===============================================
DOES NOT represent the way the average American lives life.
Tales From The Trailer Court™
Saturday, May 18, 2024
THIS IS A HEADER - scroll down one page to begin blog--->
===============================================
DOES NOT represent the way the average American lives life.
Friday, May 17, 2024
May 17, 2024
One year ago today: May 17, 2023, already enough.
Five years ago today: May 1, 2019, walked the dogs.
Nine years ago today: May 17, 2015, remain slightly suspicious.
Random years ago today: May 17, 2006, the Mexican hit parade.
Caltier is still down for compliance. I sent them a nasty note, like what’s with that? What is so out of compliance it takes two weeks to sort things out? We now have two Caltier funds, the one you get to follow is Fund 1, which, by the way, is not really a REIT, but a vast limited partnership. I have not yet really invested in any REITs. Caltier Fund 1 now stands at $20,620 and likely to stay there a few months unless I sell some vacuum tubes. And that could be happening because we found an underused eBay account that just has to be linked to PayPal.
I’ve learned a bit more about tubes yet I cannot find a definitive source of information about what and how they are used, sold, or anything. This is common with electronics. After you do all the duplicate work of figuring it out on you own, they’re all like, how come you didn’t just ask. Most “6” tubes are pre-amp and a “12” is power output. Let’s see how far I get with these new boxes. They have to be sorted first or I have no place to store them.
Tennessee called, I must be there in the next short while. Sadly, little Sammy is not doing well, suffering seizures that he cannot understand. However, that trip has tripled in price and I can’t really drop everything like I used to. Another factor is that the Reb & I have different musical paths. You cannot make me like working in a recording studio. That’s where the crazy people are.
Allow me to say more about that. I do not believe in any special status for crazy people. You heard me. This idea that America won’t put crazies in jail or execute them holds no water for me. It is not society’s job to make sure that criminals comprehend why they are being punished. The goal is to prevent recurrences of the crime, or if that cannot happen, to remove the problem at source. If someone is causing harm, they must be stopped and I don’t’ care if they are crazy or just very good at pretending they are, same thing to me.
I found some of the tiny 5kW potentiometers specified in many small transistor amp designs, but these are trim pots with no stem. I have 14 of the 100kW type which I’ve never used. These pots can be faked down, but not up. (There is a way by hooking up all the pots in parallel but that gets expensive quickly.) For example, if you need a five and only have tens, just add a 5kW resistor to the out pin. I’m unaware of any such trick to turn the gauge downward. I may also finally go out and buy an honest to goodness good quality fluke meter.
Google’s office in Moscow.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
We also found an oscilloscope. I’ll check if Wilford still wants it, but it appears he may be as bad as me for allowing new incoming ideas to eclipse other work in progress. Finally, we found a tray of small potentiometers suitable for small amplifier circuits. The rest of the shop over there has to be cleared out and pretty darn soon. Any cash realized is better than paying it to be hauled away. It should take only a day or so to get the eBay account up and running and it will be in the other guy’s old company name, which gives it a lengthy good history.
Later, updating all the books took hours longer than planned and I will need to go to Tennessee for a few days. That’s at least, you know what a few days can turn into. Is there some way I can combine selling tubes with such a trip? They have to be shipped within three days. Caltier, and most other financial adventures are at a standstill, the situation in Tennessee must be stabilized while I’m around that that takes moor oomph than most people keep lying around. Here’s JeePee at chow time, the pets cannot be kept waiting. Is this a repeat photo? Who knows, the boys must be fed every day.
I’ll wrap today up by entering more tubes into the database. We will need a better storage system and I have learned not all boxes are the same. Standard size USPS boxes have no shape that works right for tubes. When there is no trivia to keep you entertained, sometimes I have to create it. So here some things I doubt you’ve seen before. In any order, this is a case of dial cord. Remember old radio knobs had pulleys? These are the cords that kept them working, I suppose. And more gear I don’t know what it is. My guess is a pair of socket templates and two special adaptors for testing “triacs”, a word I’ve seen but do not follow.
A host of smaller lessons are learned along this path. Example, the best way to count and inventory these items is not compatible with the best says of sorting and storing them. I’m thinking the easiest way to find anything is not by the box it is in, but picking all the brand names, such as RCA or Sylvania and putting those all in one spot. Then using the database to determine where to go looking for it should an order come in. Another obstacle is the way to mark tubes which have already been inventoried. I’ve been putting a small dot on the boxes, but the boxes are in pretty bad shape. Nor do you want a mark that disfigures the original boxes as I’ve spotted that is a selling point. Forget marks on the tubes, although I will mark the more expensive tube with both an obvious and hidden mark to prevent inevitable returns of swaps.
There is a new algorithm that finds unique occurrences, but I could only vaguely follow the logic. The problem of uniqueness isn’t new, for example, it is almost impossible for the a web site to know how many visits are not repeats. The standard method is to take all the info and check for duplicates. This requires almost as much memory as the original list, which can be an expensive problem. This new method takes batches of words and works by randomly deleting half. Hailed as a “new way of counting”, I’ll wait to see if I hear of it again before learning more.
ADDENDUM
Halfway through the “Navigator” audiobook, I’ve taken a real dislike to this Gore Vidal. I did not recognize it as a common Irish name. The issue is his typical obsession with being a faggot. After he has mentioned around 15 topics ranging from warfare to hospital stays, you spot the pattern. Now some could say I mention bass playing a lot and it is because I am a bass player. But stop right there, because it is not the central theme of every conversation, it is not lurking in the background ready to be triggered at any opportunity. I do not expect you to treat me special, or make allowances, or [that you must] like what I do because I am a bassist. And I do not begin and end everything with that theme, and where I do, it is clear and not some undercurrent.
