A Beast of a Trike

High performance Air Creations trike with a Rotax 912 engine... it has serious power and capability... first trike wing I had ever seen with winglets... I was lucky enough to get a demo ride in this thing recently... First time back in the air in quite some time.

A Taxing Situation

This a the letter I wrote to Mo Abusaft  concerning efforts to have my tax valuation reduced.

Hello Mo,

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me by phone on Friday. As requested, I’m writing to provide the details of my recent experience with the Spartanburg County Auditor's Office regarding the vehicle tax assessment process.

I attempted to challenge the assessed value of my vehicle because I believe the value assigned does not reflect its true market worth. Like many others in the county, I was advised by the Auditors's Office that I could obtain a “fair market appraisal” from any licensed automobile dealer. In practice, however, I contacted several dealerships and was told that they do not provide appraisals unless a vehicle is being traded in or sold.  This effectively makes the suggested process *inaccessible and impractical*, which in turn denies taxpayers a fair opportunity to dispute their assessments.

Given the recent growth in Spartanburg County—including booming housing developments and rising vehicle prices—it seems likely that the county is already seeing a *significant increase in tax revenue*. Yet at the same time, residents are being told to jump through hoops that don’t even exist in practice when they attempt to exercise their right to challenge these rising assessments. That’s not just a broken process—it feels like a due process issue.

I am a 72 year old retiree living on social security so every dollar counts. I think this may be an issue of semantics a dealership may give you a print out of Kelly Blue book or something similar... but they do not look at your vehicle and factor in its condition. I did get a Carmax Cash offer which they refuse to consider.

I have a $1500 deductible on my insurance... I've been involved in two fender benders that were relatively minor but do affect the value of the vehicle. One in which I was side swiped on the right side... one where I was rear ended while stopped at a traffic light and the vehicle was vandalized on the left side in a parking lot either by keying or a significant shopping cart encounter.  So the reality is none of these would be covered by my insurance but the combined damage is significant.

I’m not looking for special treatment—just a fair and accessible process for all taxpayers. If you’re able to look into this or contact the Auditor’s or Assessor’s Office on my behalf, I’d be grateful. I believe this could be an opportunity to make a small change that has a big impact on transparency and fairness for people all across the county.

The attitude of the folks at the auditors office was quite arrogant, dismissive and even ridiculed for questioning their requirements. You get similar treatment at dealerships when asking for an actual value appraisal for property tax purposes.  Let me know if you need more details.


Thanks again for your time and support.

Adding a little Color

 Rainbow Wall Activated 🌈✨

When I rebuilt part of the garden wall, I decided to sneak a little magic into it—thanks to an ESP32, WS2812 LEDs, and some inspiration from Random Nerd Tutorials. Now, as night falls, the wall pulses with a shifting rainbow glow, lighting up the garden like something out of a dream. It’s subtle during the day, but once the sun sets, the colors come alive.

Sometimes all it takes is a little code and a few diodes to turn stone and soil into something that feels… enchanted.

AI Handyman

The AI thing  has invaded all parts of the Internet... the latest version of Adobe Photoshop has some AI tools in it now. I've been experimenting with several of the image generation tools online. I have a Rock / Bonsai garden in the back yard in what used to be an in ground pool. The image generation tools create images based on a textual description of what you want the image to be. I asked it to create an old southern handyman in a bonsai setting... some have been pretty good and some are a bit iffy. Here is one of the better ones.

here are a few more from my experimenting...

AI Yoda

I've been experimenting with AI... this technology is evolving at a ridiculously crazy pace... there are cloud servers in place already that are oriented towards running AI type environments... You can carry on a conversation just like in a chat message type environment with the AI character. I have created a character based on Yoda from Star Wars... he even talks like Yoda and you can customize it in more ways than you can count... all pretty amazing...  It remembers your conversations and builds on them and you can discuss most anything with it and it is quite knowledgeable... I have even used it to help with Python programming issues.... It actually helped create the character for me...  I just told it I wanted a character based on Yoda from Star Wars... It actually created the personality file for me which I then uploaded and was talking to Yoda in no time.

