A Place for My Stuff

My 2016 Election Predictions

My predictions for the 2016 election aftermath:

1) Many people who voted for the winner will now expect everything to be fixed within a few years, and that the new president will do everything he promised to do. It won't, and (s)he won't.

2) Likewise, people who voted for the opposing candidate who said that they'd move to Canada, won't actually end up moving.

3) Despite these people's claims to the contrary, the country won't actually plunge into anarchy, and World War Three won't happen either.

4) There will be lots of photos of these people from the losing party in the press, shown crying and hugging. Somebody might even make a Tumblr account for them.

5) The 2nd Amendment won't be overturned.

6) Roe vs. Wade won't be overturned either.

7) Those "Don't blame me; I voted for [losing candidate]" bumper stickers will come back into popularity.

8) Some actor from Saturday Night Live will regularly impersonate the new president. We'll be subjected to predictable sketches that each run 5-10 minutes long when they should have been 1-2 minutes, as the writers essentially try to make 4-8 years of new jokes with the same underlying punch line. Like the Sarah Palin support sketch, a lot of it will be more mimicking than actual comedy. The character will refine over time, though.

Bill M.
March 2016

Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 2

Here's part 2, some details on how I fixed up a beat-up book that was falling apart on me.  I talk about the whole history behind this book back in part one.  Now, on to the fun.

In My Time of Binding

Items used:

• 9x12" binder, with no push-down opener tabs on the top and bottom ($4.99)
• Plastic sheet protector ($1.00)
• Binder hole reinforcement stickers, a.k.a. "Doughnuts"
• Velcro strips (adhesive sticker back)
• Adjustable, industrial-sized 3-ring hole puncher (borrowed)
• Individual hole puncher ($1.00)
• 3-ring binder tab separators

 

Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?

With the plastic comb binding breaking off, the first solution that came to mind was to just go find a place who could stick on a new comb.  I asked Staples, and they said they didn't do it.  Then I went to the same Staples the next day, and they said they DO offer that service.  Well, OK, then.  But if I just put another cheap plastic comb on it, would I just run into the same problem again later?  I asked if they had something else they could do, like a strong metal coil binding.  No, they didn't.  I could have searched around to see if somebody else would, but then thought of alternate solutions.


The Size Remains the Same

Most of the problems I had in this whole project came down to one simple fact: this book is 9" by 12".  We live in a world where almost all office supplies are made for 8.5" by 11".

This led to the following problems, which in turn led to a number of purchases and returns along the way:

• Most binders, even the large capacity ones, are still only tall enough to cover 11" sheets.  This means that if you put a I didn't really see the point in fitting stuff into a binder if I had half an inch of pages sticking out from either end.
• Likewise, binders typically have tabs on the top and bottom which you press in order to open the rings, and pull up in order to close the rings.  Let's call these "opener tabs" for lack of a better term.  When these are closed, they usually stay straight out, parallel with the three rings.  This means that even if the front and back covers of the binder were taller, you typically can't fit pages taller than 11" in them anyway, because the top and bottom area are bound by those two tabs.
  
• Even if I wanted to use the plastic combs again, most of these are made for 8.5x11" pages, which means they wouldn't cover everything.  The hole system was notably different too; this book used a difference spacing.
• Most devices for punching 3-ring binder holes into sheets, are made to only work with 8.5x11" paper.  They'll have a non-moveable edge that the top or bottom edge of the paper lines up against for easy aligning.  Well, that's convenient if you have paper that's 11" tall, but not for paper that's 12" tall.  Otherwise, your 3 holes will be vertically off-center.

In the end, I decided that the plan of attack was to find a 3-ring binder that could easily fit these 9x12" pages without anything hanging out over the edges, then get the holes punched in the right place.

I Can't Cover You Baby

I knew that no matter what, I was going to get some kind of covering for the front or back.  I didn't care if this was a simple sheet of plastic to put on top of the front cover and on the back of the back cover. I wanted whatever could help protect the book in the long run as I'd be shoving it in and out of my gig case in the future.

Alas, again, the big problem was finding something that would fit all the pages. Not just holding 300-400 pages, but being tall enough to support 12" tall pages, AND not have those annoying tabs on the top or bottom.

I did see a "legal" binder (8.5" x 14"), but that was too tall.  Namely, too tall to be able to still fit the thing in my gig bag of a briefcase.  I guess lawyers have longer briefcases for this purpose?  Hmm.

In the end, the one that worked was also one of the cheapest binders in the store. For $4.99, I bought what the receipt described as a "PC Kraft Binder".  It looked very eco-friendly.  I would have preferred something more longer-lasting, like plastic.  Regardless, it was tall enough to fit 12" pages, AND didn't have those annoying tabs on the top and bottom of the spine.

Hole Lotta Love

I had a cheap 3-ring binder hole puncher at home, but as you can imagine, it was made for 11" tall paper.  I knew that trying to use it to line up 12" would just lead to weird changes in hole placement which would lead to different heights of the paper edges in the binder.  Also, I wasn't going to do this only 3 sheets at a time for 350+ pages.

