Walked to the C-store for lottery tickets

I walked about 1.1 miles round trip to purchase hope for a more comfortable future for us and the grandkid. And before anyone says anything about odds and statistics might I remind you your author survived getting hit not once, not twice, but three times getting hit by motor vehicles with enough velocity to cause the vehicles to get scrapped, and the last time I was hit the truck was going between 45 and 65 MPH with a “best confidence” speed of 60, based on my trajectory.

Anyway, the jackpot for the Texas Lotto is $9 million, which works out to just over $200K/year after taxes, which is quite enough to finish the hot rod and fix everything in the house in 2 years, and then just veg for the next 28 years to leave as much as possible for the grandkid.

The jackpot for the Powerball is enough to fix everything and make 3 or 4 cars in the first year and then spend the next 20 or so years bumming around the world, and still leave the grandkid with more than enough to live on forever.

Either one will be enough to get my teeth fixed, and by “fixed” I mean bite and chew like when I was a kid, but take them out at night for a good soak to get them cleaner than I ever could in my mouth. Seriously, I never did get the hang of brushing my teeth without some kind of a guide to show me where I missed. Soaking in some kind of cleaning solution is a much better alternative for me. And then swishing mouth wash to clean my gums, because I’m too ticklish to brush my gums.

I have a bunch of stuff that needs fixing medically, but that’s more of a long-term project, because I don’t heal like I used to. And I have been delaying maintenance for so long most of this shit is going to require surgery and years of PT to fix. If I had been able to get medical care without having to come up with mountains of cash most of this stuff could have been fixed with therapy instead of surgery. But that was then and this is now, maybe.

Advertisement

Ouch! I got some exercise

I went out to get lottery tickets the long way and took the long way home for about a mile and a quarter walk. My old feet did not take kindly to the abuse and started to swell inside my shoes, and let’s just say the results were neither pretty nor comfortable.

I’m still thinking about the alternator and driving the stock water pump on the LS engine, and discovered after a few minutes that no matter which side of the engine I hung the alternator I was going to need an idler pulley to turn the water pump the right direction, because physics. The rib side needs to drive the alternator and the crank pulleys, the flat side needs to drive the water pump. That means the belt has to change direction twice to get everything running the right direction, and that means an extra idler, or two alternators with one placed in a strange orientation to be running the right direction while driven by the wrong side of the belt. Personally, I prefer an idler and a high amperage single alternator over trying to wire in two alternators to the electrical system. But it is feasible to run two alternators if you include blocking diodes to prevent power from trying to go into a dead alternator. I think the technical term is a “crowbar” diode to stop the flow of current if the alternator shorts out.

And this came in as I was composing this, Mrs. the Poet is doing some volunteer work for the election and has some information about us on the voter registration list, and there was a strange phone number attached to our names. I did a reverse lookup and it either is now or at sometime in the past was for a church in Grand Prairie, which is a few miles down the road, and about three cities are between us and the church. Looking further had my name and my father’s birthday attached to this number, which is understandable because we have different middle names to prevent me from being a Junior, but the same first name and middle initials. And obviously this is not in my stage and pen names because he was never “Opus”. He’s always been “John” or “Johnny”. But it was funny to see me listed as 85 YO, and a whole bunch of old addresses where we used to live. Further investigation shows another person currently attached to the number over in a different part of town who I never heard of. A quote from Alice seems appropriate: “Curiouser and curiouser”.

Now, back to the Sprint-T, I have also been thinking about that intake manifold and how to make it. One thing I was thinking about was to use carbon fiber around a positive mold for the runners and just doing everything into a single unit that will bolt to the heads. I have been thinking about mounting the injectors in the roof of the plenum aimed at the mouths of the runners for charge cooling, since the runners are all downhill to the mounting face on the heads. All of the fuel sprayed into the runners will get to the cylinder it was intended for, eventually. Now making sure the fuel delivered is the fuel needed will take some finagling in the tune, but I don’t see that as an insurmountable problem so much as a calibration issue with on-throttle enrichment. This is a programming function that acts like the acceleration pump in a carb, except in software. And calibration is similar to calibrating the pump shot on a carb set up, by trial and error on the street or track. The tuner has to start with enrichment disabled, then gradually increase enrichment until the engine runs smoothly even when throttle settings go from idle to wide open in a fraction of a second. The tricky part is a little too much enrichment acts like a little too little, a slight stumble on tip-in. That’s why taking very small steps is better, because the tuner is more likely to hit the sweet spot in throttle response before going past it.

