One year ago today: February 28, 2023, well, light bulbs are $5.
Five years ago today: February 28, 2019, lure of the workshed.
Nine years ago today: February 28, 2015, ancient recipe.
Random years ago today: February 28, 2008, the Baker Street job.
My eyes are buggy from looking at vacuum tubes. I’m seeing the pattern. I can read the voltages, pins, and a bit about the glass or metal tube material. On-line does not present the vast array of simple projects and tutorials you’d get for solid state and the few I found use odd voltages I cannot supply, usch as -99V. Wendy’s fast food is toying with surge pricing. I keyed in another couple of boxes of tubes before sunup. Here’s a close-up of what I’m dealing with. Turns out my od GE deck does have auto-stop. I think this morning I’ll build a sorting tray for the vacuum tubes. My database will easily “alphabetize” them into categories, creaing the possibility of selling them in batches. Remember, you saw it here first!
So, after a third coffee, I waddled out to the shed and build two sorting trays for all these tubes. After reading there are only five actual different types, I figured the selling solution is best served making the bulbs easy to find, letting the buyer worry about what they do. I think this can be streamlined by sorting the bulbs into three sizes and by the first two call digits. For example, there are lots of tubes designated 6A, 6B, and so on. The database, now aroun 15% populated, will tell me how many of each, and I now have a feel for the size of box necessary. I’ll shrink wrap them if I have to. Most are in the original cardboard covers, but those have deteriorated a lot, as if they’d been stored exposed to weather. They are still useable,they just make the product look old, but that can be turned into a selling point.
You know, I don’t like OpenOffice as much as before. Over time it has developed quirks that steepen the learning curve. The word processor reacts funny to ordinary typos, much worse than MicroSoft. Cut & paste is also quirky. The spreadsheets are worse, sometimes taking three keypresses to exit a cell. I sent off a letter this morning requesting funds for a refurbished Windows computer, not because they are good, but because they are familiar territory. Other annoyances with Open Office is pop-up tabs that can’t be disable that obscure the place you want to work on a mouseover. Every time it goes into autosave mode, it locks the cursor. The spreadsheet doesn’t preserve the formats when you add new rows or columns.
I gave up after 20 minutes trying to extract the first two characters of the tube designation. The are no clear examples the OpenOfiice help is an on-line forum. Every whacked-out millennial asking every question except the one you want, and all his buddies posting non-answers. “What’s your OS”, and “is it plugged in”. Later, I got the formula by trial and error, it’s =Left(cell;number).
We have another juvenile downey woodpecker. They appear two different generations, one is just showing a red cap, the other is smaller and much more furtive. By mid-afternoons, we’ve seen our first robin of the season. Let’s hope the groups stops here again. The trees have been trimmed since last time.
The World Clock at Greenwich.
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Another balmy day had me out in the shed and here is one of two sorting trays. The best method to get them organized isn’t clear yet. I’ve coded a spreadsheet to peel the first two characters from the box label, then alphabetizing those. It’s working the theory that if I don’t know what the tubes do, I can make them easy to find. Most of them are small and medium size, I can fit around sixty in a shipping carton. Instead of one big database, I’ve split the tubes into more manageable categories. I’ve been calling the software OpenOffice and it is actually LibreOffice, and it looks like another few weeks before I can buy a 386 XP and get back on familiar ground. This LibreOffice has a long way to go. It does not even have a “print selection” option and changing from portrain to landscape, well, give it a try.
The neighbor came over saying he’s got a friend playing at the jam session tonight, would I like to show up. There you go, he said he didn’t know any guitar players. Keep reading, this gets better, since it turns out I know the guitar player’s wife. She’s one of the people I told the “chicken coop” line to when asked what I was doing. Now, keep this balanced, that means she had the wherewithal to initiate a conversation with me, no mean feat in a small town. I arrived slightly after 8:00PM and met the guitar player, who said he does not sing. He’s a structural engineer, so I guessed right he was holding back.
That’s where I recognized his wife. They are the couple who made millions via bnb and just bought i houses in this town. My guitar player was on stage, the one I won’t bother to play unless I’m requested, but it’s all good practice and you can always get away with just a guitar show. The new guy, who I’ll nickname Jay, gets up and this guy is good. Talk about a smooth playing style. Then he sings and he’s good enough for this town. He’s an excellent match for my bass playing. As for vocals, we are locals. Never heard that phrase before? Probably not, it just popped out of my keyboard.
He knows a lot of the standards. I invited him to our Saturday gig more as an audition, but we are an instant match, that is, we could just go play a gig anytime without rehearsal. He’s about the age and situation I was when I got wiped out by medical expenses, so I identify with the need to play music but not have the time to rehearse. Let’s hope he makes it, with the neighbor and his wife spurring him on. At the same time, next week or so I have to plan for a trip to Tennessee for at least a week. Or at least a few days if everything goes perfectly, which is possible anywhere except Florida and Canada.
