My long-awaited train trip is coming into focus again. That’s focus, as no decision has been yet made. The City of New Orleans. Shown here is a coach seat return price of $250. And I can get to the [NOLA] terminal in two easy days, remember I’ve got experience now. Maybe it didn’t get covered but the leg of the Colorado trip through north of Gainesville was terrific. A different landscape than the Everglades entirely. That would be my route. This quote is [for] seating only, as the trip of 19 or so hours each way doesn’t justify room prices that double the fare.
Unlike my earlier plan of a day trip there and back with a whirlwind tour of Union Station, this time I would stay a few [leisurely] days. Maybe experience one of those vintage hotels with horrific rates. It seems to me I balked when Amtrak increased their prices a few years back, but this goes to show you how things have changed. And will continue to change, O ye of little faith. I need some recent train travel experience. It's been too long. Thirty years? Fred called to say there is some kind of festival at the casino tomorrow. So, JZ, you lose out when you don’t answer your phone. I’m going to the festival instead of heading for Miami. I should show up on Monday and wake you up at 8:00 in the morning, just so you’ll know what we working class used to go through. Fred says this is not the annual biker wingding, but looks like a fair or something. Drop back tomorrow, I’ll fill you in.
It was a good day, sort of like saying I’m fine just not ecstatically happy. We’ve got an unseasonable heat wave. My day consisted of riding the motorcycle, drinking milk from the carton, listening to old music, and chasing women half my age. Who could ask for anything more? Anyway, today reads more like a history lesson, but nothing wrong with that.
If you like tagging along with my glacial progress in electronics, today’s addendum is for you. I found out a radio circuit fact that 100% of the expert authors left out of their instructions. The first thing any beginner would do is try to test the said author’s circuit diagrams on a breadboard. Can’t do that. It seems the design of the breadboard pin holders creates an incompatible capacitance that kills radio waves. I mean, who in their right mind could fail to mention that? I’ll say it again, most electronics authors are magnificent morons.
I was reading C-list (Craigslist) to find that I have been quoted in Michigan. I was tipped off by some fan mail. Somebody is cutting and pasting my work as their own. I’m adding this for bragging rights. How many of us have been quoted in Michigan? Ha. Listen, today’s addendum mentions bingo and not everybody here has the time to read how that came about. For their benefit, here is the retelling.
Years ago I had a house gig on Fridays at a club on Old Dixie Hwy. Saturdays I usually played elsewhere and anyway, there was a pool or dart tourney or something at the club that day. In 2009, the league dissolved and left Saturdays as the worst night for business. The staff would often close early because the place was empty. Then, one lady decided to try a bingo game. Although this was some months after my last appearance, I had left my PA (public address) system set up on stage.
By pure coincidence, on the first bingo night, I walked in to get a cable. Being the only non-gambler present, the staff asked if I would call the bingo. Some rowdy types came in and, despite seeing the game, went over and started playing loud music on the juke box. This made it rough on everybody, so I said to the staff I’d come back next week and bring a microphone. I would call the game over my PA.
What’s more, to discourage the jukebox, I recorded some background music. Not knowing if it would interfere with the game, I chose classical tunes. Did it work? Wow, did it ever. Instant hit! In no time, the music evolved into a country show with rock overtones. We have scheduled breaks, free snacks, Saturdays became prime time. I play the all time hits and it was not uncommon for the bingo game to stop while everybody sang along to a favorite. Kind of like gang Karaoke.
One memorable evening was during the first month. In those days, I wore a shirt and tie to call the game. The local police pull random raids, and they came tromping in midway through, looking for trouble. The first guy stops in his tracks and the second guy bumps into him. They look around. Sedate crowd. Bingo. Classical music. Shirt and tie. The looks on their faces? Priceless.
Sadly, around a year ago, one of our most popular and avid players passed away. He regularly brought up to twelve people to what was by then a full-fledged bingo show. (“Welcome home, everybody. It’s another great bingo, a Jimbos Saturday afternoon Klassy Bingo. The night they drove down Old Dixie.”) I believe I explained the game cannot be advertised unless the place has a license. The crowd dwindled and attendance has declined to less than a quarter of the heyday.
Sure, it sounds corny, going to bingo every Saturday. But I’ve never played the game. What I do is just as much a stage act as playing bass. In fact, it is more of a challenge because you have no idea how difficult it is to keep a nice pace going with running commentaries. It is customary to tip the caller and although operating the motorcycles has nearly tripled my expense, bingo has paid for all that and much more. Not only that, I’ve learned so much from the presentations that it has changed my bass act, the opposite of what was expected. It’s like another added dimension on relating to the audience. I won’t make the snarky comment that most guitar players could use that.
