Category: General

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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. 

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Dianne Feinstein is dead.

Condolences to her family.

Unlike the radical left, who dance on anyone’s grave that they disagree with,  I’m not going to jump for joy or say nasty things about her.

I didn’t agree with a lot of her policies. I really took offense when she was questioning a Marine a while ago and took him to task for politely using M’am instead of Senator. As in “Yes M’am” not “Yes Senator Feinstein”

I thought she was being overbearing and demonstrated how out of touch she was not only with Southerners (which the marine in question was,) but also with the Marine Corps itself who taught a level of decorum which included the use of the term “M’am”.

It was at that particular moment that I lost respect for Dianne Feinstein. At that moment she looked like she was more interested in badgering and bullying a young Marine than hearing his answer to her question. In that moment, I interpreted her entire career as about power not public service. 

I’ve thought for a long time that she should go. I thought she was losing touch with the realities of the world today and California in particular. She’d been in the Senate for far too long and had become isolated in the rarified air of Washington D.C.

It often seemed that she was more about the Washington Politics than about the people of California whom she was supposed to represent.

Over the past year or two it had become clear that Feinstein wasn’t doing all that well.

I thought it cruel that she was still being propped up and wheeled around while so obviously ill. The poor woman should have been home, enjoying her view.

Then again, having spent so much of her life in Washington D.C. it’s possible that she was more at home there, than in California.

For me Dianne Feinstein was a poster child for term limits. There have been many others, but she stuck out for me because she was one of my state senators.

Regardless of my personal opinions formed over the past decade or so… I’m sure that she did a lot of good in her idealistic youth and early years in Washington D.C. before politics consumed her. 

I sincerely hope she rests in peace.

Dianne Feinstein 1933-2023

Feinstein 1600

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So how’s that anti police stand working for ya?

Targetstoreclosing

Target has announced they’re closing 9 stores across the country.

Boo Hoo! 

“Community Leaders” are bemoaning the imminent closures, citing the harm such closures cause to people on fixed incomes. They’re saying things like people could walk to the Target but when it closes the people will have to go elsewhere via car, bus, or train.

Waaa, Waaa, Waaa,

One store being closed is in Harlem. Two stores in Seattle, Three Stores in Portland, and Three in San Francisco.

What part of retail stores are FOR PROFIT don’t people understand? When the stores are projected to loose upwards of 1 billion dollars, Anybody with a brain could predict the outcome. Target will cut its losses and say, “fuck you,” to communities that sanction crime. 

You can’t deny that these communities sanction crime. Defund the Police says, “we don’t believe in law and order.”  I’m sure there are some of these folk who actually thought that crime was somehow a function of police actions. Unfortunately, the people this will hurt most are the elderly. 

All the young dumbshits running rampant through stores stealing anything they can put their hands on should be real proud of themselves. 

It’s not the “man” a.k.a. “white fucker” running the business that is hurt. That guy, and the board of directors, and the investors in Target see the loss as a blip in profitability. A blip that is easily remedied by closing stores, laying off employees, and security guards, selling the store fixtures, and finally selling the store building or terminating the building lease. 

The ‘Blip’ disappears almost instantly, and profitability resumes.

It’s all handled in gleaming glass and steel office buildings, by people who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and drive Teslas, Mercedes, and BMWs. Their hands are clean and for them all of this is just numbers on a piece of paper. They’ll never know or see the collateral damage done to the community, nor should they. 

Because they’re not the ones doing the damage! They’re just reacting to profitability dropping and expenses rising. In fact a computer could make all the same decisions with the same outcome.

It’s the single mother who has to go on a three hour trip with her screaming children in tow to get diapers. It’s their granny pushing her walker past the closed stores 2 blocks from home, to hit the subway for the 40 mile trip to get her heart medication.

So good job! You filthy thieving pieces of shit! You hurt no-one but your own, and changed nothing except to make things worse. 

I guess we can’t expect anything better from you. After all, you were educated in the American School system and taught repeatedly that you were entitled to that PlayStation and big screen TV, but never taught that you had to get off your ass and work for it. Instead you thought you’d be a big time influencer, or sports player, or entertainer. Uh huh, sure… 

Here’s something that “Racist” math is good for. Take the number of people in your particular community. Now count the number of people from that community that are any of those things (Influencer, sorts player, entertainer). Divide the influencer/sport/entertainer, count by the number of your overall population. See that little tiny number? The one that starts 0.0000000?

It may have a 1 or larger number after all those zeros. 

That jackass, is how many people from your community are making a living in those “jobs”. That’s not even the probability that you are going to make it as an (influencer, sports player, or entertainer). Just so you know bucko the probability of you personally “making it” looks more like 0.00000000000000000000000000123.

So instead of jerking off in your mama’s basement waiting for your “Big Break,” maybe you should go back to school, learn a trade and get your ass to work. Then instead of throwing rocks through windows and stealing shit, you can walk into a store and buy shit like everyone else has been doing since humanity first moved into villages.

