One year ago today: January 15, 2017, that Antarctica book.
Five years ago today: January 15, 2013, at the hospital cafeteria.
Nine years ago today: January 15, 2009, is that the old Taurus?
Random years ago today: January 15, 2012, hey, that’s Trent.
Before we start, I received this picture link for “Miss Scotland”, from my English buddy. We agree, she is already a getting a little on the frumpy side to be winning beauty contests. What he unwittingly sent me was the background. That’s my old stomping grounds. This is the west coast of Thailand, along the Indian Ocean. My cabana was in that small clearing just left of her elbow. This is high tide, and the water is the same temperature as the air.
I better tell you some happy news since that was getting rare around here. Last evening I settled in right after dark and put a DVD about this Australian guy to goes to Gallipoli to find the remains of his sons after the war. “The Water Diviner”, far enough away from any other plot recently to make it a good movie just for that. But it is intense. The guy’s wife makes him read the boys their favorite bedtime stories as if they were not dead and still kids. With the semi-flu or whatever I’ve got, I wanted nothing more than to sack out for twelve hours when my cell phone rang.
It was that guitar player from north of town, like twenty miles from here. Could I come over now? I don’t know what motivated me to pack my gear in the Taurus and drive that far in the dark. Intuition tells me that a guy who calls on a Sunday night and wants to practice now is probably serious about his music. I dragged my carcass over there and that is the good news.
Now enters the guitar player who might save the day. He knows no country, but he knows he’d rather be in a band than not in one. It turns out he plays mostly originals so he could strum the patterns after being shown just once. And play entire songs. That might sound funny but I’ve met so many who could not. We blasted through twelve songs in two hours, bam, bam, bam. Ready to go. I didn’t have to teach him anything because, although his approach and motives are different, he caught on to what was happening right away. And he did something the Guitar Center wankers would consider traitorous. He gave playing real rhythm a fair chance and liked the results.
Um, for clarity, there is no practice time needed, we were already playing the music. He said he’d toyed with a similar idea in the past but didn’t know how to go about getting a bassist on board. Oddly, we did not know even one song in common. He’s nearly two generations younger than me. But he spotted the potential after the first five chords. Damn rights this sound is a money-maker. His wife says he’s been asked to play this material several times but couldn’t until I showed up. I cannot stress the importance of how, in Polk County, we have no competition. Nothing else even comes close. He can sing and wants to do harmonies. Fine by me, since I warned him my singing was still pretty fragile. Things are already at level 99, and if we could add harmonies, it would be recording studio time.
Yes, he really is that good. My song list won’t challenge him. I could see the gears engaging, I suppose with one more get-together this week, we’ll go do the coffeehouses. Is it clear what I’m saying here? This is not a startup, the guy is a truly talented musician with a great attitude, and as soon as he gets a few of the tunes happening, we are good to go. No learning curve needed. How good are we? I think we just missed making a New Year’s Eve fortune. Please let this be the one, there are no musical challenges here, we need only sparkle up what we’ve already got.
said that, the guy has facial tattoos, nose rings, and gigantic pierced earlobes with grape-sized earrings. Is that a problem? Nope, as long as you do the job, I don’t care if you look like Godzilla and stand on your head. We are opposites of what you’ve ever expect to collaborate on such a project. Married guys can always use extra money and when we played ‘Party Till The Money Runs Out’, I could see the dollar signs where his eyes used to be.
The possible explanation of how he knew what was going on? Like me, he started out playing piano. That always seems to have a positive effect on every musician, or in the corollary, a negative effect when it is not present. By now I’ve convinced 100,000+ readers how difficult it is to find a guitar player with any brains. It takes brains, not talent, to make the connection. The new guy saw this where the rest didn’t. I’m not unaware how a successful bid would be dandy vindication that would irk more than a few naysayers.
Bode Museum, Berlin.
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For you amateur renovation buffs, we are back at the floor in the living room slash new bedroom. You may say, aw, we’ve seen this pictures before, but no you haven’t. I ripped that floor up to install the beams, sister joists, and to upgrade some of the wiring to 20 amp 12/2. Show here is some of the reinforcing work. Visible here are the stainless steel screws holding new joist blocking in place. The new part I built is more level then the old floor space, so these blocks are to ensure if settling occurs, it will even itself out. Yep, that is daylight you seen at the bottom of the picture.