ADDENDUM
Naturally I was home alone [Friday]. That is one of the privileges of bachelorhood. To some it is a curse, but a lot of that is the married man’s hallucinations of what is out there. Like any other group, there are good and bad, meaning the successful bachelor knows that Fridays are not the best pick-up night. It is too expensive and too competitive. Even if you can compete, why waste the energy? My best [pick-up] nights are a Thursday.
It reminds me of my longest-term relationship. When we met, we’d agreed we would go out to dinner every Friday. We’d get dressed up, I’d look at her, she’d look at me. And we never did make it out the door. It goes without saying that I would want something like that all over again. Except for casual dating, until that happy day, I like my quiet evenings. In fact, the only Fridays I’ve gone out since my house gig have been to either win money or support a friend’s Karaoke show. Let me look up the details, I'll be right back.
It was June 12, 2009. That’s the last regular Friday I played, ending a two-year house gig. My tips [that night] were zero, I made only the house pay and that gig cost me $2.65 in expenses. Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of musicians would be glad to make house pay, but my incentives involve a lot more than the money. As matters evolved, how was I then to know that bingo would outpace music [as a moneymaker]? Bingo has paid and continues to pay more than 99% of the guitar players in this town will ever make. But evolution entails extinction and I want back into music.
I’m not on the boob tube at home. I studied. Part of my fascination with electronics was planned; part has been the thrill of learning despite the built-in barriers. Scatterbrains actually pick it up faster than the educated. You may have noticed my tendency to bring the regimentation of accounting into the process. Good. The entire field of electronics needs straightening out. At least I have a noggin that can categorize the brands of nonsense out there.
Take integrated circuits. They are grouped together by an arbitrary numbering scheme for manufacture and sale. Yet they fit into entirely different groups by function, and yet other groups for popular usage. And still others for teaching, you get the idea. You try to study how any chip works and all you get are technical specs and graphs. Through it all, I’ve found a favorite.
The 4017 chip is known as a decade counter, probably because it does not count decades. It has emerged as my pet chip and that’s what I wanted to chat about. From the organized man’s viewpoint, why is the 4017 integrated circuit the one I like the most? Are we actually going to talk about an integrated circuit as if it was a brand of cookies? Sure. You don’t have to be technical to follow this, it is meant to be enjoyable reading.
The 4017 counts to ten. Actually, it goes from 0 to 9, but let’s play along. It has 16 pins, shown per this photo. One of those pins takes a steady input pulse and diverts it to a one of ten output pins, one at a time. When it gets to the last pin, it starts over. No, the engineers did not put the pins in order, you have to read what is known as a datasheet to sort it out. Dickheads. The first thing everybody does is connect ten lights (LEDs). Yes, they flash one at a time in sequence. Great fun for Knight Rider fans. The next thing you do is arrange the lights in a ring and round she goes. Hmmm, looks like those gambling machines. The resemblence is uncanny.
Then you find out how some of the remaining pins work. There is one pin to make it count up or down, that’s handy. Another one, the reset pin, stops the count and makes it start over again. Hmmm, like a stopwatch. Exactly—do you see why I eventually came to like this chip? But the pin that is most useful is called a “carry out”. Every time the count goes past 9 and starts over, the carry out sends out a single pulse. It chirps once, one might say, every ten cheeps.
This means I can hook up a second 4017 to accept that signal as input. This second 4017 will count at one-tenth the speed. That’s where the word “decade” comes in, at least in geek-think. It divides the original input signal by ten. I’ve chained together strings of these back when I was trying to view circuits firing as much as 947,000,000 times per second. I ran out of chips, but I learned what we’re talking about today.
Well, let’s hook some of these up and build a gambling machine. It isn’t quite that uninvolved. This chip was designed by engineers, the enemies of co-ordination. The 4017 does not output a signal that can be connected directly to a display. You need another chip called a display driver, my second favorite type of integrated circuit, but that’s for another day. What I explain next (and last) does get a mite complicated.
The output of this 4017 chip, despite being zeros and ones, is not binary. What? How can that be? Well, binary is a numbering system. That means the position of a given number determines its value. Like the (decimal) number 592. The position of the 5 means hundreds. The 4017 just churns out zeros and ones one after another. But say, doesn’t that remind us of the Johnson counter the other day? Precisely. The point is, yet another chip would be needed to turn the 4017 output into useful binary code. It never ends.
And that is why I like the 4017. And there you go, most of you now know a lot more about integrated circuits than you otherwise might. And it wasn't painful at all. You're welcome!
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