Where's Orca? Pet Orca and she might wake up and chase
your mouse around.
Spring Ahead and Simmer Slow?
I think I have misplaced an entire season. Then again considering the
day to day temperatures and the lack of wild flowers and songbirds
these days are like Spring never happened.
Marching On
In response to my “interesting time in Yuma...” one Gentle Reader
wrote:
> Is Yuma still as crappy as ever?
I don't know about "crappy" other than the noise from the Marine Air
Base. I come in low on the southeast corner to the fairgrounds across
the street to the Yuma International Airport and Marine Base and after
a few days of basking in the glow of sodium vapour and the fumes of JP4
depart by the same route so I don’t really know about if there is a
yucky part.
It's not just a motorhome - it's a car you can go to the bathroom in!
—Homer Simpson
Must Be The Ides
Yesterday was warmish and coolish at the same time and partly cloudy
mostly but I don't remember much else other than spending several hours
on phone calls with various buck-passers in my SNAFU'd HMO. What a
runaround! No medical issues fortunately. Politics and administrative.
Lots of vocal frustration and name-calling eventually resolved at least
part of the problem. More of the complexification prevalent in the
organization that supposedly is dedicated to simplifying access to
their services. What used to take a phone call, a short email, a few
hours, now requires six layers of multiple-guess menus that never offer
me the choice I'm calling about, two-factor login (and a time-out if
your hasty is not hasty enough), then a week or so of waiting for what
used to take a day.
Mar10 Day Forgotten
 Sorry about that Mario. No
pizza for me today. Slowly I am rebuilding my confidence in the The
Cat Drag'd Inn as well as my ability to pilot her. But then
there were other problems when the house battery failed. 2000$
for a new battery. I'd been expecting that, was saving for that
eventuality, but still there is all the hassle of remove and replace
and reprogramme as I move from conventional AGM to Lithium. Then the
battery in TinyTruck decided to fail. That one was 16 years old!.
 Day Yet?
Not yet. This is the Ides of March. Today I worked on a wiring issue in
an upscale RV at the garage. Neutral busbar in the AC distribution box
had overheated, no fire however some seriously charred insulation.
Now! Today Is Day!
Thanks to Betty for the reminder; I was up early enough to build my
Whirled Famous Male Apple and share slices with
Sue and Toby and Paul and my Self. Any snake you see in the
Grasse today might be a Tyson thon especially if the
snake be 3.14 meters long. Thanks for that Neil.
 Eating too much cake is the sin of
gluttony.
However, eating too much pie is
Ok because the sin of is always zero.
—Robin
Palm Sunday
Date Palm Tree here along with Sunday chores. I trimmed the tree and
the chores. Some sort of 4-leg critter living under the instrument
panel, one of Orca's friends no doubt. Rain in the neighbourhood but
nary a trace here for 40 days. And 40 nights as well.
Thank You Mr Hayden
Orca is One and ajo is eighty-five and Susan would have been 76.
J.
Haydn - Hob I:85 - Symphony No. 85 in B flat major "La Reine"
(Brüggen) (1785)
Thank you for your birthday greeting. I've been collecting significant
songs since When I'm Sixty-Four. 76 Trombones
was a good year. And 33-45-78
was
good
for
more than one year, retroactively. My b'day music this
year is Haydn's
Symphony No. 85 "La Reine". The entire collection thus
far is an eclectic assembly of Oldie But Goody recordings.
Coin Collecting 
Collecting coins is somewhat akin to collecting clocks.
They
are
both
round—well,
real clocks are—and
coins in a manner of speaking also tell time. I never collected coins
like I collected stamps. In Scouts my first Merit Badge was "Stamp
Collecting". I still have my collection and still collect some new
issues. But coins I never collected. I hoard coins, amass coins,
congregate-cluster-convene coins. I have 13.4 pounds of rolled
coins—mostly quarters and pennies—not counting a couple cups of change
yet to be sorted and rolled. One of these days I need to sort and
examine the pennies. Long ago and far away I started to "collect"
one penny for each of my years. I have 1940 to 1973 with some missing.
