Remember when you bought a bag of apples? How many were in the bag? You didn’t count, a bag was a bag. Even when you bought apples by the pound, you could always weigh the bags and buy the heaviest one, but you never thought about how many apples were there. Take a look at what some “efficiency expert” has come up with. A dozen apples, like you would buy eggs. Exactly twelve and no more.
This had an extremely important side-effect, no pun intended. Many consumers perceived the individually wrapped pills to be more valuable. They could pay the same price for twelve pills on a card as for 100 of the same pills in a bottle. It did not take long before even the cheapest ASA and cold medicines cost 8 times as much.
I do not view this as progress or as anything new. Anyone at any time could have come up with the plan, but it was understood that nobody would stoop that low. This is one instance where I do blame the schools for not teaching values [where elsewhere I think schools should be prevented from doing so]. I was taught that efficiency was an increase in productivity using fewer inputs, these low-grade mentalities have resorted to counting the apples in your bag.
Trouble in Toshiba-land. We have begun getting a stream of brand new Toshiba laptops into the shop. Don’t look to me for sympathy, I’ve been warning people against Vista for over a year. It turns out the motherboard architecture has been modified to only work with Vista. How many times do I have to tell you Sony, Toshiba and MicroSoft are in bed together? The laptops run super slow, even with 2 gigs of RAM, so you’d think that the solution is to revert to Win XP, which just screams with that much memory.
But it clobbers your sound, and there is no compatible driver, fix or workaround. A quick glance shows 1500+ people nationwide having the same problem. No sound. One poor sap was told by Toshiba help-desk that he “should have bought an XP”. (See http://techrepublic.com for details.) You could always use the Toshiba laptop to hang your socks out to dry, I suppose. It gets hot enough.
Please, let this be the long-awaited incident that brings these irresponsible corporations to their knees. Let somebody else take over. Somebody with brains, mind you, not an apple-counter.
After work, I biked around town and put up a singer-wanted ad in some of the more likely locations, including Trader John’s. I went next door for a coffee, and the youngest waitress, maybe 25, took an immediate shine to me. She’s young, immature, snot-ring, and tattoo. I had to chuckle because it was electric and I felt it too. I finished my coffee and left, but not before she gave me a shoulder rub and informed me of the hours she would be there in the next few days. Sure, okay.
I’ve got the new PA here, but still no speakers. I’m going to scrounge for some before I shell out. If not, I’ve gotten great sound out of mediocre speakers using a good PA. Even Radio Shack speakers work fine if you know what you are up to. I ran a few notes through my Ampeg and the sound is crystal clear. The brand is “Gigrac”, model 600. I am again attracted to the idea of MIDI, although it seems to me that rhythm guitar is something it still cannot do right. For now, I’m tweaking the knobs on my Gigrac 600.
The better features include tone knobs that work by boosting or filtering rather than changing the tone. I had considerable doubts about a non-stereo system (this is mono), but in the end decided the difference in sound quality was not worth the extra $150. The Fender 250 I looked at was just $250 more, roughly what I’ll spend on speakers, but I dislike “matching” sets. Give me component PA every time.
There is a mighty breeze coming off the Atlantic. Closest thing to a storm so far this year. I’m going to chance reading in the swivel chair, so if you don’t hear from me until tomorrow, you’ll know what happened. For those still curious, there is absolutely no difference between the taste of Coke and Pepsi whatsoever. They are identical. And I can prove it. Those who think they can tell the difference are fit only to count apples. Apple-counters, get it?
Before I forget, I made up an MP3 of hit tunes without lead breaks and gave it to the salesman at the music store. It was a mini or pocket CD-R. Seems to have been an instant hit. This, after I had traded a few harsh words with the manager over the pricing the salesman had given me. He went Canadian on me there for a while, saying he “had no proof” I had been offered 5% off. When I turned to walk out, he said he did not mean it personally. I informed him that was not so, since we were the only two people in the room. He relented, and I now have the PA for said price.
Then, for excitement, I cleaned up my Florida room. See what happens to old musicians who don’t have a band? I’d give anything to be out there playing tonight, any crowd would do, any music would do.
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