One year ago today: August 17, 2023, his music is vague.
Five years ago today: August 17, 2019, a nip at a time.
Nine years ago today: August 17, 2015, all dancing clowns.
Random years ago today: August 17, 2004, Hendrix, boring.
eBay, the more I use it, the less I like it. One of the tubes was not as described so the buyer & I canceled the order. Why, just click on Refund, right? Wrong. When I found it, I see what eBay was thinking, and it is not according to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). This is where users today are shooting themselves in the foot. It is not that the accounting principles are right or wrong. It is that they are consistent. But not eBay. Each moron that comes along gets to devise his own screwball say of doing things.
Here’s a product I can recommend. Super Glue Wood Glue. I’ve not tested it completely, but so far it works admirably. Maybe it’s been around, this is the first I’ve seen it. You may ask what’s different about glue, don’t they all do the same job? In the end, but what about getting there. I want glue that adheres but does not dry instantly. It needs to grab, but allow up to a minute to adjust a bit. Then it must dry but remain slightly flexible. I like other attributes, like how kid’s glue goes on purple but dries clear.
What makes this glue a favorite? It works great on cardboard. My inventory needs small boxes and I’ve learned the thicker cardboard on cartons that ship toothpaste and bubble gum are remarkably durable. It’s that when I get them, they’ve usually been flattened. You’ll need clamps or three hands to get them back into shape, and that’s where this glue comes in. It won’t let the cardboard spring back and even then, a slight weight on a joint is enough to make it stronger than the material itself. This is the blog that dares to feature bottle of glue.
Here’s a reminder than the blog pictures here are still delayed until I have time for the library. The new 386 won’t pick up any of my three remaining drives without a reformat, which I hesitate because of the amount of unknown files that need a peek before being delete. So if you’ve read posts without pics, go back every day or two and you’ll usually find something. For the record, the posts are not called that term here behind the scenes. They are called dispatches.
Does anyone know what happened to the $12 trillion-dollar gold discovery in Uganda two years ago? Seems there is silence from the Chinese company that did the valuation. Contrary to popular belief, gold discoveries lower the price. Maybe the gold was stolen by that Nigerian prince who e-mails everybody.
Trivia. The famous 88mm German cannon, final version, had a three-piece barrel in place of the original one-piece making it easier to replace. The original barrel wore out after 900 shots. The caliber was chosen as the heaviest shell one man could lift in action, around 34 pounds. It was semi-automatic, the recoil ejected the shell and cocked the gun for the next.
Western Kansas, I think.
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Manual labor is not my next career move, but in all building that fence was not that bad. It gave me the day off and I spent it reading. All told, reading is a great thing to have as a high point. Much as I dislike the eBay system, I don’t mind classifying and entering the tubes into the files. It becomes interesting as you learn the nomenclature and recognize the more valuable units. (Having said that, I have just cataloged hundreds of tubes with no real gems.) It just seems to me by now, some sharp dude would have taken the more common eBay products and put them into a database. Then charge people a dollar to look it up, what a savings that would be. But it is too monumental a task for someone like me.
The snag arises when I want to classify the tubes in bulk. One common model is the 6CY5 which exists in almost every brand. I have to open each spreadsheet to find if any exists in a given brand. There are several poor-man’s files I could create that involve a lot of copy & paste, but no, there is no cheap and easy relational database suitable for these tasks. Don’t even think of Access, which entails a nightmare of preparation to get it to work right. That’s why so many of them out there don’t work right, by the way.
I’ve also learned the most valuable tubes store and ship very well in empty pill bottles. I’ve thrown the bottles out by the hundreds now that they’ve quit recycling them at the pharmacy. (No, you do not, in America, throw pill bottles with labels into the regular recycle container. Not since we got diversified. Who remembers that gemology course I took in the 1990s. I used it to program my first artificial intelligence routine? Well, 30 years later I am using my jeweler’s loupe far more often to look at faint tube stampings than I ever did diamonds. (I determined at the time jewelry was a racket that you needed to associate with the wrong sort of people.)
ADDENDUM
Up late enough to watch the feeds. Harris just had another flop rally, what are the liberals going to do? They have nobody left they can throw in the ring. While awake, I had time to key enter most of another box of tubes, partially thanks to the glue mentioned above. Turns out it’s 20 minute set time pretty much matches my accustomed work cycle and coffee breaks Years ago, when my tooth broke on fried chicken, I did some soul-searching over the $1,300 repair cost. It’s history, I decided against it because it did not affect my speech or singing and was not visible except from a certain angle when I smiled. Nothing spells hick like a tooth-gap at full grin.
Despite the nice gig at the Legion, likely our last for the summer, there are not the usual output of videos and stills. That’s strange because I had the camcorder set up and ready, and most of our best material recorded. Not that you get the scenes, but you’ve seen stills of the stages and settings. The lighting was good and the acoustics were bad, so where are the recordings?
Well, you see, the best spot to set up the camcorder was between a table and chair at stage right. This produced dynamic shots of both instruments and our profiles. It’s clear the Prez is more comfortable with stage work and of course, there is me, the old gig warhorse at his station. He’s reaching the plateau where his playing is secure enough that he can devote more to audience reaction. We’ve all endured players who fail or refuse to get this right, never learning the crowd does not give a hoot about the band’s personal crap, incoming or outgoing.
So far, the few people who have gotten to where 90% of their attention is on the people, I get to hear them crow about how mind-bogglingly they managed this all on their own. Being musicians, they can testify that nobody could possibly be smart enough to have handed them a map. I’ll get to the point. That camcorder was, by sheer poor luck, positioned at a certain angle.
