October 14, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 14, 2025, not easy or cheap.
Five years ago today: October 14, 2021, WIP
Nine years ago today: October 14, 2017, remember $80 electricity?
Random years ago today: October 14, 2007, early blog advice.

           Grilled sandwiches and coffee, as I plan the finances for a trip to Tennessee, A combination of factors means the carefree days of hopping behind the wheel and heading out are over, probably permanently. And listened to Tampa talk radio. It’s ironic, people who cannot read, write, or tell time, show up with pierced noses demanding $25 per hour now complaining that A.I. is taking all the entry-level jobs. Gosh.

           Yet, these student protesters make sense to me. I grew up around them, and dull, unmotivated children make for dull, unmotivated adults. Most families impose a socialistic regimen that children hate—until they get into college and realize they have already wasted most of their lives. That their screwed up notion of equality does not exist out of their little cocoon. Of course they want to destroy a world that pays them only what they are worth.

           Here is a stage in the construction of the slightly larger Yeti box, a one-off. This represents around the maximum viable size to build with my system. This is the big even today, so bear with me talking about it. Compare this to what others you know did today; These are special coated screws being pre-drilled into carefully spaced pilot holes. No glue is used because these boxes are meant to be modified if needed. I found I don’t care for constructing boxes even this large.
           Other pictures sow these screw heads and the extra work this lumber requires. For instance the clamp modified into a spreader because the wood it too strong to be held in place with one hand for alignment. The bigger pieces can’t be lined up to always be worked without this extra treatment. I went back to work this afternoon on this box, it took half a day, really. And that is all that happened out of the ordinary today. To my inevitable critics, how was your October 14th this year?

           The worst part of Tampa radio is their assumption that if you are interested in current affairs, you are also a fanatic sports fan and give a shit about the condemned prisoner’s last meal. Next, I found a reference to a Pascal program I wrote in 1986, but could not find the file. Few remember the language, but I took the course and aced it. The problem was, it needed a compiler. Borland sold one, the cheapest one ever. But I did not have the $50.
           That’s another looming threat, prices again. The Reb called for 33 minutes and we talked money. One comparison was with the past, where in the 1980s I lived through a situation that is rearing up again. That’s where house prices climb faster than I can save a down payment. I realize now most other people who bought (they were all around me at the company) had fudged their down payments. Usually with money borrowed from relatives. I had no such option.

           It was easy to calculate most of them took out 30 year mortgages, the maximum at the time. Yep, 18 years later came the mass layoffs. Because of mergers and a new distinction between union and management, numbers are disguised but judging by people I knew, they axed around 6,000 people out of 15,000 when I was there. And many were tech jobs replaced by computerized switching gear. Of those left, only around 8% were infrastructure workers, the rest were the lowest paid category of clerical staffers. Most I knew were top-of-the-scale linesmen like myself. I got out in ’96. They lasted another 7 – 9 years and left empty-handed. I’ve no idea what happened to them. But as I’ve said, when times were good, I did not see them next to me in evening school preparing for the downfall.
           Here we go again with the Daylight Saving arguments. Most people against it are just too ignorant to understand what it is for. This is neat, I found my documents, because every search also turns up all kinds of things I’d forgotten. Now I’m keeping an eye out for my old MagicJack. Remember those, you could plug and bypass the hefty phone company long distance charges. Then arrived severe warnings not to even plug the older models in, which of course now I want to know why not.

Picture of the day.
Coming your way.
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           Three weeks to election and the doors start slamming on the Democrats. Told ya, remember how California defied mandates and sent out all those mail-in ballots? I wondered why the post office would carry out such illegal activity. Now I know. They used the data to get the home address of every illegal in the Democrat inventory. This morning they received notice to remove every bogus name from their rolls and they are furious.

           Here’s the Yeti box again, showing the bottom panels being fitted. Another quirk is how bigger boxes can simply decide, jigs or clamps bedamned, not to stay square. Such is the case here, which in turn means the bottom panels must be custom cut to fit. This is where I knocked off for the day because the project was starting to fight back.

           Below I may put together a montage of fitting the Yeti (also called the Kodiak) into a specialized container, one major purpose of which is to make the unit very difficult to move without including the chargers. I never mentioned how I went without an overnight fan for months because I could not find either charger. (One 12V one 110V.) They had fallen into the spare tire compartment.
           The neighbor checked to see I was mobile, he does go to out to bars, just not around here. So I asked where he goes and he is a fan of titty-bars. I can see it, married 40 years, dull career, there are signs. We contemplated a late-week Festus but I am honestly too tired to commit. Let me check what landed on my list.

           Ah-ha, the wider picture begins to emerge. Hours before the Omar raid, members of her family began to receive subpoenas and rumors about some are fleeing to Morocco. The big article was the announcement of a tax-payer funded exclusively Jewish township in Florida. Some 3,000 houses and 800 rentals with no job or work infrastructure. It is all paid for by your taxes. Contrary to the way the fake MSM news presents America to the world, those people are very unpopular. Yes, that is the word, 'unpopular'. Here is a sampling of the posted comments:

√ The only place in America illegal to build a mosque.
√ Pity if a wildfire moved thru.
√ Saturation bomb that motherfucker.
√ Round them up and deport them to Israel.
√ Segregation for me, but not for thee.
√ When do they start bombing their neighbors?
√ Imagine the smell.......
√ Ahhhhh yes, the ol’ “self-concentration camp” trick.
√ At least we’ll know where to send the masturbation machines and lamp making tables.
√ I hope they all get malaria.
√ Nuke it from orbit, that's the only way to be sure.
√ Build an electrified fence around the place with gun towers at the corners!
√ Now let’s talk about what happens to White people who try this.

