One year ago today: May 16, 2021, this tree died.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2017, said no court, ever.
Nine years ago today: May 16, 2013, the old “brass mines” joke.
Random years ago today: May 16, 2019, north, toward Nashville.
See the beautiful front and back yards all freshly mowed? They don’t get that way by themselves. It’s now 11:30AM and I am done for the day. Hitting only a couple of stones, I’m back in the A/C of the living room. The Reb is inspecting the job. Always get the client to sign off on the work. Then you can go for a beer or something. And I just might later. We took the dogs for an extended walk this morning, a bright day with a lovely breeze. Fine, I thought, for lawn-mowing. I forgot how slow moving I was this week (probably a mild flu) and the job lasted longer than the fine weather. Now I’m over-heated, tired, and getting awful thirsty.
Meanwhile, I’m installing Realtek, the audio drivers on this tablet POS. The OS is Win 7 and it began to decay from the day it was first installed. Firefox will open 15 copies of itself if you let it and no easy fix. It’s the other things I notice because I frst used RealTec back in the 90s, it’s a mature product. Windows is not. I expienced much the same problems with Windows. Unexplained screens that go blank and disable your mouse and keyboard, files extracted to places you cannot find, apparent system lockups, misleading messages, and problems such as complete idiots over there would and should have solved by now. This popup is a Redmond classic.
It tells the install is complete and asks if you would like to install now. Either choice gets you into the weeds. This is usuall the result of another Windows brain-fart: the accumulated keypress. You are not aware the damn thing is jammed, so you press enter a couple of times to test it. The rest, you know how it goes. But my all-time favorite is the twenty-minute install that waits until the nineteenth minute to tell you the version is not compatible. It remains a mystery to me how MicroSoft, after all these years of bungling, still has such a large following, but my conclusion on that is simply that they, as a group, have never used a real computer, thus have no bais for comparison. In the computer era, that brand of know-nothing is amazingly common.
Now here a week and I’ve got maybe three days work done. Yes, the flu and I say that because if this is COVID, the pandemic is truly a hoax. It is the same as a mild cold, but nobody enjoys the sore throat and sniffles. What got me was the listlessness so I assure the world, I’m getting over it. Seriously ill people can’t spend 2-1/2 hours mowing the acreage. I was sure dragging my butt the last bit, let me tell you. Even so, could be age and not a virus, for, sad to say, even bass players are not eternal.
Hydraulic gold coin punch.
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The mowing [1/2 acre lawn] slowed me down the remainder of the day, so the Reb & I went over some aspects of my doing a solo gig. She’s been all for it since day one because she sees the entertainment value. I’m the hesitant one. She knows my sense of humor, she hears me at my best. There’s no pressure when I’m playing here. I can’t lower my musical standards. You’ve heard all this before. The result is compromise. There’s no way I can just pick up a guitar and pull off a musical set or two. The trade-ff is the sets have to be carefully planned as I condition the audience for a bass solo. If they don’t react, I need to carry on strumming.
So I went downtown for a few beers and worked on the set lists. I have the material. For the nth time, I work on a solo act. Just you watch, though. There’s one more guitar player in Winter Haven to audtion when I return. Every time that results in a no-go that delays the game by months. Except this time, the Reb is keeping tabs. Let’s see how this goes. I'm done, let's hope your day had a few more thrills, but then, quiet times over here usually means something is pending.
SI contactee the Kaiser about gigging this weekend. No reply.
