Bass Guitar for cheap, does the trick for this musician…

Posted on May 25, 2007 by Gandalfe

CheapBass.jpg

I bought this for $50 plus $65 for the PigNose (electric/battery) bass amp from Musician’s Friend from the scratch and dent sale they have once a year. I think I was there looking at an Ovation acoustic for my son and threw this into the mix. Ten years later he still has his Ovation and I have my no-name bass.

I put the stickers (second one sez “Doesn’t play well with others”) and have been very happy with the investment. Kinda makes it each to find in a stack of basses at guitar jams. The look is classic and probably copied from some well know bass guitar maker.

I’ve lent it to real bass players and they said it was good enough for the gig. It hands off the wall in the upstairs hallway. And if you wanted to share your music, the battery amp works well in the park. I’ve never been brave enough to play it in a group though.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on a bass. There are always good deals in the scratch and dent sales, usually held once or twice a year. Or you can find them in want ads from the multitudes that buy the bass and then never use them! This sax player luvs trying to find the bass line on jazz recordings on a Saturday morning.  :o)

Posted in Music | 3 Comments

Why People fail Boot Camp (or life?)

Posted on May 25, 2007 by Gandalfe

 ArmyBootCamp As we approach Memorial day in the United States I thought I’d share some experiences from my military days. I’m a retired Army Corps of Engineers Major. I started my Army career as a private. I was stationed twice on one of the primary icons of the cold war, the iron curtain.

Then I found this most excellent article about why people fail in boot camp. Besides giving me flashbacks to my experience in boot camp I draw parallels from what I learned in the military and what little success I’ve managed to eek out in life, so far.

ArmyTodaysSGT Michael Volkin, the author of the Ultimate Basic Training Guidebook writes this piece for Military.com.

"Let’s face it, basic training is tough. For the first time ever recruits find themselves having to wait for permission to eat or even go to the bathroom. Given the several weeks of rigorous mental and physical stress, it’s no wonder that many recruits fail basic training before graduation. But did you know that 90% of what you learn at basic training you can learn before you even look at a drill sergeant? Won’t that make life easier! Here are the top 5 reasons why people fail boot camp:"

… (and my favorite is)

"1) Lack of mental preparation – This is the number one reason recruits fail basic training.  Many people think the lack of physical preparation would be the number one reason. However, MENTALLY preparing yourself for basic training is more important than the previous four reasons, combined. Why? If you’re prepared for basic training mentally everything else will fall into place. You won’t mind waking up at 5 a.m. to do road marches or buff the barracks floor. Your mind will be clear and focused on a single goal, for you to graduate. By preparing properly you can even achieve rank and higher pay faster! Now there is a great reason to prepare properly for boot camp."

Read more…

I’ve seem some very bright people fail miserably in the work place and life in general. I can’t help but wonder if a stint in the military might have made the difference. Who knows? But as Memorial Day approaches I just want to say thank you to those young men serving today.  Here’s hoping you come out of the military experience a stronger and better person.

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Misogynist, philogynist, or misandrist…

Posted on May 24, 2007 by Gandalfe

I was talking with a friend of mine from work, Laura, and we were discussing a lady we worked with in the early ’90s. I suspected that the lady was a man-hater and commented that a woman-hater is commonly known as a misogynist. But there is no apparent or commonly used term for man-hater. Laura is a word lover, writer, editor extraordinare so she posited that the term might be ‘misandrist’ or something.

Today I get this rather delightful e-mail from Laura which said in part, "There is such a word, but girls are afraid to use it ;-)" And then she provides a link to Michael Quinion’s most wonderful World Wide Words which says in part:

[Q] From Douglas Muir Hutton: “Is there an opposite to misogynist?”

[A] If you consider that the opposite of misogynist, woman-hater, is a lover of women, the only one given in any of my books of synonyms and antonyms is feminist, which doesn’t meet the need at all. If you split the Greek word into its constituent parts, you find it is made up of miso-, hate (a prefix that turns up in English in a number of rare or facetious words, including misocapnist for a hater of tobacco smoke), plus gyn meaning woman (as in gynaecologist), plus the -ist ending that indicates an agent noun.

So we can replace the first element with philo-, for love, to get philogynist instead. This is listed in most larger dictionaries, with the abstract noun given as philogyny, love of women. The first citation given in the Oxford English Dictionary is from T H Huxley’s Lay Sermons of 1865, and if it’s good enough for Darwin’s Bulldog, it’s good enough for me.

Read more…

Posted in Too Spicy for some | Leave a comment

The Police do have a sense of humor…

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Gandalfe

These 16 Police Comments were taken off actual police car videos around the country:

#16 "You know, stop lights don’t come any redder that the one you just went through."

#15 "Relax, the handcuffs are tight because they’re new. They’ll stretch after you wear them a while.²

# 14 "If you take your hands off the car, I’ll make your birth certificate a worthless document."

#13 "If you run, you’ll only go to jail tired."

#12 "Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? Because that’s the speed of the bullet that’ll be chasing you.²

#11 "You don’t know how fast you were going? I guess that means I can write anything I want to on the ticket, huh?"

#10 "Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don’t think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I’m the shift supervisor?"

#9 "Warning! You want a warning? O.K., I’m warning you not to do that again or I’ll give you another ticket."

#8 "The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"

#7 "Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy and corn dogs and step in monkey poop."

#6 "Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven"

#5 "In God we trust, all others we run through NCIC."