ADDENDUM
           I found a whole file of short videos. Who remembers Jag, my guitar player from around twenty years ago? I have his old e-mail, so I fired off a note and some clips to see if he is still there. He’d be in his late 30s by now. I further sent sample of my latest bass-acoustic duo sound, which has not changed much in all this time and does not need to. It’s a great example of how everyone else crabbed about playing the “bar scene” where instead we honed it to a pitch.
           Still reading about the Colossus code-breaking computer, I stumble across many items not stressed in the commentary. One was an order form for “French glue”. Aha, that tells me they were cutting the long printout punchtapes into sections, and gluing those into a loop. Aha, again, that means they fed the loops into a reader one at a time and let the computer try every possible pattern until it found one.
           Then, an operator could walk over to a reverse-engineered copy of an Enigma or Lorenz and set the code wheels to the proper position. And that spews out the plain text. This is why since the days of RofR’s early partnership, so many of our communications had code words. Even reading them tells you nothing. For instance, his brother lived in “Little Willie”, the code for Edmonton, Alberta. This method persists to this day in many forms, such as our bank statements. All withdrawals are methodical and tell you nothing important. Here, give it a try.

           Another round of MSM fake polls are hitting the social sites, all with the same message. That Trump is failing and his popularity is tanking. Some of the pollsters are legit, the problem is they intentionally over-sample blue areas. Most under 30s today have never seen socialism and don’t fear it as much as they should. All they see is two parties that don’t work and therefore a different party that attacks them must be a solution. Danger, Will Robinson.

Last Laugh

October 13, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 13, 2025, silver finally hits $50.
Five years ago today: October 13, 2021, it was a game board.
Nine years ago today: October 13, 2017, #21 gas mantels.
Random years ago today: October 13, 2009, not quite Lex Luthor.

           That extended siesta from y’day threw off my circadian, I woke up thinking it was last night. I grabbed my bass for time zone rectification and within the hour had a pancake breakfast and my third cuppa. But I’m still wobbly, so we will kind of inch into today. I did discover if I fake the bass line, the Croce song “Car Wash Blues” is in my vocal range. For clarity, that means I can chant the melody on key while playing bass. Laugh all you want, I have not heard you sing, but I have won Karaoke contests using my style. The lyrics are actually quite snappy, I sent a copy to the Kaiser.

           Who promptly replied, meaning a get-together at Rosie’s Two Legs and time to catch up on music talk especially. I moved the old and favorite chop saw back inside the white shed where formerly the router table got little use. This is the saw I got for $15 at the church thrift in Harbor Heights. Where there is neither a harbor or any heights. It is two feet above sea level. The saw weighs about 35 pounds, so that was my therapy for the morning.

           That deep sleep recharged the battery, and I launched into the legacy filing cabinets in the shed. Texas is again getting ansty with me over some records they have that are plainly somebody else’s misfiles. I have never given them any DNA and refuse to, if only because they have shown what kind of stunts they will pull if they get it. At 11:29AM this morning I found the paperwork I need. It was locked away since 2008, but I remembered back then I had ordered several extra copies precisely for some bureaucratic bullshit of this nature.

           I’ve found three copies, which is about right and saves me a bundle of money, especially because Austin was about to insist I show up in person. Screw them, they are the ones who fouled up. There are around 16 documents in the file, which will take me a day to sift through, but I’m out of their clutches now. I remember now how they argued when I wanted five copies when they were accustomed to requests for only two.

           Soon as I sort these out, I’ll be making plans for the rest of this year, including a trip to Miami around Xmas just for a visit. However, like this past week, it depends not just on the zip I’ve got today, but what I project for myself in the upcoming stretch. My memory is very sharp over the visit to JZ was it two months ago, where I fell asleep on the sofa for two days. That is not how I visit people.
           And here is another dumb box, built to test various things, probably miter cuts, stain, or even weight. I don’t like this box, and after assembly it settled a bit off-square and will not right. Also, my box of expensive 20A switches somehow got flooded with water and wrecked about $60 worth of brand new material, including costly dimmer switches. To make things even more fun, my old hot water tank is making noise. Hey, 1946 to 2026, 80 years for a Maytag is nothing.

           What was that bank I warned against 20 some years ago? Bank of America, that’s it. Shifty as hell. They just got slapped with $1.21 billion in fines for money laundering. That’s the outfit that tried to trick me into cashing in my bonds. I found time to review more of the 20W lasers. They don’t exactly do what I want, which is cut wood. They are faster, but that isn’t a big barrier for my output. I am amused by on-line ads showing an operator sitting next to the laser on a fancy work table. With no fan or extraction apparatus, no visible cables, and no leftover pieces. Very misleading.

Picture of the day.
Each State’s most inland town.
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           I managed some prep work, including the elongated box for the Lucida drawing tool, which I have not had the patience to test well and the transport box for the Yeti. This is gluing up the extra-wide boards needed for a proper casing. This is likely its last chance to prove itself. This view shows some biscuits about to be fitted into slots that my wonderful Vivitar will not show. This is the strip to be joined to a regular fence panel to give the extra height for the box.

