One year ago today: February 7, 2018, the porch than never was.
Five years ago today: February 7, 2014, more scumbag guitarists.
Nine years ago today: February 7, 2010, a generic day.
Random years ago today: February 7, 2007, a DNS (Dragon) transcript.
At least it was a beautiful day for chasing around. Welcome back to Florida, it took 2-1/2 hours to drive the last 90 miles. I took highway 301 because it was past 11:00PM on a weekday, but Florida got me. Every red light between Sumterville and Mulberry, to the maximum. I wonder how how they knew I was trying to save time with shortcut? Florida will always let you know that no way will you ever have things entirely your own way. I’m over budget from the trip, which basically cost nothing but entertainment, which is budgeted separately, so I’ve been thinking. I can afford a router table, even a cheap one will be fine. Read below for more.
Nor does Ford help much. The manual just says check the level with a dipstick and don’t use the wrong brand. I figured it out by eliminating the other dipsticks for oil, water, and power steering but unless there’s an app for that, I see more than a few unhappy stranded motorists on this one. Noticing a rack of long spout funnels nearby, I figured buy one or regret it. Good move, the refill port is a foot down in behind the engine and no way to get your hand in there holding the container. I took a chance and got the right brand, something called Dexron(?) but the right kind not the wrong kind. Ford is not going to make it easy for you.
Thinking ahead, I bought a container of transmission stop-leak. Being the type who reads the directions, I see the fluid must be added while the gears are hot but the stop-leak is to be added while the train is cold. Overall, this tranny fluid scenario is so damn finicky it would bring a tear the millennial time-waster’s under-critical beady little eye. Screw it, I added the gunk while it was still fairly hot and made it home without incident. Once again, I’m appalled not by the transmission having this problem, but that they still make a transmission that even can.
Trent & I got to talking about music as I drove south from Atlanta. We last jammed some eight years ago, I think it was. There are two major factors holding back a lot of guitarists from playing out when they should be. First is a leap of faith, the ability to understand and recognize that you do not have to be spectacular. You don’t even need to be that good. The parallel is men who never write a book because it isn’t the next best seller.
The second hurdle is realizing the guitarist is not necessarily the star. I’ve found these factors present in every guitarist. Even my ex just carped that when the bass is played right, there is not a lot of exciting things for the guitarist to play. Ah, but that is part of my point. The guitarist has no right to object because that is exactly the role to which he has innately relegated the other musicians. It means he can complain, but don’t expect me to listen. So, during the interim, Trent has learned the art of boom-chicka. And he’s expressed the regret we did not keep up with our rehearsals. Yes, by now we would be an unbeatable combination toiling to keep our sound as amateur as possible.
Be precise understanding what I mean by unbeatable. The bands in central Florida are the same old. The better they are musically, the more they isolate from their own audiences. At the other extreme, you’ll find naturally extroverted people with expansive personalities. That’s a situation that makes for unique and encompassing stage shows. And that is sorely lacking in most every Florida show I’ve ever seen. They play what they like. I’m the opposite. Like I told you, when they video their act, the camera is pointed at themselves. My camera is pointed at the audience. Yup, anytime he wants to pick up where we stopped, count me in.
The sad news is, my ex has lost the ability to sing along to my bass playing. I’ve touted that over the years as the single event that got me off my tush to learn bass the way I now play it. And how we played that opening set with just bass and vocals. It did not happen last week because we’ve diverged musically. Another irksome quirksome is that now that I’ve learned to sing, she gets thrown off every other note when I do. This deeply saddens me, but thirty years is a long time.
And my experience is that type of rift is hard to close. You work hard at developing your style and that makes it a chore to revert to an earlier mode. I find she embellishes notes all the time now, a sound that is not there in most country music. Hmmm, she does not care for the lyrics to “Fireman” after I explained what they meant.
