One year ago today: November 7, 2014, pondering gifs . . .
Five years ago today: November 7, 2010, another "Hate Google" rant.
Six years ago today: November 7, 2009, the final “505” show.
Nine years ago today: November 7, 2006, your fired!
MORNING
Lots to read today. Want some trivia to start? Good. Did you know the maximum diameter of raindrops is 5.5mm? Any bigger than that, the coefficient of kinetic friction is greater than the surface tension. What? Okay, Patsie, it means the fall through the air breaks up drops before they can get any bigger. Still, 5.5mm, you don’t want that hitting you in the eyeball. I was looking at airfield construction.
How about some technically-based experimental material? Sounds exciting, after all, these are the very tidbits that brought most of us here. What is the real life performance of rechargeable batteries? To do that, somebody would have to both charge and recharge a set, as well as keep track of said charges, and how long they last. Now, this may not be as realistic as a home test for one major reason. NiCad/NiMH (Nickle Metal Hydride) cells have to be regularly discharged to zilch, even if they are stored and not used. I happen to have just such a device.
I cannot find the recommended rate at which these charges should take place, so follow my logic here. The package says can be recharged “up to” 400 times, that choice slab of Millennial brainfat, “up to”. So let’s presume the average battery these days lasts a week. So, if I do nothing but charge and discharge the batteries, they should last 400 months. What’s that, 7.69 years, or until the middle of 2023? Right away, you know Duracell has no intention of honoring that, they say 5 years is the maximum they’ll assure.
The package says 50% longer lasting. Than what? You? If I’m here in 2023, come meet me in person at the old folk’s home. I happen to like porridge 14 times a week. NiMH requires a special charger rated for the purpose, each brand of battery has a maximum recharge rate, beyond which a regular charger will kill the batteries. Duracell does not specify if the charger will last 400 cycles. (They mean 50% longer lasting than their regular AAA rechargeables.)
But the package says PLUS DURABLE. Gee, I’d like to buy some more of the DURABLE. Does Target carry it? I’d like two dozen, individually wrapped please. Um, it is Latino for longer lasting, Ken.
These batteries arrive pre-charged, so we will consider that charge “zero”, and that Duracell means up to 400 additional instances. Why the test of these batteries? Because regular batteries now cost 66% as much as NiMH, that’s why. I ran the calculations on the same spreadsheet that determined last year I could afford a late model used car around this time this year. That’s “afford” in every sense, which means a budget for insurance, gas, repairs, and replacement in addition to ownership.
Quick, show of hands. How many people here put away money to replace a vehicle as it ages? That’s what I thought. Because I don’t, I just make the calculation and include it as part of the cost. What, did I have you going there for a bit?
Nor is the morning over. The decision is made to lower the height of the camper walls to 18”, a more streamlined towing configuration. This adds the complexity of a fold-up roof on the drawer. And if it doesn’t work, I’m out $58 and have robot supplies for the next two years. Speaking of what doesn’t work, I’ve become acquainted with the name of another middle-aged Fox mouthpiece, “Maria”. I don’t know why Trump doesn’t ignore here. She’s not after truth, she’s constantly trying to trip him up. But her voice. Her voice grates on my nerves. I don’t like that housewife old-lady cackle. I just don’t like it.
Or that lame tactic I am just now beginning to associate with Fox* reporters, to put a Liberal spin on everything and throw it at a non-Libroid to see how they react for the media. Today she was on about how is Trump going to handle foreign policy blah-blah. Lady, goddammit, he has answered that bullshit question fifty friggen times already. Are you focking deaf? It is foreign, it is somebody else’s problem, we got more important issues right here at home. Lady, get some new material and stick that microphone in your, your eye. Yeah, your eye.
And here is an excellent documentary on gas turbine operation. About 4 minutes. That’s interesting, about 60% of a jet’s power is used to operate itself, and of the other 40%, which is thrust and heat, the heat part is wasted.
MIDDAY
That’s food time, so here is a picture of food. English, it says. Is this for making the “really big” sandwiches? The tale from the trailer court in England is that this was invented by the Earl of Sandwich. Pssst, he had some help from his second cousins, the Viscount of Sauerkraut and the Duchess of Thermidor. The only thing English about this bread is they had a colonial slice away the crusts.
Ah, I heard some say, statistically is it not 1 person in 10 that has a talent? Response: yes, and that formula would [probably] hold true if so many millions (23 million they say) of talentless hacks not been sold a dream by the music studios for so long. (I don’t blame the music teachers on that one.) Now we are stuck with the “Johnny B, Goode” generation. It is not surprising to meet some “guitar player” who has been playing the same few songs note-for-note as long as thirty or forty years. That’s not talent, that’s the brute force megalomania of obsession.