           And that is why this test. In the past, these joints have proven weak in the long run. No way are biscuits suitable for even medium duty as shown. Forget the 8-foot planks an 26” desktops shown on the videos. Even when spaced so there is more biscuits than joint, these pieces can be bent and snapped apart by hand. On the right you can just make out the clamps squeeaint the board, the other pieces are just lateral strips to keep the surfaces flat.
           Listening close to the hot water tank, I recognized a hollow sound. Ah, it a pipe in trouble. I lifted the kitchen floor and found it right away. It’s the same shark joint that’s come loose before. A five minute fix. The point is, I lifted and replaced the plywood sheet on the floor myself. Ta-da. I know not cheer yet, let’s peek at what news gets my attention.
           Coca-Cola corporation is $43 billion in debt. The media tries to portray the riots in France as student’s protesting for better education. The largest shopping mall in the world is in Iran. And if it is only a house raid over at Omar’s, why are they using fully armed SWAT teams and arresting everybody in the building including the staff? And I heard the term “reductionist” used to insult somebody today. I looked it up. OMG, when it comes to women’s personalities, I’m a reductionist.

           A touch of sleeplessness had me finally look at the construction of a machine I knew about half a century ago. But I did not understand the mechanics of digital switching or logic until 2011 when I studied the Arduino. The machine was Colossus, the WWII code-breaking unit which I consider the first real working computer. It worked on a fascinating principle which now makes sense to me.
           Every written language, including German, has patterns that repeat. I don’t know the math but the code-breakers somehow realized the German machines Enigma and Lorenz had patterns in multiples of 41. They would take certain stock phrases known to be common in military messages (such as “nothing to report”) and compare it to the lettering of intercepted radio traffic. There are millions of such combinations, so what the Colossus did was begin stepping through the seemingly random characters and counting the number of times a pattern appeared on a ticker tape.

           Then, the Colossus would step ahead one character and read the tape again, at around 9,600 characters per second. This was formerly done by hand and took weeks. The result that had the highest number of repeated patterns now looked more orderly and were sent to another department for analysis. Colossus was mainly eliminating patterns that didn’t work. I instantly noticed in the oldest newsreels that the hardware was telephone switching gear. They had replaced switching relays with vacuum tubes, which could burn out.
           But some of the employees had worked at the post office, where phone exchanges were often located and noticed the tubes lasted a lot longer if you left them on all the time. Rather than switch the tubes off and on, I saw banks of “Strowger” switches. At this point, the operation was over my head but I watched in fascination. The documentaries are still laced with wartime propaganda.
           Apparently twelve of the Colossus design were ordered. Only seven were built, and four of them were fully occupied finding the German daily wheel settings, leaving only three to do the pattern searches. Other accounts say ten were built. While I’m still not convinced the Allies could read all the code, even parts of it gave them an immense advantage. I do not at all buy the story that the Germans never suspected a thing.

Last Laugh

October 12, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 12, 2025, the original trailer.
Five years ago today: October 12, 2021, I ate steak.
Nine years ago today: October 12, 2017, no eyebrows.
Random years ago today: October 12, 2006, the sub-contractor blues.

           This country has gone downhill. I could not reconcile my bank statements for September. I found the problem. On September 9, our business account decided to record daily deposits as one lump sum. That is bastard-rat think but goes to show how unsophisticated most bank clientele is these days. Each deposit on a business account is a separate transaction. What happened was the retards at the post office (despite higher prices and lower volume due to e-mail) now take up to five days for first class mail to reach Tennessee.

           This resulted in two mail-ins and one ATM deposit all landing there on the same day. So the bank bastards recorded it as one transaction. a sum that appears nowhere on our books. The good news is this resulted in finding $64.09 unspent weekend travel money, so I’m going shopping at the Treasure barn this morning just for something to do. Maybe buy some of those nothing-fluff cookies at the Mexican mart in the same plaza.

           No sir, no cookies. Lately this town has turned into a pack of super-broke skinflints and the stop at the market was just that. Everybody is clinging on my their fingernails. Mind you, I did find a brand new Magnavox portable cassette player for $15 bucks. These rare finds are treated like gold around here because of my backlog of murder mysteries. Both vans have AUX jacks and most anything beats the local radio stations.
           Ouch! I forgot a lot of this legacy equipment, in this case the Magavox AQ6511, was built before those sissy European decibel laws. The package came with a pair of the original “bass boost” headphones and holy cow, those are loud. Like when you crank it full to see if it works. It also has superb FM reception as long as the headphones are plugged in. Later, confirmed the stereo jack is the off/on switch and this has no external power supply jack.

                      Big events this morning? Other than finding my contact at the barn went out of business, I paid bills and send the Reb some extra spending money. A stop at the lumber yard and that was my limit. Barely crawling in the door, I’m down for the day. Not before catching the headlines. The Feds raided Omar’s place. Some smart aleck commented that nobody but nobody sniffed her panties.
           Unlike the very public Trump raids where MSM news cameras were on the scene, we are only told that the raid on Omar is a “criminal investigation”. The next in a long string of recent incidents that bring serious negative opinions on the leftists right before what should be a quiet mid-term election. But hundreds of millions are being spent and Trump is hosting massive rallies across the swing states. Something big is cooking.
           Plus, doing it on Columbus Day is symbolic. Since the media will conveniently forget how they cheered when it happened to Trump, there must be outrage. Good, because the mood is that this raid is part of a bigger scenario.

Picture of the day.
China’s aging labor force.
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           Nothing to report. I zonked. News items that caught my eye are that half Saudi Arabia’s population are immigrants. The US Democrat party keeps all its bank accounts in Canada. Once again I forgot it was Columbus Day. I picked up nine new pickets, in case my energy remains low ebb. For the first time since April, I turned my air conditioner on low. Since February, I’ve lived in two rooms of the house. But I can’t even contemplate moving to a smaller place.
           I believe the independent polls that show over 80% of Americans want public hangings for current and former Democrat kingpins. It’s easy to read the stats and think they are ranting or overstating their positions. Nope, if the government did what they were elected for, the anti-communist revolution has already occurred. Keep me out of it, though I might change if it ever arrives at my back door.

