WEEK THOUGHTS

Just some quick babbling (added to over the week until it's a huge 
post like usual) about unimportant things I've thought about 
posting lately but never found the time. Funny, I was thinking in 
bed this morning about how there's nothing really worth talking 
about, now here I am talking away. Mind you as usual that was all 
in relation to my usual topic of why I don't have any luck with 
women. Ah, I guess it's all semi-conscious rehearsal for the rare 
event of meeting one such mythical being. If indeed I really want 
to...

I've been practicing welding since about mid last year, working up 
the confidence to try and fix some rust holes on the Jag. I'm using 
my father's cheap MIG welder, he could never get the hang of it. 
Flux cored welding wire is as unsuited to thin sheet metal as is 
suggested in the books I've been reading. Solid wire and gas works 
well. But the gas has been a real pain. I've spent a fortune on 
renting the cylinder, mainly because I got the wrong plan. An 
unanswered support request with the company, followed by a long 
visit with the gas agent, eventually got me switched to a two year 
plan for about as much as I'd paid for six months. Over $500, half 
of it basically thrown away. This is why I hate signing up for 
things in person, instead of a home when I can work out the options 
on paper. But the agent didn't even know about the other option 
anyway, so it's difficult. The real problem is I only get around to 
doing some practice once every month or two. But I've made a table 
out of bent and welded sheet metal, which is progress.

I got some SPARCstations earlier this year, and SS2, and SS5, and a 
SPARCServer 20 which seems broken. I'm thinking of setting NetBSD 
up on one and using it instead of this Pentium 1 PC for a bit. But 
first I've just been having fun playing around with the SunOS 
system installed on the SS2, after I brute-forced the root password 
(I couldn't get an OS to write to the Sun UFS file-system in order 
to just reset it). The root password was "No Bra!" :) . I even 
tried out an old Gopher client, but I can't get domain names 
resolving on it and the client doesn't seem to work with IP 
addresses. Even setting them in /etc/hosts doesn't work, but it's 
fun to look at all the old servers someone entered in that file 
back in the day when I guess they didn't have DNS available. 
Actually its last use appears to have been an attempt at setting up 
a personal email server. It looks like it didn't go well, there are 
just a bunch of apparantly undelivered test emails ending with one 
that says "Fuck you!".

The yearly hamfest that I'm always complaining about having to skip 
because the weather's too hot was finally on a day with good 
weather, at the start of last month. I went thinking I wasn't 
looking for much I was likely to find, and came back with a car 
full as usual. At one table I made the mistake of asking the 
stall-holder's wife the price for a mini solar panel. She said "$20 
for it, or take the whole box for free", and I barely made it away 
before she'd offloaded more boxes onto me. Actually some pretty 
good stuff amongst the junk in that box. Compared to last time when 
there were quite a few laptops and the lot of relatively new server 
gear that I bought cheap and mostly resold, this time there wasn't 
any computer stuff at all. But I got a second soldering station for 
$40, the same model as the old Weller one I've been using for since 
I started. Now I can finally stop carting it between my 'factory' 
and 'the lab' (two little bedrooms in my house). Also a bundle of 
test cables and probes that have already come in handy. Plus heap 
of big high-end LiFePo battery cells. Finally I bought a huge 
Marconi LCR meter and HF oscillator. I've been looking for an LCR 
meter there for a long time, but a little one. This is a huge 
precision lab style one made in England with a giant dial like a 
prop from a 1970s sci-fi show, and now taking up bench space in my 
would-be darkroom, but for $20 I couldn't refuse.

One disappointment came while cramming my hoard of electronics junk 
into the Jag: the band on my calculator watch broke away. But this 
time not from the band itself snapping, the lug on the watch body 
itself snapped clean off and disappeared into the grass! I've had 
that watch since I was at school and was worried that would be the 
end of it, and so soon after I pulled it apart to replace the 
battery and try to clean the keypad. But a weekend later I managed 
to repair it using a bit of plastic from part of an old air 
conditioning system and epoxy. So it's back in service again. I 
still need to try and fix the same problem with my 'holiday' watch 
- the self-winding mechanical one in a plastic case.

On my Jags, I replaced the shock absorbers and "Vee mounts" on my 
first Jag, the latter being quite tricky to unbolt and align during 
reassembly, but apparantly the cause of the knocking sound when 
going over bumps that I've been trying to solve for years. I've 
been pottering away fixing things on that Jag I was given last 
year. Ideally I'd like to get it on the road before I get deep into 
welding repairs on the bodywork of the other one, so I'm not 
borrowing my father's ute to drive while it's off the road again. 
Still need to deal with the rusty fuel tanks and a leaking diff, 
which are the major things remaining. Lately I've been doing more 
minor things like trying to fix some corroded exposed wiring to a 
sensor, and then the sensor connector which crumbled as soon as I 
touched it. Last weekend I replaced the lower radiator hoses and 
flushed out the system. It turns out the crunching sound when 
squeezing the lower radiator hoses wasn't the hoses deteriorating, 
but rust caked inside them where it had collected at the bottom of 
the system. So it didn't really need new hoses after all, but at 
least it has nice clean ones now. Depending on the weather I might 
have a stab at the tough jobs over the Easter break.