I searched the office for a better hole puncher.  No such luck.  Though weeks later I did see a plastic comb book binder machine in one room; go figure.

I asked the library.  The one they handed me was for 8.5x11" sheets.  Damn.

I went back to Staples.  They had several heavy-duty, customizable 3-hole punchers for sale.  Did I really want to spend $40-$80 on a machine I probably wouldn't be using again anytime soon?  At first my brain started to rationalize, "Well maybe this would be a good investment, especially if I plan on printing up books of my own at home to sell, like that one book I was working on, and..."  No, no, no.  Let's stick to the mission.

I went back to Staples' copy and fax center.  They had a few of the 8.5x11" hole punchers around, but several of the bigger ones behind the desk with all of their other stock paper and what not.  Surely, they wouldn't let me use one of these when they could instead force me to sell one, right?  Well, one way to find out.  I had already talked to the clerk about binding books, so maybe if I could give the illusion that I was just going to borrow it for something simple, and then later pay for something else, it would all be acceptable.  So I asked if I could use the good hole-puncher.  She said yes!  I figured out the right setting, using a single page from the book as a test page.  Then I punched through all 350+ pages, taking stacks at a time as the machine could handle it.  Awesome.  Done.  "Here's your hole puncher back!"




As mentioned at the top of this post, I did end up buying some more items: reinforcement label ("doughnut" stickers), a little individual hole puncher, a plastic cover sheet, and Velcro.

Stairway to Strengthen

From here, I could have just put the hole-punched pages in the binder and be done with it.  But given how many pages there were, I knew that over time the front and back covers would still get knocked around, so I did some additional things:

• Use some "doughnut" stickers around the binder holes of some pages.  I did this with the first few pages, the last few, and some pages for songs I frequently go to.  I didn't want to have to do this with every page, of course.  But just the ones that needed the most reinforcement.  I also bound one of the test pages I used to get the hole-punching right the first time around, since it had two sets of overlapping holes.
  I made a point of getting stickers that were clear, not white.  That's because in some cases, the holes were on the edges of some of the sheet music, and using an opaque sticker would block a bit of it.  We may be talking only 1/8" of it, but blocking it none the less.
• Bought a $1 plastic report protector on clearance, and cut it up to make two strips: one to go between the front cover of the binder and the front cover of the book, and another one to go between the back cover of the binder and the back cover of the book.  Again, I figured this would prevent wear of the book covers in the long run.  This was the only thing I used the little hole puncher for.
• Also, while I was at it, I decided to put some black duct tape around the inside of the binder. This wasn't all that indestructable of a binder in the first place, so I figured I'd put tape around where it was likely to get worn in the long run: the place where the cover meets the rings.

 

"It's been a long time since I Velc and Croed..."

While I was adding the plastic sheets, I had the idea to make these lockable with Velcro.  The idea was that these pages of the book would be tightly bound while the book was closed and put away, so no amount of shaking of the bag or tossing the binder around would really jostle the pages around in the binder.  You can find strips of Velcro with peel-off sticker backs in stores like WalMart or Home Depot.  I like the strips that let you just cut off and use however much you need.

 
Fool in the Raincoat

Here's one thing I tried, but didn't end up using.

Knowing that the binder was ultimately thick cardboard, I thought I could get something to cover this.  I found a rubber textbook cover at Staples.  And on clearance!  Fits all books 8" and bigger.  Well this should work well.  Just hook up the corners, and stretch it on.  All size fits all, right?

I tried it, and noticed three problems:

• The rubber cover just barely fit.  It reached the corners, but certainly didn't cover all the edges.
• The biggest problem is that it was so tight, it would snap the binder covers backwards.  I didn't want to have to deal with my book possibly doing a flying belly flop off of my music stand.
• My binder now looked like it was wearing a condom.

So, scratch that idea.

Trampled Under Foot

At some point in the process I had the pages in the binder, and was ready to double check that the binder would actually fit into my gig case.  And...it didn't.  Damn.  The binder was actually thicker than it needed to be for the pages.  Fortunately, the cardboardy nature of the binder meant that the problem could be solved by making an additional bend on the side, so that the spine was more curved-shaped than rectangular.  If you look at the photo, you'll get an idea of what I mean.

I tried putting the binder in a drawer and bending it on the edge of the drawer.  I tried a few other things, but it wouldn't bend in the way that I needed to.  Finally, I just put it down and carefully stepped on it.  That did the trick.  Now there wasn't a huge amount of space between the left edge of the pages and the top left edge of the binder.  Now it would fit.

As you can see from the photo, this bend was actually done before I added the duct tape, though I now had a another reason to add the tape.




This book has all of the Led Zeppelin songs arranged by album.  So the only other thing remaining was putting in some chapter divider tabs, to separate the different albums.  I already had some of these tabs which I had bought last year for something else.  Time to put them to use.