By disc five, Vidal has become insufferable. He’s now on about how the artistic world has suffered so greatly by not openly embracing all his homo lovers. It’s gruesome now he goes into details of how his boyfriends die from one malady after another but without really mentioning the real cause is AIDs. If I continue with this audiobook, it is morbid politeness, since we already know where every thread he mentions is going to end.
I’ll tell you who else has had it with these wierdos, queers, and envious bunch. The Dutch. They’ve elected people who are cutting immigration to zero, canceling visas, rejecting EU mandates, and cutting social programs. This is a telling blow to the gang that think you cannot vote your way out of tyranny.
Thursday, May 16, 2024
May 16, 2024
One year ago today: May 16, 2023, mostly the yard.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2019, Valdosta, Atlanta, Hermitage.
Nine years ago today: May 16, 2015, more on PWM.
Random years ago today: May 16, 2014, and even then . . .
Silver just touched $30 and the banks reacted swiftly. It’s a pressure cooker. Same for Biden, who has a date with destiny on June 27. Trump has agreed to a debate with CNN rules. I wonder what Trump has planned, since we know they will only ask Joe scripted questions and will cut Trump’s mic if he makes any points. It’s a known setup, so what’s he up to? Another Boeing incident, an engine catching fire. Yes, I know Boeing does not build the engines, but fires happened due to bad maintenance. Some smart aleck posted on-line that Boeing has become the South Africa of the airliner industry. Climate change is now blamed by BBC as their new black version of Dr. Who flops on opening night.
The Cuban money system is frozen.
I used a phrase in a memo I sent them some months ago which seems to have entered their parlance. See if you like it, “sub-optimal procedure”.
Who’s this adorable gal? That’s Seven, four years ago as a puppy. Part of my review includes checking in with the executor of my tiny estate and this is now the big dog with the massive ears you’ve seen here time to time. That reminds me, Mitch is back from Mexico and now has a tattoo. It must have been quite the party. Let me check, do I have the okay to post this photo? Yep. That’s the tattoo and I’ll defer any opinion from this direction. Then again, I’ve always understood people who don’t play in a band often have different methods of disguising themselves.
That makes sense, as each step has enough rules and mnemonics to scare most away. The process begins with getting your sextant and ends with drawing a line on a sheet. Even that is not complete, because you need at least two lines to plot your position. Note, where most people would say the start is the sextant reading, but it is not. The actual first step is to check if the sextant has been zeroed out from the last usage. My guess is the entire process takes around 35 distinct steps and many not-so-distinct. Thus, I would narrow my outline to just those which require you to calculate or record something.
This may be optimistic. Because I’ve not seen it spelled out before means nothing. Baking a cake is easy. Using a sextant reading to produce a line of position is not. Maybe I should work on some circuits, which would place me directly under the back room air conditioner. Hush, I’m thinking. Later, there are two generations of red cardinals who frequent the back yard. And they’ve learned the sound of the washing machine means check for treats.
Nebraska, I think.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
This is the circuit I chose to examine and build. It is called a Universal Relay Driver because it can be adapted for use in most any circuit. I recognize the components and the theory is easy. A small voltage applied to the base of the transistor will operate a relay using a much higher voltage. I want to know more about the physics. How fast can the relay operate? How sensitive is the input? Do any of the parts get hot? Is it noisy? I’ll get around to it. Usually I add pilot lights to show what’s going on, but I still have not found my bags of LEDs.
This is interesting history to me. My marginal notes show it was 9 years and 10 months ago I first looked at this topic. I found many of the steps confusing because I set out to understand them, not memorize the routine. And that made it much harder, as a mass of small details had to be carried forward and remembered, usually when “entering” the tables. That’s what they call looking things up, you don’t really enter anything.
One frustration is the textbooks themselves. The subject is complicated and each author explains it as he understands it. No two are alike. I have a rough outline, but it works as long as you remember my steps are different than theirs. Some go into incredible detail of, say, taking the sextant reading, others say close enough is good enough. The overview has already helped me better grasp how each figure recorded leads toward the goal. Is it ever clear now that so many different people over the centuries have stirred the pot. Plenty of the terms now mean the opposite of what they say. I may try a few start-to-finish runs, but this is a lot like work.
Each step has many approaches. An example is the timing of the sextant reading. Some say get a radio that picks up signals that broadcast the exact time. Then you buy a stopwatch and record that tone to the moment you take the reading and declare “Mark!”. Others say just go to Wal*Mart and buy a digital watch and set it to Greenwich Mean Time, which goes by a few other names these days. Which is better? Understanding the process, because batteries go dead.
What was not fun was Windows in any form, in this instance, Win 11. It affects the way Excel commands are executed. I even got into a mode where the entire spreadsheet locked up with no indication how to get out of it. The keyboard just make a clicking noise, I mean, what manner of bastard sits around coming up with these stupid ideas? Can you imagine a scenario where such a feature does any good? If so, you got serious problems grasping what is best for most of the people. I had to reboot the computer, I think it disabled the keyboard and who in their right mind thinks that is important enough to assign it a shortcut?
MicroSoft has severely gone downhill, but still has a grip because their most successful business maneuver was blocking others from entering the market. They have sunk to adverticing built into their new opsys, including messages that suggest your computer needs repair if you use competitor’s software. But their most annoying tactic is to flood consumer repair and tip lines with messages saying the best fix is to switch to their products. When I searched for the best ad-blocking apps, I got a message that I could stop the ads by enrolling in a paid subscription.
I miss Tennessee, so let’s run some numbers. I don’t have to stick around as much as before and the boys are super-okay spending the whole day with me. Maybe clear out of here for the cooler climes. But don’t go too far north. Canada’s new Bill C-63 empowers their Gestapo to sift through historical records and arrest anybody who has ever posted in the past what their new law has defined as hate speech. Will Canada ever have the mukluks to oust their dictator? Probably not, 2/3 of the country is on some form of welfare.
