Out with the old, in with the desk

Tiring weekend. During the week a shipment arrived from Miller Nurseries: Seven fruit trees Heather had ordered but wasn’t expecting before spring. Fortunately the weekend provided both opportunity and favorable weather, and we got them planted, wrapped, watered, mulched, and caged. Watering, yeah… did I mention I’d just last weekend stowed away all our hoses in the basement? And we needed them all to reach the new line of trees, 30 feet west of the previous western boundary of the orchard. Two pears (Max Red Bartlett and Collette), three peaches (two Fingerlakes SH and one Red Haven), two plums (Yellow Egg and Big Blue).

Meanwhile we took drastic action on Kenny’s room. Essentially everything but the furniture and clothing came downstairs for sorting and triage. The living room’s full. Time to cut way back. Kenny’s one of the least acquisitive kids I know, but once he gets something, getting him to part with it is a challenge. He has toys he’s too old for, that he never plays with, in some cases that he never played with, and he says he wants to keep them. The impetus for the clean sweep has to do with our new computer; we’re going to give the old computer to Kenny. But he needed a desk to put it on, so I bought one at SU Excess Property for $5 and spent three times that on painting it. Between computer and desk and upcoming Christmas, it was clearly time to get rid of a lot of the excess. The desk is in his room now, the computer will go there soon, and a lot of stuff will get donated to his school or to the rescue mission or to the landfill or something, somewhere, anywhere but back where it was…

Goals and victories review (Oct 09)

Goals:

(Recreation and fitness)

• Blue belt done
• Green belt done
• Brown belt done
• Climb an Adirondack high peak done x 2
• Complete my electronics project (the WSG)

(Work)

• Rewrite polarimeter software 
• Complete next experiment (HAPPEX-III) done

(Home)

• Organize shed done
• Repair house exterior

(Financial)

• Reduce debt y y n n y n n y? n y – - / N
  (y(n) means we did (did not) meet my specific debt reduction goal in the given month; final Y(N) means we have (have not) met my goal cumulatively in the months so far)

Victories:

• Purple belt second tip
• Blue belt
• Rewrote Compton polarimeter decoder software
• Blue belt first tip
• Recovered from pneumonia
• Performed at Gilbertsville, Syracuse May Day, Cortland May Day, Oneida Plant a Row for the Hungry garden, Sudz tour in CT/MA, Saugerties Garlic Festival
• Got rid of Stairway to Nowhere and much other trash and yard waste
• Blue belt second tip
• Green belt
• Replaced basement door
• Cleared brush growth near Bilco door
• Polarization measurement with new electron detector
• Finished removal of concrete hazard to navigation
• Green belt first tip
• Climbed two Adirondack high peaks
• Organized shed
• Run Coordinator for our experiment
• Started learning to play ukulele
• Green belt red and blue tips
• Semi successful polarization analysis for incoming data
• Green belt white tip
• Brown belt
• Completed HAPPEX-III data taking
• Painted walls and baseboard moldings of study

Quoting myself again, “Once again, higher priorities have put the electron detector software rewrite on hold. Priorities like actually taking data, and getting the photon detector analysis working.” We completed data taking on HAPPEX-III, which is pretty much what I meant when I set the goal of “completing” the experiment; of course it’s not really complete until we’ve analyzed the data and published the results.

And again, “Not much work done on the house. Study is … painted.” Mostly. The “…” was “still half”, but I finished painting the walls and baseboard moldings. Ceiling, doors, bookshelves, and remaining windows and trim will wait until open-window weather returns.

We were able to make a big credit card payment this month, so we much more than met this month’s goal, though we’re still behind on where I wanted to be for the year. Still, debt’s down by a good deal and I can’t complain.

The other big victory for the month is brown belt. Funny, it seems a bigger step up than it really is. It didn’t feel weird to be a green belt last May, but it feels a little weird to be a brown belt now. Weird like, hey, why do I have one of these?

All I wanted was an oil change

So I got into the Prius this morning to take it to the mechanics.

(Yes, I know. Real Men, and Real Women, change their own oil. Well, I do too — on the lawnmowers. I just prefer to have people who have more expertise than I do the maintenance on the cars I and my family trust our lives and livelihoods to. Except the windshield wiper blades. Those I change myself. Also I sanded and painted a couple little rust spots on the Matrix the other day.)

