With seasonal slim-pickin’s at the J.O.B., we are on free-day three days early.   To much no surprise to anyone, we won’t be workin’ tomorrow either,,,  Even if we were, the chance of accomplishments would be nil,,,

Today is haul the blocks of wood to shed, begin splitting/stacking

note: I didn’t say FINISH splitting.    Theres a mess of wood in that pile.  I’ll put a serious dent in it, but finish is not on the agenda.   IMO, this is at least a two day job. (and its gonna rain off-n-on all day,,, so there is that,,,)

wood heats you twice

BS!!! its heats you many times.  Ya get warmed up cutting that shit up, again moving it, and once again splitting it and stacking it,,, then you get warmed up again moving it to location to burn where it warms you up yet again in its finale of blaze.    Lots of energy in and around wood burning.

There’s a reason people pay others for fuel,,,    Pay the cash and have the time AND Fuel, or spend the time and energy and have the fuel.  Cash is  just an agreed upon storage unit of energy spent.  

I recall the book I read that totally shifted how I look at money.   No it wasn’t Robert Kyosaki’s book either.  

Not that I agreed with everything Matt had to say, but there were far more points that hit me sideways and made the world look a little less F!ed up.   I highly encourage the pessimistic to read this book.   It won’t change your pessimistic side, but it will show you that things are actually better now, even if we don’t FEEL it.(that goes back to the book, Everything is fucked by Mark Manson.)

Yeah, linked several times over the last few years,,, They had that sort of effect on my thinking.    You’ll get over it.

and I digress,,,,,

Where are we headed starting tomorrow mornin’???

I’ll more than likely be clear headed tomorrow morn, at sumpin sumpin zero-dark thirty, when Elbee wakes me up with snuggs, buzzes, and headstrops, “Food bowls empty Da!”   My party time is this weekend with kayaky friends and duct-tape fams.  Tomorrow is a kayak day.   Close to home, cold, and likely short, but I TRY to start to year on water for that peace of mind it brings.

But where are WE headed starting tomorrow?   No prognostication this year.   I have had visions in waking, and none give be a warm fuzzy, but I don’t think its going to be all that bad, nor all that good,,,   much the ‘same old, same old’ we have grown accustomed to: lying media, greedy politicians, mind-controlled plebes, and worker bees ‘keepin’ on’,,,   and no one at the local level will feel anything other than secondary effects like inflation making things rough.    It will be a creeping up on you sort of change, that we adapt to and never realize that we did so.   Same as always.   

And the world continues to turn under feet and the system streaks further and furthar along in space at 300000 miles per hour and we never feel the motions.

Life goes on is what I am trying to say,,,

Y’all take care out there tonight, stay safe, or stay home, but try to enjoy being alive.   Nothing else matters.

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Runnin’ the saws until the rain began again.     Thats an old Maple, and if’n ya zoom in, you can see, roots rotted away.  Tree was still very much alive this past summer,,, Not so much today.   Amazed it hadn’t fallen sooner, lookin’ at that rootball.  Elbee is all afreak’ed out: he’s never been around buzzy chainsaws, and there were two going wide open to get to where you see in the second picture.    Mama-cita was sitting on the porch watching ‘her minions’ clean up her queendom,,, She’s used to the sounds and knows she is safe, so long as she isn’t NEAR them.

And my carport roof blew away.   Found it in the trees at the end of my driveway.   Thats not a neccesity, just a nice addition, and I will get a replacement as soon as possible,,,  Just not today.

And there is a very much neccesary set of items needed ASAP.   A couple of turnbuckles for that set of guywires to the wind-genny.   I had one on hand, not the right size, but will suffice for the time being, and jury-rigged the guywires back to snug.   Will need proper repair soonest. and ALL OF THEM need going over now.   The tower stands tall, but that sort of impact, that can bend a turnbuckle in half,,, Yeah,   I know there is a credible chance of broken welds at the minimum.  Time to bust my drone back out and refresh my FPV app on my phone.  (its one of the cheapies, but it works very well for tower inspections.)

and now Da and Unk are talking about the “other trees that need fellin’ “   I have another maple (seen in the above pics), likely in as bad of  shape as the one that fell today, and a white oak that succumbed to age or something that is shedding its bark.   Both need ‘gone’ and I have a feeling that while I work at the salt mines, those two hooligans are going to scare my house and surroundings, with crashing trees.    Like me, they dislike being supervised, and will jump on things when I am NOT AROUND so I can’t ‘tug at their elbows’.

