Nothing to write about still

Nothing of interest has been going on the last few days except paying the phone bill and buying a lottery ticket. I have decided to start getting the materials for the frame because except for a few brackets the design doesn’t change with any of the engines I’m looking at. The reason I’m doing this is Mrs. the Poet has declared my Christma$ present this year is an engine hoist which won’t be much use aside from building a hot rod or frying a turkey. And I’m not kidding about deep frying a turkey . Well, at least I’ll have something I can use it for after I build the Sprint-T.

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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. 🙂

I’m not filthy rich

My ticket did not have the winning Mega Millions numbers. To be precise my ticket had nothing in common with the winning numbers. The closest my ticket came to winning was the jackpot total printed at the bottom. And at the end of the news was the announcement that if nobody won today Friday’s draw would be for $2 billion. That’s roughly $44,000,000 for the first year after taxes. To put that in perspective the jackpot for tomorrow’s Lotto Texas drawing is $13,500,000 over 30 years, or less than a third of the post tax first year take home. And because I’m not super greedy, just regular greedy, I bought a ticket for the Lotto Texas drawing.

Lotto Fever has not been the only thing running through my mind, I have also been thinking about making the Subaru powered variant of the Sprint-T lighter. If my math is right, I can save 7 pounds by fabricating an aluminum housing for an aluminum 9-inch center section, but I won’t save any money and I won’t be able to find the right final drive ratio to match the Subaru 5 speed transmission for racing or cruising the Interstates between races. The available ratios are kinda thin taller than 4.11, and especially between 3.50 and 3.00 as in there was literally nothing in the current catalog between 3.50 and 3.00. OK looking in the wrong page of the catalog, there are actually 3.50, 3.40, 3.25, and 3.00 in the other side of the catalog. The street side of the catalog doesn’t get as low (high numerical) as the race side, but it has much more choice taller than 4.11. Anywho, just thinking out loud again, looking for better options and not finding any.

And I was watching some racing videos last night and saw a ISMA supermodified racer that was running an interesting setup with a ball joint upright on a twin tube truss beam axle. I could only see the back of the right end of the axle because the camera was on the right side pointed forward from the driver’s seat area, but it looked like an inverted Pratt truss because they wanted as much of the load carried in compression as possible to avoid welded joints under tension and still wanted triangulation. Or it could have been a modified Warren truss with one vertical member to provide a place for the 4-link to tie in. Either way it gives a way to run different spindles and hubs if I didn’t already have an axle and spindles. But I’m keeping options open for a replacement that is lighter than the boat anchor I have at the moment. Not that it’s an actual boat anchor, just like 10 times stronger than needed for a 1300 pound street car, and correspondingly 10 times heavier and it’s all unsprung weight. Unsprung weight is bad because it’s basically uncontrolled dynamic weight. Sprung weight, as the name suggests, is weight controlled by springs and dampers (shock absorbers).

One of the options I have been looking at was making an axle from a foam core and carbon fiber for light weight and super stiffness. I could build for the same breaking load as my steel axle, or go for the same yield load, but since carbon fiber has the same breaking load as the yield load but there is a huge difference between yield and breaking loads for steel I’m thinking there is a larger safety margin matching the breaking load. I was also thinking that doing a final, non-structural, layer of Kevlar I could protect the assembly from abrasion and contain the sharp bits of carbon fiber when it does break using the different moduli of the two materials. Simply put the Kevlar has about the same strength as carbon fiber, but it has to be stretched a lot farther before it breaks so what breaks the CF won’t rupture the Kevlar layer which then contains the broken bits unless the load or impact also tears the Kevlar. I could use the same spindles I have now or I could adapt aluminum upright/titanium spindle sprint car spindles, or I could whittle aluminum uprights to use lightweight GN hubs and spindles with the same kingpins and bushings as my early Ford spindles. The sprint car spindles and uprights are tempting but questionably legal for road use. Anywho, carbon fiber over foam is about 1/5 the weight of steel for the same breaking strength, partially because the foam acts to prevent the CF from deflecting but adds little weight, and makes manufacturing the part easier because it provides the shape for the part, just lay up and use wicking peel plies inside a vacuum bag to remove excess resin. So end result is stronger, lighter, and almost as easy to make as welding it from steel except for the cost of materials.

