Good, fast, easy money today, so I had a little spare time. I’m getting better at selling people what I know. I didn’t know enough today, though. I was over at the Day’s Inn and one of the computers in the Internet room would not drive the monitor. I’ll tell you what it was, but later, so you can guess the problem on your own. The hint is you can see two monitors hooked up to one computer.
It baffled Fred and I for a couple of hours. No matter what was tried, the monitors would cut out after a few seconds. Every possible combination of cords, cables and devices was tried and nothing worked.
The groundwork has to be covered and I am proud that I have at least a measureable ability to make those critical first lessons interesting enough to sustain the enthusiasm. I had a lengthy conversation with the other Fred, who from now on I will name Freddie to avoid confusion. His computers have something serious by way of virus infection and it is taking almost five minutes to boot up. I cannot troubleshoot that kind of problem in the field, and I hesitate to hook up his wireless system on computers that need the operating system worked on.
From there, I went over to Lorraine’s, she is the French Canadien waitress at the Friendly Inn. I spent close to two hours showing her the ropes with anti-virus ware, and be damned if her computer didn’t have a record 2,322 viruses or spyware files. A lot were something called “Viper” I’ve not seen before, but it was watching every move she made on that computer via the Internet. She tipped me $20.
The problem was the two orders already placed. I have corresponded with the factory regularly but I noticed they were hesitant when asked what something cost. I could not insist because the financial arrangements are not my area, nor would the owner let others handle it. So between us, we placed the order and were waiting for the factory to send us a pro forma invoice. Everyone understood that the first order would be part guesswork and it was expected.
Now don’t laugh, but because everybody was being so damn polite, a truly sorry misunderstanding reared up. We knew the factory needed the money to get started, so we gave them the order expecting them to calculate the estimated cost, and invoice us so we could send them the money. The factory sent us the price list and apparently expected us to calculate out own invoice and send them the money. So we are waiting for an invoice that never arrived and the factory is waiting for money they have not asked for. Due to the two month lead time for orders, that is how much time passed before anyone noticed something was wrong.
Goodbye Jane, I’ve exchanged song lists with Guitar Jeff, as he is now called here. He lives up on Commercial in Ft. Lauderdale, so we are not exactly neighbors, but it is freeway the whole 14 miles, actually closer than Brian’s. Guitar Jeff is solidly a rhythm player with no background in lead guitar, and his analogies show that he has experienced the same hassles as I have. Good. We can focus on music. He also owns a PA system.
Here’s a point, my bass playing is still evolving in lots of ways. You see, although I’ve done this and that, I never played bass as a serious instrument until I was in my thirties. That means I am just around now at around the mark [in years] where others begin to look at the instrument in its own right. The biggest recent change I spotted while reviewing videos of my performance was good-sounding mistakes. I’ve learned to hold my left fingering patterns in such a way that when I screw up, it sounds okay. And I surely screw up regularly, but instead of hitting wrong notes, I hit false notes that make it look like I was leading to the correct sound. Give me money.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
