One year ago today: November 16, 2018, WIP
Five years ago today: November 16, 2014, yeah, I was a janitor.
Nine years ago today: November 16, 2010, MicrSoft = MonkeySoft.
Random years ago today: November 16, 1982, my last youthful conclusions.
Ploddingly slow. That’s how I describe Android and Windows 10. I long for the instant response of XP, and in many cases Window 98 was faster. I recognize it is the tremendous amount of overhead needed to make the systems operable for the nowadays diminished-IQ users. But some of us would like to get some work done is all I’m saying here. And that sets the tone for my grumpy morning, which is dumb because nothing has gone wrong. Bass players are not supposed to have mood swings. I went through local listings for musicians, mainly Craigslist. That last one has gone downhill with more ads for lessons than for players. And you’d never know Nashville was a country music town based on the number of ads for other types.
I think I may know the cause of my cranky morning. I opened my bag of animal crackers and I got the plain. I wanted the ones with pink sugar icing. Grrr, but I’ll cheer up since the chill bite was gone from the air when I woke up. Once I grab that morning coffee, I’m easy to please. I even ran through twenty tunes on the other guy’s song list that I’ve played before in my career. Junk like “Love Potion #9” and “Hey Good Lookin’”. I still use Cliqz as my tablet browser and they take their bloody time fixing glitches. For instance, there is often a banner saying a web page is slowing down my computer, would I like to stop it? Well, Cliqz, how in hell would I know that unless you tell me what it is? Duh.
Here’s a view of the doggies making a bee line for the 5.19 acres out in the east end y’day. I didn’t walk back there but you can see there is an overgrown opening, probably a small mower-wide walking trail. The property extends back to those trees on the horizon, then angles to the left. I’m taking the morning off to let it get warmer and still reading “Mars Crossing”. The personalities of the characters are tarnishing like in real life, but what’s missing is how these bozos got into the astronaut program to begin with. At least they’ve spared us from anyone coming out of the crew locker, so to speak. There is one quality above all that makes for harmony in closed quarters, and that is the ability to leave other people alone. This bunch don’t even have a grasp the concept.
I’m nearing the end of “Mars Crossing” and the story finally takes some interesting twists. I’ll give away one example, but since I may recommend the book,I won’t reveal the goodies. There are two twins involved, whose ages are three years apart. Huh? An infertile couple has some sperm frozen and have a child. They get divorced and the wife loses custody of the child, but gains custody of the sperm and one thing leads to another. The younger “twin” wins a lottery when he is 18 that you must be 21 to collect, and you can piece much of it together from that. While I don’t care for all the background, this book is fairly serious science fiction. They predicted man on Mars by 2020 but they couldn’t have known the Obama administration spent all the mission money on paying back contiributions.
Gypsy Gold horse farm. (Florida)
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The chill was gone from the air so it was six hours in the sunshine. Another six barrels of leaves and this is your view of what that does to the neighborhood. Leaves and around another six barrels of bamboo. This is the kind of day I’d have left to my own resources. Me, the dogs, and for a few hours, the turtle. I know turtles can’t smile, but I’m going to sneak up on the guy and you gotta see this. I pursued my latest hobby of box-building and worked the new router table, learning the ropes. One they don’t mention is that the lumber does not always lie flat on the table, even when you’ve checked for warps and twists. Another is to mark you lumber, don’t measure. Put the piece is place and scored a line where you want the cut to happen. I even devised a way to pit the birdhouse roof pieces together where the throat on the chopsaw is too narrow.
Yep, a blowtorch arrangement gets the leaves going in no time and the charcoal briquettes keep you in business. I’ll get you pictures of those planks with the knotholes now re-located to the center position. The dogs still need to be walked, they will not run around in the back yard, preferring to find a spot and lie down. They won’t play catch with me like they do with the Reb. I think it is some ancient Apache animal instinct thing that says, meh, this guy won’t do anything if you ignore him. That thought occurred to me when I spotted the secret message and hauled out my ApacheCodeDotCom app. It is a bit late, but it did say H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y.