Laptop was down

And I was annoyed, mainly because I used to be a Windows help desk operator and I had no idea of how to fix it, my training and experience ending with the introduction of XP, back in 2002, following hard on the heels of the disaster of ME and totally disrupting all the diagnostic and repair tools that had been in use since 98. So there I was a trained computer expert with years of experience and I am no better off than your garden variety N00B since my computer came minus documentation. I had no idea of how to get to Safe Mode, or if Safe Mode was still a thing in 10.

Basically what happened was while I was working and reading e-mail the bottom shelf disappeared, and when I ended the web browser I had a blank screen where the desktop should be. And when I restarted the computer I had a blank screen after the log-in screen. And since keyboard shortcuts I learned are not valid with 10 I couldn’t get anything running, or maybe they are valid but that was something else that wasn’t working. And because I don’t have any documentation I have no way of knowing if keyboard shortcuts are a thing anymore.

Anywho, as you can probably tell, I got the laptop fixed, but dang if I know how. The only thing I could find said to hold the shift key down to activate “sticky keys” and then hold F8 and reboot. After the third (or so) try I had a normal reboot and all my icons back. So here I am.

Other news, Clyde has learned to knock to be let in, we think. Story short, I heard what sounded like knocking at the front door a few minutes after I went to bed this morning, but when I got up to check there was nobody there, except Clyde sitting on the window AC unit. Clyde is not the kind of cat to hang around when people come to the door, even people he knows, so by process or elimination Clyde managed to knock on the window to get let in, or Clyde banged against the window whilst scratching an itch and got let in anyway. And as you might have guessed I didn’t win the $1 billion jackpot, but I’m buying a ticket for the $1.6 billion jackpot. Because, how can I not risk $2 for a chance at a billion dollars after taxes? The cash option is almost a billion tonight ($904 million) and will probably bust a billion by the draw on Tuesday. Not that I’m going for the cash option, I want every cent I can get because I could do so much good with that much money. And going by last week’s sales, we could see a $2 billion jackpot by the draw date. Even at 304 million to one odds I can’t pass that up. I mean look at what I have already lived through that I shouldn’t have, I must have some luck left over to win a little money, right?

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.

There was more money than I expected in my account

Well we have established that the payment is deposited first/last of the month. And there was more money in my account than I expected. I was expecting about $54 after the overdraft from the charges for the checks but there was $100 even. Did not expect that.

The GM says we are going after the Toxic Shaman that created the local population of KillDeer we just tried to wipe out in tomorrow’s game session. As long as he/she remains alive the carnivorous KillDeer are going to reproduce, and also be created from the local whitetail population. Obviously we can’t allow this to continue, But Toxic Shamans are outside of what we loaded out for, we came for venison for the Bar-b-que later in the month to balance out the feral hogs my character has been hunting for bounty and meat. Now we are going to go up against a major ecological disaster in the making and the person responsible for it. This sounds like it will be a fun session.

Now I need to go to the local C-store and get a lottery ticket. The jackpot is $14.5 million, which means I get about $125K after taxes and Mrs. the Poet will get about a quarter million after taxes with our agreed-on division of the funds. I wanted to give her more, but the 2/3 to her was as much as she would take. And I will have more than enough to live on and buy toys with, so I’m set even if taxes go way up. We will probably leave the winnings pooled for the first year or two to take care of things we both need to take care of, like knocking the house down and rebuilding it with decent plumbing and a solar roof and solar water heater, but after that we will do the 1/3 to me, 2/3 to her.

I guess I am a little crazy

It was 37°F and raining when I went out to buy toilet paper and a lottery ticket. If I’m not willing to buy a lottery ticket, then I don’t deserve to win. Figuratively and literally. I’m not checking my numbers until after I get up, so right now I’m Schrödinger’s rich guy. Until I check the numbers I’m both rich and dead broke. It was interesting walking to the local C-store and literally seeing the same store brands as my local supermarket, and seeing how little traffic there was because of the weather. I was the only person on foot for the entire 1 mile round trip. And now I’m cold and tired and want to sleep…