Category Archives: About Me - Page 20

Random Music

Posted by anachostic on November 11, 2017 No comments

So, Woot, I’ve said I’ve been done with you plenty of times, but still you suck me in. This time, you made me buy this thing.

And you know what, you jerks? It’s not the first one of those I’ve bought. I bought not one, but two from you last time. And this time I bought not one, but two, again! If you care, I plan on taking one to work to try and drown out the stupid noise leaking from all these cubes. My desk fan is effective, but having a range of potential sounds is also very attractive.

But that’s only a lead in to what I was going to post about. I’d been thinking about this for a while, because it’s been happening for a while. It’s kind of a recent thing, too.

One day, I was explaining this noise device, the LectroFan, to AK and I was saying, “It’s weird. Sometimes when this thing is running and I’m lying in bed, I hear…” and AK interrupts, “voices? Do you hear voices?!” No, it’s not voices. (“awww.”) It’s music. But it’s not exactly music. It’s very similar to turning an analog tuning dial on an old radio, except there’s no points of static. It’s just microseconds of what sounds like songs constantly cycling in my head. And sometimes, it kind of makes sense, like “I’ve heard that before, what is that song?” but it’s gone in a flash and replaced by another song in another moment.

The LectroFan does not use sound samples, it generates white noise. White noise is a random waveform that is constantly morphing with no predictability, as I said, random. And songs are music, full of tones that overlap and interact, and those tones are made of waveforms. Another blog I manage, Relative Waves, actually focuses on the difference in sound between albums by comparing waveforms. For example, one comparison looks like:

All sound is waveforms, and you would think there is infinite variation in waveforms as sound, but in everyday practice, you will encounter sounds that remind you of something else or trigger a memory. And you also might think that white noise is just noise, that it couldn’t be mistaken as voices or music or anything else, but in small enough bites, yes it could.

This phenomena doesn’t happen often, but it isn’t a single isolated occurrence for me, either. It’s a very curious effect, and I find myself trying to make sense out of what I’m hearing, which of course is impossible. But it also makes me wonder if there are people out there that are not as logical and analytical to study the sounds and understand how they are tricking the ear. These people may be the ones becoming obsessed with “hearing voices”. Seems like there’s more of that nowadays?

The Envelope Please

Posted by anachostic on November 9, 2017 No comments

Yesterday, I picked up a new keyboard. I found it at a thrift shop. I suppose most people would be like, why would you want a grungy old keyboard? Just go to WalMart or Best Buy and buy a new one. Well, this keyboard was $100. And your reaction is probably, what the hell keyboard costs $100. And I’d keep feeding you clues. It’s 20 years old. Is this some sort of vintage IBM mechanical clicky monstrosity? The kind that annoy everyone in the room? Nope, it’s a keyboard. An Alesis QS8.

alesis_qs8

A picture doesn’t do this thing justice, only because you have to pick it up to appreciate it. The case is solid steel. The ends? Solid oak. 55 pounds of wood and steel. 88 keys of weighted piano action. It’s a monster.

It’s not the first monster I’ve had. The predecessor to this Alesis QS8 was a General Music Equinox Pro. Another 88 key steel anchor. I have a whole story about the disposal of that anchor that will probably never get posted, but it did involve me getting very belligerent with a sales person at Guitar Center.

Although the news that I now have a second 88-key keyboard is cool, that is not what I really wanted to post about. I had a revelation tonight. I may have mentioned I am participating in NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. This is week 2 and I’ll be honest. It’s not as much fun anymore. And that led me to my revelation.

If you have ever programmed a synthesizer, you probably know about the ADSR envelope. If you have ever participated in NaNoWriMo, you are living through an ADSR envelope. If you’ve done both, you are probably nodding right now. For those that don’t know what an ADSR envelope is, I will explain it very quickly and it will make immediate sense.

This is an ADSR envelope:

adsr-1-r471x

ADSR means: Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release. And these four points of the envelope correspond to the weeks of NaNoWriMo. You’ll need to replace “Amplitude” with “Daily Word Count”.