And that's about it.  That's how I took one of my most often used pieces of stuff, and made it into better stuff.  And I managed to avoid spending $80 on a hole puncher.

Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 1

Here's the short version of this two-part blog post:

• I have a book that I use a lot, called The 'Just Led Zeppelin' Real Book.
• The book has gotten rather beat up through years of use.
• So I fixed the book by rebinding it.
• In part 1, I talk about the history behind this book.
• In part 2, I talk about how I fixed it up.

Now, let's begin!

Before describing this rebinding project of my copy of "The Just Led Zeppelin Real Book", there's some background information on this book that I'd like to talk about.  First, it might be necessary to talk about two other books: "Fake Books" and "The Real Book".  I'll get into the actual details of my rebinding process in part 2.

FAKE BOOKS

There are countless different music transcription books and "sheet music" out there.  That is, these pieces of paper with symbols on them which represent musical notes and other components of music (lyrics, rhythms, tempos, etc.), typically in the established conventional format known as standard notation.  Granted there are lots of musicians who learn songs purely by ear (i.e., listening to a recording of a song, then gradually trying to duplicate each note on ones own instrument) -- too many, in my opinion. But there's still a lot of power and convenience to having music in a written form that can then be passed on from one musician to another.  The works of all the great composers over the centuries would be lost if we didn't have such a system.

However, if a band or individual musician wants to reproduce a song, say "Day Tripper" by the Beatles, they don't necessarily need a full note-for-note transcription of everything in the recording.  Listeners, likewise, don't need to hear the original instruments and everything note-for-note, beat-for-beat from a recording to recognize a particular song.  Making a passable performance of a piece like this is called "faking" the song.  I have a "fake book" for the Beatles, which covers over 100 of their songs by just presenting the lyrics, sheet music notes for the main melody, and the chord changes.  That's really all you need to fake a lot of the rock and jazz songs out there, and those are the elements which a lot of fake books contain.  Heck, some don't even include the melody, since 1) they figure musicians who've heard the song can already sing the melody anyway, and 2) I think publishing the music along with the lyrics usually costs more than publishing just the lyrics, due to the way that copyright laws and publishing rights work.


THE REAL BOOK

Unfortunately, fake books aren't always reliable. Some are a bit too simplified.  Some transcriptions are flat-out wrong.  And as mentioned, some examples like the one above don't even include the melody line written out.  Some also have very impractically tiny writing, or are books that won't stay open on a music stand.  Back in the 1970s, some frustrated jazz musicians got together and compiled what's known as "The Real Book".  It's about the size of a phone book (hey, remember those?!?), containing hundreds of lead sheets for various jazz standards.  Anybody who's a jazz musician has no doubt run into The Real Book.  They cost about $50, and were essential. If they don't own a copy themselves, then they've no doubt had a photocopied page from it thrown at them before.  This was typical for me when I was playing bass in high school and college jazz ensemble.  "Here, Bill, do a walking bass line over these chord changes" was the usual command. 

Despite the huge popularity of The Real Book, it remained a black market item.  Apparently, the makers never got the copyright clearance on the songs.  Still, copies of "The Real Book", "Real Book II", "The Latin Real Book", "The Vanilla Real Book", and other off-shoots continued to be printed up in somebody's basement and sold under-the-counter.  Sher music DID finally make a legal copy of "The Real Book", not only clearing all of the copyrights but also fixing some mistakes along the way.

THE "JUST LED ZEPPELIN" REAL BOOK

The popularity and legacy of the original Real Book has lent itself to other music books being created in the same style.  One of these is The Just Led Zeppelin Real Book.  As the title implies, it's essentially every song from every studio album as it was originally released, plus the one and only one studio B-side they ever released ("Hey, Hey What Can I Do"), all presented in the same sort of format as The Real Book.  So that means it has the lyrics, chord changes, transcribed melody, and overall general structure of every song, all printed in the nice big Real Book font.  Like the original Real Book, it also has a plastic comb binding (remember what I said earlier about many books not being able to stay open to a particular page when you have them on the music stand). Sorry, guitarists: this isn't a guitar tablature book; expecting that here would be like expecting The Real Book to show you where Miles Davis put his fingers on the trumpet buttons to play the solo of "So What".  Though this book does additionally provide tablature transcriptions for several songs, as well as guitar chord diagrams, and which special tunings Jimmy Page used on different songs.

Besides being a big Led Zeppelin fan ever since I was a young teenager, I've also enjoyed playing Zep on the bass, and in more recent years I've been the singer for no less than 5 different Led Zeppelin tribute bands.  In addition to singing with these bands, I've also done a little bass playing, mandolin playing, and harmonica playing here and there.  So this book has been vital to me.  There have been times when I've had to look up and check things to tell OTHER band members what chords were being used and what not.

This is a big book that's been slapped open and closed countless times, shoved in and pulled out of gig bags, traveled with me, and has a cheap plastic comb binding.  Needless to say, it became beat up.  It was time to do something about this.  The details of that story are continued in part 2.