It's the time of year now where the weather suits me for going to 
the nudist beach. I went a couple of weekends in a row before last 
weekend when I decided I needed to get things done. But then I 
wasted most of a day writing here about NATO intervention in 
Yugoslavia instead. I probably should have just gone to the beach 
again. Then again the cost of the fuel to get there has jumped up a 
lot now. It probably still costs me more in sunscreen since I use 
most of a tube each time (though I refill the tubes from a bulk 1L 
bottle), but since I filled up for the cheapest price in years on 
the day the USA launched its strikes on Iran, I've been hoping to 
last it out until the price drops again before refilling. That's 
not looking likely though. One thing I am planning better now is 
the tides, now checking the BOM tide prediction chart before going 
to the beach so I can avoid turning up to find it almost all 
underwater, and ideally get to the nice calm waters behind a ridge 
of rock that breaks the waves near the unmarked end of the 
clothes-optional area. I still walk 8km there and back so it was 
getting quite disappointing to arrive and find the tide was in, 
though the unpredictability is kind-of nice in a way. I still sort 
of think I might meet a woman on the walk there, or one of the few 
women sometimes at the beach, but it's evidently not going to 
happen. I guess it's not really about that though, since I don't 
really mind when there's nobody around at all. Indeed as with most 
things I prefer that in almost every other way. I find a unique 
pleasure to being naked and alone in nature doing and thinking 
nothing of substance, maybe even as much as if I had the chance to 
be naked and alone with a woman...

The news is talking about fuel prices putting people off holidays 
this Easter, with tourist spots expecting lower numbers. I find it 
hard to understand how at the same time that the news complains 
that state public-school teachers earning over ten times more than 
I do have too low an income, yet it's not like I can't pay for 
fuel. OK I don't have a morgage, but it's hard to understand how 
people on such incomes still string themselves out so tight they 
can't afford fuel costs doubling on their holiday. I've almost got 
enough savings/investments to add up to the yearly income of the 
lowest paid teachers. If I were to spend all that in a year I'd 
feel I was living like a rich man. I get that people with kids have 
extra costs (though that's their crazy choice, and the government 
taxes us all to pay for the biggest necessary exponses anyway) and 
the government's stuffed up housing supply by insanely ramping up 
immigration while the building industry was falling apart, but the 
discrepancy is still hard for me to wrap my head around. Still, if 
holiday places do get quiet, maybe it's a good time to try my train 
trip to Bairnsdale again? That'll put the fuel costs aside (until 
the government hikes train fares since those trains all run on 
diesel too, but they're never so quick on the draw with such 
things). Some motels are showing booked out though, so I don't 
think it's really had a big effect. I'd probably be better waiting 
until after the school holidays so horrible children aren't so 
abundant. Actually this weekend might have been good, but too late 
now. Inevitably the train lines will be closed for planned works 
every other week anyway, as with the last two times I've tried to 
plan this trip.

Back to money, on Saturday I got onto sorting paperwork, which 
somehow always leaves me feeling depressed, but I tallied up my 
average weekly supermarket shopping spend for 2025. To June 2025, 
$37.75, and from then to December 2025, $39.04. Ramping up quickly 
in the second half there, since for 2024 it was $37.09 to June and 
$37.57 to December. I have been seeking out some cheaper options 
for things which might have kept my spend down a bit at the start 
of last year, against the inevitable upward trend which is 
unavoidable now. When I started tracking my weekly spend in 2021 it 
was $30.83 per week, so that's a 27% increase over four years. 
Pretty significant. I guess some people reportedly spend hundreds 
of dollars on grocery shopping each week, so maybe such an increase 
for those people would indeed hurt too even on 10 times the income. 
But what are they doing with ten times the food anyway? Stories 
about average food waste volumes per Australian are probably a hint 
- I hardly throw anything away except banana skins, egg shells, 
etc., but why is that so hard for others to avoid? Buying loads 
then eating out instead? But then you'd only do that if you had 
surplus money anyway. Or I would you, maybe they don't? Should I try 
to understand these normal people? It seems a hopeless task, but then 
not understanding them is largely my obstacle to talking with and 
getting to know them, eg. women, so should I try? No, I'm still not 
that desperate. The economy sucks, humanity sucks, no wonder this 
stuff always leaves me depressed.

 - The Free Thinker