You have your first week, where you are full of energy and ideas, so your word count skyrockets. The second week (where I am now), your output drops to a more realistic level. Week three is the grind (I’m going to expect this will be true), where you have to force yourself to keep going although you are sick of seeing words on a screen. The final stage, if you make it, and if you’ve plodded along consistently, is coasting to the finish line, putting in filler text and additional dialog that fills in the blanks until you collapse at the finish line with one word left to go and you find that one character who never had a line of dialog and make him say, “Fuck.” Just because.

So, welcome to Decay week of NanoWriMo. Next week, we all Sustain.

Temporary Improvements

Posted by anachostic on November 3, 2017 No comments

Day one of my first NaNoWriMo. I don’t know what really to expect, so I probably overprepped. I planned on planting myself in front of the computer and not moving for hours and hours. So, to make sure I was uninterrupted, I ordered food from Pizza Hut to eat first, or during, or whatever. This post isn’t about the writing part, it’s about the food part (but not about the eating part).

I got to PH and picked up my pizza. It’s a different crew tonight and I don’t recognize anyone. Seeing as I go there weekly, more or less, we kinda know each other. Anyway, when the counter person came out with my food, she handed the pizza to me and walked off. That’s kind of rude in and of itself, but the question popped into my head that I wasn’t asked to look at the pizza first to make sure it was done correctly.

When I got to my car, I wondered more. Wasn’t that a thing for Pizza Hut? Something like, “Your pizza is free if we don’t ask you to look at it?” Now, I don’t particularly care if my pizza is free or not. I’m pretty sure I still have a credit on file with them that I’ll probably never use since I always order online. But, Pizza Hut was obviously concerned about customers seeing their pizzas at some point. It’s logical. Catch mistakes before they leave the store. The customer won’t be nearly as pissed off as they would be if they had to turn around and drive back for a replacement. So to incentivize this behavior in their employees, they established this rule, with the penalty of having a charge-off if the employees didn’t comply.

Ok, so an employee didn’t follow the protocol. But when I looked back in my memory, I didn’t see the rule promoted or displayed anywhere in the store. At least nowhere that I noticed it. How does a rule like this just end? That’s like my Quicken post where Intuit promoted better customer service free for a limited time. It’s not worth doing if you’re not going to do it all the time. (And in retrospect, how weird is it to explicitly say you have to pay for better service? It’s more like an unspoken thing.)

The same thing for DQ and their upside-down Blizzards. The Blizzard is supposed to be free if the cup isn’t flipped over when they hand it to you. But that’s not a universal rule. When I was back in PA, the DQ there had a sign stating they were not participating in the “upside-down or free” promotion. I’m unsurprised by that considering the customer base in that town, but regardless, I know the “upside-down or free” promotion will end at some point. And then what? It just goes back to the way it was. Why do it in the first place? In DQ’s case, I suppose it’s a wow-factor, albeit a lame one. Yeah, it’s thick, yippee. And if it’s always going to be thick, why not always flip it? Or why ever do it? What does giving it away for free have anything to do with anything?

When I stand back and look at it, I find it weird that a company has to reward a customer for a employee not doing a particular action. Granted, there are some examples like “if you don’t get a receipt”, which only exposes the fact that the business hires thieves. But how about, “if we don’t tell you about our drink specials” or “if we don’t ask you to order an appetizer”? Your meal will be free if we don’t annoy you?

Maybe this has contributed to the rise in online ordering and take-out orders.

Class Action Math

Posted by anachostic on November 1, 2017 No comments

A while ago, I had heard tell of a class action lawsuit where you could get up to $900 if you were a “victim” of the abuse. What’s the alleged abuse? Phone calls. Telemarketing phone calls. Well, let’s learn a little more about this. After all, $900 isn’t exactly chump change.

Apparently, some marketing company called a bunch of people representing something about cruise lines and blah blah blah. They didn’t do something right and now they are getting sued. So, for each call the company made to you, you could get up to $300, maxed out at $900 for three calls. Well, this abuse happened years ago, so how would I even know?