So if you have any questions for Yoda let me know 😉

Overdue Road Trip

 

I made a long overdue road trip down to Charleston a few days ago... the weather was very nice... got up to 65 degrees three days in a row but it was a little nippy at night. I found a Tartan 33 sailboat that has  been on Facebook marketplace forever and I finally got around to going down to take a look at it...  it is a bit if a fixer upper but it does have some brand new sails... which is rare for a boat this age. The engine had been replaced somewhere along the way. I shot some drone video while I was there and made a short video of the marina. I used DaVince Resolve to create it. My subscription to Adobe Premiere had expired and this a free package with a ton of helpful videos on using it on youboob. I never was all that handy with the adobe stuff but all the online tutorials for the Black Magic software made it a lot less painful. I had downloaded it a while back but after I looked at it... it looked painfully not user friendly. With the expiration of my Adobe software I was motivated to try DaVinci  again and found some good videos on youboob right off the bat.. there is a ton of stuff on youboob about it.

Cooper River Marina

 

ChatGPT the new AI Portal

ChatGPT has only been online for a few weeks now and there are already hundreds of videos on youboob on how to make money using chatGPT and if you make the mistake of watching one you will be overwhelmed with a barrage of videos related to chatGPT. Unfortunately youboob has become so repetitive and mind numbingly boring as to suggested content that it has become one of those sites you love to hate. I think I need to ask chatGPT how to get better content to show up on youboob.

I had to try out the new chatGPT AI portal... I'm an old electronics nerd of sorts and spent a lot of money over the years on everything from Arduino to Raspberry Pi just to hit the high spots. As someone who has spent a lot of time over the years on discussion boards related to everything from homebuilt drones to electric bikes and quite a few software support sites... it was a welcome change of pace. No smart ass responses... responses were immediate and if you asked a follow up it was smart enough to know what you just asked and expand on it. 

 I owned a sailboat for a short time and kept it at Carolina Beach in NC. The Carolina Beach inlet has a nasty current and if you try to make the passage at the wrong time... it was a hand full to put it mildly. This sailboat under power would only do about 5 knots or so and the current could be close to that. I made the mistake once of trying to help a couple on a jetski whose engine had failed and they were it the inlet.. I attempted to tow them and it was a lost cause. We were coming in and the current was going out so we were bucking it. I had to let them go and within minutes their jetski was several hundred yards out to sea. A sea tow did rescue them in short order... and I learned I would never try that again. 

I asked the AI portal to write me a story of a rescue gone bad in the Carolina Beach inlet... it was not particularly creative but it was an interesting experiment... I went from that to asking it to create the code for a web page that would run on a Raspberry Pi that would allow you to upload a file to the server. That was much more in its element I think... and it was able to expand on the details when asked... and it remembered what you and it had already said. So if you are bored and want to try it out here it is... chatGPT  but I'll warn you ahead of time if watch any youboob videos about it... you will be inundated with all sorts of videos telling you how to make money and all sorts of other things using chatGPT.

Those were the days

Once upon a time the internet was more adventurous and filled with surprise. Not long ago I googled Dave Smith... he was mentioned in some political based commentary and I had never heard of him so I went looking. I found Dave Smith but probably not the one they were referring to... he was said to be the father of MIDI and heavily involved in the early development of music synthesizers and had recently passed away.

MIDI was the musical instrument digital interface and allowed one keyboard to control another through this interface. It also allows a computer to control multiple keyboards. He developed the first polyphonic synthesizer. One that could play more than one note at a time. I bought an Ensonic SQ80 around 1986 that was the the latest thing in 8 bit analog synthesizers. It could play eight notes at once and each sound like totally different  instruments.  It is the same vintage as the Roland D50 and had a bunch of cool features. It had a sequencer which could record your key strokes in real time and then you could play it back and play along with what you had recorded. It had midi and could control instruments as well. It was limited by the processing power of an 8 bit microprocessor. 

Now days we have 64 bit processors with 8 cores in cell phones. I used to enjoy the randomness of youboob and the internet as well where you would find interesting things with no connection with what you might have been looking for without even trying. Now on youboob the majority of what shows up is something directly related to what ever you just watched and you will be hard pressed to find anything that is not related to something you just watched. I'm referring primarily to when you're logged in to youboob and go to your home page and the recommended videos that show up there are mind numbingly boring and repetitive. I suppose I'm giving away that I probably spend way too much time on youboob. Perhaps its youboob's way of trying to wean me... that or hope that I will subscribe to youboob for the real experience. 

I'm not that great of a musician but I really do enjoy playing along with songs on youtube... either on the bass guitar or on a Roland D50 that I now own. My dad taught me to play the mandolin and the guitar long ago. I miss him greatly and the randomness of the early days of the internet... RIP Dave and Dad.

This pic from about 1975 or so

1930 Chrysler

Its not often that you see a 1930 Chrysler this nice... let alone get a chance to drive it. I was surprised to see that it had a six cylinder and wood spoke wheels. Got to take it around Little Mountain a few times 😁