And this looks like a good place to put this post to bed.

I got stuff and some people won stuff and we ate good stuff at the RPG group holiday party

And that basically covers the event. Our DM also makes jewelry and chain mail on the side so everybody got a D20 in a chain mail basket on a chain as a pendant. I handed out scratch cards from the Texas Lottery and one guy won $40, so that worked out well. I’ll take a picture of my D20 and post it next time.

We had a gourmet mac and cheese for lunch, and leftover desserts from another party that included key lime merengue pie and baby pecan pies masquerading as cookies. Then we sat down around the game table and didn’t talk about games of any kind, including the one we were playing.

Why are both ends of the economic spectrum unclean?

You know what I mean. If you have more money than you can spend you’re filthy rich, but if you have more needs than resources, you’re dirt poor. This is a roundabout way of telling everybody that we didn’t win the Lotto Texas yesterday, so we are still on the “dirt poor” end of the spectrum. Well, not actually “dirt” poor, but not entirely clean either. But this still doesn’t answer my question of why the extreme ends of the economic spectrum are not clean. I’m pretty sure filthy rich comes from the same place as calling money “filthy lucre”, alleging that money itself is dirty and having too much makes you dirty, too. But how can the absence of something dirty make you dirty? It is a conundrum.

And on the thing that otherwise occupies my mind, the Subaru EJ20X and 5 speed transmission combination has sold out leaving only the engines remaining, still at the same $1K price. And those engines are still about the best bang for the buck for the Sprint-T, even if I have to make a new bellhousing to mount a transmission. And since I just had to drain $3325 from the bank account for a trip to the ER that didn’t tell me what made my leg suddenly balloon up to about the size of a slow-pitch softball, I really don’t have funds for the engine.

Anyway, that swollen mess is the latest reason I don’t have money for building the Sprint-T.🤑 And another reason why I’m buying another ticket for the $14.5 million Lotto Texas drawing on Saturday, but not for the $750 million Powerball drawing the same night. I’m trying to not be greedy, I can live very comfortably on the payout from the Lotto Texas drawing, but the Powerball payout is really too much. And also not enough to help other poor people, although I suppose I could fund a couple of Planned Parenthood offices with the leftovers from $8,470,223 after taxes in the first year. And it just gets worse every year after that. Too much for one family to reasonably spend, but still not enough to make a serious dent in poverty. And FYI the after tax and Mrs. the Poet take home is $123,730 from the Lotto Texas annuity, so buy the Canadian bungalow, start construction on the rebuilt Texas winter home, and also start buying parts for the Sprint-T. So realistically “leftovers” from the first year Powerball will be about $8,000,000. Which would mean the entire next year tax savings would be enough to live on, freeing up the payout for “do-goodism”. I mean seriously, the tax deductions alone from $8,000,000 worth of charity are more than the entire Lotto Texas payout after taxes, meaning we could live stupid rich for the rest of our lives and never spend anything out of the actual after-tax payout before deductions with the payout from Saturday’s Powerball.

And I have been working in severe adverse conditions today.

That’s Clyde riding my neck about productivity, while keeping me from concentrating on my writing. 🙂

The MegaMillions jackpot has gotten incalculably large

Seriously, it has. There are not enough significant digits in the display to calculate the annual payout accurately. I can get within $10 million/year after taxes, but that’s as close as I can get not knowing how much there is between the hundreds of millions and the decimal point. That’s not going to keep me from buying a ticket though. Using as many digits as I have the $1.6 billion comes to about $35 million after taxes each year, and dividing up with two thirds going to Mrs. the Poet and me getting one third that still gives me about $11 million dollars the first year after taxes. The total jackpot for Wednesday’s Lotto Texas drawing is $13.5 million for 30 years before taxes. I’m buying a ticket for that one too FYI, but seriously, even with only knowing the closest hundred million the after tax take home the rough calculation is insane.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but that little trip to the ER ended up costing me $3325 complete. Now if I won even the Lotto Texas drawing that would still be a large chunk of change. That will take a large chunk of principal out of the funds my parents left me, almost a year’s worth of taxes. That’s one less year we can keep the house before we have to sell and move in with one of the kids. That’s another reason we need to win the lottery, even as little as $100k will keep us in the house until we are ready to leave it. And $200k will let me build the Sprint-T right, without penny-pinching, and let us stay in the house and get it fixed up.

And that pretty much covers everything I needed to say today except to remind everyone to vote like your lives depended on it, because for many people their lives do depend on how the vote turns out.