Starting December 1, I am officially old by my own definition. This is the month I planned so many years ago to buy a nice car or van and travel around. I still could, but my inclination to do so has waned. At least for really extended or permanent travel. After years of motorcycle travel, I find car rides less stimulating. It proved so damn difficult to find a woman who had done anything with her life that I often traveled alone for the solitude. While I did settle down, I never got married and did the family thing. Why? Because every man I know who did lived to regret it. They say otherwise for show, but the US system has turned marriage into a control mechanism. Or as the lawyers say, a binding contract with every clause against the husband.
Don’t expect any teary-eyed confessions here, I’m simply at a point where moving forward doesn’t make as much sense as hanging around with the Reb and minding the pets. This is a step back into the distant past. Yet, if anything better was available out there, it’s so well hidden I never uncovered it. Talk about a fine balance, the women I know who got anywhere in life were evenly divided between not my type or I wasn’t theirs. Even the gals I knew who had careers wound up just working at them for a living. These other women can’t sing, can’t dance. That’s one thing about the Reb. You can dress her up and take her places. Don’t get any hopes up since I like her much better than she likes me. That sounds funny, because she likes me a lot. You know what I mean.
Yes, there was an item today that was out of the ordinary. That guitar player contacted back and wants to meet up tomorrow. He’s got a busy schedule and has a gig in the late afternoon. This is the guitarist whose list closely matches mine and who has expressed the same frustrations with the prevailing attitudes of today’s run-of-the-mill characters in the music industry. The big picture hasn’t changed, but the massive glut of clone guitar players has caused a shift in the teamwork aspect of holding a band together at the entry level. As soon as you get your average guitar player into the mix, things start going wrong. Call it the Hendrix-Clapton Syndrome.
It’s going to depend on how he perceives my piano-like rhythm bass style. So far, the guy seems pretty sharp, particularly his experiences regarding big bands. To me, a big band has more than two members. Better to form a duo, and after that hire people as you need them. Contract employees, not band members. People who know that their every tomorrow depends on today. We’ve already discussed some basics of duo arrangements. I appreciated that he knew the level to which this must be taken to counter the rifts that develop when you get two guitar players on stage. Chances are by tomorrow, you’ll get a report on this.
ADDENDUM
Once again, the US political system shows its detachment from reality. Here is their Santacopter, the sum representation of their collective brainpower. They say there is finally agreement to end robocalls, but have you seen the method? Instead of touching the criminals who indulge in the calls, they will require phone companies to verify the numbers aren’t spoofed. This does not put the robocallers out of business, which is the only tactic that will work. This is what Shkreli meant when he say “imbeciles”. Like having a real call display is doing anything about preventing the calls. The telemarketers likely already have the workaround in place.
What I can’t figure out is who in the House and Senate are opposing these measures. Even allowing for the “progressive” slimeballs who will try to use any new bill to slide in unpopular clauses, what is the problem with outlawing telemarketers? I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t hate the calls. The FCC says some calls are legit, such as collections, payment reminders, and something called “legal telemarketing”. There’s your typical empire-building desk rats, spotting exceptions everywhere—as long as it keeps the FCC employed and expanding. There is no such thing as a legitimate unsolicited phone call.
Absolute nonsense that any such calls are permitted, and trust me, nobody cares about people so stupid they need a phone call to remind them to pay their bills. The legislations is custom-designed to leave enough loopholes for the calls to continue. Somebody in the law-making assembly is obviously on the take. Mr. Trump, root them out.
What is aggravating to the core is the constant claims by the authorities that it is too hard to catch the robocallers. This is absolute nonsense, since there must be a money trail to their front door. Follow the money, throw the operators in jail. There is another trail to the call-back centers. We live in a surveillance society and the authorities expect us to believe they can’t nab a bunch of crooks actively involved in ongoing crime? Corruption, top to bottom, and the phone companies are in on it, never kid yourselves. The spoofed numbers are something I warned them about in 1986. It could have been fixed [back then] with a couple lines of code.
