To Dust You Shall Return

I have been under considerable stress this week, but yesterday something happened which brought me some distraction and peace. My new blackboard arrived.

I have had a problem with responsibilities slipping through the cracks. I am naturally absent-minded. I use Google Calendar to keep track of a ton of things, but the problem with Google Calendar is that it beeps and then goes away. If it beeps while I’m doing something even slightly interesting, I dismiss the alert and forget about it until I hear another beep. When I do this, I don’t realize I’ve done it. I don’t think I can change. It’s part of my nature.

It occurred to me that a blackboard would help. A blackboard will not shut up or disappear. It sits there, glaring at you, politely but firmly, until you do whatever it’s telling you to do. When you finally get it done, you don’t have to push a lot of annoying buttons on a screen. One swipe of the eraser, and it’s gone.

I also wanted a blackboard because…I wanted a blackboard.

I am a former physics instructor. As a grad student, I taught pre-meds and engineers using big dusty blackboards. Which may actually have been green. But still. I grew to like blackboards a great deal. You write whatever you want on them and as soon as you’re done with it, you make it go away. You don’t have to crumple up paper and throw it out. Another plus: no reading glasses.

I have been fooling with STEM stuff for a while, trying to dredge up, and add to, ancient memories of my forgotten studies. I’ve been learning engineering statics and strength of materials. This week, I received a new (ish) copy of a beloved math text: Redheffer’s Differential Equations. My old copy was eaten by ants many years ago. I read a little today, and I plan to keep poking around in it in the future.

I have been using a clipboard and pencils to do problems. This is not a bad way to go about it, but you get tired of throwing out sheet after sheet of paper, and I don’t enjoy all the tedious pencil erasing. I just bought a bunch of kneaded rubber erasers to make life easier, but no matter how you pretty it up, a clipboard isn’t a blackboard.

Another nice thing about a blackboard: it reminds you of your accomplishments. If you do a STEM task in chalk with some degree of intelligence, and you walk away, you will still see it smiling at you from the wall hours later while you’re watching cats or whatever on Youtube.

I thought I was going overboard when I sprang for a 4-foot blackboard, but now that I’ve used it, I wish I had gotten a bigger one. I like it as much as I thought I would, which is saying a lot, and I can see that a bigger one would be even better.

I may buy a second board and put it on the wall by the first one.

Some people like whiteboards. I prefer chalk. Markers go dry when you need them, and anyway, they’re just not as pleasant to use. Besides, chalk is much classier. It’s ancient. It’s a bona fide artistic medium. Michelangelo could walk into my den, pick up the chalk, and get straight to work. He used chalk all the time, so he would know how to make it do what he wanted. Markers? Forget it.

I’ve never understood the whiteboard concept. My first whiteboard class was ninth-grade biology. On my first day at Miami’s best prep school, I walked into the classroom in the hugely expensive, nearly new Math/Physics building, and I saw greasy-looking plastic boards in front of me. They were still considered unusual back then. We talked about them while we waited for class to start. I thought they were interesting, but I never came to like them. I didn’t understand their purpose, and I still don’t.

What is it that whiteboards do better than blackboards? Is chalk dust the problem? It never bothered me. Classrooms with chalkboards aren’t dusty unless the people in charge of mopping drop the ball. Maybe there is some sort of phobia of chalk-induced disease. Chalkitis. Suppurating Chalkosis of the Golgi apparatus.

I’ll look it up.

If the Internet is any guide, there is no reason for whiteboards to exist. I guess it’s one of those things man chose to create simply because he could and he thought it was nifty.

I’ll bet leftists like whiteboards better than chalkboards. They like changing things that don’t need to be changed. “Ban chalk! Stop whitewashing knowledge! Save the chalk deposits!”

Once I got my board screwed to the wall, I got out my chalk, wrote down some things I needed to remember, and did a quick physics problem using the Lagrangian. I chose something really simple, as a nod to my cankered, vestigial skills. I figured out the formula for the force on a pendulum bob, as a function of the angle. I really enjoyed it.

To be strictly accurate, I derived the acceleration, not the force. Sue me.

Hope I didn’t get anything wrong. The result is correct. Twenty years ago, doing this problem would have been like breathing.

I screwed it up the first time around. Skipped a step and ended up with the wrong formula for the height of the pendulum. I didn’t notice at first, because the error mostly fell out when I took the time derivative, and the final result was correct except for a sign error.

After I was done, I wondered how to get to the result everyone in physics is familiar with: the formula for the period of a pendulum. I looked it up, and I found that you have to use the expansion for the sine of an angle and settle for a first-order approximation. Otherwise, the differential equation is too hard. Wikipedia refers to the expansion as the Maclaurin series. I know the sine series by heart, and don’t recall thinking of it that way, but I suppose it must be true. I remember that a Maclaurin series is the special case of a Taylor series, centered at zero, and you can use complex variables and a contour integral to derive the general Taylor series formula. I think.

Man, I used to know some stuff. All I get now when I concentrate are bits and pieces.

I think I’ll need that second board. Might as well double down. I hope this thing is durable. I would hate to buy two boards that didn’t last.

I don’t know if blackboard paint works. If I trusted it, I could buy a 4 by 8 sheet of hardboard and paint it.

My new board has a steel back, so it accepts magnets. Not sure that will be useful, but it’s nice to know.

I hope this board will help me hold it together. I have no help whatsoever, and organization is not my thing.

“WAKE UP!!! NOTHING IS WRONG!!!”

I am learning more about the tyranny of smoke detectors.

For quite a while, I’ve been dealing with late night/early morning smoke alarm beeps. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know anything about smoke detectors. I didn’t have them in Miami. I had an alarm system, and fire detection was part of it, so there were no electronic warts on the ceiling.

I thought my various stressors were waking me up at night, but now I think it has been the smoke detectors all along. It seems like I wake up pretty consistently a couple of hours before dawn. Sometimes I hear smoke detectors. Sometimes I don’t. That would make sense if the detectors were waking me. There would be times I awoke after the beeping stopped, so I wouldn’t realize what had disturbed me.

I started tearing into the detectors the other day, and I found out I had two sets. One belonged to the burglar alarm people. That set is wireless, and it runs on batteries. The other set belonged to the house. It was hardwired, and it also had non-rechargeable 9-volt cells. Really stupid. If you have a battery-operated device connected to AC, why wouldn’t you use rechargeable batteries and put a charger in the system?

I started calling the burglar alarm people to complain, and that’s when I found out they hadn’t caused the problem. They told me about the hardwired detectors.

I changed the batteries in the hardwired detectors, and they still went nuts at night. I found out a lot of things can set them off. Check out this list.

1. Bugs. If a bug–even a tiny gnat–flies into a smoke detector, you get an alarm. Nice, especially in Florida, where absolutely everyone has at least a few roaches. The geniuses who installed my system cut holes in the ceiling for AC power, and they didn’t seal them, so when a bug gets into the attic and decides to descend into a room, guess where it goes? Figure it out.

2. Humidity changes. I can’t believe this one. Am I supposed to live in a sauna?

3. Dust. Yes, dust. My AC ceiling warts sit under an attic insulated with fiberglass. What does fiberglass shed constantly? And as I said, the holes for the wires aren’t sealed.

4. Power outages. Let that sink in. We have power outages several times a week. They’re very short; usually, the computer doesn’t even turn off. Nonetheless, they happen, and for some reason, some detectors are engineered to poop the bed every time power goes out or even fluctuates. What were the engineers thinking? And why is there no UPS on the system? Hello? Obvious?

5. Temperature changes. This one blew me away. What does the temperature do every single night? Think. Think hard. If you know the answer, you’re smarter than an engineer.

If you hate your hardwired detectors, I have moderately good news for you. I’m convinced all smoke detectors are garbage, but some are better garbage than others. The law in Florida has changed, and now not all of us have to have hardwired smoke detectors. A substitute is available. For $25, you can get a disposable lithium-powered smoke detector that will run 10 years. It doesn’t care if the power goes out, because it doesn’t know. It’s not connected to your house wiring.

Obvious question: why disposable? Why not let people charge the batteries after 10 years? Call me cynical, but I suspect profit was on someone’s mind.

I don’t know what the law actually says, because I don’t care. I have two independent sets of smoke detectors, and it’s clear that the law approves of the 10-year kind in many applications, so it’s obvious to me that I won’t lose anything by dumping my obsolete hardwired detectors and installing new ones that allow me to sleep once in a while. If I’m committing a felony, take me away. I absolutely have to sleep, either here or in prison.

I’ve read that you shouldn’t replace hardwired detectors with lithium jobs. Sleep in my house for a week, and then try to say that with a straight face. You’ll need another kind of lithium. The kind that requires a prescription.

By the way, if you go for a new hardwired system (fat chance), it will come with a UPS. So what was immediately obvious to me took engineers years to figure out.

Today I’ve been ripping out the old detectors and putting up new ones. I love taking the batteries out of the old ones, pressing their test buttons, and listening to their death squeals. Never again, my little friends. You are washed up. You messed with the bull, and you got the horn.

I wish I had known all this before I spent over $40 on 9-volt batteries. I won’t run out of them for a decade.

There are a lot of smoke detector options out there. You can get wifi-enabled detectors that connect to Alexa. No idea what the purpose is. Maybe you can tell the smoke detector to order you a tent so you’ll have a place to sleep when your house burns down.

The other day I told someone the thought of having Alexa spy on me all day made me heave. This person said, “Alexa doesn’t ‘spy on you all day.'” They said it just listens for the cue word and then comes to life.

Uh…how does it listen for the cue if it’s not spying on you? Earth to suckers: if it’s not listening, it can’t hear when you call.

Don’t worry, though. No company would ever collect data it claims it doesn’t collect, misuse data it collects from customers, or lose any of it to hackers. None of those things could ever happen.

I’m no expert, but my tentative advice to people with hardwired smoke detectors is to get rid of them. Sleep is important. It’s amazing that engineers can’t figure that out.

I only bought three new detectors, figuring I would put them in the important areas of the house, i.e., near my bedroom. Now that I see how easy they are to install, I’m going to get more.

The detectors have tiny stickers on the side where you can write the installation date. Another genius move by the engineers. I have 10-foot ceilings. I can’t read those stickers. I took a marker and wrote “10/18” on the faces of the detectors, in big numerals. I can see it without getting on a ladder. Maybe I deserve a patent.

The new detectors have a voice feature. They are designed for bedrooms. No kidding. Somehow the voice is important for bedroom use. When you push the test button, you get beeps plus a very breathy blonde voice cooing, “Firrrre. Firrrre.” Maybe they’re designed for men. They should go all the way: “Firrrre, baby. Oh…TIGER…Firrrre!!!”

Some day I’ll figure out how to seal those holes. Right now I just want to wake up at eight instead of four.

Democracy is not a Blessing

I seem to be writing a lot today.

I wanted to mention something God showed me last night. For years–since before pundits started saying it–I’ve been saying the Internet, TV, and the telephone were going to merge. It was obvious, even when 1 MBps was a big deal. Crank up the speed, reach more people, and you find yourself in a situation where it makes no sense to have three wires doing, poorly and expensively, what one wire can do very well.

For a long time, we’ve been able to place landline and cell calls over the web. Over the past few years, we’ve been using the web instead of cable TV. If it weren’t for my dad’s needs, I wouldn’t dream of paying for TV. I have had cable, and now I’m stuck with DirecTV. Both are inferior to the Internet.

It will be an embarrassment to mankind if cable TV and ordinary cell and landline service still exist in 5 years.

I thought I was clever when I saw the future of TV, the Internet, and the telephone, but last night God showed me something very obvious which I missed: the Internet is going to replace the government. Not only that, but Satan is all for it.

