November 19, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 19, 2015, the truth about Gadaffi.
Five years ago today: November 19, 2011, Radio Shack stocks Arduino.
Nine years ago today: November 19, 2007, my education sunk in mud.
Random years ago today: November 19, 2006, boo-fecking-hoo.

MORNING
           First, admire this graffiti from Southeastern U. There’s more than one way to interpret this arrangement. Is it disfiguring the wall, carrying a message, or did the artist know about the historical significance of the handprint?
           We’ll skim over today since I was mostly fumbling with the bass to emulate those lead breaks. I should not compare them so directly since the bass can’t do around half the bends, hammers, and pulls as a six-string and the idea is to put more interesting fills behind the rhythm in songs where a break is not to be avoided. I had a lot of fun with it but also a lot of frustration.

           I long ago noticed lead players follow patterns, but I also noticed they often moved up or down the scales in imitation of the melody. And the smart guitarists played mostly eighth notes that resolved to firsts and thirds. Hmmm, I play a lot of thirds on the bass. I’m going to further see if I can adapt my “play-ahead” tactic, the one I use against guitarists who get too heroic on stage.

           My plan is to take out the instrumentals breaks from a dozen of my best tunes and string them together into long backing tracks. Then see how successful I am at adapting this one single solo I’m leaning to the various styles. Country solos use a lot of double note bends and though that’s tough on bass, just choose which ever note is predominant and play only that. If Ray-B reads this he’ll be rolling his eyes. He’s the guy that said I’d wind up doing this. But that was so very long ago I deny that I did it purposely or that he called it. If I had done this on purpose, it would not have taken ten or eleven years.
           The hardest part turned out to be transposing the notes on the top two guitar strings down to positions on the bass neck. Certain popular sounds cannot be faked on the bass, though at the same time, I can do things a guitar player can’t because his fingers are naturally “backward”. I spent most of the day experimenting with slides that mimic the guitar bends and I’ve got some of them pretty darn close.
           And like a guitar player, I’m already developing favorite passages that work their way into a noticeable amount of what I do. I strictly avoided this on the bass thought I’ll beat this because I remember how I got over it before.

Picture of the day.
Nufenen Pass, Switzerlland.
Use your BACK ARROW to return.
NOON
           These are boxes of used books. Nobody knows what’s in there and you can buy them for around $200 a box. It’s from a used book store up in Tampa that for some reason is selling books by the ton. I’ve always wanted to open a small used book store with every title on file, kind of the antithesis of Amazon. You can come in and handle the book, but unlike most used books, you can go on-line and see if the title is in stock. I ran across these crates for sale while doing a what-if on-line. Building rents are far too high in this area to consider actually opening a store.

           I’ve toyed with the store idea for decades. I’m wary of any business now not because I would not make money, but the business climate is so terrible. This is not merry old England where you keep a shop and the shop keeps you. In America you must continue to grow or get wiped out. I would make more money, probably a lot more, if I could re-enter the job market. What, did I hear a snicker back there? Let me tell you something.

           You would not have to read very far back in this blog to find since day one of my career, I was mindful of how far behind my own co-workers were falling. They fell into the last comfort zone of the western world, the 25 years after 1970. People could walk in off the street into a secure union job and have a $200,000 mortgage a year later. I’ve worked with people so stupid they could not run a lemonade stand who held six-figure management salaries because they had a “winning smile”. And they thought it would last forever.
           I never fell into that trap. I was taking evening classes in accounting and computers for the majority of the 14.5 years I was with the company. I saw nobody from my department at either the college or university after hours. While I was the youngest employee to every every get a buyout retirement package from the company, the rest left empty handed and became mall cops. I too, would snicker if I heard any one of them say they thought they would stand a chance getting hired for anything like what they used to make. For most of them, their sole experience with the computer age is an aging laptop and a smart phone.