 

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2

Fixing the "SIM Card Removed" error on a Samsung Galaxy S4

Recently my smart phone has been doing strange things.  I'll look down, and I'll get an error message saying "SIM card removed -- Unable to detect your SIM card.  Your device will restart to check for your SIM card.", or something along those lines.  No, I didn't open up my phone to actually remove my SIM card.  It just does this magically on its own.  Unfortunately, this means people can be trying to call or text me and I won't get any notice of it because my phone is in this "SIM card removed" state.  Rebooting fixes the problem temporarily, but I wanted to try to fix this problem before I consider buying a new phone.

These are the times I ask that all-important question: "Hmm, what would MacGyver do?"

So here's a solution I found on-line, and worked on tonight:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s4-att/general/how-to-fix-galaxy-s4-sim-card-removed-t3113480

You'll need scissors, a micro screwdriver, and a foam earplug.  Of course, MacGyver would just use his Swiss Army Knife for the first two.

So far, so good.  We'll see over the next few days if this really worked.

Muddy Waters, 2/10

Over on my Facebook page, I regularly write notes from the various gigs I do as a musician.  These have included the open mic nights I host, performances with one of my two bands (Tsunami and I'm Gonna Crawl, both linked from ZepTribute.com), or whatever other musical adventures I find myself doing.

Tonight, I was going to enter the following notes about a short gig I did with Tsunami at a bar called the Muddy Waters Cafe.  But since I already have a blog here, and Feb 10 has had an odd tradition of being a diary event day for me, I figured I'd post my notes here:

----

I tell the IGC band that I can't practice Tuesday night, because I have a gig with Tsunami. I tell the piano teacher who had to reschedule my first lesson that no, I can't do it on Tuesday night; I have a gig. Tuesday comes, and Tsunami cancels. “Too tired”, or something along those lines. Motherfucker! The is the second time this has happened.

Wednesday is another night where I canceled other plans in advance in order to play out with Tsunami. The bassist has been dying to play an open mic at this club in Methuen called Muddy Waters. But first it was time to reclaim our old practice space. As luck would have it, the IGC's band's practice space is going to be moving to, to a new rehearsal space with its own PA. That meant I could take the PA from IGC's practice space and put it in Tsunami's practice space. At least for now. So I stop by IGC's old space, pick up the PA, and go to the Tsunami space. I don't know why the band would think I could make it to that practice at 5:00pm on a week day. I do show up, and we start running through songs.

Earlier we had talked about doing Black Sabbath's “The Wizard”. This is one I've always wanted to do with a band. They insisted they didn't know it in full, but as long as they had the general parts, I talked them into running through it. That didn't last too long. Oh well, next time. We decided to go through the songs we had been doing at these shows: Crossroads, Jesus Just Left Chicago, Since I've Been Loving You, and Rock and Roll. The tired one had seemingly forgotten “Since I've Been Loving You”, and proposed that we replace it with one of the other dozens of songs we've done before. So we picked “The Ocean”.

I arrived at Muddy Waters around 7:45. They start at 8:00. The sign-up sheet was confusing. Rows were grouped in 20 minute time slots, but some of these entries had single names, not full bands. Surely, some of these folks were going to be playing TOGETHER, right? Because otherwise it said we wouldn't be on for another two hours. Hosting the open mic was Craig, a bespectacled guitarist with a white snow beard. His band was the house band that started things off, and also served as standby musicians for other players who needed a drummer, or a bassist, or a keyboardist, etc.

It's so weird how these sorts of gigs are mostly just audiences of musicians, all waiting their turn. We patiently sat through and supported each band as they did their 4-song limit. I have to say, I was overall impressed with what I heard. At some point I talked to the host, Craig. I complemented him on his playing and singing, and said his singing sounded a lot like Howling Wolf to me (which it did). He said, “You could tell me that all night long, and I'd be happy!” He then went on to tell me that Howling Wolf was one of his influences, and that he even got the chance to see him perform live in Cambridge. Wolf was on his last days it seemed, sitting in a folding chair. He'd pass out to the side after a few numbers, pop a nitro pill, and get back to playing. Repeat.

Santino had apparently lost his strap, but fortunately I keep a guitar strap in my gig case for such emergencies. It wasn't he first time he used it. I ordered a chicken Caesar wrap and a club soda. As always, I drink nothing but water, or in this case the next closest thing, when I'm going to be singing. At some point, a waitress slipped, announced to everybody that she was fine, but none the less, half a dozen 50+ guys suddenly had to play the white night. Ugh.

It was getting close to 10 anyway. So much for the idea that the timesheet might be exaggerated. Before it was our turn two guitarists came up. They explained they were from a band, whose name I completely forgot (ProTip, folks: mention your name more than once), but were playing without the rest of the band this night. I saw later on the set list they had signed themselves up as “Tony & Bill”. They started with a rendition of a Jimi Hendrix song. I think it was “Wind Cried Mary”; I forget. I do however remember Santino and I looking at each other and cringing when the guitar solo came up.