The political left belongs to Satan. In case anyone is interested, this is why we see witches getting together frequently to curse conservative politicians but never liberal politicians. The left is against Jesus, Israel, Jews, Christians, conservatives, sexual morality, cleanliness, good manners, and nearly every type of good behavior one can think of. If you want to find someone who thinks burglary should be legal, you have to look to the political left.

Look how leftists are acting now. They hate our current democracy. That shouldn’t surprise anyone; they supported Castro and Stalin. We have a democracy (please, nerds, no “republic” comments), and it’s not giving leftists what they want, so they have decided they’re not bound by its authority.

They attack conservatives on the street. They accost and frighten conservative politicians and their families. They doxx conservatives. Their leaders tell them to go after us in public places. They’ve gone berserk with civil disobedience.

Trump was elected fairly, in accordance with the law. Our Supreme Court justices were appointed and confirmed legally. Our GOP-controlled senators and representatives were put in place legitimately. We have a lot of conservative governors, and they won their seats in elections. Leftists aren’t having it. They’re not just complaining about the results; they’re saying the system itself has to be discarded and rebuilt so it works in their favor.

Suddenly, leftists hate the Electoral College and call it racist. They have no idea why it was created. They’re making up slavery-related stories in order to turn anyone who supports the College into a target for damaging accusations that are impossible to disprove.

They’re upset because Hillary Clinton got the popular vote but not the office of president. They say the person who gets the popular vote should get the job. Great logic. If that’s true, then we should abolish the Senate. Wyoming is basically empty, but it has the same number of senators as California.

The Senate is racist! Wyoming must be a racist state.

Leftists want a system in which the majority gets its way fast. They want hyper-democracy. They don’t want to be hindered by laws or morality. They believe they know best and that the rest of us have no rights except the right to be managed.

In the past, there was no way for citizens to get around the need for government. We didn’t have the ability to coordinate quickly and effectively. In order to influence society, we had to rely on representatives and tedious processes. That won’t always be true. Computing power is increasing all the time. Our ability to network and act quickly is increasing. We live in a world where a bunch of ghetto kids who feel like destroying a mall can organize their attack in hours.

In the future, leftists will be able to use the Internet and their personal devices to put mobs wherever they want, faster than the rest of us can react. When they want something, they won’t have to vote. They’ll show up in numbers the government can’t cope with, and they’ll rule by force.

At first, the new government will appear in isolated guerrilla actions. We’re already seeing that. As things develop, the left will cohere, and they will act with one deranged mind a good part of the time. Eventually, they will be like one communal organism, with what almost amounts to a single consciousness. They’ll be wrong about everything, but it won’t matter. They’ll be unified. Just as Spirit-led Christians have the mind of Christ, they’ll have the mind of the Beast.

Tech companies are run by extreme leftists, so they’ll be on the side of the mob. They’ll pretend to be dismayed at first, just as they pretend to want to be fair to us now, but gradually they will out themselves as supporters and architects of the revolution.

This has to happen. We can’t keep binding our minds together more and more effectively without developing a hive consciousness.

The hive will be very powerful, and when people are powerful, their real natures emerge. They don’t have to hide any more. They don’t have to pretend to have compassion or to care about fairness. Cruelty and deliberate injustice will surge to levels we can’t imagine right now.

Computerized persecution will be a wonder to behold. The other day I was in line at a grocery, and I saw all the technology around me. I realized it was a small step from persecuting Christians and conservatives on Facebook to fixing things so we could not buy food. “Your chip says you’re against gay marriage. You can’t shop here.”

If God lets the world continue long enough, technology will destroy and replace individual sovereignties. Countries will become obsolete. When we’re thinking and feeling across borders, with lightning speed, conventional governments won’t be able to regulate us.

The bizarre, infantile, cruel mob behavior we’re seeing from the left today is the Beast, taking baby steps. They’re going to get better and better at it, and because they control technology, we will not develop electronics-based power along with them.

The other day I dreamed I died. Nearly. For some reason, it seems like when I dream of death, I always die in a falling vehicle. Remember the death of the Illinois Nazi in the original Blues Brothers movie? That’s what it’s like. Somehow or another, I find myself and my vehicle plummeting, and it doesn’t scare me at all, because I’m tired of this place. When I think I’m about to die, I feel like I’m embarking on a thrilling adventure.

In my latest dream, I was driving a big vehicle like a bus. I was on an impossibly high overpass. A storm surrounded me and lifted the vehicle off the overpass, and I figured I would die when I hit the ground. I prayed intensely, trying to make sure I had salvation sewn up while I still had time. Suddenly, I saw a bright light, and it occurred to me how similar it was to the “white tunnel” stories people like to tell.

Unfortunately, I did not die. It turned out the bright light experience was the result of slamming into the ground and losing consciousness.

I was very disappointed. That’s how tired I am of this earth. Surviving what I thought was a fatal accident was a big blow. I was thinking, “Now not only do I have to stay in this miserable, evil place where I don’t belong; I may have to face all sorts of surgeries and physical therapy, and then I may be crippled. Great.”

I’ve had funny experiences during prayer when I felt like I would leave my body. I’ve had supernatural chest pains during prayer. I didn’t ask God to protect me and keep me alive. No way. I told him to do whatever he wanted to do. Any excuse to get sent home from the front.

Our future with a digital antichrist put together from juvenile, trashy individuals that hate me for existing is not alluring. This world is a mission field, so I know I have to stay here a while, but when it gets too sordid, and too much of the population has become unreachable and filled with apelike, unrestrained hate, I want out.

The left doesn’t want us on the planet any more. I am in complete agreement, but God’s plan doesn’t let me off that easy.

It’s astounding to see the capabilities electronics have given us. Unfortunately, the increase in power has been accompanied by a degradation of our humanity. It has eroded kindness and civility. We can’t handle the power. It’s going to destroy us. We will continue to use it to indulge, magnify, and mutate our basest drives.

By “us,” I mean the species. Myself not included.

This stuff will happen. It may not happen exactly as I describe, but it’s coming. You don’t need prophecy to see it coming. It’s the obvious, inevitable result of the changes we’re going through. We created new toys we are too stupid and venal to use in a mature fashion.

I don’t like being old. I hate reading glasses and knowing my potential is limited. I don’t look forward to falling apart. But I’m very glad I’m not young. The lucky people are the ones who are at the end of their lives. I read about a famous person’s death recently, and before I had time to censor myself, I thought, “Good for him!” He won’t have to suffer the indignity of being crushed by the autonomy-sapping strangler figs, Alexa and Siri.

I can’t believe people want Alexa in their homes. Imagine the digital surveillance records they’re creating. And they trust Jeff Bezos with it! A merchant! When did he prove he was worthy of that? Jeff Bezos is doing things that would have made J. Edgar Hoover faint from ecstasy.

One nice thing about my age is that it limits what the left can do to me. I’ll be gone in 30 years, more or less. That’s all the time they have to work on me. Then I get my vision back, along with perfect health, safety, and an atmosphere of overwhelming love. What if I were 20? It would scare me to death. Even with God at my side, helping me, I would not want to be here for another 70 years. I can see why Jesus left when he was young.

Our dystopian future will make films like Soylent Green and Alien seem idyllic, at least for people who see it for the horror it is. It makes me glad I’m mortal.

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. My last blog entry was three days ago.

On September 22, my dad the angry atheist prayed for salvation, and later, I reported that there was an unexpected benefit to this startling event: the two of us got along better. I was less driven to avoid him. His frustrating mistakes and deliberate bad behavior tapered off, and when they occurred, they bothered me much less than they used to. I found I needed less solitary time for recharging.

I am here to report that things haven’t gone back to the way they used to be. My dad and I are spending more time together, and life is going pretty smoothly.

I suppose it makes sense that a child of God would look for opportunities to get away from a child of darkness and regroup. Spending time with God is beneficial. When he’s with you, he helps you. He tells you things. He drives away spirits that make you suffer. He may work miracles in your body. It’s only natural that spending time with beings from the other side would wear you down.

Something new is going on. These days, God’s presence comes to me in the afternoon and brings peace. The house starts to feel like a church. I have been in God’s presence every day for a number of years, but he hasn’t always brought peace with him. In the past, it was mainly power.

For years, I’ve been praying for God to make my house a place of peace, where people live in his presence. I hope what I’m seeing is the answer to those prayers.

The children of darkness don’t have peace. They may have money, looks, fame, admiration, and so forth, but it’s hollow because they don’t have the peace God brings. Many of them have to fight constantly to keep what they have. Many have to pay huge prices in order to get the outward appearance of success.

I now believe that if you don’t have peace, you must be under the influence of spirits that are against God. A lack of peace indicates that you have a spiritual issue that needs to be addressed.

God will allow us to have problems. He will allow us to be persecuted. Nonetheless, we’re supposed to have peace. If you feel rushed, worried, or pressured, a supernatural force is trying to control you. God doesn’t use things like anxiety and fear to motivate people who are cooperating with him.

When I think of the worst people I’ve known, I realize they tried to control me by taking away my peace. They tried to scare me. They pressured me. They laid false guilt trips on me. They tempted me to do things I knew I shouldn’t do. Rotten people make you feel rotten. They may not make you feel bad at first, but it will creep up eventually. Dependence on a toxic person is like dependence on drugs or alcohol. The first time you get drunk or high, it feels fantastic. The thousandth time, it’s unrewarding.

The reason it’s so easy for me to cut people out of my life is that I hate being manipulated more than I hate losing people.

Toxic people and toxic spirits are alike, because spirits run people. Spirits that are out to get you may make you feel blessed at first, but once they have control, they make you suffer for their pleasure.

I want God’s presence. I want his peace. I don’t want to worry any more. I don’t want to feel pressured.

If you’re in a close relationship with someone who isn’t on board with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, you need to cut the cord before the ties get too strong. You know better. You can’t say you weren’t warned, and God often closes his ears to people who deliberately do stupid things.

In other news, I’m still fooling around with tools. I think it’s time to move my machine tools here. I’ve decided where to put them. I have to get an electrician to give me an estimate on some 60-amp sockets.

I decided to get some CBN wheels for my bench grinder. CBN is cubic boron nitride. It’s extremely hard. Only diamond is harder.

When I started using machine tools, I learned I needed special grinding wheels in order to shape cutting tools for the lathe. Lathe tools are made from sticks of high speed steel (“HSS”) which is an amazing type of hardened steel that doesn’t soften when it gets red hot. When you shape lathe tools, you can use the cheap grey wheels that come with grinders, but they don’t work very well.

The best moderately priced choice is white bonded aluminum oxide. This is a substance made from crumbs of aluminum oxide held together with resin. A white wheel will shed particles as you grind, and that exposes new sharp edges to keep the wheel cutting well.

I probably spent $200 on a pair of white wheels, and they work fine on HSS. Problem: when you’re a woodworker as well as a machinist, you use tools that are made from tool steel. Tool steel loses its temper when it gets hot. I don’t mean it gets angry. It gets soft. White aluminum oxide wheels will work on tool steel (plane irons, chisels, and so on), but they will heat the metal fast, so you’re likely to burn your tools.

Another problem with aluminum oxide: because the wheels are friable, they change shape as you grind. You have to buy tools that reshape them. The best tool is a stick of carborundum. Diamond tools work faster, but they smooth the wheels too much, reducing their cutting ability. A smooth wheel generates more heat.

Here’s yet another problem: aluminum oxide is ceramic, and all ceramic wheels explode. Bench grinders are extremely dangerous. The wheels can develop cracks (grinding brass or aluminum can make them crack), and then they shatter. Flying fragments can penetrate your skull or your genitals. It’s bad.

Want more bad news? You can’t grind things on the side of a ceramic wheel. I know; I know. You’ve been doing it for years, and you’re still alive. You’re lucky. One day you’re going to get hurt. Pushing on the side of a ceramic wheel will eventually crack it.

Aluminum oxide wheels are problematic, so what’s the answer? Diamond wheels! That must be it. Diamond is super hard, and diamond wheels are made of metal with diamond particles stuck to them, so they can’t blow up.