Here’s another picture, the kind I am taking to document the renovations if I ever go to sell. There are so many patch-up and cover-up shacks on the market that everybody is skittish even when things get inspected. I have installed this anti-drill plates over the cable runs. I don’t know if you can see it but I think I know why they were on sale. They just will not hammer in straight. The metal prongs choose a side and get offset slightly, I don’t know if you can see it here. Actually, it doesn't look that bad in this picture. But damn, build the thing so it works right, this isn't rocket surgery.
because you've been good lately.
There was a two page write-up in the Tampa paper today about the robo-callers. Those who know this blog know that term was first used here many years before, and most of what was in the article was also old news to us. The bad guys are using computers to dial the calls with recorded messages, then directing any suckers who respond to a call center. That’s where the feds should be tackling the problem, but they are too chickenshit. Instead, the try going after the guys who own the robot dialers.
And as usual, the government is not listening to the electorate. The people have overwhelmingly said they do not want these calls from anybody. Yet the ass-clowns in DC permit calls who, in their opinion, are not “selling anything”. Like surveys, religious bunk, and I got a call from some damn policeman’s charity just last week. What part of no-calls don’t those 'tards up in Washington understand? There should be another list, one of people who want these calls and everybody else is automatically protected against all phone calls from any entity which dials up more than five numbers in a row that belong to someone they do not know. People caught doing this should, in addition to a fine, be prohibited from using a phone for five years, including a personal phone.
[Author’s note: you can buy the dialing software to make 6,000 calls per hour. This photo is from Voicent. It’s on sale right now for only $9,988. The trick is setting up 100 phone channels. That could cost a pretty penny, since each one is a business line.]
The government should also take aim on the people who sell this kind of software. There will be a squawk because they also sell a lot of "legit" annoyance-ware. I made that term up, but you know what I mean. Here’s a partial list of their offerings.
A) Predictive dialer – used for political campaigns, it ignores answering machines and busy signals, only alerting the system when a live person answers. Third most hated interruption, behind sales and surveys.
B) Auto dialer, this is the one you hate. It is only supposed to be used with contact lists. Sure. First on the list of complaints in America. There are some 260,000,000 phone numbers (that's phone numbers, not people) on the no-call list. Almost every phone in the country, but you still get calls. Proof your elected "representatives" are not listening.
C) Appointment reminder. Most of us are okay with this one. After all, you gave the doc your number. His office probably didn't sell it to the telemarketers like my cardiologist's did. Well, she gave it to the pharmacy, the health care provider, and my insurance company, and they gave it out, so she wasn't "responsible". Trisha, the lady who tried to tell me I was being "unreasonable" because she told her staff to lie to me.
D) IVR studio. These are those robot answering services where you are supposed to “listen closely as our menu has changed”. No it hasn’t. It’s to remind you they are the boss. Press “1” for English.
E) Phone surveys. Probably the only thing hated more than telemarket calls. Especially the surveys that want to know if you want to buy anything, duh.
F) CRM. You don’t really get any calls from this one, but you’ve been a victim of it. This is the robot that, when you respond, walks you through that phone menu to “measure your progress”. If you want to complain, it is designed to deliver you the whole sales pitch or never offer you that option. Pushing “0” for Operator is no longer a valid option. Please try again.
[Author’s note: prior to the advent of computers, there were mechanical dialing machines. I’ve never seen one, since they were outlawed around 1969. They delivered a recorded message that you had to listen to entirely. If you hung up, the machine would repeatedly dial you back until you listened to the whole message.]
ADDENDUM
Google and it’s grab for power through Internet blackmail. They’ve got a little bit of dirt on everyone who has ever used their browsers and don’t think for a second they don’t intend to use it. Somewhere along the line, it will be your turn. After all, you read this blog and it was bought out by Google quite a few years ago. For most, this is probably the least of your worries.
It’s the new tablet that is teaching me the real lessons. Google locked me out of this blog until they got my “unknown” device registered on their system. They detected suspicious activity, which is basically the Tor browser trying to log on from Idaho. For those who wonder where the IP address sends you, just log on to Craigslist and read the title bar. Note that Craigslist locks you out if it detects or suspects you are using Tor. You’ll need to set up a bridge, which I’ll be looking at tomorrow.
That’s what I mean when I say these sinister corporations train their own opposition. I am learning how to work with Tor. I’ve used only Tor on the new tablet, yet they still got my location, which I though I had turned off. My knowledge here must seem primitive to the wired-ins, but please allow that there is no place for a person my age to go find out there things. I have no computer peers. And the younger users I know seem to be totally apathetic about personal privacy and security. Google is mainly focused on getting your phone number, as that is the same as ID. That’s in most cases, but not mine. Like my bank statement, my phone doesn’t provide any demographically useful data.
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