One year ago today: September 10, 2023, not a summer sport.
Five years ago today: September 10, 2019, rather nice.
Nine years ago today: September 10, 2015, two dozen.
Random years ago today: September 10, 2017, the dreaded Folger’s.
Will we find any adventures today, this nothing Tuesday in September. We got started okay with a breakfast of fried grits, sausage , and onion, hang on while I get another coffee. The picture is the day’s allotment of birdseed, we have another smart squirrel. I never put much more than the birds will eat. This was the high point of the morning, hope you liked it. Okay, quick recap. I figure with Taylor and vacuum tubes, it is wise to keep abreast of the situation. I posted the first listing and it took, that is, eBay didn’t reject. We are up against entrenched millennial mentalities here, so read the addendum for remedies, workarounds, and counter-measures. Fair warning, we may have to cancel Festus Tuesday this time.
I got millennialized before even finishing my grits. My printer is set so it paused first, asking for any final instructions, in this case, print just the selection. This time it immediately began printing my entire lyrics booklet. It also collapsed the print menu along with the cancel button. By the time I found and opened the menu again, it had printed 55 pages of lyrics I already had. What a pity I won’t live long enough to enjoy the spectacle of the millennial world come crashing down upon their stupid, short-sighted, smug-filled lives.
Their hero, Kamela tries to backpedal saying her proposed unrealized gains tax will only affect a few of the 10,660 Americans who make more than $100 million per year. Nope, lady, no deal. We’ve too often seen how the limit of $100 million can drop to $1,000 late on some Xmas Eve or buried on page 1,647 of an omnibus.
I’m not even sure what some of these jobs are. According to Personal Finance, the
Petroleum EngineeringKnowing better that to plan anything else when band logistics need work, and this morning it was the updated song lyrics booklet. This is a irksome difficult task that you only think is really nothing. One of the worst aspects is word processing. Using this application was supposed to be a time saver, and it is at a certain low level. Creating or editing the document is relatively fast and easy. But these computer eggheads have screwed it up that for actually printing things up, it takes probably four times longer than if they’d done a good job to start with.
Industrial Engineering
Computer Science
Interaction Design
Building Science
Applied Economics
Actuarial Mathematics
Optical Engineering
Quantitative Ecomonics
Operations Research.
That’s not even counting how those people have failed to produce a good cheap good printer. (Hell, despite the greatest resources and tools in history, they can't even design a tape dispenser that workds. These ate the people thinking they can run the system themselves in a few years. I spent two hours updating the index because it cannot be done right with any existing command. The lists are best produced on a spreadsheet but printed with a word processor. Try it. You’ll wind up like I do, typesetting it on the spreadsheet, then copying it to the word processor where you cannot delete any of the formatting commands you no longer need. Even then, you always miss some tunes and find duplicates of others. There is no command to highlight duplicates in a sorted list, although if you know how you can program in a formula, but then it spots blanks and place holders as duplicates and away you go.
Without complaining, I would point out that 100% of the logistics in this band are completed by me. The Prez does not even own his own microphone or mic stand or music stand, nor a booklet of his own lyrics. Occasionally he will help tear down the gear after a gig, but you got to supervise. Like last week. I never turn by back on my equipment. I’ve mention to him before the Legion is directly across the street from a culturally-enriched neighborhood. Instead of leaving the gear inside the loading door which cannot be opened from the outside, he put the gear outside, closed the door. I didn’t notice anything amiss until he had walked around the outside of the building and came in the front door. Anybody lying is wait could have stole the entire lot.
Early English cast iron bridge.
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Another chapter in the band and music saga. This takes a lot of thinking because you meet very few people even aware of the depth of what is going on. An hour’s traffic jam on the way to rehearsal give me time scan the list, we are not going to make three hours of acoustic. Two maybe, but as the Prez points out, even the quietest Bluegrass groups still amplify the bass. My approach to entertaining a crowd may not match what they are teaching them downtown these days, that watered-down generic mix of standards. II prefer the time-honored methods borne of experience. And today we need to go over the set to find what is acoustic as a duo.
The picture? That is my entire sales in the past 32 days. Gross income before expenses this one Philco tube was $4.03.