Sadly, this is wrong. Diamonds are carbon, and carbon dissolves in iron, nickel, and cobalt. That’s why steel is possible. It’s iron with carbon dissolved in it. If you get diamonds hot while you grind a steel tool, they will start to dissolve into the tool. That’s bad for the wheel. Probably doesn’t do the tool a world of good, either.

CBN is very, very hard. When you can’t have a diamond, CBN is a good second choice.

Like diamond wheels, CBN wheels are metal disks with abrasive particles stuck to them. They don’t wear down like aluminum oxide. You never have to dress them to restore their shapes. Because CBN is very hard, it lasts for decades. Because CBN wheels are mainly metal, they conduct heat well. Grinding with CBN wheels generates heat, but they also carry heat away, so it’s hard to hurt a tool steel blade by burning it.

It’s pretty cool.

The only drawback to CBN is this: you can’t use them on soft steel. If a steel object isn’t hardened, the steel will clog the CBN wheel, and then you have a problem.

I’ve been fooling with planes and chisels lately. I have a Stanley 60-1/2 block plane I ordered, and I also have a flat-bottomed Millers Falls #14 plane. Both irons needed reshaping. I got myself an XX-coarse DMT diamond stone, but it’s very slow. I know I said you shouldn’t use diamond wheels with steel, but flat diamond stones are okay. They don’t get hot enough to make the diamonds dissolve.

I have a couple of other ways to fix the irons. I have a belt grinder and a bench grinder. The belt grinder is hard to use accurately with edged tools. The bench grinder isn’t much easier. On top of all that, they both burn tools.

I would like to accumulate more edged tools, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life using slow abrasive methods to work on them. CBN looks like the answer to my prayers.

I ordered a pair of wheels. One is 180 grit, and it has a flat face and two flat sides. Because it’s not ceramic, it’s okay to grind on the sides of it. That will be very useful.

Ordinarily, you would use something like 80 grit for a coarse wheel, but CBN cuts much faster than aluminum oxide, so you can use a finer grit and get a better finish. BONUS!

The other wheel is 600 grit, and it has radiused edges. It’s crazy. You can use the flat face to sharpen things, and you can do pretty weird stuff with the rounded edges and the sides.

Because a metal wheel can’t blow up, you can take the guards off a bench grinder with CBN wheels. You still have to be concerned about getting caught in it, so you have to apply the relevant safety rules, but it’s not going to kill you.

I’m looking forward to using these wheels. I am not going to mess with any chisels or planes until the wheels get here.

The wheels cost a fortune, but only about 1.8 times what ceramic wheels cost. They will never wear out or explode, and I will never have to dress them. They’ll save me a ton of time, and they’ll do a better job. They’ll do things the ceramic wheels can’t do, period. It’s worth it.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that white wheels are obsolete for my purposes. Their only real virtue is price, and it’s an illusion when you consider the fact that ceramic wheels eventually have to be replaced.

What will I do when I want to grind unhardened steel? Simple. Belt grinder.

I’m planning to start using the bench grinder to shape all of my blades. A wheel makes an arc in a tool, so the profile is sort of hollow. It’s called a hollow grind. This gives you a bevel that doesn’t contact a flat stone along its entire length. The heel will touch the stone, and so will the edge, but the part between the heel and edge will not.

When you start a bevel on a grinder and then move to a flat stone, you end up cutting less metal on the stone. Only a small percentage of the bevel touches the stone, and you only have to grind that percentage off. It makes the work go faster.

You can also get a hollow grind on a belt grinder. Belts go around wheels and pulleys, so you can hold your bevel against a rounded surface. You can also buy a platen which has a radiused surface, so it’s like a small segment of a big wheel.

I was thinking I might try to shape a blade on my oscillating belt sander. This is an easy-to-use woodworking tool that moves a sanding belt up and down while it runs on two vertical pulleys. It might work. It’s very controllable. I have this feeling people don’t understand how useful this tool can be. I’m still getting the CBN wheels, though.

The weather is getting very nice now, so working outside and in the shop will be more pleasant. I wish I could have done more last year, but it seemed like I was always reeling from some calamity or other.

I’m also spending time fooling with math and physics. I’ve been doing problems. Strength of materials. Differential equations. Quantum mechanics. Whatever seems interesting. Maybe I can get back some of what the years took away, and adding some mechanical engineering would be great.

My engineering studies started very well, but I ran into an integral that showed me how much I had forgotten. Building up integrals from scratch used to be second nature to me, but I’m having to go back and re-learn it. It ought to go pretty quickly, since I’m just renewing abilities I used to possess.

I bought a new copy of a book I used to have: Amit Goswami’s Quantum Mechanics. I bought it as an undergrad because I hated our assigned text: Gasiorowicz. I left it in storage in Miami, and ants ate it. Made me really mad. I don’t need it, but it always bothers me when I think of the books I lost, so sometimes I replace one just to make myself feel better.

That’s it for today. I plan to sit down and see if I can integrate. if not, well, I’m still reasonably young. I can always take up something less challenging, such as writing legal memoranda or fingerpainting.

Cold Weather Shrinks Footballs but not Egos

Somebody mentioned Bill Nye in a comment, and that set me off! In a discussion of Israel, Bill Nye has said places like France and Germany (bad choice) were “home” for Jews. He also calls himself the Science Guy, but for some reason, he has never made a point of letting people know he is not a trained scientist. He has a BS (not a Ph.D) in mechanical engineering, which is science-aided but not science. Finally, he has a reputation for rude diva behavior. These factors, combined with his bowtie, resulted in him being added to my list.

Bill Nye weighed in during the Deflategate scandal. The New England Sport-Ruining Cheaters…I mean “Patriots”…were accused of using partially deflated balls to make the game easier for them. Defenders (the kind of people who beat other people up in stadiums for wearing the wrong color socks) chimed in and said the pressure problem was caused by the temperature difference between the field and wherever the balls were inflated. Gases contract when cooled.

Bill Belichick, the Snoke of the NFL, came up with a truly weird theory. He said something about players rubbing the balls a lot, causing them to heat up and expand. I haven’t played football since phys. ed. class in high school, but I think I know enough to state, with confidence, that rubbing the footballs vigorously is not a normal part of the game.

Nye gave a ridiculous interview, and he brought a prop, which was an air pump with a needle. He said that in order to change the inflation pressure of a football, one would need “one of these.”

Let’s talk about the ideal gas law. In fairness to Nye, for all I know, this may not be a topic covered in a basic ME program. It is, however, a topic covered in HIGH SCHOOL CHEMISTRY.

Bill defends his science credentials by saying he took 6 semesters of calculus (physicists take 8 or more, but never mind). The ideal gas law doesn’t involve calculus. You should be able to master it when you’re in the fifth grade.

Here’s what it looks like: pV=nRT, or as I called it when I was trying to memorize it, “PIVNERT.” The small P is pressure. The V is volume. The n is the number of moles (kilomoles, whatever) of gas. R is the ideal gas constant, which is something that works with plain old air, even though it may not smell ideal to you. T is temperature, measured from absolute zero.

The pressure inside a football varies with temperature, Bill. That’s science, by the way.

I sat down today, and in a few minutes, I came up with a figure. I am not totally sure about the units, so I may be wrong, but it looks like the pressure inside a football ought to change by about half a pound per square inch per ten degrees Fahrenheit.

I think I’m right, because I see people who claim to know what they’re doing, citing pretty similar figures. If I were wrong, I would probably be off by one or more decimal places, because the dimensional errors would come in multiples of 10. I don’t think a ball’s pressure will change by 0.2 or a whopping 20 pounds over 40 degrees.

I guessed that a ball contains about 2 liters of air, and I figured that’s about a tenth of a mole of air, because of the Gay-Lussac law. Air doesn’t really have moles, but you can pretend it does, and it works.

Hmm. Turns out it’s Avogadro’s law. Whatever. Some foreigner or other.

Some of the figures don’t matter when you’re figuring pressure changes, because they cancel. It’s not a hard problem.

I’m too lazy to make absolutely sure I’m right, but I’m working harder than Bill Nye.

Football is a cold weather sport, which is one of the many good reasons for not watching it. Baseball players go home at the first sign of a cloud. Football players stay on the field when it’s zero degrees. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hail, locusts…you play, and if you die, you walk it off.

Let’s say a ball is pumped up in a 70-degree locker room or Chamber of Referee Mysticism or whatever. Then you put it on a field where the temperature is 30 degrees. That’s about two pounds of pressure lost, once the ball gets cold. Don’t know how long that takes, but air doesn’t hold a lot of heat, so it shouldn’t take long to cool a football.

NFL balls are supposed to be pumped up to 13 psi, but because no one wants to be a royal pain, it’s actually 13 +/- 0.5. The NFL found that Patriot cheater balls were something like 1.5-2 pounds low. That seems to fit in pretty well with science, but I still think they cheated because they’re the Patriots.

Anyway, I don’t get Bill Nye’s claim. If you’re going to call yourself the Science Guy and probably apply for a trademark, and you have time to dig up a football pump before an interview, you have time to look up the science. Takes maybe three minutes, if you’re slow. Maybe Nye had no idea what the ideal gas law was. Maybe he managed to get a degree without learning it, or maybe he forgot because he’s old.

I would certainly expect an ME to learn about ideal gases.

There is a Youtube video of an MIT professor giving what is presumably an authoritative lecture on Deflategate. Unlike Bill Nye, he is a Ph.D. mechanical engineer, and since he teaches at MIT, he may very well be a true Science Guy. Whatever he is, he should be able to handle pV=nRT. I didn’t watch the video however, because it was like 15 minutes long.

My guess: Bill Nye didn’t “like” the MIT video and send links to all his friends.

Okay, I’ll cheat (like the Patriots). I looked at the money parts of the MIT video. The prof’s findings match mine to within something like 10%, and unlike the prof, I didn’t even measure anything. I just winged it. Hello, it’s not hard. A football is about the size of a two-liter soda, so I said two liters of air. That’s about 10% of 22.4 liters (volume of a mole of ideal gas at STP, which is not all that far off from 70 degrees F), so 10% of a mole. It worked.

Real scientists don’t measure unless they have to. A good scientist can guess at a lot of things and be within 10% of the truth. I’m a bad scientist, and I can do it. A good scientist knows when a guess is good enough. Look up, “How many piano tuners are there in Chicago”?

People who get overly excited about precise figures and taking advantage of all 14 digits displayed on their calculators don’t know anything about science (or significant figures). Sometimes you need great precision, and sometimes it just gets in the way, and a real scientist knows the difference.

Anyone can be wrong about science, but the ideal gas law is 10th-grade stuff. Very obvious. If Nye can’t figure football pressure out, how can he be taken seriously when he claims he knows about the climate?

The Patriots still cheated. That much is obvious.

Engineering!

My dad’s new primary care practitioner is a busy bee or possibly an eager beaver. He got us lined up with a couple of specialists, and now we have two therapists and one nurse coming to the house every week. I don’t know how much this will benefit my dad, who never remembers anything the therapists teach him, but I believe it will improve my math, engineering, and physics skills, because when I take him to see doctors, I study and do problems while we wait.

A long time ago, I developed a policy which I don’t follow nearly often enough: “Never wait.” Of course, it doesn’t really mean, “Never wait.” It means, “Never JUST wait.” When you’re stuck waiting on someone or something, come up with something useful to do to fill the time.

Waiting-room magazines are horrid, especially in offices where liberals or women choose them. Women’s magazines are sick, shallow, and depraved. It’s strange how no one talks about this. Men have great magazines about things like guns, hunting, mechanical things, and so on. Women’s magazines are about MEN MEN MEN MEN MEN. More specifically, they are about how to out-compete sluts by being a bigger and less sincere slut. If you don’t believe me, read Cosmopolitan some day.