ADDENDUM
The Creationists are up to their old tricks, claiming that Darwin was wrong because man did not descend from apes because their religion said so. These people have never read Darwin’s book. He never said any such thing. All of the components of the Theory of Evolution existed long before Darwin. Mutation, natural selection, heredity, variation, all of these were old themes before Darwin was born. But they all were stifled by a religious objection—that the Bible stated the world was not old enough for any of those events to have taken place.
What Darwin did was document that there was a fossil record dating back millions of years, meaning that there had been enough time for species to evolve. He pointed out there were no major species which did not have relatives and that once a species goes extinct, it never evolves again. This can only happen if, far enough back in time, there was a common ancestor.
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
May 15, 2024
One year ago today: May 15, 2023, birds, diodes, & Starbucks.
Five years ago today: May 15, 2019, the shirt’s still missing.
Nine years ago today: May 15, 2015, Camp Good Counsel.
Random years ago today: May 15, 2007, The Johnson Twins.
My sextant has rust, which some way is not right for a plastic unit. Yes, but tiny spots on it like the lanyard clamp and small screws are metal. They’ve been inside the original case and I admit to not taking many readings. Because it is boring and I did not know that until I did it some. Also, the job of reading means being awake and outside at inhuman hours of the day in any weather, it’s like shift work. In any case, the real work, and 95% of it, is done indoors, long after the sextant is back on the shelf. Today’s lesson is (once more) the kind you don’t get in the instructions. It is about accuracy.
The goal of measuring an angle with the sextant is to then use a series of tables and equations to establish a LOP, or line of position on a chart. So you might think the more accurate your input, the better the final result. That’s what I thought. But let’s take a much closer look at that line. You draw that line with a pencil, trust me, use a pencil. The nicest pencil line that you can draw is going to cover a space, to scale, that on your chart that is several miles wide out on the ocean. You will have gained nothing by using fractions.
A bit more obscure to grasp is that even if your accumulated rounding off does produce an error, it is in the position of the LOP itself, not the location of your boat. In the middle of the ocean, a factional mile isn’t that important, and if you are near to shore, you navigate by beacons, lights, buoys and landmarks, not by sextant. While it’s true the textbooks probably in total say all this somewhere, none of them I’ve read spell it out like I just did.
This is a picture of my relocated woodpecker bird house. Birds can be very picky about nests and this was unoccupied. Possibly it was too too low, so here it is raised up to nine feet off the tround. There are no more predator approaches than found on any tree. This is the third or fourth unsuccessful location.
How about another day off? Yes, by acclamation, so let’s find a project or two and relax. I worked late on the Tascam, finding a number of quirks not really covered in the user manual. To the tune of five or so birdies in the back yard, let me list a couple of these snags so I won’t forget. Worse is to save the recordings in a playable form, they must be exported by a process called “writing” which takes forever, and you cannot use the same file name as it was recorded. So make sure you remember that live session on Wednesday two weeks ago was called SONG005 or something before it becomes exported as EX002 or something. Up yours, Tascam. Or something.
Happy birthday, Climate Change. It was 35 years ago that the threat of Global Freezing changed to Global Warming, with entire nations supposed to be underwater by now. Another set of “146 polls”, says Big Media, show that Trump is 0.8% ahead. So begins the pre-election push to convince Joe Stupid that the margins are so narrow that Trump can once again lose by 12,000 votes out of four million cast. And Biden just announced tariffs on Chinese goods, something he screamed about when Trump did the same.
What a blustery “Gulf” morning, dwindling my coffee reserve. The back yard is completely alive with birds who have discovered the squirrel baffles make excellent rain shelters. Another small and fearless woodpecker has been helping me in the mornings and the peach tree is showing a slow, irregular recovery. Let’s check silver prices. What’s this, Canadians must now pay 66% tax on large capital gains? Serves them right. Biden’s campaign continues with the outdated method of thinking people will forget anything over six month’s past. Now he is claiming Trump lost debates to him in 2020 and now fears a debate. The popular perception is Trump is wining on every issue, so why debate? It just gives the crooked news a chance to spin his words—and his non-participation in that game has cost Big Media badly in their circulation. I’m surprised places like CNN are still in busines
s Silver momentarily hit $29.64 this morning. Will it break $30.00 or continue to be the most traded commodity that seems immune to the recent 25% inflation? And here is the reputedly worst webpage design in the world. And here is a link to the spacecraft collision with an asteroid, claiming it was a test to deflect an event that would wipe out the Earth. Myself, I would have told them to wait a couple hundred million years until there was actually any danger and give me the money they saved.
Tons of sports trophies.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
The latest on the recording box, I hope you like it. The hardest difficulty was the power cables. You can’t see most of them, they are now behind that small compartment at the lower back, if you can see it. Shown here the pieces are being fitted, there are more cables soon to be stored in the lid and two storage trays under the gear shown here.
Argh! Tonight I wrote two letters, one of them was the 600th (personal letter) in my life. Based on averages, that’s fifty times the output, Ken. For every letter you ever write, I come up with fifty. It came at a price. For longer than this blog has been entered, it was written by hand, and now my handwriting has deteriorated to a noticeable degree. The errors begin when I write more than roughly ten minues. I rattled off notes to Marion and JZ, and in each case found blots and stem errors unacceptable even two years ago. Even addressing the envelopes was sloppy, mind you the postmen who deliver these would know each address by heart That’s how rare such letters have become.
All else was on hold while I reviewed our song list. We are not ready for the big shows pending, but close. To front a proper show requires 32 songs played above standard. We have just 22, plus another 20 we have played before. This tells us how much work needs to be done.
The shed radio is cutting out. That is the old GE unit that has been playing almost continuously for over ten years now. Maybe that is why it only picks up Tampa. The world laughs as Biden “challenges” Trump to a debate. But it must be only on MSM, with no audience, and recorded, that is, not broadcast live. Yes folks, this can happen in a free country, because it is free—people don’t like to pay for or maintain freedom, they think once they have it, the condition is permanent. What’s that smell?
