strings, she, gc

Saturday 6/28/2008

Yesterday I headed to Guitar Center to pick up a set of acoustic strings. I got my set successfully but was thoroughly disgusted at the rest of the hardware there. More on that in a moment. I wrote a new song called “Life in D” and put it on my Sabbathized MySpace page. Check it out if you like.

A friend of mine that lives close by IM’ed me. I said I didn’t feel like internet-chatting so I asked if it was okay if she called me up. She did; we spoke for a while. Just general this’n'that stuff. She’s a sweetie. Very cool girl. It just so happens she’s a bit of a history nerd which is pretty darn cool because I’m an Americana nerd. I made note that I feel sort of embarrassed that I haven’t been to Busch Gardens since moving to FL even though it’s literally less than 2 miles away from me. Yeah. Seriously. So hopefully sometime before the summer is over she’ll agree (fingers crossed) to take a trip with me there. I don’t even care if the place sucks. I just want to go just to say “Yeah, I went. Been there, done that.” :-)

Okay, here’s why Guitar Center Tampa pissed me off:

The staff was cool as usual, no problems there. What I did have issue with was the selection for what I was looking for. And what is it that I wanted? A rackmount guitar effects signal processor. My Alesis Quadraverb GT is really old and the backlight on the dispay doesn’t work anymore, so I was in the market for another. I just wanted something simple.

Now here’s the deal. GC has these on their web site and they’re relatively cheap, like this one or this one or this one, blah blah you get the idea.

Want to know how many GC had in the store? NONE. These aren’t out-of-stock items. I’m saying they literally had zero rackmount units. Oh sure, they had pedals and stompboxes. They had those galore. But true-blue rack effects? Nonexistent.

This pissed me off because a signal effects processor is something you have to hear before you buy it; it’s very unwise to buy one “sound unheard” so to speak.

I remember not so long ago that GC used to have these things stocked, plugged in and ready-to-try before buying. Not right now they don’t.

I’m seriously considering going to Sam Ash in Tampa. It’s just under 10 miles from me right off Dale Mabry highway. One can only hope they actually have some rackmount effect units there that I could actually, y’know.. HEAR.

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amber

Friday 6/27/2008

I broke down and bought a digital clock yesterday with an alarm on it. I was using my cell phone as my alarm but the problem is that you can’t hit “snooze” unless the phone is open. And if you press a button the snooze doesn’t work. So one trip and five bucks later I have a digital clock with an amber display.

Why amber?

Because I don’t like red on clocks. It looks cheesy to me for some reason. But other colors like amber don’t.

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link it

Thursday 6/26/2008

A few changes are coming soon to menga.net so I’m writing this to alert my readers so they don’t freak out.

The blog will remain mostly the same but I’m going to divide the site into separate (sorta/kinda) sections for easier access. It’s really difficult to describe how these sections will work, but once you see them you’ll say “Oh. This is really easy.” Yeah, that’s the whole point. :-)

Recently I’ve been checking out some of the more popular tech bloggers out there and it’s my feeling they’ve got their design wrong. And I mean completely wrong. These supposedly smart guys who use all the social media they can possibly get their grubby mitts on moosh it into their personal web sites. And yeah, it’s a big pile of mush turning their sites into slow-loading behemoths that piss people off left and right.

These guys embed everything. Flickr, YouTube, Ustream, blah blah frickin’ blah. WRONG. Haven’t these guys ever heard of text links? You know.. hyperlinks? Yeah, those things. Evidently this is a foreign concept to tech bloggers. Social media tries so desperately to make sites that load nice’n'quick and are easy to use. But then the tech guys MASH all this stuff into a sidebar.

Again: Wrong.

Link it. That’s what links are for. If you want to identify the links easily, put a little icon next to it. Really, really simple guys.

My upcoming semi-redesign is going to weigh in heavily on hyperlinks. They load fast, they work and there’s no need to embed every single frickin’ thing in the universe on a sidebar. Want to get creative? You can use little icons. Those are okay because they’re quick. But once you start mashing in a crapload of JavaScript and Flash… sheesh. Haven’t we learned enough about design over the years to know not to do that? Have you guys ever seen Web Pages That Suck? Go read that. Then bow your head in shame and redesign your site so it LOADS FAST for a change.

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bits for 6/24/08

Tuesday 6/24/2008

I filled up my gas tank. Cost was $46.50. The price at BP was $3.89 a gallon if you paid cash so I went to the ATM first to grab some before filling up. The price appears to have plateaued for the time being. Around where I live it hovers between $3.89 and $3.95 depending where you go.

Speaking of gas, my “green” article made it on Yahoo Finance. Evidently the fact Florida isn’t very CNG-friendly concerning cars is a big deal with many (and I can totally understand why).

Someone starting banging on my door at around 9:30pm-ish. I didn’t answer. I think it was a neighbor. Neighbors always have a specific type of knock because they don’t knock, they bang. VERY LOUDLY. And they’ll do it at least 3 times. Normal people don’t bang, they knock politely. Furthermore a neighbor almost never visits just to say “hi”; they always want something, i.e. they’re moochers. No, you can’t have a cigarette. No, I have no money to give you. Bug off.

My sleep pattern is messed up again where I’m staying up all night. It really bothers me when this happens and usually takes about a week or so before I shift back to regular hours. The only time it really serves an advantage to me is when I do the live show for work because it usually goes past 10pm.

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if you don’t take a photo of it, it will disappear

Monday 6/23/2008

“…those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

Roy Batty
Blade Runner

Per the recent migration to Flickr I got to scan over the hundreds of photos I have.. again. I was kind of surprised to find out how many photos I have of stuff that no longer exists or has changed significantly.

Click any image for larger size.

This was a bookstore in Putnam Connecticut. Gone.

There used to be a K-Mart here in Putnam Connecticut. Gone. Now there’s a Price Chopper.

This was the Sunshine Skyway Bridge Tampa Florida, May ‘06 before it was repainted.

This tree in Tampa Florida is gone. It was close to where I live and was torn out to make way for a new building.

This bookstore called “Green Dragon Books” in Ybor City Florida is gone.

This walk-in clinic in Tampa Florida is gone.

The Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios Orlando is gone. I consider those photos some of the most important in my collection. The ride there is now The Simpsons.

I think what I may do in the near future is start taking photos of everyday stuff around where I live. While seemingly insignificant now it will most likely prove to be quite a good historical archive in the future.

For every photo not taken that’s a moment lost in time.

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