BUT, there is my fire wood for next season.   Two big maples and a huge white oak, all three at least 18″ dia at the base.     Plenty of wood for a season of serious knock your socks off cold weather (with my little house that is,,,)

What a way to wrap out the year,,,   Not a bad thing, but ‘ominous’, 

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Did a Stoopid! yesterday,,, 

Was working on building a box to hold my automotive tools: one that will slide under the truck box to keep things better organized and still secured.    While doing that, I was also charging batteries for my tools.  That means I needed to run the inverter to run the chargers.

Winter time, short days, low light at best of times and we have had several days with less than optimal sun shining.

Killed the battery bank.

Well, not killed, but I certainly ran it down way too low for comfort levels.  As in, my controller cut the power to the house until such time as the bank can come up to snuff.   

No lights.

Candles and kero-lamps for Dio.   And that doesn’t say I am out of options,,,  I’m writing this even as the power is cut off,,,     

But I knew better and didn’t pay any danged attention to what the bank condition was like.    I could have run the Genny to charge those cordless batteries, and left the main bank untouched,,, and I do need to run the genny ‘just cuz’, to keep things running proper and swap out that old gas for new.   Its been a couple months since I last used the genny.

Luckily, the heat and hot water are independent of the electric system,,  ya ever take a shower by candle-light?  LOL   Might sound romantic as heck, but seriously, its a PITA,,,  BUT, it was hot!!! and I needed that with the aches and pains of winter and age.  

That all said, the box I was working on is ready to be loaded while I do the domestics thing.   Gonna feel a bit of comfort having my tools back on board, not lounging in Da’s basement.  Call it a security blanket for the guy that drives a truck with 320K on the odo,,,   (Poor Buffalo,,, I give her so much grief over her milage, but she does have a rebuilt transmission and a completely new rear-end (among many other new parts, like brakes and steering components)  I just worry about that danged engine,,,  Side note: I do keep a spare cap and rotor for the Distributor on board.   She’s left me stranded a time or two with that failure.)

Been VERY lazy about the kayaking thing this past month.   I could have gone yesterday, chose not to, instead dealing with that box.   Needed? Yes!  Essential? Not really; I just stick close to home for awhile.   I have been spending time on the ERG for staying in shape for the paddle times when they come about: it just isn’t the same though.    I can forget about how many times I dipped paddle when the scenery changes: when I’m in a fixed position, I get VERY bored with the motions.   I stick it out though, set a timer and turn up the tunes, push through the boredom,,,

Lazy wrap up to the year, no prognostication from me this year.  Read Kunstler instead; he has some serious insight in what we could expect this year (and probably wrong seeing how F!ed up the last four have been.)  Time will tell,,,,  I am not going to get my hair in a knot over it (and I need a haircut,,, Looking like Ted Kazinski,,,ROFL)

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Ten years gone, ten years to go, Ten before the previous ten, and ten to go after the ten have gone,,,,

Ten years.  EVERYTHING changes in a ten year span.   Different chapters in different books describing the same person,   EVERYTHING changes: perspectives, politics, political viewpoints, personal knowledge, physical prowess,,,  EVERYTHING.

Lord knows when you are in your teens, ten years seems like a Life Sentence,,,  Once you have passed that Fifty-sumpin’ mark, its a Camaro blowin’ through a red light with blue lights in pursuit.

I think back to my childhood, I recall seeing scenes from Vietnam on the boobtoob (which was an actual TUBE!!!) I remember the shush-silence that followed that time period where people ‘ya just don’t talk about that,,,’ and the dichotomy that people WOULD talk about the “Great Wars”,,, never the black eye our own government created in southeast Asia.

