A Crummy Commercial

I remember this Peanuts cartoon: EVERYBODY loves looking at house plans !  There's so much potential.  No money has been spent.  No painting has to be done.  No grass needs cutting OR no snow must be shoveled !  You get the idea.  It's just fun to dream - the reality is often not as fun.  Here's a fun book of plans from Sunset: https://dn760104.eu.archive.org/0/items/SunsetMagazineSunsetscabinplanbook0001/SunsetMagazineSunsetscabinplanbook0001.pdf Here's my favorite from the book, built from materials on the land, certainly better than a tent ! Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

Spacex had a successful launch of a Starship orbital mission, caught the booster, deployed Starlink satellites in orbit but then splashed down and had an explosion of Starship.  Pretty successful day although it is the 14th launch. source:  https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/starships-first-orbital-launch-gives-lift-to-spacexs-next-gen-starlinks/ On a related note: now that Spacex is having the Starship success, they will be ramping down their original Falcon rocket and also the Crew Dragon capsule.  So Boeing will be the only way to launch from the US to the ISS with their Starliner: https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/09/boeing-incredibly-excited-to-serve-as-nations-only-astronaut-transportation/ I guess since the ISS will eventually be thrown away, there won't be any need for the astronaut and supply missions.  But I would think that there still is a need for a rocket with the Falcon's capability, for smaller satellites ?   I suspect that eventually St...

The Brewers finished the 2026 season on Sunday, beating the Cardinals 6-4 and ending with 103 wins and 59 losses - an amazing record for them.   They finished the season with 5 straight wins, strangely their longest win streak of the season.  They also had a 6 game losing streak near the start of the season but otherwise a lot more green than red: source:  https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIL/2026-schedule-scores.shtml      Remember last year George Webb gave away free burgers: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/08/eleven-in-row-again.html So instead of being streaky this year the Brewers seem to have evened things out.  AND the finish by sweeping the Cards was the cherry on top.  I'll still remember the 1982 World Serious when the Cards beat the Brewers in seven games.  The irritation that made it memorable for me was seeing Ozzie Smith do all those flips :( Robin Yount is also a shortstop in Cooperstown but he didn't do back flips sou...

You know how it is.  If you start looking at old TV shows, for example: Salvage 1 starring Andy Griffith: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyZA_PQE6AE Then you see an actress like Ellen Bry, who used to be on St. Elsewhere : source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ALRQgNRQA8 Finally you see an actor like William Daniels from St. Elsewhere - which reminded me of the show: Captain Nice , Daniels was the Captain :) https://archive.org/details/capn-nice-tv-show/101_-_The_Man_Who_Flies_Like_A_Pigeon.avi It has that goofy energy from creator Buck Henry - Captain Nice   makes fun of superheroes.  In his other show of the 1960s that I remember, Get Smart !   he and Mel Brooks made fun of spy movies. BTW the moral of the first episode of Captain Nice :  don't wear a belt buckle with your initials on it.   There was another show, Mr. Terrific , with a similar concept.  I have NO memory of Mr. Terrific at all. https://archive.or...

Coop   not Co-op.  A book being read on Chapter-a-Day: chapter 1 of 15:   https://www.wpr.org/shows/chapter-a-day/coop-1-of-15-new-digs Michael Perry is a good author - he makes writing seem like something that anyone can do - which isn't really true.  And he is from Wisconsin (New Auburn): Washington Island is on the right, northeast of Green Bay And extending the current prevalent theme of the USA, why listen to books that aren't produced in Wisconsin ?  :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

One thing I used to buy was distilled water.  Maybe 4 gallons a week ?  But aside from the expense another reason why I stopped buying distilled water is that if there is any slight defect or ding at the bottom of the plastic jug it will leak eventually.  Same is true of milk containers.  And water appearing on a pantry shelf or basement floor is UNWELCOME, ask me why I kept the distilled water jugs inside Roughneck plastic containers.  So I bought the air still and distill a gallon of water several times a week.  It's probably cheaper and certainly easier than buying distilled water.  So I usually only keep a couple of gallons of water so I am aware if a leak happens. But what can be done with old leaky plastic water jugs ?  2026 has been a good year for apples so I decided to make picking and storage buckets for apples out of old plastic jugs.  The leaks don't really matter with apples.  Making the bucket is done with a scissors to enl...

I saw this comic page from Pinterest: It reminded me of a song that my Dad once told me about called Gloomy Sunday : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloomy_Sunday Here is the version by Billie Holiday: source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ2AuLaClmk According to my Dad the song was so depressing that people would commit suicide due to hearing it - and (wait for it) IT WAS BANNED !  (not really). That in turn reminded me of a song I heard during high school called DOA : source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOMIYEfN7fU The group was called Bloodrock ?  I didn't remember that. But what a dumb song, yuck.  It came out when I was in high school, luckily before I took drivers ed.  I always assumed that the song was about a car crash but no, it was a plane crash per the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.O.A._(song) So I've heard and read this gloomy material and yet I've survived three score and ten  :) This material raises the age old ...

An interesting Veritasium video:   source:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsBZOcqZerk The most interesting thing to me was the explanation of how the "cribs" were used to help manually break the code.  This starts at about 26:30 into the video.  A "crib" would be some boilerplate text sent in a message each time like:     WeatherReportBiscay      (but of course in German).  I'd read other books about Bletchley Park but none of them ever explained in detail how this clever technique was employed.  Of course it was kind of hit and miss before the clock ran out on the messages. Since the Enigma machine never outputs the same letter that was input, the crib could be slid across the message until those same letter impossible alignments were eliminated. One thing I wondered was whether there was a lamp test ?  Old school bulbs don't last forever !  I guess you'd know something was wrong if no bulb lit up but you wouldn't...