Men chase women, but we don’t sit around reading magazines telling us how to torture and abuse and twist ourselves into woman magnets. Men’s magazines don’t tell us how to starve ourselves, dress like prostitutes, drive women crazy in bed, fool women into marrying us, or get over painful breakups so we don’t turn into stalkers who call their boyfriends’ offices 500 times a day.

Men don’t have long, painful breakups. The first thing a man notices when he dumps a woman is the sudden sensation of freedom, and it tempers the feeling of loss. “I can drive as fast as I want! I can wear the shoes she hates! I don’t have to pretend I like to dance! I’ll never have to watch another movie about cancer! MY GUNS ARE GOING BACK ON THE LIVING ROOM WALL!”

I’m not about to poison my mind with old copies of O or Vogue. I have to have something else to do.

I’ve been working through the Schaum outline on differential equations, but I decided to set it aside because the problems aren’t really suitable for waiting rooms. Some of them require integral tables, and while a Schaum outline is a thin, handy book, adding an integral table to it turns it into a cumbersome package.

My new thing is the Schaum outline on solids. This is an engineering topic involving the way solid stuff behaves when you subject it to forces. I think. The names of engineering courses are confusing. The title of the outline is Strength of Materials.

I really like this stuff so far. It gives me confidence that mechanical engineering isn’t very hard. I know engineers will yell when they read that, and maybe I’m wrong, but so far, it looks a lot less challenging than physics.

I looked at lists of things ME’s study, and it was not like what I studied. I started with courses a lot like the ones ME’s start with, and then things got worse and worse. The material got more and more difficult and esoteric. It looks like undergrad ME’s don’t continue pushing themselves the way physicists do. They go into courses about applying simple first-year physics. Which gear to pick when you design a machine. How much concrete you need to build a strong garage floor.

Maybe it’s like law. Law never gets any harder than it is during the first semester. You spend one year acquiring skills and general knowledge, and after that, you apply the skills to new material.

I’m sure there are ways to make mechanical engineering very hard. I suspect it’s like math. Getting a math major is about one-thousandth as hard as getting a physics major (says a physics major with all but one math major course), but you don’t have to limit yourself to the relatively easy math courses. You can make math as hard as you want if you pick the right things to study, and I’m sure mechanical engineering must work the same way.

There is no easy way through a physics program.

Thing is, I am not interested in the hard engineering topics, if they exist. I just want to feel more competent about building things and so on. Physicists can’t build anything.

I scored a brand-new, highly regarded solids textbook for 21 bucks on Amazon. That was sweet. I used to think a $60 text was expensive, but I see a lot of three-figure prices these days. I don’t know how anyone can pay for college. The Schaum outline was 7 bucks, new. Lectures are free on Youtube. I figure I could become a de facto ME for $200. No one would ever want to hire me based on home study, but I would always know which gear to pick.

I wouldn’t want to work as an ME. My understanding is that they learn all sorts of cool stuff, and then they get stuck in horrible jobs where they measure things all day. I think the only fun they ever have is building things in their garages.

I’ve seen horrifying Youtube videos by disappointed engineers. They think they’re going to build autonomous robots and Ferrari engines. Then they show up for work, and someone hands them a box of parts and some micrometers.

I wish I knew what my Uncle Johnny did for NASA. He was in liquid propulsion back when we had a space program. No idea what liquid propulsion is. I don’t know what he did or whether he enjoyed his career. I know he liked using his skills at home.

He knew a lot of things but he wasn’t really that great with practical applications. I remember he fixed a refrigerator on my dad’s boat. It would tilt when the boat listed too far. He made a crappy little plate and screwed it to the fridge and a cabinet, I think. I hate the term “redneck,” but that’s how it looked. I expected a miracle, because I was so impressed with his credentials, but a guy who fixes lawnmowers every day could have done better. After four years of study, you should be able to stabilize a fridge in a way which is completely seamless.

He’s from Alabama. Do I ask too much?

Maybe I overestimate engineers. Maybe they can’t do do anything, either. Perhaps they’re like physicists. Maybe only the exceptional ones are able to build things.

Maybe Johnny measured things all day for NASA.

“How long is that bolt, Johnny?”

“Fifteen millimeters, plus or minus one tenth.”

“Great work.”

“When do I get my pension?”

“Your eyes are full of hate, forty-one. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive. It gives him strength.”

I feel like no one who doesn’t have a milling machine and a lathe is serious about mechanical things. You need those tools, a drill press, a belt grinder, and a metal-cutting band saw if you want to do anything with metal. If you’re poor and extremely determined, you can do a lot with files, but I digress.

MIG welder. You need a MIG welder, too.

I guess I’ll do some problems. If I fail, I’ll realize I’m too old and stupid to learn anything new. My biggest problem will be learning engineerspeak. Physicists gave them every basic tool they have, but they had to change the name of everything. Out of spite. This is my theory.

Moment is just torque. Stress is just pressure. Come on, guys. We invented this stuff.

If all goes well, some time next year I’ll be able to pick the correct gears out of lists. That will be exciting.

If I succeed at this, I will be insufferable to engineers. More than I already am. “I learned your stuff in a year. Why do you exist, again?”

If I fail, I’ll just quietly not write about it.

Watch this space.

If Reality Calls, Say I’m not In

I had an interesting experience this week. I came up against a startling example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

In case you don’t know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is, I will tell you. It’s a strange syndrome in which people who aren’t bright or capable believe themselves to be smarter and more capable than others. I run into it all the time, and I’m sure you do, too.

You could also call it the Appleby Syndrome. In the novel Catch-22, the character Orr says character Appleby he has flies in his eyes. He says, “How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?”

I don’t know if Dunning-Kruger is a form of projection or what, but it’s exasperating. It’s annoying to get in a squabble with a person who is not smart enough to be right about anything and not smart enough to know it.

I can understand lacking intellectual power. What I can’t understand is going through life getting C’s and D’s, getting a 900 on your SAT’s, ending up running a backhoe for a living, and still thinking you’re smarter than doctors and scientists and everyone else. How can you fail to notice your limitations?

People like to blame tests. “They’re biased.” No, they’re not. Unless you mean they’re biased in favor of smart people.

All over the US, there are slow black kids who sincerely believe they’re brilliant and that white people have rigged tests to keep them down. They go on social media and write about the intellectual superiority of the black race, and they call white people “Neanderthals.”

Educators tell them these things. Maybe I should put “Educators” in quotation marks. White kids are lucky they have a less-powerful excuse-making industry working on them.

Dunning-Kruger people aren’t rational. Lack of intelligence isn’t their real problem. There are lots of slow people who don’t try to tell the rest of us what to do. Dunning-Kruger people have psychological problems. They bully and pout and control, because they are crazy and insecure.

I was participating in an Internet forum. Someone asked a question about physics. Incredibly, a bunch of ignorant people started weighing in, as if their wild and pitiable guesses, which they presented as fact, were anything but ludicrous and useless.

You may be the smartest layman on earth, but if you haven’t studied physics, you don’t know the first thing about it. When you talk about physics, it’s as if you suddenly decided you could play the cello or speak Urdu. You’re going to make a fool of yourself, and even worse, you lack the ability to understand people who try to explain why you’re wrong.

If you say stupid things about physics, you then need to take at least two semesters of calculus and two semesters of university physics in order to be able to understand why what you said was stupid.

I decided to chime in on the forum, and I gently said people who didn’t know anything about physics should be quiet and let people who knew some things talk. One forum member is a physics major, and he was trying to be helpful, but an insecure, bullying blowhard kept interjecting with infantile nonsense.

Naturally, the blowhard homed in on me, and he made a bigger fool of himself than he already had. He was so determined to find something to be right about, he even “corrected” my English. I referred to electrical engineers as “EE’s,” which is correct. When you refer to something by its initials, and you pluralize it, you put an apostrophe before the S. It’s not mandatory, because people keep getting dumber and grammarians are now dumbing down the rules to suit them, but it’s right.

Soon writing will disappear entirely, and we will simply grunt and point.

He finally managed to get his milligram of flesh. I said “EE’s” was an acronym and told him to look up the rules, and after what must have been an all-night Googling session, he said it was an initialism. Hooray. Victory. But he was wrong about everything else, including the apostrophe. The apostrophe rule applies to initialisms.

He sent me a private message, as if he thought I craved even more exposure to him, and he filled it with links on initialisms. I told him never to bother me again, and I blocked him by all means possible.

Some people are just too crazy to live. This guy is more obsessive than an ex-girlfriend who can’t handle rejection. This must be how James Woods felt after he dumped Sean Young.

The enemy likes anger and conflict, so he sends annoying people to God’s children. The way to handle it is to take the supernatural approach. Forgive them, speak defeat to them and the demons that run them, and pray for God to help them and also keep them away from you until they shape up. Unfortunately, I did those things after he had already started to dig into my skin. I didn’t get into a flame war or sink to his level, but I put things in the wrong order. I responded first and took the supernatural approach afterward.

I hate to say it, but I just realized Dunning-Kruger has blossomed in my dad. My biggest problem with him is his belief that he can win arguments and be the leader. He can’t accept what he has become. He even hits on women. After a certain point in a man’s decline, all women are out of his league. All of them.

Nobody will date a demented man who is pushing 90, apart from sociopathic whores and possibly demented women.

Romance, sex, and marriage are out of the question for demented people because they lack the capacity to consent. It’s like statutory rape.

My dad is mentally hobbled, but he is still smart enough to realize it, and he is able to yield to me and stop questioning what I do. There are times when he defers without any hesitation and admits I have to be in charge. Unfortunately, there are many times when he gives in to his habits of pride and bullying.

I should be able to get cooperation by saying, “We have discussed this many times, and you have forgotten, but it’s taken care of, so please let me handle it.” If he truly respected me in his heart, he would accept that.

The other day he decided he wanted to write short stories on the computer. He can’t use a computer. I wish he could, because he needs activities, but there is no way. He used to use Wordperfect and Word to write legal briefs, but now he asks if there is a “machine” he can use for writing or to “look things up on.” That’s how little he remembers. I showed him his laptop and reluctantly agreed to spend some time showing him how to use it, but when the appointed time came, he had forgotten, and I didn’t remind him.

If he had remembered, I would have been put through an hour of hell. “Goddamn it, stand here next to me and show me how to do this!” Pardon the language, but that’s what used to happen before he gave up using computers.

“Just show me.” “I did show you.” “No you didn’t!” “I did; you just don’t remember.” “Just give me a chance, damn it!” “Dad, we’ve done this many times, but you forget later.” “Just try it this time, and if it doesn’t work, to hell with it.” “Dad…that’s what you said last time.”

Most of the time, he doesn’t tell me to go to hell, but sometimes he does. Then he forgets about that. He forgets he was angry. He resets so the process can start over again. One of my challenges is to break cycles of futility.

My dad cannot write fiction. He never could. He has never written a book or short story, as far as I know. He has STARTED stories. He has always wished he were a writer, but you can’t write unless you have something to say. Like most people, he does not, and even if he did, he is demented now. If I don’t help him use the word processor, I’m not preventing him from having a good time writing. I’m preventing him from driving both of us crazy while he wastes his time.

He couldn’t write even if he used a pen, and he can’t use the computer for any purpose. He can’t save files. He can’t open applications. He can’t do it.

He quit using the computer long ago, on his own.

I have never understood people who wished they were writers even though they were not motivated to write. Such people are much more common than actual writers. Go figure.

“Writer” doesn’t mean “person who identifies as a writer.” It doesn’t mean “person who wears a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, smokes a pipe, and lives in New England.” It means “person who writes.” If you don’t write, you’re not a writer. Best to admit what you are and look for something else to do.

I write, but I don’t tell myself I’m going to write novels or short stories, because I know I’m not.