The duo wanted to move on to some originals, and asked if they could have some drums and bass. The drummer came up. Well, I was anxious to get on the stage, so I approached the house bassist, whose name was Scott. I asked him if I could play his bass. He looked at me skeptically. I said, “You can say no!” He asked me, “Well, can you actually play bass?” In other words, he wanted to know if I was really a bass player, or some schmuck who just wanted to come up on stage and try it because he thought it was a good idea. “Yes,” I assured him, “I've been playing bass for over 25 years.” He said, “OK, I trust you!” I strapped on the bass. This guy had the strap nice and high, the way I like it. I didn't even have to adjust anything. The duo informed me that they tune down a half step. “That's fine,” I said, “I'll just transpose”. They gave me the rough chord progressions of their songs. I managed to pull it off. We did some fast funky stuff. I played two songs with them as a bassist. Then it was time to put down the bass, and become the singer for Tsunami.

We were debating about how to start. We decided to just start with “Rock and Roll”, then go into the two blues numbers: “Crossroads” and “Jesus Left Chicago”. Those two called for my harmonica. Then we finished with “The Ocean”. We blew the roof off. With our fourth song finished, we packed up. I don't know why the highlight of the night for me is the shortest paragraph, but there you have it.

I stuck around to watch the others play. I figured that if they had the patience to wait their turn and see ME play, then the least I could do is watch them. At the very end of the night was the guy who had been waiting the longest. “Billy T” was his name according to the sign-up sheet. He looked like a stereotypical shop teacher, to be honest. But he took out his guitar and started playing with the band. His tone blew me away. His back was mostly to me, as I tried to see what sort of guitar he was playing. It was rectangular. Was it a Bo Diddley guitar? The body actually appeared to be a large cigar box, reinforced with metal corners, and what looked like built-in speakers. But this guy just wailed on it. And I could tell he wasn't just another one of these 12-bar playing baby boomers. I saw him signal to the band: fingers up to go to the IV, gestures to do a call-and-response with the other guitarist, etc. I talked to him afterwards, and he showed me how his guitar had been custom built by “D – Guitars” in Miami. He showed be the unique inscription on the back of the head stock. Well, that's another page I have to check out.

2015 Projects & Accomplishments

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize progress if you don’t record it along the way.  Fortunately, this digital age makes pretty easy to look through your past photos by date, or past updates on social media, and find some highlights.  

Here’s a list of some personal accomplishments and milestones for me from 2015, broken down into categories as best as I could.

1. I turned 40 this year.
• In theory, there’s no reason why numbers that end in a “0” should get some special attention.  I know some people smugly claim to be above all of that and see it as “just another number”, but come on.  We measure and especially categorize all sorts of things in sets and multiples of powers of 10, whether it’s decades, money, ages, or anything else.  There’s something psychologically going on when you realize that first digit of your age has increased and is never going back down again.  
• This doesn’t mean I viewed turning 40 as a depressing thing.  But I did view it as a sort of wake-up call.  I have jokingly viewed 2015 as the year of the starting midlife crisis.  But that’s a good thing.  To quote Tony Robbins, getting to that point of ultimate frustration when you say “Ugh, that’s IT!  I’ve HAD it!!!” is a good place to be.  That’s when progress can really start rolling.
• Unlike my incredibly memorable 30th birthday which took place in Las Vegas, I kept my 40th birthday party pretty simple.  Booked a dinner at a local restaurant with about a dozen local friends.  Got some presents.  Fun night.
  
  
2. MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC!
• The biggest change for me musically was discovering the open mic nights at the local coffee house.  I’ve had visions for a long time of doing my own thing.  Too long, really.  So here was the chance to do it.  After attending a few nights as a guest, I finally got up there and did my thing.  I’ve gone just about every week since then.  It reached the point where the owner asked me to become the new host, which I gladly accepted.
• Recorded vocals for the closing epic track of the third Gyps Fulvus album.
• After my last Zep tribute band (Devil’s Blues Band) essentially broke up, our guitarist pointed me to an ad for another Led Zeppelin tribute band looking for a singer.  So I joined them.  Then they broke up.  So I formed a third band with members from both.
• I also got in touch with a guy looking to do a virtual collaboration, where different musicians from around the country sent in individually recorded tracks, with his goal of doing a perfect recording of Led Zeppelin’s “Gallow’s Pole”.  I sang it, and even added some bass and mandolin later.  The recording was superb, but not finished.  Unfortunately, the guy seemingly dropped off the face of the earth and stopped returning my calls.  Oh well, I got a good partial recording!  I should go upload it.  It was a great experience while it lasted.
• Does the Zep end there?  No!  I joined an additional local Led Zeppelin tribute band, Tsunami.  They came to the open mic I hosted, I knew they had no singer and had seemingly always been without a singer.  I told them that I currently sing for and have sung for other Led Zeppelin tribute bands.  We played the open mic the night we met, then had our first official gig the next night.  It was the first of many gigs.
• Found two new places to do karaoke: one local, one not-so-local that my cousin invited me out to.  The latter one had a contest.  I made it to the first round.  Unfortunately, I was unbelievably sick for a good 2 months around the time I had to go to round 2, and on top of that I had already bought tickets for a concert on the same night.  So I said fuck it to the contest.  Still, getting out there and singing in whatever way I can was a good thing.  I even had one drop-dead beautiful Brazilian lady like my singing so much that she was doing the bump n’ grind with me at the bar.  (And no, she didn’t steal my wallet.)
• And bringing this full circle: that open mic included playing with so many people, jumping in on different things with different instruments.  And the recent Lemmy Tribute I did (with 4 Motörhead songs on the uke) stands out for me.
  