Well I could be better

But I have been much worse. The food budget was a bit restricted so snacks and desserts were 86’ed from the list, but the critical bits like bread, peanut butter, and yogurt made the cut. And I dug up enough change from the various places change hides around here to cover a Texas Lotto ticket. I still don’t know if I won, but if I do anyone in North America with the possible exception of the far northeast provinces of Canada and the state of Alaska will hear the yell.

When I write about building the Sprint-T I can pretend for a while I will actually have the budget to do it, and pretending and imagining while I’m writing are usually enough to make me believe I can really build it, and make me not as depressed as I would have been if I wasn’t writing. Hope is a hell of a drug, but the crash after is not as bad as other drugs. I’m not so sure about how addictive it is, mainly because of all the sayings about not giving up Hope. To read/hear about it, Hope is completely non-addictive, and needs to get replenished regularly. Anywho, at this point Hope is about all I have. I know I won’t starve, but things might get a bit… strained.

I’m still thinking about the Sprint-T, suspension, brakes, drivetrain, interior, everything. As I wrote, I feel better when I’m planning it out, which I guess is why I still do it. I would like to be able to find out how much the complete Subaru EJ20V engine and transmission combined weigh, just to get an idea of how much I would need to offset that to balance my 215 pounds (97.5 kg) with helmet and driving suit. But I can estimate from other transmissions how much the modified Subaru would weigh after removing the FWD bits that I don’t need that I need to add 100 pounds to the 250 of the engine for a rough idea of how far I would need to shift the engine to the right to balance everything out, and that works out to be about 7″ right if the math is right. And since the formula is so simple I’m pretty sure I got it right. I multiply my weight by how far my center is left of the car’s center to get a moment, then divide the weight of the engine and transmission into the moment to get back to a moment arm. Or as Jethro Bodine would put it use my guzintas of the weight of the engine/transmission into the moment. And if you understood that media reference you have to either spend too much time watching TV Land , or are about the same age as me.

After melting running errands yesterday, blessed coolness today

Yesterday I was depositing checks and picking up my pulls from the comic shop and basically melting in the sun as the temperature again approached the triple digits. I also got my toes done as I was snagging the sheets again when I didn’t wear socks to bed, then walked the 0.9 mile from the nail salon to Casa de El Poeta for a full limit on my Sweatcoin collecting. Speaking of Sweatcoin, I still don’t have enough to cash out any, but I’m getting there, almost $15 right now. I need to get a bunch more to have enough to cash out at $50.

One thing that is hard for me to get used to is the thought of actually having money to spend on days I’m not doing the lab rat thing. My mentality has been when I’m out and not visiting the LRK I don’t have any money unless this is a trip to actually spend money on something specific. And that I wouldn’t have a couple of bucks to spend on a cold drink and a snack if the urge took me. So I stopped at Jack in the Box and got a Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ and a slice of half-price cheesecake one because I needed it and the other because I could. Well I didn’t need the Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ specifically, just something cold and wet, but the cheesecake was definitely because I could.

Now today it was much cooler as the first of two cold fronts passed through leaving temperatures in the mid-80s most of the day. It’s only 91° as I get ready to get the lottery with the $15.25 million jackpot. Back from the store. And just for giggles I also bought a ticket for the Powerball $223 million jackpot, which the first year payout will have more than enough money for us to live on the rest of our lives. I suppose we could move to a small town without internet and set them up with Gigabit internet just because we want it and letting everyone else have access just makes sense. Seriously, I have so little experience spending money in large sums that after setting up a retirement account to take care of my financial needs for the rest of my life I have no idea what to do with the rest of the first year payment.

Well if tomorrow’s post doesn’t make much sense, I’m still drunk from celebrating winning.

Listening to “Billy and the Boingers” while writing

You would not believe what you can find on YTM. I literally found the video for the Billy and the Boingers song “You Stink But I ❤ You" that I never knew existed. There are actually two videos, the official one for the Boingers and another for the real band that provided the music, Mucky Pup. I wonder what happened to them after the Boingers?

I didn’t win the lottery, again. No surprise as I know what the odds are, just a little disappointment. Wednesday’s jackpot is $16e6, again something I could easily live with. And I have been looking at the costs for buying a Pentastar V6 crate engine and the automatic transmission it bolts to and they are supposed to get back to me Monday. Used transmissions are about $1800 by themselves so I’m not looking at this as a cheap option. Indeed it looks like it will fall closer to the LS3 crate engine than the 383 Blueprint crate engine, but I won’t know for sure until after I hear back from the parts department.

