One year ago today: December 28, 2016, WIP
Five years ago today: December 28, 2012, WIP
Nine years ago today: December 28, 2008, WIP
Random years ago today: December 28, xxxx, WIP
Enter Katrina Lake, who Fortune 500 is calling one of America’s youngest rich women (Taylor Swift is richest and six years younger). Nope, I’m not impressed by Lake. It’s the same reason I don’t care for Fortune 500. These are not, as suggested by the titles and articles, people who started from nothing and got rich by entrepreneurial genius. Like most people that magazine exhibits, that is totally false. And it gives a bad impression to everyone, especially those who are aware of what it really takes to get rich in America any more.
Nor should she should be portrayed as an achiever. I mean, exactly what did she achieve? Publicity? I know how hard it must be for these magazines to locate a legitimate success storey for every issue, but they could at least try. If she is really worth $500 million, why hasn’t she done something about that face? Let’s hope she’s not trying to win the Zuckerberg Beauty Pageant. She’d come in a distant second in most every category, none of which are sex appeal. Then again, judging by her looks, she probably lives alone and this might be her anti-kidnap strategy.
You bet I was up early going over my tunes. When it comes to music, jump on every opportunity. You think I don’t know the single biggest contributing factor is dumb luck. Followed closely by being related to someone in the business. Then, the Madonna route. I went over all the tunes I play that have a certain kind of bass run. Why? That’s easy to answer, because this is the bass run that throws so many guitar players into thinking it signals a chord change. They can get anal about it. To me, it is just another run, but because of blockheads like that guy from New York, I often have to quit playing them. Now I have to put them back in.
I’ll tell you another annoyance. Guitar players who play bass runs on top of the bassist. Unless the song goes that way, don’t do it. And in a duo especially, the two instruments should never be playing in unison, again with the exception noted. You know, that’s the final reason why I canned the New York guy. I specifically told him to quit doing it and he would not listen. What? You want specifics. Okay, you know the Jackson song “Don’t Rock The Jukebox”? In the chorus there are two chromatic walk-ups, one to C, the other to D. That dork kept playing the one up to C because it is easy. Then he’d leave out the D because it isn’t so easy.
Twice I told him to either play them both or don’t play them at all. Because it is a bass part and his job is to play rhythm. It’s easy to tell whether the guitarist is learning to play in a band or preparing to play the song solo. I don’t have time for that crap. The new lady has no such pretensions. She picked up pronto that in a duo, if something can be played on the bass, it probably should be. Did I mention she found an excellent version of ‘Party Till The Money Runs Out’ on the first try? She’s getting me the lyrics. Please let this be my rhythm player. I can scarcely believe I’ve met someone who’s started a band willing to join one. You know, she kind of looks a bit like Carol Kaye, who still lives in Seattle. My bass hero, Carol uses a plectrum.
Hill of Crosses (Lithuania).
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Here was a waste of time, MagicScore Maestro 8. First of all, it is not free as advertised. It is a time-limited trial. Not free at all. How do they make money if it is free? Who cares, but they should not advertise it as free if it isn’t. Damn millennial-think. Constantly trying to find some way to screw the world out of a few pennies each. Anyway, the software is not intuitive. I did the basics, drop a note on the scale. So touchy that the single half-pixel shift as you remove the pressure on your mouse click is enough to cause the wrong note to appear. The opening screen is a cluttered mess.
Speaking of liars, I had to kick another one off the property across town. He manipulated his ad for distressed real estate to read as if he was an expert at getting you a better deal than a short sale. Wrong, it was just a short sale which is basically throwing the owner out on the street with some walking money that will disappear in rent. The ad was worded as if he would evaluate the property and mortgage, and if the numbers worked out, he would buy the mortgage on the condition he listed it for sale at market value and thereby make enough money to ensure you got a far better deal than if the place went to auction. Lies.