Conveniently, the lawyers set up a website where you could search for your phone number and it would tell you if you had been called. It’s great the marketing company kept call logs because I sure don’t keep track of all the spam calls I get. Upon visiting the site and utilizing the search, I found out two of my numbers were in the list. Jackpot!

But, I hate class action lawsuits. I hate them so much, I’ve actually written a “piss off” letter to one in response. Let me explain why class action lawsuits suck so much. I submitted two claims on this one just to gather the information to bitch about this.

I submitted two claims, back to back. In each case, I got a claim number for my submission. Safely assuming the claim numbers increased sequentially, I calculated that the number of claims being submitted was 20/minute. That’s 1200 claims every hour. My claims were made in August and the cutoff for claims ends in November. How many claims would get filed? Too many. Even taking into consideration that it’s not going to increase 1200 claims every hour (like at 3 in the morning), the point is still valid.

Just like any sweepstakes or lottery, you have to read the rules to determine your chances of winning. So, let’s look at the pertinent numbers involved in this case. How much is the payout? Between $7M and $12.5M. That will cover 23k to 41k $300 claims. But wait, there’s fine print. The lawyers get paid first. THE LAWYERS GET PAID FIRST. How much? $4.1M plus expenses plus an extra $500k. How much are expenses? No one knows, but it will be five years of expenses by a law firm – you make a guess. Anyway, now we’re at a maximum of about $2.8M to $8.4M with the numbers we do know. That will cover 10k to 28k $300 claims.

The number of claims at the time I submitted was growing by 1200/hour. The money to pay those claims will be exhausted in under 24 hours. Do you get it? Four months available to file a claim and the funds will run out in a day. So what happens then? Well, everybody gets less money, except the lawyers. EXCEPT THE LAWYERS.

An update was recently posted on the claim site and all claimants were sent an email with the update. As of October, with a month left to file a claim, over 2M claims have been submitted. Do I have to do the math? With a payout fund of $2.8M to $8.4M, that equates to $1.40 to $4.20 per call. Not $300; less than $5. And there’s still a month left for more claims.

So, the law firm is getting $4,100,000, plus expenses for five years of effort in this lawsuit and each person wronged gets a few bucks. I think I’ve made my case.

Authenticated

Posted by anachostic on October 31, 2017 No comments

Whenever you go to an local art or music exhibition, there is a greater than normal chance you are going to be faced with disappointment. Further, you may be slightly offended that such works of art are foisted upon the unsuspecting public. And they have the audacity to proclaim themselves as art! Whenever you encounter one of these events where you must provide your feedback and insight into the quality of the presented medium, there is a simple compliment that you can give that softens the blow. The art/music is authentic.

I am one of those artists that will offend your finer sense of artistic quality (doing it right now!), but you cannot deny the artistic integrity on display. And here is a point I want to make about how I approach art. I create ignorant art. That is, I do it using my own inherent skills and skills I am able to pick up organically. In other words, I don’t want to be taught – or more accurately, told – how to do art.

I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year because, you know, I can write, and moreso¹ because AK is the great persuader. What’s the first thing I get in my email when I sign up? A bunch of help resources. Thanks, but no thanks. I’m going to succeed or fail on my own, you just watch.

And the help never seems to stop. It’s kind of the same thing with music. There’s a never-ending list of resources for how to do something. It’s the case for anything creative, really. Here’s how to be creative. You know what? You either have it or you don’t. If you don’t have it and all you do is follow how-to’s, you are simply a clone of your teachers.

I’m not saying there’s no room to learn and grow. I’m saying you can’t be taught how to be creative. I know that no one can teach me how to have an eye for visual design. It’s not an ingrained skill for me. I could have sworn I’d written on this topic before, but I can’t find it. My memory is a post about how my music compositional style is unique and that uniqueness owes itself to not being formally trained. The memory also made a point that many musical icons had no training and became genre-defining because they broke the norm.

