This is a Different Post, Just Like All My Other Posts

Over in England, the Ministry for Measuring Things has noted a 90% increase over last year's sales figures for cassettes. Yes, those things you couldn't wait to get rid of after you got a cd player for your car.

Every now and then I come up with an amazing idea and here's one: I am going to put my entire collection of Vintage Original cassettes on the market. They're worth a fortune! I will even include a few Vintage Original blank cassettes. The reason the Vintage Original cassettes are better is twofold: firstly, they have Vintage and Original in their title; secondly, over time, the magnetic particles have aligned with each other for smooth Vintage Original sound that one cannot approximate with New Non-Vintage Non-Original cassettes.

I won't be able to count my money fast enough. Either the tone of this blog is going to change or I'll stop blogging entirely. On the other hand, the guilt of abandoning the six of you would be too great. I will stay.

Just wait til I whip out my 8 tracks and reel to reel tapes!

• I like my neighbor the schizophrenic. He's a genuinely nice guy, who manages to spend most of his time on the planet with the rest of us. After he told me about the lasers shining on our house the other night, that looked like gun sights, he said he's really sorry and he knows we must be missing our little guy. 

It's a bad time to be an administrator or citizen of two municipalities in Alaska. The Alaskan Borough of Matanuska-Susitna (Mat Su) and the City of Valdez have both been hit with some really nasty ransomware. Let's say a few systems are down, like the electronic door key swiping system, nearly all of the workstations, 120/150 servers, email, property querying, library system, landfill weights and fees application, and animal shelter’s computers. The saddest part of this is that they had to dig out their typewriters. I'm sure there were courses available for the kids who had never seen one before. "Most" of the data is safe and credit card data was not stored there. Over 200 organizations have been hit.

The IT Director said:

I will tell you is that this isn’t some kid in his mother’s basement. This is very sophisticated and well-funded.  It would come from somewhere I believe outside the US. When we call it ransomware, that’s not its purpose. I believe its purpose was to disrupt our way of life.

ThermionicEmissions has done some digging in some very dark places and came up with some information: it's the Chinese, messing with the Russians. 

• Seeing a .DOC, .XLS, .PDF, .ZIP, or .7Z "paperclipped" to an email message should always tell you to proceed with extreme caution. These are the most dangerous extensions potentially used by malware authors.
• Remember: Don't

A Security Dood on Twitter has one smart bulb in his house. He found out the company went out of business months ago. The last settings he made are now permanent because the app no longer works. The Internet of Things became The Internet of Things That Don't Work.

• John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, is in Deep Doo Doo because he used the word 'poof' on British radio (poofter: slang for homosexual). Apparently this is a terrible thing to say. In response, Cleese said Graham Chapman was a poof and dead, so he's a double minority. Terry Gilliam, Python and filmmaker, said he identifies as a black lesbian in transition.
• The BBC has dedicated itself to finding comedy of color, so it's not six white guys, like Python. Because non-white comics are genetically funnier than white comics.
• Hopefully we'll all be alive to see this stop.

If you're a Gmail user, you shouldn't be.

Having said that, they offer a new feature called Confidential Mode. It should be called, more accurately, Sometimes Confidential Mode. Let's say that its somewhat confidential from most, except the biggest culprit last time: Google. Google can save and read all your email. Again. Still. Protonmail.com

• Just heard on tv: Don't put your penis in the cooking stove.

Folks... I hope you don't feel like I'm bleeding all over the blog, but I have to try to get this out somehow. Losing a 13 year member of the family you saw every day is traumatic. We're trying everything to get back to (ab)normal, but only time will help. There hasn't been nearly enough of it yet.

Dear Marshall:
I don't know if you read blogs wherever you ended up, but I'm putting this out there to the Universe.  There's a lot of disruption in the wake of your leaving. It's been 4 weeks but feels like forever. We miss stuff... stuff like..

• not being able to go on vacation. We now have the freedom to go anywhere (which we haven't)
• keeping doors open a little
• your food lady misses buying hot dogs for you and jumping when you bark
• tripping over you in the bedroom
• the shrieking to go out, in, or when you didn't get what you wanted
• Quality Time: when I got in bed and you'd come up and lay next to me, demanding attention til one of us got tired. The best time of my day. Mom was jealous. Was the extra cuddling because you knew?
• hell, we miss running to vets and paying the bills - we'd gratefully do it again for you
• the supervision and assistance we got whenever cooking or cleaning the kitchen
• looking at you and scratching your itches

I wanted to tell you how much we miss you but I think you know; you probably miss us too.

Another Exercise in Futility - Guitar Center

I had to order a small p.a. system for work, so I went with Guitar Center.  Ever since, they have been sending me email.  Lately I hear from them more than my own family.  I am desperately seeking a way to order my dream Custom Shop lefty Strat through them and have the company pay for it.  From what I hear, it won't be the first time.

