One year ago today: June 9, 2023, I’ve never dated a Mary.
Five years ago today: June 9, 2019, ears down.
Nine years ago today: June 9, 2015, it’s gone.
Random years ago today: June 9, 2014, the old horse trick.
Most of this morning, I rewired the entire jack assembly on my bass, using automotive wire. It’s working fine now, the 22 is that I did not find any problem. The pieces are all triple-checked and tested, I even tested for invisible wire breaks (inductance test). Then I listed another 15 tubes on eBay. All I can tell you is if the people who code for eBay worked for me, I would have run the pack of them off the property long ago. It’s as if they picked out the asshole methods and coded those. If you change one word in the title (gosh, who would ever want to do that), you still have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to find the enter button.
Standby and I’ll get you a picture of the view from the fancy club. Later, here’s the picture of the view from the front door. That’s the big lake in central Winter Haven, if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. The view from the tiki bar is similar, as the Prez puts it, we keep not getting gigs at ever fancier places. Says the Reb, at this rate soon we’ll not be getting them on Broadway.
The big news of today is how did the band audition go this afternoon. Since I got started this morning, we can surge ahead. After two hours, I cancelled the show. Nothing drastic or big deal, but here are the facts for you to decide on your own. My little duo is more designed for a Tiki or Kava Bar. When I viewed the Legion on a weekday, I saw a small 8 to 10 couple dance floor and made an estimation of the clientele.
When I arrived today, two things had changed. One, they drew back the curtain to reveal an Olympic-size ballroom, and the crowd was not locals, but obviously now a lot of snowbirds. They like a different style of country than my little duo can manage. A lot of them women were wearing more jewelry than my house is worth. We had dancers and clappers and $25 in the tip jar, but this was not a match for our material. A frank discussion with the coordinator reached the decision if they can use a small “listening” duo we can fill the slot. But we cannot fill a dance hall. And we don’t want to, that is not something I shoot for any more.
3D model of Reykjavik.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I made a batch of chicken fried rice with fresh tomato and onion, and spent a few hours mulling over this changed situation. Time to admit the locations I had targeting have changed. They are not gone, they just want different music. It’s a sad day when they’ve come to prefer the sound of backing tracks. While I don’t know if this means locally or everywhere, this is the area I intend to play in. And I see no need to expand the band beyond a duo, we get dozens of compliments on the sound. The stumbling block seems to be the style and presentation. If fifty people want backing tracks, that’s the crowd.
This is too much to decide in one afternoon, so I took some time to seek out solutions to the insanity that produced the Samsung SL502 “Intelligent LCD” camera I’ve been using for the vacuu tube photos. Samsung are plainly smoking some weird shit. If you go on-line to find the owner’s manual, they link you to some brain-fart millennial page that tries to rope you into signing up for an owner’s manual membership. Give an Asian company your name and address, what could go wrong?
It turns out the auto-flash cannot be turned off in the mode that I want to use, basically macro. Wait, yes you can turn it off, but then it will not focus. And you cannot set the camera to a fixed focus, each picture cancels the setting. I always take pictures in pair minimum. Some slant over at Samsung decided that is not what they want. The second picture of each object blurs the shot and neigher the manual or autofocus will work. I finally put a thick piece of black tape over the flash, which continues to drain the battery every sixty shots.
Wait, there’s more. The Samsung has some weird formatting on the SD card. One of the first things you’ll want to do is change their default filenames to something meaningful. Not so fast, Samsung has other ideas. If you rename, it will ask you to confirm every shot, but if you accidentally hit the delete command (which is located right above the rename button), your file is gone. One of the reasons you name them on the card is if you copy them to Win 11 first, each filename you change will rearrange the deck. That, plus Win 11, never did figure out the drop menus should be in order of usage, not alphabetical. You get to scroll down to R, past Change Font and Page Preview every last time.
Tomorrow, I’ll try the library in the morning to see if this process can be streamlined. The nicest library nearby is over in Bartow, but take your earplugs. Remember these are public libraries designed far, far back in the days when the public was a decent lot of good folks, taxpayers who went there to read in peace and quiet and, if they took their kids, they were disciplined.