“empires go to Afgahnistan to die” was totally ignored by both the USSR and Mother America,,,   And this country is slowing dying, while we watch Russia making something of a recovery, NOT the USSR,, that died in those frozen mountains of dust and rubble, killed by goat herders with bolt action rifles and serious FU attitudes.   We don’t talk to much about that black-eye either,,,,

Ten years gone, ten to go; everything changes. 

When I started this blog, things were still fairly sedate; the blob was very active, but still in hiding, that was in 2008.  In 2018, that blob was showing itself, the masks had come off, and the UGLY was very much out there for all to see, but most chose to ignore it. 

THEN, Covidiocy,,,  My mum died, my DA did too, but they brought him back from the edge and into his body again before the transition had taken hold.  

The things I thought I held dear in 2014 are gone,,,   My Southbend lathe has moved to someone elses possession and my ‘machining days’ are evolving into other areas of manufacturing (in research and development currently,,, not active duty,,,)  Not let go, but changed,,,  

My desire to fly has not shifted one iota,,, Still wanna fly, and keep falling back to those videos of FAR103 ‘hicles,,,,   

Love of flying transitioned to kayaking, in a sideways fashion.   Serendipity played a role there, and the methods I used to make model airplanes came into play to make three of my boats over the years.   EVEN THAT HAS CHANGED,,, I am looking more and more into composite boats (and that may play into the FAR103 stuff in the future,,, only time will tell.)  

The FPV stuff I loved in 2016-18 has grown widely in less than 10 years, and roughly along the lines I laid out in “Wings”,,,  to include LIDAR,,,(Weak version for Autonomous landings,,,,) Tech grows faster than the mind,,,   Only those that are ‘finger on the pulse’ can keep up.  The rest of us would require a learning curve of a year or more, DEDICATED, to ‘catch up’.  

And something else from the FPV thing I noted,,, Big Corps aren’t in it.   Many of the manufacturers from just 6 years ago aren’t either,,, all new names coming up fast behind the ‘big names’ of just 6 years.   The growth potential is driven by consumer demand and makers ability to provide,,   JUST AS FREEMARKET RULES DESCRIBE.    Its when BigGov and Industry collude, that Capitalism gets mugged in a dark alley. 

A lot of that growth has been driven by homebody research, 3D printers, and curious little kats with 10 digits on thier front paws.   Things like ‘rotary detonation rocket engines’ are being experimented with, and the file sharing is there for you to dig into on your own.

This species is destined to expand into the solar system,,, its inevitable, only a matter of time, not luck.  

Will we expand past that into the stars?   Maybe,,,    There is that whole FTL thing we still need to work on.   Less than that is not economically feasible.    And who knows,,, current meddlin’ in Quantum physics may break the barrier yet, and maybe (not holdin’ my breath) in my lifetime,,, What remains of it that is,,,,   

But I can easily see us expanding into the  SystemSOL and beginning to harvest materials from the asteroid belts, or finding ways of bleeding off atmo from the gas giants for all those lovely hydrocarbon gasses we use.   May be science fiction today, but look at that phone in your pocket and think back to Roddenberry’s ST series,,, Fiction can become fact.

Ten years to go,,, then ten more,,,, like a racing car blazing down the highway at twice the limit,,,,  NOTHING will be the same as it is today.

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Lots of vitriol flying about the webs and socio-sites about all things ‘immigration’ and H1B visas specifically.   

Not partaking, only watching (well, other than what I am writing here, not partaking,) but what I am seeing is a failure of tact on the part of ‘the smartest man in the world’ also known as the richest man in the world.  

Specifically, his throttling of opinion on his platform X.   Seems he doesn’t like people voicing against his wishing for MORE H!B visas, and at one point even stated ‘the DKE in these people is astounding’ or somesuch,,,   

Name calling shows lack of standing in your argument.    CENSORING OPINION shows you have no grounds AT ALL to defend your position. 

This all from a man that harped about freedom of speech just a few years back and made solid inroads into correcting the online censorship that was rampant under the COvidiocy,,,,  

Freedom of speech does not mean you must like what others are saying, just as they may not like what you are saying.   It DOES mean that discussion is possible, so long as the language remains civil.  CENSORSHIP IS NOT CIVIL, ITS TYRANNY WRIT LARGE.