While the forum discussion about physics and Dunning-Kruger issues was going on, there was some mention of engineering and how it differs from physics. One big difference is that physicists can’t do anything. An engineer may be able to fix a broken lawnmower. Most physicists wouldn’t stand a chance, because we study variables and chalkboard models, not real objects.

If a physicist is able to do anything practical, it means he went beyond his education. It’s that simple. Physics prepares you to understand engineering, but it’s not engineering.

I feel I should have majored in mechanical engineering with an EE minor. I was not cut out to unravel the mysteries of the universe through physics, but I’m smart enough to design and build a guitar amp or a tractor implement.

I decided to take a look at ME major curricula on university websites, to see what ME’s (apostrophe) had to learn. I was surprised at how basic it was. When I was in school, I had to take a bunch of advanced stuff undergrad ME’s never have to conquer.

I may try to learn a few things. I found a Youtube Ph.D. who teaches engineering, and I looked at his solid materials course, which is one of the first courses engineers study. I found out I was supposed to be familiar with a topic called statics, so I dropped solids and looked at that. In maybe 45 minutes, I was up to lesson 21. I kept skipping lessons. Statics is very, very simple for a physicist. Even a bad one.

I don’t know how far I’ll go. It’s nice to see how accessible it is.

Plus More Marvel Emasculation

I made the mistake of watching another Marvel movie. Even worse, I bought it.

I was tired of my 1995 integrated amplifier. It was great in its day, but in a 2018 living room, it’s like a demented grandfather in a room full of Silicon Valley whiz hipsters, yelling into a disconnected candlestick phone while everyone else Whatsapps.

It can’t do HDMI. It can’t switch video sources. It’s not fun hooking it up to a subwoofer. To watch TV and use the computer, I had to juggle remotes way too much. Finally, it didn’t sound good. I have DirecTV (the Less-Attractive Rob Lowe of TV providers), and the only way to connect the box to my amp was to use an S-video adapter which provided pretty bad sound.

I did what I believe was the smart thing. I bought an Onkyo receiver which was discontinued a year or two ago. I paid less than 40% of MSRP, and all I’m giving up are some ridiculous Amazon-compatibility features. I don’t want that stuff. Amazon spies on me enough as it is. I would never have an Amazon spy device in my house.

The new receiver has fewer wires hanging out of it than the old one, and it does more. It has crazy video menus that allow you to set your system up to work with your speaker inventory and its positions. I can aim movie dialogue at my head when I sit in my favorite seat. It’s also nice to be able to switch video sources without touching the TV remote.

I got it hooked up, and I realized I needed a loud, trashy movie with lots of special effects. In short, I needed Marvel.

The latest Avengers movie won’t be available for a couple of weeks (something like that), so I chose Spider-Man: Homecoming.

I didn’t understand the significance of the “homecoming” connection. It turns out the movie takes place during homecoming at Peter Parker’s high school. That doesn’t help me all that much, because I don’t know what “homecoming” means. Every school celebrates homecoming, but no one ever explains what it means. No one comes home on homecoming, and if they did, wouldn’t they celebrate at home instead of wasting the occasion on bepimpled, empty-headed cheerleaders and wedgie merchants?

I will spew spoilers at will, so if you run into one after this sentence, it’s on you.

Here’s how the movie works. Peter Parker (British actor Tom Holland) has been discovered by Tony Stark, who has provided him with a stupid electronic suit that talks to him. In the comics, Spider-Man has incredible strength and agility, and he’s pretty capable. He doesn’t need a set of computerized long johns to look after him. In the movie, he is an inept 15-year-old who is lucky to best common street punks. He can’t find his way around. He can’t make anyone respect him. He can’t run fast. He gets winded easily.

Yes, Spider-Man gets winded easily. Evidently someone on the writing team failed to look “superhero” up on his iPhone. A superhero is not a great, plucky kid who struggles to defeat stronger enemies with humor and humility. A superhero is someone who can do things like melting steel with his eyes or lifting an aircraft carrier with one hand. Nobody wants to see a superhero gasping for breath.

Tony Stark ignores Peter and leaves him in the hands of Tony Stark lackey (and real-life Obama lackey) Happy Hogan, who has turned bitter and jealous (not unlike Obama). In earlier movies, Happy was a good guy who supplied comic relief. In this film, he’s jealous of Spider-Man, and he treats him the way I treat telemarketers.

Hogan manages Parker by cell phone, hanging up on him and ignoring everything he has to say.

While Peter waits to be called up for service, he goes through the usual high school ordeals. He falls for a gorgeous girl, and people pick on him. Nobody tries to beat him up, so we never get the satisfying and anticipated scene where Parker humiliates a bully without even trying. But an obnoxious Pakistani kid manages to make him an object of universal ridicule.

Is it diversity when a movie has an obnoxious bully who isn’t white? I’m not sure.

Peter’s enemy is Michael Keaton, so in a way, we’re watching Spider-Man vs. Batman.

Keaton plays a blue-collar guy who runs some kind of salvage company. He gets a contract to collect superhero-battle debris after a big Avengers kerfuffle. Marvel-y government types show up after he has spent a ton of money hiring people and gearing up, and they throw his crew off the site without so much as a written citation.

Hello, Marvel: “due process.” It still exists, even after #MeToo and 911. In the real world, Keaton would hire a lawyer and either drive the government off or get a huge settlement. In the movie, Keaton punches a Peter Strzok type in the mouth and leaves.

Keaton still has a bunch of weird alien technology in his possession. The scraps come from the fight with Ultron, who was not an alien, but…okay. He decides to make arms and sell them to criminals. He builds himself a giant set of wings driven by what appear to be enormous computer fans, and he flies around causing problems. He wears goggles with little green lights in them. Put it all together, and you get the Green Goblin.

Keaton’s character is wonderful. He’s a better actor than Willem Dafoe, and the part is written well. He’s not just a nut who hates the world. He’s a small businessman trying to look after his employees and his family. I mean, yes, he murders people, but he has a little depth.

Peter discovers Keaton’s crew and starts following them around and screwing up their operations. In the process, the goblin crew accidentally cracks the Washington Monument. Peter’s friends are inside. They’re on some kind of nerd-competition field trip. His dreamboat love interest, Liz, is among them. He saves her, as Spider-Man. In a later scene, he asks her to be his date at the homecoming dance, and she agrees. Of course, she has no idea that the two awkward 5-foot-tall men in her life are one and the same.

It gets weird when Peter’s aunt (Marisa Tomei), drives him to pick her up and the Green Goblin answers the door. Liz the crush is Michael Keaton’s daughter. On the way to the dance, he figures out that Peter is Spider-Man, and he threatens to kill him and everyone he cares about if he doesn’t lay off.

Obviously, they end up fighting, and Peter wins (after losing badly), saving Keaton’s life in the process.

It sounds good, but throughout the movie, Parker keeps screwing up and getting bested. The Green Goblin’s illiterate thugs defeat him. Four random punks armed with Green Goblin merchandise defeat him. The Green Goblin defeats him twice. I’m pretty sure Liz could beat him up. Of course, she’s taller than he is.

What’s the point of putting radioactive spider venom in him and turning him into a freak if he can’t do anything? He’s even worse than Captain America. The Hulk is the toughest Marvel hero. Then comes Iron Man, because he has the best stuff. Then comes Thor. Then Captain America. Way down on the list, sitting in a corner listening to Justin Bieber MP3’s on an iPhone with a pink Hello Kitty case, is Spider-Man. He’s like 5 inches shorter than 5’7″ Robert Downey. He’s out of shape. He’s about as hard to ambush as Helen Keller. Why does he even get a movie? Even Ant Man is tougher.

His love interest is a former Disney girl named Zendaya, i.e. Mary Jane. Her character is a tortured urban kid with a very sour outlook on life. Sarcasm is her only talent. She’s very funny, and Zendaya plays her beautifully, but there is no romantic interaction between M.J. and Parker, and even if there were, it would be disappointing. I don’t want to be mean, but a female lead should have the looks to pull off her role, and this girl does not. It’s impossible to believe that Parker would want her.

The girl who plays Liz, on the other hand, is a stunner. Not only that; she likes Parker. You want to see them get together. And her dad is a villain. That makes for all sorts of writing opportunities for future films. No, we get the feminist version of Mary Jane. You WILL love the smart girl, no matter what she looks like. Dissent is not permitted.

No, no, no. Doesn’t work. I hope the next Spider-Man movie starts with Peter Parker finding out Dr. Octopus ran Mary Jane through a chipper, so Peter and Liz can go put an end to his shenanigans.

Mary Jane wouldn’t mind. She’s always depressed.

I’ll tell you something about men. We don’t fall in love with women just because we are ordered to. The feminists can’t make male moviegoers find Zendaya attractive. I don’t care how funny she is.

Movie heroes aren’t supposed to have ordinary lives. They don’t marry the homely girl who makes her own sweaters. Moviegoers want to see characters do things they can’t do. We are all perfectly capable of marrying disappointing women. Why would we pay to see Tom Holland do it?

Sure, Mayim Bialik is nice, but everyone wanted to see Johnny Galecki marry Kaley Cuoco.

Imagine a movie where the protagonist has a dream of becoming a concert pianist. He practices and practices, and his beautiful love interest encourages him and tells him to believe in himself. Then at the end, he gives up, gets a cubicle job, and marries a plain girl with a congenital odor problem that requires her to bathe with prescription soap. Who wants to see that? I certainly don’t. I want to see movie heroes do better than I do.

I’m tired of wimpy Marvel heroes. Thor got neutered in his last movie. Iron Man is on Zoloft. It seems like the Hulk–a certified moron–is the only real man in the bunch, unless you count Scarlett Johannson.

On the up side, the movie was a fairly good test for the new receiver. The room shook, and I didn’t feel like the characters were talking from beside the TV. I love this receiver. Given that I only buy new ones every quarter of a century, that’s a good thing.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is sort of okay. If it pops up on your cable system without an additional fee, it’s worth watching. Just be prepared for disappointment.

I had to buy it. Amazon didn’t list a rent option. Now I’m stuck with this thing for as long as Amazon acknowledges my right to it. Ten bucks, down the toilet.

I’m not buying The Avengers: Infinity War. I hope.

Meet the New Upstairs Maid

A few months ago, I bought a Roomba. The house I now live in has a built-in vacuum system, which is impressive, but there are problems with it. First of all, I am lazy, and the central system will not run by itself. Second, the system has a 30-foot hose which is not much fun to carry upstairs and from room to room. It’s actually easier to carry a vacuum cleaner, now that I think about it.

The big advantage of a built-in vacuum system is not convenience. Not unless you have several expensive hoses so you can leave one in every room. The advantage is cleanliness. A central vacuum does not expel dust into the air like a regular vacuum. Everything it takes in goes out of the house and into the remote canister. That’s nice, because nothing gets blown back into the air, and you never have to buy bags.

The Roomba is great, with certain reservations. It runs every day, and it usually gets stuck at least once. It thinks area rugs with patterns are “cliffs.” It sends me messages saying it’s trapped on a cliff and makes me go pick it up. I’m positive it’s female. So needy. It even sends me messages when I’m out of town. I don’t know how it does that. I never gave it my number. “I’m stuck on a cliff, and you’re out gallivanting around without a care in the world.”

I spend a lot of time picking the Roomba up, moving it eighteen inches, and turning it back on. “There, there. You’re safe. And you don’t look fat.” But it’s worth it. It beats doing the entire job of vacuuming with my own two hands.

The Roomba can’t climb stairs. As far as I know. This is its biggest flaw. As a result, I was forced to buy a second vacuum. A Eufy. Reviewers liked it better than the Roomba, and it’s cheaper. It has no phone capabilities. After dealing with the Roomba’s constant cries for attention, I viewed this as a plus.

The Eufy is running right now. It has two side brushes, and the Roomba has only one.

Uh oh. I just heard a crunchy sound.

