One year ago: March 28, 2013
Five years ago: March 28, 2009
MORNING:
Favorite Fridays, the grand opportunity for you to read and enjoy what I do on my day off. Can’t beat that for sheer ecstasy. What? In that case, write your own blog. Ha! I went to Radio Shack and spent $17. Most of it was on the five chips you see here. Before this week, I had no reason to buy such items, which in this instance are used to test configurations of memory bits—the exact opposite of what they were intended for. But that’s how it makes sense to me. Most electronics men never actually ever build a memory circuit, you know. Thinking you may want to see a comparison, each chip on the left represents approximately four times as many circuits as my pilot project on the right.
And don’t think I’ve forgotten our Qbasic graphics code. If you just arrived, I’m coding to draw a line on the computer monitor which will not cross itself. Easier said than done and a week later nobody can spot the logic error, the worst kind to look for. Stay tuned for the solution to that. If it is compact enough, I’ll publish the code. Yes, you can copy the code, paste it into your XP or earlier computer, save it with the suffix .BAS and run the program. Hint, in cheesy MicroSoft computers, you can often do the same in reverse. If you get my meaning.
The Big Band, my 5-pc has some new promotional material. My name consistently appears as last on the lists. We all know that is so wrong, but I figure if it imbues others with an impression of happiness or self-worth, we can let it go this time. So don’t say nothin’. I mean it. In an equally important topic, I kept thinking y’day was Friday, so I spent most of the day reading. By this morning I’m over-read, I guess you’d call it? Because I know it’s happened to all of us. Well, most of us, Hector.
I installed the newest Adobe Flash Player (I no longer trust that company concerning spyware) and watched some documentaries. Where is this much touted hydrogen car? Last I heard they cost $4 million bucks each. And I watched this old German tank commander describe how he had been knocked out five times in World War II. You would never find me inside a tank by choice. He said a hit caused incredible dust inside the crew compartment, and then it would be silent. He’d ask, “Fritz, are you living.” “Hans, are you living.” What a horrible ordeal that must be.
Within moments, I uninstalled Flash Player 12. Get that crap off your computer if you value your privacy. It tries to auto-install Google Chrome, another item you do not want. Adobe has really gone downhill. Even an uninstall leaves all kinds of changes to your computer registry. I would stick with a single older version but Adobe has taken measures to ensure you can’t do that. Their revisions are not backward compatible.
Now that I have a working memory circuit, I followed my acquired habit of going back and reading material that I could not understand before. Oh yeah, it makes perfect sense now—a sure sign that author was not a good teacher. The logic is that I have been through college and can follow the lousiest of teachers. It takes a royally dismal individual to confuse me in writing and no topic has done that as much as electronics. For example, now that I know how transistors work, I realize if I’d had one good teacher I would have learned it all in ten minutes, not ten months. That is not an exaggeration.
I moved my propane tank. I have not used it since my pilot light died last year or the year before. The cylinder was giving the Frenchies next door the heebie-jeebies. They smoke and despite the full empty lot between us must have decided to worry about an explosion. So, keep ‘em happy, I rolled it around back beside my work shed. It’s much the same distance but they can’t see it. Did the trick, lads.
The expected spring [real estate] price drops are trickling in, but still too far north. I don’t like the middle area of Florida around Jupiter and Hobe Sound, nor do I care for the interior. Too isolated and if you are going to live here, being near a beach is the meaningful part. And if I was going to move a hundred miles away, I’d likely move all the way back to Texas.
Mike, the last guy I shared a place with in college, came to mind when I opened my cupboard and found three spice jars of nutmeg. How’d I manage that? Anyway, Mike was one of those guys who was never home, but when he was, he was helpless. The guy could not go shopping. That’s how the nutmeg reminded me. I once sent him to get a jar of chili powder. He couldn’t do it. Mike was 35 years old. He only stayed home once a year, on his birthday. Then next day, broke as he always was, he’d go out to some greasy spoon diner and order the biggest meal on the menu. He’d tuck the napkin in his collar for a bib. I’m sure that was to let the world know we were from Montana. (At that time, I mean. I have not been in Montana in over twenty years.)
AFTERNOON
I’m giving Canon the camera maker a bad review. I’ve been generally satisfied with the new A1400 until I tried to produce a series of similar recordings of me playing bass. What a piece of crap it turned into. It will go out of focus without any indication that is going on, you don’t see it until you play back a clip. By then it’s too late, you have to start over. It even has a bastard-rat setting that turns the original around by 90 degrees. That might be useful for post-production, but Canon alters the original. And just you try to figure out how to change it back. You have to go into a completely different menu. Stick it, Canon. You may have a sudden urge to turn pictures sideways, but intelligent people don’t do that much.
Then a documentary on U-boat tactics. Like the tank, it was another weapon the Allies were ahead in numbers but harnessed to faulty tactics. It says the Germans only had 12 boats at any given time in the Atlantic. What if they’d had the 100 boats that the navy had asked for before starting any wars. When was the planned date for that many? May of 1942, so they didn’t miss by much. Why was a looking at this ancient situation? Because Germany in the late 1930s had much the same of military-technical advantages that the US had after the Roswell incident. I have no conspiracy theories. But I’m less skeptical about what I thought was propaganda about the German leadership looking for the Lost Ark and reading horoscopes. Did they have their own Roswell and were looking for answers? Did they have an Operation Highjump?