ADDENDUM
Enter a new vulnerability called the SSID Confusion attack. I quit with the details on these things 15 years ago, but they still get my attention. If you use a VPN, when you shut it down, your equipment will try to re-establish a connection with a device on your trusted list. You gave your system this SSID at setup and after that it is no longer authenticated. Some protocols use the SSID as an encryption key. The trick is for the bad guys to spoof that SSID.
They need not cry to me, I was part of the group saying this type of security should have been a priority from the day anybody first connected two computers. One feature I recommended was a single control on every computer that would list, in plain English, every site that accesses your computer and the ability to block them permanently—but keep a log of every attempt. If my original journals are ever publish, I believe I wrote that back in 1984 as part of a larger project.
For those who remember years ago when I described how A.I. was not the real thing. How it was really just very advanced pattern matching? By combing and sifting billions of private conversations and data, it could distill what the majority were thinking—but not why. And majority rule is rarely the solution for complex problems that require specialized but not mass input. There are probably 2 million useless bass players in America who would tell you I’m doing it all wrong.
After a typical lag period, the A.I. community has admitted I was right and given this phenomenon a name. When an infinite number of idiots with an infinite number if keyboards get it wrong, they are calling it an “A.I. hallucination”.
To me, the Raspberry Pi is always a microcontroller. It is not the “computer” that they are now calling their many copycat versions. I’m going to turn off my filter for news on that topic because they are going crazy over there. I don’t even like to bother going through their jargon any more. How they are selling some memory device called HAT. I could not figure what in hell they were on about, so I’m done with them.
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
May 14, 2024
One year ago today: May 14, 2023, one busy day.
Five years ago today: May 14, 2019, tame, tame, tame.
Nine years ago today: May 14, 2015, I still don’t own one.
Random years ago today: May 14, 2006, typical computer talk of the day.
The video did not work, but we have some excellent audio sections. These were recorded directly off the PA so there is no fooling with the raw quality. The Tascam is crap for live recording but it does an accurate job of capturing every mistake. I now have enough material to give a demo sound. It picked up my habit of saying “uh” at the end of long lyric passages. I stress these are not studio quality productions. They are live dance music and part of that is glossing over what are technically errors. Focusing on technique, which we are fully capable of, does not make for the right live sound and now I have a lot to back that up.
I was able to edit a few short clips. The timing is tighter than it needs to be, maybe we could channel more effort away from that. Otherwise, it is the music slot we were shooting for. It is not perfect and is not intended to be—going that route makes the music less fun and the audience can tell What’s more important is any soloist and most guitar duets will now have a nearly impossible task trying to duplicate this show. Never forget after I discovered Jimbos and put it on the musical map, every soloist who was not already on the beach circuit tried to hijack that location from me.
And the picture this morning is just for a placeholder, it is from the train museum in Plant City.
It rained all morning, so we have Tampa news, where you listen between the lines because they are a bunch of losers consistently behind GAB for new items. The comic relief stems from watching the live events on-line, then hearing the spin some hours later. The prevalent theme this time is the complete panic on the Left who know they have lost the popular vote, but only hve their time-worn tactics to fight back. And those methods are not working Trump. As they ramp up the attacks, their motives become shamefully blatant.
The FDA says the upcoming bird flu will kill one in four Americans. Here are my favorite GAB responses:
1) Hope we don't get fooled again.My favorite meme today (not reprinted) says I need A.I. to do my laundry and dishes while I read poetry. Instead, it is reading poetry while I do laundry and dishes. The Oscars went woke and now they are broke. Begging for money on-line. New York City has banned white-owned companies from bidding on tne billion-dollar airport upgrade.
2) Of course they are
3) Get your Ivermectin now
4) The summer before an election, what are the chances??
5) The plan is to kill off a large portion of us useless eaters.
6) I don't foresee any problems with that.
7) Start with vaxxed & boosted Democrats
Somewhere in Switzerland.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Just like that, I took the day off. Doing the light work of converting the recording to a computer-compatible format, my old shoulder cramps began to bother me. I made some tea and laid down. Just like back when they put us on shift work, I lost the day, waking up at 5:30PM, just in time for Festus Tuesday. This is not a new thing for me, but a holdover from nearly 30 years ago. I hate shift work for this reason alone and it is my opinion those who like shift work have no real life and don’t need one. They don’t miss what they don’t know.
There should be a photo of the unfinished box nearby, with most of the hardware already installed. It is probable only box exterior will receive any finish, probably just wood stain. All six sides of thit unit are solid ¾”, the joints all secured with gorilla glue and sixteen 2-1/2” exterior wood screws. If I can’t build the boxes fancy, I can build them strong. I plan to make more boxes of this style, as the silo taught me these are the only economical way to store anything rats can eat, like the buttons off my old drum machine.
I may put in a small divider as well, since operating the device requires at least six cables sold separately. Some of my old travel tales can be real gems. They were often made in the Cadillac, I had a one-hour timer and on long trips, I would record a few minutes of the plans or scenery, or just what was on my mind. Sadly, I gave up this practice when I lost the Cadillac around 2004 or 2005, two completely lost years to me. Other than the journals, that is. Today I found a cassette tape from my birthday in 2018, must have been one of the last.
Because shortly thereafter, this blog itself became the medium for keeping track, since after that point, the journal changed to made-for-posting. Or as JZ puts it, the most accurate record of some people’s lives that will ever exist. The tapes could be recorded directly into the computer but the plan is to get up to speed on the Tascam. So far, what works is all the controls turned to the lowest settings and letting the equipment find it’s own levels. This is not an efficient machine.
Not too tired for Gunsmoke, today’s episode was the Morgan gang taking the whole city hostage to rob the gold shipment. Festus and Dooley repair a Gatling gun while Kitty and the saloon girl, Jenny, upset all the menfolk. The history books are wrong, I saw Matt Dillon personally plug old Morgan and capture the entre gang almost single-handedly. The expected shootout did not happen because there was no gold, which no doubt saved the producers from filming expensive scenes.
