One year ago today: February 1, 2015, ping-klunk-ping.
Five years ago today: February 1, 2011, including a blind dog . . .
Nine years ago today: February 1, 2007, library computer lessons suck.
Random years ago today: February 1, 2005, on tuition-driven schools.
MORNING
So, you buy a bag of something, like potato chips. It comes in a foil lined bag. I like those bags because on one side you got foil, which is a conductor, and the other side with the decoration is an excellent insulator. Until recently. Look closely at this picture. See the shiny part? Somebody has gone through a lot of trouble to make it look metallic. Yeah, then how come it does not conduct electricity?
It does have a small metal pin as the hinge. But what do you want for $1.48. Somebody has to keep Wal*Mart on top of things. Does anyone ever have enough cheap plastic crap? I bought a floor mop there and when I put it in hot water, the handle fell off. So I went back and bought another one. Wal*Mart has America by the short and curlies.
I still don’t have a new water heater. The one installed is a tiny preheater, which works, but you get a three minute shower. I’m retired since age 41, I like a twenty minute shower and I don’t care how much the bill comes to. And yes, I leave the A/C on when I’m only gone for an hour. And if the weather was not so inclement, I’d go up to the Panera old folks home for a coffee. Listen to all the losers talk racing forms. I need a reminder I didn’t wind up like them.
For starters, Aquafina bottled water. It is made by Pepsi, it is filtered tap water, and costs 2,600 times more than what comes out of your tap—and by federal standards your tap water is more pure. I like vehicle stats, since I keep my gas usage to a minimum. Did you know 53% of vehicles on American roads are trucks, not cars. That’s correct. SUVs, minivans, crossovers—those are all trucks. Return for more every day the rest of this month only.
The Farmer’s Almanac for today this month says:
“Although the winter grey with age, yet reigns a sovereign king;
Sol’s plastic rays will soon assuage, and usher in the spring.”
Does anyone else get the distinct impression that was not written in 1818? It’s another gloomy-looking day, the Almanac got that right. It is 320 seconds to sunrise and the sky is getting light. Why, I think I’ll go out for breakfast, but overall, this will be a month of severe austerity. Why? Because, dammit, I’ve still never seen the Smithsonian.
Old and new windmills.
NOON
The daily quote from George Carlin is gone. Too much research for too little return, but it was fun. This was also fun, the supermarket. After four days of torrential rain, I used a letup to hit the aisles for basics. The problem was so did everybody else. Take a gander at this lady. I don’t wander around the store “shopping”, I know exactly what I want and where it is. So explain to me how I ran into this broad five or six times. It’s like she knew where I wanted to go next and was lurking there when I arrived.
Besides, did I not read somewhere in my mid-thirties, “Beware the egg lady”?
JZ called and some supply shop up the street from his condo just got a load of used water heaters out of a demolition site. He says they are in excellent shape. So maybe I can invite this lady over for a shower as soon as tomorrow, oops, did that slip out? Well, that won’t happen in the shower. I’ve got experience with these things.
And music. I responded to an ad for an acoustic guitarist looking for a working band. There aren’t any in this vicinity, so I was a little iffy about his claim to be a regular player. If he was, he’d know you have to do it on your own from scratch. Don’t waste time, this county is full of time-wasting wannabes who will never make it to stage.
Unfortunately, he is convinced he’ll find a working band and does not want to dilute his efforts by playing what he can now. That’s fundamentally a wrong move but you get a lot of that with guitar players and their unrealistic expectations. Like women of the kind, they always wind up alone and lonely until it is too late. And too late is age 40 in this world. You can play drums until you are 50, sing until 70, and play bass until you die. But guitar is stringent on demographics. Can you imagine some old guitarist playing Beiber, that’s what I’m talking about, and yes, it is an attitude thing.
He does have a fairly novel sound, but I point out I’ve only heard studio recordings. You can’t go by that. I’ve had top-notch recording artists crap out and freeze up on my stage. I get the impression I’ve jammed with the guy somewhere near Aventura. If it’s who I think it is, the guy may not be able to handle a top-notch bass player. By that, I mean most guitarists can only work with a bassist who follows their mistakes, they have real difficulty with a bassist who expects the same in return.
