Word meaning for Skedaddle |
Hi Everyone, The blog is about my adventures in the avatar world that surrounds us. Hopefully, there are take away for you in reading the blog. Enjoy! David Alan Bartholomew Phillip Hallsted
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
To Skedoddle - To open a Zoom meeting and leave without knowing why
Sunday, September 29, 2024
2024 July - Dragon Diary
It is a diary of my daily experiences. If an event is important, it will have its own post...
Here is the blog post about percentages. |
A dead relative is now an immortal soul without a physical body. |
The trailer is here. |
Above is a map of all the civilizations that collapsed. |
Above is a short history of the collapse of the Bronze Age. |
Friday, September 20, 2024
2023 December - 5% diary
It's a diary of my normal life, the 5%. Just posting my replies to the monthly newsletter questions between the family and cousins. Dragon comments are after, "in the record".
Did you get your favorite dish? My favorite dish is the turkey mash dinner. That is when you cut everything up, put it together in a pile and mix it up. It is amazing the flavors that came crashing into your mouth with each bite. I learned the turkey mash dinner from watching how my Dad would eat turkey dinner. When I first saw it I told it was a carry over from eating in the army mess tent. But no. It is amazing. I highly recommend it.
valve. All I know is that I have a house full of compression valves and half of them are failing. Sorry about the rabbit hole on valves.
Do you have a favorite month where all is calm and less hectic or do you like busy months instead? When I was young the summer months were how many jobs could I work for college money. When
I had a family, the Xmas month was fun to watch the boys open the gifts and play with them. The holiday months when we played games in Sacto were excellent. For my retirement month, I look
forward to peace and quiet, which is January. Too much rain to do projects and the fresh smell of water Earth are perfect for reflection.
to avoid Type 2 diabetes. On this December 12 holiday, we celebrate a beautiful seasonal flower and John Poinsettia who brought them to the United States, the beautiful Poinsettia. Do you buy yourself a Poinsettia or just admire them? Poinsettiacare: https://www.housebeautiful.com/uk/garden/plants/advice/a994/poinsettia-care-buying-tips/ Thanks for asking the question Mom. If I had to guess, room with central heating killed all the Poinsettia I knew. As the link says, "it must be kept away from draughts". If I was you Mom, put the Poinsettia in the corner of a room to avoid draughts.
Finished the side yard between 908-912 Shattuck. See pics below. The last of the three pics still have the forms in them. They were temporary to keep the planter soil and the Sandy Loam for the Dymondia separate. The fall pic has the forms gone and the dymondia planted. It came out quite nice with the fall Japanese maple leaves in between the plants.
house.) She agreed and I made it worse. Now it is clogged and does not drain at all. See pics. It's a 100 year old drain that had handmade cement box drains with bell-and-spigot cast iron pipes. So I had to figure out how it worked and drew a map of what I thought was under the garage. I used the length of the jet hose I could put into the drains and the direction of the drain pipe in the box for the map. See map. It turns out that no one had cleaned it since the Wittstock moved into 908 Shattuck, for 50 years. If my map was correct, which it was, I had to break the 90 to completely flush out the drainage system because of the centralized drain box.
https://youtube.com/shorts/yRkgT58tsrQ?si=7H2ipbd2GmIYpCyo
https://youtube.com/shorts/DDmeW7VCcaw?si=eXhgdBxI3xIkUZ7t
Ben and I dug out the 90 and found all sorts of old plumbing and made a trench for the upcoming flood. We jetted all three inlet pipes and one outlet pipe. Put gutter foam in the drain boxes in front of the inlet pipes to stop the big stuff from getting in. Replaced the 90 with a hose clamp 90. Extended the outlet pipe all the way to the apple tree at the very end of the property. Done.
• Added Perkgrout for custom drains around the deck (see before and
after pic), turnoff valve box, and side yard flagstone.
• I have plans to use Perkgrout for all sorts of custom drain
projects around the house. Yay for fast drainage!
• See street step Perkgrout test:
• https://youtube.com/shorts/BthcEoZbo20?si=BC7S01sHKkt8fWEj
• Next project, time to finish the patio stairs that I stopped
doing a year ago. Wish me luck. Everyone stay safe.
2024 September - 5% diary
It's a diary of my normal life, the 5%. Just posting my replies to the monthly newsletter questions between the family and cousins. Dragon comments are after, "In the record".
Have you had a glorious day recently, one that you chose to make it a glorious day in spite of what happened.
This will sound silly but it happened when I was playing GeoGuesser.
