Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Now I have four electric guitars, and I get to put them into a rotation. I played the GG5 Cus hollowbody a few weeks, then rotated in the Agile PS-900. Both of these were from Rondo music. I tend to get fascinated with one or the other to the exclusion of the others, with the result that when I play the others again it is almost like having a new guitar. This week I pulled out the Strat and rediscovered it again. It looks like this:

I think this has to be one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. I was reminded of how much changing which guitar you have in your hand will change how you play. I was drawn to more bluesy style stuff, but sadly I have little mastery of blues licks. Or rock licks. I’m just a hack. I need to expand my vocabulary if I’m ever to be worthy of this awesome guitar. It sounded great, even played through digital effects (Jonathan will eventually convince me to go all-analog).

The single-coils are the Fender custom staggered tex-mex pickups. I was amazed how bright and hollow the neck pickup is, and how sweet and vaguely smoky the neck pickup is alone. In combination, it’s a sweet, fat sound. The diamondback humbucker in the bridge position doesn’t disappoint either. My buddy Jeff bought the noiseless one, but the noiseless pickups just don’t carry the strat sound. This one clearly does. It’s all the strat you could want. If I were going through a tube screamer and straight to my tube amp it might squirt out some better tone, but the only real issue I have with sound right now is the guitar player.

The C-shaped, satin-finished neck is very comfortable to me. I am not screaming up and down the fretboard, pulling out monster tapping licks and the like, but I like not having my thumb stick to the back of the neck.

The switching is handy enough. It never gets in my way and is easy to reach. This included the S1 switch in the crown of the volume pot.

There are only three negatives for me:

• I seldom use the tremolo arm, because this guitar does come out of tune if you lay on the whammy.
• I want to change out the tuners. Either they’re desperately in need of adjustment or they’re desperately in need of replacement. I’m thinking some Gotoh, Sperzel, or Schaller locking tuners would be a really good upgrade. I’ll adjust the tuners I have for now and hope for the best.
• I wish it came with a nice roller nut or a nice brass one. This is pretty generic, but functional. I think it’s pinching my strings a bit, so I need to file/paper the guide slots a bit. I don’t know that it would help to use graphite there. I tried once and it didn’t seem to make any difference.

As a matter of preference, I wish it came in the nice transparent butterscotch blonde you can see on vintage Telecaster guitars.

I would have liked that better than the sienna sunburst (too red but at least it shows wood grain). The butterscotch finish that’s available on the HSS is non-tranparent. It looks like a pumpkin. I had that first, but I hated it and traded up.

If you’re looking to buy a strat in the $900-1200 neighborhood (non-sunburst is cheaper), you could hardly do better and could certainly do worse.

If you are a Fender representative: Please consider putting out a model with the vintage butterscotch blonde transparent finish and some of your upscale Fender/Schaller tuner machine heads. This is a very nice strat, and you all do great work. PS send me a TC90.

I did the upgrade today from Fiesty to Gutsy (Ubuntu release 7.10). I made a backup first, because there are sometimes troubles, but it came out okay. I found a few good changes.

There is a nicer setup for networking now. I set up my home network information, and that’s been working nicely.

I have transparency that works now. It doesn’t mess up the XFCE4-terminal (xterm) program like it did before. I am using opacity to indicate focus now. It’s a very obvious visual hint. I am not crazy about transparency for my panel (top and bottom of screen), so I’ve turned it off there. I suppose this is a reason for my CPU utilization to be higher than before, but the machine is snappy enough that it doesn’t bother me.

I’ve noticed that GAIM is now Pidgin (which I knew, but didn’t bother acting on). I lost a few icons and had to find replacements. I reduced the default desktop font. Other minor changes aren’t bothering me at all. It’s overall a good upgrade.

I suppose I could recommend it now. When I unpack my new Dell laptop (Ubuntu pre-installed!) I’ll probably upgrade it as well. First I have to get my flat screen LCD back, though. My old glass CRT monstrosities don’t fit on my tiny new desk.