So, in that spirit, I am beginning a novel with only a plot concept and a couple of characters. I have no idea how it’s going to end and what will happen between the beginning and end. At a minimum, I expect it will cause me a lot of trouble with pacing, since I don’t know what will happen and when. It would suck to unexpectedly get to the end of the story at 20k words.

But, as bad as it may potentially turn out, I can say that my work is authentic. It will have no influence from “better, more knowledgeable” people whose writing credits are filled with how-to articles.

Moreso: from http://grammarist.com/usage/moreso – “…continues to appear despite the disapproval of usage authorities and of spell check.” Yeah, fuck you, authorities, and you too, spell check.

Personality Reorder

Posted by anachostic on October 30, 2017 No comments

Times have changed and so have I. A recent reassessment of myself via personality profile informed me of such. It was just a very simple personality test, one meant to be simple and easy to administer, but useful enough to apply in a workplace environment. The test is called Kingdomality and the results of the test will map your personality to a particular role in a self-sufficient medieval village.

I had taken this test back in about 2010 and I’m somewhat surprised I don’t have any past posts that discuss Kingdomality or my results. I know I have discussed it in another blog, but apparently, not here. So then, why not now?

In my earlier results, I was classified as a “discoverer”. This was the person in the village that would leave and go in search of great things and bring them back to the village for everyone’s use. And that’s pretty much what I did in my work life. I would find new technologies and techniques and present them to everyone, then I’d be off again. It sounds like every team would want one of these people, but you also have to understand that discoverers are hard to pin down and may have trouble focusing on current tasks because they would much rather be exploring. And that’s pretty much what I did.

In my most recent test, my result was a “dreamer-minstrel”. I think their role is to encourage and cheer everyone up, like a wandering minstrel. I never really thought of myself as encouraging at work. I’ve been pretty cynical for quite a while and have a slightly bleak outlook on the company’s future.

In the time between tests, the world changed. For one, I grew very weary of the rate of change in the software development world. Because of that, there was nothing I felt like discovering any more. If I did discover something, would it still be around in six months? Secondly, at my job, things are pretty stable. There isn’t a pressing need to get with the latest technology. That need was there when I first got hired, but we’re pretty good now.

Over the weekend, it finally dawned on me why my results changed. It’s my relationship. When I first took the test, I was single (well, almost divorced) and was plowing all my effort into my career. This time around, I’ve been in an excellent relationship for many years. And one of my primary functions in that relationship is cheerleader. The GF had made a deprecating remark on something and I immediately reframed the issue for her in a positive light. I should have noticed that behavior earlier because I do it somewhat frequently.

I’m not going to say I’m always good at it (“God damn it! Things are not that bad!”) nor will I say I do it for everyone (“Excuse me miss, I overheard your comment and I wanted to say that I think your hair looks great.”). There are very few people in my inner circle, which has the benefit of not exhausting me from being supportive.

Trying to extend that into the workplace means that I try to understand the positive reasons for the crazy business decisions we have been making as of late. And even if I don’t understand or agree with them, I need to try and promote them as good for all of us. Is it lying? No, it’s just focusing on the positive. That wall of water approaching? Well, it’s been pretty hot lately and it will cool us off.

The Search Continues

Posted by anachostic on October 22, 2017 No comments

Today, I treated myself to a nice, long, hot shower. I know at least one person who would say, “fuck yeah!” and at least one person who would say, “fuck you!” to that extended activity. Showers aren’t really a big thing to me. I’m typically always a solo showerer (“Boooo!” from at least one person) and usually, I just want to get it done and get my day started.

Because of my view that a shower is utility and not luxury, you would think my showering hardware would reflect that. You’d be right but oddly, I find myself in a perpetual search for the perfect showerhead. I initially wrote shower head and quickly determined that is something totally different. (“Boooo!” from at least one person)

I don’t recall the showerhead that came with the house when I bought it, and can’t remember when I first swapped it out, but I do remember at that time I had a real bug up my ass about saving as much water as possible. I don’t really know why, since the water bill is really low and my appliances are all water-efficient. But anyway, I bought this ultra-efficient head with a shutoff switch built into it.

