Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

Whew! We dodged that bullet!

Kamala Harris has been appointed the Biden Administration’s Gun CZAR. She’ll be leading President Dunderhead’s  new federal office of gun violence prevention.

Cacklingkamala

Of course President dumbass would create some new office of blah blah blah. Of course his administration would take aim at the 2nd amendment. After all his administration has already tried to trash the First and Fourth amendments.

His administration is also engaging in destroying the justice system so the American Citizen won’t have any legal recourse to recover their rights…

Fortunately for those of us who believe in the 2nd Amendment, President Dullard, appointed perhaps the only person more incompetent than himself. Kamala Harris!

With her at the head of this anti-gun push, we’ll all be able to own .50 Cal Machine guns by Christmas. If we’re really lucky we’ll be able to have patriot missile batteries on our front lawns by New Years! That assessment is based on her stellar performance as the border CZAR. 

The gun control lobby must be apoplectic. They know they’re screwed but they can’t say anything about it because to criticize the Biden/Harris administration is heresy of the highest order!

That part makes me laugh! It’s nice to see them get a little of what average law abiding citizens have been putting up with since President Doofus, “bump & goed,” his way into the Oval Office, and honestly a long time before that in California.

(I never noticed how many denigrating terms started with “D” before.)

There was a reason that no one in California voted for Harris for President. It wasn’t that she was a woman, or a woman of color, or that she couldn’t keep her legs together. It was that she was a SHITTY Attorney General for the state, and a shittier Senator.

Putting her in the Senate meant that she wasn’t in California to keep screwing up the state. Beware all you lockstep Democrats… The people of California might send Gavin Newsom to Washington as President so we have time to undo his colossal fuck ups here in California. Yeah, think about that for a minute! Maybe the dumbasses we send to the House and Senate, we send not because they’re good but so that we can limit the damage they do to the state.

In Kamala’s case no one ever imagined that she’d be considered for Vice President. Then along comes President dipshit!

(There really are a lot of “D” words…)

I heard that President Dummy said, “If you need an 80 round magazine, you shouldn’t own a gun.”

I thought that was funny too. An 80 round magazine just means you can bag your hunting limit without reloading!

On the other hand, if high capacity magazines are measures of how good a shot you are, or should be, then perhaps we should limit the capital police to single shot weapons in time for the next insurrection.

It would be interesting to see the capital police and maybe the D.C. police defending why they felt it necessary to have 15 round magazines in their Glocks, in contradiction to President Dweebs assertions.

Fellow patriots, we can all rest easy! Cackling Kamala will be as effective in the Gun Control sphere, as she has been in every position the Biden administration has put her in. 

It does make me wonder if she’s any good in the one venue that has supposedly  propelled her to the top of the political arena. Is she well versed in the bedroom, or is it just easy to get her legs open?

What? Brain rebooted….

Yesterday while I was on hold with Apple, I was scanning news articles and one from Bloomberg caught my attention. The headline was a jaw dropper.

Is it me, or are the titles of officials sounding more and more like the stupid titles of drooling inbred Barons and Dukes who were 6th cousins to the king from old Europe?

Here is the persons’ title, “White House Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security”  what the fuck? The translation of this title is, another cocksucking bobblehead yes person.

I’m gonna call him “Bobblehead” Amos Hochstein.

This person actually said publicly, “one reason why oil prices have surged and gas prices is that Bidenomics works.” Then started blaming OPEC for decreasing supply.

WHAT? 

OPEC wouldn’t have the ability to fuck with global oil prices if Biden hadn’t within days of his inauguration screwed domestic oil production and caused oil prices to jump, not due to constraint… but due to Biden’s actions destabilizing oil futures.

As I theorized before, Bidenomics may indeed be working exactly as designed. Bidenomics isn’t to help the country, it’s to help the filthy rich and punish any and all Americans who might not be marching in communist lockstep with the Democrat party. A.K.A. all those who disagree with the direction the country is moving in, and are therefore domestic terrorists.

I’m predicting it here and now. It is going to be a very cold expensive winter for the average American Family. Because Biden’s energy policies will continue to drive up fuel prices. Don’t forget it’s not just gasoline.

Diesel fuel is what runs the container ships, the 18 wheel trucks, the farm equipment, the construction equipment, and petroleum byproducts go into almost everything else throughout our product and supply chain. So when fuel gets or remains expensive… the average American Family takes it in the ass.

An Interesting side note, Biden and his bobblehead staff all say repeatedly that The President is very concerned that the American Family doesn’t have undue hardship.

When you run that statement through the Democrat/Biden translation matrix… You get “The President want to make sure the American Family is hungry and cold.”

After all if you keep people cold enough, hungry enough, poor, and hopeless, long enough, then offer them free shit and relief if they vote for you, or if they’re asked to offer up their first born to be slaves, most of ‘em will say “yes”.


