Rip Snorter's Blog

Hi blogsters:

A couple of days ago I came across a tattered copy of Henri Charrierè's, Papillon on the bookshelf.   I'd read it many times over the decades, but there's always one more read left in it, it seems.  This might be the last.

Charrierè's autobiography always has something new to tell me, depending on where my life is when I re-read it.

Papillon (Charrierè) was transported to the French prison islands of Guinea in the Caribbean in 1931, where thousands of prisoners were kept out of sight and mind of the French citizenry.  Devil's Island was the most well known, but it was only one of the camps where 80 percent of the prisoners died before serving out their sentences.

The book is a story of courage, determination, brutality, as Papillon goes through a series of escape attempts, dungeons, unthinkable tortures, solitary confinements at a time in history when the ‘civilized world' was no more civilized than it was before, or since.  Eventually, he escaped and became a worthy citizen of Venezuela from 1945 until he wrote the book in 1967.

In some ways the writing and the stories both remind me of the fiction works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Strange how some nationalities get all the credit, while others manage to escape notice.  The Spaniards and Portuguese take their battering from the waning memories of the Inquisition.  The Russians from the Gulag camps.  The Chinese from the Great Cultural Revolution.  The Belgians from the terrors they poured onto the Congo.  The Cambodians, the Ethiopians and the Germans have all been held up to the light and examined with appropriate repudiation.

Somehow the Brits and the French just managed to escape notice when the recognition for some of the vilest institutionally sanctioned acts of human brutality in modern human history.

Papillon.  A book worth reading and thinking about by all you ‘jail'em-til-they-rot' enthusiasts. 

We haven't caught up to the French, Brits, Spaniards, Cambodians, Chinese, Russians, Belgians, Germans, and other civilized nations yet.  But we have the ingredients. 

Plenty of prisoners and prisons.  A freedom-loving population of the same kind of jurors, courts, prosecutors who sent Papillon and thousands of others off to a life and deaths they'd never tolerate for any cute animal that appeared in a Walt Disney film named Bambi.

Jack

At least I think they are.

I know a few others are having problems, but it's evidently not universal.  I'm seeing where new posts are up over the past 10-15 minutes.  But I can't read them.

Evidently these blogs are working okay.  I see the beat'em over the head, toss 'em in a garbage can, barf on 'em if  you don't agree with them emoticon lady has posted one with a bit of irony in the title.

So I'm thinking this will post fine.

Hope all of you folks are having trouble with it, too.

Jack

Hi blogsters:

It's been a long while since I've posted on this blog, so I'm having to re-learn some things.

I'm not going to regale you with empty-headed political parrotry.  If you're hungry for that you'll have to get it on another blog or three, or on the threads.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about a project that's going on in my yard and my shop.

I'm feeling a bit enthused about a particular canyon.  I'm anxious to work it, but it's waterless.  I lost most of my half-ownership of a lot of equipment, including a couple of drywashers when Mel got whacked, so I'm having to improvise.

Working a canyon without water requires some specialized tools if a person's not going to spend all his time carrying samples somewhere water's available.  Usually the best tool is a backpacker drywasher.

However, it requires a leaf-blower to provide air, which I don't wish to purchase.  Besides, drywashers blow dirt from hell to breakfast, fill the eyes with grit, and make a person want a shower when the day's done, along with some clothing roughly the same weight as went in with him.

So, after thinking about it a while I decided to try something I don't believe has ever been tried for desert work.  A vibrator/separator table, portable, built mostly from junk I have around here not being used.

 The first thing a person needs working dirt looking for gold is something with riffles.  There has to be a series of dams to inhibit the movement of the heavier material once the lighter stuff's separated.  I'm using this old utility shelf.  The side without mud-dobber nests.

Here's the first step toward having an experimental portable vibrator table.

I've already sawed the top off this nylon drum.  I'll cut another strip to make a bottom for the riffle box.

 

Since there's no water, no blowing air, a lot of vibration's going to be required to separate the heavier material (mineral) from the light stuff (dirt and gravel).  What I have available that's portable, high RPM is a weed-eater.  I've tested it enough to cause me to believe just cutting off one of the nylon cords will throw it off balance enough to create plenty of agitation when the engine's idling.

