One year ago today: August 14, 2022, heat scanner fun.
Five years ago today: August 14, 2018, Chassahowitzka.
Nine years ago today: August 14, 2014, fries kill you, slowly.
Random years ago today: August 14, 2007, MS Vista sucks.
Trivia. Those 9V batteries, no matter how completely dead they ever go, still measure roughly 0.42 volts unless the casing is visibly damaged. Remember that next time you get stranded on Mars. There’s another heat warning for today. I’m going to try some light duty, as in straightening up around the place, having prepared a quart of peach tea before sunup. It’s half gone already. A not-bad looking plant sprouted near the birdfeeder, so I’m transplanting it to a pot to see what grows. I’ll find out later it is the Ocala stink plant, an invasive species, but a man has to try sometimes. You’ll find me inside the shed or in the shade until past noon. It is 94°F out there already.
The wind calmed down to a mild breeze so I was out there over four hours. This constitutes fun when you’re over fifty, so enjoy right along with me. Mrs. Red scolded me for half the time, I checked and she’s got food and water, so what gives? Maybe she’s nagging but it seems to me females in the wild would know much better than that. The mere hint of rain and I decided to work inside. That meant finish moving the work bench to the wall, out of the center of the room. This is more work than you’d think, as it involves adding a work light, which in turn means drilling in the scooter canopy because I’ll need the spare wire that frees up.
This gave me plenty of time to mull over the auditions and music so far this month. My records show Fretz is likely mistaking me for somebody else. His emails make references to aspects of bass playing that do not apply to me. And his replies show that he does not think band management is important. That might explain why he has not been in a band in, I think he said, twenty years. As you age, you have to change with the demographic and face it, working with older people set in their ways is a must in the music trade.
He’s got another band-killing quirk. Not only does he think management is unimportant, he does not recognize the skill in others when he sees it. The way I like to put it is bands are 30% about music and he’s operating up at the 80% level. So musically, everything works but the band never gets off the ground. Those who go that route also tend to write off any motives but their own as shallow, maybe childish. For example, we agreed I’d play to backing tracks if he would learn a full set that had no tracks. He instantly presumed I was trying to undermine his authority or something. I explained to him no, my motive was that when the tracks quit working, professionals should be able to complete the set without them. He said that had never happened and a half-hour later his Bluetooth cut off for twenty minutes—but he still thinks I’m just stubborn. In reality, I’m equally motivated by seeing if he can obey instructions himself.
The tracking chip in your smart phone.
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A successful band is more like a job or business than a hobby. This provides the powerful incentive for me to keep things simple. We get another e-mail from Fretz indicates from his perspective, we had no agreement to learn one set. Rather he figures he can send me a set of his backing tracks and say, “Learn it.” If he doesn’t have me mixed up with somebody else, he might as well. I’m not pulling the pin on the guy, sometimes they come to their senses. How do you like me new work bench? It’s the same size as the old one because it has the same table top.
Consistent with my working pace, that light required 1-1/2 hours. That was just to tap into the existing light system controlled by a switch over near the doorway. It’s done, if you see a picture it’s because I went back outside after quitting time (5:00PM). Later, see below, yes I made it. Notice three 100W bulbs and the work light at 200W. I’m planning a stop at Harbor Frieght, but balance that with a nap. You want work out of me, then you gotta let me nap with the time is right.
Deciding I liked coffee more than usual today, I watched the latest documentaries (by posting date) on the Panther tank. Sure, that is 1944, but for all the bad things historians say about the model, it is the one that had the greatest influence on tank warfare. I’ve mentioned how the Mark III and IV German tanks were not designed to fight other tanks. They were really mobile artillery, meant to deal with machine gun nests and other stoppages in a war of movement. It was really the Russians who were all about tank versus tank, which is a truly expensive way to go about things. (The Germans would feign a withdrawal and draw enemy armor into tank traps.
The T-34 made a very bad showing against regular German tanks and was hopeless in a one-to-one battle against the Panther. So it was not revolutionary in that context. It’s influence was on tank design, not operations, an area where it never really ever caught up.
The videos that made it to disk have been saved and I reviewed them. Ha, I get a chuckle seeing people react to real bass playing upon seeing it for the first time. I make a big deal about notes and timing and voicings, but https://youtu.be/sMsjnU0Ueugthere is an aspect to the job that only your 10,000 hours can produce. It is touch, the way to make the note sound like the original. You could resort to the racks of pedals or you could learn the trade. There you go, repeatedly on camera he hears the notes, them realizes something is different, then stares at my left hand. This usually throws them off, which is why you’ve heard me tell guitarists to not try faking it by following me. But there it is, he knows he hears the sound but cannot see how it is done—and it is different on every song, as different as I can make it.
There’s something funny going on with the Hawaii town on fire. I’ve been there and the construction material of choice is concrete which doesn’t burn. How does fire get away when you have an ocean full of water a few hundred yards away. I’m not buying.
ADDENDUM
The Hadal Zone. Ever heard of it? I think it comes from “Hades”, it is the depth of ocean below 3.7 miles. The combined area of all such space is the size of Australia. The name implies Hell because the pressure is so great that it will crush the cells needed to support life. But we know there is down there, all the way to something like 6 miles in the Mariana Trench. The Japanese, who have over-fished every other food supply, have a vested interest in what is down there. My curiosity is that the water at that pressure contains no dissolved oxygen. If it’s food, it needs oxygen to grow, so what is down there?
My total experience with the sea is a few School Board tours on the west coast in the 80s. I never went back as you never meet single women on these jaunts. Proving most single women haven’t got the brains they were born with, but that’s another story. The Japs have sent down cameras that show definite fish species. So, my theory (independently derived) is that these fish don’t live there. Up higher, the whales breathe in enough oxygen at the surface to feed at much lower depths and I say this is the same process. If there is no oxygen in the water, the fish must be bringing it with them.
Later, I found a video with promise, called Mariana Trench. It actually moves along well, a welcome change to BBC junk, but I only got in ten minutes viewing so far. I’ve got work to do. It’s funny to watch these people lug around the unwieldy laptops on sale these days. They cannot be handily used anywhere but a desk, even using a real lap is uncomfortable. What would make them better? Remove that useless dead space below the keypad. I’ve never liked it. Put it above the keypad if you must have it, so at least there is a place to prop our pencil. Yes, I still question how much work anyone is really accomplishing on a computer if they have no pencil.