           So don’t compare me to that pack. I’m reminded of that Nova robotics class, where my mere presence in the room was enough to blast the Millennials out of the water. How many times in my life have I had computer professionals tell me something could not be done just before I showed them how to do it? I’m aware the phone company had to hire eight people to cover my job when I left. My degrees are in computers and accounting and I have experiences operating a business that supercede anything they teach in the cheezy universities of today.
           So yes, I’m hardly bragging to say I would easily command a great salary if I got back into the workforce. But I would not do that even if I could. I’d rather take a simple job that paid maybe $70,000 and let the rest of the cowboys climb the ladder and take the flack. I’d work for five years, bank the majority, and move back to Texas. That’s what I’d do. Because being the smartest guy in the room always makes you a minority.

AFTERNOON
           I looked further into Bitcoin to find there are no clear instructions on how to go about setting up an account. There are web sites that talk about wallets and mining, as if everyone knows what that is all about. I gather you have to go to a website that offers these “wallets” and while I have not looked yet, you can bet there are some stringent criteria to opening an account. It never says so, but getting a wallet is identical to opening an account. Then you have to buy or earn some Bitcoin.

           This is done by selling something and accepting Bitcoin as payment, or by purchasing Bitcoins on a credit card. What if you don’t own a credit card? Again, it doesn’t say. The going rate for a Bitcoin seems to be around $742, quite a leap from The $16 when I first looked in around 2011, a couple years after they were first offered. I’ll try to make sense out of the system, if only because so few people remember what happened in Greece. Large bank accounts were confiscated and everyone else was limited to withdrawing $300 Euros per day. The software to freeze accounts is already written and installed on the ATM network. It is only a matter of time.
           The biggest obstacle to Bitcoin is that it is not accepted everywhere. Yet. The aspect I like most is the lack of a central bank. If it was government controlled and they tried to dump an extra $85 million into the system the way they do it right now every day, users would simply refuse to accept those serial numbers in payment. Note that you cannot do that with a central bank because the law states “this note is legal tender”. You must accept it when offered for payment or the debt is dissolved.

           [Author’s note: this fluctuating price of Bitcoin units upsets some people. They don’t understand that there is a limited supply of Bitcoins, so yes, the price does go up. Nobody can secretly “print up” a bunch of Bitcoins and dump them into the system, which is known as “quantitative easing”.]

NIGHT
           I scootered out to the farmer’s market to pick up some spuds and stopped in at Tractor Supplies to price out a few yard tools. I’m eventually going to have to roto-till the entire yard. That’s when I saw this sale on NeverWet, the $20 water repellent the robot club bought to see. We rejected it because the coating wears off by itself, just being exposed to the atmosphere. I see we were not alone, it now sells for three bucks. Why, this was so exciting, I even looked at chain saw sharpening files. Retirement is going to make an old guy out of me yet.

           Old? Yes, I was also at the club last night looking for that farm girl who was fed up with fancy-pants cowboys and eastern types. There was nothing there to compare to the Dali Museum, but then, there is no $24 admission fee at the door. There was one that caught my eye, but her plain-looking hefty friend plunked into the chair between us and kept pretending it was crowded.
           When she headed for the ladies, I quickly moved her chair a few inches further away, letting her friend have a giggle. But I was right, they were bar bunnies. An hour later their husbands or whatever showed up.

           I found several videos of home-made jigs for cutting planks out of logs with a chain saw. Some of them are ingenious. They all use gas powered saws. Many involve standing the log upright. That’s okay for somebody who can lift such weights. I priced out a lot roller at the supply shop, it’s $35 and the biggest model fit logs maximum 12 inches in diameter. I already cut all my small pieces without needing any leverage.
           The cold spell let up, so I took the evening off and watched DVDs again. I watched “Lone Survivor”, which was full tough soldiering but I remain totally opposed to the US interfering in all foreign entanglements. Of course, it is too late to avoid trouble because we’ve destroyed their ancient customs and corrupted their youth with video games, but we still don’t belong there. I do not cry when US soldiers die in the middle east. We’ve got enough troubles at home. The US military should not be much stronger than required to repel a physical actual attack on our soil.


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