#4 "How big were those ‘Just two beers’ you say you had?"

#3 "No sir, we don’t have quotas anymore. We used to, but now we’re allowed to write as many tickets as we can."

#2 "I’m glad to hear that Chief (of Police) Hawker is a personal friend of yours. So you know someone who can post your bail."

AND THE WINNER IS….

#1 "You didn’t think we give pretty women tickets? You’re right, we don’t. Sign here."

Posted in Humor | 1 Comment

The Music Gig from Hell

Posted on May 21, 2007 by Gandalfe

KimsGig Sometimes there are engagements that you wish you had never accepted. The stories of such events are legion. As many times as I’ve heard of bad gigs, this new one tickles me.

Kim writes about this ‘adventure’ at the Sax on the Web forum site. No one can ever accuse Kim, the baritone sax player in the picture, of being faint of heart. I was going to grouse about playing in Victoria this weekend in the rain, but really, compared to Kim’s story, I have nothing to complain about.  Here is a picture that Gary, lead trumpet had taken. I still haven’t gotten my camera’s pictures downloaded yet.

This picture was of the good day, before the rain really came down!

Vic07-fix

This picture is cropped and slightly tweaked as the sun (I use that term lightly) was behind the the band. I had my hat one because it kept sprinkling. However, some high school dancers showed up and I hope to have those pictures posted by tomorrow.

Posted in Music | 1 Comment

Live Ink – Are we writing wrongly?

Posted on May 17, 2007 by Gandalfe

Live Ink LogoVentureBeat 05.10.07

Did you know our primitive brains weren’t wired very well to read this paragraph?

Scientific research conducted by Walker Reading Technologies, a small Minnesota startup that has been studying our ability to read for the last ten years, has concluded that the natural field of focus for our eyes is circular, so our eyes view the printed page as if we’re peering through a straw.

thestraw.jpgAnd a very bad-behaving straw at that, because not only do our eyes feed our brain the words we’re reading, they’re also uploading characters and words from the two sentences above and below the line we’re reading.

Every time we read block text, we’re forcing our brain to a wage a constant subconscious battle with itself to filter and discard the superfluous inputs. This mental tug of war slows reading speed and diminishes comprehension.

Read more …

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ToonTown Tuners – Four Brother

Posted on May 14, 2007 by Gandalfe

SaxQuintet Randy Emerick sends this pearl to the Bass Sax Coop. The sound is mesmerizing and I can’t stop listening to it. Here’s what Randy sez:

"This YouTube video clip was posted on another site, but it’s too good to miss. I think all five saxophone players are excellent, and there’s a bass sax solo, too.

The tune is Four Brothers, which is an unusually bebop-oriented piece for a Disney ensemble. Check it out. You won’t be disappointed!"

There are a number of other recordings by the ToonTown Tuners on YouTube too. I just hope they don’t get pulled as so many seem to be gone after a few months.

Enjoy.

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Woodinville Jazz Ensemble

Posted on May 13, 2007 by Gandalfe

Suzy and I are really enjoying being a part of the Woodinville Jazz Ensemble this year. We have been blessed with a phenominal director, Neil Proff and  a lot of really good musicians. We’ve placed some new recordings on the site for your enjoyment. We have concerts in Victoria next weekend, Cottage Lake on 24 June, and the Ballard Locks on 28 June. Hope so see you there.

This is my fifth year with the band and Suzy’s third. In the picture above you we one of our very dear friends JB playing the baritone sax. He started playing the sax for the first time four years ago. He played clarinet in school.  On the right you see Carol who is a world-class pianist who started playing the trombone. There are a lot of late bloomers in this band. And there are a number of music major types like Molly, Matt, and Cam to help us hold the whole thing together. Then there are the two band instructors including our director Neil.

I have been saying for years, as baby boomers’ kids get families of their own and the boomers move towards retirement, more and more of us will be looking to do the things we loved when we were young. Music was a big part of what Suzy and I loved in school and where we are spending a lot of time now-a-days.

Posted in Jazz | 3 Comments

Friday Funnies

Posted on May 11, 2007 by Gandalfe
Posted in Humor | Leave a comment

Josh get’s hit by a car

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Gandalfe

BikeWreckJosh Ledgard is a bicycle riding friend of mine and the third friend to be hit by a car in three years. One ended up in an emergency room for a week touch and go, the other two were able to walk away from the accident. Only Josh’s assailant were hit and run types (of the three).

"I saw a red car out of the corner of my eye quickly cut in-front of me and attempt to turn right onto the cross street without a signal. They did this, without knowing that I was right next to them. I slammed on both brakes, but careened into their right front passenger door. I was lucky the force of the collision unclipped me from the pedals. I flew onto the hood of their car and I heard their tires skid from the brakes. When the car stopped my momentum flung me off of the hood and onto the pavement."

My wife is pretty adamant that I do not ride anymore. Over the years I’ve been chased off the road once and hit once by a lady driver trying to beat a red light. She said she never saw me. That’s how’ll it will be, the person that runs me over will say, "I never saw him!" I now only ride in the park on a bike path. Even then I have to be extra cautious at the intersections because many times the drivers are busy doing everything but driving.

As I drove to work today, a lady driving a high-end Mercedes was pulling up behind me at a stop light and as she was slowing down, her head went down below the dash–what the heck! There was a car in front of me so I was stuck. Fortunately she bobbed back up and stopped. Be careful out there people.

Posted in Health and wellness | 2 Comments