Another muggy night, I stayed in the shed and added some hardware to the recording box. I took one of the travel tales to practice more on the Tascam. I found my GE recorder does not rewind, instead you must flip the cassette over and fast-forward. It will not play stereo and I found things like the reverb have to be turned off manually. It’s a workable system and I now have the tape rolling specifically to discover parameters, like how much memory is required and which levels work best. I’m not tired, but that extra snooze today didn’t rest me up either.
I have a booklet on tales from World War Two, the last “good” war. A collection of short chapters published in 2007, it is amazing how much of the censorship and propaganda has persisted. Nobody seriously believes in the Holocause anymore, not because it didn’t happen, but because the victims have lied too often and shown no remorse for lying. It is great for details of lesser-known campaigns, like Finland, Alaska, and Tobruk.
ADDENDUM
So, you think Jeff Bezos is a self-made Internet billionaire, do you? Wrong. His grandfather was head of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time a shipment of uranium went missing. Three years later, Israel tested and atomic bomb and the radioactivity confirmed it was the stolen material. All government records of the incident were destroyed.
I found an excellent documentary on the Do X, the Dornier giant flying boat, careful it is 2.1/2 hours long. I wish I’d a chance to ride one in my life. This all-metal airplane was ahead of its time, carrying 60 passengers when 14 was considered tops for other airlines. Only three were built. One flight carried something like 120 people including 9 stowaways.
Monday, May 13, 2024
May 13, 2024
One year ago today: May 13, 2023, the Mark II sawhorse.
Five years ago today: May 13, 2019, impossibly eroded.
Nine years ago today: May 13, 2015, everybody is on file.
Random years ago today: May 13, 2008, a blurry day.
How did this picture turn out so well? It kept two differing points in focus. The upclose SquirrelX feeder, and the more distant clock thermometer, showing a balmy 76°F. This same camera is going to let me down later today. This feeder is a fail, it’s the one that the weight of the rodent is supposed to slide the metal cage down and seal the feed port. But the squirrels just learn to hang from the lanyard, which is less than a squirrel-length away, and snack to their heart’s content. Shown here, the feeder has to be filled with hot pepper seed at greater expense.
And let me say it again, the tax forms are not complicated. One easy way to track your true taxes is to make a spreadsheet that contains every line from your tax file that you entered a number, even if it is zero. In most cases, your file is a special one called a tax return. The point is each entry only affects the numbers further down the page. This makes it easy to play what-if by changing any number, say your Caltier dividends, and watch the impact on your bottom line. Do it, chances are it will change your perception of taxing the rich. Every law that taxes the rich reduces your own odds of ever getting anywhere. This has already been going on so long, the poor attacking the rich, that the odds are already somewhere in the negative. I didn’t say the rich did not deserve it, only that being rich is not the opposite of being poor.
The reasoning is somewhat simple and based on the fact the rich do not use money the same way as the poor. To stay rich, they must either steal it or create something of value to the people who only consume. I figured this out quite young. Some people will pinch and go miserly to get ahead, that sort have a bad reputation. I’m the opposite, I will establish the goal in advance, then arrange a path that avoids doing the things that would block my way. But this requires extra vigilance because the shysters are out there everywhere. Anyone who has had to pay taxes on their investments, which they bought with money they had already paid taxes on feels this sting. Taxing those who invest and create is not the fair equivalent of taxing those who do not create anything. Every tax on the rich seals off an avenue of getting there.
An example is Caltier. Why, at my age, am I investing in long-term real estate? Because investing now reduces the income I would otherwise need to allocate in the future. Confused? Read what I just had to say about taxes. In 2023, Caltier generated $1,000 and it is still there, rolled over. I can count on that being better in 2024. My prediction is $1,400 if I do nothing (which is bloody unlikely). By years-end, that means a (two-year) total of $2,400 income to start 2025. Today, I invested my spare change of $52.50. In my planning, that is the equivalent of having $262,500 in my emergency (funeral) account for 30 days. And thinking in this manner means I’ll find the fifty-two bucks month after month.
What’s happening is that makes me up and running and outdistancing the pack, most of whom did not make a dollar’s interest in any month last year. If I do nothing, I can let that money ride with zero impact on my daily life or income. Ah, some of you are thinking that one through. Good. It’s that initial major push to get there that fouls up so many people. Maybe they did not spend as much time as I did in the winter looking out over that barren, frozen landscape and reach the same conclusions I did, but they were there and can’t use the excuse they didn’t know.
Put into another perspective, that $100 a month that Caltier brings in at this time is more steady money that most people will ever achieve long-term. They think it is trivial and not worth the sacrifice of $20,000 to make so little return. It is not the $100, it is the fact it stays and accumulates even while we are asleep. I did not invent this system, I’m just making the best of it. (That $100 per month was present in other forms before Caltier, it did not suddenly appear.) That makes the grand total comparable to everything I’ve made playing in bands in Florida or working overtime.
So I will soon have $2,400 income for a $20,000 investment and more on the way and that is $2,400 I did not have to take out of my paycheck if I had one. For that matter, bands and overtime have probably cost me money since I moved to Florida, if you tally only the dollars. What follows is the kava bar situation of later today and I would not trade such events because the sheer ability to have this sort of fund by my age is reward in itself. Many times over, Theresa and Ken.
“Lakes” on Titan, probably methane.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Fifty things went wrong, but the show was a success. I arrived early to set up the recording equipment, hoping to avoid the equipment problems of last week. Following is a report of the haphazard way this turned out. Here’s a description, with me seeking anything positive in a half-day that wore me to a frazzle. The old guy guitar player from last week was already there and had an excellent brand now PA head set up and he was playing 60’s hits. But he had no speaker system, so I hooked up my speakers, which beautifully expanded the sound. I decided to play through his PA and try sing the Tascam to capture this.
