It's another Friday of minimal internet connection. There's not much to report. Progress on the book front is slow. Progress on the Fiverr gig is slow. I've developed a second tooth abscess. I could use prayer for it. I'm very tired. I had a dental appointment but had to miss it and reschedule. If it doesn't get better over the weekend, I'm going to see if I can get an emergency appointment.
Have a great weekend.
The internet is wonky today. I assume Verizon is upgrading the network. Progress continues on the writing front. It's not spectacular, but it's progress. I've also made a little progress on the Fiverr gig. It's still not up and running due to lack of equipment and more training that I've been needing. I had to replace a critical element that arrived only today. It can't be used without modifications, so another delay. Sometimes the hindrances feel supernatural. Keeping it short since my upload speed is 0.03Mbps.
Have a great weekend.
Oil from the Middle East ships on tankers that take 90 days to travel to the U.S. It goes through a port of entry and is shipped to a refinery where it's stored for refining into gasoline. After it's refined, it's stored for shipping to gas stations. Counting the time it took from the original sale to get to the port of exit in the Middle East, the price at the pump is for oil that was bought about four months ago. Oil pumped in the U.S. can skip the 90 days of shipping, but that oil still takes time to pump, ship and refine.
Another way to put it is that there's a disconnect between the cost at the pump and the cost of the oil used to make that gas. A change in the price of oil has no affect on the price of gas already at the pump today. That oil is months away from being sold as gas. Is the public being gouged? Yes. Does the government care? No. Is this a coordinated plan between the Biden administration and oil companies? That's a good question. See: campaign contributions. Is the Biden administration allowing the gouging as a backdoor green energy policy? Undoubtedly.
The price of oil today is $120.70. The price of oil four months ago that is gasoline at the pumps today was $89.88. Why is gas so expensive?
Book Stuff
I got some work done toward the B'vellah War series. It wasn't anything to brag about. I found an error in book 1. Marion notices some dark stains on a sasquatch that he thinks are blood. In reality, he would automatically recognize blood by its colors. Ugh.
Fiverr Side Gig
I'm still working on getting that off the ground. As mentioned before, I don't have all the equipment I need. An $8 part arrived yesterday. I did some testing. It looks like I have enough to get by for now. If I can put some work into this weekend, next week could be when I finally get started. Once things are going is when I'll have more details.
Have a great weekend.
I only got about four hours of sleep last night, so this is going to be short. May was a bad month. This month isn't quite as stressful, but I could still use a breakthrough. Nevertheless, I'm now moving forward with the B'vellah War series. Let's hope enough problems stay out of the way to get it wrapped up.
If everything goes well, I'll be able to get the second Fiverr gig going this upcoming week. If so, I'll have more details later. We'll see what happens. I'll still don't have the proofreading one up. The style guide I need to study is over 1,100 pages long. The second gig would pay more than proofreading. If I can get that one going instead, I'll save proofreading for my own work.
I need a new car in the worst way. If you believe in the power of prayer, I could use one. :)
Have a great weekend.
Sorry about missing last week. I had about 0.5Mbps download speed and 0 upload. This week I have 0.03Mbps upload. Blame Verizon.
In brief.
It looks like the Ministry of Truth will not be getting off the ground. https://news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-considers-shutting-down-151257861.html
Elon Musk says he will no longer vote Democrat. "In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican." That the Democrat party has been the party of division and hate(and intolerance) has been true for a number of years. I'm amazed he said it out loud. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/teslas-musk-says-no-longer-200335296.html
The shorter this is the better my chances of the upload not failing.
Have a great weekend.
Last week, it looked like a post had been censored by Big Tech. It turned out to be some kind of internet problem. A number of sites weren't loading or weren't loading correctly, including Blogger statistics. Even Facebook was inaccessible.
There's not much to report this week. The two pieces of equipment I ordered for the second Fiverr gig arrived. They didn't connect without a cable. I ordered one. It arrived today. Hopefully, I'll get it set up this weekend for testing. I still need more equipment to get it up and running. The proofreading Fiverr gig isn't up yet either. Life has not been working lately. It looks like the tooth in front of the abscessed tooth is abscessing. I've been feeling it some but not as much as the last one. I've been feeling tired from it, too.
The plan for the next week is to get something done on the writing front and get this equipment tested.
Have a great weekend.
Last week's blog had zero views, which is impossible. It exposed the truth about a political scheme the Democrat party has enacted to officially censor truth in the United States. Blogger is owned by Google, so the censorship of that blog was done by them. Assuming I'm not being paranoid. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I've known for a while that I need to abandon Blogger. The need is more urgent. The most obvious flight to safety would be setting up a WordPress blog on my own site.
Speaking of censorship, a while back Twitter did a purge of Christians, one wave of who knows how many. I gave up on them and cancelled my account. Elon Musk is buying Twitter, if the deal goes through, and is promising to restore free speech. The current CEO, a foreigner who doesn't understand American free speech, has made anti-free speech comments in the past. Twitter as a company has a very toxic culture. Will Musk be able to turn it around? Will he replace the anti-free speech CEO with one that loves freedom and democracy? Will democracy-hating employees leave? We'll see. I was tempted to open an account, but I think I'll wait and see what actually happens. Tesla has a long, long, long history of overpromising and underdelivering.
In real life this was a very bad week. The main good news is that I was able to find and buy two pieces of used equipment I need for the second Fiverr gig. I still need more, but I may be able to get that up and running next week, which would be even faster than the proofreading gig that I thought would be running for months before the second gig could get off the ground. However, the problem with Fiverr is that they promote successful veterans over newbies. It can take two months or so to get a first job on Fiverr. If I can get a barebones setup working for the second gig, going outside Fiverr will be my first option. It's possible I might not even do the proofreading gig. I was kind of thinking of that as a way to bootstrap the second gig. We'll see. If I can get up and running and get a sale next week, I'll post more about it.
Have a great weekend.