My most recent (non tech) reading project is Ain’t Too Proud To Beg, subtitled living through the Lord’s Prayer. The author is theologian Telford Work (an unusual name, to be sure). The book is not even 300 pages long, but I’ve been taking a long time getting through it. It’s rich, and so I must take small bites in small sessions, and sometimes have to mull and reread.

The book is inspirational, but it’s not “Inspirational”. Books and music titled “Inspirational” are typically trite emotionalism sanctified with the occasional scripture reference (sometimes taken in context). Instead Work has a definite edge, and takes an eyes-open approach to the subjects. It is a thinking book, not just a feeling book. From the intro:

Crafting chapters that begin in my own experience and culminate in the Lord’s words might be popular […] but it would make Jesus my public relations representative, not my King. I do not want to give readers the impression that Christianity is just a name for one’s mental attitude or outlook.

I knew I was into something different. I have learned a lot in the first half of the book. Work is well-educated, and has taken me on a tour of things I know only a little about. I’ve had to play catch-up. This is another break from the easy casual “inspirational” style of “Christian Living” books you tend to find in popular bookstores. This book will challenge you instead of stroking your hair.

What it is about, so far, seems to be about the Kingdom of God and Holiness. It refuses to accept God as “a vehicle of the self.” The following anthemic chorus (from P103) is something I’m meditating on now:

We — we peoples of the world, but also we Christians much of the time — have spent the last two thousand years doing what we had been doing before: trying to turn the world God gave us into the world we want, the people we were made to be into the people we would rather be, and God from the the Lord we have into the Lord we prefer. This is the pattern in the chaos of American Christianity. Constantine is not the villian; we are.

The book follows the structure of the Lord’s prayer, and is a sort of series of articles on the otherness that is represented there. There are a few whippings (like the two mentioned above) but it’s not a book of accusations. It deconstructs to reconstruct, and reconstructs brilliantly on a better foundation.

I have found it beneficial.

This came to me in response to a different posting, but I thought I’d put it here.:

So, although I’ve read many of your articles I do have to wonder: what is your stance on Christianity and commercialism?

I believe (though I believe many other interpretations are possible) that the Bible does not - in any way - forbid charging for product. (I know, I know, that the Bible describes our Lord chastising the temple hawkers, but this does NOT mean that capitalism is BAD.)

So I’m genuinely interested in your stance: what’s so bad about paying for Windows?

There is so much to this. Some of it is my Christian stance, some of it is practical or pragmatic, some of it is purely emotional. There is more “me” in this than maybe you will like.

On commercialism:

• There is nothing wrong with a Christian also being a businessperson. He should be a certain kind of business person, but can be successful in a commercial setting. The trick is that he should do business ethically at every turn, and should choose his partners carefully. I would disrespect a “Christian business” that had partners in organized crime, pornography, or other questionable areas. Realize that the success of the business is not an indicator of God’s approval, nor is the failure of the business a sign of wrath. Businesses succeed and fail for lots of silly reasons.
• If you use Windows, you should pay for it. I’m not into “robin hood” advocacy, or the “they deserved it” defense. I am not against paying the price of the things you use, but I do have concerns. Those will follow.
• I have definite feelings about commercialism in the church. Simony is an offense that bothers me a lot, and so is the act of trading on your church membership to make more money. Likewise I despise the whole “revival in a box” thinking that includes the “certified Purpose-Driven” thing. The Church is not a marketplace (hence the moneychangers).
• It bothers me when the church is run as a commercial business, measuring their success not by spiritual but commercial indicators such as attendance, buildings, cash, and pastoral salaries. These are not how Christ did things, and while they are not wrong neither are they the indication of God’s favor. A large church that loves and serves the Kingdom is the same as a small church the loves and serves the Kingdom. Selfishness is the problem, not the answer. We aren’t selling something, aren’t trying to beat out the competition, and aren’t trying to be successful in order to win the world’s praise. We have a different mission.

Now as to the whole windows in the church thing, I have a few problems with it.