I dropped off some music files with the guitar lady. I’ve got a sixth sense that this might be the one. If she does the homework, I told this is a sure thing. Here’s one I never heard of before. There are five or six yappy little dogs in her house, and I mean constantly. Not just when the doorbell rings. She also has a cockatiel, so you tell me if you know this one. The bird has learned to bark. I’m like, what is that, I thought she put the dogs in the back yard. It’s the bird. This, folks, I suspect, is the reason so many elderly men prefer to live alone.
A lot of noses got bent from y’day when I described the difference between playing guitar and playing rhythm. I understand why guitarists object to saying anything. As I said, I often ask the guitarist to do the unthinkable—to play a particular strum without knowing what song is being learned. That only comes later when they prove they can ace that strum through an entire three or four minutes. And I’ll tell you the reason.
Now that I’m saying something, you just watch, you’ll notice this next time you hear a guitarist. If, when learning, the guitarist knows the tune, he will change what he plays. It might be subtle and subconscious, but he will learn to play the tune the same way he would if he was going to solo the material. And that is not good enough. What’s more, I’ll fire any guitarist who even thinks he is going to pull that stunt on my time. Learn the strum first, then bother with the song title later. Only those with the patience to sincerely try this can move up to this level.
We ran over which tunes will be best for beginners, but she was most taken by the complicated arrangements. I had to haul in the reins and explain that is not a good starting point. I need to see her learn ten or twelve easy songs first and develop the confidence to force things to sound right. As I stated before, she does not always allow that some of what she’s hearing is my best material, honed over years. And it should not be used to predict how long before or how well new material can be brought into the making.
ADDENDUM
I’m still setting up the tools to re-commence work inside my house. Notice how quickly I resort to my hobbies when things get slow? Pity those who don’t have this option, and I don’t just mean later in life. You can find them down at the saloon most every night. Learning new things hasn’t been their bag since they dropped out. This time, I read an in-depth description of the commands available in QBASIC, which is MicroSoft’s evil twin version of BASIC. That company keeps contorting the language to fit their architecture, to the point where their object version, VisualBasic, is practically non-readable.
This is my traditional gripe with C programming structure. It does not contain any commands or capabilities that are not present or could be made present in script that looks like easily readable BASIC. Why? Because BASIC code is practically self-documenting. The commands and variables read like what they are. It is only, in my opinion, bad programmers who want the code to look esoteric to outsiders. And that is wrong on every level except their own.
Anyway, reviewing every command in the list, you know what I’d do if I had the skill and time? I’d write an overlay that directly translates every useless C+ or similar command into its BASIC equivalent. The major obstacle would be the way those pinheaded C+ people have added command variants and switches over time. Like those idiotic i++ or ++i commands. The spot where a counter is updated should be at its logical position in the code, not by cooking up yet another hard-to-remember rule. My point is there is nothing that could not be changed to make the code look like BASIC.
Somebody must have thought of this before. It works by allowing the operator to program in a friendly language like BASIC, then a compiler-like operation translates it into C-like cryptics. It would make a huge difference to how coding is done and all for the better. Alas, I have no clue how to write a compiler. Since this might be another of those ideas somebody else has failed at, I’d better dig a little deeper before doing more.
BASIC, or even COBOL, has a readable structure, but they are not perfect and I never said they were. My biggest grumble with such languages is the original people focused more on mis-using the keyboard than on inventing useful items like friendly print statements and a universal end-of-file marker. Instead, you have to enter dummy values, but that is not a good solution. It is entirely conceivable that there could be a real value of -9999 or a customer with the name “Quit”. Know what I mean?
Author’s note: The command lists I was reading were published in 1991, the year MicroSoft really began mucking with DOS and BASIC. Back then, most computer related material was authored by people who took pride in their work, so the listings contained heaps of references and a list of where to purchase various types of computer hardware. I’m getting to the point.
Those included a lot of component supply houses that I could use. But sadly, not one of the companies mentioned are still in business today under the same names. There may be descendents, of which I’ll take a look. The robot club may be disbanded, but I believe the materials budget was left in place. There could be a some real money in there by now.]
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