Think about it. The world is the puzzle and you need to land your guess
within a meter of the pic in the GeoGuesser for a perfect score. There
are 5 guesses in a round. I nailed the first four at 0Km. I just need to
get the last one. My template showed the guess was off the road. So do I
pick on or off the road. I chose off the road and I was right. I stood
up and screamed YES!.
Anton
Wallen, the game designer, was a genius on how to use small clues to find a
unique location. I spent many an hour in the outback of Australia, or on
the rural roads of Japan, US, and Europe. One guess was in the backyard
of someone's home on a Geo View which is a single point. Even though
you could not go out and explore down a road, there was a Russian car
with a license plate. With just the plate you could find the exact
location. One guess was under the water in a school of fish.
I stopped playing because it got popular and the game was changed for speed, not perfection.
Below is the
history of GeoGuesser and the documentation I did to get the perfect
guess. I also tried to get the lowest score by using the antipodes of
the Earth.
Make sure you click on the text for the sidebar to come up for the full explanation.
The history behind GeoGuesser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
How to get 0km on GeoGuesser: https://photos.google.com/
Hints for GeoGuesser: https://photos.google.com/
GeoGuesser almosts: https://photos.google.com/
GeoGuesser Beta: https://photos.google.com/
GeoGuesser Lowest Score: https://photos.google.com/
What would you wish for in your life?
I wish for an electric bike. Voila. I now own one. But not just any
electric bike from Lectric from Phoenix. It is called the Lectric One
bike. Video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
I
also wish I had a bed frame for my horse hair mattress. Voila. I own
several redwood 3x8 and 6x6 lumber from the lanai. See pic. In fact I
used several timbers for the wheelbarrow ramp not knowing that it was
redwood. The folks who built the lanai stained the wood a pink, because
the redwood was several different red colors. I am busy looking at
different designs for my new bed frame.
Are you cutting back on expenses to help with the budget? Any helpful hints? The trash bill. When the local store started to recycle plastic warps, my trash fell to the size of a small bag once a month. See pics. So we have a 96 gallon green container for all wet trash/compost. This is what Berkeley does. A blue recycling bin for paper and containers, while the gray one is for trash. So what I do that I should not do. I put all the hard plastic in the blue bin because they have a sorting conveyor belt and they will pull off the plastic they can not recycle. But here is the thing. I remember being down at the recycling center and they had a huge pile of plastic wrap. Several weeks later it was gone. They are recycling the plastic wrap but not telling anyone. I put all the small scrap metal in the container bin because they recycle scrap metal at the site and will pull it off the belt and put it in the correct bin. My trash is only multi-layer metal plastic, you know chip bags and air tight seals on food containers.
Did you ever have some old superstition? If you did, what are they and how did you learn them?
The only ones I can think of are from sport. For example, in little
league baseball we wore stirrup socks over our white socks. To keep
stirrup and sock tight you had to put on the pants, then take them off
below your knees. Then you overlap the sock and stirrup over the pants,
then pull up the pants. I would also double knot my shoes to make sure
they did not come untied in the game. Well, I guess I did not have any
superstitions, just practical means of ensuring success.
Also let’s not forget the favorite September holiday, Sept. 19. Talk like a Pirate.
It has been a while since I talked like a pirate. It may happen on a
game night. The most recent was in a DnD game. You have to love the
voice acting in a DnD game.
As always what is going on in your life. Projects and tools:
As always what is going on in your life. Projects, tools, and getting orders: The next project is the hardscaping of the East steps. See pic. The new tools are rip jigs, New Makita auger, New Makita Sander. I have two orders to talk about: AliExpress and Home Depot. (FYI. A saw cross cut the width, A saw rip cut the length.)
Update:
2024 August - 5% diary
David–- How did you choose to watch the Olympics? I did NBC Sports and I recorded NBC and I still did not get to see all the sports. One would have to subscribe to Peacock to see it all. I was not interested in another subscription.
- Likes and dislikes on the opening ceremony? At first I was confused about the opening, but once I let go of my linear thinking the opening was great. It was most excellent getting a tour of Paris. To see more go to “NBC sports Olympics 2024 opening ceremony”
- What is the fastest sport you watch? Table tennis 100m sprint
- What was the craziest sport? Kayak cross. BMX racing. Carnage everywhere.
- What is the slowest sport you watch? Dinghy Sailing. It was slow. Very slow. The video was even speed up.
- Which sport events had the most amazing back and forth between the two teams? Badminton.
