It’s a picture of a man taking his five-foot long iguana for a walk. Why, isn’t that what it looks like? This was just outside the shop and we took some pictures of Fred holding it. The word is that it is one very strong but tame animal. I think I’d prefer a hamster, or maybe a dog with a wig.
The winter [cold] snap is here, roughly on schedule. Estimate is 55 degrees. At least it is getting light again, but if I told you that was at 6:17 AM, you might get the impression I was slipping in here that I was am early riser and you are not. So I won’t even mention it, you know, that I was outside emptying the trash by then. After a breakfast of coffee and bannock with cheese and peanut butter.Just so nobody gets jealous, I will note that the first thing that gave out with this bout of the flu was my sense of taste, so I did not enjoy brekky as much as I would have otherwise. In fact, I clicked on the television to see the weather. How middle class, I know. But how would I otherwise learn that Gerald Ford just died? I mean, I thought he kicked the bucket back in the 80s. Or that somebody drove into a car parked on the shoulder of Tamiami Trail, then another car came along and did the same.
This type of accident in Florida needs examination. Tamiami Trail is around eighty miles long and except for casual bend around half-way, it is straight and level. No surprises, it is good all-weather road, a huge levee to the north and but for small stretches of roadside bush, unlimited visibility in all other directions. It is as safe a road as exists anywhere. No distractions, no road signs, no gas stations, the thing goes through the Everglades. My opinion is that anyone who hits a parked car on that road should be convicted of attempted manslaughter plus civil charges. [I am not saying it was a Cubans who rammed the cars, but I am saying that is how you bet your money.]
Channel 7 confirms 55 degrees and is making a day of the Gerald Ford thing. Well, that makes the second day in my life he did anything I ever heard of. I didn’t get into the shop until 11:00 AM to put in most of the time into getting my network back up, finding another half-dozen obstacles nobody else knew about. One is that some programs just cannot be made to work the same even in identical circumstances. Opera is difficult to install on different user accounts on the same computer.
I tricked it by using an admin account to change the limited accounts to admins temporarily, but that only worked 50% of the time. Fortunately, once on each computer so anybody who complains can just switch accounts. One thing, I seem to be able to zero in on drivers better than usual, which is good because the person who invented drivers needs his nuts removed if they already weren't. I wonder if there is any money to be made in teaching people how they work. Probably not, people who need them likely don’t even know what they are.
Unless I get called out, I need at least another day in the shop on this network. Wherever I get something to work, another issue pops up, which I recognize as part of the advanced learning curve. This all pays off down the line but for now it seems part of the needless hassle that surrounds the entire networking process.
Which is what made practice tonight a welcome break. Everyone was a half-hour late which I used to drop into the Guitar Center and pick up an adapter and notice a new babe working the counter. A sharp one, too, in fact, smart enough to kind of treat all the male staff like slightly retarded delivery boys. She latched right on to me. In return, I’m smart enough to know that babes don’t latch on to me without an ulterior motive (and then get pissed off they find out that I knew that all along).
The bad news is that Brian is not recovering noticeably and still experiences pain over any simple motion, he mentioned playing a recorder put him out of commission earlier. There is some progress but most of it is directly attributable to the rehearsal time while I’m there, that is, although things are moving along, there is little evidence that he is doing much on his own. I allow that he may not know how to practice any other way.
He burned me a CD of tunes he already knows. I'm leery of guitar players who only want you to learn their songs, but they won't learn yours. He uses an Apple but I was able to make them into MP3s. I doubt one person in a thousand in Florida knows the correct theories of burning CDs. We ran through most of the tunes we’ve decided on although none of them are ready to go. I said some encouraging words but he’ll have to get more mileage than he has so far. I’m glad that he adapted to the drum box and often does not even know it is there, giving the music a natural quality.
I finally heard “Crazy Heart” for the first time, a Merle Haggard hit. All I can say is if I did hear it when I was younger, it is no wonder I didn’t listen to it. Yuck. I’ll jazz it up a bit so the audience doesn’t fall asleep. We have more than enough tunes to play a gig, meaning I hope we don’t have to dig too far into his list. Some of the tunes are such vague hits that I don’t know them by name and the CD does not have titles. Guitarists tend toward a steady diet of long and draggy “marathon” tunes, like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Rocky Racoon”.
I’m the opposite. One slow song per hour is plenty, if it was up to me I would play one slow song per night. I have yet to see a dance floor fill up over a “waltz”. You’ve got to get them up there and tire them out, then they’ll dance a slow one. And I only have to be right 51% of the time. Actually, when the Hippie is around, you can best that New Age rookie by being right 5% of the time. But you never heard that here.
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