Not so much a stir crazy thing, more of a crazy quarantine related factoid.
I can’t remember the exact dates, but I think I have them. On or about Wednesday March 11, 2020 I filled the gas tank in our Mazda. My memory is less clear on this, but it was either Saturday March 7, 2020 or Saturday March 14, 2020 that I filled the gas tank in our Kia.
Fast forward to Monday June 8, 2020. I filled the gas tank in the Kia. We were down to 3/16th of a tank so it was time.
There were no other fill ups for either car in the the intervening time. The Mazda still has half a tank left from the March 11th fill up.
My commute from home to the office is about 33 miles or so and usually takes an hour and a half (on average, I think) each way. My wife’s commute is less than that but she often spends an hour each way. The very concept of going three months on a single tank of gas is so far out of the realm of possibility that my mind is having a hard time processing it. I would normally go through a tank every four days in the Mazda. The Kia is a hybrid. The tank is only about 9-10 gallons, but it could usually go 5-6 days without a fill up.
The Kia went three months and the Mazda is three months and counting.
I’ve probably written this exact post before, but I’m too lazy to look back and check.
My eyes. My eyes are getting really tired, really fast these days. By 3:00 or so on more days than not my vision is a blurry mess. It’s not so bad that I can’t deal with it, but it’s just a major pain.
I need to have my eyes checked. I need a new set of prescription glasses. I need one set of glasses for general use, one set of glasses for reading so I can start reading actual books again (because reading with the progressive lenses is about as much fun as getting kicked in the nards), and I need a set of sun glasses too.
Of course we know that’s not happening because of COVID-19. No way I’m going to put myself in a situation where a couple of different people are going to have to get right up close to my face to check out my eyes. Mask or no mask, it’s not worth it. If it keeps getting worse there might be a point where reward starts to outweigh risk, but until then? Screw that. I’m not risking bringing the plague into my house. No, no, and no.
I figured I’d give a quick update on the June Music project even though no one else on Earth gives a shit. I give a shit, so here we go.
There are seven songs in the works. All have the MIDI tracks, drums and bass, complete. One has a piano as a placeholder for the melody. Three, as of this afternoon, have rhythm guitars.
Two songs used the KTR and the D&M Drive pedals. It was my first crack at substituting the D&M for the OCD. It didn’t work well. I had the output on the KTR maxed and the drive off. The D&M didn’t seem capable of handling that signal and it got really mushy. I used the ES 335 on the first song I did and wasn’t happy with the sound. The string buzz may have been making it worse so I switched to the Les Paul. It was a little better, but not much. So two songs have less than good guitar sound. It’s good enough to roll with for now. I don’t think I’ll change it. The third song used the Les Paul but just the KTR. I wanted a cleanish sound, so I shut off the D&M. That sounded pretty good.
After I was done I set to some major tweaking and found something that was much better. I lowered the output on the KTR, lowered the output and the gain on the D&M, an added a little treble on the KTR. That was better. I will try recording with that setup. I was hoping to just use the RYRA The Klone pedal this month but the whole racist pedal builder shit made me want to experiment with the gig setup more. I also pulled a couple of other overdrive and fuzz pedals out of storage. I might try pairing different things with the RYRA. We can sort of consider June as Lab time. Let the tinkering continue.
One thing I do know… it’d been over a week since I had played at all. With all of this quarantine, social distance shit going on… playing is good for my mindset. If I don’t play for a longish period of time I start getting under people’s skin. The more I play the easier I am to be around. It’s definitely a good way to work out my quarantinie frustration. I knew it would be, but I think I have some evidence to support that original theory now.
Playing helps me not be an asshole… therefore I should play more.
12 weeks of everyone working and going to school from home and I never had a problem with our home network…
Until today.
I was on a video meeting with my boss and one of my staff members and I lost the network for a second. Then it recovered. It wasn’t even bad enough to kick me off the call. A minute later though, bam. Total WiFi fail. I had to pull my USB network adapter and plug it back in. That fixed the problem, but I was totally discombobulated for the rest of the meeting.
Hey network, how’s about we don’t do that again, m’kay?
I think I did the math right (the math involved counting) which means 12 weeks ago today was the last day I spent in the office. More math: (12/52)*100 = the percentage of the year that has been spent in quarantinish. What’s the value? Why, 23%. We’ve been in social distance lock down for almost a quarter of the year. Yippee!
Patches, my cat, is standing firm on her belief that my desk is her desk. I have two desks right now and she has made this declaration about both of them. She’s sitting on my desk as I type this, and if I stop typing for a second she’ll sit on the keyboard. She’s staring at my hands, willing them to get the hell out of the way so she can sit down.
Correction, she just moved from my left side to my right side and sat on my track pad. Cat!
Over the last few days I have found very few moments where something goofy happened that could be blamed on the lock down. It’s basically normal life now. Our society is dissolving all around us, but being locked in the house is no longer a symptom, it’s just the way things are. That’s kinda sad.
It’s Friday though. I’m about nine hours shy of the weekend. I can make it… I think. It’s been almost a month since my beloved bride cut my hair. She told me she wants to give it another shot this weekend. I’m game. Let’s do it.
I think I am going to go punch into work now. I have to move to the other desk so I don’t drive my love nuts as she works. I’m guessing the cat will invade my space (her space) soon after I get there.
23% of the year down… still going. Have a good one, everyone. There will likely be cat pics later.
The City of Methuen is trying to salvage their 4th of July celebration while still maintaining social distance and fighting the spread of COVID-19.
Obviously the standard celebration is kaput this year. No way we can flood one small section of the city with people without causing a major spike in infections. City Hall… or the Mayor’s Office… or someone in city government, I don’t know who, came up with the idea of launching fireworks from the highest elevation in town.
But would it work? Would people all around town be able to see anything? A test was in order.
Tonight at 8:45pm the city lit off fireworks for about a minute from Pie Hill in the Eastern part of town. Residents were asked to go outside at that time and see if they could see anything. A Facebook thread was setup where folks could share the results with everyone else.
Jen, Harry, and I went outside a minute or so early. It’s beautiful out, but we live in the woods and the bugs were out in force. We waited a few minutes but didn’t see or hear anything.
Bummer.
Maybe there’s a higher elevation they could try? Probably not.
See look, he’s posting as normal. There’s nothing wrong. Society didn’t end last night when the so called president ordered troops onto the streets of Washington in order to put down constitutionally protected rights. No, there’s nothing wrong.
I just changed the cat’s litter box. I dumped it all into a garbage bag and took it out to the trash. I enjoy one aspect of this process. Since the squirrels in our yard gnaw holes in the barrel covers so that they can climb inside and eat our trash, when I put the contents of the litter box into the barrel I am literally telling the squirrels to eat shit.
See? Nothing wrong. Life just going on as it was before the fascists ordered armed troops onto the streets of the nation’s capital. No problem.
I’m doing my best not to let every little thing bother me, but today is starting to feel like one of those days where the whole lock down thing gets to me.
I slept okay last night. That’s a tick in the good things column. The kids are here. That is another one. I played guitar last night and I didn’t suck (any more than normal). Tick. It’s only been a small amount of use, but so far I’m not seeing the same issues I saw with the new MacBook Pro the last time I tried to use it. My backup from the old computer took without issue this time, and with the exception of my copy of the Vivaldi browser acting screwy this morning there hasn’t been any software problems (I closed Vivaldi and re-opened and it’s been fine since).
My wife and my step son have spent the last few weeks becoming excellent cake bakers. Not only that, but they are teaching themselves how to decorate too. They baked their cakes and made their frosting from scratch and are doing all sorts of fun things with the design. Unfortunately they have decided to take a break from baking for a while because… well… we’ve had a lot of cakes to eat lately. We can put the baking and the creativity into the good column, and the lack of more cake forthcoming into the bad column. I haven’t made any of my now legendary Tewksbury Tweets in the last couple of weeks. I don’t think I’ll have time before the kids go back to their dad’s for the weekend. Maybe I’ll have some for when they get back next Wednesday.
The kids are going back to their dad’s tomorrow. That’s a tick in the negative column. We get them today though, so I won’t be upset about it for now. Harry has started watching 30 Rock. I am 99% sure I binged the entire series. He showed me a youtube video yesterday of something hysterical that I totally missed. Apparently, there is a thread throughout the show demonstrating that Kenneth the NBC Page is immortal. They actually come right out and say it once, but you can laugh it off as goofy hickish behavoir, but with all of the little throw away lines lined up one after another… Kenneth is some kind of immortal being.
We can add that as a tick in the good column.
I mentioned in a post over the weekend that I sent an email to Gibson’s repair site. They haven’t responded. Under non-coronavirus circumstances I’d tick that under bad, but with things being as they are the staff are probably stuck at home… maybe… I don’t know how strict Tennessee is being, or how strict Gibson itself is being. I don’t know. I will invent a new category and call it the ambiguous, grey area list and put this there.
There were other things I was going to mention but I’m working now and all non-work related things have been flushed from my memory buffer (that’s a technical phrase).
Congratulations, USA. We’ve hit 100,000 deaths today. Look at all the happy MAGAs. Look at that president glowing about how awesome our response to this has been. One Hundred Thousand dead Americans. It’s all on you, Trump. You evil nazi piece of shit.
Inside the Red Head's Head 