Yeah, historically, if you’d been taught actual history… Villages, spawned trade and free markets, and OH MY GOD! NOOOOOO!, Capitalism. 

Communism is the artificial construct. Nobody is altruistic enough for Communism to ever work. I don’t want to work my ass off for someone who’s a lazy piece of shit. Why can’t I be a lazy piece of shit too? Why should I work to provide food for my family when that guy who plays X-Box all day smoking dope with his friends, gets as much food for his family as I do, even though I’m the one growing the food!

Communism is completely antithetical to Human Nature. It will never work, and hasn’t to date worked ever anywhere on the planet.

Human Nature always wins.

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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?

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There’s a reason we have voice mail.

There are lots of reasons that might prevent you from answering the phone.

My reasons are that sometime, I’m not in a position to answer your call.  Other times, neither my phone or I recognize the phone number and don’t have the time or desire to listen to some bullshit SPAM call is shitty pigeon English.

I will usually answer if it’s family or close friends. Sometimes if I answer someone’s call and explain that I’m really busy it goes like this.

Me: “I’m really busy right now, is there something you needed immediately? If not, can I call you back in a few?”

Them: “Oh, what are you doing? I called to just chat. Did you hear what Matilda did? I was so cute. When are you going to visit? What’s the weather like there, here its’ been hot and rainy.” And on & on & on & on.

Me: Still up on the ladder, balancing the 40 pound ceiling fan holding the black and white wires connected to the light switch and wondering if I turned this particular circuit off or if I could use it to electrocute myself rather than have to listen to this unnecessary conversation.

Them: “What’s wrong? Why aren’t you talking to me? Are you mad? Did I do something wrong? Are you okay?”

Me: Still looking at those wires that could mean the end of my annoyance, wondering if I’m “Right Enough” with God that I’ll end up somewhere beside Purgatory or Hell… “Well first, I can’t get a word in edgewise, and second as I said I’m very busy right at the moment.”

Them: “Well you don’t have to be snippy about it! All you had to say was you’re busy!”

Me: “I DID and you completely ignored me.”

Click!

Me: Sigh… 

As a rule, and I think everyone pretty much uses this rule, I don’t answer phone calls from unknown numbers.

Voicemail is a great place for those calls to go even if they’re important. If someone has legitimate business with me, then they can leave a voicemail and reasonably expect that I’m going to return the call.

Someone not leaving a voice mail is an immediate BLOCK on their phone number. Clearly they are up to no good and I have no time for them.

I’m surprised that scam calling still exists. You’d think it would go away if no-one was taking their calls.

I’m still applying for jobs and still getting zero responses. I’m considering going to the highest level of call filtering my cellular provider allows. I’d turned off a lot of security measures because I didn’t want to miss a phone call about a job application. Obviously, I needn’t have worried about that one little bit!

With the new voicemail feature on iOS I can read a voice mail as it’s coming in.

I find this amusing because it takes us back to the old days when we’d listen for the person’s voice before we answered the phone attached to our answering machines.

How many answering machines did I have through the years? Honestly I’ve lost count. They tended to break a lot.

There’s one machine that I wish I still had, but it was lost in a fire. That last answering machine had two fantastic messages both stored digitally, not on tape. One was from a hospital ER telling me that my other half had been in an accident, the other was my grandmother screaming into the machine, (because the machine was deaf,) that my Father had shot himself, followed by a ‘click’ as she hung up the phone. 

Yeah she left it there. Just hanging…

So many questions about that statement!

There was another message on tape from many years before, that message was from my Father informing me that my grandfather had died and that he’d been called because folks were trying to reach my mother. (At this point my Father and Mother had been divorced for 30 years?) 

He asked that I give him a call. He also said that he didn’t want me giving my mother this news. He’d handle it as soon as I gave him her number. He told me that he’d be waiting on my call and he was there for me.

All of this is floating through my mind because of a flood of phone calls coming from Orange County. More specifically from Huntington Beach and Cypress.

I think it’s a spoofing ring. The phone numbers appear to be listed to Vietnamese folks all of the numbers are from the same prefix and the first two numbers of the remaining four match. Either these calls originate from the same business (in which case they’d leave a voicemail,) or they’re some kind of scam operation.

Probably the latter.

It just got me thinking about phones, phone ettiequte, and how very different things are now.  Back in the day, you’d call someone leave a message and wait a reasonable length of time to try calling again.

These days, scammers will call, get voicemail, leave no message, hang up and call again & again trying to bust through Do Not Disturb on my phone.

I’ve had bosses do the same thing. There is nothing more annoying than being in a doctor’s office and having your boss or anyone else hammering on your phone. 

There are times when I really do miss land lines!

I miss leaving my home, getting in my car, and being blissfully unaware that anyone was trying to reach me for 8-12 hours a day. 

Yeah, I’m turning up the security! If you change numbers and call me, better leave a voice mail or you’re going to be in the blocked forever pile!