Now I want to fill the holes and complete the set.
I saved coins from hither and yon when I travelled. Herewith are
photos of that set. Click on a quarter to view the detail. The detail
images will be about 7MB files to download. Some coins are rather
special such as the Canadian Victory Nickel with a message in Morse
Code on the reverse and one from Cook Island showing a man with a long
penis. (That coin was banned in Boston.) I have two "One Troy
Ounce Silver Trade" coins. Interesting that the two Silver Trade
coins weigh 1.1 oz on my postage scale while the 1924 "Peace" dollar
weighs in at 0.9 oz.
April 12 Is Happy Big Wind Day
Mount Washington New Hampshire 12 April 1934 the wind of 231 MPH was
recorded, a record which still stands for a wind measured by a rotating
anemometer, at a maned station, on a Thursday. And while I'm on
the subject of April: The Feast Day of Saint George is on April 23rd,
also on a Thursday (this year). My max wind today at Tonopah
AridZona was 19mph and 86f from the southwest.
2026 April 20
Yesterday I worked on a well controller. The main point of the failure
was a loose screw in the controller, a simple enough fix. But once the
pump was running we found a small leak that wasted enough water that
the pump never turned off. After two trips to Lowe's and three hours
under a blazing hot sun we had the leak repaired and several yards of
wiring replaced. The water was on. I do a lot of similar jobs
that are not quite code however safe enough, however this installation
was a mess of poor construction practice and unsafe wiring and plumbing.
I figured out how to use a small window mount room a/c in TinyTruck.
Perched on a crate by the rear window and powered by two huge batteries
and a 2kW inverter in the bed. Should tide me over until the LornRanger
is ready for the road.
 Feast
Day of Saint George—Take a Dragon To Lunch
I think I am sitting too much. Some days, except for getting up to pee
a few times, I spend too many hours sitting at this keyboard reading
and writing. My fingers get more exercise than my feet. Two of my
peer-group friends had “brain bleeds”, one a few years ago, one a few
days ago. Just for my ongoing education here is a treatment of
the subject.
What Is Tarnishing My Silver
Sunday chores this week: Dishwashing and all the silver which has been
soaking in the dishpan for several days is various shades of
tan-brown-almost black. This happened once before, months ago, but I
didn’t think much of the matter since the time was nigh for my annual
silver polishing holiday. But this time was puzzling since everything
was sparkly polished just a month ago. WTF Over? So I asked
DuckDuckGo: https://duckduckgo.com/ what is in my dish water that
tarnishes my silver dark brown? And the Duck replied: “Chlorides
or
sulfides are in the water, possibly from food (salt, eggs,
mustard, etc.)” Well,,, salt on watermelon... dregs of mustard
from hotdogs & beans... eggs hardboiled in a salad and fried for
breky a few days ago... I may have to do some experiments.
May The Fourth Be With You!
 I remember
Eeyore and Piglet and Pooh. And I have a rotary dial telephone on my
wall with dialtone and a bell that rings.
https://thecatdragdinn.org/13a10_wallphone01.jpg
All the pictures are a sad commentary on the ubiquitous "phone". "More
people have mobile phones than toilets." And that brings up another
point: Oblong. Cellphone? Ha! Tablet? Double Ha! A camera you talk to,
a road map that plays music, a calculator on which you compose
messages... Phone is the least of the functions. One might just as well
say I'll write you a message on my camera. Let me ring you up on my
GPS. I'll take a picture of that with my roadmap. Oblong for the shape
of this communicative Swiss Army Knife makes so much more sense. And of
course I remember the Model 33 as well. Which has also been replaced by
an app on your phone. Thanks Jane & Ken and May The Fourth Be With
You!