           The Temporary Protection Status of Haitians has not been renewed, meaning over 10,000 of them are going back. It will be curious to see what happens in Springfield, OH, when a quarter of their population disappears. Remind me to watch house prices and which businesses start failing, considering all but around 400 of the aliens are on welfare. Talk about funny, there has been an increase in pictures of Trump protesters, but is it intentional or just representative. All of the pictures now show only fat boys, ugly women, and the obviously mentally deranged. Clever.
           And in crime-ridden Northern Territory, teen girls over 16 only are allowed to carry pepper spray but only has a defense against rape. Presumably under-16s don’t get raped. Illegals, immigrants, and aboriginals are screaming the move is “racist”. Most other forms of White self-defense have already been outlawed in Australia. Trump has put all the fake women back into men’s prison where they belong. Sadly, he did not fire the prison staff that created this problem.

Last Laugh

October 11, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 11, 2025, the one-click dream.
Five years ago today: October 11, 2021, then the drummer died.
Nine years ago today: October 11, 2017, down the tubes.
Random years ago today: October 11, 2020, Sparkie is aging.

           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.

           Another MSM “whoops”. They’ve been awful smug about being immune from reporting lies and hoaxes, but this latest investigation is something they had not anticipated. By collectively agreeing to not broadcast White House press news (to protest the banning of fake news reporters), the big stations may have run afoul of anti-trust laws. Relax, it is DOJ pretending to work. There will be investigation but no charges or arrests.

           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.

Picture of the day.
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.

           It ranges from 100W light bulbs to the 2-lb bags of rice. In a true free market, there would be no recurring shortages. Here is a box of the 1” size which passed the 1ȼ each barrier. A box of 1,000 is $12.26. They are $8 for a similar box at Harbor Freight, but you have to add in the time wasted going there when they don’t have any. DeWalt is Home Depot, a quality brand, but you pay for it.
           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.

           Before I let you go, my spell of extra energy is over, dwindling back to the same level as last month. That’s around 45%. One, and the only one, consolation is that we now know it can happen. Over the past few days I watched some the A.I. documentaries that have taken over youTube. I chose several on topics I know something about, like naval battles, metals, and aircraft. It’s freaky. The A,I is methodical and never misses a single important point. Some layer of society is in for it.

           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.

Last Laugh

October 10, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 10, 2025, “no slop for you”.
Five years ago today: October 10, 2021, pallets, scooter, spuds.
Nine years ago today: October 10, 2017, first driverless semi trip.
Random years ago today: October 10, 2013, the Colorado circuit.

           I bought this gizmo at the Thrift thinking it was a speaker, but it was a clock when I took it apart. Before we continue, it has been a dead calm all morning, so I will tour the yard after sunup, in case we are in for it. Hurricane Isis (not a typo and screw you weather bureau, go be woketards someplace else) makes landfall about now.and I’m seriously thinking of walling in all my lean-tos over this wind damage nonsense. The clock stunned me because of the precise assembly and perfect accuracy of pieces too small to be hand-held. This $4.99 MSRP gadget was a marvel in itself.

           This was designed and built by the robots. If you see imperfections on the pieces, it is on the camera lens. I didn’t keep any pieces, they were one of thousands. I took this photo at around 50x to reveal the intricate and exact neatness showing how far some of us have fallen behind. No way a human did this, and this article was years old when I found it. Who is to say what A.I. will turn this into?
           I’m considering a change to my Picture of the Day feature. The links expire, which is the readers incentive to check in regular, or miss something. They are also the single largest part of this blog that has any potential for copyright troubles. I abide by the court decision that copying such material is infringement, but merely pointing at it (like a link) is not. It’s a fool who argues this blot is anything other than entertainment or education, but the supply of fools grows exponentially with our welfare society. What to do?

           There you go, the last week caught up with me, but I paced myself and I’m doing okay. Energy at 50%, marginally better than before. So that’s improvement. No word from the guitar player as I continue to apply custome bass lines to old Croce tunes. This, I cannot do without thinking of Sweet Judy. I wonder whatever happened to her. I did try, as promised, to contact her on her 50th birthday. After than that, nothing. She could be a great-grandmother by now. If I recall, we broke up about this time of year, 52 years ago.
           Another distinct memory of the time was how “dumb” I seemed to people because I did not watch television. I could not follow their humor, nor they mine—but they had become a permanent majority. See addendum for history. My 50% energy does not measure motivation. I still managed a breakfast of jelly on sliced hard roll toasts, grits with cheese and chicken chunks, an apple, and three cups of coffee.

           Lest we forget, I’ve still got the tail end of the Karaoke flu, and that’s been nagging for days. It chose this morning to give me some last trouble. Deep-chest expectorant coughing. Cancel my trip into town. The Reb called to tell me to cancel because the rain has already hit Tennessee. And you can leave the Reb in charge. Untrusting of cold medicine, I took a “sinus congestion” tablet, a half-dose. And it’s purging my whole respiratory tract. I’m staying put.
           Part of it is I promised the Reb to take it slow. Here I am. I located a file of old pet pictures from the late teens and sent them. One trait of that gal is she does not, like some, attach any overboard nostalgia to these things. Keeps things light. Hours later, here I am, on the streaming computer, looking for a movie. My chest is loosening up and I made a quart of lime-ade y’day to keep hydrated. Now, if only I had some popcorn. This was my American Saturday morning.
           Wait, there is one more thing. The Democrats are begging for money. No more NGO kickbacks. The Republicans have hundreds of millions while the Democrats are trolling for $17 million to contest a few spots where the contest is close and they stand to lose easily. Odd behavior for a party that is normally floating in cash by the midterms.