41uMWEd8qpL[1] I think I might have experienced this spray nozzle once before in a hotel and I was impressed with the power of the spray while it still used very little water. So I sought one out for myself. When I got it installed, I learned a few things. One is that novelty wears off. If I had stayed a full week at that hotel instead of a night, I would have learned that the sensation of the spray isn’t all that wonderful, day after day. The other thing I learned is that when I used the shutoff switch, the water immediately starts cooling, so when the switch gets turned back on, you get a blast of cold water. Nope, this is not the last showerhead I will own.

89cb9d4f-8aaa-4f18-9118-8cc0719899c9[1] In 2012 (according to sales records), I purchased a Dream Spa showerhead. This head had a major advantage in that it had a hose on it. I don’t know why manufacturers always try to suggest that you will grab the showerhead and spray all over your body with it. I just turn around in the shower. It’s not that difficult, people. However, the hose allowed me to clean the the shower much easier than a stationary head would. Being a typical guy, it was not out of the realm of possibility to run a garden hose into the bathroom to spray the walls down. I’m not saying I did that… often, but then again, I’m not saying I clean… often.

I used this head for a really long time. And I did it in spite of the fact that the shower head designers were complete idiots. What I am referring to is the nozzles. Nothing like having a dozen or so faces staring aghast at your nudity. Don’t see it?

Because the water sucks everywhere in this state and even in my house, I eventually had to replace this showerhead. The limestone and other minerals clogged up, dried out, and cracked the rubber OMG faces, resulting in a suboptimal spray pattern. So I bought another Dream Spa head, one that had even more spray patterns. Honestly, they all sucked. I’m just sticking with a simple outer ring spray pattern until I move on to my next head.

Unrelated to my head problems at my own home, a different problem was occurring back in my hometown motel, where I was last weekend. You know how a lot of faucets have tilt-to-open, turn-for-temp designs? You see them pretty much everywhere.

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Well, I was pretty surprised that in the lobby of the motel when I was checking in, there was a large-type printout explaining the proper use of the shower faucet. My assumption is they had one too many people snapping the handles off trying to tilt them to turn on the water. In my own room, they had another educational piece, printed on a high-quality placard.

Contact the front desk if you don’t comprehend what we’re try to explain. Don’t break our damn handles anymore.

Now And Future

Posted by anachostic on October 20, 2017 No comments

You might think there is someone new managing this blog. But no, it is still the same person. I’ve gotten a recent “kick in the pants” to write more. You can see in my history that I’ve posted a few times a month and sometimes when nothing was going on, or when lots was going on, I skipped a month. You can also see that I’ve been trying to post consistently every weekday as of late. This accelerated publishing frequency has necessitated that I dip into old drafts and refine them for posting. Not to worry there, I’ve got dozens in the backlog.

I’ve never been at a loss for ideas, but over the years, it became a significant effort for me to flesh out an idea into a post. It’s the same mechanism I use when writing music (which also has been neglected). You start with a riff, and if you’re lucky, you have a hook. Then you have to form the song around that riff. If you have a good hook, you have to elevate the rest of the song’s parts to match the hook’s quality. If it’s just a riff, you have to hope you’ll find the hook in the creation process.

Having ideas is easy. Anyone can have them. And that’s why Twitter exists. At various times, I considered moving to Twitter because I could get ideas out without having to construct a narrative. But now that I’ve shaken the dust off, I feel more accomplished being able to express an idea and surround it with context.

You’ll also notice that I’m starting to incorporate images and hyperlinks in my posts, where I rarely did before. Actually, if you go way back to when this blog wasn’t even on WordPress, you’ll see more images. So, I’m actually going back to my early blogging days.

On a completely different topic, I recently found out that the excellent blog composing utility, Windows Live Writer, which has been dormant for years and years, finally has a successor – Open Live Writer. This utility seems to be a continuation of the original Windows Live Writer code, just updated to work with current blog platforms. At a minimum, they fixed some issues with publishing to Blogger. It’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t tried it before.

