One year ago today: April 12, 2024, tube tester.
Five years ago today: April 12, 2020, 19.657.
Nine years ago today: April 12, 2016, back in 1933 . . . .
Random years ago today: April 12, 2013, Amelia Island.
Still stunned and amazed by the revelations of y’day, I’m already on track getting things back to normal around here. This morning I’m out to Rural King to buy another overhead heater. Off season, they are $50 off and I’ve decided to raid the 240V circuit off the old water heater. This means the flooring stays up even longer. The wiring will cost more than the device. I not what you’d call happy over this event with the transmission.
Here’s the first pressure washer I’ve ever had in my life. Not a great photo. I set it up y’day but no time to test it. The Prez says it works just fine so how about I let you know soon as I give it a try. He’s also going to give me a well used charcoal barbeque, I wonder if I’ll ever use it.
California fossil tooth.
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Today was the most unusual audition of my career, the new guy Roberto. It’s a broad subject, working in a new band member, but this was unique. There are few notions as pre-conceived as people’s ideas of what it takes to play in a band. Here is a guy who’s only been playing guitar a couple of years, but he learned there was something wrong with the way other people were going about things. Yet, he could not define the issue and was on the verge of blaming himself. Until he met us. If nothing else, he now knows others have drawn the same conclusions, but to even meet somebody articulate enough to define the problem is rare.
This is why I was emphatic the Prez be in the loop. And it produced great results. The new guy got three hours of firsthand experience as to the finished product. Plus direct input from the Prez, a fellow guitarist he can relate to, which is more effective than anything I could demonstrate. We went through some 28 tunes all of which are possibilities. He plainly found the sound astonishing, which is the desired effect. I might add that he is a very young looking 50 and we looked positively grandfatherish. Hold on, the Prez is a grandfather, so there.
Roberto did a lot of homework. He took notes, kept a list of what we played, but has an understandable lack of confidence. We assured him in this atmosphere, that is just a passing phase. He also picked up quickly how to give each song a slightly different character by strumming the “feel” of the tune. He very quickly learned to trust the bass line to conform this way and by an hour later was able to alter his chops to match. What a sound! Alas, the Panasonic let me down and it will be replaced shortly.
My conclusion later is this session accomplished amazing mileage. The new guy knows he does not have to learn every song to perfection and knows it can be easy. He’s seen techniques that seem impossible at first and knows he can stop playing and let things carry. The variety and versatility of the song list is there. Best tune of the day, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”. That’s what the video is playing, if I could embed sound.
Taking a needed evening off, I checked the news. Silver is climbing again, but so is criticism. Most everyone has by now noticed how the commodities exchange has been holding silver down. Lots of estimates say it should not be worth $300 per ounce if it was allowed to find its own equilibrium.
ADDENDUM
During the past ten years, I’ve seen the rise of a new form of computer illiteracy. Ask yourself, why would a store person utterly, absolutely refuse to let you use their phone to do a lookup? Why do they insist they will look it up for you and often cannot find the object? Worse, the insinuation is that if they can’t find it, that is some kind of testament that you don’t know what in hell computer searching is all about. I have a new theory on that, but first, here is the a picture of the heater I went in for, their web page said it was available for in-store pickup.
Think for a second about a person that won’t let you touch their phone. They are scared if you change anything, they are so unknowledgeable about the device that they are terrified they might not be able to set it back. This is a sign of almost complete ignorance, yet these are people who would rate themselves power-users. What is the mechanics behind this?
It’s the dumbing down of computers to match the generally lower grade of today’s users. I know of several personal examples, such as the computer shop. Before 2008, people brought in non-working computers which we discovered were mostly clogged up by weird computer settings. If we set the parameters to what was correct, or reset things to default, these people were so brainless they could not use their own software—because they had long forgotten all the settings that got them to the problem.
I’m reminded of the time I failed a beginner’s word processing exam at the temp agency. The test was full of questions like how to enable the command to capitalize the first word of a sentence. This is how I learned some computer whiz-kids had never learned that much, they needed a computer setting to perform the function for them. I was aghast that such “commands” were even a thing. What the hell are you doing near a word processor if you don’t know the primary use of capital letters?
Well, my theory is like this. These numbskulls are dull and unsuspecting, which explains why they are clerks at a feed store. They leave their phones at the factory setting, unaware that it is constantly tracking and profiling them. So a year later, their phone only tells them what they want to hear—which delights them to no end. When given even the most accurate search criteria by anyone else, their phone draws a blank. I’ve seen it, even after confirming they put in the correct search terms, they get a different screen and different results. You see, I wanted “overhead electric heaters” and their phone only knows DoorDash, Poki, and OrientalHooker.com.