 

The thing will require a collapsing, light, cheap stand.  It needs to assemble easily, break down fast, and be easily transportable.

I used these old camp chair frames.  It will take a bit of messing with it, but I think they'll be fine.

 

This thing will work a bit like a rocker box, rocking fore to aft while vibrating to spill off the lighter material.  I'll be putting a grizzley at the high end to classify and feed the material across the box, but I might also put a classifier across the top of the riffle box just to allow material to be fed into it directly by shovel.

This is as far as I've gotten, thus far.  The bottom of the riffle-box needs to be relatively easy to remove, so I'm dreaming up ideas for a way to attach it with homespun key-clips.  Other odds and ends need to be completed and experimented with, including a way to cover the motor assembly to keep dirt out of the chicken noodle soup inside it, and keep dirt out of the air intake.

If anyone's interested, when it's done I'll post pics of the final product, along with some showing it in operation.

I'll be carrying it into the canyons on a stretcher/gurney thing I picked up at a flea market for a couple of bucks.  It's designed for man-handling dead deer and elk out of the wild.... has a couple of handles and a bicycle wheel to help a person who's feeling the years keep from having to carry so much weight.

 

Jack

 

Shalini's comment on the last blog entry tonight, plus several recent PMs motivates me to post again for those of you who might wish to visit my new blog.

The blog URL is http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-2LIAx6g.aa8hcztUoeJddw--?cq=1

Evidently some folks have a problem accessing it from LP using the link above.  You might try raising another browser screen and cut and paste there the link above.  Sometimes that works.

Otherwise, if you register on Yahoo 360, log on and search for 'orioneer' it will take you to my page and blog.

Best wishes and big wins to all of you.

Jack

Jack's new blog: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-2LIAx6g.aa8hcztUoeJddw--

Best to all of you

Jack

Broadening my horizons a bit:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/

Good luck to you folks.

Win

Jack

Dowsing group mailing list - Mega Dowsing It's new.  Look it over and join if the subject interests you.

Jack

 

 

 

 

 

Morning blogsters:

I'm betting a lot of you only just now got yourselves back onto the computer after spending all your hard-earned time holidaying.

Hope you all had yourselves a merry little whatever it was you wanted a merry little of.

Not much going on out here in the wilds where we don't keep up with most modern stuff, but I'll fill you in on a bit of news:

Orion's overhead, near the horizon.... still shamelessly chasing the Plaeides.

Winter's progressing real fine temperature-wise, but we're spang getting the short end of the stick on moisture.  Ground's cracking.  We had hopes for a snowpack this year to prove we ain't in a drought any more, but it didn't and we are.

 Hmmm other stuff.  I shot up a lot of ammunition on some tests of method yesterday.  Narrowed down the field on a lot of things I'd needed to make sure didn't work, and they didn't.  Used the blog to keep track of it so I'll probably be able to remember now and not have to try those things again.

Otherwise, I can't think of a lot to say this morning.  Been a good holiday season here, same as any other day.

Later,

Jack

Hi again blogsters:

Coronado's conquest of the southwest was made in search of Cibola.  Quivara.  Seven legendary cities of gold.  The were looking for treasure of the Aztec sort.  Gold plate.  Jewelry.  Houses and streets ornamented with worked gold.

On the hard trek to Zuni from southern California they passed over some of the richest gold bearing channels in Arizona.  They passed over a fortune in minerals comparable to the Aztec conquest.

These remained undiscovered until 1849-1860, because the men who were prepared to die for gold weren't equipped to look for it. 

Had no idea what gold looked like when it hadn't been worked by skilled miners, smelters and artists and artisans. 

Weren't accustomed to getting their hands dirty with anything but blood.

Coronado returned to Mexico a successful conquerer but a failure.  No expedition from Mexico returned to the US (now) southwest for almost half a century.

They returned to Mexico without having found a single grain of gold.

Jack

Hi blogsters:

I've been back reading more of Coronado's Quest when my head gets to trying to swim upstream looking at all those numbers.