• Opportunity cost/Stewardship: is it the best use of tithes and offering to buy windows and windows software (including Office and even software development tools) ? Would OpenOffice and Linux or BSD suffice, saving the money for more important needs? Remember that churches exist on whatever money the congregation deems to give, and they always want to see it put to use in helping others and spreading the good news. Microsoft products require more and more hardware and provide less and less performance. The “upgrade treadmill” makes them very successful, but what makes them successful is not what makes us successful. I’m not sure that the yearly cost for for hardware and software upgrades is our best choice.
• Reputation: Is Microsoft the kind of business you want as a partner? Do they have the ethical background? In my view, they do not have the kind of history that we should support. Bill is getting better all the time, but Microsoft seems to me to be a scofflaw and a poor citizen in many ways. I’d feel better if we used something else. Note that in the list of “fruits of the spirit”, we don’t see “commercial success”. While MS success is awesome, it is not in itself a virtue nor does it make the means of success virtuous.
• High Maintenance Agreements: Microsoft licensing has difficult rules and requirements. If a church is to use Microsoft software, then they should abide by all the terms of the agreement (just as they should abide by all the terms of any other contract they enter into). Have you read the agreement? If you run Windows, you really need to be sure all your uses are carefully policed. Other operating systems have very simple terms requiring very little monitoring and freely granting the right to copy and modify the software. You should look at a comparison of the MS EULA and the GPL. You should also be vigilant and read what various astute detractors have said about the little surprises lurking in the EULA.
• Practical issues: Windows doesn’t work very well. It’s well-known that a typical windows PC will slow down to a crawl in 6-9 months after purchase. There are tricks one can use to keep it running well (mostly involving buying more and more software, increasing the cost-per-cpu), but it just “runs down” over time. Some windows experts even recommend wiping out and re-imaging your system every 1-to-2 years. My best windows boxes worked because I eliminated (as much as possible) all IE and Outlook and used only third party (open source) browser and email apps. I messed with the virtual memory settings to get a fixed-size page file. I added commercial anti-virus, firewall, and adware management. I got a third-party disk defrag. I downloaded memory defraggers, uninstallers, registry defraggers and cleaners, and other performance-managing software. I limited the software that could be loaded. If we only ran the browser, email, and some accounting, and we kept up on all the upgrades, and ran the performance tools often enough, and had constant watch on vulnerabilities, we didn’t see much degradation in performance in the course of two years (after which I converted the box to Debian rather than stay on the upgrade treadmill). If you have to shore it up with so much additional software, is it really a good operating system?
• Ease and freedom of installation: Microsoft doesn’t provide anything like the Debian apt repository, where you can pull in tens of thousands of software titles with a simple gui (or command line) front-end, complete with dependency management and automated upgrades for the whole box.
• Freedom to copy: If I copy Windows onto a second computer (even on my kids’ computers or in the childrens ministry area), I am a criminal. If I copy linux or BSD, then I’m legally and ethically entitled to do so. I don’t have to police the EULA, I don’t have to send money to anyone (though I can if I like).

So my basic premise is that if you can in any way choose not to use microsoft, then it makes sense not to use Microsoft for your church. If you do use windows, you should certainly buy or download all the software it takes to control it and you must be sure that you understand your EULA and live in compliance with it, and you simply must ensure that you are legally entitled to all the use you make of it. Use microsoft products most scrupulously and with my blessing, but don’t get sloppy about it and risk a loss in a BSA audit, and don’t leave yourself open to bot nets and the like. Be very, very careful.

Oh, and beware. Recent licenses include a clause that you will not work around any shortcoming in the product. If it doesn’t work, you will simply deal with it. That seems a little crazy to me, but you can make your own decision.

<sarcasm>It’s a good thing these guys were stopped before a passer-by heard it, liked it, and decided to buy the album!</sarcasm>

This is nuts. Radio is broadcast, and anyone with a receiver can listen. If you let someone else listen when you are playing your radio, it’s an offense?

Wait. Does that mean the RIAA can shut down all those cars that pull up next to you and play their radio on 10 with a kicker? Does it count if it’s a CD or MP3? I guess that’s the upside.

OTOH, what if someone evesdrops on my radio listening? Does it make me a criminal? I was right, this is nuts.