Picture of the day.
Congo coltan mining.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Ever heard of “Blonde Facism”, it’s on TikTok (Scrolling with Hayley). Blondeness is now a far-right political statement. Quote, it is an American ideal that signals purity and traditionalism. There are shades of color, such as “MAGA blonde” associated with Republican politics, “Sweeney blonde” means racial supremacy, and “dumb blonde” is used to give other races inferiority by something called body propaganda. Gawd, what does this mean for my blue, blue eyes? Note that most blondes do not stay blonde into adulthood. By age 28, I was mostly a dusty brown. By 48, I was white. Not grey, white.

           Having the time, I took a look at an operating system. I know they are there but not how they work. I learned they are two-part. One is the memory system, which surprised me that I have always understood how that works, with addressing and memory locations on a grid.
           I would warn that this is a complex topic and my interest is partly because that is where the concept of Arduino libraries come from, a type of computer coding that relies on subroutines written by others. (I believe most of them should be hard-coded or at least subject to very stringent standards.) A good example of why libraries are a screw-up is the original IBM/DOS copy command. There were at least 8 versions of it, none of which would do what you expected.
           Nor can I find any of the original “real” assembler languages. I last did this brand of programming in the late 1980s. The newer versions are not assembler, but higher-level mostly crap. In my book all assembler commands are 4 characters with one command per line. I’m encountering something new to me, called HLA for High Level Assembler. It looks like COBOL. Later, I found a version called Netwide with four-letter command lines, so I’ll read that.

           Trump is holding massive rallies, once again just showing up is enough. Yet, the legacy media is still insisting the other side is winning. In Tennessee, Trump announced that 25 million illegals will never get amnesty to a crowd roaring approval. That is the number let in under Biden and about half the total illegals. One person in six is here illegally and these midterms could spell the end for them. They are being cut off all government services, which is also a scary reminder that all Americans have become too dependent on that.
           Later, I read up on assembler language (noting today’s authors interchange ‘assembler’ and ‘assembly’, bringing back an early fascination I had with my Apple computer. I recall most the immense effort needed to understand relative and offset addressing, which is second nature today—and how gamers find it easier to grasp.

ADDENDUM
           I still have thousands of unsold tubes in my shed. Many are 1950s manufacture, which I find an amusing reminder of how most people are followers. TV had been invented long before it became popular in the 50s, but what changed? I often marveled at the set of tubes inside a television cabinet. I did not know they were a spillover from the war. In 1945, pretty much the entire tube industry was producing for the military. I read somewhere they were cranking out 100 million a year when the war ended.
           It was find something to do with all that capacity, or wither. Wartime radio demand as maxed within 36 months after the war ended, but radio did not have the potential or require as many tubes. I had notice the inside of TVs had much the same set of sockets—but we were constantly warned that there was lots of dangerous electricity in there.
           We were the last people in town to get a TV, not through any objections, rather because my parents were that cheap. Yes, it was the era of three channels, mostly golf and baseball, and signing off the air at 10:00PM. I witnessed two phenomena. How farm kids knew about “news” faster than I did. And how instantlymy siblings became addicted to television. Many times I saw my parents smiling at the others fighting over the channel, not aware these little bastards were seriously trying to harm each other.
           Some may conclude my non-watching of television was due to lack of access or exposure. Wrong. I grew up surrounded by television. I rejected it for what it was—a waste of life.

Last Laugh

October 9, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 9, 2025, so-called experts.
Five years ago today: October 9, 2021, a power outage.
Nine years ago today: October 9, 2017, a nasty 105°F.
Random years ago today: October 9, 2024, mine bought a farm.

           I don’t watch TV (they still make those things?) but that does not mean I’m against them. Stupid people need constant distraction, and besides, a planned watch is a different animal. Festus is scheduled, not surfed. I may go out that day to watch the execution, make a celebration of it. The morons have started the protests already, saying it is “un-Christian”. Others protest the public nature of it, but it seems to me the killer executed his victims in public. Either way, let me mark the calendar.

           Tomorrow I have been officially happy for ten years. I had moved in here but not quite settled, and this is the first house I’ve bought in decades that I actually lived in, and bought for myself, not for investment. It’s a bit too big for me to upkeep, but that’s the lesser mistake. And end of this month, the place has paid for itself some ten times over in saved rent alone. The event will pass without a celebration, as my life outcome is now largely determined by what happens in Tennessee.
           My question of the day is will I ever be able to just sit down and do nothing, as is apparently the game plan for 99% of retirees? That’s born out by observation and it looks like many of them got a 30-year head start, ha-ha. The answer is no, but meanwhile here is a picture of a very common mistake. Instead of a direct explanation, it is a slow day. We’ll make a short story long. As you see, the lid cut on this unit has been cut twice on one side. Relax, I know how to fix this, but the story is how this can happen.

           First, the operator has to be distracted. For certain personality types, this is not so easy. Let’s follow the trail. This lid is one of the most precision cuts, so it often is left until later than other projects. You get better results and I don’t know why.
           Today we had several of those other projects and one was building these two boxes. This excellent view shows the dimension difference between the K-box on top and the Z-box at bottom. It does not show the K-box requires only five cuts and is build in roughly a third of the time.