It was nibbling on an adaptor cord. No harm done. When I got up to save it, I started moving things around and clearing the floor. I didn’t realize how messy the room was until I turned the Eufy on. It is training me to be neat.

The machine has been running for about 10 minutes, and I have had to get up twice. The first time, it was in my bedroom, making a distress beep. It had sucked up the little wire antenna from my clock radio, and it had used it to pull the radio under the bed. I got there before it did whatever nefarious deed it was trying to conceal.

This house has two staircases. I was worried that the Eufy would fall down the stairs as soon as I turned it on, but I have watched it back away from the stairs already, and it seems to have some sense of self-preservation.

Another nice thing about the Eufy: it doesn’t have to ram into the wall in order to know it’s time to turn around. It senses walls from a few inches away. This should make it easier on baseboards and furniture.

Months ago, I knew the Roomba might damage the paint on my baseboards, but I pictured myself sweating over a real vacuum cleaner, like a peasant, and I decided I didn’t care. Paint is cheap.

I like this machine. It’s lower than the Roomba, so it doesn’t hit as many things. It’s very quiet, too. I hope it works out.

I’m a dusty guy. I don’t like to vacuum, and I tend to create clutter, so dust is one of my curses. The Roomba has sucked up all sorts of dust downstairs over the last few months. If the Eufy does the same thing up here, dust will no longer be a problem.

It’s quiet. What happened? Just a minute.

It was in my bedroom again, at the other end of the house. Maybe going after the clock radio again. VENDETTA!

Here’s a photo of the Eufy, shortly after I launched it on its maiden voyage. It has a glass top, so it probably won’t get scratched up like the Roomba. Or maybe it will. I don’t know.

I’m stuck here writing about vacuum cleaners because it’s too hot to move. Outside, I mean. The fricking daily rain turns this area into a steam bath. Today we had blazing sun and almost no clouds, but I promise you, it will be raining shortly. I don’t even have to look.

Another fun purchase: I’m getting a ballast box for my tractor. Not the little tractor. The big one. My tractor came with a bush hog attached, and people advised me to leave it on. They said the weight would be helpful when I lifted stuff with the front end loader. That’s true, but it also makes banging noises, and it digs trenches in the dirt when I turn. I need some other form of weight.

You can buy weights made for tractors. You can get steel weights that go on the front, and you can get giant steel disks that mount on the rear wheel hubs. I don’t need weight up front, obviously, and the wheel hub weights look like a bad move.

When you lift stuff with a front end loader (or “FEL,” as we tractor experts call them), you turn your tractor into a seesaw. The fulcrum is the front wheels. You can actually lift the rear wheels off the ground if you lift too much with the FEL. Supposedly, this is bad. You want to reduce the weight on the front tires because the front end of a tractor is wimpy. Stressing the front suspension repeatedly leads to problems and repairs.

If you put a big weight behind the rear wheels, you create a lifting force on the front wheels. Think about it. Wheel weights can’t do that. They put weight on the wheels themselves, so there is no helpful new seesaw effect with the rear wheels as the fulcrum.

A ballast box is a big steel box you fill with heavy stuff. You mount it on your three-point hitch, behind the rear wheels. It improves your rear wheel traction and takes weight off the front axle. I need one.

You can fill them with concrete or rocks. I decided to use sand. The upper area of a ballast box is a good place to put things like chainsaws. If I use sand, I’ll have a nice soft bed for my tools. I’ll have to keep sand out of them, but it will be better than bouncing on concrete. Also, I can drain sand out if I want to. Some day I may want to transport my ballast box. It weighs 132 pounds empty and about 982 full. You can see why I might want to dump the sand. Can’t dump concrete.

I tried to remove the bush hog once. It did not cooperate. But I know it’s possible. The whole purpose of a three-point hitch is to allow you to change implements, so there has to be a way to get my bush hog loose.

I didn’t want to remove it, because I knew I would have to leave it out in the weather. Having looked at it carefully, I know realize this is a stupid concern. The paint is in bad shape. It has clearly seen plenty of rain in its day. I don’t think it will hurt it to sit outside.

The tractor stays indoors. Unlike the bush hog, it looks great.

In a few days I’ll have a ballast box, and then I can run to Home Depot for 16 bags of sand. I have sand on my farm, but it’s full of bugs and poop. I want nice sand, not a fire ant farm full of gopher droppings.

I haven’t seen the Eufy in a while. Hang on.

Bedroom. It found a flashlight on the floor and tried to eat the lanyard. Then it turned itself off out of spite.

Still better than doing the work myself.

Once I manage to get the ballast box working, I plan to start using a harrow to drag my yard. I have lots of crap stuck in the grass. Spanish moss and live oak leaves, mainly. I can’t take it any more. It has to go. I think a harrow is the only thing that will get it loose. I can’t use one with the bush hog attached. I can get one for the garden tractor, but it would be small and therefore inferior.

Maybe I’m wrong. A small harrow would get into more places.

If I can get used to swapping implements, I can get a box blade and really get stuff done. I could level roads, which would be nice.

I can hear the Eufy. Things must be okay.

I keep getting more things done than I used to. God is freeing me from restraints. Supernatural stuff is going on. God keeps showing me that the things I thought he was telling me really did come from him.

It’s a relief. It means life will continue to improve, not just while I’m here on earth, but after I die.

People don’t believe what I say. That’s unfortunate, because it would help them. Pride in doctrine is a major stronghold.

The Eufy is back! Oh, no. It found a USB cord. But it escaped!

I should get another one of these things. Maybe they get lonely.

The second story of this house is probably 2500 square feet, and the Eufy is killing it. I think I’ve found my dream wife.

If I ever get the ballast box working, I’ll blog it. I can’t wait to use the tractor without having to hear the bush hog bouncing up and down.

Citric Acid Saves the Day

I have a great tip for people whose dishes and glassware have mineral deposits on them.

Florida gets its water from limestone aquifers. Limestone is made of a calcium compound, plus other things. Limestone dissolves in water, to some extent. For this reason, the water here leaves white mineral deposits on things like dishes, counters, and faucets.

The scale in Miami was noticeable but tolerable. Here, it’s much worse. Maybe it’s because we have a well. Maybe we need a tank to let some of the crud settle out.

I thought about having a water-softening system installed, but it seemed like an expensive solution to a minor problem. I looked around on the web to see what I could do.

I found a product. “Lemon” something or other. Too lazy to Google. You put a small amount in your dishwasher when you run it, and it dissolves scale.

Okay, I Googled it after all. It’s called Lemi Shine. Amazon charges about $20 for 36 ounces.

That’s expensive. I can get a huge box of Cascade for a few dollars, so why does the additive cost so much? Unacceptable.

I rooted around some more and found out what Lemi-Shine contains. It’s citric acid, which is a common food additive also known as “sour salt.” Well, now.

Guess what Amazon charges for 5 pounds of pure citric acid? Fourteen bucks. That’s 80 ounces. I can probably do even better on Ebay.

I got myself 5 pounds of citric acid, and I started using it. I throw a tablespoon in before I start the machine. Now my dishes are scale-free (or getting there). I saved a ton because I didn’t buy Lemi Shine, and I don’t have to worry about a water softening apparatus.

Here’s something else: you can put a citric acid solution in a spray bottle and use it on counters and so on. It works, and unlike vinegar, it doesn’t stink. Bonus! And you can flavor food with it.

I read that you need about two tablespoons of citric acid in a quart of water in order to descale surfaces. I’m going to mix some today.

I tried putting CLR in my dishwashwer. Bad idea. It turns dishwashing powder into little bricks that don’t dissolve.

My bag of citric acid ought to last me several months. I am quite happy about it. Give it a shot, if you can’t see through your drinking glasses. I’m sure it will work, and over time, it will also clear the scale out of your dishwasher.

3D Printing Almost a Reality

This week’s exciting development: I am now a big 3D printing expert. And my opinion of the whole enterprise is even more negative than it used to me.

I want to be good at CAD. It’s useful for CNC machining. It’s useful, period. You don’t need CNC in order to have uses for CAD. You can design stuff with CAD and build it with files and grinders if you want.

CAD is good. Printers use files that come from CAD. Printing will make me better at CAD.

I also want to be able to print a useful part from time to time. Most things that come out of 3D printers are unbelievable useless crap, but you can also design metal parts in CAD, print them in plastic, and see if your design makes you happy before committing. You can use printing as a step in designing metal parts, but plastic is strong enough for some parts, so you can also print certain things which you can use.

I ordered an Anet A6 printer. This is the upgraded version of the Anet A8. Right away, you can see that the 3D printing collective has issues. Why would an upgraded version of something have a lower model number? And what is Anet going to call the printer that comes after the A0? The -A1?

The A6 arrived last week, and I started assembling it on Sunday. They send you a box containing stacked styrofoam trays full of parts, and you get to put them together. There are no written instructions. You get a USB drive with a PDF file. I think the drive may actually be a micro SD card in a USB adaptor, but it’s in a USB port right now, so I don’t want to take it out and check.

The instructions aren’t perfect, but there are very good Youtube videos.

I would say I have another two hours of assembly to go. It’s about a 5-hour job. Am I complaining? Yes. Well, no. If the printer came assembled, it would cost a lot more.

I’ll put up a couple of photos. One is the printer by itself, with the print bed installed upside down. I’ll fix that. The other is my assistant, Johnathan. He lives in one of my storage closets. He gets fed as long as he continues performing menial tasks for me.

Actually, he belongs to my friend Amanda. He is her youngest son. He likes building things from Legos. Working on a 3D printer is a step up for him.

I spelled his name right, so don’t correct me in the comments.

Notice how well the new workbench is serving me. It’s a joy to use.

The printer’s frame is made from black acrylic. They cut it into useful shapes with a laser or something. Maybe I should have bought a laser instead of a printer.

The sheets arrive covered with paper decals. The acrylic is manufactured with a big protective decal layer on each side. You have to peel it off every part. This is why the printer takes 5 hours to assemble instead of three.

I may get the printer running today. In anticipation, I’ve been looking at videos. The news is not all good.

The first thing that surprised me is this: it takes forever to print things. I’ll post a video in which someone prints–get ready for this–a giant orange Baby Groot. Dolls are very big among male scifi/comics fans. Troubling. Anyway, the Groot has two parts, and each part took around 5 hours to print.

Will the things I make take that long? Not for the most part. I expect to print a lot of small items. Still, 5 hours! Man! What if I need to print something big, and I have to make several versions to get it right?

I’ve also learned that printing is not precise. I’m not sure what kind of tolerances you can expect. From looking at things on the web, I get the idea that you would be lucky to stay within 5 thousandths of whatever it is you’re trying to print. That may not sound bad, but it is. Imagine you’re printing a knob to go on a 1/4″ shaft, and it’s supposed to rely on friction. If it’s 5 thousandths too big, it will slip, and if it’s 5 thousandths too small, it won’t go on the shaft.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I expect to find myself using drill bits and sandpaper a lot.

I may have a way to mitigate the time problem. I’ve noticed that people tend to print solid objects. By “solid” I mean “not hollow.” They’re filling their prints with plastic that doesn’t do anything but add weight. It’s stupid. I’m wondering if I can create designs with a lot of hollow space to avoid wasting time and filament.

Here’s another bummer: prints fail a lot. You can set up a job that takes three days to print and have it go crazy late on the second day. After that, the printer will keep wasting filament on a doomed print while you’re off somewhere looking forward to handling the finished item.

A web printing guru says the smart thing is to rig a camera up so it sends you video of the printing process. Then you can shut it down when it goes sour.

I sort of hope printing hobbyists don’t see this, but here goes: I am very disappointed in them. It looks like all most of them do is turn machines on and print other people’s designs. I saw an instructional video today, and the guy in the video had a lot of ridiculous garbage on the shelves behind him. How many skulls and unicorns does a grown man need? What is that junk good for?

