Category: Uncategorized

Bad Apple

It doesn’t happen often, but it’s happening right now.

I’m using iTunes Radio to listen to Christmas music (I wanted to listen to the new Smashing Pumpkins, but my iTunes was totally hijacked by people who actually have Christmas spirit even though it’s only December 12th) and all of the holiday music channels I’ve picked have just plain sucked!

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then Apple actually does let me down.

Stupid Apple.

But wait! Elvis’ Blue Christmas!

Redemption!

Big Bird


Look who I just saw in the back yard!


I’ve been hoping to get a picture of one of the big suckers living out in the woods. He flew into view as I was walking past the window and he was (finally) nice enough to stick around for a pic.

The question now is, is it a hawk? Is it a red tailed hawk? Is it something else? I think it’s a red tailed hawk but I really don’t know for sure.

Originally published at robj2112.wordpress.com on December 11, 2014.

Microsoft Blues

I’m having one of those, “I want Microsoft to die and go away and never come back” kind of mornings.

Just before Thanksgiving I inherited a laptop running Windows 8.1. It has a touch screen and everything. I set it up to VPN to work and have used it twice for telecommuting so far. Today was supposed to be the third day.

At about 8:45 I turned the lappy on and went down cellar to flip the laundry from the washer to the dryer. When I came back it was in the middle of the mean ol’ update fiasco. Windows updates were installing. Yippee. I waited for it to finish. Then it needed a reboot. Okay, so I signed in over my phone and set up my call forwarding. Then the laptop rebooted. When it came back up it started installing another round of updates.

Screw you, thinks me.

The laptop I had used prior to this is running Windows 7 and is currently in the living room closet. I could have gone straight there and logged in the way I used to, but I tried something different.

On the same day I initially set up the Windows 8 box, I also installed the latest version of Parallels onto my MacBook Pro. I set it up to run a copy of Windows 7 that we weren’t using, and did all of the setup to connect to work. So instead of grabbing the old lappy, I grabbed the MacBook Pro.

Two minutes later I was connected to work. The Windows 8 box was starting to install a THIRD set of updates. That’s when issue number two presented itself.

My MacBook Pro has a Retina display, In English that means the display is at a ridiculously high resolution. Normally that’s awesome, but there is one instance where it actually screws things up. I used windows remote desktop client to remote connect to the PC on my desk at work. I do this every time I work from home so that I can have all of my usual stuff in the normal place. I don’t have to re-install any software or anything like that.

Unfortunately windows remote desktop tries to match the screen resolution on the remote device to the resolution on the local device. That means that everything on my work PC looks so small you can barely read any text. If I only used text editors or web pages I could just zoom in, but I don’t have that option using any of my company’s software. Everything works, it is just really hard to read. It’s usable, but only barely.

So I ended up re-installing anything I need to start the day so that I can run it on the MacBook itself. That’s all fine and dandy and working well now. Unfortunately, if I need to connect to a customer’s network it will have the same remote desktop issue I have with my office PC. While still connected to my desktop I tried lowering the resolution on the display, but those options are not available when remote connected. I didn’t know that. Crap.

Off to Google we go! I learned how to set up remote desktop to open full screen. That was nice. It didn’t solve the problem though. I continued looking around and found three different Microsoft forum questions asking about my issue and in each case the solution was…

Wait for it…

There is no solution. The best suggestion was to lower the screen resolution on the target machine before you remote connect to it. That means I would have had to change the resolution last night before I left work. Ummm… yeah.

So at lunch time I am going to the living room closet and getting the Windows 7 laptop. I know I can get the problem on the Windows 8 machine fixed (I am guessing I know what the problem is), I just don’t have time to do it right now. I can handle the MacBook for a couple of hours, but if I have to remote to a customer it will be tough. During lunch I’ll have enough time to switch over to the other machine.

What a pain in the ass. Thanks for sucking, Windows.

Originally published at robj2112.wordpress.com on December 11, 2014.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

Okay, first of all I am not going to turn this blog into a movie trailer collection. Yes, this is the second movie trailer I am posting in about two weeks, but that doesn’t mean this is the new thing, okay? You’re still going to get your usual blathering idiot stuff. Okay? Okay.