What? You say, well, look at all the millions who took piano lessons. They also never went anywhere. So it is, I reply, but talk to the average piano player. He does not believe the small collection of songs he can play represents anybody else’s taste in music. He certainly does not think the way he plays it is better than anybody else. He does not think he could be the superstar of his own show if only he could find the right team to back him. He does not incessantly play the same tunes every day imagining himself in the spotlight of a concert hall. He does not fantasize that a “good” bass player would unquestioningly learn his song list verbatim. I’ve more than made my point.
Gee, having said that, I should look back to see if there are any songs on my list from that long ago. The focus here is not just is the song old, but how long have I been playing it on the electric bass? Listening don’t count because it is a passive activity. Nope. Not one song is from my original band. As a teen, we played “Hey Joe”, “Gloria”, “Do The Hanky Panky”, and “Proud Mary”, many of which were already dated songs when I first played them. I did not play bass in a band until 1987.
And due to the conflicting interests of school and work, I did not play at all from 1991 to 2001.
Whew, I’m not stuck in the past, but my curiosity is up. What is the song on my list that I have been playing the longest? That’s easy, “Folsom Prison Blues”. Hey, wasn’t that 1959? Maybe, but I did not learn to play it until 1987 and that band broke up in 1991. I didn’t play it again until 2004 with the Hippie, who never could sing that song. That’s the oldest song I play and I’ve only played it for 13 years. Explanation: I used to hate country music and I thought, wrongly, that Johnny Cash was country. When I grew out of rock, nothing was there to replace it. Then in 1987, I met my wife, a Patsy Cline fan. In no time at all, I was playing country. I still don’t like most of it and I don’t like the Nashville sound.
Fine, I’m a Cash fan, so what is the song on my list today (other than Johnny) that I’ve played the longest? Let me dip over and look, be right back. Okay, I’m back. You still here? Good, the “oldest” songs on my list are these, with the year that I learned to play them with which band.
Jambalaya – 2002 (Space Hippie)
Margaritaville – 2003 (Space Hippie)
Spiders & Snakes – 2007 (Not Half Bad) (That’s my own band.)
The song I’ve played the longest, but never in a band is “These Boots” by Nancy Sinatra, because I like the bass line. It may surprise some that most of my current Johnny Cash tunes, I only learned in the last three or four years (“Jackson”, “Tennessee Flat Top Box”, “Cocaine Blues”) and in the case of “Cocaine Blues”, I never even heard of the song until the Hippie mentioned it once in 2005 and I didn’t like it. Because he played the Zydeco version or something.
Let’s be fair. What are the newest songs? I play about 200 tunes total, but less than 20 make the grade. Enough, you could say, to propel the average guitar player to a new level, if I could only fine one who could learn this easy material.
Here’s A Quarter – learned this year.
Don’t Rock The Jukebox – learned this year
Blame It On Your Heart – learned last year
That’s What I Like About You – learned last year
So there you go. 25% of my song list was learned in the past twelve months. The oldest songs roughly twelve years since I first played them on stage. That makes sense, the bulk of the songs I learned new since 2009 were after I learned how to sing, and had to pick all new material except the few that by rare chance were something I could manage. My biggest learning year was 2010, because I was so broke for most of it. Another burst of tunes in 2013/14, but those were never music I’d play on my own. “The Doors” druggie-hymns? Gag me.
Got that, Steve, Mike, Glen, Zach – 85% of my song list is new in the past six years. Got you beat by a country mile. I got five bucks says your ratios are somewhere between 1% and 0%. And don't give me that "bass is easy" crap. You only think you can play bass. It takes 8 hour minimum to learn each tune properly. You guys don't have that kind of attention span.
AFTERNOON
Much reading, mainly the scroll saw book I bought in Naples 48 or so hours ago. It turns out substantially about fretwork, which doesn’t that much interest me. I prefer clever functional designs. I’m happy to know I picked a medium to good grade of saw, that was total luck. It can be modified to do extremely fine woodwork, as evidenced by this picture of a clock. To me, building stuff like this is going overboard. You never know.
I’ve also been using the wrong type of spray adhesive. A better choice is artists mounting spray, designed to be temporary. Along with that, I was not using the best type of paper to print the designs. What got my interest was the chapter on planing wood.
That chapter was meant to teach the art of using a planer to “improve” warped wood. I’d always thought the planer was to peel a worn or weathered layer off old wood, but this book addresses the expense of the woods best suited for fine work. By cross-referencing this with a book I already own on cabinetry, those woods are Cherry, Mahogany, Maple, Oak, Walnut, Rosewood, Teak, and Zebra wood.
