One year ago today: February 25, 2020,decentralization, my eye.
Five years ago today: February 25, 2016, early GP calculation.
Nine years ago today: February 25, 2012, the Kiss courtyard.
Random years ago today: February 25, 2008, why City Hall sucks.
The Beat Buddy continues to disappoint. Now there is a distinct hiss through the speakers. I’ve tested every combination of cables, so it is coming from the box. I still have not installed the programming software, as the only computer it is compatible with is the one I use for WiFi, hardly suitable for a work station. I was up early to a yard full of chirping birds, signalling it is finally spring. I’m down to one serving of coffee, I say, y’day must have been a rough day. So I brewed it up and watched the Modern Marvel episode on nuts.
I was taught G.W. Carver invented peanut butter. Wrong. There was footage of the peanut butter plant, I hope they are not serious about returning to steaming the nuts. Roasted is the flavor America loves. It is considered a staple. I use mine mainly for pest bait, but when there’s no other snacks in the house, it’s time. They go on to say peanut derivatives are being used for famine relief and to clean spaceships. Is it that much more versatile—or just more available?
Here’s a view of the eave around the cabin. I’ve decided to use the next bit of nice weather to throw a thick coat of exterior paint. It doesn’t need it much, but nor have I really inspected that part of the building. In the lower right, you can see the double window, now the focal point of the room from the inside. I don’t care for painting these old windows. Every time you step back you see another spot you missed—and same thing when you go inside and look out.
It was not until 1983 that I began to travel to Hawaii for vacations rather than work. That is where I first tried macadamia nuts. I find out today that they had just become available at that time because of a new nutshell cracking invention. Prior to that, they were hand-cracked and too expensive, so I may have eaten some of that original batch. I still like them, but nuts are not big on my diet. Now I’m interested in the leftover shells, now that is an interesting byproduct. There is walnut shell in your plywood.
Today, I feel like building something. I had another stab at getting the Bear Buddy to work, only to find in it’s unboxed state, it is worse to use than a regular drum box. Worst feature is that it cannot be stopped and started like a regular drum box, though the literature says a special pedal can do that. If the product is that slipshod, the pedal could be throwing good money after bad. Yeah, let me build something and take my mind off that $300 gadget that won’t work on it’s own. Forget the setting that says detect footswitch. Detect doesn’t mean it works right.
Vanilla beans.
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What a beauty of a day. I began a small box project using oak planks from the old floor. Sort of a sea-chest style without the curves. Hmmm, there’s a thought. Why to treasure chests have curved tops? Wouldn’t that just make them harder to stack below deck? Here’s a closeup of the bracket I need to cut or buy an impact wrench to get bolts like these two off. I tried sniping them with regular sockets and it just rounds blots. Yes, that’s a bandaged finger. I don’t do this for a living.
By 5:30PM I am done for the day. The “legal” telemarketers are back in business. It is still a robo-caller, who are obligated to give you the fake option to be deleted from the calling list—it is plain that list pays no attention to the no-call list.. Biden would be wise to repair a bit of his reputation by outlawing this sordid business. Make a simple law that you cannot sell anything over the phone unless the buyer calls you.
If you notice topics from pre-2016 showing up recently, there’s a reason. With the shed and now the double window bringing the back room into full use, more of the boxes that were buried in the move are being opened and there’s a bit more time per day for leisure. It won’t be long until the back room is networked, which explains the opened boxes. I can’t find the drivers for my legacy wireless hardware. But it’s there, I always pack them special. And my custom cut-off switches are in there somewhere. (Meanwhile, no computer here is ever left on-line when it is not being used.
ADDENDUM
We need another storage shed. The ones that are out there now are all work sheds, and stuff piled in there gets underfoot. There is no chance the city would approve replacement sheds, much less a third unit in one yard. So, do we obey the rules or bend them? We obey, but at the same time notice there is a ten foot gap between two of the trees on the north side that cannot be seen from any where but directly on. It the neighbor picked up his fence and set it six feet into my property, you might never notice. It blends into the trees which blend into the old fence.
It would be so tempting to throw up a fence section and create a 10 by 6 area between the two, a stealth area that only a trespasser might notice.
And we have a challenge. One reason I avoid bass demo recordings is there is no control over how other party plays back the sound. Anybody who’s heard a cheap stereo knows the bass is most to suffer. Consequently, I have very little live bass footage even if the sound was properly engineered. When Elliot wants video, I’m inclined to write that off as just another guitar player trying to set up a contest which, in his opinion, he cannot lose. We jammed once in north Seattle in 1986. Since then, he’s played along to his stereo and nothing else. He interprets the lack of footage from me as shrinking away from his all-seeing, all-knowing social magnifying glass, although he would deny that to the hilt.
Then today, he claims to be a better guitar player than I am a bass player. (My readers will recognize he is just rewording my own phraseology.) More than once I’ve had to explain to the guy my goal is not to record music, but to perform it. He maintains he can walk all over my bass playing while admitting he has never really been able to play guitar in a group or a studio. He is not alone amongst guitarists with that illusion. I have countless recorded bass lessons and clips, which I often make to review songs I fast-learn (like “Spooky”) that crop up over time. Rather than re-learn the notes, I just watch my own “tapes”.
This could be fun, because the recordings give me a loophole to present my stage technique to jolly old Elliott under the guise of answering his dare. (I use the word “tapes” to mean all such material because “tapes” is easier to say and write.) There is no substitute for stage time and I could otherwise never get the guy to even look at such material. Ha, playing into my hands, unless he shows up in person, he now has to review the scenes or can’t back up his challenge. The tapes are often clips of live performances where he can’t even try picking out the bass lines without witnessing the presentations he otherwise blots out. Ha!
You see, he’s spent a lot of time denying that stage work is meaningful to musical success, more guitar-think he will deny he has. Double-ha! He’s already watched a few, because he is already back-tracking and modifying his words. He now says it has to be “his songs”, where as I say it is Kamikaze, that is, audience requests until we get one we both know and fly at it. Notice his extremism vs my more MOR tendency? That’s normal.
One other thing to watch for is Elliott is part Canadian and full English. I think his brother moved to Canada and became of the dreaded RCMP. Anyway, what I refer to is how such folks are constantly in mild hot water, but they accept that as normal and project it into others. This makes them unreliable and not band material. How would I describe the root of the problem? Um, okay. It’s the same way the millennial mindset got underway.
It works like so. Instead of becoming good at expressing himself clearly and putting across unambiguous straight talk, he is inclined to think it the other guy’s unpaid duty to carefully turn on his each word, each clause, each inflection, and so on. Elliott is the guy who has forgotten he still owes me $55, remember that? He said he’d pay me to help him pack a shipment, so I got up at 2:30AM that morning to help before going into my day job. He never paid. His contention was that he said he’d pay me, he did not say he’d pay me right then after the job was finished. You take it from there.
