July 24, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: July 24, 2022, papaya revival.
Five years ago today: July 24, 2018, cell phone now required.
Nine years ago today: July 24, 2014, biscuits & gravy.
Random years ago today: July 24, 2015, originally “Apple Friday”

           Wow, I went out there at dawn to fill the birdfeeders and it was like opening an oven door. Scratch today for much to do. Last evening the hillbilly and I went out for a couple drinks. He met some gal and disappeared, so I left him there after waiting nearly an hour. It’s walking distance. He earlier brought over a baby pineapple he says are best for planting. Speaking of ovens, I made muffins, biscuits, and baked a small veggie loaf. It’s like meat loaf, but with mashed potatoes and peas, meant to be served with gravy. By the time I got the camera, this is all that was left of the pineapple. Also see a picture of the relay from last day. These really are mechanical marvels.

           Let me check the coffee reserves, yep, we are okay for a day indoors. At 80°F around 10:00PM, it isn’t that high but the humidity is 81% and don’t laugh unless you really know what that is like. My rain gauge says that we got a mere 3/5ths of an inch last evening, so buddy, we are going to get it today. The good news is these conditions stop all the aches and pains associated with cold mornings. And an enclosed workshed means one could work there in undershorts if one had to. The biscuits are cheese and garlic, with extra cheese, so help yourself.

           The waffling Fast Frets has checked his spam folder again and replied. I wonder why people like that don’t just use the spam folder as their in basket, but who am I to question a guitar player? Just like last time, he forgets to mention he uses backing tracks and has another guitar player who knows his material, but won’t rehearse because it’s “not a real band”. However, I am reduced to this if I want to play out. He has this thing about not singing and playing at the same time, a tip-off that he’s a lead player, not a strummer. He’s also touchy about his song list, but I was able to find the one he sent last year. Guitar player lists rarely change.

           His top tune is one I detest, “Tequila Sunrise”. But that never stops me from playing it. That one is super-amusing because most every guitar player regards it is one of his signature pieces. Now I’ll tell you how it really goes. That song, played properly, has thirteen chords. That includes variations like G6 and GM7, but do you recall why that is important? Ah, because as a piano player, I know the individual notes. And that makes me one deadly bass player in songs of this nature. I keep it simple until the song is too solid for the guitarist to drop, then kind of nudge my way with the audience – which is 100% fair game, boys. You want to be top dog, earn it.

           Now that song, being one of my least favorite, really gets the treatment—this is NOT to be confused with over-playing the band. I play all the bass notes as they should be, but with a flair. I’ll provide an example. When listening to that tune, you may notice a slight “sparkle” in the gaps where you think it is just a rhythm guitar playing. I hear something much different. There’s set of banjo notes buried deep in the recording. I know those notes very well, they are not there in every open measure of the original, but they are there when play the song, damn rights. If you want to hear them more clearly, go to Songsterr.com, find the Eagles version, and play the tab marked “overdubs”.
           Okay, I hear some of you saying I’m playing a note that isn’t there. So I do cheat a little bit. The note is a flatted fifth, for instance, that’s C# when playing a G chord. You are correct, the note is not there but I’m emulating a slight “slur” that happens when guitar players switch certain chords. The difference is I’m doing it on purpose and I’m doing it on the bass.

           Want to know what’s coming? The recent talk of banning gas stoves is still an active issue. Some interesting hidden facts have emerged. The government says the stoves pollute, so the ban is over emission standards. Guess what? The real ban is because 95% of gas generators, the ones you use in a power outage, cannot meet the quota. Manufacturers are not permitted to stockpile inventory before the law is enacted about six months from now if it flies. For now, if you have a generator, you can use it after the ban, which is only on manufacture and sales. As            I said, for now.
           Biden flubs another speech, rambling on about the Gulf of Mexico, then losing his way off the stage. It’s beneath pathetic.

Picture of the day.
Biden’s “secure border”.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s the map of Florida on my fridge. Is this some kind of hint that a trip is being planned? Could be, since we are not going to Tennessee this month and I’ve already been to Miami which doesn’t count. Keep it a secret for now, but the bedding in the van has been rearranged and we’ll need to check it out for the Great Trek of 2023.

