This is a personal thing, granted, but you can’t go 2 videos on YouTube anymore without seeing someone doing the simplest tasks with a CNC.
I hate CNC. The whole reason I’m working with wood is because I want to use my hands. I spend all of my days working on a computer and woodworking is one way to get away from that. I want to actually craft the wood into something worthwhile.
Screw the CNC.
This one comes in a very roundabout way. Every year Joe Bob Briggs’ Last Drive-In does a Walking Dead special and someone, who knew I was a fan of the show, asked if I’d seen it. That’s the one thing that I skip every year because I really do not like the Walking Dead.
Here’s why.
I’ve had a couple of discussions lately with newer philatelists, wondering what the point of the APS actually is. What do you get for being a member that’s actually useful?
To be honest, I don’t think there are any, at least for me.
I was thinking about this recently, but a couple of years ago, I thought that I should do my part and support YouTube channels that practiced proper safety protocols in woodworking and I almost immediately realized that if I did that, 95%+ of them would have to go away. Hardly anyone uses blade guards on YouTube. Half the channels don’t use pushsticks. I’ve seen channels that purposely removed the guards from their jointers, which is one of the stupidest things ever because if you touch that, you don’t just lose a finger that can be reattached, you produce hamburger, which can’t.
Why are people so stupid? I don’t know!
This is going to be a very specific comment that can be also taken generally. Don’t worry, it will make sense in a minute. In the specific, in No Man’s Sky, you can shove whatever you want to into someone else’s inventory without their consent or even knowledge and a lot of people do that. They say “I’m helping!” by taking a new player and suddenly giving them a billion units worth of crap.
What if they don’t want your “help?” Oh, suggest that and the shit will fly!
It always disgusts me, watching people complaining about one thing and then when the solution comes up, complaining about that too. A while back, Dungeons & Discourse made a video about some of the big online RPG sellers taking action against AI-written content. She pointed out that there was a lot of really bad human-written crap up there already, and I pointed out that I’d been suggesting for years that Amazon institute a reading fee for every single book uploaded to the site. A human reader makes sure it isn’t a scam, of which there are plenty, and that it meets minimum quality standards.
Imagine my surprise when people didn’t like that either.
The cycle continues, sadly. Once it became clear that I wasn’t going to get the miter saw that I wanted, since they are out of stock at every store within a 100+ mile radius, I started looking for other options. I know what I need. I need a 12″ saw, I need a short-throw sliding mechanism so it can be pushed against the wall in my existing miter saw station and I know I want either a laser or an LED shadow. Three simple things. What could be easier?
It never works out that way though, does it?
It’s hard to find anyone but idiots out in the world right now. I just ordered a brand new miter saw off of Amazon. It wasn’t cheap, although it was on sale. It also wasn’t ludicrously expensive, to be fair. I had looked at higher end saws, like the Bosch, and it doesn’t come with the laser that I wanted. Therefore, I had tried to buy it at Lowes but they were out of stock. I got on Amazon, I paid for it, I waited and when I received it, they had sent the wrong saw. It wasn’t even close.
Now they want to argue with me about the return. Screw these people!
So let me tell you a story. Way back when I was about 7, this is more than 50 years ago, I started collecting U.S. stamps. It wasn’t really a conscious choice, more one of availability. I lived where there were tons of U.S. stamps, so I collected what was readily available. Most people start that way.
This last weekend, I finally got tired of looking at a lot of holes so I did something about it. Mostly, I am now complete from about 1916 to 1993 where I stopped. It kind of feels good, to be honest.
We knew this right after we moved in. The people who used to live in our house before we bought it were morons. Everything was half-assed. Everything was done wrong. I resigned myself to having to fix all the things that they did wrong and I’ve been doing it for the past almost 8 years.
Here we go again.