But I digress.
Always.

I am obviously a person who does not learn through repetition.  The great majority of my trips to Guitar Center end up in disappointment, yet I keep going back; like a battered spouse, hoping the outcome will be different.

Some of my online buddies have been making noise about the Fender Mustang series amps.  The real troublemaker in the group discovered that he could hook the amp to his computer and edit the presets deeply.  Like dominoes, others in the group went off to purchase these amps.  And they're having a lot of fun with them.

These particular amps have two strikes against them (at least in my game):  they have no tubes and the software does not run on linux.  That aside, the smallest (Mustang I) is tiny and goes for a hundred bucks.  Not a ton of money for a decent-sounding amp for the living room.  Further research showed that there is rudimentary functional software for linux and that it got good reviews.

So I figured what the hell - GC is always sending me email.. why not pay them a visit.

I located the amp in question but had to hunt for a lefty Strat with which to try it out.  The store had exactly three lefty guitars.  This is my personal hell, akin to my very own Monty Python cheese shop sketch.  There sure are a lot of guitars on the wall....

Got stuck with a new Standard Strat.  It sure looked nice but playing was another story.  Maybe I'm spoiled but I haven't played a new Fender neck I liked in more years than I care to remember.  It was like holding some other instrument that wasn't a guitar.  They put this neck on everything.  Don't even get me started on how Fender wires the pots backwards on new guitars.  Counterclockwise should be down, not up, guys.

The Mustang was definitely a cute little toy.  I didn't have a ton of time but it definitely sounded like it was at least worth the price.  Naturally as I was trying to tune the guitar, others were trying to play louder.  I have yet to pick up a guitar (in a store or at a gig) where another guitarist didn't step all over me.  I am not competetive (volume is inversely proportional to talent) and don't play loudly so I don't get on others' nerves either.

I tracked down the nice saleslady, who was kind enough to leave me alone as I tried out the amp.  I'm not used to being waited on by women in guitar stores, for better or worse.  She was rather attractive, except for the army boots, but none of this matters unless she knows what she's talking about.  I told her I'd take the amp.

She told me there weren't any.

Huh?

Small wonder I had such a difficult time finding one: there weren't any.  Only the demo, which didn't have the accompanying books, software, and ephemera.

========================

Understand: I am not really upset - just confused and amused.
It seems that I leave Guitar Center disappointed most of the time.

========================

The Guitar Shop - starring John Cleese:


Do you have any lefties?

Not really.

Do you have this $100 practice amp?

Ummmm..... let me check.....  No.

This is a guitar store, right?

Yes - finest in the land.

By what measure?

It's very clean.

Yes, it's certainly free of guitars and amps.....

We could order you one.

There sure are a lot of guitars here.

Yes sir - thousands.

And barely a lefty.

You could try playing in a mirror.

The Ministry of Silly Hats

Those of you who are avid Monty Python fans (to hell with the rest of you) will remember John Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.  It's some of the most brilliant (and silly) physical comedy you will ever see.

For some reason, I have been seeing a lot of royal British types in the news lately, perhaps because of that poor girl's impending wedding to Son of Jug-Ears.  I didn't realize it until recently but those wacky Brits enjoy their extremely silly hats, leaving me to inquire as to whether or not there's a Ministry of Silly Hats in the UK.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:  I understand that the Brits are absolutely nuts over their royals and Bob's Your Uncle to them.  I support them every bit as much as I support the right of the French to surrender at a moment's notice.

I just start questioning things when the wacky Americans become befuddled by the royals.

CONSPIRACY THEORY:  After a closer look at Kate, I have been led to wonder if she's actually a citizen of England.  Just between us, she's a bit too attractive to be British.  And those teeth...

Let's face it: we Colonists don't have royals (not counting President and Mrs Giveaway, George Bush, and Simon Cowell).  It's ok when it's an obsession on the other side of the pond; it's just plain weird when the American Great Unwashed get involved.

Perhaps there's a break in Americans Idle.  Maybe Dancing with the Stars has gone on hiatus.  Is Glee done for the season?  Who knows? 

BUT THOSE HATS...

Still, we have the matter of those hats. Some seem to defy gravity. It's apparent that there is no requirement for them to be level (or even close). Some block out the sun, although this isn't fair, as England doesn't have sun (kinda like Philadelphia).

People features an article on Kate's top ten hats.  My favorite is the purple one that she appears to be wearing on her forehead.  But don't miss the one that looks like a cymbal from a heavy metal drum set.

These are particularly fuzzy.  After that, some refuse to obey laws of physics.

Oh no - look: we're not immune either!

Small wonder the Brits look down on us.