I’m further suspicious of guitar players who, when you say you want to hear what they sound like, tell you to listen to their originals on Reverbnation. That’s a non-answer. I don’t want to hear originals, I want to hear how well the dude can play the popular music that people already like. I listened to this guy’s calypso sounds and already have second thoughts. I’m going to presume he was not stupid enough to send me to his site to sell me a CD or something.
Yet, I understand that once a guitar player does what all the other guitar players do, start creating web pages of his totally unoriginal originals, well that costs. And since nobody really goes out there to chase down original music, it makes sense they try to steer people there. It’s just that doing that with a bass player is, well, you supply the adjective.
AFTERNOON
It is amusing how propaganda remains long after the facts become available. It has been over 70 years since WWII ended and it amazes me how many people still believe Germany started the war by “invading” Poland. Other persistent myths include thinking Germany lost WWI (in fact, the war ended by armistice, not surrender), that Hitler broke the rearmament treaty (England broke the treaty by never honoring it at all), and that Hitler declared war on France and Britain (he repeatedly made peace offers that were rebuffed by Churchill).
No, they are not mobile you-know-whats. They are too small and anyone concerned with efficiency, like if there was a war going on, would not bother with something so complicated when other methods are cheaper and faster. There has never been a satisfactory explanation over this discrepancy, that is, why anybody during wartime would opt for the most complicated, expensive, and dangerous way of doing something.
NIGHT
Alas, rehearsal was canceled; young Trent is down with the flu. Sounds like the one I had, upset tummy for nearly three weeks. I’ll spend the time testing features on the Tascam, since I now have several original tracks to mix for my videos. There are only a few styles of music I don’t play as a rule, such as ska, jazz, rockabilly, and the shithouse blues. My idea of easy listening is still instrumental covers of John Denver.
Nor have we forgotten our Arduino work. It just isn’t in the forefront any more. You might say the honeymoon is over. I’d toyed with the idea of a display to indicate what is uploaded to the microcontroller memory, but these displays require six outputs minimum and work on weird voltages. 4.2 volts I think. That does not leave enough outputs for any realistic functions. You could use a second Arduino, but that is beyond comprehension for most users.
I am further attempting to decipher the system of writing to memory cards. It is needlessly complex to start with, and the Arduino couples that with whacked-out C+ code. You want to write data to a card, and instead find yourself downloading libraries, declaring local variables, and writing error codes. Typical C+ bull donkey. I now believe the process to be one of those things you just do it five or ten times and it begins to make sense. It always struck me strange that the computer being a storage device, someone would make that storage one of the most difficult things to do. Something like 17 lines of code to store a single digit number.
Say, I just thought of something. Why not have a single blinking light, which uses only one output, and have it flash the information in Morse code? Or flash a number, since code is slow. It would also have to be on command, which would mean an interrupt request. And most programmers avoid those "like the plague", but that's because you have to know what the hell you are doing before you suspend core operations. 93% of programmers do not know what they are doing. Right, Patsie?
ADDENDUM
Musically, these are tough times. I see the glut of bassists remains, partially I think for two reasons. One, around 15 years ago, in an effort to create business, bass lessons began being heavily pushed by the major studios and music stores. Since then, the majority of bass players have been pretty much alike in style and musical taste. A polite way of saying they have been indoctrinated to play what the guitar player plays. Two, there are simply too many bass players for available bands, thus you see more ads and conclude there are more bassists.
So let me throw in a little advice. To get in a band these days, you have to do more than just play bass. Singing always helps but not every bass player can manage that. It is best to add some dimension to that band that is sorely lacking when you are not there. I’m the last one to tell you that is easy. It isn’t, I do it by overplaying the bass wherever there is a chance of a dead spot in the music. Never overplay the band, but I get away with this by playing mainly guitar riffs that would otherwise be left out.
I further see so many musicians still advertising to play in a band for fun. Folks, it isn’t fun. Bands are work, but for me it is work I rather enjoy. It beats waxing cars or part-time janitoring or anything. About the only non-music activity I could compare it to is running a booth at the flea martket. You make some money on some weekends and make nothing for the non-fun chasing around you have to do during the week. The competition is ferocious but at least you don’t get dirty.
Last Laugh
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