           Another time-consuming step is that thumb-hole. Without it, the Z-box is difficult to pick up with one hand. This will be on the exam, pay attention. The small box is just the 4V “glovebox” drill getting coat of stain. The other boxes are for utility so they are not finished They do reflect the cleaner lines of most output these days.

           Okay, smartass, how does this relate to the cutting mistake? Well, see that thumb-hole. This box does not have a lid, and boxes with a lid are handled different. For one, the saw is across the yard and can only be used on cool, sunny days. The slice has to go across the center of the hole, so that the box is not easy to pick up unless the lid is latched. How are we doing so far? The question is now can sawing through a hole cause a distraction?

Picture of the day.
Scooptown car wash, SD.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           It works like this. Because the box can sit a while, a month is not uncommon, for its turn to be cut, it sits on a shelf. Shown here, until that slice goes through the thumb-hole, it is a dark, cool, and sheltered environment. Just right for wasps and hornets. Also shown here. It put a damper on the other work I was planning, I can't use the saw for anything else with those buggers swarming around. So I went inside to watch the Indians deny their stock market was crashing. There are a rash "Hindo genius" videos appearing on youTube. Trying to cash in on the myth that they are math whizzes. They are not, it is akin to a series of parlor tricks, that roots and squares nonsense. As for new theories, or breakthroughs, you get none.

           Trump put a stop to the biggest abusers of the H1B program, the people who brought in 10 million East Indians over the past twenty years. Who warned you about fake degrees, in case you have forgotten? The mill worked by essentially forcing the workers to send money back to India. Now that pipeline is cut off. And, along the Hindu corridors in Texas, foreclosures are soaring.
           Pink, another celebrity taking political sides, reports that being pro-Jewish is “lonelier than expected”. Polls outside of Democrat cities show they stand to lose fifty seats next month. I care less for Democrats, but I hate liberals.

           Tampa is on about the poor, sad sailors on the returning aircraft carriers. The tour was 266 days without shore leave. What part of “war” don’t these people get? What part of “volunteer”? I am opposed to married people in the military and against men with children. I don’t want to hear that 122 of the sailors “became fathers” while away.
           And the Indian stock market continues to crash despite endless, countless press releases that it is not.

ADDENDUM
           The corniest video, titled Happy Ending.

Last Laugh

October 8, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 8, 2025, early A.I. comments.
Five years ago today: October 8, 2021, gluing boards.
Nine years ago today: October 8, 2017, cheapest local bnb.
Random years ago today: October 8, 2018, Tarzan backtracks.

           This is my messy work area, showing the “beautifully organized Florida compact shelf” of spare parts, junk, and small tools. I knew you’d like it and it is one slow blog. Day. If there is any excitement today, it will have to happen while I’m at Wal*Mart. Today’s recurring theme is smaller boxes. You can see some of them here. The two at dead center are ordinary F-boxes just finished differently. They are also “off-sizes” which I’ll explain in a moment.

           Day four since my “boost” walking across the parking lot and I’ve not experienced the usual pull-back. See addendum. I flunked this morning's word quiz because I don’t know what a slip dress or a wrap dress are. But I know how to get women to take them off in a wink. More reading on early programming reveals the early problems I pointed out later had names as outfits like IBM noticed them. Remember, I was too far ahead of my time and could not find any programming jobs until after I had settled on a career. But, I’ve never lost the knack.
           Prime example is what I called “fall-through coding”. Nowadays this is the familiar “case” statement and has inherited the defect. This is where the computer is given a list of choices. When none are valid, the computer “falls through” to the next consecutive command and carries on from there. Whatever the problem might be is not visible in the list. That is an instant problem and a dangerous one. The most common consequence is years later a new coder comes along and inserts a new line of code where the old one had rested.

           This is the difference between a coder and programmer that I have stressed. The defect does not appear until usually much later when a “fall-through” occurs. The coder will argue to death it is not his fault. A programmer knows better and codes in a routine that specifies what to do when none of the cases are selected. I have always written my code this say. My point today is this has become known as “defensive programming”. Others are now getting historical credit for doing what I considered plain old common sense. They could have saved millions, maybe billions if you count probes that get to Mars and encounter something unanticipated.
           There is another topic I have written on. The abuse of punctuation as computer delimiters. Completely moronic. My article, if I ever find it, is called “There are 53 letters in the English alphabet.” Some C+ code addresses the fall-through coding by using ON_ERR command lines. But they even get that backwards by placing it before the selection list. This means an invisible error could be imported, and that the list of plausible errors is not stepped through to eliminate that source before you even go looking.

           MicroSoft has been suspended from government programs that allow the importation of workers by claiming they can’t find American candidates. Kind of like I warned 30 years ago, but let’s not dwell. I did not move fast enough to record one of the most disgusting performances possible, the Irish immigration minister dodging questions about the Algerian who stabbed children. It was a masterpiece of deflection and ducking the searchlight. And I did not move fast enough.
           Rumor has it the woman who survived the execution (an inside job) is expected to regain consciousness. This is the lady that carve a pentagram into her still-alive victim. Listen to the bleeding hearts scream for her. I say arrest the “all-woman execution team”. I’m reminded of the time the Polish soldier was asked what it is like to kill another human being. His reply was he wouldn’t know, as he had only ever killed communists.