My hand is still bothering me. I have been comparing the symptoms to previous experiences and it comes closest to back when I first started commuting to Farmer’s Branch by bicycle, about 100 miles a week. I injured a nerve in my palm sometime in the second or third week and it took several months to recover, mostly because I couldn’t take a break from commuting by bicycle and my route was under repair for most of the time I was working that job. There is a nerve that runs through the middle of the palm that can get pinched if you keep putting pressure on it like if you ride 15 miles a night over broken pavement. The other 5 miles a day was getting to the bus and from the bus to work. Incidentally that’s the route I was riding when I got killed, but by then the repairs had been finished.

And speaking of my hand pains, it hurts to type again. So this post is over.

Playing the lottery helps my depression

Buying a lottery ticket buys something I can’t get anyplace else, it buys me hope. When I have that ticket there is the chance, infinitesimal though it may be, that I will get enough money to live comfortably and pass down to my kids some of that comfort. No ticket means zero chance, a ticket means a small but non-zero chance of winning, and that makes all the difference in my outlook on life. I mean look at my life, it’s all a series of wild coincidences one after another and several non-survivable scenarios that were million to one odds or worse. If anyone should win the lottery it should be me. Plus I usually play the Texas Lottery which has far better odds of winning than any of the national games. Still astronomical, but in a lower orbit than the national games.

Mrs. the Poet has already agreed to split the payouts in thirds, one third each and the other third for the household expenses. If anything needs to be spent on the house for personal use, like wiring the garage for 220V for power tools, that comes out of personal budgets. What would this do for the TGS2? Well I think instead of the minivan I would use the flood-damaged Corvette from Houston scenario as the donor vehicle because I still wouldn’t have an unlimited budget. Close enough to unlimited for a bucket, though.

And my hand is still messed up and making typing hard, so this is the end of this post

Lab Rat Keeper tomorrow

I get to go out and about with nothing but water until lunchtime tomorrow because I have a visit to the Lab Rat Keeper about the new study. I have been medication-free (including antidepressants) for about 2 weeks. My BP meds I have been out of since the end of July, and I have to be fasting since midnight when they take my blood.

I have been feeling a little better in my back since yesterday’s little walk to get the pain pills. I can actually bend over and tie my shoes without spasms. I think part of that is from staying in bed until 1500 and managing to get in a comfortable position early after going to bed. Also this particular brand of ibuprofen works better for me than the pills we just ran out of. As I have posted earlier this particular pain in the back is highly dependant on how tired that particular muscle is. Better rest means way less pain.

I looked up tomorrow’s payout for the TX Lottery after taxes, then sat down with Mrs. the Poet to discuss exactly what we wanted to do with it. She doesn’t want to move, not surprising, but she does want to travel some. She wants the house fixed but not torn down and replaced. She wants the AC fixed, the floors done, the bathrooms completely redone, the kitchen plumbing fixed… And she wants a new bed. I want a Japanese style bathtub, basically a hot tub without jets, done in tile with a bench inside to soak on. And a place to build things, I want to have for my place to retreat to what is basically a garage with a bedroom and bathroom attached to it within walking distance of a place to eat. And a place on the beach at Waikiki for wintering over, because Hawaii is wonderful if you have enough money, having lived there for three years. Of course I was only 4 when we moved there and 7 when we left, so a lot of what I remember is colored by the perceptions of a child. So we will be spending most of our time here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell even after winning the lottery. We are just so exciting as a couple, aren’t we? The big thing for me is I would have the resources to actually make things instead of just thinking about making things. That would be so strange to actually be able to pay for materials and tools and skilled artisans to make things.

What brought this on is Mrs. the Poet got her statement from SSA about what she’s going to make when she starts getting Social Security. It’s not the same as winning the Lottery, but it is a huge jump up from what we make now as a couple. My pension doesn’t start for another 7 years, so until then we get to live on what she’s earned. Unless we win the lottery. Then we start to live like people who don’t have to worry about money.

Now, about the things I’m supposed to be writing about. I’m afraid I don’t have anything about that because of laying in bed for my back, and talking about pensions, Social Security, and Lottery jackpots, with Mrs. the Poet, and getting ready for going to the Lab Rat Keeper tomorrow. I haven’t even had time to check Twitter yet and … Oh My Gawds he fucking did it. Trump just deported almost a million people whose only crime was being brought here without proper papers. Who have been paying taxes, serving in our military, paying an extra fee on top of that just to stay here legally.

Excuse me I have to find something to beat on that won’t cost me anything to destroy, because Trump just got rid of DACA.