One year ago today: March 21, 2019, Tennessee spring day.
Five years ago today: March 21, 2015, a ten-speed transmission.
Nine years ago today: March 21, 2011, my 63% repeat rate.
Random years ago today: March 21, 2010, shortcut to the bookstore.
Today you get a pseudo-post. Work done today, six or seven hours. Work done on the renovations, where it counts? Zero hours. So you get a “calendar” style blog, like the early days. That’s when these blogs were actually taken from marginal notes on my desk calendar. I see more state governors are jumping on the bandwagon, grabbing as much power as they can. California closes all business deemed “non-life-sustaining”. The last thing these bastards care about is public safety, or they’d do something about the 117 women (and men) who die from breast cancer every day. Shutting down the economy is not a medical treatment, never has been, never will be.
People don’t mind so much when politicians do that to each other, but this time they are pissing off the man on the street. Talk is that when this is over, the whole thing will backfire on the Democrats. Like every other stunt they’ve pulled, it only works when they keep everybody else bickering between themselves. The economy is like a coiled spring, we’ll see a huge gain once this is over, which hopefully will give Trump an absolute majority in November. Some good might come of this yet. For clarity, the general attitude is that the disease is real, shutting down the economy is a con job by the left.
We have another tree, this time a small one. It is a Damson plum, the one the hippies made wine from. Strange, innit, hippies can drink wine but not beer or whiskey. It’s the image thing, I suppose. I pulled the trim off the rear door of the car and removed the broken “3rd backup light”. It’s been broken over a year. It had the strangest bolt size. Something like 11/32” or 9.5mm, I did not have any such socket in my 100+ inventory. I finally got them off with a wrench that nearly fit. Way to go, Ford.
Another looming problem is the number of companies sending millions of people to work from home. As far as I’m concerned, each and every one of those people is now a security risk. I doubt one in 10,000 has even the most basic concept of computer privacy or protection. What’s more, I doubt any of them are being compensated for the cost of their equipment and floor-space. This is an imminent threat because it could alter the business model making it difficult to regulate the employers. Companies could close down their offices, then pocketing all employee benefits by simply reclassifying them as contract workers. Watch that one closely.
And phooey on the International Business Times for making a big deal that Trump did not “message” his son’s birthday on line to their satisfaction. Trump should tell these non-doctors to go to blazes and get back to his job of running the economy. One positive is the big media are really making asses of themselves trying to pin this thing on Trump. CNN is pushing the angle that if Trump won’t cancel his rallies, he must have a “compassion deficit”. What a compassionate thing to say, CNN.
Rieu outsells Sands & Biden.
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The neighbor has five new tractors in the yard. Hey, at least he doesn’t collect stamps. Personality-wise, those who do generally also collect dust. I contacted Agt. M, who can work wonders with bondo and a bastard file. I attached pics of the damage. Maybe tomorrow, but certainly on Monday, we’ll meet up at the old garage, I think the club still has welders and stuff in there. Anyway, he’s done super body repair. I’m okay with drilling holes in the interior to pop the panels back out. Again, I don’t want a repair, I want it to just look okay.
It was busy in the heat today. Since I had the shovel out to plant that plum tree, I dug out and leveled the ground where I want to put the lean-to. And sunk a post in place, one of the 7-footers from Tennessee. I haven’t decided what to do to make the ceiling high enough, but somebody in history has solved this problem and made a video. What else, since I’m just recording the day. I mixed up a gallon of Seven (an insecticide) and gave the good plants a soaking. Then I hosed down everything in the yard that looked like it needed it. Fed the chickens. Went downtown to post this blog, since Google has a warped idea of what passwords are for.
There, see. A picture of the new zapper. Not many blogs can get away with this as a news item. It’s the first digital unit I’ve had in some 15 years. I got pretty good at setting a dial timer. Now a curious item. I was at Harbor Freight for some repair tools that came out to 64 cents more than I had on me. So I muttered, “How embarrassing,” and put a couple things aside.
Music. I’ve been practicing without the bass, concentrating on what goes wrong. At the end of certain musical phrases, the harmony sometimes changes the song message. I’ll memorize which notes to avoid, the tonic seems to work best. Remember, I can sing in perfect (if not undetectably wrong) unison to a recording (but not to a live vocalists who change inflection without notice). For that matter, I used to really shock some people by singling perfect unison to juke box tunes. But, only on my dollar.
Ha, guess what I just discovered. I picked up the bass for a quick review, when the track started at the wrong place. Damn, how about that, I can sing harmonies to the lead breaks. As best as I can sing, I mean. When the instrumental break emulates the melody, which is common in country music, I can sing along. This won’t have many applications but it is great for songs that are just a little too short. Just add another verse using Audacity, with which I can do most things with at this late stage in the game.
To imagine this, think of a fiddle or guitar that plays the melody line during the break. Then add me singing another verse in harmony. Hmmm, where can I take this? Intended to get some real practice in, I go on-line to find the sheet music and vocal track to “Oh Holy Night” (Cantique De Noel). That search could teach you 90% of what is wrong, not with the Internet, but with weak-minded people creating a majority rule situation. When you try to enlarge the sheet music to see if that’s the version want, you are hijacked.
And I want just a recording of someone singing the plain old song. Not the Mariah Carey one-verse version or some obscure Baptist choir scatting every note. You search for the original lyrics and you get them in French. It takes true millenialism to bastardize things to this degree. Like the new youTube videos with no “stop” (and start over) button. Just a pause that resumes play.
I mean, I get it. YouTube has to reach the largest possible audience, but in doing so they’ve needless removed features that intelligent people use. They’ve done nothing but gone downhill the past five years. You could say it is all about money, but youTube, that is not thinking ahead.
Just for the record, you’d think there would be countless tracks on-line to practice singing harmonies along with. Nope, but a lot of “it’s easy” types. The natural presumption is that you can sing in the first place, wait, that sounds funny. What I meant is I realize now I could probably have started with singing harmonies, if only. It isn’t easy for the majority, but I found exercise definitely helps. One important routine for me is sirening. Like a siren, sing a steady sound from the bottom to the top of your range and back down. You are seeking to avoid any “crackling” in your voice. Exception: Johnny Cash.