It’s like painting by numbers, which, I should stress, is a perfectly legitimate hobby. If it makes you happy to print Thanos heads all day, go for it, but you’re not really learning anything. You’re also filling your living space with things that will motivate people to apply unkind labels to you.

Here’s what I wonder: who is creating the designs people use? I have CAD, but there is no way on earth I could create a Groot doll. CAD uses lines and simple curves. Can you imagine how many tiny lines and curves are in a Groot doll? Someone must be sculpting these things by hand and then scanning them into CAD programs. I don’t know how it’s done, but your 12-year-old 3D-printing nephew isn’t designing plastic skulls by himself. If this is true, then what are most printer owners really accomplishing?

It looks like there are people who use printers as tools, and there are other people who don’t learn anything from 3D printing except how to assemble rickety machines and make them function.

Home 3D printing technology is still in its wobbly infancy. That’s what I take away from all this. The machinery has huge limitations, and part quality is not great. It will be a fun, cheap way to improve my CAD and Gcode knowledge, and I’ll get some useful things printed, but 3D printing is closer to the realm of Ron Popeil than that of Haas Automation.

Now I Need a Puffy Shirt and Some Goth Tattoos

Temptation got me. I am buying a 3D printer.

This was not an easy decision. I was waiting for printers to become a) affordable and b) useful. I would say I’m 75% of the way there. You can get a fairly decent printer for a little over $200 now, so a) is covered, and the printed parts are useful for certain purposes as long as you don’t push it. That covers b) to the tune of what I reckon to be about 50%.

When 3-D printers came out, they were very pricey. They still are, if you get one that even approaches fulfilling the 3D printer mission. If you want multiple colors, limited glitches, strong parts, large parts, and so on, you pay through the nose. If you’re content to make reasonably good stuff in single colors, with a tolerable level of aggravation, you can get a lot done for a a low three-figure sum.

Why do I want a 3D printer? To print illegal guns, of course. I want to print up a warehouse full of flimsy, dangerous, non-rifled pistols and stick it to the Deep State.

That was my little shout-out to you, DHS people.

I actually want it to improve my CAD skills, prototype stuff I am considering making with machine tools, and make whatever useful printed items are within the limits of the technology. Printed guns are not for me. They are the gas station sushi of guns.

If you truly want to print good stuff, you can now buy 3D printers that do metal. Last time I looked, they started at about $800,000. That’s a little steep; I plan to wait just a little bit longer.

I’m not sure how such a machine can make sense, when you could have astounding casting and CNC capabilities for maybe $100K. You can get a HAAS CNC mill up and running for under $30K.

I never got anywhere with CNC. I did a few things with CAD, but when you’re machining things by hand, CAD is not that tempting. It’s usually easier to just go to the garage and throw metal on the machine, relying on a sketch on a legal pad.

I learned that Fusion 360, the free CAD from AutoCAD, will create designs a printer can use. Now I’ll have a little motivation to use Fusion 360. I won’t be able to make anything unless I have a computer file on hand, so CAD will be mandatory.

At first, I considered getting a $300 Monoprice printer, but I read some bad things about them. I ended up choosing something called an Anet A6. It’s an open source gadget. You buy a kit and put it together. I’m sure manufacturer support is terrible, but the web is full of nerds who use this machine and similar machines, so you can always go to a forum and get advice, if you don’t mind fielding a few snotty remarks from 4chan-dwelling pimple-poppers.

Wow. I just described about 30% of the world’s tech hobby forums.

My understanding is that the vast majority of printer users make useless things like plastic skulls and dolls action figures. I suppose they get excited about the novelty of printing, and they crank out a few items using other people’s designs. Then they get bored and let the printers gather dust. I’m hoping I’ll find uses for my printer. If not, there is always Goodwill.

I don’t want a skull. I don’t understand why printer owners like them so much.

I looked online for useful designs, and I really didn’t find any. One guy made a bottle opener. American homes contain a lot of stuff that has plastic parts that break, though, so I should be able to come up with projects from time to time, even if I can’t invent anything.

I think it’s going to be a long time before 3D printing really works. It seems like the problems printers had three years ago are the same problems they have today. Weak parts. Inaccurate parts. Parts that are too small.

I’ve read that it’s possible to print with nylon. This is a very strong material. I’m wondering if I’ll be able to do it. The obvious question is this: “If it works, why isn’t everyone doing it?” There have to be some issues with the process, or no one would be using relatively crappy products like ABS plastic.

I ordered something called PETG, I think. It’s supposed to be better than ABS. I picked blue. I figured it was a good choice for most parts. Red would be annoying after you made 40 or 50 things with it. Blue has more dignity.

If I create anything useful or even recognizable, I will be back to tell the world. Don’t expect any skulls, though.

Put the Skee-Ball Machine Down by the Stuffed Moose, Boys

I am working on my lofty sanctuary.

The new (still new to me) house has a big upstairs room where I hang out, and I am getting it ready for more effective use. This room has to be my office, music room, TV room, gymnasium, and upstairs workshop.

It doesn’t have to be, exactly. I have spare bedrooms. But using this room for multiple functions seems like the way to go.

I’ve had my recliner, couch, and entertainment system up here for a long time, along with the exercise equipment, some musical things, and the computer. But I haven’t done much to organize it or add a tool area. Last week I moved all the furniture, got rid of some things, and started adding tools. I even vacuumed.

As noted in an earlier post, I have a prefab workbench on the way. Sneer if you want. It would cost me something like $150 to cobble something together from two-by-fours, and it would be a big pain in the butt. I will end up putting about $250 in the prefab bench, and it should be up and running an hour after UPS drops it off.

The bench won’t be here for three more days. I’m using a folding table in the interim. Once the bench is here, I plan to use it for electronic instruments and whatever else shouldn’t be on the bench itself.

I’ll show you what I’ve done so far, and you will have to accept it and continue functioning if I go over things I mentioned last week.

I’ve been picking up tools. I’m not trying to have a complete shop up here. That would be redundant. I’m trying to assemble enough tools to prevent me from having to go up and down the stairs 300 times whenever I have something to do on the second floor. Also, it will be nice to have a bench within view of the big TV/monitor. These days, you have to be a fool not to use the Internet when you work on things.

I’m not trying to locate the finest tools on earth. I just want things that will work well and not fall apart. If something fails, I can always go to the main shop and get something better.

The bench itself will be Chinese, of course. It will have a light fixture, pegboard and hooks, a big drawer, a solid wood top, and a power strip.

I got myself a Tekton socket set. It was pretty cheap, and it’s Taiwanese. It will cover the vast majority of jobs I need to handle up here. Looks very nice.

I needed screwdrivers, so I got the blue Felo set in the photo. Seven drivers which will turn most screws. I also have a cheap set of Grace gunsmithing screwdrivers, and I think I’m going to leave my old Wiha precision drivers up here and get new ones for the main shop.

No intelligent person turns screws manually when he has a choice, so I have a DeWalt gyroscopic screwdriver.

I love the Ridgid Jobmax. Make fun if you want, but if you’ve tried one, you know how handy they are for little jobs that involve multiple power tools. They saw. They sand. They turn fasteners. They drill. I had a cordless Jobmax plus one with a cord. I am replacing the cordless one the main shop with an 18-volt version with more grunt, and I’m moving the old cordless up here. I got a few new tool heads because…stairs.

A long time ago, before I realized my dad was becoming demented, I bought him a 12-volt Panasonic drill and impact driver set. The set was cheaper than the driver all by itself. Go figure. The drill is small, but it will work fine for most of what I’ll do here. The driver is very nice indeed. It can’t match my corded Makita, but it’s a very serious tool. This set has crappy non-lithium batteries, but my dad has never used it, so they ought to give me a year or two of good use.

I got me a set of Bondhus ball-end hex wrenches for a pretty good price. There is no excuse for skimping on quality when the best costs $18 and garbage costs $14.

I splurged on Klein side-cutting pliers. Very expensive for little pliers, but people love them, and I was feeling whimsical.

I have a set of Gearwrench metric and standard box wrenches on the way. I thought I could use some tools we already had, but I was wrong. A long time ago, I bought a set of Craftsman sockets and wrenches for my dad’s boat, and I wanted to use them up here. When I opened the box, I saw that some of the items had walked away. People who work on boats are very dishonest, which is unfortunate, because the vast majority are also incompetent.

Individual Craftsman sockets and wrenches cost a lot to replace, even when entire sets are cheap. I looked at replacements and decided I was better off getting the Gearwrenches. The quality is better, and the price is very good.

I also found a great price on a set of Craftsman metric and standard ignition wrenches. These things are very handy.

I will probably get some kind of bench block. I’m not sure what to do about workholding. My feeling is that if a job requires me to use a vise, I should probably take it to the main shop.

I’ll be putting my Ersa soldering station here. It’s too nice for the garage. I can move my old Weller out there.

The lamp is the one from my electronics station back in Miami. I’ve been using it as a living room lamp. I’m going to get a floor lamp from Home Depot to light the room. I have articulated magnifier lamps I’m not using, and I will probably put one on the bench and put the one in the photo elsewhere.

I don’t know what to do about seating. The bench is taller than the table (which can be raised). I have a very, very, VERY expensive ($1400) ergonomic office chair my dad doesn’t use any more. If I can raise it high enough, I’ll make it my tool chair. If not, I’ll have to think.

I’m sorely tempted to move my CNC lathe up here. I have the wall space for it. Hobby CNC is a computer-intensive game, and it would be nice to do it near the main PC and the fridge.

When all is said and done, I will live in obscene luxury up here. I will be able to watch my favorite Youtube tool gurus from my workbench in total comfort. Guys I went to high school with are probably fussing over the color schemes for their new Lear jets, but to me, a couch, a recliner, and a nice workbench equal extreme self-indulgence.

If I were married, my wife would be reading over my shoulder and working on the necessary papers to put me in a mental home. When you’re a single man, putting a CNC lathe in your den is not a problem. I could put a mechanical bull in here if I felt like it.

I have started to think the machine tools (the big ones) should be in the garage, not the main shop. Space in the main shop is not as generous as I had hoped (at least the way I have things arranged now), and the temperature in the garage is usually more comfortable. Also, it’s nice to have space between your machine tools and the things that throw sawdust.

I need to make a firm decision and get a quote from an electrician.

In any case, I am living the dream. I know you want to be me, especially if you live in a house full of throw pillows, cats that aren’t stuffed, potpourri, and Hummel figurines.

I’m going to go over to the table and smell the tools now. Don’t wait up.

“We’re From the Government, and we Want to Help”

I don’t read the news all that much these days, so sometimes I’ll read a story that interests me, and I won’t be aware of other stories related to it. Last month, I wrote about a story that said online DNA-testing companies were supplying information to law enforcement, but I glossed over the bit about the Golden State Killer.

Who is the Golden State Killer? You probably already know, if you are doing a better job keeping up with the news than I am. He’s a serial killer, serial rapist, and career burglar. Decades ago, he terrorized California.

Here’s what happened to him, or at least to the man the cops think is him. He’s an old man now. He was in his house cooking dinner. The police came in and dragged him away. The basis for the arrest: DNA his relatives sent to testing companies appeared to be related to DNA found at one of the crime scenes.

That’s amazing. This guy didn’t have a DNA test. He minded his own business and laid low, and the cops found him anyway because people who were related to him had THEIR genetic material tested. They used a company which makes results available to the public. Can you believe anyone would go for that?

What this means is that law enforcement may have genetic information about you, even though you’re a prepper or a Jesus freak who would never send DNA to a testing service. When I say they “have” the material, I mean someone else is maintaining the records, but they roll over and hand it to the cops so easily, it’s as if the cops themselves have it.