We have the keyless remote entry/start, so I pushed the start button. It didn’t start, just lit up the idiot light that means “you don’t have the remote on you, idiot”. But I did, so I pushed it again. Same light.

Sigh. Battery had gone dead in the remote after just under 5 years service. So I pushed the remote into the slot on the dashboard and verified that even without battery power, it works in the slot. Started up, drove it in, waited. Quite a while.

Finally they were done and I found out what took so long: They’d found a mouse nest in the air filter. After cleaning that out and buttoning up, the check engine light came on. Deciding they’d bumped something in working on the air filter they reset it and drove it a bit; the light stayed off. All good.

So I got in and called the Toyota dealer, who’s just down the street from our mechanics. Asked about the remote battery. I was told I could buy a new battery at a drug store and was given instructions on how to open the remote up to access the battery. After disconnecting I tried it but couldn’t figure it out, so I drove to the dealer and went in to ask. “Huh. This isn’t like the newer ones…” So we went to the parts department, and the guy there knew how to get it open. The two of them only had to struggle with it about 30 seconds to open it. I am assured the new ones are much easier; I told them I’d probably need a better reason than that to buy a new Prius.

Anyway, they got it open, but then there are four little Philips screws you have to remove to get to the battery… don’t ask me why… and the parts guy’s suitable screwdriver had gone missing. He went looking for it, and I attacked the screws with the point of my Swiss Army knife. I won.

He sold me a battery (drug store would’ve been cheaper, but less convenient at that point — meanwhile another customer bought the exact same kind of bottle of touch up paint I’d gotten at the auto parts store last weekend, and he paid about 50% more), I put it all together, verified it was working, and drove off… and the check engine light came on.

So back to the mechanics and I got a ride to work.

They just called. They claim the Prius is pretty sensitive to high oil levels and they’d put in a little too much, but they’ve fixed it and cleared the light and it didn’t come back on after a longer test drive.

No word on how the mouse is doing.

Brown

Kenny and I have the same color belts again, though he got his four months ago. This is belt #7, but this and the next (red) each take longer than each of the first six. They’re the first of the advanced belts. Then there’s high red, and the fun really starts…

A blast from way, way in the past

Labor Day Weekend, 1985. (YouTube video, low quality unfortunately.)

Another video from the same show will go public soon, I hope…

Goals and victories review (Sep 09)

Goals:

(Recreation and fitness)

• Blue belt done
• Green belt done
• Brown belt progress
• Climb an Adirondack high peak done x 2
• Complete my electronics project (the WSG)

(Work)

• Rewrite polarimeter software 
• Complete next experiment (HAPPEX-III) progress

(Home)

• Organize shed done
• Repair house exterior

(Financial)

• Reduce debt y y n n y n n y? n – - - / N
  (y(n) means we did (did not) meet my specific debt reduction goal in the given month; final Y(N) means we have (have not) met my goal cumulatively in the months so far)

Victories:

• Purple belt second tip
• Blue belt
• Rewrote Compton polarimeter decoder software
• Blue belt first tip
• Recovered from pneumonia
• Performed at Gilbertsville, Syracuse May Day, Cortland May Day, Oneida Plant a Row for the Hungry garden, Sudz tour in CT/MA, Saugerties Garlic Festival
• Got rid of Stairway to Nowhere and much other trash and yard waste
• Blue belt second tip
• Green belt
• Replaced basement door
• Cleared brush growth near Bilco door
• Polarization measurement with new electron detector
• Finished removal of concrete hazard to navigation
• Green belt first tip
• Climbed two Adirondack high peaks
• Organized shed
• Run Coordinator for our experiment
• Started learning to play ukulele
• Green belt red and blue tips
• Semi successful polarization analysis for incoming data

September not much more goalish than August. Out of town at the beginning, recovering from out of town, busy with data analysis, blah blah, excuse excuse.

Quoting myself, “Once again, higher priorities have put the electron detector software rewrite on hold. Priorities like actually taking data, and getting the photon detector analysis working.”

And again, “Not much work done on the house. Study is still half painted.” Though I’ve done a little prep work on the other half.