           I correct my figure of y’day about the great wealth transfer. It will be closer to $84 trillion. That’s the amount that could pass by the entitlement bastards who mean-mouthed their parents and go directly to the grandkids. I hope it does. I began work as a paperboy at age 8 and had my own band by age 13. I’ve had millennials call me down screaming where are the equivalent opportunities for their age group. See, that’s what I’m talking about. They even think it somebody’s job to hand them the bootstraps. I saw a couple of other gems, like that commie mayor of New York getting chased down the road by his own voters.

Picture of the day.
Amerca’s lonelinest road.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Life is more interesting of you can create your own nice surprises. Here is a mistake. This box should not be. I hark back twenty or so years to that stroll through Young Circle where I met the old guy who built boxes. It’s in the blog somewhere, but those were no ordinary boxes, he was asking $200 each if I recall. They were worth it, works of art. Well, this is the opposite, here is an ordinary box. With the usual catch that what it represents can’t really be seen. Hey, it’s how I write my blog, it is also not written for people over 55 or so (you may have noticed).

           This is no cigar box. The walls are 10x thicker. The captioning says the box is a mistake, in the sense that it would not normally have been built. What happened is the pieces had been cut for a different project. They were cut too short and the panel slots had already been grooved. This is semi-skilled labor so I didn’t throw them out. Much later I needed a container for spacing cards. What are those?

           They are an ordinary deck of playing or baseball cards. Then you have a saw cut too thin to move the fence, they are ideal to put a few or as many to just nudge your piece over. And I noticed these end pieces were the right size for storage. Cards like to blow around in the shed, see? And occasionally I will grab small pieces like this and test paint colors. It makes sense these pieces eventually got grabbed and make into a unit. I had no idea this would turn out.
           You cannot see the dozen wee mistakes and drill holes and uneven cuts. Most boxes have them but they are filled in or sanded away. This box is king of a revelation that I have sort of learned a lot about building smaller boxes. Nothing like the old guy, but still a lot.

           Next, another bank problem. I’m not worried in the sense that I know A.I. is combing historical bank records. They are looking for suspicious patters and there are not any. My accounts are designed to give away nothing, and that sadly is also something that A.I. might look for. I was in to town to deposit and the ATM rejected the transaction in a way I have never seen before. Not a bad transaction or a code, but a message saying access is denied. Meh, this is a PPP and I have a variety of safeguards ready to combat such nonsense. But they take time and my doggie has a sore paw now.
           Aware a hurricane is due out near the Texas coast on the weekend, I did some leisurely shopping. Bad idea, I got blasted by one of the worst storms in years. Too me until 7:00PM to get onto my street to find it is brimmed up to the level of my driveway. The drive way that is the principle depth guage in this neighborhood. My yard is level with being flooded, and mister, that is a lotta, lotta water.

           Later, my yard did not flood but it was saturated. Good thing I stocked up on hot chocolate and granny smith apples. This was one freak storm with almost no wind. That’s today’s excitement. Landscaping by semi-monsoon. Actually, for really bad yard work, nothing beats North Carolina but decide for yourself.
           The sickos in New York are now fining the Amish $2,000 per day for each unvaccinated child. A usual, it is the greedy going after the rich. The Amis farms are incredibly wealthy and the Democrats got elected by promising everybody everything for free. I really hope this represents a tipping point, but I don’t think the Republicans will do anything to stop the bad press the communists are getting this close to an election.

ADDENDUM
           It’s past 250 days and this time is already different. One would expect bouts of weakness, but each one ending in some gain. Not me, I was sinking a little worse each time and by end of September I could barely shuffle across the room. But it was not painful and my heart seemed just fine. I still have no cardiologist, but my PCP tests showed I was fine. Especially hose lengthy blood test printouts that show a comparison to what is ideal. Yet I was back at the levels of last March in the energy department. I was already working around the house by then, but I want improvement, folks.
           That is why this week gets extra coverage. The undocumented life is not worth living, they say. This week there is gain. I still tire too easily, but only to stop-what-you’re-doing tired. Not the physical exhaustion that sleep only partially cures. It’s more a sustained energy, or core energy if you would, except milder. Nonetheless, it is energy and I’m again doing many things without having to plan and strain the system. Energy level 50% but I have hit 60% at spots.

Last Laugh

October 7, 2026

Yesteryear
One year ago today: October 7, 2025, unlimited supply.
Five years ago today: October 7, 2021, the frog moved in.
Nine years ago today: October 7, 2017, from $6 to $32.
Random years ago today: October 7, 2011, never near the magazines.

           Nothing today, except hearing the news. That Eurocrat lady wants to “supervise” people[s personal savings. Stating these accounts are a problem, she wants to put this money at “the service” of European companies. How much longer, I have to wonder. France is now a non-country, but they had fifty years to do something about it. The fake pandemic people are at it again, this time another test tube dropped again in a communist lab. In the name of “damage control”, our embarrassing “agencies” are making a stink again.

           Opting for pancakes, I settled in to read on the history of 60 cycle electricity. I’m one one of the minority who can notice 50 cycle flicker. I learned Westinghouse, the Niagara electricity guy had experimented with this. I learned 60 cycles was chosen as best for driving electrical motors. This explains why I rented several rooms in my teens that were wired only for light. And I have seen kitchens wired only for a fridge and toaster.
           Here’s you go, my outdated map showing the Gulf of Mexico. The connection here is the first hurricane of the season is incoming right there. That puts Florida at the northeast corner of the spin. If you live here long, you learn that is the “dirty” corner of the storm. Best get yourself dug in. How many boxes today? Two, both junk boxes with wood that split. They can still make functional boxes. We can do better than functional. Left unfinished, they take a laser logo really nice I also checked on some underused gear, such as the jointer. It needs setting up and I forget how.