However, all such successes bring along their own limitations. The house is buying the PA system (my doing I choose to remind everyone) and people are bringing more of their own gear, all of which diminishes the need for my duo and begins to limit out own stage time. The event has now attracted comedians, itinerant guitarists, two crystal players, poetry-reading, and family groups in the audience. The owner is happy but also understands we can’t be driving 40 miles to play only a half hour. Meanwhile, his new PA has not arrived and when I unplug mine at 10:00PM, the stage sound goes dead (the open mic continues to past midnight).
Here’s a photo of the standup comedian. I don’t care for this brand of performance because it sounds manufactured, and it is. This evening, that guitar player with the motorcycle was playing when I got there, but his time with a brand spanking new six-channel PA head, plus a matching set of two mics with stands, again all brand new. But no PA speakers, I’ve explained this curious lack of experience and familiarity in these folks with how music is performed. I noticed this when we first got there.
I connected my speakers to his PA, making a world of difference (from playing through guitar amps) and connected the recorder. I won’t know until tomorrow, plus my camera acted up on stage again and I’ve long ago told of the impossibility of finding anyone in Florida who correctly knows how push a button and work such a device. Would not be a perfectly rotten time to mention that the Wednesday jam collapsed completely after I withdrew our unappreciated support? Why, the people quit showing up and everybody knows that is pure coincidence.
See the guitarist we first backed up on the first show, he’s jamming with the motorcycle guy in this dramatic stage photo. It’s become a real session, you can just make out the two small cubes on the floor, which are my PA speakers. But they are now bringing more of their own gear, and tonight may represent our last full show—things are moving along.
What is on the horizon? Two things. The Prez is away for three weeks, and I may consider doing the kava bar solo, both with bass and guitar (by comparison, I’m quite good on a six-banger). I would be reliant on that house PA getting there, but I already promised to help the owner set it up. Plus, the motorcycle guy realizes he needs speakers, the principle here is I would not have to pack equipment. The second item is the owner has again mentioned the car show, which is pending, and that the duo is what he is looking for. Such gigs are the Holy Grail of the stage band omniverse.
Daytime gigs are like playing the boat show; if you are smart you will be nice to everybody because you don’t know who they might be. Remember the 1890s mantra, “Money is honey, my little sonny, and a rich man’s joke is always funny.” The sheer stupidity of digital camera design does not help. I asked the guy tonight to check of the red record dot was on, he said yes, looking at the power light, duh. So all I got was 46 seconds of video. Of the other guitar player. Digital cameras have the Japanese gremlin. They work fine while you are standing there watching them. But leave them on a stand and get on stage? You lose.
ADDENDUM
Here’s a good place to mention the evolution of my own duo. We have mastered all the basic rules of how to interpret larger bands for duo presentation. While it took longer than I planned, we have also much gotten further with. We can pretty much “hear” what needs doing to capture the personality of most songs, distilling it in real time to what sounds right. To me the telling point is how the audience can tell instantly what song is being presented without us using any tracks, pedals, or gimmicks. This was a challenge because it meant each of us had to modify away from what you naturally hope to do best, sacrificing that for the common good.
Around a third of our material is now “big band” tunes that other guitarists have told me were impossible. They are not wrong and I know what they are hearing, but that’s my point. They are not hearing it and it took me years to get over caring about that. I want the audience to hear that. I’m going over our song list another time to sort it into two broad categories. We have the kava bar set, but I also would like to have another less tame set ready just in case. We don’t play “Cocaine Blues” at a family show and neither should you.
There are two emerging problem areas, but they tend to cancel out. One is the fragility of the show. We must both play at optimum level to get the effect and surprises and even moods can throw things off. A dynamite gal in the crowd and I’ll forget lyrics and the Prez still has tinges of good old ordinary stage fright, he knows our material but does not have the same confidence in it that I do. To counterbalance, we can ace over most mistakes and some of it gets downright hilarious. We need that Legion gig and we need it for six months. That will transform us into the band I had in mind when I walked off the Hippie’s stage ten years ago. What a lifetime accomplishment that would be for me, anyway.
Sunday, May 12, 2024
May 12, 2024
One year ago today: May 12, 2023, slower than usual.
Five years ago today: May 12, 2019, he got home early.
Nine years ago today: May 12, 2015, “a low raised bridge”.
Random years ago today: May 12, 2009, aboard the USS N. Carolina.
A little more research on the potential new gig says it’s a good match. Don’t expect rapid results, the Prez is off on holidays next week until the second week of June. My strategy is to map out a loose schedule based on all the information I have. Dominant is the club is already booked ahead for two months. I will plan my summer break to leave July and August mostly open. I dislike demo tapes which are outdated the moment they are made. So that leaves me a window around June 10th to arrange a live audition. We also know band cancellations are a problem for local clubs, so we should be ready to jump in at the first opportunity.
I’ve planned for that as well. Being a duo means larger groups cannot undercut us. I’ve watched how these bands showcase, which is not the right formula a lot of the time. When you dance with a gal, you want her paying attention to you, not the band. The other bands are good, in fact, most of the time they are too good. That’s a big part of the reason I went for the amateur sound. When it comes to the small dance club, maybe it is other bands who will find it hard to compete.
It’s a quiet morning, so come along for a glimpse at the underbelly of the music management process. I already know we will be up against some of Polk’s finest. But I know all these bands and they are overkill. They formed a lot of my decision to get back to a basic “amateur” duo sound. These bands put on a damn good show, if that is what you want and even if that is not what you want. See where I’m going with this?
By noon, I’ve identified the three serious contenders, and they have all the prime time slots parceled out between themselves. The are two family bands and good of Etta from Boss Hogg, who doesn’t really have a band. Family bands are the only type of band you can never really quit. The Good Stuff is one guitar player with his wife and daughter. See also the other photo of Two Smooth, husband & wife. These groups both use heavy backing tracks or else sound rather thin. Great harmonies, but I like to point out most people can’t dance to that.
