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Re: A Problem To Solve :-)

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On 4/13/24 01:50, Physfitfreak wrote:
> After that, Physfit said, "Cheers." and left and came home. Grabbed a 
> piece of paper and a pen, and began thinking about how he could make a 
> rectangular cross-sectioned lumber out of a log with a certain diameter, 
> resulting in the maximum strength for the lumber.
> 
> An hour later, he had the answer.


He peeped through the kitchen window to see if the neighbors' cars have 
come back. Pendulum clock now was showing almost noon time, and none of 
those "true Americans" worked. So whatever booze and drugs buying 
escapade they'd embarked on that morning should've ended by then. They 
all had! So he took the paper with the sketch of the correct 
cross-section on it, and got ready to go there and knock on their doors.

As he came back in the living room area it happened that he surprised 
the only male cat he had who wouldn't let him touch him, let alone lift 
or hug him. This was a black and white cat who in the hierarchy held 
among them, occupied the lowest position. Even the miserable gray cat at 
the second to lowest position, who always got bullied by the two other 
male cats, would sometimes get a bit of respite in bullying this black 
5and white one. And when that happened, the gray cat was ferocious 
toward that cat, literally trying to make up for all the humiliation and 
stress he was always receiving from the other males.

Physfit had not resolved that situation yet.

And when the black and white got surprised, he ran to hide somewhere, 
which triggered the gray one to run after him, and the two other cats 
run after both gray and the black and white cats. So suddenly a huge 
noisy quarrel began and all four began running and jumping and fighting 
and hitting stuff around the living room, throwing them down, etc.

When this happened, which it did about once a week, nothing would work 
to stop them but water :) Physfit had to take one of their water bowls 
and empty it on as many of them as he could at once. He did that, and 
cats quickly dispersed and hid silently somewhere, with the female ones 
still where they were, except were now watching this madness intently; 
and probably getting yet a bit more feminist as a result. Physfit could 
read their faces, "These lunatics..." they may've been thinking.

Physfit took a look around to estimate the damages. Other than all that 
extra cleaning up added to usual daily chores, only one item seemed to 
have suffered real damage. The pendulum clock. It had fallen down 
hitting the hard floor underneath it when one or more cats had jumped 
away from it. Its front door was unhinged and thrown off, and the 
clock's both hands were missing. It was a piece of shit to begin with. 
He'd bought it years back from a thrift store for something like $9. And 
for some time he'd messed with it to make it work at all, forget the 
accuracy.

The clock was prone to all sorts of disruptions. It was not designed to 
automatically correct for any of them. The manufacturer, some fucking 
CHINK, had left all that work to the buyers to toil and adjust. Its 
functional window as far as being vertical was concerned, did not 
include the 100% vertical direction! Right there you could see what type 
of _Chink_ had designed it. Someone who'd left the rice fields not that 
long before changing jobs.

Physfit had discovered that the pendulum would keep oscillating only 
when the clock was held on the wall slightly tilted to one side, and 
only to that side, and only to a certain degree, not more. There was not 
a way to turn the clockworks part of it itself against the wooden body 
of the clock. More than one screw had been used, and they weren't 
regular screws either, you'd have to damage them to remove them. Not 
wanting to go that far in the repair of the thing, Physfit had decided 
to correct for it by tilting the frame itself. It wasn't showing that 
much though. But it sure was, again, the hand of a fucking rice field 
farmer showing. Or that of an equivalent little Code Monkey wannabe, 
begat under some stone somewhere across this land of the brave, thus 
turning into a "true American" for us who came and built the USA.

And there were all sorts of other problems with other parts of the 
clock. For one, the slider on the pendulum bar for fine tuning 
oscillation frequency was way too light for that job. You could move it 
all the way up, and clock was still slow, or all the way down and clock 
was still fast. Physfit had had to wrap rubber bands around the slider 
to make it play a role... imagine what THAT did to the "interior design" 
of the living room after the fucking think was tuned and done with, 
giving the correct time at last. He'd messed with it so much in so many 
different ways that he didn't even want to change the rubber bands with 
something more appropriate. He wanted that Chinese _sin_ to exhibit 
itself each time you'd notice it; or that stench of a "true American" 
type parasite.

It had several other problems. The gears were sharp, showing that clock 
was quite new, yet one wind beyond the second, and PRRROPP!, they'd slip 
and turn back to the unwound position. There were at least three pivot 
points where you could reduce or increase the distances between gears, 
both sideways and in a planar way, and yet with nothing that Physfit had 
tried, you would find a combination that eradicated the slippage of SOME 
gear in there. Result was that this motherfucking thing could only get 
safely wound two turns of the key, and never more. The little user 
manual said 5 to 7 turns is best. So winding had to get repeated every 
week, and not every month as it was supposed to.

The damn thing was also susceptible to temperature variations. The 
material used, and the design of it both, were at fault. And this was 
Texas! Where temperature often varies 30 to even 40 degrees within the 
same 24 hours, repeatedly, in most periods of the year. So this thing 
was accurate only in certain hours of each 24 hour period. It was the 
mark of China in that house. The mark of rice field workers. A "true 
American" thing.

The clock had been knocked down by cats once before, so Physfit 
carefully placed the clock back on the wall, adjusted the position as 
best as he could (he had marked the wall itself for it), and reinstalled 
the detached front door of it whose glass was fortunately not shattered 
or cracked.

He then looked for the hands and found them and inserted them back on 
the face of the clock. He chose, for now, to position them at 12 o'clock 
noon and adjust the fucking time and the clock itself later.

Unbeknownst to him, he had inserted the hands in wrong order, 
effectively interchanging the roles of the two hands.

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Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-13 01:50 -0500
  Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-24 13:53 -0500
    Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> - 2024-04-24 19:25 +0000
      Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Joel <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2024-04-24 15:30 -0400
      Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-25 00:23 -0500
        Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-25 14:36 -0500
          Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> - 2024-04-25 20:04 +0000
            Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-25 15:15 -0500
              Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> - 2024-04-25 21:23 +0000
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-25 17:59 -0500
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-26 12:51 -0500
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-26 12:37 -0500
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> - 2024-04-26 20:13 +0000
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Joel <joelcrump@gmail.com> - 2024-04-26 16:17 -0400
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-26 15:48 -0500
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2024-04-26 22:41 +0000
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Farley Flud <ff@linux.rocks> - 2024-04-27 10:45 +0000
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-27 12:08 -0500
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2024-04-27 08:42 -0400
                Re: A Problem To Solve :-) rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2024-04-27 20:09 +0000
            Re: A Problem To Solve :-) rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2024-04-26 03:22 +0000
              Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2024-04-26 08:10 -0400
      Re: A Problem To Solve :-) DFS <nospam@dfs.com> - 2024-04-25 09:58 -0400
    Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-26 14:48 -0500
    Re: A Problem To Solve :-) Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com> - 2024-04-28 13:11 -0500

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