It's a worthy piece of work.  Grove Day's research is solid and he bases everything on direct quotes from Spanish records: memoirs of members of the expedition, Board of Inquiry reports and statements from the Church arm of the foray.  He backs this up occasionally with traditions on the Indian side, but he's good about pointing it out to the reader when he does this.

One of the more interesting things I'd forgotten from past readings of the book was the first encounter between Apaches and Spaniards.  The army was crossing the staked plains.  The time was prior to the entry of Comanches to the area (or Navajos, Day observes, to the NW NM region). 

The Apaches are described as friendly, helpful, extremely competent.  Quite a contrast to the Spanish/Mexican/Apache war that began within a century and lasted until the Apache was so penned up he couldn't carry it on. 

However, as I mentioned it was before the Comanche acquired horses and descended to the plains wiping out just about everything in their paths.  By 1843, they'd completely extinguished the Lipan Apache, which was the band Coronado probably encountered.

Interestingly, at the time of the encounter the high plains were shared between Wacos, Wichita, Teja and Apache.  All of those were either driven off the high plains, exterminated, or allied with the Comanche by the early 1800s.  The Jicarilla Apache was also backed up into N. New Mexico looking for help from the Spaniard/Mexicans to protect them from the Comanche. 

Fara'on Apaches were out there too, at the time, but by the time there was much record keeping going on they were generally so few in numbers they only showed up as a criminal nuisance in Spanish records.  They vanished before 1800.

Amazing what a  simple unintended introduction of the horse to America did to stir things up.

Jack

 

 

CA Fan 5 draw today

•  9 5 24 26 37
• 12 5 24 26 37
• 21 5 24 26 37
• 29 5 24 26 37

Derived by simple tally high numbers triplets combined with repeat of 23 triplets.

 

Morning blogsters:

I see that test yesterday only did three out of five on one of the two Pick 5 predictions posted for the day.  California Fantasy 5.   

I also see the other one, Florida Fantasy 5, didn't score.

Guess I'll have to go back and try to dig out what numbers I put into the wheels for each of them to see whether more numbers were in the wheel, but the abreviated wheels missed them, which would be nice, or whether the method is just fundamentally flawed.

All in all it isn't quite the way I figured.  I was expecting something that either busted things, or got busted.  Never considered the fact that once those draws come down there's no record anymore of what numbers were posted. 

I'm going to have to start keeping better records on my end, and organized in a way so I can find them later.  Maybe I still have it.

I do know they were both abreviated wheels, so there'll be holes that might have allowed the other numbers to be there without showing up as hits.

Might even be FL Fan 5 had three out of five also and just didn't hit in such a way in the wheel to show up.

Hadn't thought about all that.

Ah well.

Back to trying to figure out what happened yesterday instead of trying to puzzle out what's going to happen today. 

Hope all's well among all you blogsters.

Jack

 

Hi blogsters:

I've about run out my string looking at numbers for the day.  I think I'll just settle for those three test posts and see how they do before any further puzzling.

Wind's blowing something awful outdoors.... blew the prop off one of my weathervanes

This one:

And broke one blade off the prop of the other one so's it ain't doing a lot of celebrating the New Year.

Might go natural with those things

 Anyway, those two Fan 5s ought to give as good a read as I need on whether to pursue that route further.  If the work you Californio's might want to study the ones for the Lotto a bit.

Might post something more later blogwise, but the wind's also giving me a schizoid phone line, so I mightn't.

Have some fun,

Jack

 

 

Hi blogsters:

Hope you're all having a good last day of the first part of your lives.

I am.

I'm going back and trying some things today that probably won't interest you, but I'm using the blog to keep track of which is which method-wise.

California Fantasy 5, draw today

CA Super Lotto, Wed draw

Connectiwhatchallit Cash 5, draw today

For those three I'm running through the high numbers triplets I was touting several months ago, but with some new tweaks.  I never managed to put the validity of that to sleep to my satisfaction, so I'll take a shot at doing it now.

I'll be cooking up some other predictions using other methods today and using the blog to keep track of what I was doing.

Sorry to say I don't have anything much interesting to talk with you about this first day of double ought six.  Maybe later.

Jack

 

These are a few of the highlights posted on this blog during 2005 quick and dirty: