One year ago today: January 3, 2017, look at the hinges.
Five years ago today: January 3, 2013, on my first guitar.
Nine years ago today: January 3, 2008 , God’s database.
Random years ago today: January 3, 1980, my mother was Canadian.
An uncommon picture for you, this is the view over into the neighbor’s yard. That, folks, is a completely restored 1951 John Deere orchard tractor. I told you, the guy is an avid collector and he rebuilds everything from plowshares to pinball machines. His project this week was a new ramp on that trailer you see under the tractor. The ramp that came from the factory would have folded under that tractor, so he build new one. Wish I could weld like that. You may have noticed the frozen raindrops on the car window. The entire country is experiencing a little negative global warming. Two hundred miles north of here, this is snow. It melts to freezing rain before it gets here, and that’s what you see.
However, leave it alone, I say. Something about that whole situation stinks and I’d rather watch what happens than get involved. Now, let’s talk music and band-forming. I stated before that I’m keen on spotting how many hours of practice have been put in. That doesn’t mean I’m not lenient, but the list of allowable excuses is pret-t-t-ty short indeed. Today’s rehearsal was a real balancing act over that issue. I realized zero hours guitar practice happened. At the same time, I’ve told you how I felt the rehearsals are too close together to allow time for learning as well as practice. I also thought it would be better to allow the new lady to reach that conclusion for herself. She did.
Next get-together is in a week. She knows she’s got a double workload but seems eager to leap into it. She still struggles with lapsing into comping, but I know what a gremlin that becomes once it gets in your system. I don’t remember how long it took me to break the habit, but it was a while. Her double tasks are learning to play real rhythm and learning the startup tunes we’ve agreed upon. While these pieces of music are partially chosen to be super easy, there are always a couple of hurdles. One is that the tunes, while familiar, are not universally played. And secondly, some are tunes that even long-term guitar players had never considered playing in a band.
An example is Twitty’s “Tight-Fittin’ Jeans”. It’s a catchy pub song, but it has a fiddle break instead of a guitar solo, meaning it consistently gets over-looked by the wankers. For now, let’s focus on where there has been progress. We have a potential nickname, how do you like “Lady Nick”? I think it’s catchy and close enough to her real name. She has grasped the concept of playing the implied rhythm and likes it. It’s can be a real eye-opener to those who’ve never done it.
Abandoned Soviet Radar
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It’s actually going to freeze tonight, so I was home early battening the hatches. Most older Florida houses, like this one, have no built in heating system. A space heater in each room is sufficient except when it gets unusually cold, so I move two heaters into one room and kind of live there till it warms up, which is a couple of days at most. Hey, it also means I get a lot of practice time myself. Lady Nick is now keen on the methods of “taking the song apart”.
I explained the process, how she might wind up in a week hating the song, that it was part of the process and she would like it again once it gets reassembled with a guitar part that captures the character of the piece. She’s there already with a couple songs, but these were learned on my time, not hers, and she knows it. She’s assured me she now understands the process and will get right to it. And next Tuesday, we shall see. Overall, I’m okay with how things are going.
Myself, I never had the luxury of someone telling me what to expect, so it took me considerably longer to work out the winning formula. We have so far taken three tunes through the process and the results are impressive. She sometimes gets lost in the groove which is nearly amazing considering we are just a two-piece. She has embraced the concept and needs no more persuasion how well it works. I would point out, however, that she is still playing the guitar parts I previously arranged myself. We need her to get to the stage of arranging her own, and hopefully, a real guitar player will do a better job than I can.
The odds of winning are actually zero. No matter how you round off the odds, that is correct, the odds are zero. But approximately twelve people in the universe have defied those odds—and the lottery people know it. The premise behind the PowerBall was rolling over the jackpot, where previously, it had been divided between all the winners, after, of course, the lotto people took their cut. The lottery also brought in the system of partial winners, including the free ticket, so that approximately one person in nine wins something through partial matches.
In 2012, the lotto commission began rolling over the jackpot, similar to a system already in place in Spain. As the jackpot snowballs, it produces a feeding frenzy. Even people like me who don’t gamble will buy a ticket on the big one. It is not the one chance in 292 million that matters, it is the chance to be part of history. With jackpots of a half-billion, other social factors come into sway, with people buying tickets for such reasons as just not wanting to be left out. It’s a massive game indeed, and the lottery people are very adept at the psychology below the surface.
If you read the lists, since the PowerBall (not in it’s present form) has been around since, what was it, 2003 or something, it appears there are close to 200 mega-winners. Defined as someone winning more than $10 million, the list also includes people who split the prizes. Unlike Britain, who keep the winners anonymous, the US makes it very difficult to collect without public revelation of names, a dangerous proposition at best. The actual number of single big PowerBall winners, no splitting of the prize, has been twelve, I think. I don’t follow that closely. It is a phenomenon that anyone wins at all, much less twelve of them.
[Author’s note: the odds of winning are actually probably even worse than 1 in 292 million because of several factors that cause some combinations to rarely be sold. Example, 65, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, even though the odds are identical to any other numbers. What’s more people tend to play lower numbers like birthdays, meaning less likelihood of winning, but if there is a win, it will be multiple.]
ADDENDUM
Finally, I cracked the cryptogram of New Year’s Eve. Note the illustration on that post is NOT the puzzle to which I allude. It was a double Playfair, each second letter using a different grid. The keywords were MERY XMAS.
Last Laugh
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