Update penny collection
Over the past three days I have sorted through about 942 pennies to
find one for each of my years. The photo shows the best one for each
year—in some cents I held out two "for my two-cents worth", eh—and the
rest are rolled. In the photo many years have two coins just to sort of
give me a choice when I come to mounting them is some formal
arrangement. In some cases I found only one of a particular year.
Interesting that I found none for last year nor this year. Perhaps I
will fill the gaps with nickels or dimes. Even more interesting is the
relative rarity of pennies—in this pile at least—for the decade of the
60s and especially the latter part of that period.
Most interesting is the evolution of the reverse of the penny.
From ? To 1958 the "Wheat Penny". Then in 1959 the Lincoln Memorial
until 2008. What was so special about 2009 that the penny had various
scenic views on the reverse? Ahhh... " celebrating Lincoln's 200th
birthday." Then 2010 to present the ugly shield.
2025 pennies should be out there someplace. There won't be any 26s
since production ceased last year. I have ordered an official penny
coin display book. Perhaps my penny collection will have to be rounded
off with nickels; I'm not ready to follow the demise of the
penny. Henceforth my two cents worth is going to cost you a
nickel.
a fait accompli
The Secretary
of
the
Treasury
has decided to suspend production of the one-cent coin
(penny) upon determining that it is no longer necessary to meet the
needs of the United States. The decision was influenced by the rising
cost of producing the penny, which has increased 1.42 cents to 3.69
cents per penny. Interesting that one would offer you "a penny
for your thoughts" but when given the opportunity wants to put in "my
two cents worth". Understandable that thoughts should now cost a
nickle given the rate of inflation but one will still be able to give
their "two cents worth" if done by cheque or credit card (or PayPal as
well I suppose...)
My TinyTruck, a 1986 Isuzu Pu'p, faithful conveyance for 29 years, is
about to follow Mikey into the Great Beyond. I've managed to sell off
most of Mike's Ham radio equipment and pay for his incineration.
And Another Thing
...about not travelling this Simmer. As if outrageously inflated
Fuel Prices are not sufficient deterrent I have just noticed that two
tyres on The Cat Drag’d Inn, one front and one rear, are
showing cracks in their sidewalls. That is a giant Red
Flag. All six tyres have been on the road for nine years and cost
$2049.21 installed in May of 2017. Guesstimate replacement cost
today: $3,000 at least.
May 24 Sunday Chores
Two nights ago just as I was dropping off to sleep two text messages
beeped into my oblong within seconds of each other: "How are you
doing?" "Nice to meet you." From strange looking numbers. I did not
respond to either. Next morning I looked up their prefixes: One was
Djibouti, the other Nigeria. Despite rumour of Humanity’s origin there
I do not believe I know anyone in Africa.
My new old Linux Mint box (MMii) is almost ready to actually put in
service in place of this old-old Ubuntu MikeMachine.
"MikeMachine" is the name of my primary floor model tower computer
(running Ubuntu16 & Windows7) too old and slow to upgrade (like
me...). Ergo MMii is "MikeMachineTwo". Still not cutting edge newness
but newer enough.
MM: Memory 5.7GB, Athlon Dual Core 4400+ 2.2 GHzx2, 64-bit, 79.8 GB
Drive.
MMii: Memory 8GB, Intel i5-2400 3.1 GHzx4, 500GB Drive, 8 USB ports.
Same sort of thing with 1986 Isuzu TinyTruck and 1997 Ford LornRanger.
I am feeling badgered by these entities who insist I can save time by
"Going Paperless" and get a discount (one time only of course) by
signing up for "Auto Pay". None of these things save me any time; they
only broaden my arse from sitting long hours in front of the computer
waiting for two-factor identification and click the squares that
contain traffic lights...click the squares that contain stairs...click
the squares...
My medical insurance is offering me Extra Help with medical expenses if
I will send them my bank statement and household utility bills. But
they don't allow for fuel costs to drive a hundred mile round trip to
the doctor for a wellness checkup they insist on. I suppose I am well
enough to bitch about it...
