Today you get drama. Not only that, but drama about stuff that probably interests me the most—unless you clue in that I’m not studying clothespins, but switch theory. I’ve finally got a switch that works well enough to continue. And I’m experiencing “switch bounce”. It was expected, so those with sharp eyes will see the capacitor I’m including on each switch to combat the problem. The obvious question is why ten small capacitors instead of one big one? ROM design. Where could you place it?
Shown here is the sketching and puttering I did to finally opt for the clothespins over the paper clips. Or more accurately to try the pins as only the pilot model is done and that took two hours to wire up and test. The size of capacitor will be chosen by trial and error and by the nearest size I have ten of. We’re not engineers over here. The capacitor also fades the lights slowly, which helps Morning coffee and maybe brunch, both at the bakery, that’s my life these days. It’s the new band again making inroads into my daily routines. I don’t have time to eat more than a sandwich and right back to the fretboard. And I’ve been reading CL again watching for developments. The guys who put in ads saying they want to “start a band and have fun” stand to be mightily disillusioned. There is fun, but much later than they expect. What’s getting me a little down is due to the pressure of this new venture, I’m beginning to behave like I did in college. And I was desperately poor back then.
Mommy and daddy didn’t exactly give me a car ride to my dorm room. If anyone in my generation ever hitchhiked to university like I had to, I've never heard of them. No, we were not poor. While I stood in the ditch with my thumb out, my year-older sister was living in an air-conditioned apartment and driving two cars. I lived in an abandoned house that winter, and it was forty below. No exaggeration, if it was thirty-five I would say so. It was forty. But I recognized having no education spelled a life of drudgery and I did what I had to do to avoid that.
It’s a stinging memory, so I’m not really happy when that survival mode hits me back again the minute I start to cram new information even if it is music. I still have a deadline. It also explains my lack of empathy with dropouts, those who took the seemingly easy way out. They laughed because I had no shoes. But when I did get shoes, I didn't put them on a credit card.
Ah, you want examples. What do I mean “poor” behavior? That’s not so easy since it is trivial combinations hard to point at. Like I’m reading my horoscope again, so what? Well, when I’ve got big bucks, who cares about luck and superstition? Conduct like that. Or getting news from the media companies instead of the library. That’s all working class behavior, or more accurately the behavior of people stuck in the working class. No, I'm not in that group. I stayed in school long enough that since 1981, I’ve been paid for what I know, not what I do. Those who don't understand the difference--back on your heads.
Florida has got to be one of the hardest places to start a group, a topic I’ve covered in fine detail. Yet music is rarely the issue. It is the rotten personalities and serious personality flaws of the characters that make it so. Present company exempted, of course, but show me ten Florida men who think they are great musicians and I’ll show you ten arrogant guitarists. Ten substance abusers. Ten deadbeats and no-shows. Ten who will disappear after the second rehearsal. Ten who call in sick and go play another gig. This is a Florida constant, read my lips: the guitar player is going to screw you around.
This happens elsewhere, but I’m talking a matter of degree. Ten out of ten will never amount to a blessed thing. They’ll just waste your time. Second worst offenders are the bass players who are really guitar player wannabes. Complete, unashamed, write-off losers from the word go. They have all the guitar-player bad habits like riffing off, overplaying the band, playing too loud, refusing to learn band material, and so on. I’m not talking a few exceptions here. Worse, all of them are floaters, going band to band until the entire local scene has become musically incestuous.
I’m the opposite. In the fourteen years I’ve been in Florida, I can only name you one other bass player. I met him once in 2002 and he lives forty-eight miles away. Hey, Vinnie! Vinnie really likes Facebook. I still cannot figure out what’s to like about it. The endless spewing of shallow opinions? Why not just walk over to Dunkin Donuts or Tim Horton’s. Get your quota in a flash.
Part of the routine is that when I’m practicing, I’ll take a five minute break every twenty minutes or so. Helps me assimilate. The Internet news is right there so I’ll get exposed to it more in a day than a year otherwise. I’m glad I never went into writing, I mean for a living. You never hear of a successful writer who works for somebody else. The ads indicate the terrible degeneration of that career. The ad says hours are very flexible. No, that doesn’t mean go in when you want. It means you are on 24 hour call. I quit my job at the phone company because of that kind of crap.
That reminds me, I checked the union lists of my old job. Of the 252 people that could be considered my contemporaries, only 17 are left at the company. And they were the total sycophants. Do the math. We were all offered the same buyout package. I’m the only one that took it.
That’s 251 people who laughed at my decision, saying I was giving up a job guaranteed for life. That’s 234 who are no longer laughing. You see, the last six years I was on the payroll, I used the company course reimbursement plan to get myself an accounting degree from evening school. It was the only school in the area, and I did not see any of the other guys there. Know what I’m sayin’? They know what I'm sayin'. Because most of them are probably security guards today.
ADDENDUM
3D printing again. According to posts on JimmyR [no link], the US navy has plans to turn its aircraft carriers into 3D printing factories. Initially, the printers would manufacture drones on command. Drones matched in size and power to the target. But remember, 3D is still first generation technology. How long before they print entire airplanes as needed? There is also talk of using the printers to build a moon base and to take them to Mars to produce spare parts for the rovers. It’s a good thing we here in this blog spotted this invention as the most important of our time, it gives us a head start.
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