           News of the day, a cholera outbreak in Pretoria. That’s a disease that does not happen to civilized people. It shows how South Africa has collapsed. I’ll never understand why the Europeans did not, painful and expensive as it would be, draw behind the southern mountains and block the passes. There has never been a majority in that area that was not from Europe. It is a bacterial stomach infections associated with poop in drinking water. It is a disease of Pakistan and The Congo, where every water source has been polluted for a thousand years. There have been no cases in America in over 100 years.
           Trump has added a campaign promise to give China 48 hours to pull their military base out of Cuba. Or enact a 100% tariff on everything they sell here. China will cave, their economy is nearly totally reliant on sales to America. Their policy of taking over the southern hemisphere has given the a presence in some of the worst markets in the planet, countries who rival them for getting the least done in the past 2,000 years.

           I lump China and India together as the two largest markets that can only get ahead by adopting Western, and particularly US, methods. For example, China is creating a presence in dozens of countries by building railroads. That’s nearly 200 year old western technology with some sections being build by hand-labor. These are grandiose projects with aims like linking the east and west coasts of Africa—places that even in modern times had no incentive to build roads or even airlines to connect up. I think China calls it the Road and Belt Initiative or something. They are spending money they don’t have unless trade with America remains imbalanced in their favor.

           Now way I got work done today, but I have a story to tell. My bulletin board notice looking for a guitar play is not on Bandmix, but let’s call it Bandmix,. However, I often see ads that I would like to respond to but cannot for a simple reason. Bandmix does not let you answer without an account. Why don’t I have an account? Because Bandmix only accepts electronic payment and I don’t give my banking info out to strangers. You are also giving them a lot of information that is not their business, there’s that as well.
           So, that’s the tale from the trailercourt. I tried for six hours to hack the Bandmix system. Man, they have hired some slick programmers and their site is something else. The way they control things is you must use their e-mail contact service, another thing only stupid people who are unaware of what is going on would do. Oh, I know they are the majority, and they are the reason the country is screwed up. They don’t know when they are being sold down the river.

           Bandmix prevents you from displaying your e-mail contact in your ad. That is where I too aim. If I could hack their system, I would put up an ad using one of my direct e-mail addresses, I still have plenty underused from the mid-1990s. Thus, my goal was to see what their text boxes would or would not allow. You could enter the name field, but not the at sign or any known e-mail provider. That is, if you put [johnsmilth@AOL] in the ext box, it would only display [johnsmith]. It not only blocks letters, it also is able to spot patterns and blank anything after the @ sign. So, how are they doing that? Since the suffix is useless unless I can get it to display the ‘@’ sign, I focused on that.
           I tried every trick in the book. The ASCII code, the Hex Code, the Unicode. I drew the symbol in a bitmap and tried binary. You can’t even use the old typewriter trick of issuing a backspace command to fake the symbols. They have sewn up every last avenue and that is the sign of a real programmer at work. I tried every variation and tried a text editor (Notepad) to strip away any formatting in case they were blocking fonts. I can’t tell you everything I tried, but by the fifth hour I was attempting to upload Cyrillic characters that resembled Latin letters. Nope, they had that sealed off. The company is 54 years old, so they’ve learned a thing or two.

           Why would I try to cheat an honest company just trying to make a buck? Answer: because they are shoving an unwelcome cashless system on people who do not necessarily want it. I would willingly pay for an account if they would accept money orders. These places are like self-serve gas stations. As soon as one opens up, the others have to lower their prices or flunk out. So I’m not cheating at all, just letting them know I don’t like what they’ve done with bulletin boards that used to be free.
           In the end, how did I get my e-mail posted on their site? Easy. They have a profile section that lets you post pictures. Take a picture of your e-mail address or print up one with your meme generator. Then mention to anyone who reads your ad to look for your addy in the photo section. Let’s see how long it takes them to catch on and cancel my fake account. Hey, you gotta let these people know every once in a while that maybe I can’t defeat squirrels, but that doesn’t mean Bandmix is smarter than me.

ADDENDUM
           Homelessness in Japan. Suddenly, there are videos claiming the government understates the problem by ten times. I did not care for the reasoning, that society pressures the homeless to stay out of sight. Japan has 24 hour “cubicle hotels” and cyber cafes that have spaces just big enough to sleep. But the videos revealed something not possible in America. These crowded spaces were clean and quiet, no drunks and addicts screaming and fighting. Myself, I feel the solution in America is to remove these people from the cities. That is where they congregate and cause problems. There are ghost towns all over America where they could be housed very cheaply. This is not cruel, it is very kind and breaks up the negative influences found every place the homeless show up in large numbers.

Last Laugh