There’s a story about Vlad Țepeș of Romania inviting the poor, homeless, and destitute, of the town to his castle for dinner. He asked them what they wanted of him, they replied, “give us money, give us food, end our suffering.” At which point he ordered the palace guard to slaughter everyone in the dining hall.

VladIII

He ended their suffering right then and there.

I don’t know if that is a story that actually happened or if it was a teaching tale.

I do know, that every time I see people with their hands out to receive “Free” stuff. I always think of Vlad Țepeș and his “Solution”.

“Free” in politics is just a word that obfuscates the actual price. If more people knew that, politicians would have a lot less power.

Vlad Țepeș actually Vlad III,  had quite a life. Wars, imprisonment, loss of a throne and regaining it.

Stories about his “Unheard of cruelty” were circulating in his lifetime. Note we’re talking in the fourteen hundreds. By todays standards just living in that time would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment. This guy was considered unusually cruel then.

… Turkish messengers came to [Vlad] to pay respects, but refused to take off their turbans, according to their ancient custom, whereupon he strengthened their custom by nailing their turbans to their heads with three spikes, so that they could not take them off.

— Antonio Bonfini: Historia Pannonica

The pope was informed of Vlad’s methods. A Poem about him was performed at the court of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor during the winter of 1463.

While the story of him slaughtering all the poor from the town near his castle might be apocryphal, given the other stories about Vlad III I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually did it.

Interestingly, stories about Vlad III were some of the first best sellers to be printed with moveable type.

Bram Stoker did a great job of romanticizing Vlad III. As the source of all the vampire myths, in my Goth phase I was curious about Vlad III so I found out a about the real person.

I think he was an Arch Villain. This is certainly true through the lens of todays standards. It’s probably true through even the lens of the fourteen hundreds. But there was a lot of political intrigue and a lot more involved in keeping his kingdom together. Perhaps his cruelty was justified, perhaps not.

For some reason, Vlad III always pops into my mind whenever I hear Biden or his bobbleheads speaking. I think Biden and his administration are cruel and they call it “kindness”. They call failure, “success”. They call crime and criminal behavior, “Righteousness”.


By the way…. 

I did not preorder the new iPhone after all. 

Apple wouldn’t allow me to preorder it and use their interest free financing without me declaring which cellphone carrier I was going to use. In other words they wanted me to buy a carrier locked phone and I won’t do that.

They didn’t make me declare my carrier when I purchased my iPad with cellular capability. Nor did they ask for me to declare a carrier when I purchased my Apple Watch. Yet I was allowed to put those items on their interest free financing.

For some reason, they wouldn’t allow me to do the same with a new iPhone. 

I’d actually filled out the Pre Preorder forms that was supposed to make the preorder easy this morning. I stopped when I realized that for me to have the phone I’d have to put it on my card at whatever the interest rate is. Since the Apple Card is among the highest interest rate cards I have, that was a big RED NO GO!

Who am I kidding? All credit cards have nightmare interest rates these days!

The Apple Card is convenient, but it’s not something you carry a balance on unless it’s interest free. To be honest, I’m questioning keeping the Apple Card moving into the future. I don’t like the way they handle some things. The question is, does my dislike outweigh the convenience? It’s about neck & neck right now.

I’ll wait on the new iPhone. Maybe, I’ll wait until the next iPhone, or the next… I can wait, the battery on my phone isn’t that weak yet.

Sure there are things I’d like to have, but do I need them?

Maybe not…

Today is the day

Preorders for iPhones began at 5am.

I’m still deciding if I want to plunk down the cash for a new phone. Indeed I’m wondering if I want to pre-order one instead of seeing it in the store in person. 

I know I want blue. I’m pretty sure I want the smaller of the two phones although the telephoto abilities of the iPhone Pro Max are intriguing. I just don’t think I could get comfortable with the size of the Max. I still like being able to put my phone in my pocket.

Sacrificing that ability for 5x telephoto versus 3x doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff for me given how little I use telephoto in general.

My current phone is 512GB. It’s served me well at that storage level, I do take photos regularly and with the resolution of the new iPhone being 4 times that of the current iPhone I wonder if bumping the phone storage up would be a good idea. Or is that something I can kick down the road a bit? It’s $200 extra. 

That pushes an already expensive phone into the stratosphere. Then again, at these prices? What’s another 200 bucks? It’s improbable that this will be my last iPhone, given that I tend to replace them every 3 years. My estimated remaining lifespan is 10+ years so maybe there’ll be 3 more iPhones in my future. 


My perspective on that kind of thing is changing. The other half made choices that meant he had what was just barely serviceable in the last 5-10 years of his life. I was the one that forced him into buying better things than just “serviceable”. He fought me on his Apple Watch and flat out refused to get an iPhone that used facial recognition.