A little confusion in our financial planning made this a not too good month for the credit card debt. Which is, I should add, down substantially since the start of the year, just not as far down as I would have liked. We’re going to try to do better at keeping track of upcoming expenses.

Some victories, though. Getting a decent start on learning a new instrument probably the top one.

Contrarian

Of course I’ve neglected to mention one of the big factors in my interest in the ukulele: my contrarian tendency. I am often biased against the popular and in favor of the out-of-favor.

I’ve never watched Titanic or “American Idol”. I’ve ignored contemporary popular music to a great extent all my life, especially the past couple decades, and the artists I do like tend to be ones not found in the top ten or, in many cases, the top thousand. I use Windows as little as possible, sticking with Mac OS and Linux. I watch almost no television. I prefer bass clarinet to soprano.

With ukes my contrarianism may be in for trouble, though. I tried putting “ukulele, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, mandolin” into Google Trends. Guess which four have trended downward over the past five years? And guess which one has gone up a factor of two?

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=ukulele%2C+banjo%2C+fiddle%2C+dulcimer%2C+mandolin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

If I put “guitar” in place of one of these instruments (you can only compare up to five) it blows the rest away in terms of volume, but it too trends flat-to-downward.

Another thing: notice the spikes every December. Zoom in on individual months and you find they’re always on precisely December 25. Looks like people give and get ukes, banjos, and mandolins for Christmas, but not fiddles and dulcimers? Odd. Granted, ukes are cheap, but banjos and mandolins? Not so much.

4 nylon strings: Priceless

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that it is easier to learn to play three chords on a decent uke than on a bad guitar. I had a guitar once. A cheap one. Bought it — I can’t even remember where, now — back around 1981 or so. Spent a few weeks trying to play, ended up deciding not to pursue it, got rid of it eventually. I learned some small number of chords but was never able to move from one chord to another proficiently, without getting horrible buzzing and/or damped strings on the first two or three attempts.

It’s just as well. Guitar players are universally scum, you know.

There are no sour grapes involved here.

For no particularly understandable reason, a while ago I started thinking it might be fun to take up something guitar-like. But smaller, hence easier to lug around. Fewer strings, hence less to keep track of. Nylon strung, hence easier on the left hand fingers. Something like:

Wait, no, that’s not it. Something like this:

Actually what I bought first, last month, was one of these:

Yeah, Grizzly Industrial, better known for selling stuff like table saws and jointers and drill presses, also carries a few kits for things like guitars… and ukuleles. The uke kit costs about $23. From what I’ve read it makes a thoroughly mediocre, or worse, instrument, though it can be improved a good deal by using good strings instead of the ones they supply and making one or two modifications to the instructions. I don’t know yet, having done nothing with mine so far (in part having to do with being in Newport News for three weeks since getting it). But I figure even if it’s unplayable, at that price, it’s a cheap bit of instrument-building education.

But what about something to play? Some research turned up the following factoids:

1. Your average guitar store, or at least places like Guitar Center, will carry very few ukes. Specifically:
   1. Guitar Center, DeWitt NY: Zero ukes, I think, though they did have Martin uke strings.
   2. Guitar Outlet, Syracuse NY: A dozen or so ukes on display, but none priced above $90.
   3. Music and Arts, Yorktown VA: One uke, really cheap, though half a dozen or so uke books.
   4. Jeff’s Guitar Warehouse, Newport News VA: Zero ukes.

   And I submit that, even if one wanted to buy a sub-$90 uke, buying one from a store that sells nothing more expensive is a bad risk. It probably means the management places little value on ukuleles, and the staff knows almost nothing about them.