- What sport did you watch and could not figure out what was going on because of the camera angle? Skeet shooting. What are they shooting at? I finally saw the burst of the clay pigeon but I never saw the pigeon in flight.
- What sport did you watch and wonder,."What is going on?" Handball. First off, the count up clock counts up. Who thought of that. And I guess you can not touch the inner half circle before you throw the ball, though you could see some player making contact before the throw. I still watched it.
- Which event would you like to attend in person? Tennis does not interest me, but the match between Djokovic versus Alcaraz would have been amazing to watch in person.
- What facts do you now know about the Olympics that you did not know? Well, I had no ideal that the Olympics is a hook up event.
Mental Floss, https://www.youtube.com/@MentalFloss/shorts, is a great site for fast facts. Here are some more:
Why the U.S. won’t dip its flag at the Olympics Opening?
How does the Olympic flame stay lit?
Why do Olympic runners still wear paper bibs?
How much gold in in an Olympic gold medal?
Food inspired slang from the summer Olympics.What did you think of the Olympic mascot? Freedom, a.k.a. Phryge. I love it. The Dems need a similar mascot.
- What part of the Olympics did you watch that now you wish you had your time back? Platform Diving. Not much has changed.
- What part made you cry? The opening ceremony where Celine Dion sang. Her struggles to get back to a singing career is amazing.
- What sport did you watch that you thought you would ever watch? Break dancing. It was really good.
- What sport was new to you? Handball, 3x3 basketball, Rugby 7
- Your opinion that Russia was not officially represented? I know they cheated. Rick is correct, I should not feel sorry for them.
- Likes and dislikes on the closing ceremony. I am still watching it, but I like it. Here is the Golden Voyager vid.
- How does this Olympics compare to the others you have watched? Paris is the best.
- What is the nastiest sport in the Olympics that you watched? Water polo. Vince is correct. I actually attended a UCB water polo event where the same fist hitting happened about 10 years ago. The sport needs to be cleaned up so it is safe.
- If you had the abilities, which Olympic sport would you participate in? Kite sailing. I was mesmerized by the sport. I remember the best I could do on a race bike with a tail wind on the flat would be around 30 mph. But, the kiters are doing 30 mph on a hydroplane board flying across the water. It turns out that one of the best places for kite sailing is the Bay Area.
Your opinion about the possible 1st female president. It’s about time. She is perfect. This elect will be about women’s rights. If you are wondering who are the 4 females on the title page, they are other female president from other countries. You need to go to the Wiki link in the title for more info.
And as always what is going on in your life: projects, trips, naps… Smoking chicken, orchids are blooming, and I am doing Invisalign to straighten my teeth (because I can get a $2k deduction on it from insurance). Yeah, I find the new death screen hilarious. And for some reason, I found a squirrel tail outside my door. I hung it on the wall outside.
Oh yeah, projects:
Step brackets, Screeding steps,
compacting steps. Here are three
new videos of project work:
Shortening bolts for the steps.
Jig cutting a 6x6 timberAdding the rivnuts was easy because I learned that from work, though we had to vice up each bracket and hit it with a 15 lb sledge to square it up.
Time for the fails… I bought the auger drill bits to be able to drill all the way through because the spade bits are too short. What I did not understand was that the auger bit would drift inside the wood no matter what jig I built or how precise the hole alignment was. After many fails I finally started the hole with the spade bit followed by the auger bit. Success! The first four steps are a disaster with Ben and me doing all sorts of shims and redrill to get the brackets to align. To finish the drilling we countersunk the bolts because the the 7” bolts were 3 times the cost of the 6” ones.
Projects, install the steps: Three cubic yards, yes 3, of gravel and the steps were installed. Once a step is install it is easy to install the rest of the steps. The plan is to take a step out when ever I want. I figured that the step was going to be the only thing to wear down. That is why I decided to bolt the steps in place. I was going to place fabric by the step to keep all the stuff in place. I hope it works. Step steps: Gravel to 1” of top. Compact to 2” below. Add base and screed level to wall. Install step and side screws. Rubberize screws. Remove base and gravel. Add fabric. Add back gravel. Compact. Bury fabric under base. Repeat 7 more times.
Projects, step flagstone: Well, you see the flagstone was quite dirty from sitting around outside for years. We rinsed all the flagstone to be installed. Thanks goodness it drys quickly. There are three piles of flagstone in the front, bits, small, and medium.
Screed the largest stone to the step. Once level, level up all the surround stone to the main stone. PerkGrout time!Mix the grout with the minimum amount of water. Trowel in to the grout lines with little force. Smooth out with a sponge. Done!
Update: