One year ago today: October 13, 2019, a scruffy idiot.
Five years ago today: October 13, 2015, Chinese wiring.
Nine years ago today: October 13, 2011, nothing worked that day.
Random years ago today: October 13, 2016, still “wanted for questioning”.
I’ve decided, I truly hate that song, “Mack the Knife”. I can’t find my new Zoom drum box, but that just means it is securely stored somewhere. I have the old unit, the one that the mice ate the buttons. Or more like the ink off the buttons. My chore for today was chasing around Winter Haven, where I found a set of the reputedly best strings for my acoustic Ibanez. I wrote to Bryne for advanced methods of improving the playability. His first advice was changing those strings and adjusting the truss rod. If those don’t make enough improvement, I’ll drop it off at his place for a week.
Here’s half my guitar stock ready for cleaning. The Ibanez is on top, none of these have adjustable bridges. The middle guitar is my dreadnaught, a Fender copy. It plays easier but is cumbersome on my bass shoulder, the one that’s getting all the therapy. The bottom is my loaner, with the loose bridge don’t think I can fix myself. To gig, you need two guitars in great working condition at the ready, so first and second choice are obvious. The Ibanez has built-in electronics, the Burwood copy has nothing. But I use a Dean Markley that I have always been happy with. Other guitarists who stand in like it better than I do.
I stopped at Carillon Music for a set of the reputedly smoothest strings, good deal they were on sale half-price. The small E-string has a 0.11mm diameter, the only thinner are guitar strings. Those are more designed for bending, which I do rarely. Also, Bryne mentions they have a different metallic alloy for better pickup response. I’m going for the strings and truss rod first. If that works I’m happy. Bryne also suggested something I would not have thought of. Tune the guitar down two notes and capo. He says the tension on the strings goes to sound instead of shredding your fingertips.
Truss rod adjustment should be easy to find on-line, but get ready for another millennial runaround. Most of the videos take the low-effort route where the adjustment nut is behind the nut. I have so little use for lazy people. The few showing the type where the nut is beneath the sound hole tend to have the neck completely removed. Which is dumb because it should plainly be adjusted while the strings are at full tension. This often requires a special tool. I plan to compromise by removing the two middle strings and using an ordinary Allen wrench. Millennials, the people who sell you the iPhone 12 with no charger.
It’s called an “apparatus”.
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As predicted, the price increases are now out of control. A 2x3 used to be $1.19 just over a year back, they are now nearly $4.00 each. That’s one example and it will really hurt a lot of people who don’t yet realize there is no going back to “normal”. After the election is anybody’s guess but I think the biggest change will be this inflation. This is going to hit a lot of people between the eyes. I spent $75 just walking in the door. Here’s a shot of the two guitars I sent to Bryne, showing the slight difference in profile. I greatly notice the effect on my shoulder, but I must work with what I’ve got for now. I’m used to that.
Over time, the largest single source of untaxed money in the world is those middle-class retirement savings plans, characterized by IRAs. The money is only taxed when withdrawn and oh, how the government would love to create a scenario where everybody had withdraw it all right now. Enter the Democrat party. They’ve dropped hints before, like the statements that nobody really got rich without government help. For instance, they pointed out you drove to work on government roads and had a government education, remember that? It is a short drop in IQ for such people to think the only reason people have a retirement plan is due to the grace of the government. You and I may think we are the ones that scrimped and saved, but the liberals say we were lucky and it is time to share with the less lucky, that generally meaning the lazy.
Trump is sending shivers down the spines of the Democrats, getting directly to the “crush these radicals” touted by this blog a year ago. They took aim on Trump personally and it is about time he responding in kind. It was getting ridiculous how they were attacking him rather than running an election campaign. They are past the stage where they will say and do anything to get back into power. And that’s where the retirement plans loom large. I opted for a pension, which are group-owned and far harder for the government to grab. To do any of the things the Democrats promise takes more money than they can get without some drastic plan to seize money from somewhere.
By now it is over-evident there will be repercussions of the unpleasant sort after the election if Trump is back in control. He’s not allowing a repeat of last time, he’s got an amazing amount of experience now. The French have a curious expression, “a poteau”, which means “to the pole”, a euphemism for firing squad. Although Trump would not want such events on his record, the expression may have some excellent connotative applications once the Gang of Eight are rounded up. Certainly Clinton and Obama deserve triple life sentences—after a fair trial of course, or at least as fair as they have granted others.
Ah, remember I told you some of the MSM would jump ship soon? It’s not ethics, they are worried about their own skins. Sure enough if you have seen the last few Trump rallies, the cameras are at least showing parts of the huge crowds. Crowds that are chanting “CNN sucks”. Which network will pull a U-ey first? Don’t ask me, I can only name one or two, but changing sides is now a matter of survival. With Pelosi reduced to telling question-askers they don’t know what they are talking about and calling CNN apologists for Trump, the Democrats have gone bat-guano crazy.
ADDENDUM
Looks like I’m not the only one who’s ever wondered about celestial navigation. One of the frustrations is if you plunge into a book on the subject, you are almost instantly confronted by intense “do this, do that” instructions. The challenge is the instructions, not the theory. So, being how nice you are, you know, understanding I have a complex personality, I’m going to give the short overview, the underlying facts that navigation is based on.
First of anything, you must have some idea of where you are, called ded reckoning. Nobody is ever completely lost because you know where you were at some time in the recent past, possible exception Joe Biden. To get your location, you must have two positions which are known or can be calculated, same thing. (Uh, Ken, that’s two besides where you are, because if you knew where you are, you would not need any of this, savvy?) That’s essentially it, because after that it’s like the two lighthouse problem. If you can see two lighthouses, you can figure out with sixth grade geometry where you are. The trouble is when you mix in situations where there are no lighthouses, such as in the middle of the ocean, interplanetary space, or flying a B-17 over Bavaria really late at night in 1944. To name a few.
Thusforth, I will tell you how to find the easiest point, because it is the GP (ground point) mentioned just y’day. It’s in the Almanac, to the nearest degree, remembering a degree is composed of 60 minutes. If you know what time it is in Greenwich, England, you can, on the hour, look up in the Almanac exactly what point on the Earth’s surface when the Sun was at that split second. (That’s correct Ken, there is a use for all those little numbers in the Almanac.) You can then take a map and put a big fat X on that spot. Give yourself a pat for getting this far, but you are far from even half done. Want more?
Okay, just a bit more. If you, by coincidence, took a sextant reading of the Sun at that same hour mentioned, you could convert those degrees to minutes, and subtract those minutes from 5,400 and you would know how far away you are, in minutes/nautical miles, from the GP. And from ded reckoning, you could make a good guess at the compass bearing. Alas, compasses are notoriously inaccurate, so they are not used in celestial navigation. But they look snazzy on a belt clip when you are pretending you know about hiking and boating, until they get magically disappear just before you need them.
[Author’s note: the need for the stopwatch is because it is almost impossible to take the sextant reading smack on the hour. In the back of the Almanac is a series of smaller tables with, you guessed it, 60 segments, which you use look up the off-set from your reading time and the exact hour. Then calculate the GP using a little mod 60 arithmetic.]
You still need a second known point and I’m not getting into that. But I can say all the complicated arithmetic is done for you in the tables of navigation books. No matter how tricky it is to follow the instructions today, trust me, you don’t want to do it any other way. Modern tables are called “Sight Reduction”, because they reduce all the real work to looking up your results in the tables. Mercifully, no trigonometry is involved. The more accurate you sightings, the better your results. If you care to pursue that second point, it has a name. It is called your “assumed point”, and it is within 45 nautical miles of where you think you are, because you chose it to be, and I warned you it would get convoluted in a hurry. Where is my sextant, anyway?
