Blogging Ottinger (tim)

As is common with so many rumors, the Antioch Flood Rumor is also not true.

To flood Antioch would take an amazing storm. It is high ground, and the chain-o-lakes would buffer against a very substantial increase in water. Remember, rivers and streams are flood vectors, but lakes are flood protection. It’s all about excess capacity, you know. We’re pretty well buffered and pretty well elevated.

Now, some low-lying areas south of us are looking kinda marshy, and had wind damage. Up where I live, nothing.

Kinda makes me want to consider staying put. It’s a nice town even discounting the flood protection and access to fishing. It was only about 76 degrees this weekend, with pleasant breezes. It’s far from everything else, but it’s a very nice little town.

—-

Oh, my! It turns out that this rumor is
pretty well substantiated. I had no idea, because we never saw any such trouble. We are on high ground, but I guess there are houses down by the Fox River that have it pretty bad. Well, rivers are flood vectors. I guess I’ve just not travelled west into the low grounds. My apologies.

Myspace is a cacophony vector. Be advised. Do not open a bunch of myspace links (such as from your “friends” list) in separate tabs, unless you first mute your computer. Listening to seven different songs at one time is not fun. It is so very not fun. It causes mental impairment and nervous facial ticks.

It will also take you a long time to stop all the movie and sound playback widgets, because they’re usually under ‘facts about me’ and a slew of pics (all taken at odd angles).

Myspace is nice enough, but you really have to open one page at a time.

“Hey, Tim. Whatcha been doing?”
“I’ve been standing in a dark parking lot watching the international space station fly by.”

It’s an interesting thing to say you’ve been doing. In Dallas/FtWorth area, we’ve gotten quite a show. Just the idea of watching a man-made, man-bearing space craft (well, low-earth-orbit) a couple of hundred miles away, zipping across the sky at an amazing rate, is pretty cool. I don’t know much about the station, really, but I’ve seen it with my very eye in the Texas sky. How many of my fellows in the Northwest Chicago ‘burbs can say the same? At least one, because he’s here with me.

It’s been a good week, though I’m eager to be home. Some good work, signs of good things happening, good conversations with good people. I actually like my fellow consultants when I get with them, but I’m such a homebody that I don’t always jump at the chance. I love my family more, but I really like learning from other professionals and picking up their jokes and ideas. Tonight we had a good talk and some really fine Italian food, and capped it off with a naked-eye observation of our space station.

We built that thing, we humans. And launched it. And we’re not intending to use it to kill anybody (that I know of). We even got along, more or less, to get it up there. Nice.

You can’t tell me this isn’t funny.

An arms-race mentality has developed among status-conscious Christians, says a gallery owner. “When people want a big TK, nothing else will suffice,” he says.

And of course it’s just in fun. LarkNews.Com is all about the giggles. If you’re a churchgoing Christian, you’ll love it. It’s got a humor you’ll recognize. If you are a church-hating Christian, you’ll like it as well. If you’re non-Christian, you might be happy to know that we do have a sense of humor, even if you don’t get all the jokes.

Sadly, I’m back to another version of the Miro bug. When I try to run Miro (was DemocracyTV) it dies trying to load the channel guide. Even if I’m not online, it seems. I’m not sure what I have to do to get around this, but I’m not getting any of my video podcasts now. Bummer.

This is a python program, mostly, but the error is a java error. that stinks.

/usr/bin/python2.5: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun-1.5.0.11/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so: undefined symbol: PR_NewMonitor

Not sure what the answer should be. Maybe “wait for somone to fix it”.

—-

Later now. I moved the ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so file out of the way, and now miro runs. Not sure what the ns7 plugins are for, but I guess “out of the way” will have to be enough until I find out what that is really supposed to be.

My guitar arrived today. Here’s a moderatly crummy webcam pic, just so you can see what it looks like:

I’m really excited about that, but there’s a little problem. It has a blemish. It’s a little gouge out of the finish. It’s such a nice finish, and the gouge is visible. I’m disappointed, because it was shipped in the case. I don’t really want to wait for a replacement, but I don’t really want to have an imperfect guitar straight out of the box.

Ah, it’s a dilemma. What shall I do? I’ll talk to the shop and see what they think. Sigh.