There are three calibers of bassists. The ones who took lessons and win trophies and not much else. The ones who are failed guitarists and sound like it, the source of the “bass is easy” myth. And the smallest category, the player who plays as if the bass is meant to fit into the continuum of what is going on. Today, I got called one of the best bass players and I hope that means I’m in the latter category. The long drive also gave me time to listen to more of “The Stars Are Fire”. Her husband has been missing less than a week and she’s already on the hunt for a replacement.
This book bends over to stress that women are far more caring, nurturing, and protective of children. Then in the next paragraph, blatant hypocrisy. Example, husband and wife are driving their child to the new doctor. The husband wonders if he is qualified, the wife wonders whether he is tall or short. Or they get on a plane with a young pilot from the war, the husband wonders if he has enough experience, the wife is only curious whether he is single or married. Yes, I do have an opinion on which of these parent’s concerns have truly a more positive impact on the welfare of the children.
It is now Festus time, I’ll return later with the results of our practice, or maybe tomorrow. Taking the long way home, I stopped at the bank to check if my emergency funds have arrived. They have. Doing the books has priority, even with that transfer, we are broke until December 7. That accomplished for the evening, I watched Festus get hired, then I drove to the Legion as part of my unsung management duties. The Commander was not there, he’s in the hospital. Each time I get there I find another higher in rank, and tonight it was quite the character. I explained from the word go how my duo fit into the scheme. It was unintentional but I had him laughing about the PA disaster and how Scotty, the mandolinist, was sooner or later to be corralled for an audition. I may suggest to the Prez we do another free show there this Friday. Acoustic.
Let’s backtrack to the rehearsal. We do not have the time to put really much of an act together. We split the list into several parts, such as those that were mandolin, those that were two guitars, and the rest where some amplified bass was necessary. It went well but it is not at all good. Just good enough. And yes, there are more than one barmaid there with the same name, so it wasn’t a senior moment. I ran into Dexter, who I wish could play guitar, because he sings and I’ve seen his playlist. It’s like 70% of the tunes we play. But, I know how difficult it is to play and sing at the same time. Took me 40 years to learn how.
ADDENDUM
The tube tables are easy to produce, the largest size is best around 200 but smaller is okay. The challenge is that the eBay title field also doubles as the search criteria—and it is limited to 80 characters. Primitive or what? If you can’t use the title for a search, how can people find a specific tube? Before I muse that overlong, let’s examine what has been done so far. Each of these snags has a positive, in that the optimum presentation can’t be spoofed by simply cutting and pasting. The best way to upload the lists is not the way it displays in the edit box, another eBay “duh”. That screen is only 10 “tube cells” wide, where the eBay web display can handle 18. I chose 15 to leave larger padding. Since there is no direct way to access the lists, what is the indirect way?
My considered solution is to steer as many users as possible to a generic title. It took another hour to come up with a unique title. You can’t just say “pick ten” or anything similar, trust me, I tried, or all you get is a lot of baseball card sites. I decided on a title with a descending order of precedence, with the last word being the brand name, kind of the opposite of auto ads. By adept brainwaves, we can guess which are the most popular tubes. My plan is to list those, but in each include an easy way to look for the bulk tube discounts.
At this time, we have 3,030 tubes for sale from a total of around 3,500. That means there is no economical way to list then on eBay, who not only scalp a percentage of sales, they also charge more for over 250 listings. We have now used up 240. Each is a single tube, and that gave me the idea I’m working on at this moment. Cancel the tubes that are not selling, replace them with the highest priced units—but on each display include a blurb for the bulk sales.
To prevent things they don’t like, eBay has disabled posting any links. But, I can post a list of the search criteria that is easy to cut and paste. My plan is to list most of the tubes in 20 large listings of 100-200 tubes each, then use the remaining 230 (in reality it is more like 200) as billboards. You search for a 12AX7, you find it, but with a big banner saying if you want more great bargains, cut & paste one of the links below. I’ve tested it and it works for me, but it has not been given the on-line geek test.
This precludes using photos, but that is a real time-savings anyway. Here’s a remind to all that this is a unique and new way to present the tubes for sale. There are sites with drop-down menus but they would be a nightmare to maintain. The table is much easier, edited locally and past the whole new table. I thought of just placing the little used strike-through feature, but it is hard to see and some people won’t know what it means. I’ve chosen to just put the word SOLD as a placeholder until I find time to update and upload. It’s a busy matter, dealing with the greatest generation, the more so because their little world is imploding on them and they may have to go get real jobs instead of conning each other with cell phone contracts and free shit.
