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Putting it all together7

Sewing new cushions

The Park Fire approaches our place. And flames can be seen from our house.

But the couch cushions are not ready. They are just pieces of foam and fabric. Of course, if we have to evacuate, the trailer will move without cushions.


This sewing machine was just given to me a few days ago. Thank you Kay! Kay teaches sewing, and has about a dozen sewing machines. As soon as I got it home, I removed it from its desk. The wood was not real wood and was in bad shape. Don't tell Kay, but I threw it away. I had bought some thread on the way home. I threaded up the bobbin. I noticed the machine was oiled, emaculate, and appeared to have been well taken care of. I made a thread spool post out of a wooden rod. It worked good. Plugged it in, and it purred to life, sewing perfectly. I did not have any test fabric laying around so I had used one of my socks. Now, one of my socks had a pretty zigzag pattern around the top. That is OK, I am a guy. I don't give a damn. Lifted the sewing foot off my sock, examined the tension, and loosened the tension on the top threads. About a half turn. And that was it! It was perfect.

You see, Mom taught me to sew before I was a teenager. Of course, being a guy, I do not bring up the subject, but I could hem and sew on buttons just fine. Being poor, our new genes sometimes started out long in the pant legs at the beginning of the school year and needed to be temporarily hemmed. No problem. Buttons were always popping off, and Mom had a large collection of assorted buttons, different colors and sizes. Buttons, no problem. Done in two minutes, cause Mom's machine was a table model and usually already set up.

When I was grown, I gave away my sewing machine. I gave it away to a lady that appreciated it. And to this day still uses it.

The old cushions were not designed for an RV. Any spilled drinks would run off the table, and be absorbed through a woven fabric and immediatly into the foam. A couple of times a drink has been left on the table as we have went down the road. Imagine that! The cup ending up on its side on the cushion. And quite empty. And then there was the time that Taffie peed on the cushion. WTF! I soaked the foam in water, then squeezed it out. Then soaked in water and squeezed out again. ...And again. But the real solution was to fix what the RV Company had failed to do: Design a cushion that was water proof on top, with breathable fabric on the sides.

It was pretty easy except for the zippers. One side of the zippers was vinyl and was elastic. The side was rigged fabric. Car has to be taken not to pull on the elastic side. Otherwise the zipper will be wavy.


One trick that identifies the sewer as a male is the use of paper stables. My Mom used pins for everything: She used them to hold her patterns to the fabric, and to hold hems at the right position. Here I am using stables to temporarily hold my lines. As I sew up to them, I remove them with an electronic tweaker screwdriver. There is a metal stable at the end of my fingernail.


Cushions in place. Fire is moving away. RV is ready to roll.


Bathroom looks ready to roll. I use clips to hold towels on the rods.


I love this soft foam matt. Easy on bare feet or socks, and it matches the white marble of the floors.


A lot of heat can come through the skylight. I use a reflectix panel.


The container on the right is a mixture of shampoos. The container-dispenser on the left is bodywash. I think even the bodywash is a mixture of bodywashes because there are visible boundaries.




link_text SwampMonster-vocal-in Computer room. WEBm 6.86MB 27seconds

link_text Monster-Singing-BadMoonRising mp4 6.75MB 25seconds





My computer is set to never shut off. So it is kinda awake all the time. Which is totally doable if the computer is SSD, Solid State Disk. Therefor, it keeps track of things for me, day or night. The draw back, is that I have to be in the house or the RV.

But the draw back to the cell phone alarm is that it is not reliable, and does not always work. And that is despite the fact that I have put Charlotte's voice, nice and loud, on the cell phone. The cell phone used to have a stupid "ding" that I could not hear. It was useless. Charlotte fixed that part. But could not fix the faulty inner workings of a cell phone. Peace of crap.

But the computer works great, and never goes to sleep.

For example...
Every day, I know when the sun is just starting to rise in Chico. That is approximately a half disk of the sun visible on the ideal horizon, like an ocean. I also have my Electronic modules, and MasterClocks, that also know when sunup and sundown are. Accurate to withen a minute.
This is what I hear...



This is what I hear at SunDown, or SunSet.
You know... When the sun is just starting to show on the theoretical horizon.




As you get older, you need your sleep. Linda and I have been suffering from loss of sleep. We do not go to be until 01:00 or 02:00. And we get up at 9. It is insane. But nothing works.
This is what I hear at 10:02pm ...




But the greatest thing about this "secretary" is the scheduling. The first program that I wrote for KHSL was a "History" program. But lately I thought; Why restrict it to the past. Why not include future events? Why not a "planner" or "scheduler"? I have two voices, a male for the actual times. And Charlotte for the details of the scheduled event. Actually, the male is my Representative. I am trying to get him to take over, but I have to admit, that I like Charlotte's voice better.
This is part of what I hear if the calendar is clear for the rest of the day.




And then this happens every hour if there are any scheduled events up ahead, later today. She also says the number of events.




I happened to catch this Doctor's appointment for Linda, and I recorded it on my cell phone.

And this is not Charlotte. This is Zira because she has to read a script that she finds in the Past and Future Histories for any year. Zira has Local Text-To-Speach from Microsoft located on my computer. So, I can easily code for it to speak any unknown thing. Charlotte, on the other hand, although a much more wonderful voice, is not dynamic in my programs. Her voice has to be statically pre-formed. I, before hand, dictate a specific sentence. So, I use Charlotte when I know what she is going to say. Zira, or actually my program code, before Zira is picked, looks at records going back thousands of years. All records were manually typed-in by me. I began typing-in History about the time Dad died, about 1991, when I first wrote the program. The History Notes are simple notes written in any format, and are not directly part of the "Program". They are used for external Reference; external Data. If an alarm is included, it is composed of the Time, Hours and Minutes in 24Hr format, followed by ".clk" or ".CLK", like this: "17:16.CLK". Zira figures out what to say, or vocally iterates, from there. I write the code for Zira, and my goal is for someday, not to know what she is going to say.




And then this happens every minute, until I hit a key on the keyboard.

AI