Second, this is not as big a deal to me as the Star Wars trailer I posted Thanksgiving weekend. However, that does not change the fact that this is a big cinematic deal for me.

When I learned that this movie was actually happening my first thought was that there is no way on this Earth that this movie can live up to the original. My second thought was that this movie is probably going to suck 37 flavours of ass.*

Then I saw the trailer and found myself laughing out loud.

I laughed out loud while watching a two minute trailer. That’s pretty impressive.

Now, here you go… The trailer for Hot Tub Time Machine 2!

*See what I did there? I used the British spelling of “flavor”, “flavour”. I figured this crappy little web page could use some freakin’ class for a change. Am I right or am I right?

My Town


I was not born in Methuen, MA. I lived here for a year during the mid 90’s, and then returned in 2008 along with the woman I would marry in 2009. There are a lot of things I like about our little city.

I love the water falling over the Spicket Falls Dam.


I love the Sands Bridge, even though it’s no longer over the Spicket River, and after well over 150 years it is starting to collapse.


I love our library.


I love that big ugly clock downtown.


I love the Merrimack River from every vantage point.


I love the Music Hall, even though I have yet to see a concert there. Maybe someday I’ll play there. More likely my step kids will play the gigantic pipe organ someday.


I love Greycourt Castle… or what’s left of it.


I love the random castle walls scattered all around town.


Most of all I love the Mighty Spicket River.


Best Thing Ever

I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that one of the main reasons I wanted to play in a band again was jealousy.

Both of my step kids have been playing piano for years. They’ve both dabbled in saxophone too, and my step daughter is very active in her school chorus, while my step son plays bells in his school band. He has also recently started taking guitar lessons. His teacher took a few of the students and formed them into a band. They rehearse on Saturdays and are going to play some Christmas music at an upcoming recital. Their big number is “Jingle Bell Rock”.

The first time I sat in the hallway listening to them play I decided it was time for me to get back into the game again. No more sitting on the bench for this fat boy.

Anyway, last night was my step daughter’s school chorus holiday concert. My wife, step son, and I were sitting together enjoying the show when the select chorus started singing “Jingle Bell Rock”.

That was the moment when the Best Thing Ever happened.

When the song began my step son smiled like he was going to split in half. He was getting a serious thrill out of hearing (what he probably thinks of as) his song. Then it happened. The little rocker dude started air guitaring. Like a Boss. Even better? With his left hand he was fingering the chord changes. He was air guitaring the actual chords!

Like I said, Best Thing Ever.

But Which Guitar?


I own three high end electric guitars. For the past nine years or so they haven’t really been used outside of my home. Just songwriting and recording projects and a couple of jamming with friends situations.

Then a couple of months ago I joined a band. They have been playing together for a couple of years, so I have had a lot of catching up to do as far as repertoire is concerned. There are also a bunch of questions I have to answer about my own equipment. Some things quietly died while sitting in my gig bag for years. Rest in Peace my trusty DoD Octopluss pedal. Other things made sense to me in my last band back in 2003–05 that might not get a lot of use now.

The biggest question of all is which guitar will be the go to instrument. Who is my #1?

This is my 1978 Gibson Les Paul Custom:


I bought this guitar in 1990 after my first Gibson, a Les Paul Deluxe, was stolen out of my car. When I bought it there was a Bigsby Vibrato screwed into it (you can still see the holes) that I removed literally within minutes of getting it home on the first day. It didn’t have stock pick ups, the tone control for the bridge pick up has never worked, the pick up switch won’t snap into the neck position, and lets politely say that she often seemed to prefer being out of tune to in tune.

Back in 2006 or 07 my friend Larry did some mods to it. I bought two Gibson Classic ‘57 pick ups and he installed them. I’m still not sure how I feel about them. They are surprisingly bright, and the output isn’t nearly as hot as it used to be. Harmonic feedback is no longer easy to come by. He also changed the machine heads and the difference is night and day. I have to strangle the life out of the thing to get it out of tune now.

The upside is that it has the fastest neck I’ve ever played. The action is just marvelously low without any buzz at all. It’s as perfect a set up as I’d ever dreamed of playing.

This is my 1979 Gibson ES-335 Pro:


I bought this guitar on Ebay in 2000. When I opened the case for the first time I was blown away by the smell. Yes, the smell. Someone in this guitar’s past had played it a lot, and apparently chain smoked the entire time. The cigarette smoke smell almost killed me. It also had the greasy grime coating that smokers leave behind. I went through a ton of guitar polish and I don’t know how many rages just scrubbing the thing down. It has other issues as well. Obviously it’s missing a knob, and the tone pot that has a knob doesn’t work. There is a loose connection somewhere in there for the neck pick up. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. It doesn’t have the heavenly neck that the Les Paul has so it’s a little harder to play, but not much.

What it has is the most amazingly killer tone. This guitar sounds incredible. The pick ups are Gibson Dirty Fingers and I love them so much that I may someday put a pair into the Les Paul. The guitar coos like a baby bird, screams like an eagle going in for the kill, and roars like a lion claiming it’s prey. It can do absolutely everything. And the harmonic feedback? Oh my goodness! Just breath on the thing and you’ll get a perfect tone one octave up.

This is my 2000 Fender American Standard Stratocaster:


This is the new kid in town. Last May I was in a music store with my wife. I was looking for a bottle of finger ease. That’s all. I swear it. My wife was looking at the guitars and started trying to goad me into buying one. I’m a lifelong Gibson man, and there was a sweet SG on display, but I’ve always thought about owning a Strat. Still, I said no and we left the store. We met my wife’s folks at a restaurant across the street and had lunch. By the time lunch was over I was willing to let myself be talked into spending money that didn’t need to be spent. This Strat was $300 cheaper than the SG, and it was something new and different so I bought it.

I was really surprised by how different the neck felt. I knew it was going to take some getting used to, but I did not expect that it would be significantly harder to play than either of the Gibsons. Eventually I started getting a feel for it and was able to play it without a struggle. If there is one thing about it that stands out it is the sound of the neck pick up. The bridge pick up sounds good. The middle pick up… well… not so much, but the neck pick up? With a clean tone, or maybe a slight bit of overdrive, it is just fantastic. I understand now why just about all of my favorite Gibson playing guitarist eventually became dedicated Strat players. It’s also cool to have a whammy bar for a change, although it needs to be replaced with a locking nut because just looking at the bar puts the guitar out of tune.

So back to the question at hand. Which guitar is the #1?

In the last band, from 2003–05, the ES-335 was usually my first choice. I didn’t mind sacrificing a little playability for that monster tone. Occasionally I would focus on the Les Paul, partly because I had so much history with it, partly because it just feels so damn slick to play, partly because the other guitarist in the band bought a Les Paul too and it was cool to be a duel Les Paul kinda band, but mostly because it sounds great and I love it and hate to ignore it.

Going into the new band, the first guitar I brought to a rehearsal was the ES-335. I had already decided that it would be the main guitar and the Les Paul would be the main backup. For the second rehearsal I brought the Strat. The reason was that I had never played it through my Marshall amp before. At home I am a headphone amp kinda guy so I had never plugged it into the real thing. It felt pretty good in a real band situation, but the tone was no match for either of the Gibsons. Single coil pickups are supposed to sound thinner and weaker than humbuckers, and that was definitely the case. For the next couple of meet ups I played the ES-335. Yesterday though I brought the Les Paul. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was just an equal time sort of thing. How could I relegate my oldest guitar friend to the second chair without at least taking her for a spin.

It was like old times. It just felt great and it sounded fantastic. I worked pretty hard that day and my finger tips got pretty torn up and tired quickly, but the guitar is just so comfortable to play that I was able to push myself much further than I should have. It just seems like home.

So now I don’t know what to do. The Stratocaster is definitely my #3, although I will give it some band time now and then. The two Gibsons? I’m torn. I think next week I’ll bring the Les Paul again and see if my attitude changes.

I’ll let you know.