Five years ago today: April 9, 2011, mice, lizards, & PA systems.
Nine years ago today: April 9, 2007, Alexander, the movie.
Random years ago today: April 9, 2013, Yep, exact same lady.
MORNING
Where would you like to start? This is new starter day, except I can’t get the batbike started to make the 9:30 appointment and the mech isn’t answering his phone. The old starter is causing some kind of dead short that’s killing my battery, fortunately I paid extra for a deep cycle model that can handle multiple recharges. Finally, I get my weird neighbor to help me push it onto the street, where it finally grabs.
Next, over the Agt. M to get him over to the batbike, sitting by the roadside. What luck, we get it running on the first push. Then over to the flea market for parts. That’s this picture, here because it is a first. Home made battery panel. Those are grinding stones in the foreground, read on. It’s only mid-day, I’m exhausted, and I’ve already wasted $30 on nothing. And I have no sidecar until at least next Wednesday. This means more unplanned downtime. It makes for extra blog reading but it sets other matters off schedule, in some cases seriously so.
Mulling over last evening, I’ve decided to go ahead with the purchase of the wireless Karaoke mics and begin negotiations over the Fishman PA. Somebody has to get down to that beachfront and save the musical scene. Tell Cowboy Mike to get down there, he would wax the band at the Walkabout. If I said music on the broadwalk has gone downhill, let me rephrase that. It is down right off the bottom of the map. We did not check Margaritaville, but what we saw was a calamity for the beachfront business establishment. I’ve been to the beach off-season before and never seen such lack of quality.
The Cuban lady was a knock-out, but so untouchable it was hard to tell what was really for sale. And unless you knew the Havana hit parade, my single tune was the sing-a-long portion of the evening. These places are not adapting to the 800-pound gorilla down the block. They are not providing a cozy alternative. And if they don’t wise up, it’s going to be too late. Glom onto an older crowd, I say, and don’t even compete with the glitterati.
Maybe I need this down time to re-evaluate what I’m doing musically. The consensus is that because of the electric bass, I’m setting my sights too high for the guitar. That’s a fair opinion because it stems from people I know, both musicians and not. Right now, I don’t agree that lowering my standards is a great plan, but you know, that’s not the same as not caring what people think. That I can live with and maybe it’s time to apply that attitude toward my guitar skills.
I can do better. That’s how bad the entertainment was last evening.
von Braun.
“Any activity becomes creative when you try to do it better than you did before.” ~ RHP
Agt. M burnt out the motor on his pet project, the electric bike. He accidentally connected DC to an AC motor. Some of them run at half speed for a while, and according to Agt. M, they make a funny noise and you can smell the wires frying. Ha! That’s a $500 motor down the drain, that project is going to be the end of that guy. The club only meets up on occasion these days, like the assist on the batbike. We have not so much give up on building a robot as having decided it isn’t worth the effort and we benefit more from collaboration than invention. Now, he’s looking at an electric motor design with the magnets arranged flat instead of around the circumference.
What’s new about this photo is this sharpening stone. He found it on an old farm in Delaware. It is more than 100 years old. And you should see the excellent home made rectifiers he makes. That’s ordinary AC to DC. Next time I find a massive capacitor, remind me to save it. I’ve many times asked the guy to take me on as an apprentice. No, he says, he doesn’t have the patience to teach.
EVENING
Sorry for the late updates with the posts. One of the Frenchies who is just passing through connected some kind of device to the system supposed to double his speed. He wound up taking the entire link down repeatedly until I noticed which vehicle was always parked here as the problem occurred. It was a bit on a heated argument over there, it serves the guy right. The rule handout says no telephone or enhancement apps to be connected. None, so why belabor the point.
I still have that old Magic Jack from Lance. That’s the one they didn’t say don’t use, they actually wanted users to send them back. Fat chance. I know exactly what that does when you plug it in, and I’ll often do it just to knock down whoever is Skyping. Sometimes I can hear the howl. If you plug the Magic Jack into a hub instead of directly into a computer port, it scrambles the network.
Last Laugh
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