Fist Fula Yen has this great quote from Ian Rogers of Yahoo!Music, on the subject of DRM getting in the way:

Inconvenient experiences don’t have Web-scale potential, and platforms which monetize the gigantic scale of the Web is the only way to compete with the control you’ve lost, the only way to reclaim value in the music industry. If your consultants are telling you anything else, they are wrong.

And later:

Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us. Yahoo! didn’t want to go through all these steps. The licensing dictated it.

There you have it.

I’m tired of the phrase “the real world”.

When someone in an argument or explanation utters this magical phrase, it is supposed to confer to them authority and strip same from their victim. It is supposed to be an argument-ender. It says “my experience is objective and counts, yours is not valid.” If your world is real, and mine is not, then nothing I can say matters. In fact, my very existence is 99.99% in my past, so my entire life is invalid if my experience is not in “the real world”. In this usage, it’s simply rude and inconsiderate.

“But that doesn’t work in the real world” usually doesn’t mean that it has been tried and found lacking. It usually means the speaker doesn’t imagine it will work: It fails in their imaginary world. Usually when it has been tried and found lacking, the speaker will begin with “when we tried it we had problems.” In this usage, it is a lie wrapped up in a pompous generalization. It is rudeness and presumption.

Other times, it means “in my little corner of the world.” The problem here is that we may selfishly assume that our experience is universal. The world as we have experienced it is dubbed “the real world”, and the world as others have experienced it becomes some imaginary place. This is especially true when we are talking about people who have spent the majority of their career in a single company or the majority of their life in a single town. This use is at least honest. The speaker has spent so much time in one place that he doesn’t realize there are other places. This is a common criticism of Americans in general. Sometimes we think we are the real world, the whole thing and not just one corner of it. This usage shows self-involvement, but isn’t generally intended to be rude. But it is wrong.

I’m now trying to keep myself from uttering the phrase at all. I will struggle to say “in my experience” and “reportedly” or “so-and-so found that” or “I don’t believe” or “here at this company”. I want to be honest, and avoid presumptive self-involvement or rudeness.

Please join the crusade. Don’t let “In The Real World” stand as an argument. Ask which real world the author is discussing, the whole one, the one he’s built, or just the corner he lives in. Decide to not be intimidated by the phrase. Decide to not use it yourself.

I think that dropping this little habit won’t bring about world peace or give us any kind of silver bullet, but it might make our arguments more objective and useful and that might make this shared “real world” a little nicer place to work.

I’m back from Door County, WI. I have photos to prove it. I really enjoyed this trip. We didn’t get to relax all the time, and my oldest boy wasn’t able to go with us, but it was still a wonderful time. I had such fun, and was able to relax fairly well. The food and visuals were incredible.

I highly recommend Door County as a get-away spot for couples. I’d like to grab my better half and sneak up for a weekend sometime.

I played my acoustic guitar for church yesterday. I haven’t played acoustic in a very long time. I played it through a crate CA15 Cimarron acoustic amp looking rather a lot like this one:


I was really impressed by this amplifier. I had another available to me, but I thought this one sounded better with my guitar. It almost sounded like a Taylor instead of an Ibanez. Thanks to Danny for the loan of his amp. Thanks to Crate for making a very fine and very affordable amplifier. We mic-ed the amp, which worked rather well. I can unreservedly recommend this to players looking for small-venue amplification and to other players who can’t afford a Fishman Loudbox or a Roland AC30 (or better)

Our regular acoustic guitar player/lead vocalist/music minister was out of town. I only took over acoustic guitar duties, not singing and leading. In the few years since I sang last, I’ve fallen totally out of practice and am having pitch problems as well as tonality problems. I can’t keep it out of my nose. I need to either learn to sing or quit entirely. Right now, I’m mostly on the “quit” side of the fence. I am sticking to musical fingers for now. Anyway, I was in Texas and unable to practice on Wednesday so I had to pretty much pick up the set with a cold start during our Sunday morning runthrough. There were two new songs, and one of them was a worship song and hymn medley. It was a lot of “new” with the acoustic guitar, new songs, and amp. We also found out that our bass player would not be there. That left drums, piano, and me. Still, we all adjusted and did pretty well. I was feeling confident.

