One year ago today: April 11, 2016, always use WASAPI.
Five years ago today: April 11, 2012, dusty, unpaid labor.
Nine years ago today: April 11, 2008, outnumbered 30 to 1.
Random years ago today: April 11, 2007, not another guitarist . . .
How do you like the front yard hydraulic system? The birdbath drips by capillary action along the string, down into the dish on the ground. And the cats can get the water without leaping up into the bowl. I’m going to build a simple wooden bar across the top of the birdfeeder to see if that prevents the bully birds from alighting. I looked at the wire cages and plastic baffles and nothing looked right. Today was more chasing around, so you get what came along. It turns out the logo for Burlington Northern was a fake. It was some lady named Beverly N. who liked the design.
It wasted the morning, but I had a refill and watched more candle videos. As usual, the rest of the gang has no patience for the research so I come across as the expert on everything. I found wicks that stand up on their own, and a candle made of Crisco lard that reputedly burns for 46 hours. It has to be in a glass container, so is it really a candle? Agt. M is fascinated by that idea, but says they should be made smaller and burn for less time. Makes sense.
The guitar player has gotten through and we have a audition slash rehearsal at his place tomorrow morning. He’s got a temporary place near the highway, so I don’t mind the 22 mile commute. He’s from New York and can do a solo act, which sets off alarms. But he is so much better than anything local, I have to chance it. I don’t think he knows how far above the others he is. I have to get him into a duo before he finds out. The positive news is we’ve each heard or played every tune on both our lists. He has some moaner-droner-groaners, but he sings them. When that happens, I let them. If he wants to sing “Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain” before or after I do some Trisha Yearwood, good luck.
I checked out assayer courses, and it is not for me. I’d be more interested in how to smelt the metals in small quantities. The ancients could do it with a wood fire and look at some of the gold found in their tombs. I’d be happy to get a fraction of that quality. Talk about a surprise, the top Internet course in assaying is offered by my old alma mater. That’s the college with standards so high, the local universities were socially compelled to allow credits for their courses. I have two degrees from that school.
My decision is no, the course is not what I want. It is divided into five modules which cost in excess of $650 each. This is correspondence course, and I’m openly leery of such that include laboratory time. An important part of any assaying would be the hands-on. So, I shall continue looking. My goal is to learn how to refine gold at least away from nugget, rice, or flake form. To learn is not the same as to actually do, so this is not any kind of commitment to performance.
Should I go to Karaoke tonight? Because I haven’t been out of the house unless you want to classify grocery shopping and sandblasting social events. Trust me, I’d rather be partying but it seems all the people my own age don’t like to do that any more. For most people over 40, good times often involve a lot of hired help. I’ll opt for music, thank you. My second choice, I admit, is staying home in my comfy new place. Last evening was just that, I watched a Seagal movie. What a hoot.
It’s not so much that he kicks the snottlies out of the bad guys, but how these characters are portrayed. Any chop-chop guy can beat up the gang members and secret agents, ho-hum. But Seagal, he pounds the crap out of the types that so desperately need it at street level. The crooked cops, the tough-guy bodyguards, the rich kid. This movie was about a toxic waste dumper, and of course, Seagal finds a wholesome hillbilly lady, a beekeeper, too.
The American way.
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Didn’t I just mention the big beautiful building for sale that would make a dandy hotel? It was a topic of hot discussion at the Mongolia, but way out of my financial league. I have news. Some major developer has bought the place just this morning. And it is slated for precisely what I said. The upstairs is to be a hotel, and from what I hear, the interior is something else. The downstairs, a luxury night club and top notch eatery. Rumor is the buying party has big bucks and knows what they are doing. Isn’t that something? (I'm already calling it the "lawyer hotel", but confess, I don't know the difference between a lawyer and an attorney.)
I love entertainment. We’ve decided on an initial list. Here it is (below) for the record. It reads like the 1965 top ten, but we are both the generation that began playing these songs after the were hits, as in long after, when they became classics. So add at least 25 years before calculating we must be 80 years old. What’s more, these will quickly be followed by another batch from the same era if this flies.
Long Hair Country Boy
Don’t Rock The Jukebox
Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain.
Hey Good Lookin’
Cocaine Blues
Mamma Tried
Jambalaya
Boot Scootin’ Boogie
Six Days On The Road
Oh Lonesome Me
This list has some hidden advantages, the best one is that nobody else around here plays these tunes, yet every one is a million-seller. Some might conclude the wrong thing, but the true explanation is that Guitar Center doesn’t teach these songs. These are all familiar music to the crowd that still pays and it would take the clubs I’ve seen by storm. I don’t even go to hear any of the local bands any more because I’ve heard all their sets twice. This, club-wise, is all new material.
I talked to the guy on the phone a little later. Like all of us, he thinks he can move into the Florida music scene without becoming involved in the politics. Is he in for rude awakening, I speak from experience. I once said the system here would slow down Superman. When they say third world, that’s what the “world” part means. It’s that process whereby a few bad people can bring an entire society down to their sub-level, see Canada. Let in a few hundred thousand immigrants from countries with no history of democracy and you’ll see what I mean. Just to compete, you are forced to adopt behaviors that are wrong and destructive in the long run, or you won’t eat today.
Such it is with music in this corner of the nation. I’ve coined the new term “guitar freak” to cover my collective criticism of the situation. Think of all the things I’ve described about the evil guitarist and that’s to what I refer. They’ve made finding a guitarist in Florida into a drawn-out process of starting over again countless times, weeding out the Guitar Center crowd. These are the talentless hacks who can only play the few tunes they’ve learned by rote and go through lengths to disguise their inability to learn anything new in good order. Whether this latest project flies or not, the new guy doesn’t know he will one day fondly look back on this as the best of times.
