February 29, 2024

Yesteryear
One year ago today: February 29, 2020, I attract nobodies.
Five years ago today: February 29, 2019, discussing the batbike.
Nine years ago today: February 29, 2015, on losing 15 years.
Random years ago today: February 29, 1492, printable copy.

           Yep, that guitar player last evening was something else. Said he couldn’t sing, ha-ha. I’m just hoping the Prez connects that with my predictions of how we would eventually find a guitarist without going through all the hoops and channels. Nothing is decided yet, but so far so good, if he shows up Saturday. There’s a couple other factors, for example, the Prez has lately been admonishing our “old” song list, but funny thing, those are the same songs this “new” guitar player knew. And I know the Prez does not play them with any other musicians except me, because he doesn’t know any that can play anything that advanced.

           Here is the Peavy amp I checked out and found unsuitable. It is a very good build, but does not carry the bass end low enough. It has an over-sensitive gain setting that serves as the volume knob. But there is some kind of internal circuit breaker that trips every so often even at moderate volume. Even for the bargain price of $75, I can’t use this. Now back to my complaining guitar player.

           Also, I made sure if we met someone who played excellent guitar, that person would not find joining up with us a burden on his time. I know a lot of people who won’t join a band because of the time that rehearsals take. I’ve eliminated the need for rehearsals by insisting we play the intros, ourtos, breaks, and where possible, in the original key. If you know the tune, you should be able to play right along without a hitch. And yes, I’ve got us trained to apply all these rules to any new music.
           Now this is a mercurial situation, up to y’day, the neighbor has been telling me for two years he didn’t know any musicians. Nor am I unhappy that his excellent workmanship clashed with old Keith’s half-baked presentations. I don’t have to convince him Keith is a nobody, and Keith is the second time in Florida I’ve met a guitar player who claims he’s played out for years, yet nobody I know has ever heard of him. It’s like I described plenty, when you do a good job the other guy thinks he’s getting better. Which is sort of humourous before you figure out he’s not joking

           Biden openly broke the law and defied the Supreme Court ruling over student loan forgiveness. Nobody is fooled, this is blatant vote-buying and the debt does not go away. It is piled on the taxpayer. Plus most are aware of the decline in quality of the schools, something like a quarter of people with Bachelors are working in food service. Another quarter, making for a total of half of all four-year degree holders are working jobs that don’t require any college education. For those familiar with my story, how I had to drop out and return as an adult to graduate ten years later, the changes happened while I was a drop-out. I returned to a school system that was junk, over-priced, and a curriculum based on woketard-appeal.
           Often, I would take courses out of interest only, but even that supply dried up by 1999. At that late date it was still possible to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree without ever having taken a computer course. Up at 5:30AM to a backyard of birdie noises, I fixed breakfast and said, what the hell, I’m crawling back in the sack.

           But first listen to the news. Biden is a basket case, but the libtards have nobody to replace him with. He’s getting booed off every state and Texas is planning to arrest any illegals who attempt to vote in November. Panic is setting in as Trump is winning in traditional Democrat stomping grounds. The margins are getting too wide for mail-in ballots, which are the only places the Democrats have ever “won” any elections. Only fools still believe the 2020 election was legit and very few people are buying that J6 was an insurrection. Biden’s latest interview, rememeber this is a presidential year, came in with 852,000 viewers. The leftist media tried to brag it up, but that is a lower rating than “Law & Order” reruns. Want to see something truly hideous?

           Gab, the free speech go-to is about to start charging people. I never cared for the way Gab goes on about a parallel economy, then reverts to intrusive advertising. Well now they want to start chargin for free speech. Turns out many users, especially meme posters, gobble up a lot of memory. The plan is, if you don’t become a member, your memory gets dumped every 30 days. It’s kind of dumb because most of the appeal is the ability to post anonymously. Gab may be cutting off the item that attracts their best contributors. Honestly, I don’t really understand how that works and why memes would take any more storage space than any other pictures.

Picture of the day.
One billion dollars each.
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           A pleasant three hours in the shed, I’ve learned to sort the boxes first. It means handling them an extra time, but that is made up by bundling them into packages of nine. Why nine? Because that’s the size of elastic bands I have on hand. I’m leaning more toward selling the whole lot to an on-line buyer. If the present pattern continues, it is unlikely we’ll make any real money from this venture. Later, I found a way to band them into stacks of five, which are a standard. And the database now uses the first four characters to alphabetize the results. We still have a week’s work at this pace. Here is a view of work in progress sorting through the larger tubes, this is around a third of the lot.

           I think I have to fire the new guitar player. Now that he’s trained on how to put on a show even with his second-rate guitar playing, and now knows many of the local clubs where he can play, he figures he’s the boss. He’s going to drag the duo back down to beginner’s leverl like the Hippie, where he feels his song list is definitive of what the audience wants.
           All this is predictable, but you know it was a good run this time. Also, he has been attending the Wednesday jams and his guitar playing has suffered badly. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I know what he’s planning from experience. He’ll have a good run of things for a while, but if the jam session fails, he’ll be right back where he started. As for his solo career, he has no idea how solo his career will be.

           Inventory of 26 large tubes shows price quotes of just $237 retail, not encouraging. Only four of the tubes had a price over $10. Later, things look slighly better as I finish counting and price all 87 large tubes. The price quotes total is $1,084 on paper. That does not include tubes not listed on-line. They might be extremely rare or extremely useless. I’ll propose my sales strategy to the shop tomorrow and make payment arrangements. While in Winter Haven, I’ll try to get Ray-B out for at least coffee. He’s really depressed-sounding, aggravated by that case of tintinitus he got instead of sea sickness two years ago. I had a touch of that, a high-pitched squealing that lasted for a couple days.
           He’s also discouraged with music and when music isn’t fun, it leads to other consequences. One factor is so many musicians take these doldrums as an omen, which seems the case here. I recognize it as just a normal phase. Also, he met a lot of dud women on these cruise lines and that has not helped his ego any. But I say get right back up on the horse, and the best way is to gig in a small town. Winter Haven would qualify, we’d only have to play ten gigs before he meets a rich widow. My philosophy says he’s past that age where being in the audience does any good. Might as well go hunting on-line or go fishing at church picnics. The good ones are gone, the strategy is to get the best of what’s left over. Harsh? Try it.

           During the research on these tubes, I have developed a theory why some musicians swear by tube amps. On-line, 1953 Gibson 14 watt amps are going for $4,000. Funny, such amps would have to be patched into a PA system which is probably not a tube device. Anyway, here goes. Most of the tubes in an amp are for converting the incoming AC mains power to DC. In this process, the wavering AC goes through a rectifier, then a capacitor. The result is a rippled DC signal as the capacitor slightly discharges between each peak. Since this happens 60 times per second, it is possible some folks could easily hear the effect.
           The vacuum tubes work on the principle of a heated element causing electrons to migrate across the vacuun to a colder filament. This is an analog flow which would provide a constant average once the filament heats up. This would provide smooth DC, which would again be smoothed through a second set of amplifying tubes operating on the same principle. So maybe there is something to the “warm” tube sound after all. I was raised totally in the digital era and either can’t hear any difference or grown used to it.
           Something else I learned. LibreOffice is not worth the hassle. It seems to have reverted to the form before all improvements were made, plus it has features that are plainly designed to allow idiots to operate the system.

Last Laugh