On the other hand, we found that the offeratory was supposed to be an instrumental by the band. We didn’t have one. My wife was on piano, and was playing through “Spirit of the Living God”, a beautiful hymal chorus. It was so beautiful I knew we had to do it. We were trying to figure out what to do when it hit me that Danny (on drums during the worship set) could pick up the other acoustic guitar and we could do the whole thing on acoustic guitars. I would comp/chord, and he would take melody and riff on it a bit. We did a quick partial run-through, and let it go.

Most of the songs were in guitar-friendly keys like A or G or D. I was pretty comfy with them, and wasn’t feeling the bruising of fingertips or the strain in my wrist. Later I was seriously wishing I had a capo with me. One of the songs was in E flat, and I was barring like mad at the 3rd fret to play it as if it were C. It took some finger-picking and a little pinky finesse and by the end of the second chorus I was really feeling the burn.

It became a bit of a nightmare in that E flat song. When you don’t play acoustic guitar for a while, it isn’t just the fingertips and wrists that suffer. The strings can be a little old and experience some pitch dynamics. That’s a nice way to say that the G and B strings both started going flat on me. At first it was fine, but the longer the song went the worse the strings sounded. It was noticeably off by the bridge. I was trying to bring it back in, but my ear is lazy and my hands were too eager, and I went sharp, then flat again, then gave up. I tried to play the song through on the lower 3 and tune up at the break. Of course, Libby had piano, and I doubt anyone missed my upper strings. Maybe the power chords actually added punch. Maybe we got through on strength of vocals. Maybe it was a supernatural miracle of hearing. Maybe people just didn’t notice.

I had to do a very quick by-ear tune job before the last song, which was a very sweet song featuring a bit of light finger-picking. It would have been awful if I’d not got it quite back into tune. I wish I’d brought a clip-on tuner with me. Next time, maybe.

The last ensemble song went quite well, and I was able to return to the moment rather than cringing over my strings or aching wrist. We were able to play and worship together as we should. The set ended quite well, and there was such a sweet spirit in the place.

Our final bit was for the offeratory song. It is common for things to come out better live than in practice, because there is so much more feel when the congregation is present. This time it was a little bit of a challenge. While my guitar was finally in tune again, we hadn’t actually tuned the two guitars together. Danny is so professional about this. He kept pressure on, bending the strings up to pitch as he went. I’m glad he was slightly flat and not slightly sharp. Still it sounded very warm, rich, and full. I like working with Danny because I never worry about him. I know whatever he does will sound great. We got through the verse and chorus, and then we each realized that we didn’t work out the ending. That was pretty sloppy of us. Here we are at the end of a very nice song with such a good acoustic vibe, with a solemn and reverent mood over the whole place, and we’re ever so slightly stuck. He looked to me, I tried to motion that we’d go back to the start of the line for a tag, but who knows what that head motion looked like. So I went back to the start of the line, and he followed beautifully and we ended together. Whew.

It was a good morning. There were compliments, but we knew that we’d made it through on grace, silent panicky prayer, and the skin of our teeth. Some mornings are more miraculous than others. We weren’t without challenge, but we were able to focus and work through the songs and carry a message to the congregation, and they joined us in every way. It was truly a fine morning. You should have heard it.

My guitar arrived today. It was packed in the original cardboard box by Jeff and Anne, and I had that box packed into a larger box with peanuts for shipping. I was tracking it via FedEx, and they did a very very nice job. The tracking job done by UPS on my Agile PS-900 wasn’t nearly as nice. It came in good shape, and all I needed to do was tune it up. I should also hit it with some polish on the metal (said Jeff) so that we can stave off corrosion. It really is quite attractive and a pleasure to play. I could barely put it down.

The picture is not from me. It’s a slightly gimp-ed photo I downloaded. Mine has no pickguard (a preference of my wife, who finds scratch guards unsightly). Otherwise, this is the same guitar.