—-
(much later)

I’ve finally seen it with my own eyes and played it with my own hands. I didn’t get to plug it into a real amp, only my little 9-Volt mini amp. It wasn’t too bad. The pickups will probably stay on it for a while.

Still, the hardware is all gold and pretty, the (photo?)cap is pretty, the mahogany is quite nice.

Even though Rondo Music was willing to have a return/exchange, I think I will just fill in the chip instead. It’s actually a chip out of the wood, not just a paint chip. That’s a bit sloppy. I did get it at a good price, and I do want to play it. I’ll just get used to it. It’s not like I paid a fortune for it. It was quite a deal.

I’ve lately been giving some of my regular guitar heroes a break, lest I wear them out. So for a little while, no Dave Weckl, no Larry Carlton, no Lee Ritenour, etc.

Almost all of the jazz I’m now listening to has come from eMusic. That subscription makes me want to pull down more music than I’d normally be purchasing, and the price is quite good. Now I’m into Niacin, Jimmy Bruno, Joe Diorio, the Jazz Mandolin Project, some old classic Wes Montgomery and Earl Klugh (who I understand didn’t consider himself to be jazz, but popular music). I don’t get around much, so some of these I’d not even be aware of except for eMusic’s search services and recommendations. Very cool.

I’m also listening to some new Phil Keaggy releases that just came to eMusic. I love to listen to Keaggy.

Odd that I play guitar, and listen to jazz guitar, but I’ve never tried to play any jazz. You’d think I’d be working through all these great solos and trying to learn the craft, but I’m not. Nor have I learned many pop songs. I tend to compartment too much. It would be cool to be able to do more, but I’m more of an audience than a doer when it comes to this great music.

I think that my next renewal to eMusic will be a downgrade, though. 65 songs a month is really cool when you start out, but you don’t really need to collect that much music in a year. Admittedly, if some more of my old favorites were there, I could manage to do this another year. Still, I’m discovering bands I like in multiple genres. It’s cool.

The online tracking for FedEx should really have reduced the number of calls they receive from eager consumers. On the other hand, it really does make their system a lot more transparent. I know know how much latency there was between when my order info was received from them, and when the order was picked up. I also know how long it was from the time it was picked up until it left the local FedEx warehouse. I can see when it left the “origin” and how long it’s been somewhere on the road. It almost makes me more antsy. I know it’s coming, I can see it’s a few steps on the journey. I know it’s an express package, and I’m eager to see it. I wish it were faster. I want to push somehow. OTOH, I know that there’s more to logistics than just driving one package from NH to IL.

I think about Agile software development and feel the same way. We have so much more visibility. The customer sees how long it takes to make the software, and they see it in progress. Thankfully, they can have their hands on it once per iteration, and can have corrections immediately. It’s brave to expose so much information (way to go FedEx) and it increases expectations. It has that coercive immediacy that makes you want to do what you can to push things along.

I wonder how many other businesses will open up their business to scrutiny, maybe putting more process information on the web. What if we could see the local grocery or department store’s inventory levels? What if we could watch our banks working? What if our plumber or yard tech updated their schedule automagically through the wireless internet? Would be be more patient or less? How much scrutiny would be reasonable? How much would improve our relationships with customers, how much would ruin them?

I saw this GTO at the Volo car museum. Man. A guy can dream, right? When it comes to muscle cars and guitars, I become somewhat materialistic. Gotta watch that tendency.

There are millions of guitars I don’t have. It’s not Pokemon, you don’t have to collect them all. However, I wouldn’t mind having one of each kind of pickup. I’m not the gonzo guitar collector who has to have the top-of-the-line anything, though I really wanted to have a real american strat so that is my one top-of-the-line exception to the rule. I am not dying to get an SG like Angus Young or a Les Paul like so many of them.

Also, I don’t like having to keep batteries in my guitars, so I’ve gotten over the active pickup thing. But it is nice to have variety, and switching between guitars makes you think differently about playing.