It amuses me when bands that use tracks claim they can adapt to any room. My next task is to go on-line and find where possible what tunes they play. If there is overlap, I deal with that separately. I’ll plan my approach around what these bands do and emphasize we do not use tracks, because if I don’t people think they hear them. Both these bands will slip broadway tunes (like “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” into the mix if you don’t watch out. Another sure sign of backing tracks in a massive song list. The duo lists over 140 tunes on their page.
It sure looks like the Democrats are going to try another election steal. Their attitude is that they got away with it and that gives them an historical precedent. Bad thinking, that assumes they can keep pushing the limit and it will turn into acceptance. No, it smolders like forever and then you have a big bang.
Taking stock, the Fulton County case has resulted in charges against the prosecutors, the New York hush money case is headed for a mistrial, the J6 case has been zapped by the Supreme Court, and today the Secret Document case has been put off indefinitely. The Democrat goal to make Trump into a felon so he could not run for office has completely fallen apart. If they do manage to pin something on Trump, rumor is he would rule from jail. The walls are closing on the Deep State. They have to do something fast but they are out of steam. I wonder which of them will break and spill the beans? It’s not as simple as charging them, because all the people who would arrest them are on the take.
The one I would like to see fall is that sinister Jack Smith. He just plain irks me. I’ve not followed the details, but it seems due to a bureaucratic delay at his end, somebody started filing charges against Trump before the alleged stolen documents were shipped to Florida. Ooops! Now evidence emerges that the Feds put fake “Top Secret” stickers on Trump’s storage boxes. Remember these are news headlines, I don’t always have time to go review the full articles.
Tornado siren.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Looking for AlkaSeltzer and kept finding this aisle of cold medicine that does not work? And it costs $11 a box? Don’t give up, the real AlkaSelter is over in another shelf, keep looking. They must like it when they make you keep looking. The only active ingredient is ASA, which I am supposed to take daily as a blood thinner. Regular AlkaSeltzer is my choice—when you can find it.
What, you didn’t know that trick? Squirrels hate the smell of vinegar. Spray their haunts and they will move. The aroma goes away overnight. Later, the fence cleanup took longer than expected. I finally had to get out the electric chain saw. I can assure you those weird fig-like bushes are not coming back in my lifetime. I sawed them down to stump level. Hours later, I still have not raked up the last of the debris. I retreated to the much cooler work shed and finished more of the recording box. It was an eighth inch off square. Strange, since the pieces were cut on a sled using a jig.
You know the rules, and sometimes the top story is a dud. Since the last kava gig, I can’t find my blue scribbler. It contains the latest song lists and gig information. I usually know where things go missing but I was about to give up on this one. You know that metal tool box where I store the PA cables? It has a large lid, which you clamp down over the cables and snap it shut. You see, the cables spring back once the lid is closed. If you slip something inside there of exactly the right dimensions, it can get pressed up into the cavity and hold itself in place as it tried to spring back. And unless you haul the box out of the van and fully open it, you are unlikely to see any inside that lid. Found it.
What is this noise at 3:15AM? Two fire trucks and a police car at the house across the way. That place has been the trouble spot of the neighborhood for years. It’s the lady, she’s nice enough, but the daughter not so much. I’m not going out there, but I did see a mass of smoke and a bit of flame from the back part of the building. There are some sheds back there. It’s always something whenever that daughter is around and I saw her car there this afternoon. When I say daughter, I believe she is at least 60 years old.
ADDENDUM
The following was written for another discussion, not this blog. I’ll chance you might find it amusing. I’ve known for some time there is a demand for country dance music, yet could not figure out why the bands did not exist around here. Now I know at least partly why. There is small group with a tight grip on the comparatively tiny live music circuit from east Lakeland to Winter Haven. Hire outside and you could find yourself stuck with disk jockeys. The music coordinator told me he met with woe trying to find bands that fit.
The music market since COVID has tightened up considerably and the bands that survived have a distinct manner about them, playing a lot of the same material. This evolution really began around the same time as the Internet was taking off. Call it 1995. After that, the availability of multi-track recorders and the ready-made on-line distribution system changed bands forever, giving rise to the indie (independent artist) period. Many musicians remember the great pay from the old days but have no real clue that it is the times that have changed, not the competition. They did not keep up. If anything else has changed, it is the composition of the poor people who now consider themselves middle class, a group most bands thus no longer represent.
We are in a new age of management-based bands. The old ways are gone, and what I mean by old is their attitude. Before 1990, you’d be hard pressed to find a band that was not based on a class for their support. Most bands played middle class music to middle class audiences without giving it a second thought. It was the other way around, most of those bands could not have existed without that basis of support. And today, such bands all sound alike.
Another example is Blues. That era is over, but that doesn’t mean nobody plays it. Rather, a different sort of musician plays it. When the Blues artists died off, there were no new bands to replace them, rather you saw the rise of the aficianado, the artist who could clone to perfection, but could not create. Rock and country have both undergone the same transition. There will always be exceptions, but that is not what I’m discussing.
The topic here is the changing band philosophy, the area of music management. Many still ignore it or claim it has no weight, but they are not paying attention. It now takes twenty-five years to be an overnight success. Once the clones take root, you are unlikely to find bands that shoot to the top by riding one talent to death. You know, the way Clapton and Hendrix did it. Instead, the success stories are those who have dozens of small advantages—and that is where management comes into play, not in the music itself, but in the successful organization of those often-invisible nuances.
This comes in many forms. Easiest to recognize is what many call a “sound”, and even management-deniers correctly know without it the band will flop. This factor is only a starting point and there are countless failed bands who thought otherwise. While there is no ultimate correct answer, bands have now moved from class-based to management-based and those that take this into account have a much better chance of success, however that success is defined.