Other work gets done besides the house, like getting back to the hurricane lantern. I redesigned it to have just two different pieces. The top and bottom, and the four corner stiles, each set is identical. They are assembled with dowels, which also form the feet beneath the bottom and decorative stubs on the top. Agt. R wants to fit the top dowels with wing nuts, so the candle can be changed by removing the lid. I feel the little wicket-like door on one face adds a necessary bit of character to the product. It would involve becoming an expert at installing tiny brass hinges. I never could do that.
“I can’t count how many time
I’ve failed math.”
You’ve heard of “As Found On TV”? Well, here’s the next fancy bench as found on roadside. There’s a few dozen folks around town who are trained to call when they see something useful being curbsided. This solid wood masterpiece is about to be transformed. We had a half-hour discussion this afternoon about the advantages of selling on-line. I say throw everything on Craigslist and only further advertise only what doesn’t go fast for the asking price. We are finding more readily saleable material the deeper we did. For instance, today we uncovered a set of matching screen doors. Except without the screens, but I happen to know where there is a forty-foot roll of the stuff not being used.
Trying as much as I could to listen to the entire radio news report, I turned it off at the point they started talking about politics. Like most educated Americans, I don’t need or want any political parties, so it is not a question of where they are good or bad. There should be a few people with jobs looking after limited aspects of national concern, but they should not be leaders or politicians, and they should not be allowed to form parties. Just employees whose work is graded against historical performance standards.
Even as a child, I noticed the correlation between peace and prosperity at home and the amount of attention paid to other people’s business. It is boring, useless, live-nothing types who are most obsessed with gossip and sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Hence, I am an isolationist. Quit giving North Korea a reason for hating us and they’ll go away. We got plenty to do at home, like these states that want to become “sanctuaries”.
Ha. Like the Texas guy said, since when do elected people think they can pick and choose which laws they are going to obey? Round them up, Mr. Trump. Not that I agree with big government, but places like California are totally dependent on it. That state has consistently proven it cannot behave financially responsible. Don’t just cut off the immigration programs, cut deep into their welfare roles. Let them know that you can never put enough people on welfare to tell the world what to do.
Now there is the Amgen issue. This is the big pharm company that produces the shots that brought my cholesterol under control. The treatment I get for free that costs others $14,200 per year. The company and its 74 lobbyists in DC has been slipping last minute clauses into larger bills, knowing the average house voter does not have the time to find and read them. Well, I’m not on the side of Amgen for doing that, but I am against the people that allow Amgen or anybody to touch bills for the previous month before voting. What? I don’t care if that slows things down. No last minute changes. Period.
ADDENDUM
While toying with the gold idea, I came up with a few ideas that I’ve never seen in print before. As a diversion, I’ll relate what those were. They involve gold as money, not the paper crap that Americans are required by law to accept when it is offered as payment. (That’s what the “legal tender” part means.) And we’ve talked before why I prefer silver for smaller transactions. Few people carry change for an ounce of gold. People prefer paper money that is exchangeable for gold. Now, let’s move to a desert island and go over my thoughts.
We lean toward the loaf of bread, again for convenience. This causes a need some multiple of the dollar for larger purchases. That’s the easy part. We issue bills in denominations of ten, fifty, a hundred and so on. You can add fives and twenties, but you get the idea. And we’ll make all the big bills even numbers so two people can split them equally. The smaller bills act as change for the larger bills. All this paper money will hold its value as long as the total of ones, tens, hundreds, etc. never exceeds the total amount of gold.
Now, we look the other direction. What about purchases that comprise fractions, rather than multiples, of dollars? There immediately arises the problem that no matter what “size” we make the dollar, we still have to make change for that dollar. This is the theory of coins. We don’t want to print bills of small fractions, again because we want the money to be convenient. Now we get to the point—how many coins?
Suppose on our island, we have enough gold for a million dollars, and we have already printed up a suitable total of dollars to match. But what ratio of coins will be needed for the population to make change in their daily small transactions? For each dollar, how many quarters, dimes, and nickels need to be minted so that people can conduct business? Business will suffer if there are not enough coins, but we don’t want too many—or do we? There must be a proper ratio of coins we create for the dollars. What is it? How many coins do we need so people can make change for the dollars in circulation?
Do you see the problem? Each person entering the marketplace cannot realistically carry enough change for every one-dollar bill he is likely to encounter. Some will be made up for other change he receives, but if he does not carry enough of a float, it means constantly looking around for a vendor who will “make change”. So there is, indeed, an amount of change that theoretically is right. My guess is that each person will need a minimum of $2 in change, because he should be prepared to buy or sell, yet cannot ever be certain the other guy will have enough change. So, in total, what amount of coins are needed to “make change” for our million-dollar economy? Do you know? Say $10,000 in coins? Maybe $100,000?
Let’s add two complicating factors. One is that our little island adds a bit to its wealth each year because there is a gold mine on the far side. For each increase in gold, we print corresponding dollars, but should there be a corresponding increase in the number of coins for change? If so, what ratio? Ah, now you’re thinking like me, that this second factor is not so easy. Since the coins are used mainly for making change, do they need to be included in the total amount backed by gold? Or is it enough for us that coins could be exchanged for the dollar which could in turn be exchanged for the gold?
Do we detract from the number of bills in circulation to include the coins? Or can we just mint up extra essentially valueless coins in the quantities the public needs? Why not make only the dollars and not the coins redeemable? Why have we never seen an economics text that addresses this situation? What about coins that get taken out of circulation, as when lost or collected? And should the coins themselves contain precious metal? Remember what happened to all the US silver coins when the metal value exceeded the face value. In conclusion, all this boils down to is I was wondering what ratio of coins is required for each dollar, and if those coins are included in the calculations of national worth.
Your turn.
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