August 15, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 15, 2021, today is pet city.
Five years ago today: August 15, 2017, the wood is rotten.
Nine years ago today: August 15, 2013, drilling some steel.
Random years ago today: August 15, 2011, 20 miles @ 12mph.

           You could have predicted it. Today was downtime for me. Nothing serious but I know the warning signs. So I baked a cake, made another five pounds of chicken, the whole domestic thing I mistakenly thought retirement would be all about. In November, I declare myself officially old and I’m lucky to get a few hours off on a given afternoon. Some of my older friends (I started school early) are now in their late 60s. Recall Mitch, the guy I have only seen once in 50 years? He caught a fish for the first time in his life this week.

           I’ve never caught a fish. Light duty today, I took a look at some blog statistics. While there is a recovery in readership, the trend has been slightly downhill since 2017. Let’s see if I can get you at least some statistics, but generally in this political climate, you don’t get much of the internal numbers. There are still gaps in readership, that is, times when nobody clicks for an hour, the smallest measured interval. That was unheard of two years ago.

           When the blog is busy, on average there are eight people engaged. I probably get fewer referrals than most blogs, with less than 10% of my hits originating from that. Told ya, I have a loyal readership. And 70% of them use Firefox. The past year the US and Canada have regained their spot as my top locations, which makes sense due to relevance. Italy remains my mystery spot with over 35,000 clicks, most in the past few years.
           In the past year, most of the decline is American readership. France has a strong presence, another circumstance I don’t understand. And the least number of hits these last 12 months is from Viet Nam at 29. Highest number of clicks in one hour was on January 19 this year, with 266 for no apparent reason. That’s all, it is approaching noon and I’m still not on the ball.

Picture of the day.
Hand-built playhouse.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           I’m miffed. I strung out ever guitar cable that I have to find what works. Most of them did not. I have cables I bought in pairs and stored one away until now—and it crackles. And that headset microphone has the preamp built into a small belt clip. But the clip is around the size of a small cigarette pack and will not stay put unless you are wearing a leather belt, which I rarely bother with. There is no other convenient place to keep it, so I may shop for a small cell phone shoulder bag, but what a hassle. On the bass it clips to the strap, on a guitar it slips right off. See picture, that small cable on top is a custom plug so there is no way this can be adapted to anything else.

           What really pisses me off is the XLR adapter. I got sold this without checking to see the plug end, which is stereo. That’s assinine because they don’t make stereo gear for stage work (that I know of and if they do I would not bother). This piece of crap works sometimes in mono but sure enough, not with my Fishman PA. It was expensive as hell, so I will try to repair or modify it. But for the past twenty years anyway, guitar cables are designed to be very difficult to repair even if you do a super soldering job. See the next picture. If I don’t get this working, I have to use a twenty-foot cable to connect the microphone which creates another bloody set of problems on its own.

           When I total the maximum I’d have to spend, it is $169 just on these cables and adapters, of which I have trunks full. But between practice and stage, to do what I need, not one of the nine pieces I need is working right. It will take a half day to do the soldering without any guarantee of success. To think we used to be able to repair these things better than new using a butane lighter and remelted alloy.

           The good news is I’ve worked three distinct strums to my better tunes. It is no an automatic process for me on guitar. I have the list I’ll work on and the endorsement of a few people who’ve heard me play some of this. It’s impossible to tell in advance so I’m basing the presentation almost totally on my experience at presentation. More than enough times, I’ve had some pretty vocal critics but it’s been easy to drown them out by majority rule. But, I was playing bass and had the confidence. My ratio of guitar to bass playing this week is finally around 10 to1, a fairly incredible change on my part.

           And hidden way down here is my report of a tummy-ache. The unusual is also bloggable and I am not prone to this sort of malady at all. Thus, it always signals other trouble. By late evening I was quite uncomfortable, but no fever indicates it’s not the flu. Since COVID itself turns out to be just the flu, many say, I have a 99.97% chance of surviving. However, in my thinking I should not have any such condition to begin with. One in five years can make me anxious.

Last Laugh