           This is getting old, but it was another good morning that still had a few warning signals. So I took it easy and went back to sleep. That’s constructive, in a way, because I have dozens of small projects to occupy any free time slots this creates. Like today, I’m finally building a box to keep my non-USB-C cables separate. The standardization laws have made other cables increadingly rare. I have a dozen of each and acquaintance with these affairs tells me to begin guarding them preciously. Ten each is considered below replacement levels.
           Right now, I’m hauling back to idle mode because of a lingering sense of “repair” going on. This is a third good day without interruption, a streak I don’t care to upset. That’s the longest yet. No sense pushing for anything, it’s already been 250 days of mostly struggle with fatigue, so a month or two here and there is just a recess for me. I’m deep formatting some old SD cards, which takes an hour each, leaving me time to ponder that any hope of a musical career for me is sunk out of sight. The closest I’ll ever see to a hit song now rests solely with the Reb.
           My budget for fame and fortune is not depleted and I have deep faith in the Reb’s talent and ability. I’m already doubting my strength would be enough to sit in the audience and watch her show. But I do have sixty years part-time management experience at the most dramatical part of the industry, that is, getting that first big flight off the ground. I further know well before most how much these things will cost. Since I know she won’t ask, I will make the offer. I’m very aware how closely this resembles a relationship we do not have. It keeps life interesting.

           Busby, the Brit ex-soldier, has completed his 28 year walk around the world. Starting in 1998, he has managed to stroll 30,000 miles without once mentioning where he got the money to do this. He says he walked 7 hour per day, meaning his speed was less than 1/2 mile per hour or he stopped to partake in “local custom”, another expense he did not mention. Hey, I never said people who do this are wrong. I’m just noticing they never mention the obvious.
           I don’t use a lot of links because they interrupt user reading patterns. So to articles which extend beyond a page. I combat that with shorter “3-sentence” paragraphs, so if you must scroll back, you get there easier. I read some excellent articles which finally referred to these as blogging mistakes. Whew, I thought I was the only one. Other errors you won’t find here often are:

Begging for money constantly (hit that subscribe button)
Overlong preambles (I was born in a log cabin crap)
Too much jargon or tech-talk
Font-glare (or the unreadable opposite)

           I’m guilty of some bad habits, but my defense is they are habits borne of long-term immersion in the blogging effort. Often, I have no choice but to presume you’ve read what happened up to today, in general.
           Certain people are making a big deal that the lady who “programmed” the Apollo computer passed away at 90 today. I can identify with her role in leadership and organization, but I stop short at calling her a computer pioneer. Why? Because in the 1960s, it was the math, not the computer, sending men to the moon. The formulae were all worked out and coding them into a computer was a clerical job, done mostly by the office secretaries at the time. Look it up.
           It was another twenty years before MicroSoft created the mess that is called coding today. However, there is one consistency that has not changed. Coding still, sixty years later, does not require the coder to know much about the underlying process, as long as it displays “right” or produces the expected results.

Picture of the day.
Making plastic forks.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Total shed time to day was maybe a couple hours. I looked again at the biscuit joiner, but I’ve had poor luck with those. Bottom line, the joints are just not all that strong. Wood around here would only be joined to create larger panels than my current maximum of 5-1/2 inches. But the larger resulting pieces do not match the strength of my solid pieces. And something else has changed since the weekend. My regular appetite is returning. Top missing items (since January)? Rice. It’s been a staple since 1980.

           How about a reminder that over here, the best of the day can also mean the worst of the day. The house term for it is “superlatives”. I can feature the best photos and topics of a day, you’ve seem some pretty dismal results. But I can also go the other extreme, and this is a view of laser etching spacers. (Later, by request, that small block full of holes top of the picture is a sacrificial drilling pad, looking well-used.)

           A small box (what else) of blocks to slide under items to be etched which to not fit into the focal range of the beam, or for narrow items that would rock the assembly as the relatively heavy laser head moves around. It’s so any future Zoomers can compare it to their collection, nomsayn? After all, this is 2026.
           I get in from the shed with a craving and I still have half a bag of sticky rice from the last trip to Snapper Creek. It does not make well in a standard microwave cooker. Yes, I microwave for convenience and because the results are identical. Chicken and rice is the most common chow around here and today was a welcome back feast. I ate four cups of rice with shredded chicken and watch a documentary on mining in the Atacama. In grade school we were taught about the nitrate deposits, both in the camps and the bird guano 200 feet deep.

           We were also taught that Europe was cruelly responsible for the bad government and failures when the market collapsed once Germany learned to extract nitrogen from the air. I wanted to see the abandoned mining camps where the desert air mummified everything, but could not find a single source that did not focus on the industry downfall. It’s their own fault, you see this drunken binge lots of times. Opera houses built with imported marble on streets packed with oxcarts. It took less than ten years for their economies to implode and stay there since.

ADDENDUM
           Okay, I finished reading an article about what most people fear most about growing up. Here are the items that surprised or informed me the most, one way or the other. The overall surprise was how little most of them affected me.

Being surprised learning things takes longer.
Job skills overnight becoming obsolete.
Your generation’s heroes begin dying.
Realizing you will never reach your goals.
Re-emergence of childhood injuries.
Your brain stops at 30 but your body doesn’t.

           There is so much of this theme out there, it’s got to be A.I. That also makes it predictable. But nothing beats the realization that you’ve been lied to all your life.

Last Laugh