One year ago today: April 18, 2017, finally, French toast.
Five years ago today: April 18, 2013, comments on GPS.
Nine years ago today: April 18, 2009, we were still friends then.
Random years ago today: April 18, 2010, last Friday’s gig.
Question. If plastic is supposed to take forever to degrade, how come most things made from it break within the year? See the jockey box on my scooter. This puppy has done sterling service over the years. It’s the jumbo size and has hauled everything from pizza to large spare parts. But y’day I lost the only remaining key. The duplicate went up in smoke last September, so now I have to drill the lock. I’ve got one more place to check for the key, but I’m afraid this is a goner. The big reflector is broken away and I liked that safety feature. Maybe time for a new one. I have to get in there, my laptop and notebook are inside.
The reason behind this is the system, in particular, the legal system and the tax system. If you are known to be rich, people are more likely slip and fall on your icy sidewalk. And anyone who makes money fast enough to attract attention is inviting a visit from the income tax department. There are other similar issues that add up to Americans not discussing how much money they make. Under the regime since 1917, when income tax was imposed without consulting the population, this has been a fact of life.
I’ve placed a firm offer on the hot dog cart, lined up some potential suppliers, arranged for proper tow hitches to be installed on two vehicles, and have one trainee lined up. Agt. R has talked about staffing the place with teenage babes, but I guess he doesn’t understand the circuit. I, on the other hand, talked to the toughest ex-con I know of that is in the family. I paid his outstanding traffic fines (motorcycle) to get his driver’s license re-instated (I told you about Florida), and have his agreement to train as an owner-operator.
Everyone involved has been instructed that if I find out they quit their day jobs, they will probably be let go. The operation is not designed to supply anybody with steady income and decisions cannot be made on the basis of needs from that direction. It is not unnoticed that everyone so far is in some manner beholden to the robot club and that is considered a primary asset. For this reason, JZ’s position in the organization chart is undefined.
This is a trial project, so even if there is an initial operating loss, we are seeking out reliable, trainable people. People who will not quit at the first opportunity and start their own because one of the first things they learn is they can never match the efficiency of my logistics system. That, and I have enough to crush them if they try by selling for less than their cost until they cave. I can’t believe I just said that. Today’s business expenses, and we have not even begun, were $255.55.
Speaking of expenses, that black cat got into the laundry area and knocked over an $18 bottle of fabric freshener, which proceeded to leak slowly down into my basket and soak all my socks. It’s now the most expensive and best smelling set of socks I will ever own.
Hat rack.
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Satisfied with the morning, I’m back home with a good relaxing book. In this, instructions on how to build regulated power supplies. It’s a component I took for granted, but got curious. It is fascinating how these work using only passive components. There are all manner of elaborate models today, you probably own some in the form of specialized battery rechargers and, of course, all your wall warts. I refer to the original models that use parts you could have bought at Radio Shack. I’m half tempted to build one to see how well it turns out.
All of this reminds me that I still don’t have my little electronics hobby bench set up and I miss it. But I put in four hours on the new band material, mostly memorizing start notes. That’s the method I learned to sing with, so it probably has a name. I found the original lyrics to “Move It On Over” in the process, I think I may learn both versions. I worked out an arrangement of “Last Train” that may be too much for my guitarist, but so what? She can quit playing during those spots. That odd tune, “Your Still Gonna Die”, intended as a break song, is now standard first set material.
I changed the key of Clark’s “Stripes” to A and found it to be at the bottom edge of my range. Uh-oh. This means moving it up to B, but that is a hassle key. That means the circle of fifths makes for difficult guitar chords such as F# and G#min. I’ll try moving it all the way to C, but this much can change the character of some music. The alternative is to mess with a capo on stage and this would also be an impossible key if I ever again find myself working on my long-awaited solo guitar career again. I’m pretty much have to drop the song.
Last, Freddy Fender. Wasted days and wasted nights trying to arrange his music for acoustic and bass. Well, it’s done now and this Sunday we’ll see how my bass break works. What we do during rehearsal does not always translate to good stage work, especially as I’ve told you how badly she strums behind these instrumental segments. Even with a chord chart, she gets lost every time. That issue is probably best left to resolve itself. It is a common bad habit of many guitar players, taking their cues off the rest of the band instead of properly learning the song and assimilating it with what is available.
In my earlier days I had many an argument with guitar players on that one. For openers, guitar players never lose arguments, they’d rather quit than admit they are wrong. When you meet a guitarist who says he relies on the bass or drums to keep the beat, you’ve got yourself one piss-poor specimen of a player. I’ve met others who cannot play to certain bass lines and want you to change to something they recognize, even if it is not slightly like the version you agreed on. This gets glossed over because that is your most prevalent type of guitar player. There are so many of them that make this same error that it becomes the accepted standard. And they will never change. Music by majority rules.
ADDENDUM
Doing some file backups, I found a copy of a loan repayment schedule from 1981. This is before spreadsheets and it was some six months before I got my first computer, an Apple ][e clone from Hong Kong. I’ve likely posted this before but it got me thinking about the situation last summer when I fired my heart doctor because his office manageress was leaking private medical data from my files. He said that I was “unaware how the world has changed”. Really? Take a look at this document again, click on it to enlarge.
One glance at this sheet tells you how quickly I took to computers. It also tells you I instantaneously saw the danger when ruthless entities such as the police, credit agencies, and government departments go hold of these machines. No need for me to act like stupid people and wait around until 2018 to start yelling at Zuckerburg, like he cares. Somebody should tell them it’s too late.
My information has been protected since before 1981, and I had a standing habit of just plain not giving out personal information that extends back before that as well. So yes, I was miffed when that bitch at my doctor’s office was handing out complete up-to-date information—thank goodness I fed them only basic, coded data. But it still took nearly six years to catch the bitch. She had threatened the staff with getting fired if they did not lie to me when I kept asking if they knew anything about the leak.
For anyone who remembers my first degree was an associate in military history, you may have noticed that these are not actually the names of flowers. They are the names of Royal Navy escort destroyers.
In the same files, I found another revealing pair of documents. In the early days, there was distrust of computers because they “crashed all the time”. So by 1984, much of my record keeping was still done on paper, then manually transferred to a computer for printing or analysis. Here is a 1984 trip from Sedro Wooley to Los Angeles. That would have been in my old 1974 Ford Maverick. Let’s take a peek at state-of-the-art recordkeeping back in that day and age. Yep, by that time I was already an old had at computer applications. So when I tell you MicroSoft of Google is giving you the gears, could be I know what I’m talking about. I also notice my handwriting has changed over the years.
I left with 124,342 miles on the clock, gas was $1.229 per gallon and on June 21, 1984, I noted that I passed a town called Weed in California as the mileage rolled around to 125,000. It seems to me I was in Weed again around five years ago, maybe this is why it rang a bell. That evening, I rented a room in Redding for half price of $18.95 and bought six bottles of beer average 75¢ each. Next day I had two beers in Bakersfield, I should find my handwritten blogs and find out what I was up to. Bakersfield is the location of first bar I snuck into underage.
The trip one-way was 1,287 miles and the cost was a whopping $149.09. This would indicate prices on car travel have between tripled and quadrupled since then. Or put another way, today’s dollar is worth 25 cents. Notable items on the chart? It was the only time I ever bought gas at the Awful Brothers place and a note that the Chevron clerk in Ashland was honest. I would have been traveling to Palo Alto. Three years and one week later, the world changed forever for me, but that is another story.
[Author’s note: anybody having trouble enlarging that last picture too much? Yes, I know. This ain’t my first rodeo.]
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