Some people have asked me how many I have, and are surprised to find that I really don’t have a houseful of them. I have:

• a nice Fender American Stratocaster HSS as my single-coil baby (red sunburst, including the cool S1 switch),
• an Ovation Breadwinner tricked out with Seymour Duncan humbuckers (white “spackle” finish)
• One acoustic guitar, an Ibanez P5CENT — not expensive, could use a pickup upgrade, but solid-top at least.
• One tiny applecreek travel guitar, acoustic. It’s worth about what I paid for it, which is not much. That’s perfect for a travel guitar.
• I have an Agile PS-900 on its way (tracking through FedEx right now).

At any given time, one or more of the above may be at my house, and the others either loaned out or at a church somewhere. I have to keep track of where they are from week to week.

I actually *technically* have part ownership in a frankenstrat my buddy Jonathan built up, though I assert no ownership rights and he will make better use of it than I would. It started out as my white Squire cheapie strat, but he’s made it into a real guitar. He’s refinished it in Daphne Blue, added a lot of excellent electronics work, and will be dropping on some Sperzel tuners soon. It’s amazing. “Partial ownership” is really a conceit, because it makes me feel like a part of the process and I’m proud of Jonathan’s work. It’s really his guitar, I was just a partial donor.

I also technically own (I paid for) two other acoustic guitars that I used for a while and then loaned out with no intention of ever collecting back. I have two friends who wanted to learn, and I wanted to help them. One was an Applause turtle-back acoustic with the usual crack running across its face, the other was a no-name cheapie acoustic with a junk peizo pickup. But I hope my friends use them now and then, and maybe think of me when they do.

What I don’t have, and should have to round of the collection (some day, in several years) is:

• a guitar with soapbar pickups like the Fender TC90 perhaps,
• something with lipstick pickup(s) (maybe a Dano or Tele),
• a hollowbody (maybe the Washburn HB32 or SX GG5 or Schecter Corsair), and
• a Hybrid like perhaps the Taylor T5, Crafter, Michael Kelly, Godin, Ovation VXT, or the Parkwood.

If I got a hybrid, a Crafter or Parkwood or Michael Kelly would be cool. They’re such beautiful guitars. The Taylor is a dream, but is very expensive. The Ovation isn’t cheap. But I think I’ll save the Hybrid as a reward to myself for learning more about music. I play a lot, but I don’t know much about music. I should. I’m too old and slow and lame to ever be a pro musician, so really owning one of each is a little silly. It’s a hobby that lets me worship freely, though, and I don’t have many hobbies. If I bought a guitar every few years, I don’t think it would be so bad.

This is all about fun, not about career.

It seems like a companion to my comment about the three-single-coil SG I mentioned earlier. This is the other gender, a Fender strat-tele-something with a hollow body and two P90 pickups. It’s another strange juxtaposition. I wouldn’t have thought of Fender for a hollowbody P90-equipped guitar. Yet here it is. And it’s gorgeous too.

These are two mini-duncans. You gotta like Duncans (well, if you’re not out of your mind and arent’ buying Bryan Gunsher). This is an odd duck I could see buying sometime. Right now they’re listing for about US$630.00 and available at all the usual places.

It’s a crazy time.

For the price you can’t beat this.

(From an advert at SX Guitars Spain)

I was recently at the Weems Guitar Museum in the dallas area and this is one of the many beautiful toys Jeff has acquired. I just loved his collection. I also remembered there why I don’t go out and jam much — I don’t tend to memorize songs, and don’t know any popular ones. I tend to work from my chord sheets at church. I will fix that. I should have an hour or two of memorized songs and chord patterns.

Anyway, this GG5 seemed very attractive to me, sat nicely in my hands, and had good tone. I could definitely see owning one of these. Jeff’s had the scratch guard removed. My wife hates scratch guards, because she thinks they’re ugly. Okay, I can play with or without one.

I don’t own a GG5, but maybe I will someday.

I’m not sure I get the point of this:

It’s nice enough, but I always thought that the point of the SG was its fat-sounding humbuckers. I think if I were looking for three single-coil pickups, why would I look at an SG instead of a strat?

Ah, but I suppose if you like the look of the SG (I always think “cow head” when I look at one) then why not? It’s cool that we have so many choices these days. You can mix the best looks and sounds and work up a franken-strate or a SG-caster and it’s all good. I think if I had a collection of SGs, I would want one of these to round out the collection.