  
  
  
  
3. There’s the “professional” accomplishment stuff which is worth mentioning.  Though to be honest, part of this current midlife crisis has been working on a career change.
• Still, I’m proud of an end-to-end software suite I created which will have applications for government mandates in the medical industry.
• I worked for a second company where I toasted champagne with the CEO as we celebrated $8 million in revenue.
• Though I was glad to leave that and move to a third company with a wonderful commute.  I won’t say what company it’s for.  All I’ll say is that you’ve heard of it, and it’s really big.  They were bought by a colossal company and need my expertise to see things transition smoothly.
• The REAL rewarding thing I was happy to do was get a job in between doing some math tutoring.  It pays a fraction of what I make as an engineer, but it’s always good to have some mathematics going on in my life.  It’s one of my life’s passions.
  
  
4. MONEY!
• It turns out that the stocks I thought I had sold years ago for a company I used to work for, were never completely sold.  Long story short, they had been accumulating all this time, and I ended up collecting a LOT of money.  And with that, I...
• Paid off some credit card debt I had lingering for quite some time, along with a loan too, AND my car.  Started a new IRA.
  
  
5. SEX!
• I won’t name names, but there were more than just a couple, and 2015 was fun for me.
  
  
6. CHURCH! 
• Well OK, that word “Church” doesn't sound as exciting as "money" or "sex".  But I belong to the sort that embraces those things.  This year we celebrated Year 50.  It included a secret conclave in Washington D.C., complete with a number of events like salon/lectures from various members.  When you’re in a minority religion, it can be really invigorating to suddenly be in a huge room full of them.  I finally met some people that I had been talking to online for over a decade.  Best of all, when you see the accomplishments from some of these amazing people, it makes you realize, “I have to get off my ass and do more.”
• I flew down to Florida to catch the opening reception of The Devil’s Reign.  Once again, great to be with “my people”, and meeting some face to face for the first time.  I even managed to get in a little improvised ukulele tribute to Type O Negative. 
  
   
• I’m honored to have my own section of essays on the COS Great Minds page.  I similarly wrote a little commentary on the alleged Starbucks holiday cup controversy.
• I was interviewed for episode 15 of the Raising Hell podcast.  Despite being fiercely childfree myself, I had some outside perspectives to share.
• 2015 also saw the release of Outbursts of Everett True, a collection of long-lost comic strips of a most wonderfully misanthropic nature.  I used my professional software skills to help collect the appropriate material for the editor and brainchild of the project, who gave me a free copy of the final hardcover book in return.  I was proud to have contributed to this immense project, however small it may have been in terms of work hours and to all of the other work that had to go into it.
• Every Halloween since 1989, I’ve done some kind of formal ritual.  This year was no different.
  
  
7. And hey, how about that Radio Free Satan?
• We hit our 15th anniversary this year, and I wanted to do something to mark it.  To be perfectly blunt, I did almost all of the work for it, because nobody else really, really wanted to.  But I was happy with the result.
• After 12 years, I’m still doing my podcast.  This year I really scaled some things back, admittedly.  I had already shortened the show from an hour to 45 minutes, and took an extended break for the first time.  I also made use of reruns.  Over those past 52 weeks, it was only 30 new episodes.  Still, when I consider that over 90% of podcasts seemingly never reach a TOTAL of 30 episodes in their existence, I’m proud.
• I created a new holiday video with Satanbear: 
   
• Also contributed an old track to an upcoming music project that RFS is doing! More details on that will come in the spring.  
  
  
8. Speaking of comedy…
• After being kicked out from an overly-sensitive grammar nazi humor site (go figure) on Facebook, I went ahead and made my own: Ridicule of Shitty Writing.  I’m happy to say that it has accumulated over 100 members, and has purposely avoided the stuff that plagues some of its rivals (repeating posts, off-topic posts, in-fighting, etc.).
• I created a few other comedy clips for YouTube, including “Kim Davis: The Untold Story” and “McGyver: The Missing Lyrics”.
  
   
  
   
  
  
• I created a lot of memes and other pictures which I had hoped would go viral.  So far, it hasn’t happened.  Oh well.  This is another one of those things I want to pursue.  If not getting popular that way, then getting them published.
  