Because he played harp, his thumbs and fingers were always torn up a little. As it turns out, just enough, that fingerprint scanners in iPhones and iPads more often than not, wouldn’t work.

It wasn’t anything he complained about, but I couldn’t help but notice he made his life more difficult than it had to be. It saddens me that the last few years of his life, he might have been more frustrated by devices and tools meant to make his life easier. When I bought his last iPhone, I should have gotten the one with facial recognition like mine.

Thinking like this has changed my perspective some. I’ve always gone for nice things within some kind of boundaries. Now, I’m looking at things from the perspective of does this make me smile, does it make my life easier or reduce frustration? If it does, then It’s worth it to spend a little extra cash. Especially since I’m aware, the road ahead of me is shorter than the road behind me. Why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?

The computer I’m typing on right now, is a marvel. It’s small, powerful, and has great battery life. In low power mode, the battery life is crazy long. Most of what I do these days is completely unaffected by running in low power mode. So yes, I spent a bloody fortune on this machine, but it meets all the requirement stated above, and probably will not be replaced in the next 5 years and possibly this is the last computer I’ll have.

I’m usually startled at how fast this computer really is when I plug it in. Low power mode turns off when it sees incoming power. Mostly it’s the speed of some applications loading. But when I’m using something like Final Cut, or the Affinity Suite of applications, I really notice. I’m sure I’d notice the speed using Photoshop if I could afford to use Adobe products anymore. $55 a month for access to Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the other Adobe products seems excessive. If I was a student it would be $20 a month, but if I was a business it’s $85 a month. Wow! Must be nice… 


I miss the days of being able to purchase the Adobe Creative Suite outright and deciding if I needed to upgrade year over year.

That being said, Affinity does a great job of replacing Adobe. I just noticed that most of the benchmark tests aren’t referring to Photoshop rendering speed anymore. I hadn’t thought about Adobe for at least a year, maybe two. That’s a pity, I used to use their products all the dang time. I haven’t even looked at the Adobe Font catalog for more than 5 years. I used to always be shopping for some cool unique font. 

Ahhh apparently Adobe is doing subscriptions on fonts too. Guess What? The subscription is obscenely expensive!

I guess Adobe really did cut themselves right out of the general public’s awareness when they got too pricy for individuals to maintain copies of their products. I’ll have to make sure that all of my previously purchased fonts are securely stored somewhere because I won’t be able to replace them going forward.

I’ve found some font houses are still in business. Of course, looking at the various font houses, I discovered two fonts that I really liked. At $200 bucks a piece They may be a bit too rich for my blood, but at least I could buy them without a subscription. 

Screenshot 2023 09 14 at 10 27 38 AM

From Typography.com, is a very beautiful typeface. As fonts go, it’s not inordinately priced. This is the problem I have with subscription services especially for fonts. It looks like paying one year of Adobe’s subscription price would greatly exceed the cost of purchasing both of the fonts that I’ve just found and liked.

As an individual, I might only need or want 2 fonts. So having subscription access to 1000s of fonts does me no good whatsoever. That being said, I know that I’m an outlier. Most people don’t think about the font they’re using unless it’s hard to read.

Being in the printer and printing industry for as long as I was, I look at fonts very differently. For example, Requiem (above) is elegant, and beautiful. There are features in the font that are very old school having to do with ligatures. I suppose I look at fonts as functional art. Moreover a beautiful font is art that I get to look at and use everyday on my computer.

I digress, I do wonder though if I still have any of the Adobe Type Manager 3.5” disks around that contained my font library. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those as I’m cleaning up.

This is how I lose entire days… One connection leads to another in my head, and then another and another until I realize I’ve learned a lot but haven’t gotten anything done.


I’ve decided that I’m preordering the phone… 

Hmm, apparently not! Something is very odd with the Apple site. Apparently, they’ve got another hit on their hands…

9/11

Lasttower 2011091122 years later.

That morning, I’d just gotten up, grabbed my computer and began the ritual of looking for a job over my morning coffee. I’d flipped on CNN, back when they were an actual source of information, instead of propaganda and sat in stunned disbelief watching the replay of the planes flying into the twin towers.

I’d missed the actual event due to the time change but witnessed the aftermath and knew that our country would never be the same.

I pounded my fists bloody on the floor in front of the television. Impotent rage at something that had already happened. I was young… just over 40. I was afraid for my brother who I knew was going to be in the thick of it.

I also decided at that moment to take the first opportunity to finally go work for the Military Industrial Complex. I was too old to join the military, but by God I could help to build shit to utterly destroy our enemies. Or, as it turned out, build shit designed to add to the safety of our troops.

