January 30, 2014

           Today, the club meeting was rescheduled for the bakery, since the regular slot for tomorrow will find me up at the first big gig with the 5-pc. The meeting was over the merits of a small PDA instead of replacing the GPS, that junk from Tom-Tom that quit in the first rainstorm. I’m hesitant of the recommended wristwatch style for many reasons. It takes two hands to operate, meaning I would have to let go of the batbike throttle to use it. There are other factors I’m not sure about. But shown here is the club meeting as it moved up to Best Buy.

           You can tell this is early in our visit. Why? Because the details Agent M and I discuss at lightning pace tends to draw an older crowd who seem to just want to listen to what we are saying. Rumor is that we discuss the right topics and know more about the technology than the staff over there. In this particular sequence of photos, we are using one of their demo computers to look at core speeds, dual SIM cards, and stable Android versions.
           In the middle photo I’m comparing my regular wristwatch to the bulky size of the current models available on-line. The variety advertised doesn’t make any sense and I believe that is intentional. One model was listed at $6,800. The specs are bewildering and so is the order in which each manufacturer displays them. It is like printers, in the end the hundreds of different models do basically the same thing.
           Now it is a good thing we began and ended at the bakery because their oven packed it in. Have you ever tried to get a repairman in Florida, and I mean today, with the spare parts, and less than $200? The town does not work that way. Shown here is our team going to the rescue on this one. We quickly determined that virtually any element would work if it matched the voltage. And it did.
           Shown here is the process of fitting the parts, then testing the repair. Note the new element glowing red hot. We used an oven thermometer to calibrate the temperatures with the display and found it to be extremely accurate. Good work, General Electric, but we still had to double-check. The bakery had several large cake orders and could not have waiting until Monday for a local to waddle out and tell them he had to take the oven into the shop, type of thing.

           We found a variety of loose fittings and bolts on the same range, which we fixed so they will stay that way. The pretty blonde is visiting from Hungary and heading back in a few weeks. This job, start to finish, was around 40 minutes, so they were all happy. We ate good this morning, let me tell you. Ahem, some of us ate three times as much as the other, there M. I decided not to publish pictures of the stove taken apart as they had zero human interest and this entire job was a case of who you know. But sorry, the advent of Google glasses now prohibit any closeups of anyone.
           The secondary reason I was at Best Buy is that they closed their music department. Too bad. I was after a bargain on the Fishman solo but it appears to be the one piece of gear they did not discount. And I mean like 60% off. Last day I told how my PA amp is in the garbage can and I don’t have any light-duty gear left. Using all my portable stuff to do bingo has been just as hard on it as playing regular gigs. It is plain all worn out. That includes my laptop and the small Android-like thingee I was using for background music. Bingo has not been a profitable venture for nearly a year, but I’m likely to stick with it until I get some kind of band happening.
           Which brings me to my private learning session today. I tackled that 31 year old Annie Lennox tune, “Here Comes The Rain Again”. And it fought right back. I can tell a tune that has had a studio grade bass line injected into the final mix and I say that track was played by some kind of machine. The good news is I can emulate it well enough that anybody who is aware of what’s happening is bound to be impressed. But I can also tell you I would never use a bass line like that for any song I wanted people to dance to.
           And, since that put me in a mood, I’ll tell you the first five songs off the big band set list that I would shit-can instantly if I had any say:
           “Sleepwalk”, Santo & Johnny. There’s a reason they only had one hit, guys.
           “You Really Got A Hold On Me”, Beatles. Let that song die a natural death, already.
           “Paint It Black”, Rolling Stones. They were trying too hard and it sounds like it.
           “Something”, Beatles. Okay, Paul, we get it. Now turn it off.
           “Do It Again”. I agree with what George Carlin says about Steely Dan. And his fans.

           The name of the bakery? I’ve been asked often enough, and no, it isn’t a secret. It is called the Kiss bakery. Kiss is a common Hungarian surname. It has a meaning similar to the English surname of Little, say like some man named John Little. I don’t know where it fits into the people over there, but it is probably somebody’s maiden name or something. I don’t know. What I liked was the minute the club showed up, they were confident enough we’d get that oven working that they cracked a dozen eggs. Or egg yolks, I suppose. The point is even though they knew we were not appliance repairmen, they knew we’d get the job done.

           In fact, they were so happy I’m going to wait until tomorrow to tell them we need $40 for the gas and the parts used. Don’t worry, they know they saved $200 minimum. The problem turned out to be a missing drip pan from the otherwise brand new GE range. When they baked anything that boiled, any spill over the side would fall directly down onto the hot element and it finally snapped.




ADDENDUM
           The Battle of the Bulge. I’ve heard all the versions popular on the media, but I got to thinking. The German tanks rolled forward until they ran out of gasoline. They were then abandoned. Logic says that therefore, the nature of these would indicate the composition of late-war panzer divisions. What surprised me was the lack of Tiger tanks. Are you with me here? If the German retreat left their big tanks on the battlefield, then what is with all these stories of overwhelming masses of Tigers grinding down on the Americans? Something doesn’t add up.
           Somebody appears to be exaggerating. George Patton wouldn’t do that, would he? By this late in the war, Tigers were well known enough to not be confused with other models. I think I may have a partial answer. The big Tiger battalions had numbers like 501 and 503. When these units were transferred to the Russian front, they were often renamed and we know the Germans often reused the numbers. While I do not know the designations of the tank forces the Germans sent to the Bulge, I would still like to know where were the Tigers?
           By at least one report, there were only thirteen actual Tigers destroyed or captured in the Battle of the Bulge. Thirteen. By 1945, there were still over three times that many in a single German unit. Call me skeptical, but it doesn’t sound like an assault by a full-strength Tiger battalion of battle-hardened veterans from the Russian front. Not if they were stopped by some green doughboys with bazookas and a few Shermans that showed up days later. That doesn’t pass the smell test.