2. The self proclaimed only full-service ukulele store on the mainland US (though I’m not sure such a claim would not be disputed) is outside Richmond VA, tantalizingly close to Newport News. Still, it would have taken about five hours to drive there, shop, and return, and I didn’t have five hours available for that sort of thing. They also sell on eBay, but
3. so does musicguymic (MGM), who seems to be nearly universally adored by the online ukulele community (such as at Ukulele Underground).
4. Ukuleles are cheaper than, say, Anglo concertinas.
5. You can buy a new ukulele for under $20. But I wouldn’t. In fact I wanted to spend well over $100. Years ago I learned not to buy a cheap instrument — unless I had reason to believe it was much better than the price would suggest. If you’re thinking “I don’t want to spend a lot because I don’t know if I’ll like the instrument”… well, think about it: if you buy a bad instrument, of course you won’t like it. If you buy a good instrument, one that plays well and easily, there’s a much better chance you’ll like it. And if you buy a good instrument and you still don’t like it, at least you can sell it for some good fraction of what you paid. If you buy a piece of crap, you’ll maybe get five bucks at a garage sale for it. That cheap guitar I never learned to play serves as an example. (Unfortunately I didn’t learn the lesson until I’d made the mistake again.) Now, obviously, cheap is not necessarily bad, nor expensive necessarily good, but counting on getting what you’re not paying for is a bad bet when you’re a novice.
6. Solid wood (as opposed to laminate) bodies, or at least tops, are considered preferred — though there are some good laminate ukes around.
7. In the $100-$250 price range, Kala is one of the brands to look for. (Mainland is another, but I was put off by the small number of models and by a distaste for the rope binding they’re so big on. Ohana and Lanikai get some good reviews. Fluke and Flea are a little closer to the pricier end of that range, and though they get great reviews I was not particularly enticed by their plastic bodies, laminate tops, and funky designs. A lot of people love them, though, and maybe I’ll consider them for a second instrument someday.)
8. Ukes come in various sizes; the confusingly-named soprano, concert, and tenor sizes all are tuned the same while the baritone is tuned a fourth lower. It sometimes seems as though people who like concerts and tenors greatly outnumber those who like sopranos, but sopranos are often advocated for uke novices. One thing for sure, the string tension is less on a soprano (for a given string diameter), contributing to easier playing.

Ultimately I ordered a Kala solid lacewood soprano from MGM; that’s it in the photo up there. It arrived a week ago. At this point I can play C, Am, F, and G7 chords, moving between them clumsily but without having to take three tries to do it; and I’ve started working on an A/D7/E7 12-bar blues progression. In other words, lousy big 6 steel string instrument << decent small 4 nylon string instrument. Too early to be sure I’ll stick with it, but I certainly am liking it more than the guitar, and doing better with it.

Still without comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzHAa9FMJoM

Goals and victories review (Aug 09)

Goals:

(Recreation and fitness)

• Blue belt done
• Green belt done
• Brown belt
• Climb an Adirondack high peak done x 2
• Complete my electronics project (the WSG)

(Work)

• Rewrite polarimeter software 
• Complete next experiment (HAPPEX-III) progress

(Home)

• Organize shed done
• Repair house exterior

(Financial)

• Reduce debt y y n n y n n y? – - – - / N?
  (y(n) means we did (did not) meet my specific debt reduction goal in the given month; final Y(N) means we have (have not) met my goal cumulatively in the months so far)

Victories:

• Purple belt second tip
• Blue belt
• Rewrote Compton polarimeter decoder software
• Blue belt first tip
• Recovered from pneumonia
• Performed at Gilbertsville, Syracuse May Day, Cortland May Day, Oneida Plant a Row for the Hungry garden, Sudz tour in CT/MA
• Got rid of Stairway to Nowhere and much other trash and yard waste
• Blue belt second tip
• Green belt
• Replaced basement door
• Cleared brush growth near Bilco door
• Polarization measurement with new electron detector
• Finished removal of concrete hazard to navigation
• Green belt first tip
• Climbed two Adirondack high peaks
• Organized shed

Ah, August. Definitely a month for not getting things done. Especially if you’re 500 miles out of town. No new goals completed, or even much in the way of progress on any of them except for the one that’s the reason for being out of town. Victories? Have there been any?

Once again, higher priorities have put the electron detector software rewrite on hold. Priorities like actually taking data, and getting the photon detector analysis working.

Not much work done on the house. Study is still half painted.

I’m not on top of the finances, being where I am. Heather paid the bills, though, and from what she told me I’m guessing we met or exceeded this month’s goal — maybe even made up part or all of the shortfall for the year. I’m also guessing next month will be back in the not-quite category. But Heather’s starting a new job that pays more, and she’s getting pay for unused vacation at the old job, so maybe not.