And lastly, a small announcement for the week coming up. I’ve been practicing the skill of expanding a simple idea into something more substantial and to do that, I’ve written a small series of stories. Well, they’re too short to be stories, more like tales. Since it is Halloween season, these tales are all dark. I’ll be posting them all next week. Here’s a preview of what’s coming:

Halloween Scenes – Bundle Of Joy
Halloween Scenes – Everybody Loves You Now
Halloween Scenes – Desiccation
Halloween Scenes – Lesson Of A Lifetime
Halloween Scenes – Peep Show

Does My Offering Please You?

Posted by anachostic on October 18, 2017 No comments

Things my cat likes:

Friskies
Feline greenies
Origen original treats
Tuna flakes from PetCo
Pop tarts
Mounds coconut
Peanut butter
Pistachios
Cake
Hamburger
McDonald’s cheese
Cookies
Long John Silver’s fish
Frosted Mini Wheats
Froot Loops (sometimes)
Pizza
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Some types of cat grass
Cardboard boxes (bonus if there is crunchy paper in box)
Bean bags
Suitcases (open or closed)
People visiting
Sticking her paws in my speaker port holes

Things my cat does not like

Spaghetti
Milk
Rice
Steak
Splashing water
Tuna flakes from other pet shops
The other types of cat grass
Paper bags (even if the paper bag is in a box)
Other cats
Stepping on bare skin
The garbage truck

This One Time At Summer Camp…

Posted by anachostic on October 17, 2017 No comments

I made a trip to my hometown, the wasteland, this last weekend. It wasn’t exactly business or pleasure. I guess it would be considered more business than anything else, though. My mom now resides in a nursing home. I don’t think they call them nursing homes anymore. They’re probably called long-term care facilities. Cue George Carlin and his anger over the softening of the English language. But anyway…

I got to see my mom a couple of times. She doesn’t have a lot of stamina for visits and dismisses visitors with a “I want to take a nap.” No problem. I don’t really have much to talk about anyway. But one thing we talked about got me thinking.

In her new living quarters, they have a pretty set schedule with meals, activities, therapy, etc. Some things are optional or semi-optional, but a lot isn’t. When she was complaining about it, I was reminded of my years at summer camp. I thought, my mom’s at summer camp, for the rest of her life.

My first summer camp was an unpleasant experience. It was a military camp far from home that ate up six weeks of my summer vacation from school. I didn’t know anyone there and I was not exactly military material. Your day was regimented into sessions, of which you were allowed to choose things like Arts and Crafts, Model Rocketry, Basket Weaving, etc. Then there were others you couldn’t, like Softball and Soccer. Then there were parades and practice parades, and inspections, and of course, meals. You always went to meals in formation with your entire division. What a show.

And in many ways, my mom’s new life is like that. Some things are optional, or a choice and some you can’t get out of. You go to meals with the same group and sit at the same table with everyone. You are going to do therapy. (They don’t talk about it, but the facility has to perform therapy or they are considered neglectful of their patients and would get fined or shut down.) There is a gift shop/concession place where you can buy things with money from your account (I had that too in camp). Other people can put money in your account for you to spend (just like my parents did for me).

So if my mom is unhappy at summer camp, it’s no different than how I felt in the same situation. Both involved being around strangers you have to become friends with, away from a lot of things that are familiar to you, and made to do things you may not feel like doing. If you’re an independent spirit like my mom (or me for that matter), it’s a nightmare.

While my mom and I discussed the summer camp concept, I finally admitted to her that I almost got kicked out of that military camp in my last year (the last of four) there. I had gone “cabin-trashing” with another camper and it isn’t really a surprise we got caught. We had to spend the time repairing all the damage we caused while all the other campers were at a picnic. I think we were still fed lunch, I can’t remember. And it caused me a lot of ill will with my cabin-mates.

But, the year following that incident, my parents sent me to a different summer camp. A computer camp that was only two weeks long. It was a totally different environment than military camp and I would have gladly spent six weeks there. But it was only a couple of years that I got to go and then I was on my own again.

Unfortunately for my mom, it doesn’t sound like there are other camp opportunities.

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