One year ago today: May 29, 2025, staples & glue.
Five years ago today: May 29, 2021, I dislike SMT.
Nine years ago today: May 29, 2017, a remarkable achievement.
Random years ago today: May 29, 2023, where I really learned pallets
If today gets posted, it is officially post number 8,000. That’s the point which a blog officially becomes a “super-blog”, making this the largest blot in the world without advertising or followers. That is correct, zero followers. And I’m surprised I’m still here, as in still alive. I’m the last of my crowd, you know. The good news is Trump has successfully deployed my oldest tactic, the Canary Trap. He announced a meeting, then cancelled it due to weather. But he told each department a different type of weather. Then waited for the new news reports. No word on what happened to the leakers, but another leak says there were plenty.
Don’t be fooled by replacing the battery and watching it tick—unless you hang it vertically. Why? Because the tiny weight of the hands makes a difference on the left side of the face as the gears have to work against gravity to raise the minute hand. The number 9 below is to be affixed to that board painted brown in the background. I decided against black paint as not individual enough. I thought the photo looked good, so here you go.
By noon today, I finally get a response from the guitarist with some songs. We have a problem already, but I am so desperate to play on stage again, I will go along with it. The problem is, we have another guy trying to recapture the 1970s big band with hero-guitar. His list has nothing I recognize. Three of the tunes have simplistic 4-note bass lines. I never cared for anything by Hendrix, but know that is just me.
There is another defect harder to counter, it is how these boys never listen to what the other band members have to play. Instead of the requested song titles with artist names and keys, he sends me youTube links to himself shredding lead breaks in big bands 10 or 15 years ago. I should send him the same, but it is foolish to not at least give the sound a try. What’s more, I sent him my top ten weeks ago and know he has not touched them.
We must be careful here we don’t have another Class A guitarist. A reminder that is one who talks the talk, but has no intention of learning any of your music. His idea of forming a band is handing you his song list. He can’t play your choices because he has the wrong brand of guitar, or the wrong type of strings, and (I love this one) his doctor told him not to sing like that. Right, Glenn?
Of course, he’ll learn your material as soon as you’ve mastered his—but you will never get it just right. And did he mention he brought a surprise sax player to the gig? And he’s paying them a split of your share. And I think he tried to slip in an original in the links he sent. That’s never a good sign. But, for the third time just this morning, I say I am desperate. Now you see, I could go several ways with this. The bass line will either be too simple or a guitar riff. My usual treatment is to compose a super-bass line and let him wonder what happened. But not this time.
Ah, a bit later he is sending me more material and it confirms he has never played with a real bassist before—but you cannot tell that to a guitar player. Because they all once knew somebody who was a “good follower” and could play anything after hearing it once. That, folks, is why they all wind up in the bassist’s elephant graveyard. Just you watch, he will now make a series of mistakes I am ready for, such as playing the “wrong” versions. This is always fun.
Rampage water park, England
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Who likes those “spot the difference” picture puzzles? If you’re a regular, you got it already, if not, I’ll help you out. Lok at the corner eave, the white trim directly above the ladder. That tiney decorative triangle is painted and replaced. Folks, I know my age has taken away the thrilling escapades of this once-dynamic blog, but the real reason for this photo is not the bit of wood. It’s the sound effects of all the ladies going “ooh” and “aah” that I climbed that ladder. Several times, actually. Ta-dah!
More time in the shed, just shuffling along. Here are two boxes from last day now stained darker so the knobs stand out a bit more. The shortage of matching sets is now critical. I have a few that have been painted over which I will try to upgrade. I’ve needed a wire polishing disk for years, Is this my big opportunity to make one up? I sent a note to India if she wants to chat a bit at the club. Check back on that.
What’s this, a test rocket just blew up on the launch pad? Eighty years and they still have not gotten any better than the Germans at the beginning. This got me distracted looking at flying boat hell designs, which somehow survived the 1930s. The idea was that they would perform better for patrol work if they could land on water. However, most stretches of ocean did not agree most of the time.
Still, it is worth a shot, who knows, ancient obscure guitar meets country bass done right. Wilford texted saying threw was a huge pile of pallets somebody wanted taken away. I went downtown to see him and had one beer. I never have one beer, but I did. And rejected the pallets. Closer inspection showed only one in twenty was new and the ad said all or none. I’ll pass all but the best deals for now. The club was dead, five people where there used to be fifty on a slow Friday.
ADDENDUM
It doesn’t get lighter duty than reading around here and I continued with my review of COBOL. Good news is massive chunks of the more advanced COBOL features came back to me in the time it took to read the code. Videos took a bit longer. See, I behaved myself, the heaviest thing I lifted was my phone. There is no replacement for the current COBOL techs who are about to retire.
The hope is that A.I. and a new generation of coders will save the day. But that brings its own problem, they are coders, not programmers. The massed billions of lines of COBOL code out there might one day be recoded. But where are they going to find the sixty years of accumulated experience and talent that wrote that code?
I’ve found a few new items, like COMP number commands and something called FD, but nothing much has changed. This used up half my allocated time, but there is a change that intrigues me. Data input. In my day, we used punch cards. I will look at how it is now done.
t was COBOL data that first got me interested in relative databases. COBOL was sequential and we were told the order cannot be changed and new records could only be added at the end. I took an entire course just on sorting and found the rules could be broken, but by tedious writing to create a new file, the classic “third empty glass” approach. But I loved how hardened COBOL naturally is against viruses and intrusion.
