Friday, September 20, 2024

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/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

To secure the hardscape border timbers, we are going to use small concrete piers. I'll give more info on the details but check out the new auger we tested. https://youtube.com/shorts/3Z_fEL7WVoc?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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