One year ago today: October 11, 2025, 130% in a month.
Five years ago today: October 11, 2021, WIP
Nine years ago today: October 11, 2017, WIP
Random years ago today: October 11, xxxx, WIP
Dead calm, high humidity, this is a day for lasers. I wrote letters while looking over the latest offerings. Thanks to nobody, I can now read the lingo and know what to look for. And I am very partial to Wainlux products, my K10 has never let me down. New features I like are how once a pattern is loaded, the unit can be disconnected from any device and operated separately. For more detail, see addendum.
Here’s a shot of the Yeti subject to yet another test. Yes, it is a nice compact unit, but designed by a millennial. It weighs around ten pounds without the power cables. But without those cables it is ten pounds of dead weight. And those cables are designed to be lost, stepped on, broken, and left behind. The solution is to make a special wooden box which negates all the advantages of the weight saved by using separate charging cables. It fits almost exactly in a Z-box, without the chargers. A whole new box has to be built for just that.
Noon approaches with no wind. But also no news the storm is moving north and away, so I’ll slate today for taking a much close look at costs. An F-box uses less than half the materials as a Z-box, but sells for 60% of the projected cost. But those materials are harder to procure and can be a struggle to work with. It’s an unglamorous study of the sort that one overlooks at one’s own financial peril.
I avoid tuna. Maybe once or twice every five years. I laughed to hear all those who spent extra to get tuna packed in olive oil wasted their money. The labels are misleading but not illegal, there is almost no olive oil in the cans. Is this a good time to mention the news out of Tampa is the Democrats are not just out of money and begging, they are demanding people give money, sending potential donors a memo they must give before October 22.
More talk radio out of Tampa, but I’ll give them credit for avoiding hurricane-talk this morning. I have some advice for men considering dating older or divorced women. They will talk about why they broke up, but avoid telling you why she chose such a loser in the first place. You might want to find that out before you dive in too deep. The water is pretty goddam shallow.
My word puzzle this morning did not go well. It’s not beating the champs, it’s how many I beat. Today is was only 36. These are British English phrases and they have lately been full of sports terms I would not be expected to know. So test yourself. Am I dumb for not knowing what a match point is, or did it require 37 champions before one beat me.
Bavarian schoolgirls.
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The smallest box, that is the button box, would be the easiest to ship. It used brad nails, which are cheap enough. With that dang hurricane just over the horizon, I used the day to run some numbers. And to locate some 1” crown staples, the correct length for the Fake box. But also the hardest to find and most expensive. This is the strangest phenomenon in capitalism, that the most common and in demand be the hardest to get. Yet, over the past five or so years, there are always stockouts.
An F-box requires 26 staples. The 7/8 won’t hold and the 1-1/4 will poke through. Total materials, which are wood, glue, and staples, are less than 50ȼ per unit, but it’s a fool who doesn’t know exactly. For any non-accountant types out there, every manufactured article has three inputs. Materials, labor, and overhead. GAAP says you cannot charge for your own time, so the unknown is the time spent. That includes the time to do these calculations, and to write to you about it.
By mid-afternoon, the storm has gone without once hearing Tampa radio call it a torrent. Wow, lucky me. I must get to emptying ashes from the burn barrel, which I meant to sift. I’m careful to not throw any boards with nails into the fire, but shown here is a small handful from the top showing all kinds of hardware finds its way in there. I never got around to building the sifter. I often wondered if an old paper shredder could be used to grind up larger pieces of ash. Note to myself, this is the number of nails from a single gallon of the ashes. And that 55 gallon drum is almost full. The ashed must be ground up or cannot be spread. I am planning to experiment on a portion of the front yard where nothing grows but kudzoo.
Next, it took just twenty minutes reading to figure out MicroSoft’w next move. I’m not the only one noticing the lack of “new” Window releases. What is Redmond up to? My guess all along is to switch all computers over to user-pay subscription services. But, that cuts them off from a sizeable market share who (like myself), who shun any software that requires identification. That is just plain stupid. So, the MicroSoft plan requires enforcement, which they do not have. Until A.I. appeared.
The Democrats are beyond desperate. Now they are trying to block public announcements that portray Trump in a favorable light. The claim is the ads (around $20 million worth) were paid for by misallocated border patrol funds. Nobody doubts that Democrats know such funny stuff when they see it. I can’t tell what specific material they are shouting over, they could be political ads. I don’t know, I’m not tuned to that channel. The important part is they are only picking on the pro-Trump ads. Not a great idea at this point. No election platform, just “get Trump”.
ADDENDUM
I am very aware a good laser would replace the four saws I now use. They also scorch the wood. A 20W laser, around $1,000, will cut 12mm of plywood. But that does not tell me how that compares with fence panel wood. And that’s the small pickets, the larger pickets are 16mm thick. Some features I like are the autofocus and internal camera. Right now, I eyeball everything and some of the mistakes are hilarious. I have no honeycomb table and my desk pullout has the scars of many burn-throughs.
The compromise appears best with the 20W, you are only interested the speed and accuracy. Above 20W you get a “fuzzier” cut which appears to be from way the mirrors or prisms focus the beam. The depth of cut seems limited to 1/4 inch, above which most videos switch to something I don’t have. A CNC router. I may try a fine-tooth plywood blade to get a better cut.
The newest units have a built-in flame detector, but I would still not leave the machine unattended. It is not that easy to find on-line demos that actually show a 20W beam cutting a long, narrow slice of wood. Such gems are not omissions in XYZville, the douchebags are hiding something. It’s how they roll.
Once again be awed at the ease I can ask the mighty Internet minions a valid question that stumps the lot of them. Try this. I don’t want a laser that cuts fancy shapes. Is there a laser that just cuts the end off a piece of lumber? Fingers on your buzzers. I heard data centers compared to being digitally strip-searched. Good, maybe they will learn.