Don't irritate me, computer, I'm already bugged !  Yesterday I started seeing this little star in the Firefox icon:  Apparently it is for profiles ?  I don't know or care what profiles are, I want this little star GONE !  I turned off profiles, no help.  I may have to give up and live with the little star. This is another thing that annoys me: Yes, gmail, I deleted something and now I want to bolt, why are you doing: "mother, may I" ??  I will probably just have to live with that as well. Another irritation is Hotmail.  Lately it stinks.  It will erase emails from the screen, I haven't deleted them.  So I have to refresh the screen and voila, the email is back.  But it's a waste of time.  Isn't time saving supposed to be one of the justifications for computers in the first place ? I had clicked on an email and then the screen blanked after a refresh the email appears Now possibly this is due to the Lenovo Ideapad memory going bad - ...

This post was from last Sunday 2026-09-13: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/09/hey-everybody-its-time-for-beating.html But this is how Youtube served up the vids on Monday morning: you know the Brewers have won when they have their own video highlights Yesterday the Packers won an overtime noon game: The Packers lost a couple of players early and the whole game was a wet, ugly mess but a win is a win is a cliche. And the Brewers also won their 98th (a new team record) game of the season in the evening: Six more games in the season for the Brewers. But I did waste a pretty decent Sunday inside - I also ate way too much :( Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I did finish reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons.  It's a very readable book but without spoiling anything, Hyperion just seems to be an intro - sorta like The Hobbit , there are three more books in the series.  I did put a hold on the next book, The Fall Of Hyperion but who knows how long it will take before it is available. My Dad always hated this kind of thing, especially on TV, he'd use the phrase "soap opera" as a sort of epithet.  I guess Hyperion would qualify as a space opera :) BTW, I have no idea why I reserved Hyperion in the first place, must have been something from the internet ?   Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

One thing I've always meant to try is a hot wire cutter for plastic.  The primary application would be for cutting IC tubes.  I like to package DIP ICs or sockets in the plastic tubes to prevent lead damage during mailing.  Cutting is done with an old Swiss Army Knife.  But it's kinda tedious especially with weird tubes like for TO-220 transistors. I was looking at the July 1957 issue of Popular Electronics, from World Radio History: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/50s/57/Pop-1957-07.pdf On page 79 I found this article: Here is the schematic: That's pretty simple, basically just a transformer and a wire.  I'm not quite sure where to get the nichrome wire but I'm sure Ebay might have something. The only problem: hardly any kit sales lately, it wouldn't be worth it.  Maybe I could rig something up using a Weller soldering gun ?  Basically those guns are a transformer, a trigger switch and a piece of copper wire. I'll have to think it...

I think the only reason why I've read some fiction is because it was referenced in another work of fiction.  For example, as mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/08/braves-yankees-1957-world-serious-game-1.html the only reason why I read the book: You Know Me Al is that the author, Ring Lardner, was mentioned by Holden Caulfield in Catcher In The Rye . Another was the book: Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.  I saw that referenced in the Heinlein juvenile SF novel: Have Space Suit - Will Travel .  Of course that title was derived from the TV / Radio show: Have Gun - Will Travel   :)  mentioned previously: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/08/hvac-comfortable-rate-of-cooling.html Those are the only two that come to mind - although a lot of the juvenile series books like The Hardy Boys will reference other books in the series, but that's not quite the same thing. I started reading a book called Hyperion (soon to be a motion picture ?  :) ...

I saw these in the daily email from Electronic Goldmine: source:  https://theelectronicgoldmine.com/products/g29888 DigiKey still sells them:   https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/te-connectivity-amp-connectors/6-1437514-7/2135766 But a nickel each just seems high for my 20th century blood.  And I do still have tons of these: source:    https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/09/pin-sockets.html And they might not work in my boards anyway.  Regular sockets work fine at relatively low frequencies, are easier to solder and easier to insert chips into.  Press-fit sockets are theoretically slightly better than the soldered pin sockets because they should make a gas tight bite into the plated copper rather than relying on solder.  Solder just isn't quite as good as copper at high frequencies. But just this one time I will resist temptation :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm

I went to Mann's Store on Tuesday morning looking for old people fuel (aka bananas) - nope !  Even though I had been warned about it, they didn't have a sale flyer either !  :(  They didn't have the Arizona Just Tea 1 gallon jug that I often get either (although I am getting tired of iced tea - I like the Arizona 1 gallon container, nice and sturdy, good for maple sap or distilled water).  There were other items in dwindling supply as well. However I did see some Best Choice items (the new wholesaler brand) showing up amidst the old Our Family.  For example, I bought a carton of eggs: They haven't had eggs in Styrofoam containers in a long while. Strangely enough I found this in my pantry: Best Choice version of Tums A expiration date of 7/22 would imply that Mann's last sold Best Choice items maybe 6 or 7 years ago ?  I can't really remember.  I assume that a clone of Tums is basically just chalk plus some sugar and flavor so it should last forever in...

I saw this window sticker on Pinterest: The thing that caught my eye was the $11 credit for deleting the seat belts.  If there's a car that would need a seat belt it's a souped up convertible Chevrolet Impala SS ! I tried typing this VIN into a web site:  41467SI65556  (maybe that I should be a one ?  didn't matter much either way) and got this result: source:   https://classicdecoder.com Looks like the details are somewhat wrong but assuming the model year is correct (why wouldn't the window sticker have a date ?), the price inflates to: Assuming the same ratio, that $11 in 1964 inflates to $119.24 today, more than nothing but still. Since it was sold in MN it probably rusted out although convertible owners can be picky about driving in snow.  I'm not going to invest in a report but I like to think it survived as a low-rider, those things are so cool ! Here is one that appears very similar: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1964-chevrolet-impala-75/ I...