Luxury cabin, Queen Mary 2
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Ha, did you catch the ramifications of the President’s speech? The left-tards can’t win for losing, they made total fools of themselves. I have not followed the personalities but what I’m hearing makes me embarrassed for them. They tried horribly juveniles tactics, including what appears to be a pre-written critique that criticized the wrong things. Apparently the event was one for the record books with some sources saying 90% approval ratings, but CNN broadcast a prepared report saying otherwise. I’ll tell you what AI think it is. Democrats work by attacking and criticism as nazi, racist, you know the drill. They can’t seem to adapt when faced with an opponent who shrugs that nonsense off.
Here’s a photo of Tennessee ground cover. I could not identify any of the plants but the ones in the lower panel remind me of wild strawberries. This was from my last daylight walk in Hermitage, I suppose if I was going to do a lot of dog-walking, that would be a good area for it. The upside is good exercise and time to think. That’s how I decided to look at a router table. Sure, you can build one cheap, but it is like those sites that show you how to build your own saw table. The job is best accomplished by those who already have one.
Skipping siesta, I threw on an obscure Speilberg video called “Super 8.” Gee, I dunno, to me it should say “Super 8”. Read about this in a moment, getting back to the movie. The premises is these kids who are so eerily informed about movie making happen to get some footage of a mysterious train wreck. It would seem like his earlier work considering the hackneyed plot and normally forbidden scenes like the early teen boy and girl alone in a room together, but the jacket says 2011. How did that get past the blue-stockings?
I also like watching trailers, called pre-views in my day. It is my primary source of what else is out there. I know, dumb, but I do okay with it. All trailers are not alike, with one exception. All the Disney cartoon characters are drawn so alike, I can’t tell one movie from the others. The bad guy loses, the people are grateful and the prince never, never, never has blonde hair. And please, let’s not have another round of those movies with the single mother and her gifted ‘tard kid.
There’s another round of talk about the $15 per hour minimum wage. Hmmm, tell you what. If that happens I’m going back to work. I’ll apply for that part-time job rounding up the shopping carts at the lumber yard . Do the math, 24 hours a week means an extra $360 for the long weekend. Yep, and I’ll tell you how it works. Other’s will use the new money to go on a binge, but I will be waiting and watching. There’s a lag time between the enactment of such laws and the consequences. It’s a golden opportunity for those with a little self-control.
It’s hard to find a top story on days like this, but something is always new around here. For years, I’ve used the English style of punctuation for ending sentences with a period. That’s where I’ll sometimes put the period after a quotation mark. In America, the rule is to always do it that way. I think I’m make an effort to comply. The English ways says you place the period depending on whether you are punctuating the quotation or the sentence. It must be hard for you to contain your excitement over this information. It’s a weird contemporary attitude that one can become literate by reading. The reality is you also have to write and I suggest the ratio is around 50-50. Knowing that, you might think differently about punctuation.
ADDENDUM
The remainder of the afternoon found me reconciling the bank statements. It is not so easy with the exchange rates and how not that long ago I still wrote consecutive checks for the same amounts. The process is three steps but I’ve added a fourth to keep things even. It’s that “bounced” check of mid-2016 that’s still giving hiccups. Unlike an ordinary check bounce, you cannot simply reverse the transaction because the exchange rates have fluctuated. The fourth table converts everything to American dollars so the paper trail is easier to follow.
The other snag is one unusual situation. Why? Because most people who write bad checks would not know about this because they probably don’t have enough money for the experience. It’s simple, a check for $4,500 got entered as $2,400. Thus, the balance after the transaction showed a higher balance than the actual. Here’s the hitch: there was no much money in the account that the problem was glossed over. Nobody noticed a thing until a particularly large check bounced the following year. By then, the offending incident was buried by follow-on transactions.
The reconciliation is simple after that. You total up all the deposits, which in my case are logged and scanned. Then you add up all the withdrawals, I have each canceled check. The difference, if any, is the amount the books are off. At that point, you agree on a starting point and do the arithmetic.