Not trained but bonded.
 This
thing of walking with me was the idea of the cat. At first when Orca
was outside and I walked around the yard she followed. Longer and
longer walks over a period of days and she followed and then as the
routes became familiar she sometimes led. Eventually two or three of
the other cats followed as well. Today Orca was accompanied by Linda
and Knot. When we returned Orca complained that something was
swimming in her water fountain. 3MB Video>>
Another Neat thing:
In some fonts M and W are invert to one another.
M is the 13th letter. W is the 23rd letter.
13 and 23 are Prime Numbers.
Their mean is 18 which when halved is the number of digits between 13
and 23.
Something
mystical
about
all
this numerology.
To Vote Or Not To Vote, That Is The Question
I'm having issues with the voting rules in this Maricopa County. I am
registered "No Party" which used to be called Independent until some
wag decided that Independent meant just that and we cannot have
thinking persons in a Two Party System. At a primary election there is
no room for Independence. In order to vote one must select a party
ballot. Actually there are more than two parties but they rarely have
any candidates running.
D-Day?
Yesterday was a mixed bag. Good cat walk but later in the afternoon
Orca was limping. Her left front paw and lower leg are swollen a
bit. Made great leaps of progress with my new primary computer.
About ready to move the box into the house and begin the transition of
operations thereto. And another hour or two with poll worker
training. Today I need to concentrate on sunday chores and keep
an eye on Orca to decide if she will need to visit the vet
tomorrow. Interesting about yesterday. Lazy unproductive day
here. Am I depressed? Maybe tho I try to avoid that concept. If
anything there is so much I should be doing that I bog down thinking
about what to do first. In the end I pace to and fro, take a nap, and
soon enough the day has devolved to G&T Time. I think partly I am
searching for a new community to take the place of my missing friend
Mike. We never were a couple, nor really companions beyond common
interests, but I really miss our occasional chats, set-tos, and once in
a while a meal together. Orca at least is doing better.
Damn The Torpedoes Full Speed Ahead!
Strange dreams the past few nights. Enlightening or challenging? I need
to write more about them.
Whatever you do will be insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it.
—Mahatma Gandhi
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be
criticised anyway."
~Eleanor
Roosevelt.
Ham Radio Field Day
Well, I had a half-assed field day. not my usual level of involvement.
Enough to see the equipment works. Made a few contacts but kept no log
and so no report forthcoming.
About Hanging Up The Keys
Ich habe genug gehabt. Tomorrow I will more or less
formally retire TinyTruck and put The Lorn Ranger on the road. Gonna be
a week or three moving radios and solar and tools...There will be a
ceremonial siphoning of gas from old tank to new.
I am replacing TinyTruck, a 1986 Isuzu P'up which I have been driving
for 30 years, with LornRanger a 1997 Ford Ranger. Lots of things to
change and get used to. The muscle memory involving the parking brake
is particularly thoughtless. “When a movement is repeated over time,
the brain creates a long-term muscle memory for that task, eventually
allowing it to be performed with little to no conscious effort. This
process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency
within the motor and memory systems...” – Wikipedia. Problem is when
the task is in a different place... Every time I stop the truck to park
my right hand reaches to set the parking break except the pull handle
is not there. My left foot now has to be called into action to find the
pedal to step on. Clutch and accelerator coordination is another
muscle memory that has to be reprogrammed.
Yesterday after Food Bank I visited my auto insurance agent. That
meeting went well. Then on to the DMV contractor to take TinyTruck off
the road and move her tags to The LornRanger. First question the
clerk asked: May I see your Driver License please? OMG! Where is
my Driver License? Not right there next to my Insurance Card. Not over
there mixed in with several credit cards. Nor in the other slot with
the collection of membership cards... I emptied my wallet on the
counter. No driver license.