Saturday, May 11, 2024
May 11, 2024
One year ago today: May 11, 2023, air, not water.
Five years ago today: May 11, 2019, at the Octagon.
Nine years ago today: May 11, 2015, North Palm Beach.
Random years ago today: May 11, 2012, “for under $30k”.
What’s that beeping at 4:00AM? What? Silver hit $29, my breakeven point? Keep going, little buddy. Shoot up to $200 just for a day, daddy needs a new pair of shoes. My appetite is back along with three cold sores, so I did have something after all. This translates into a luscious breakfast of grits, cheese biscuits, gravy, coffee, and one solitary fried egg. The country gets a morning laugh from Biden who falsely says inflation was 9% when he took over (it was 1.4%) and claims he hammered it down to 8.5%. This is a tactic that genuinely worked time after time on stupid people before the Internet. This could be one helluva news day. More coffee, please.
[[Author’s note: this picture shows the cheapest place that met my criteria, meaning mainly a two bedroom that is immediately livable. That rules out any ‘hoods. A $75,000 hut in Brownsville. This gets past my 60 mile filter. It’s 155 miles away, nearer to Memphis.]
And cash will be short here until August. The accounts meanwhile are held a minimums, which includes Caltier. It is still closed for compliance, which was supposed to be temporary ten days ago. Actually, only one part of it is closed but only to new investment. The dividends have continued. Inflation is insane, the fact there has been no public backlash reveals how well the Democrats have got the majority divided against itself. I figure by the time I need $4,800 for my own funeral, the inflation game has been lost. Not here, but in some places butter is now $7 a pound. Even then if I die, the best scenario is if I could get four months notice.
I f I can’t give you action news, I can give you really hard-to-find trivia. I’ve got some bor you. If you have old Nautical Almanacs, you can reuse the Sun and Aries figures every four years with reasonable accuracy. Not so for the Moon and planets, the explanation is far over my head, you might say.
Ah, sun up, and I’m much better, thanks. Maybe slate an extra rehearsal, we need those six new songs. Trumps prosecutors continue to be rounded up for sedition, many of them facing the same charges they orchestrated against him. Even Rasmussen, the decidedly pro-liberal pollsters, grudgingly admit Trump is 10% ahead, but have to rate him a ridiculously low 46% to do it. The crowds outside his latest rallies are three times the building capacities, themselves in the tens of thousands. Did you see those two dumb bitches trying to destroy the Magna Carta? Time to start throwing these climate change bastards in the slammer.
Dolan Springs, California.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
We got it a solid two hours of rehearsal, and by solid I mean we specifically target problem areas. We worked on out stops, we’ve learned from experience how to slightly emphasize them. Predictably, we looked closer at why we sound better playing minor chords and have no answers on that one. There are three Merle Haggard tunes we’ve been neglecting. We wrapped it up by just past 5:00PM and the sun was still high in the sky. So I took out my old sextant and took a few measurements for luck.
The place is a beauty. On the lakeshore. A real stage and a real dance floor. I finally met the social coordinator and was he glad I walked in that door. I’ve put it off for three weeks because I had nobody to sign me in. Finally, I just walked in and asked one of the barmaids to sponsor me. Turns out the club is indeed heavy on dancing, and who do we know that insists our music sets consist primarily of dance music? That’s foxtrot, swing, two-step, and slow Texas moves, folks, we’re custom made for such a joint.
Turns out the coordinator has the same university degree as myself and the finances were a shambles before he took over. So were some of the bands that were on their roster and he had just finished firing them. He said right off that if I was an acoustic guitar player, get lost. In his search for bands, he wound up hiring two acoustic players in a row and learned his lesson. He accurately described how they were excellent musicians but could not get the crowd on that dance floor. He was horrified. I’d say his worries are now over.
[Author’s note: it was amusing to hear this description of the guitar players from another source. They were the heads-down type that play what they want. The type of guitarist I disdain. Yes, they win music contests but nobody is good enough to force their brand of music on others. I happily supplied him with the correct vocabulary to describe these yahoos. I know they are fellow musicians, but I also know you don’t pull a stunt like that without lying through your teeth and knowing you are in the wrong venue.
I’m surprised I did not know of this place. It faces the lake, not the street, so I’ve driven past it numerous times thinking it was a country club. Winter Haven is a tough market, but we’ve worked hard and deserve to get in at a top-level establishment ]
He’s now cautious and asked for a demo tape. These tapes take time and effort to produce, so I counter-offered a more economical arrangement for us both, one that cannot be faked like a tape. A demo involves setting up the equipment, so why not set it up and let him hear us play live? I know it only costs me $34 to put on a show. The Prez is out of town next weekend, but the following one we are slated to do a stage audition. The club was pleasantly surprised that I knew exactly the parameters and was familiar with how things needed to be run. It makes me one easy musician to negotiate with, that’s for sure.
I’ve known for some time there was a good market for a country dance band and once the Prez was up to speed, it did not take long (three weeks) to find something. Now, more of my take on this. I’ll advise the Prez to polish up the Merle Haggard set. This club is in a wealthy part of town and the clientele I saw were a good 15 years younger than I was expecting. It’s an upscale neighborhood and the setting is more like a private resort than a watering hole. If there is a bulletin board, always read it for a knack of what energy level, when you see boat races instead of bake sales, that’s where I like to gig.
My best plan is to set up at their request on a day when nothing happens, say a Sunday afternoon. When I said years ago there was a market for this kind of band, here is what I had in mind. Rumor is they pay quite well. These days, that means $160. And for the record, the other club tried to rekindle the Wednesday jam, I said no, and they landed flat on their arses, boo-hoo. You see, with music you never get rid of the drama, but you can make sure everybody gets their fair share.
ADDENDUM
For the umpteenth time, NASA announces a plasma rocket engine to get astronauts to Mars in 60 days.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)