Day: March 11, 2020

Guitars and Statistics

I doubled the number of songs with guitars recorded tonight.  I had three, now I have six.  They all suck and my attempts at keeping things low-fi are making them suck even more.  What can you do, right?  Two of the songs are in 7/8 time because prog, and two are in 3/4 time because… I don’t know, waltz maybe?

So… COVID-19.  WHO has declared it a pandemic.  Duh.  It is pretty global now so, yeah.  Pandemic.  Dig it?

I’m seeing all sorts of people calling the responses so far “panic”.  They don’t seem to get it.  It’s not panic, it’s resource management.  Every single infectious disease expert is telling us to put “social distance” into practice.  Why?  Resource management.  There are going to be x number of infections, based on the data we have from China, and y percent of those infections will require hospital care.  Finally, we only have z number of hospital beds available at any given time.  y is less than x, but y is greater than z.  Dig?  Statistically speaking there will be more infections requiring hospital care than there are hospital beds to put them in.  If we put “social distance” (I fucking LOVE that term and I’ve been practicing it since I was about four years old) into place then we spread out the infections over time, thus reducing the number of cases requiring hospital care at any one time so that suddenly y is less than z.  Boom.  Problem if not solved then partially alleviated.  Statistics, babie.  Stats for the win.

Read this from the New York Times: Flattening the Coronavirus Curve

Read this from WBUR: Harvard Global Health Expert: Mass. Hospitals Face Capacity Problem If Coronavirus Cases Spike Quickly

Remote Classes

I saw some rumblings on thebookface that the University of Vermont had made a call on post-Spring Break classes. I just checked with Bellana and it is confirmed.

Spring break ends on Monday, but classes on Monday and Tuesday are cancelled outright. Starting on Wednesday they are switching to remote classes.

In other words… hey you crazy spring breaking kids… don’t come back.

I asked her if she left anything in her dorm that she needs going forward and she said she’s all set. She is prepared. She’s also planning to go back as soon as they let her, which is understandable. I guess the question now is will they lock the place down while the students are away or will they be able to get back into their rooms if they need something.

We will see.

Strat… Delay

I brought my Fender Stratocaster up from the cellar this morning.  I cleaned everything out of the case (except for the whammy bar and a couple of strap locks that were there when I bought the guitar six years ago).  I plugged it into the little Bassbreaker and made sure everything worked.  The volume pot is a touch on the scratchy side, other than that it’s top notch.

Then I put it back in the case and leaned it against the wall and left it there.  I was going to take it to Guitar Center tonight after work to see how much they would give me for a trade in.  I paid $700.  Strangely, $700 is about the retail price for a Vox AC15 amplifier.  Weird how that works out, eh?  I know Guitar Center has a reputation for being stingy about trades and if they offer anything less than $700 I’ll take it somewhere else.  Maybe ebay.  Maybe reverb.  I’m not taking a loss on this baby.  No way.

I’m not doing any of that tonight though.  I’ll take a look at the world situation on Saturday and see how things look.  This is the very definition of non-essential.  It can wait.

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