Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

Still here, still braining, a bit. I know, it's January, there's nothing at all going on, right?  Well, not in my world. For starters, did your health care insurance change at the beginning of the year?  For some of you, it did.  The reason why matters little.  The bottom line is that, for thousands, probably millions of people, their insurance changed.  For some, it's a major change - as in one company to another.  For others, it might have seemed a minor change.  A few more things included in the coverage since they hiked the premium, or maybe it dropped a bit, and so did some options.   Whatever those changes might have been, they play havoc in my world.  Let's say, for example, you're on an on-going therapy.  Like me.  I'm diabetic.  Is my insurance still going to cover the same things it did last year?  For most folks, that's a "yes."  For some it may be an "I sure hope so".  For a growing group of folk...

Full disclosure - I attended the same MIAC school which my father graduated from, Hamline is also an MIAC school, and it used to have a law school.  Apparently now it has a collection of kindergarten-level halfwits at the helm.  The great and wonderful thing about most kindergarteners is that they're filled to overflowing with potential.  The leadership of Hamline, on the other hand, is also full of potential - the sort of potential which leads to disastrous futures, disappointment, and generally low achievement across the board, because they're seeking not to offend. Yup, my friends, I've waded into yet another one of those rather large dustups that any slack-jawed halfwit could see it wasn't going to be that big of a deal until someone did a dipshit move... So let's start with the beginning of the day.  After my alarm clock goes off and blasts me out of bed (yes, it's across the room, where I need to get up, because I learned many years ago I had become so ade...

Part of me thinks that might be interesting, but another part admits that to be an immortal must be pretty tiresome.  I mean, the wonder of inventions, of new knowledge, and new art is probably wonderful, but the truly depressing part might be how cruel people can be to one another and the world at large.   So yeah, it's been a year.   Putting it mildly.   I mean, at the beginning of the year, I was sitting fat, dumb, and happy, with a solid job, working with people who liked me, who I really liked, and doing a job that really felt rewarding.  Then I started to get this itch.  I started looking around, outside my foxhole, as it were, as it had been three and a half years, and the IT Dork deep down inside of me kept screaming "Look, these jobs never last forever, you're gonna get run over and flattened by something because that ALWAYS HAPPENS!"  A larger portion of my semi-logical brain said "shaddup you in da corner dere.  Youse don...

I know it.  I'm a cranky old bastard.   I guess my problem is that here in the 21st Century, I'm a fish out of water.  I learned a long time ago that time was the really precious thing.  With time, you can buy money, you can buy love, and you can buy some really great experiences.  It just takes time.  Therefore, as Dad regularly told me, I still do it right, because I do not want to have to find the time to do it over.  Do it right the first time, in part because it saves time, but it also saves materials and an awful lot of other things. Such as sanity. And I do have to tell you that I'm sure my experience is unique, but the Snow Joe folks sure aren't ready for prime time.  Which is really unfortunate. I do need to start out by admitting to you that I am definitely not the sort of person who works well with snow blowers.  I believe this is in part because I'm trying to find something that works for me and keeps me on/under budget....

I am still alive.  Which is a little more than I can say for the father of a friend of mine.  He passed away yesterday.  Which is really a terrible thing to have happen during the holidays.   This year sure does not seem to be holidays.  At least, not for me.  I'm one of those people who cherish all of the rituals that were involved around Christmas, the sneaking up to the event, experiencing the event, and the aftermath.  I know that for some people Christmas seems to start right around July 5th, which to me is utter insanity.  I find the various Hallmark channels and their continual shoving of Christmas down people's throats to be just about as reprehensible as you can get. To me, the event of Christmas is made up of so many bits and pieces.  There's the Gospel of Luke, the birth of the Lord.  And I'm very well aware that many people do not see Christmas as a religious holiday, but rather a secular and consumer event.  That's...

I do tend to pay attention when people scream "Fraud!"  I do have a couple of steps which I use, internally, to determine the validity of the claim.   The first thing I do is look at the person who is claiming fraud has been committed.  Does this person have a personal history of numerous events in which decisions were ... well, let's call them decisions which were made by a thin margin?  Were they decisions that came from a known and "level" "playing field"?  Was the contest fair?  Was there a chance for the contest, whatever it was, to be grossly or minutely influenced by what you might want to call "nefarious contributors" that is, people who might not want to see a fair contest?  Is or was the decision questionable?  Is there a history - either the contest, or the contestant - of questionable results?  Is the claim in any way valid? When it comes to the Orange Jesus Nazi Sympathizer who is now saying we need to set aside the Constitu...

I guess that's me.   For years, I've relied on a simple CAD tool I downloaded a few years ago.  It's called CadStd Lite - yes, it's Freeware.  That old thing.   I do not do any sort of professional design.  I do not do anything that requires full-up 3D modeling.  Primarily because when I think of the things I'm going to make, I think of them as 2D views on graph paper.  Which means anything I make that's rather complex takes up more than a few sheets. The thing I absolutely love about CadStd is it works like my brain does.  I can define the grid as some specific measurement, and design on that.  In most of my projects, 1/4" is plenty of detail for me.  Some do require I go to 1/8", while a very few have required more detail.  But it does it. The trick is that it's a simple program.  I can draw shapes, which in my mind are 3/4" plywood sheets, 3/4" hardwood, or maybe a 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" post here and there, or ... well, ...