This is special. It is not a tremendously expensive guitar, and if you know how to look you can get one for $USD200 or less, but this is the only guitar anyone other than my parents has given me outright. I didn’t know for sure how to react when Jeff told me I could just take it home with me. He’s an old friend from my CSC days, when I lived in Champaign/Urbana IL. We did a lot of programming together in C and C++. There has been a lot of change since then, but I’m still a little jealous of his guitar-playing acumen. He’s actually pretty amazing now, and has taught himself to sing over the years. That puts him two up on me. I’m grateful for this.

The guitar plays very well. The pickups sound good. The 24.5″ scale neck is a little shorter than some of mine, but comfy. It definitely has an ES-335 kind of vibe. No F-holes like the GG5-STD. It doesn’t have quite the quality of pickups that the 335 has (duh) but it has a nice sound, and I like playing it. I sat around playing though a few chord progressions, finger-picking, and fiddling about. This guitar is going to be a pretty constant companion. It may not replace strat or breadwinner, but it will probably get more play at home. It’s a great addition. I don’t feel the immediate need to go out and upgrade anything about it. I won’t even need setup. It’s fine as-is.

I played it through my 9v battery amp and through a couple of Jeff’s nice combos when it was his, but have not yet played it through either my tube amp (Crate Vintage Club 50) nor through my solid state Vox 15R Pathfinder. I am looking forward to those experiences, but I left the amps at church.

I need to pick up some new strings, a hardshell case, a strap, a stand, and some straplocks. It’s my first hollowbody and I don’t want to see it crushed either while being hauled back and forth or by being dropped.

Now, when I have a with P90s and a hybrid I’ll be “done”. For small values of “done”, any way.

Guitar nuts: if you want to see something really pretty, read something really interesting, and get your fix of master craftsmanship then you should pop over and look at Steelbender.com’s spotlight on Jack Briggs. You’ll see gorgeous guitars at various stages of completion. It’s great stuff.

I am continuing to look at p90s, though it really doesn’t make a lot of sense for me to do so. I got an all-humbucker guitar (Agile P900) for my birthday last month, and last week my friend Jeff gave me one of his collection, a nice hollowbody that FedEx says is on its way up from Texas even now. I really have had all the Gear Acquisition Syndrome I need for a little while. I’m satisfied. Well, after I get some more straplocks and straps and guitar stands and a case for the new addition. I have a collection I’m already not worthy of, being untrained and hardly well-practiced. I want to try to work more on my skills and spend less time on my gear.

My wife was excited for me, that now she thought my collection is “complete”, but I told her that I don’t yet have a P90 guitar or a hybrid. Otherwise, I’ve got all the variety a guy could want. So now, as is my habit, I’m going to spend the next year or two looking at P90 guitars, playing any I can get my hands on at the guitar stores, and digging up pictures and reviews. I’ll make a decision in a year or two, and in the meantime I’ll be happy with all the goodies I have at home.

I was looking at the TC90 again

I also had posted a little article about the godin LG P90, which seems to be a very fine guitar according to Harmony Central.

I also have noticed that MBM has a very hot looking LP-style P90 axe, too (and Jeff recently replied to my note about their guitars):

Of course, I noticed the Agile 3000 (from Rondo):

There are plenty of gold-top-like guitars, from the genuine article at Gibson to the Washburn Idol series and the PRS SE series. I just don’t like gold-top. I like seeing wood grain, and so I am not crazy about any of the thick plastic finishes (paint and polyeurothane I suppose). Gold top in particular is historic and and all, but I want some pretty. I actually like the aesthetics better when there is a black cover instead of the cream that yells out “P90″ to the audience. I might see if I can’t get down to the Washburn factory and see what they have cooking.

I was listening this evening to the recorded samples of Bryan Gunsher’s P90 pickups and the ones over at Duncan’s site. There’s only so much variation on the P90s, but they’ve got a cool sound.

You know what would be cool? A deeply-single-cut, walnut body with a P90 at the bridge and lipstick neck pickup, and black& chrome for the pickguard, plates, and hardware. Or else maybe a swamp ash body. Either way, if the pickups would blend decently it would be an unusual kind of guitar.