  
9. Other Online projects:
• I finally broke down and created a Twitter account
• ...as well as a Facebook fan page.
• This very own blog got a much-needed revamp to stop it from looking like crap on a mobile device
• Ditto for GeorgeCarlin.net, though work on that should probably continue.

Yeah, I put more of the less exciting stuff at the bottom.  Likewise I can rattle off some memorable parts of 2015 for me that weren’t really personal accomplishments per se.  But as long as I’m sharing memories from 2015, here’s that list:

• Remembering people who passed this year whose work I admire (Lemmy Kilmister, A.J. Pero, Chris Squire, Taylor Negron. Notable mentions to Wes Craven, Christopher Lee, B.B. King, Leonard Nimoy, Dick Van Patten, Roddy Piper, and Phil Taylor. No, I don’t care about the guy from STP. )
• Great concerts (Blue Öyster Cult [twice], Alice Cooper with Mötley Crüe, Deep Purple, Whitesnake in support of the Purple album, AC/DC for the first time in over 20 years, Weird Al, the stand-up of Gilbert Gottfried, and probably some more I’m stupidly forgetting)
• The CD and Blu-Ray releases (the rest of the Zeppelin remasters, and finally “The Decline of Western Civilization”!)
• Films and TV shows (revisiting “Oz”, being introduced to “Black Mirror”, “Theory of Obscurity” which documented my favorite band, watching “Back to the Future” in October 2015, and the long awaited return of Bob & David)

I typed all of this out by the way on my new Google Chromebook.  Boy, talk about getting the right tool.  I've used this to do online stuff as well as be a tablet for my sheet music and chord charts.  My best purchase of 2015.

The Lawnmower Starter Dream

"Nothing is so boring as listening to someone else describe a dream"
- George Carlin
(Carlin, George. "Brain Droppings". New York: Hyperion, 1997.)

I had a dream that I was mowing the front lawn of the house I grew up in. I started mowing a small section of the front of the huge front yard, then stopped. Then I realized that I wasn't done. I had only finished the section.

So I dragged the mower over the concrete of the driveway to the start of the much bigger section. Then pulled it over again for a different view and a different place to start. I pulled the rip cord a few times. It wouldn't start. I slowly pulled the cord out and took a closer look. Grass cuttings from last time were all clumped around the other end.

I pulled one more time, and the cord split at the far end, frayed off. As I stood there in my sweaty, dusty, dirt-covered outdoor clothes, I thought of what to do. I could try to fix the starter by tying the two snapped ends back together again, a big overhand knot. But then I thought about the much better starters I saw advertised somewhere which come up and attach to the handle, so that to start it you just keep squeezing a handle, like a bicycle brake handle, and after a few of those it starts without breaking your back. It was a way better long-term solution, but both being in those crappy clothes and wanting to get the job done made me hesitant to get in my car and get one.

I get the nagging feeling that this whole dream of me and my broken starter was symbolic.

Curiously enough, mowing the lawn was a chore I hated, but preferred mowing the front lawn to the back. Usually my brother did the front. The front was bigger, but no where nearly as dusty. And the lawn was more consistently grassy, so it didn't look like you were needlessly mowing nothing as you dragged the lawn mower over mostly bare parts of the back lawn.

A night of musical dives

The local coffee house owner extended me an offer to MC the open mic night.  They have a PA head and one speaker, but not the rest.  Well, I wasn't going to stand for that.  As planned, I drove down the street to the local music store, where Rainbow’s “Stargazer” was playing. I bought an XLR cable, a speaker cable, donated my second mic stand, and brought (but didn't leave behind) one of my microphones.  Though this night, a band was playing who had their own mics and all. Go figure!

What they didn’t have, at least not at the time they started, was their drummer.  They did however have the coffee house’s drum set (or at least somebody else’s drum set whose owner leaves it there) half set up.  “They need some drums.  Bill?”  I’ve played with enough drummers to get some idea of how to set up a drum set, so I set up the rest.  And I’ve faked my way on drums at parties before when there was nobody else to do the job, so here was another one of those times.  And like last time, with a band of baby boomers!

Gary is a regular who sings songs himself, a cappella. This includes 18th century folk songs from Scotland to 20th century pop.  I know that not everybody would understand this in an open mic performance, but personally I admire his bravery, not to mention uniqueness.  Even most musicians I know who have played on stage are afraid to sing karaoke, all up there in front of a roomful of strangers, with nobody sharing the stage with you.  Now imagine you don’t even have the musical accompaniment. If anything, I think the only uncomfortable people are the audience, who feel they have to give him more of his attention.  As they should.  Gary did a few songs.

In between I managed to rattle off a few musician jokes. I’ve been wanting to develop a stand-up act for a long time.  I’m sure this will prove to be the breeding grounds of that.  Ya gotta start somewhere.  And although I wasn’t planning on it, I brought the uke anyway, and tried a few songs I’d been working on: “People Are Strange” (which was in my head after catching it on seeing “The Lost Boys” for the first time in years, then seeing Robby Krieger perform it live a week later), and Elf’s “Good Time Music” (because I wanted to do SOMETHING from Dio that would work in this setting, and god dammit I did).  