3 July
Off to get new tyres for the bus. As soon as I can get the cat for the
front in and the Cat in the back started. Accumulated total
mileage 1997 to date: 1st odo 5000; 2nd odo 81,678; 3rd odo
69,098=155,776. Previous Tyres from May 2017: 9 years, 14,051
miles. What a waste.
Orca chose to stay behind when I moved The Cat Drag’d Inn out
of the yard, onto the street, up the road, to the Tyre Shop. $2100
later the bus has new sneakers. Heavier and harder than the
previous edition, very smooth ride on the return trip to the yard where
Orca was waiting for her breakfast.
Found my lost license. A thirty-seven dollar memory
mismanagement. Somewhen in the past week or three I must have had cause
to email a copy and last night I found the license on the
scanner/printer glass when I was adding paper. Well, this will be
interesting to see how the replacement differs to the original.
Ordering books from Amazon may be a symptom of “tsundoku,” the
Japanese term for collecting books and letting them pile up unread
.
First Encounter With A Road Hazard
Off to visit my DermaDoc and shopped at Auto Zone on Watson for a door
handle. On the return trip, between Miller and the 85 underpass,
there occasioned the singular event that most bothers me when being
passed by a semi. A tanker in the middle lane lost a tread not two
truck lengths ahead of me. The wriggling black carcass flew through the
air above my lane and hit the ground below my line of sight. The Lorn
Ranger thumped and lurched over the carcass before I could think of any
evasive action. The whole thing happened so fast. I thought of stopping
but everything felt OK so I kept going. Back here I see there are scuff
marks on the right side of the air dam below the front bumper, on the
mud guard behind the right front wheel, and black marks on the fender
in that area, but appears to be no real damage. So now I have a
new door handle and a couple videos explaining the installation steps.
260712 What Is Under Your Bed
Removed the bed liner from LornRanger and cleaned out an archaeological
dig site from underneath. Looked like a prehistoric midden. Radiocarbon
dating of the debris indicated origins in the last century.
The Ides of July And Other Assorted End-Notes?
  Of
Tyres
and
Blowouts.
I just read an article about my antique Singer
66 My Singer has been in the service of three generations of my
family. Still has a tin of Official Singer Oil in the carry case. My Singer
serial
number on the base is G9758555 indicates that is a 1923
model 66. Over the years I have built tents, sleeping bags, hundreds of
stuff sacks, repaired clothing, bedding, tote bags. My
current project is to build awnings for my Residence Vehicle for which
I have found some UV resistant thread and heavy duty needles.
First I have to replace the tyre on the bobbin winder. The tread is
worn away after an hundred years of winding.
July 15th was Food Bank Day and my 35# of grub sat in the 117f sun for
a few hours of shopping and driving. Back at the yard, unloading
and sorting there was a POP
and brown fizzy stuff was dripping from the tailgate. The ants are
having a feast.
Mid-Term Primary Election
> Fair election ?
In what sense are you using the word "fair"?
The weather was fair, tho hot. The A/C worked just fine.
All the equipment worked but instead of an eight person team we had
only three so we each were working fairly hard doing two and three
jobs—but I'll be surprised if we get two or three salary checks.
As far as the fairness of the election process? No. As usual the
acrimony and stupidity of American mentality wins out over rational
treatment of the issues. The greed of politicians and big business
overshadows the needs of the community.
"The irony is that most Americans think they are moral, yet
remain unconcerned about the immoral way their [representative]
government exercises power [on their behalf]. That's what I find
hardest to understand: the level of self-delusion that Americans
allow themselves. Then again, I suppose that if Americans
really thought about what their government is doing, they might
go
crazy."
—Ebrahim
Moosa,
April
2006.
"If voting actually made a difference, they wouldn't let us do
it!"
—Mark
Twain
|
2026 Winter Spring Summer? — Greetings Virtual Travellers
and Pen Friends: 
