a stern but polite message for them to contact us. There is an update, probably repetitious, in the addendum.

           Last day, I grabbed some sticks from behind the back fence which I kept knowing one day I’d have a dowel jig. My eighth wasp’s nest of the year did not like that. I am now convinced the anesthetic of last January has somehow caused an allergy—maybe not directly, but before that day insect bites that did not bother me now cause serious swelling. I was out this morning to feed the cat and this photo shows I slept through another fairly violent windstorm. The neighbor confirms it was a good one, a half-hour howler straight out of the west.
           One option is to close in the scooter shed which catches the worst of it. Tell you what, I saw some lumber curbsided y’day. I’ll go over there now, after I set up the game camera. I have a dream that one day, the GenXYZ class, with the resources at their disposal, will one day devise a tripod that folds and unfolds easily and is easy to set up on the first try. Later, yes, I got the lumber before anyone else, including four 16-foot 2x4s. The big storage rack was a myth, unil I got the lumber for free. Also, two 8-foot 4x4 posts. It needs cleaning, which I specialize in since my early pallet days.br />

           Here’s the lumber, with the black cat supervising, see him at the top, almost dead center, almost invisible. This mess is man-made, no wind today when it might be helpful. All these felines have names from the neighbor. Names I never remember. So let’s see if I can remember to call this cat Chester. It’s a furnace out there even this view shows the welcome shade. Maybe later, I need to build a box, something different. I have in mind a “project box”, just enough for a mini-breadboard with some parts. A shallow box, so I can reach small components, more of a tray.
           Rumors of an $8 billion dip on the stock market are circulating in the mainstream media, so nobody believes them. That much would sting a lot of people who need it, don’t look at me, I have boards to clean. Something seems different about this one. New Jersey governor blamed bad voter registrations on a “software glitch. Not true, says IDEMIA, the vendor from France, who proceeded to publish how the New Jersey DMV manipulated the settings to allow the false registrations. In the process they unexpectedly revealed that 100% of the 6,600 bogus registrations were registered Democrats. Trump was quick to point out the governor only went public because she got caught.
           Even CNN, that die-hard bastion of fake news, is forced to admit even its own carefully-worded and biased polls show a huge drop in Democrat ratings. I never trusted that point systm, but I know a drop from +1 “favorability” to -24 is not good news.

           I fired off another letter to JZ with an update of my August plans. If he wants to do some driving around, it will have to match my time and energy level. Last visit I went over right after a clinic appointment and fell asleep for 20 hours. That's not how I want to be remembered.

Picture of the day.
Akhal Teke
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here it is, 2026, and another gizmo that America’s greatest generation have never invented is some place on your dash to hand a trash bag. The normal excuse is that it is dangerous, but that is a copout. A proper design would address that. Here you can just see the two pilot holds I drilled into the plastic.

           The logical spot is on the passenger side just past the console. Sure, it might get in the way of a knee or two, but I’m used to driving solo. You can’t use the peel & stick hooks because the heat of the day will work them glue loose. The trick is to drill a couple of pilot holes and use couple of drywall anchors. I got that done although it took nearly an hour. Without Chester cheerleading, I may not have managed. I have difficult sitting up at certain angles, and the Hundy design team figured out what it was years before it bothered me.

           I put a couple “project boxes, scraps put together for holding the half dozen small projects I tend to have going at once. I even found time to clean the lumber—mostly. Some of the screw heads are hex and I’m 70 feet from the shed. I do have four long pieces but only one good post. A lot of the screws are also bent and just cutting them away is easier. I think it is time for an evening of nothing, I would be sapped on a day like today without any help from Nature. Doing nothing around here could include running the laser, writing letters, or study. Anything but wasting time.

ADDENDUM
           Nothing verfied yet, but it seems the $30 million net worth of the Somali Ilhan disappears almost instantly after the “learing” centers were closed. That was rapidly followed by the bankruptcy of here wine company and some sort of capital investment firm. She’s blaming the drop of her net worth by 99.68% on the suddenly popular accounting error. Hmmm, where did the money come from and where did it go? She doesn’t have the brains for the stock market.

Last Laugh