It’s a fascinating development. Only DNA works this way. The cops can’t tell anything about your bank account by looking at your sister’s account. They can’t tell where you live by looking up your aunt’s address. It’s only in the realm of genetics that personal information about your relatives equals personal information about you. And you can’t do anything about it. You can’t resist a subpoena. You can’t block the testing, the way you can refuse to provide your own DNA. You’re stuck. Exposed. You have no recourse whatsoever.

It’s obvious that I’m not happy about it. Here’s what people will say: “You want to protect serial killers and rapists!”

There are a couple of responses to that.

Here is one response: the framers of the Constitution, our legislatures, our courts, many of our corporations, our schools, and our police protect serial killers and rapists. It’s how America was designed. The framers thought it was better to protect criminals than to subject us to things like at-will searches. Our law enforcement agencies apply the policies of the framers every day. Banks, universities, hospitals, employers, and so on refuse to hand over private information unless they have no choice. Protecting criminals isn’t a new idea I just came up with.

Here’s another response: do you really want to go through life naked, even if it means we arrest more criminals? We’re starting to resemble the Borg. One mind, no privacy, no freedom…it would appear to make the existence of the individual completely pointless, apart from his contribution to the unfeeling colonial organism known as the state.

I’ll give you what I think is the typical answer to my question: yes. Most people would be happy to give up all privacy. Most people don’t know what their rights are and don’t care. Fill their food troughs every day and give them big-screen TV’s, and they will serve you.

One of the big myths about America is that our people love liberty. If that were true, we wouldn’t support socialist politicians. We wouldn’t be so quick to demand that the government regulate our behavior. Whenever something bad happens, news reporters put microphones in the faces of ignorant people, and the ignorant people say we need new laws.

Right now, you can’t sell a hamburger in the United States without putting the calorie count on the menu. That’s because of a law Obama pushed for. Telling people how many calories they’re eating is a great idea. Fast food joints should do it in order to make customers happy. But do we really need to have Congress force them to do it? Should we be threatening people with fines and God knows what else?

Americans generally don’t ask themselves whether laws are the best way to address problems. They assume it’s true, because they don’t care about freedom.

The other day I was talking to someone about this, and I suddenly understood why it was successful men that put this country together and drafted the Constitution. They were more educated than the rest of America. They understood the importance of freedom. Because they had money, they knew how hard it was to gain wealth, and they knew what it was to have something to lose. They understood that there is no freedom without capitalism and private property.

If servants and slaves had written the Constitution, it would have looked completely different. It would have looked like the Democrat platform. “Free” money for everyone. High taxes on people who create wealth. Lots of searches and seizures to make sure the evil “haves” paid what they owed. America would never have become a powerful nation. We would have been a weak, ridiculous country like Mexico or Honduras.

We used to have mainly capitalist immigrants. Boy, has that changed. Now we have a certain number of immigrants, but mainly, we have invaders who come illegally. They show up and start looking for welfare offices. They come across the border pregnant so they can force us to pay for their deliveries and coerce us into giving citizenship to their babies. We don’t get to check their criminal backgrounds. We don’t get to ask if they have money, education, or skills. We’re importing hordes of people who want to impose socialism on us.

We are moving toward a future in which rights are not sufficiently important to us to keep our system going. Statists care about unimportant rights, like the rights to smoke weed, engage in various sexual perversions, and have “slut walks,” but the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments mean nothing to them. America is filling up with ignorant, gullible, arrogant flakes who spend their time thinking about things like Snapchat and the Kardashians. They get their political opinions, which are nothing more than sound bites, from trashy, poorly educated entertainers. They are too stupid to protect themselves from tyranny.

Here’s what I think will happen, either not long before or soon after the rapture. We will have a big DNA database, and everyone will be in it. Social media will be compulsory. The Fourth Amendment will be repealed or whittled down to nothing by legislation and court opinions. The Second Amendment will go away. Government agents will be able to enter our homes and look at all our records at will. Almost all transportation will take place in self-driving vehicles which are tracked around the clock.

I don’t know whether we will be microchipped, but if we’re not, the government will have other ways to track us, with identification, 24 hours a day. They’re already doing it with our phones. The information is collected and stored by private companies, but Uncle Sam can get it.

The destruction of freedom will be wonderful, as far as the ignorant are concerned. Crime will barely exist. Our streets will be safe. Everyone will be vaccinated. Poverty will be greatly reduced. Traffic accidents will be rare. Things will look great on the surface, and most people will be content. This will be disastrous.

The disaster will be that human beings will think they’ve eliminated the need for God and obedience. We’ll be a big colonial organism that seems to do very well without divine help. We’ll have no dignity, but that’s okay, because human beings don’t really care about dignity as long as they get fed. Oppressive regimes aren’t always unpopular. Sometimes they have overwhelming support from the people. I believe that’s how it will be after we cut God out of the picture.

Christians and Jews will not be factors. We will be seen as infectious agents of discord. “The cause of all the world’s problems.” In the eyes of the somnolent sheep of the Beast, exterminating us will be like killing zombies who carry the plague. God will pull Christians out of the world, because leaving us here will no longer serve any purpose.

Once we’re gone, all hell will break loose, literally. Misery and pain will be everywhere, because the presence of believers is what restrains Satan and prevents God from releasing his wrath.

The Beast may be a man, but he will also be the hive-mind populace, which obeys him in a feeble parody of the body of Christ. The world will be united against God. Mankind will be like a tower of Babel built from human flesh. People themselves will fight God openly. Spirits will have convinced them they can win.

I enjoy the toys of Satan. I enjoy the information age. I like computer programs and the Internet. I like depositing checks using my cell phone, instead of driving to the bank. I’m not blind, though. We’re seeing the beginnings of a technological Goliath with 10 billion brains, held together and coordinated by the Internet.

Tech experts are very stupid. Perhaps “stupid” is the wrong word. They are not perceptive. They have very little insight. They have a very poor record of predicting how the world will react to technology.

No one understood how the Internet would change us in 1995. No one understood how smartphones would change us in 2005. Today, no one understands how total connectivity, including the Internet of Things, will change us.

We can’t resist candy and shiny things. I’m not descended from a monkey, but maybe my flesh is. Unsupervised, it thinks and acts like a monkey. I’m not my flesh, and through the Holy Spirit, God is giving me control over it. Most people are not heavily influenced by the Holy Spirit, and they don’t want to be. The monkey runs things, and spirits that hate humanity control the monkey. We grab at the pretty toys technology offers us, and we are too dumb to understand the cost.

Arthur Koestler compared the growth of the human forebrain, over centuries, to the growth of a tumor in a body. He said our mental abilities had grown, while our character had not. Basically, we have the same urges crocodiles have, controlling powerful human intelligence. He was wrong about evolution, but he was right about our problem. We are smart enough to get ourselves in trouble with technology, and we are too evil to fix the trouble.

Look at the nuclear arms race. Disarmament has never been possible, because there will always be a few countries that resist in order to gain an advantage, and they force the others to stay armed. Think of the danger we face. We can vaporize hundreds of cities, plus the ground under them, and the threat, which couldn’t be any worse, isn’t sufficient motivation for us to do the right thing.

Socialism sounds great on paper, but it doesn’t work, and the reason is human nature. People will not work hard if they’re not rewarded. Socialists are lazy, weak, and unproductive. Capitalism works because it harnesses self-interest. Capitalists work hard because they are compensated for it. Socialism would be wonderful, if we were good. We wouldn’t mind doing our best and seeing other people get the rewards. It will never happen, because we can’t change. A world of powerful technology looks great on paper, too, but it causes problems for the same reason as socialism. Our monkey nature causes us to misuse technology, and we will never stop unless we are deprived of free will.

Socialism will finally sweep the world when technology takes away our privacy, and therefore, our free will. Technology, with its constant surveillance and total control of wealth and movement, will make us slaves, and only slaves can make a socialist state work.

I doubt any of my close relatives have used DNA-testing services. They don’t seem like the kind of people who would do it. I’m not sure, though.

I have cousins who are caught up in the Mormon cult, and genealogy is one of their obsessions. Do Mormons do DNA testing? Could be. I doubt it, though, because DNA testing disproved the nutty Mormon belief that American Indians come from Israel.

I haven’t committed any crimes that involve DNA, so I’m not in danger of being hauled away at the moment. What if relatives of mine have done bad things no one knows about? My dad is 86. He has been around a long time, and he has done a lot of things. What if someone made a false police report in 1952 and didn’t name a suspect, and the cops kept evidence with DNA on it? What if he was present when someone else committed a crime, and he cut himself at the scene? What if he walked by a place where a child had been raped, blew his nose on a napkin, and threw it on the ground?

If you’re reading this blog entry, do you feel confident that no one close to you has a secret DNA could bring to light? Are you sure you won’t lose your inheritance after a midnight raid on a parent’s house? Is it possible your grown daughter might show up broke, with her kids, after the feds drop by and take your son-in-law away?

Crimes from the past are being dredged up after decades of hibernation, and the exposures won’t just harm the guilty. They’ll hit the people around them, too. Even when statutes of limitation have passed, disgrace, civil liability, and financial ruin will be on the table.

Someone in Hollywood should make a movie.

Here’s a fun question: what if you have a hereditary weakness, and it pops up on DNA tests? What if you apply for a job, and your employer’s investigators run a check with a DNA-testing company? What if you’re 60, you really need a job, and three of your grandparents died from severe heart disease in their fifties? What if one of your parents had Huntington’s Chorea?

In the past, once you got away with something without being identified, you were generally in the clear. You could repent, build a decent life, and move on. Now old misdeeds are bursting out of the grave to torment people.

Rebellion and lack of prayer create and feed disasters that grow out of our sight and then jump out and attack. It’s as though we were feeding monsters that live just below the horizon, like the monsters kids hear breathing under their beds. Repentance and prayer shrivel these things and neutralize them, and they create blessings that come to us and surprise us. There is always symmetry in the supernatural.

As our legal protection from disaster wanes, it is wise to increase our supernatural protection. Sow blessings in your future and pour Roundup on the problems you inseminated in the past. Legal protection was always an illusion, anyway. The only safety comes from God. Escape prosecution, and Satan will take it out on you some other way.

The world is getting tiny. Internet companies collect my secrets. Our neighbors watch us with drones flying over our yards. Government and private security cameras film us all day. The dragnet is closing on all of us, and many of us can’t survive the scrutiny. Sooner or later, the ubiquitous, perpetual observation will be like a thick, heavy body cast with a tiny straw through which we suck air, and the government will keep its thumb on the end of the straw, opening and closing it at will. We will try various reforms, but while they may delay the inevitable, they won’t keep it from happening.

The age of technological nudism has begun. Shade will be scarce, and there will be no sunscreen.

I Don’t Need a Nightlight

For years, I had a problem with my pillows lighting up at night. I would roll over or whatever, and little green spots would light up all over the pillow. It was the craziest thing.

I found I could reproduce the lights by crumpling and slapping the pillows.

Thought they were some kind of static electricity, but in my experience, static electricity moves quickly when you discharge it. You get a brief spark and then nothing. The green lights were usually quick, but I remember seeing one dissipate slowly over maybe half a second.

I used to wonder about it. Was it some kind of electrical thing I didn’t understand, or was it some sort of Holy Spirit residue, from praying with my head on the pillows?

Here in my new home, I am still having the problem. I rolled over in bed the other day, and my hand brushed against the contoured sheet. As my fingertips dragged over it, little light trails followed them. They were bright bluish white. They were maybe half an inch long.

You really notice things like that in the middle of the night in a dark room.

Some day I want an explanation for this. When you’ve had experiences you know were supernatural, it’s easy to give up on natural explanations and attribute paranormal causes to things that are really just physical. No one wants to be the guy who saw a goose fly past his window and told people it was the Holy Spirit.

When I think about this, I always think about Ed Harris as John Glenn in The Right Stuff, hollering, “Get out of here, you gadgets!” at a bunch of sparks coming off of his capsule.