My ordinary ten minute weekend financial review turned into a series of comparisons. You see, I’m too broke to afford that Bass Buddy foot pedal drum box. That’s a metaphor, as the cash sum is here, but there are so many other priorities. We are very aware over here that although progress has been fine since early 2011, some 75% of that progress has been in a few narrow fields, none of which have paid off well. Think music, electronics, mechanics, robotics, and other entertainment. Everything else accomplished in the same time period has been “small scale items whose wins and losses generally balanced out”.
Add in my concerns that my recent foot pain was too gout-like to ignore. I thought I’d find some preventative measures. There isn’t much by way of authoritative advice. Increase potassium and vitamin C. Don’t eat mushrooms. I’d rather not take supplements or chemicals, As far as extra fluid intake, low blood pressure, and no strain on my joints, I’ve always been well ahead of the existing advice. Mostly, the Internet is not helpful on this. Maybe I should just do what seems natural.
I put in four hours of intense bass study on selected music before dark. These were chosen for intense or complicated bass passages and I polished them up mighty fine. I admit my motive is self-interest. I am not denigrating any particular guitar player, but these tunes were chosen because a guitarist said they were “easy”. (Quote, “It’s just A and F#m and then a D”.) This does nothing but tip you off the guy thinks you are a flunky, but bear in mind this is how they think naturally, why, they don’t even suspect there is anything wrong with such arrogance. What I like to do, n’yuck n’yuck, is play the real bass line that isn’t so easy.
An audience reacts to bass lines that are pressed beyond perfection. How is that done? It seems to have two components. Choose a song like Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” where they’ve heard every sloughed off bass version for years. Then play it note for note and make it look easy. A similar tactic is to ace some so-so or nothing bass tune right when they aren’t expecting it. Like River’s “Memphis”--99% of bass players do that song wrong. Oddly, I don’t consider this my method, I consider it what bass playing should have been all long.
The guitarist who thinks you are his follower, you see, is not expecting much of a bass line. This is one of the few times you can steal a march on him without getting any backlash. How so? When they hear the real deal, it is not like they can suddenly steal it back. There are two options. They could knuckle down and learn better guitar (I’d like to see that) or they could be a jerk and overplay at the moment, which fools nobody, Zack. And since you are playing the real bass line, the guitarist can hardly complain that you are showing off. Warning, although I told you how to do it, that is not an excuse to go cop an attitude. I have only once or twice in my life every been fired from a band, and only once on bad terms. The other 40+ bands, I quit or fired them.
EVENING
In preparation for tomorrow’s meeting with Prof. Oz, I went over some of the Internet offerings for book promotions. I quickly concluded same as forty years ago—most advertising on a small scale doesn’t work very well. The fact is, advertising has nowhere to go except a change from the unwelcome to the outright annoying. The Internet has spurred that along. What I’m seeing with these “book promotion” sites is a rip-off from the point of view of effectiveness. Rip-off? Yes, in the sense that the purpose of advertising is to increase the odds of a purchase, and the odds have fallen below any level I can imagine.
These promoters want a fee to list your book on their site, say $15. Not that you are going to get much for that kind of money, but let’s generously suppose the actual listing is worth 25 cents in effort. Because that is all it is. An alphabetical listing of books. The literature says you should write and send press releases, add links to your blogs and website, tweet, and facebook all your contacts. Question. If you are going to do all that on your own, what is it they do for the fifteen bucks? Ah, the book list. Nothing like a shallow-thinker with a web page to make my day. Worse, the more “successful” the site gets, the worse your book gets buried in a list so long nobody can find your title.
Has the Internet entered an era of these “indexes”, as such listings are known in computer parlance? While there is some remote chance of a connect with your product, most of these listings appear to do nothing except hit you up for extra money to do anything. That might appeal to those who cannot do anything on their own. And when was the last time you wanted a book and dragged out some interminable listing of titles and read down the pages, hoping to find something? I thought so.
I went out at 8:30PM. To Karaoke. Not an exciting time, for some reason all the other singers chose mournful, dreadful dirges. Mind you one guy did attempt “The Perfect C&W Song”, a number I dropped from my list two years ago. There was one episode unusual enough to make this blog. A mousey type bar bunny showed up, working the single men in the room. As in “accidentally” using one of his drink chips when he isn’t looking. And when he gets back and spots it, she does the old, “Oops, me bad, you are gonna buy a little lady a drink, aren’t you?”
The chips come in packs of four, I quickly put mine in my pocket. Sure enough, she would leave with a guy every once in a while and by fluke she did this exactly whenever I was singing. Then she’d walk back in just as the crowd was applauding. And what applause! So she starts to give me that who-do-you-think-you-are look. In an hour’s time she was really worked up over nothing. But I’m just telling you what happened. I left later by which time she was stewing in her own juice. One weird lady.