These are expensive. The new book gets right to the point, which is buy the defective wood and a planer. The tool can remedy crooks, bows, cups, and twists. It says further that it will remove surface splits and accumulations of sap. A planer, you say?
Okay, okay, I already know I got that exactly backwards. The planer WILL NOT correct those faults. Hey, shit happens.
EVENING
I want to talk about music. But first, here is a picture of JZ beside the sign. “$5 charge for whining”. Take it to work with you and make a fortune. I was at the beach tonight, passing but not entering the now-open Margaritaville resort. Time to call Trent, because I have a morbid fear of walking into the place on my own. And I admit it.
However, and that’s a big, big however, there is only the slimmest chance of any collaboration. If we ever team up, it would entail fundamental changes to how each of us do business. That’s a combination she is probably as leery of as I am. It makes it arduous to move on when the band breaks up, as such bands always do. It’s a Lennon-McCartney thing.
I’ve already decided on a tune or two if she is amenable to the concept. If there is a great sound, we move on it, if not, little lost. We are the type who will meet half-way but will not perform half-way. I have yet to confirm, but it seems to me around ten years ago the Hippie called me to play at a festival. That’s the Catch-22, he’d imply it was a gig but when you showed up, he was already on stage with a different set of people. He invited you to play audience.
One time, there was a blond lady, but totally into her own thing. About the same time, there was another festival in Hollywood with another blond lady. When I press my memory, I keep remembering this other festival, and that was not the same person. Ah, maybe it will hit me. Naturally, all the men were hovering around, acting the nice guys, but fooling nobody. I watched her show an hour before introducing myself and you know, I think she fended them off very expertly. A skill I value greatly but the more so in much younger women.
Trivia. Those slow-moving windmill turbines step the speed up by a ratio of 90:1. They are planetary gears, the shaft is the axle. The base of the tower contains the step-up transformer. This link in an excellent 5 minute investment. No wind turbine can ever be more efficient than 59.3%. But, but, that was before the Arudino!
ADDENDUM
For those who notice that Google censorship has been mentioned frequently, there is a reason. It was around a year ago that Google bleeped my post. Some would call it enforcement of copyright, but I label it censorship for two good reasons. One, they bleep first and ask questions later. Two, they don’t make it easy to establish “fair usage”. Plainly, each and any picture or even reference made in a blog of this nature is undeniably fair usage. That is, quoted for information and education.
Such utilization does not even require credit, besides in an on-line world, the owner should put his own damn watermark in an inconspicuous portion of the photo. Like I do. Too many of these Millennial jerks use the technique for advertising. Getting back to Google, the reason for mention is the old story—people who try to tell other people what to do ALWAYS backfires in the end. Just ask the government about Prohibition, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, welfare . . .
Anyway, it was that blatant censorship that boosted my rating high enough to impel this blog into the form you see today. A more standardized presentation, with more standard features. Oh, and might I add, readership is s-l-o-w-l-y recovering from the onslaught of the social media and its impact on the immediate gratification crowd. And I happen to know a lot about immediate gratification. That’s how I lived up to age 80% of my life. So I knew when the planned changeover for me was scheduled.
Until there is reason to change, standard features are the Yesteryear links, which increase hits by 16% and the Last Laugh (directly evolved from the Togla Treat), at 17%. Togla was that queer Turk who objected to me pointing out his youTube posts were stills, not videos. It might have been “Tolga” but he is now internationally known as “Togla”. Like I said, trying to make people do things your way always boomerangs.
Meanwhile, you may like to know that Google has the largest and most complete database on American citizens, more information than the NSA. And Google is bound by no privacy laws or conventions as to what they may do with that information. Google is also the largest owner of humanoid robots, having purchased Boston Dynamics back in 2013. As the saying goes, “Information is the new currency and Google is the central bank.”
[Author’s note: in case this surprises anyone who has known about it for years, I may need to remind some readers that I only learned what “Fox News” was just a few months ago. Prior to that, I did not know or care what a news network was. And the only other outfit I’ve even heard of is CNN and I add that to date, I still have never watched a television news report by any of these stations or networks or whatever they are. I only know them for their opposition to Trump, the only viable candidate of the decade, and a long-overdue patriot.
I do not directly support Trump, but I support the stance he is projecting, remembering that previous candidates also talked tough. After hearing a few speeches, I am also fearful of what would happen to America if anybody except Trump gets in. Those others are not leaders of men, they are politicians that would be unemployable except for this "political correctness" gag they pulled on the country. The big credit party is over, folks. It is payback time.]
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