IMO, its not about “who’s right” in this argument, its about solid emotions of Nationalism,,,   WE ARE AMERICANS, and we have seen the powers that be, trying to replace us, and now one of those that helped sway this past election, is showing signs of wanting to continue that trend.   THATS OFFENSIVE, and the guy with the DKE remark really needs to THINK before he responds so flippantly.    I admire the man for his accomplishments, drive, and,,, Hell His enthusiasm for LIFE, but right now, his liberal colors are showing brightly and not showing a good image.

I understand that there is a serious lack of STEM students on these shores, and that may be why he is leaning towards the H1B’s so hard,,, thats where the problem hits us sideways.   Its not a problem that is going to go away tomorrow, its going to take YEARS to correct and the only way to correct that issue is to GET THE GOV OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS.   Get the economy straightened out so the kids graduating aren’t buried under debts, and unable to find jobs because those jobs are taken by Visa holders that are damn near indentured servants.   The kids today have zero incentive to strive since they see the future stolen from them already.   Why bother, eh?   The jobs they do have offered are petty service industry jobs like flippin’ burgers.   Imagine having a masters in engineering and unable to find a job working for a big Corporation and working the local restaraunt scene is your only option to keep an income.   That shit will embitter a body with a quickness…

And guess what Elon,,, THOSE PEOPLE I JUST DESCRIBED are a large part of what voted for Trumped recently.   They are sick of the shit, and then you turn around and call them Dunning Kruger Effect Retards, you have the algorithms changed to suppress their opinions, even shuttering accounts to quiet the deluge of counter-opinion to yours,,,,

Nice move, real smart,

I’m reminded of my GranDad, who was a frickin’ Genius, but a social retard,,,  Grandma was the one that kept him from getting killed by stupid social F!ups.  (and she might have been just as smart as he was, just better equiped for the ‘real world’.)

I think you need to work on a better standing; one that doesn’t look at the bottom dollar first, before you go swinging your weight around and driving your credibility off a cliff.  A stance you can defend INTELLIGENTLY, and maybe even sway those, like me; open minded, but doubtful, that your position is one with the future of AMERICA in mind, not just your companies bottom lines.

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Here’s hopin’ y’all have a good holiday.   Lots going on in the world and there are brothers and sisters of mine in harms way: I send a more sincere and hopeful wish to them.   May this mess resolve quickly and quietly with no more loss of life.

Watching things going on and have some questions, but nothing I want to put into printed form at this stage.  Won’t lie, there are some things going on that have me scratching my head and thinking “we’ve been duped, AGAIN”, but I hold my peace because its still VERY early in the game.

BUT, it’s Christmas time, peace, and joy, and love of one another, etc etc…    The big thing for me is getting away from the comercialism side of things: no gifting this year, just spending time with those I can, and wishing I could spend time with more.   Scattered we are, and that makes such times more precious, especially when one looks at the years gone by and how few remain.  (that uncomfortable truth of unknown quanitity)  I am trying to see the lighter side of life, and this time of year makes that a bit easier, and just a little bit harder to swallow, at the same time.   I know that my times with my Da are coming to a close: might be this year, might be another 10 or more, but no one knows,,,, SO,,,, I make what good of them as I can. 

but enough about me.   Heres to YOU, hoping you are blessed this Christmas with the spirit of the holidays in all its glory.   Renewal of life, second chances, enlightenment, Ascension; all those aspects can be attributed to this time of  year.  Its not a death holiday, its RE-BIRTH, and I think after the last couple of decades, we could all use a fresh start.

MOre laters, after the festivities have settled down some (at least for a week when we start the new year)  Maybe I’ll post pics from my Christmas day paddle session,,,,  (tis cold but I’m determined.)