On 9/11/2001 I’d have turned the entire Middle East to nuclear glass, and never thought about the millions sent to Allah. It was a safe bet 9/11 was some asshole from the Middle East, My thought was nuke ‘em all and then you don’t have to worry about ‘em ever again. This was especially true when I saw images of people in the Middle East celebrating. I’d have gladly made sure they were all well and truly fucked. I’d have smiled watching those fuckers die like cockroaches in a cheap apartment.

My other half came home from school early. The classes he’d been subbing for had been dismissed and the children sent home to be with their parents. He hugged me, calming my rage and hate. Then he cleaned and bandaged my bloody fists. He pointed out that my nuke ‘em all and let Allah sort ‘em out was pretty close to genocide and that wasn’t a good solution. I admitted he was right. We sat on the couch holding each other, watching the news coverage until it became obvious that the talking heads were repeating the same thing over and over again. We turned off the TV. When we went to bed that night we held each other tightly wondering if there would be more attacks while we slept.

As I said, I knew our country would be irrevocably changed. At the time I didn’t realize that the source of changes  would come from inside our borders, from our own people,  and indeed from within the halls of Congress. 

Later, I remember being uncomfortable with The Patriot Act. I went along with it because there wasn’t a choice (my voice mattered little,) but also on the assurances that The Patriot Act was a Temporary measure. That was back in the day when I has some measure of trust in our politicians and political process.

Well, The Patriot act has been temporary for 21 years and it isn’t going away any time soon.

I never thought that fear would end up being so potent a weapon that Americans, of all people would fall in line asking the Government to protect them, or that they’d be so willing to trade rights and freedoms for the illusion of government protection.

We should have been demanding answers of our Government. We should have demanded an explanation how they had so abjectly failed to protect our borders. You know, the primary thing the government is supposed to do… Not from a place of fear, but from a place of holding the politicians fully accountable for their failure.

Yes, there were hearings and investigations. There were a few “sacrificial lambs”.  “New” more powerful bureaucracies were born. But in the end, the people that were in power, and therefore responsible for this epic failure… Remained in power. Most of the policies that had allowed 9/11 to happen in the first place are still in force today. 

The only people who experienced limitations of their freedoms and rights post 9/11, were American Citizens. Illegal surveillance, censorship, “enacted for the public good,” any of this ringing a bell?

Our borders, which should have been closed on 9/11 at the ends of gun barrels, remained open and still remain open today.

The rationale was and is, “These poor migrants are looking for a better life.” That is a true statement. But the chaos of our border policies, and lax enforcement of expired visas and our not deporting people who have committed crimes (the first of which was entering the country illegally,) and all the rest of it has led to our not knowing who is within our borders.

These are exactly the same conditions the 9/11 hijackers exploited to launch their attack in 2001.

As we listen to Mayorkas in hearings, if you listen very closely, you’ll hear that our border is no longer being over-run by only people from Mexico or failed South American countries. You’ll hear that nationals from all over the world are being apprehended at the border and many more are “got aways”

In other words, another 9/11 is possible, and I’d say probable. If I were a son of a bitch like Osama bin Laden, I’d be planning some big assed 9/11 attack on the 25th anniversary. God knows, I’d have plenty of time to move assets in place. Even if 10% of my guys were stopped trying to cross the almost non existent border, I could still put enough bad guys in place with enough time and resources to make the 25th anniversary a real “blow out”.

Every time I hear Mayorkas telling us that the border is secure I ask myself, “Is he delusional, or is he an agent of a foreign power?”

It needn’t be a disgruntled islamic nation that sets up a 25th anniversary “party” for America. It could literally be any nation on Earth with an Ax to grind, or who seeks the overthrow and demise of our country. China, Russia, Iran, Ukraine (when we can’t afford to give them money and arms). Literally any nation on the planet that would love to see America go down could put their assets in place. 

But the greater threat is, what happens if several nations or theocracies combine forces?

9/11, as terrible as it was for us in 2001 apparently taught our leaders absolutely nothing. I am not saying for us to live in fear. We have the ability to fix the problem, what we appear to lack is the will. Perhaps more concisely we cannot force congress to execute our will. That is a serious problem because Congress doesn’t seem to remember they work for the American people. We should remind them!

Yes, today should be a day of remembrance for those victims of 9/11.

We should remember the valiant action taken by the passengers of Flight 93. We should bow our heads in prayer for all those first responders who died trying to save others, and those who died later of diseases caused by exposure to toxic materials. Many of those men and women rushed in, knowing the dust was likely dangerous, they heedlessly continued to search for, and help others, without any protection.

We should also see to it that nothing like 9/11 happens again. We should see to it our government is brought to heel, with the American people once agin holding the leash. That’s how I believe we should honor the fallen, not with grandiose speeches, empty promises, and outright lies. 

We should honor them by returning to the safety, freedom, and security, our country enjoyed pre 9/11.