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/GeoGuessr
How to get 0km on GeoGuesser: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipOCci4G2-r5sNk4hNLPmAixGwTJjs9Lwn_eWCyT
Hints for GeoGuesser: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipOVNXE6IYtJYADDtD0r6DpsP_MpIJewWhuDwYf2
GeoGuesser almosts: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipPrT2RMF0fDXrmtWv19TDui456OwckHAtiRQJtS
GeoGuesser Beta: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipNjPqkHCLB4nUI4_6GY0zpSyIDDqWDJ6OYm2ijq
GeoGuesser Lowest Score: https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipMxod8db6vXOp5HmZ-iiF9w9m2oDsEGsvvBc1bB
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?v=ABNzdOOz2Go&t=85s
. In fact, the folks who live in the new car free area in Tempe can get
one for free. See the April 2024 newsletter regarding a car free
society. I recommend you Phoenix folk to check it out and anyone else
because it is free shipping to your home.
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.)
The new hardscaping
project is the East steps. See pic. It is just dirt now but we have to
move cubic yards of dirt out and add cubic yards or gravel, base and
flagstone. We are building a ramp on the stairs to use the electric
wheelbarrow to move all of the material. Yay!
Ben and I built
two rip jigs to cut the 6"x6" timbers in half and the 3"x12"x96" timbers
for the border of the East steps. See pics. Yes, I know the ramps are
redwood which is about $150 for a 10 foot timber, but hey I did not know
that Lanai wood was redwood. We also built a rip jig for cutting the
long timbers in half. See pic. To turn a 6x6 into a ramp, you cut at the
middle point with the saw set at 26 degrees and you get the perfect
6x12 ramp. Watch here the
Impact driver screw together the wheelbarrow ramp: https://youtube.com/shorts/ZJkQZJmWTpg?feature=share
Here
is the sad story about the sander. I used the money my Mom gave me to
buy a new Makita cordless sander. Not any cordless sander but one that
does quarter sheets and the Velcro sheets of sandpaper. So I go online
and the new sander is only available from overseas. The US version is
not ready yet. Mind you, I should be questioning this but I want the
latest and greatest. I ordered the sander from AliExpress and for some
reason, the purchase program came up with my address in Bakersfield.
Yes, Bakersfield. Who knew there was a Shattuck street in Bakersfield? I
quickly contact the seller and tell them to correct the city. They said
they corrected it, but every invoice and tracking link still had
Bakersfield. I contacted the seller again to remind him to change it,
and they said all is good, but everything continues to say Bakersfield.
Believe it or not, it does come to my address in Berkeley. So I open it
and I am happy because the old sander vibrates more than the Makita one
will. I go to the garage to try it out with my quarter sheets of 8.5x11
sandpaper and it is short.. See pic. You see, the metric equivalent of a
8.5x11 sheet of paper is an A4 sheet of paper which is 8.3"x11.7". Yes,
11.7" My new metric sander wants quarter sheets of A4 sandpaper. My
English quarter sheet of paper are 0.35" short. I have a fix. I bought a
new base plate and I will 45 bevel the base edges which should allow me
to use my English quarter sandpaper sheets. Wish me luck.
Home
Depot: I love the prices but you have to up your practice to shop
there. I ordered a lot of parts for the East step hardscaping. Going to
concrete strapping in a 6" pier to hold the borders instead of rebar or a
metal stake. So I was going to put a dobie in the bottom of each hole
to keep the metal in the pier 2" from the bottom. I placed the order
online to pick up the next day. Low and behold there were two boxes and
a single sheet of dobies in my order. I am confused because they are
trying to give me way too many dobies for my needs. Then I realized the
person pulling the parts does not understand that a single dobie is a
2x2x2 inch block of concrete with wires to tie to the rebar to keep the
rebar in the center of the pour. I told them to keep the boxes and I
will be taking the sheet with the extra four dobies. Update:
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