Watch for a totally random picture later when I get one. The day was all indoors at the computer. It was breezy and down in the 80s, anyway. Ruth had a new girl in today, nice babe. She has my disposition but I don’t know if she has my patience to put up with a truly disorganized way of doing things. (I don’t care for it myself, but I make twice the money.)
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Later. Here is the picture. Gulfstream park is just over the way here, and it gets honorable mention for kicking me out for riding a bicycle. They “don’t allow that kind of thing”. Get used to Florida. Most other places have some basis for rules, such as public safety. In Florida, it is usually because somebody else doesn’t like it or can’t do it themselves. This [photo] is called the “Winner’s Circle”. It confuses me whether they mean the people or the horses, but either way, such things always smell a little of horseshit. I see I got the wrong picture. This is the US Border patrol, doing a fine job, I'm told.Mr. Brian did not return my call y’day, so there was no practice. I was up early experimenting with different ways to package the used transformers from the Thrift. We get buckets of them but like you, find there are no standard voltages, sizes or plugs. The bucket becomes a mess when the customers rummage through it. Since it is easy to test (the voltages are regularly 50% higher than specs), I think a package would command a premium price, especially when paired up with a radio or something, doubling the sale.
This is just a side issue, I am still pursuing the battery vending machine. You remember those coil types with the dollar changer? That’s what I want. You put in your dollar and the coil turns, dropping one package to the tray. New, these things cost a fortune. Dickens called later in the day and I want to go over this with him. Since one of us is there at all times, any vending machines will do.
I’m having a time convincing Ruth of the value of my record keeping, which is understandable because it is an additional layer of work on top of the bare minimum needed. She still often wants bank confirmation despite the printouts I create. It makes it appear as if the printout was not needed because the bank already had the same information. Today was an exception because she saw how the printout made it possible for the bank to even zero in on the correct data.
Some of the time is researching suppliers for Chinese products. Ruth is finding out I was not kidding when I said it is hard to cut out the middleman. Things were different years ago when the middleman supplied a service – getting the product from a central point to where you could buy it locally. The Internet, you’d think, would wipe them out. Ruth says, “China is a big country.”
Yes, but it seems China has discovered the instant cash value from selling distributorships. I’m glad Ruth called around to see how bad that has made things. One outfit told her to get stuffed toy dogs, it would require a complete new assembly line and months of lead time. I’m surprised she didn’t tell him what to get stuffed. We have the price down to $4.25 locally, why do these middlemen think we’ll pay $30 for something from overseas? There is a name that keeps cropping up, Alibaba. They are in Puerto Rico and every factory search of the Orient sooner or later gets back to them.
The high point of the day was chatting with Marion on the way home. She’s got the husband and dog to look after. She warns me I’m not to be going out there and having children when I’m over 80 even though I assured her that was only my extreme backup plan. Like myself, she thought that the longest stretch we have been out of touch in the past quarter century was six months, but it was 13 months. I’ll see if I can find the journal entry that refers to that incident. But it was only once, during her second marriage, I think, they lived way and hell out in the country.
"Tower Bridge London Feb 2006" by Diliff - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Later, I left Mr. Brian another message. I’m not learning any of those Beatles tunes until he writes out the chords. Hey, I’m the first on to admit I don’t do jazz chord progressions, I never even liked the style. That also explains why I don’t know the jazzier Beatles hits, I considered them a retrograde musical step for an otherwise progressive group.
I’ve got the coffee on and I’m going to play bass for a few hours. The new drum box, the Alexis, has problems I did not see at first. The manual is very poorly written, which causes a curious effect. Since nobody can understand it, they don’t use the programming features. Thus, Alexis has cut corners and the drum pads don’t work as they should. Tapping them the same causes wide variations in sound and volume. I had the Internet manual up till a week ago but now can’t find it. It will turn up again soon after I print the whole 58 pages from the Internet.
I found it in my sock drawer. Anyway, I can see now that many of the bad reviews the machine has are partially due to the manual. Follow it directly and you will be frustrated. Alexis has really skimped on the drum pads and gotten away with it because very few people get far enough into it to complain. Another couple of annoyances are that some of the “drumsets” seem to disable certain of the drum pads or the default sound is so quiet you think it isn’t playing.
Later. I actually programmed a beat into the box. It took three long tries that kept me up past midnight, but it works. What a strange logic they used! To program a 16th note, you enter the number 24 and for some reason I keep getting a readout that I am on the 72nd beat of each measure. You build the drums up in layers and then set the volumes, at least I think so. I would have done it the other way around. As with most drum boxes, only a few of the preset patterns are of any use so I’ll be programming the majority of what we play. The presets do not include any ¾ time or triplet beats. Maybe ancient bad luck or something?
Here is another picture. It is a game I play that I usually lose at. It is called “Find the Missing Drill Bit.”Mr. Brian called back and we have a practice scheduled for Thursday, as in Pearl Harbor Day. He’s got a heavy day between work and home, so we practice at his place out in Pembroke Pines. He’s got a Peavy amp which should work fine until I take inventory of what we still need. Chances are we would get more use out of PA system so I’ll target one we can both play through, that is, a four channel job. Anything more, I’ll get an el-cheapo Radio Shack mixer and pour it through.
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