MORNING
So I never did get my annual November holiday. That means more study time and what I write should reflect that. This morning I shall check out the job market. No, I’m not returning, just investigating what is available. But really, the cancellation of that holiday still has me off balance. Meanwhile, here is a picture of the Babbage Engine, claimed to be the first computer and only one that is virus free.
No holiday means a stretch looms with free time on my hands. Mind you, it is that feeling of freedom last experienced the day I walked out the door of the phone company for the final time. The best and worst place I ever worked. Good conditions, but after five years they figure they own you. I’ve often considered another career but these days what is out there sucks compared to how it was. No, I’m not some codger lamenting the good old days. Jobs today really have globalization written all over them.
I’ll be a little more descriptive here. Who was Charles Babbage? He’s the guy famous for the first “computer” thing, but he was also an industrialist, a very boring one at that. He also wrote “On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832)”. This is the classic on division of labor. He noticed skilled labor spent a lot of time doing tasks that didn’t require the skill. Like the seamstress threading her own needle. The phone company honed this down to a terrific level because they had a secondary motive—to prevent any employee from learning start to finish any transferable trade.
When I left the company, it was a total Babbage environment and only the union prevented them from taking it to the next level. That’s the one where they want to shove a broom up your ass so you sweep the floor while you’re walking around. And unless you want to spend enough money to go to school for seven years, that’s my estimation of the jobs that exist out there today.
So job-wise, that leaves writing and music. And Ann Coulter has the writing side sewn up. Even the Watley (see above) is tacitly admitting she is the Madonna of journalism--success without content. Yankee-style. Ann is not out there to cater to half-educated expectations and that’s what I like about her. She sells books and makes money and she has outdone all of her critics put together on that count. It is unfair to compare her to the faceless masses of hack writers that populate the dying newspaper industry, as they lash out at her in envious malcontention.
That leaves music. And I'm working on it.
NOON
I have a new neighbor, a Frenchie. But this is December, not the middle of October. They leave earlier too. What, is Canada running out of welfare money? Then again, they could just print it up like we do. What? Their dollar is 88 cents. Okay, so they know about the printing part already. My concern is that this cuts down on the amount of work I can do in my back yard because Frenchies turn in early. And that office always likes to back in the temp units to my exact property line where they should be leaving a polite foot of clearance anyway. Time to check Boynton Beach again.
This is where I hauled Pat Pendergrast of Telluride, CO, out of the ocean after a jellyfish attack. Years later, when we found out about an infestation of irukandji did we realize how lucky he was—and a reminder to never dive alone. He went paralyzed under the water off the north end of the island, there was also an epidemic of crown-of-thorns starfish. Remember, 1985 was when industrial pollution was just beginning to kill off the Pacific.
I saw the little purple jellyfish and went around it, but Pat, who was not wearing a mask, went right into the stingers. If you follow the link, read the symptoms because he had every one of them. I had to haul his nearly 200 pound carcass out of the water and I nearly gave out. He recovered in less than an hour but never underestimate the dread of a person who thinks they are going to die. We had to hold him down and I think he was also allergic, as large boils formed under his skin in long strings where the wet stingers had coiled around his arms and legs. There were no medical facilities on the island in 1984.
[Author's note: if anyone can identify when this photo was taken, please notify me by leaving a comment. I found the picture randomly and there were no credits, I only know it is Borocay from memory--and I've had people born in the Philippines deny the place exists. It is near a big island with the capital city of Kalibo.]
AFTERNOON
Another rainstorm but I got my PA speakers out of the club before it hit. It was a runaround since noon anyway. My clutch cable [from the supplier] was the wrong model, so I have no Goldwing until at least Wednesday. JZ said he’d visit but not with this rain, he won’t. The club meeting was held this morning, at Senor Café, where the big eBike tests to pedal easily at 20 mph. And Virgin Mobile misplaced my cell phone payment again, an error rate of around 25%. I think their office is in a cave up near the Great Lakes and they all failed ESL. It’s weird, you wait and finally call them, they always say, “That just went through.” And then it works.
The rain further canceled the beach expedition. If you are thinking just go back another day, you have not seen the 35 pages of charts and diagrams I’ve prepared over the last two months to get this done right. It is, I think, very akin to surveying, which I’ve never done. But I understand triangles and I’ve narrowed it down to that basis. I still need data to find out if my absolute height above sea level anywhere I am like to travel will make any difference compared to the circumference of the Earth.
I would like the rest of the day off, thanks. Just me and my navigation books, because that is something that finally challenged me and I’m glad it took months to learn. That weeds out the competition. While at Radio Shack, I examined the new robotics section and I see the kits are becoming modularized. Instead of building a kit in isolation, they are all designed to work off a single common voltage and microcontroller. That’s a good step. Then you notice the same gear on the shelf month after month. Robot parts don’t sell well in Florida.
Hidden down here is the sad news. I finally wiped out that little family of mice from my kitchen. In the end, I boiled the traps to get rid of any scent, then re-scented them with peanut butter, bacon fat, etc. The mice were smart enough if one trap worked, they’d ignore others with a similar aroma. Where are these super mice coming from? Eating GMO cheese?
NIGHT
It was practice night, but I thought to find a couple of guitar/electric bass duos on-line to demo what we are putting together over here. It didn’t fly. All I got was weird jazz combos that didn’t even sound coordinated. And often wearing funny hats. How strange is that? I could not find a single guitar-bass duo of the kind we are putting together—although I found several forums with other people asking where they could find good tunes for this type of arrangement.
Rehearsal, I’d rate it as encouraging. It’s starting to take on the sound of me playing to my own bass lines. Oh wait, hold on. In a sense, that is what I’m doing, innit? This is not the same music I played with my ex, so a lot of it is newly arranged for what we do. And it is a definitive sound already, meaning it is already more danceable than what you’d strictly get with most duos who play pre-learned sequences. While a lot of guitar players have notions about what their “job” is, we have to play what makes it sound right.
And the few tunes we’ve worked out are instant crowd-pleasers. You can just tell and I don’t mind saying it is largely due to what I have been trying to find, but in another person. There was always some reason why [the guitarist] would not even attempt to play it any way but his own. In my books, that is precisely the wrong thing to do in a band—-and I just described the majority of bands in this neck of the swamp.
I’ve got lots of homework to do now. The technique of a custom strum for every tune is clearly the way to go. This is taxing for a non-guitarist but I started it. No reverting to standard comps, which I consider cheating. The only guitarist that could do it was Jag, and he’s long gone off to college. That puts me on the spot that I created myself.
This creates an apparent contradiction, in that I’ve said each person doing their own part is wrong. But we are definitely playing different parts. What’s the difference? I’ve said before how a lot of musicians impair their own style by playing only their segment of the music, expecting it is up to the rest of the group to fill in the weak or empty stretches. This creates a band that sounds like a bunch of soloists. What Trent and I are doing is creating parts that would probably sound wrong if soloed, but give a far better presentation when played together.
So, although saying it is technically wrong, you might think of what the others are doing is playing in unison while we are playing in harmony. And I was right, it works and sounds great, even at the beginner’s level we are starting from here. It completely waxes any solo guitarist who plays this brand of music, even those with backing tracks. Now to find out why there is nothing about it on the Internet.
Today’s Togla Treat
Look, I found another picture of Togla.
