One year ago today: February 25, 2017, the great window move.
Five years ago today: February 25, 2013, I learned a lot that day.
Nine years ago today: February 25, 2009, on Detroit house prices.
Random years ago today: February 25, 2011, Canada: nothing is free.
Here’s a snap that got past the censors. There is a ton of info in this one if you know what to look for. As for the object, it is a four-way switch. When you add things up, so far over $110 worth of new electrical has gone into the sound wall. That does not include any fixtures yet. All told, the sound wall has now chewed up $380.84 in materials and the final cost will easily be over $500. And if it were not for the band start-up, this would be top story every day. This is a 20 amp switch, since the entire house except the two bedrooms, is wired with 12/2 NM cable and 20 amp fixtures. No skimping there.
This may be the final straw for Google. They’ve messed up the blog template. In the process of trying to fix it, I tried to revert the style back to the original, but they’ve changed that, too. I viewed but did not save the style sheet, but it activated itself. Now my precious blog looks like some kind of millennial half-faggot ransom note. The problem is, the only other large blog carrier wants money and that carries other implications. These days, when you spend money, they want your life history as well. Anybody who does not see the long-term danger in that is not a thinking person. Still, something has to change as they’ve made the opening list of blogs unreadable against the background.
Nor can I rule out the new tablet as part of the problem. It has some kind of virus, it seems, and none of the existing programs can find it. Every computer built since 2002 is a piece of junk infected with backdoors, keyloggers, and other institutional malware. My best equipment remains the refurbished equipment from the old computer store, some of it barely operates the last good MicroSoft operating system, Windows XP.
And hour of meetings today was concerned with paperwork. We’ve stumbled across something bigger than we anticipated and I’m convinced we will need to be ready for whatever is coming down the tracks. This is the situation where I assisted Agt. R with his loan mitigation forms and upset the foreclosure plans of a big and mighty corporation. That’s not the issue here, however. It’s the reaction of the anti-foreclosure people, and while I’m hopeful, I’m also concerned. Too much has happened too fast for this to be ordinary circumstances. It is beginning to look more and more like they are going to outright bail the guy out.
This would be a godsend, but should still be regarded with extreme caution. Don’t get me wrong, I would not refuse any free money—as long as the conditions are tolerable. While the situation is not out of control, I caution everyone over here that we really don’t know what is going on. The last thing we need is to set ourselves up for disappointment. I’ll make you a deal, I tell you what key items have changed and you see if you can guess better that I have. That is not tilted wording, because the way things are, one explanation is that I could have been “guessing right” up till now. But I doubt that.
Top of the list is the housing society has stopped sending form letters. This is more important, I think, than the contents, since we are dealing with a government-style office. The letters are custom typed and the envelopes are hand-addressed. Even the envelopes have changed to a posh blue shade, I say we take one and frame it. Now, let’s look at the contents, or shall we say, meta-contents, of the most recent communication.
The letter twice states that although the decision is higher up, that Agt. R has met all their criteria. Huh? What criteria? Getting your house repossessed hardly sounds like a qualification. So what is really being said? I say they are telegraphing that he’s already in the program, but don’t want to either say it directly nor, should anything go awry, be accused of raising his expectations. Bureaucratically speaking, it is the equivalent of them really going out on a limb here. But why? They’ve never met, but maybe they plain like the guy. He certainly does neat paperwork. In fact, perfect paperwork, like he worked for the phone company or something.
Coconut plantation.
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Not wanting to again blast you with music and band reports, here is yet another product with coconut oil, this one non-edible. See, all that rainforest clearing they’ve been doing in New Guinea is flooding the market with cheap oil and driving dozens of native languages to extinction. Notice all the coconut cooking sprays, and how this oil, the most unhealthy of its family, has been reclassified as a vegetable. It says here to apply it to the knees and elbows. Which is hard to do without applying to your hands, see?
Once again, I’ll describe what was found, you draw your own conclusions. That’s why this blog isn’t for everyone. To get any benefit from it, you have to think. It’s okay if you think out loud. We’ve gone over how some songs from her former list are easy for her, but not others. Ah, I mentioned how she has not eliminated the nasty habit of comping. It would appear the ones she can play are those which most closely resemble her natural comping. For my non-music readers, comping is to play every song the same way. We’ve all been bored to death by such musicians. I do not allow comping.
When we play another seemingly easy song that has a different strum, it’s a disaster. Comping does not work. It messes up the whole song by changing the character. It does not match my bass lines, which follow the original music very closely. I set the bass aside and picked up my acoustic and sure enough, she instantly reverts to comping. This implies her cues were traditionally coming from another guitarist and she is used to ‘following along’. Trying to follow me is never a good idea. She could not stop comping. So, one major barrier has been identified.
My bass lines can easily throw off a guitarist who tries to follow me without understanding the framework of the whole song. You heard me, my bass lines may be worsening the situation. Even when she practices to the recordings, she is still inputting a great many cues that will no longer be present when it’s just the two of us on stage. We talked first day and agreed on how song structure becomes a predominant factor when accompanying my playing. Months later, the problem rears up. So that’s another discovery.
Last for today, I stuck with guitar for the rest of the lesson and identified there is a series of distinct spots where she mucks up. It is fairly consistent, such as when changing from a I to a IV chord, or whenever there is a II to V “farmer” turnaround. This means if this band flies, it will mean a long haul ahead, and a difficult one. Years of guitar damage needs undoing. I don’t know if I’m up to it. You see, in the end, such a band will be so much toil that it exceeds the reward. Mind you, once again it would be a band that succeeded only because I had a hand in every technique, every note, every strum, every last part of the end product. Remember my first band? How I had to find and train everybody? Am I back to square zero after a lifetime?
ADDENDUM
What’s this then? A bank error in my favor. Looks like it. Could be a $400 withdrawal that got recorded twice. Or it could be a gremlin in my filing system. I’ll go see them Monday afternoon. If it’s the four hundred, maybe we can go buy something nice. Whaddaya say?
Last Laugh
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