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Recent posting about Drones and what not, and my prior interests/endeavors,,,

I jumped back in to them, at least researching how far things have come.   O!M!G!,,,,

Just like the computer industry, things have JUMPED FORWARD,,,  no creepin’ along here, things are really REALLY much more complex than they were just four years ago.   Better Long range systems (30 klicks!!! is pretty standard now)   One vid I watched showed the guy ‘toeing the line’ at thirty klicks and it wasn’t the transciever for control that was failing, it wa his video transmitter reaching limit.  (can’t see, can’t fly, unlike with actual flying where you have all the gauges and indicators to guide you along.)    Think about that,,, 25 miles away and he was just hitting his visual limits,,,   Up the power on the Vid and he could have gone further (I believe they don’t want to do that because of interference onboard, AND, they start dipping toes into FCC regs.   FAA has really started some shit with regs recently,,, another ‘government overreach’ from all the F!you’s flying around in comments.)  

and that gets me into where I stopped today.  RID: Remote Identity.  Thats what went into effect Sept 16′ 2024 in FAA regs.   The drone pilots have to install a chip that broadcasts a ‘license plate’ and the have to register with the FAA (which also means they need to be certified by such,  lots of hoops to jump through.) and currently, there is ZERO WAY TO ENFORCE IT.    The idea looks good on paper, but when the rubber meets the road, No traction.    How many cops are going to start tracking down some guy because his RID was ‘caught’ over a ball feild his kid was playing at?    How many departments even have the equipment to pick up that info, let alone the resources to chase down every incident?    The FAA just farted and showed just how inept the department has become over the last 100 years.  The biggest complaint I have read is “You don’t interupt your pilot when he is trying to fly or land the plane, why would your assume that a guy piloting a drone would be more accessible?”   These things are not “Toys” and most of the people flying them are very aware of what sort of damage they can do if things go wrong.  Hell, the things are flying lawnmowers, and even though those blades look weak and fragile, they WILL cut a person to the bone many many times before they succumb to the laws of physics.

I’m starting to think that the recent ‘drone debacle’ was a staged event to drive public sentiment for further regulation of these ‘toys’.   It may have been an actual DOTMil exercise, but the media hype was pure propaganda for other means and ends.  

Now, I have a confession to make.  I am torn in two directions over the use of drones.   One is of the “PRIVACY” factor.  I get a little perturbed when people are looking over my shoulder, and when I find out that a drone was hovering nearby, I get even more perturbed.   Not that I am doing anything wrong or wayward, but that “Someone is being a snoop” feeling gets my ire up.    I dislike being ‘supervised’, and the small footprint and silence of a drone really puts ‘stealth’ and ‘sneaking’ into new lights.   (((we had a drone peeking at us while we were working at one of the schools, recently.   Don’t know who was controlling it, (and I think that is part of my dislike of it, the obsurity it allows) nor why they decided we needed ‘watched’.   Nothing ever came of it, but it left a very bad impression on me, and a little anger.   I can understand why some people get violent with some drone operators,,,    There needs to be SOME discretion on the operators side, respecting others right to privacy: even it that person is out in public or on a lake fishing or whatever.   )))

The other side of that coin in my world.  Its a tool, one that can add levels of safety to a hobby.   I can tell you, from personal experiance, that landing a Model Airplane is MUCH easier when you have the Pilots point of view, not trying to coordinate from a distance out side of the ‘cockpit’.   Much smoother, better able to determine ground speed and attitude of the ship, and you can “see” any obstacles on the runway that need avoided, or if you need to abort a landing and try again.     Same goes for the takeoffs and actual flight: You have a better perspective of what the model is up to, unlike from 100’s of yards away.   

Like any tool, it can be re-purposed for other things, to include “alterior motives”.    Just look at what they are doing in the hotspots of the Ukraine, and other places where things are not friendly to life.   That doesn’t mean you can regulate ethics or morals into people just because you don’t like their ideas. (and I feel that is what the agencies are trying to do: more for ‘control’ aspects than safety.

Not gonna pull the trigger on any equipment to fly FPV right now.   I know the learning curve has steepened since four years ago.   And I have other matters that need more financial attention that some toys.    (and I have two planes that are in need of  a serious dusting and going over  before I would dump more money into the hobby. (would need a new radio,, mine is out of date and unsupported now.)  But I can tell you, the itch was been re-awakened.    and I am feeling like Rip vanWinkle looking around.

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