A guy named Dave with a beautiful longhorn electric-acoustic 6-string came by.  He’s yet another regular I guess I hadn’t run into before.  He did some stuff with the band.

The other fellow harmonica player (whose name I’m shamefully drawing a blank on) showed up, so I asked if he wanted to come up to do something.  We crudely pulled off “Crossroads”.

The band’s drummer (who unlike me, was an actual drummer!) finally showed up.  They closed the night with a few songs. I joined them on vocals and harp for “Roadhouse Blues” to close out the night.  And hey, I got free coffee and a discount off an enormous cream-filled coffee roll, for my efforts.

Was the night over?  No, because I knew karaoke was at the bar next door.  Barely any people, as usual.  I managed to buy the bar’s last bottle of water.  My voice has been pretty crappy these last few weeks, but I pulled off Aerosmith’s “Last Child” and AC/DC’s “Have a Drink on Me”.  I had to watch 3 guys cluelessly attempt “Don’t Stop Believing”, all of them singing it a full octave down and not getting their timing right.  (Do these people even know the songs they do?  Do they know that they can follow the highlighted words on the screen, in time with the music?)  The karaoke hostess trusts me to touch her equipment, so I was able to search and select my own songs, and not to mention correct a problem another singer had with the speakers, all panned to one side for some reason.

2 or 3 drunk guys invaded the hostess’s space, and started fucking around with things.  Why she let them do it, I don’t know.  But it took some time to fix things back for me, up next.  “Who do I have to make out with?” said one of the drunks, as an attempt at an apology.  “I’ll pass”, I said.  I managed to pull off “September”, after which a more sober attendee praised me and gave me a high five.  I had another song up, but by that point I had enough, so I split.

So that was my night.

I left out the parts about the x-rated text message exchanges I was having.

Freezer explorations, spring 2015

My freezer is pretty magical.  Just when I thought I've dug up and thrown out the expired stuff, I find even stranger things.  Take this, for example.

The "sell by" date?  June 13, 2013.  Yep, this has been sitting in my freezer for at least two years., invariably buried under other stuff.  After taking the photo, I throw the beef in a plastic shopping bag, put that in another plastic shopping bag, tie it up, and put it in my garbage bin.  Next.

In the last town I lived in, there was a nice little coffee shop that had these sorts of fruit sorbet desserts in varieties like lemon, peach, and coconut.  I started seeing lots of other places sell them as desserts.  I haven't seen any in a while though.  Maybe it was a '00s decade thing.  But they would take the real frozen shell of a coconut, or hollowed peel of a lemon or peach, and fill it with that sorbet.

Well, lo and behold, I had a coconut one.  And I have to say, it looked tasty. Some clumps of ice around the edge, and it was no doubt even older than the beef.  But you you know what?  It was edible.  And not bad at all.  I sure as hell wasn't going to try the ground beef, though.

Holey Shoes, Batman!

"I got holes in my shoes,
I got holes in my teeth,
I got holes in my socks,
I can't get no sleep.
I'm tryin' to make a million."

- AC/DC, "Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round To Be A Millionaire)"

It's good to be thrifty.  It's good to creatively find ways to reuse or fix things without having to spend money for a replacement.  But there are times when you just have to say, "No, it's really worth spending the extra money to take care of this."

A long-held archetype of being poor, is the pair of shoes with holes in them.  It's right up there with making cat food sandwiches, and ragamuffin fingerless gloves.  (Actually, do poor people even buy and eat cat food anymore, given how cheap human food can be these days?)

I like the slip-on types of dress shoes and low-cut boots.  I've noticed though that after a while, I'd get leaks in them.  I'd only notice this of course when it was raining, and one foot or both would be wet by the time I got to my car. 

So that should be the sign that it's time to get a new pair of shoes, right?  Well, it's not that easy.  Psychologically, my mind comes up with excuses to not have to deal with that.

• "I just bought these last year, so surely I can wear them a little longer."
• "Hey, it's only a problem when it's raining.  So I'll just still wear these most days, and wear one of my other pairs when it's raining."
• "They look fine on the outside anyway."
• "I have that Shoo Goo® glue at home that I bought 10 years ago.  I'll just repair it with that."

Thus of course, the shoes stayed, as my mind kept focusing on bigger and better things every day.  But those invisible leaks eventually became visible holes.  And eventually I reached the point where I said, "Wait a minute, why the hell do I still have these?  I may not be rich, but I sure as hell am not living in poverty right now.  If there's one thing that I should be able to afford for myself, besides food, it's clothing without holes in it!"

I threw away the shoes.  Shopping at Target, I walked by the shoe section, found a nearly identical pair in my size for under $30, and bought them.  Problem solved.