netdud blog

Beer is for mouths, not amps!

A friend of mine got a really great deal on an amp.  It’s a Traynor YCV40, of which I am a big fan.  In fact, I have a Traynor YCV40WR, and I love it.

The YCV40 is a 40 watt tube combo amp with a single 12″ speaker.  Like a lot of combos, the amp brain is mounted “upside-down” at the top of the cabinet, with the tubes pointing down and the controls at the top rear of the box.  The front of the amp is rounded slightly, which means the speaker points up a bit, which means it projects sound a bit higher, and that is useful.  It also means that the top of the amp is NOT flat.

This amp was used, but it seemed in pretty good shape. The speaker is fine, the amp sounds great, all appeared to be well.  My friend had the amp for a little while, and we noticed that the channel switch on the top of the amp was pretty sticky.  It was obvious that someone had spilled something on the amp, and some of the something had run into that switch.  It was hard to change channels with the switch on the amp, though the remote foot-switch works just fine.  There was also some rust under the paint on the top of the amp brain.

Then the carry-strap on the top broke.  I said “No problem!  I’ll fix that for you.”

I tried to unscrew the handle.  It became clear that whoever owned the amp before had indeed spilled something on the amp–my best guess is that it was an entire beer. He had probably tried to sit it on top of the amp, probably with the bottom against the strap, which is in the middle, right where the channel switch is, it had fallen over and dumped all over the amp.  And then he had just left it.

There’s no sign that anything was done to try to clean or dry the amp.  Maybe the top was wiped off.

The liquid had run into the handle, and along the top of the amp brain itself. The bolts holding the strap in place had rusted, and then had come loose, and someone had stripped them by trying to tighten them and/or remove them with the wrong screwdriver head. Then they had been left a bit loose, so the strap, which was rusting, worked back and forth against the threads every time he picked the amp up, and eventually wore away. It had broken on one side, and he had driven a screw into that side of the handle.   And finally the whole thing had given up, and the amp had been dropped when the handle broke.  After that, the channel switch on the top of the amp had given up completely, so you can only switch channels with a footpedal.

The bolts were far to stripped to get out any other way, so I had to use a tapping screw puller.  And both of the bolts broke off halfway with very little pressure.  I am not a strong man. In fact, I am widely known for my utterly laughable physique. Those bolts were rusted all to ratshit.

I ordered a replacement strap from Direct Pro Audio here in Omaha.  It cost five dollars for the strap handle (which is steel sandwiched with vinyl) AND both of the shiny metal mounts that hold it on.  Yes!  Original parts, from the manufacturer, reasonably priced–ANOTHER reason why I like Traynor.

I took the back plank off the amp, took out the bolts that hold the brain in place, along with the RCA jacks to the reverb and the plug for the speaker, and pulled out the brain.  I opened it up and checked to see if there was any other damage inside, and I was pretty sure there would be.  Nope. Traynor had done a good job of designing the amp so that the top is pretty well-sealed.  Apart from the little opening around the switch, there was nowhere for the liquid to go in.

The top of the brain was covered with rusty gunk though, and all the bolts in the top of the brain were rusted. I cleaned the top of the brain, then took out all the rusty bolts, cleaned them off, put them back in, and then wiped all the rusty gunk off the top of the amp brain again.

And there were a couple of very dead beetles inside the brain.  Very dead, very dry beetles.   By the time I found those, I was starting to really dislike the old owner.

I measured for what I would need, and bought a couple of T-nuts and new bolts. Traynor had done a nice tidy job of putting the mounting hardware under the Tolex covering, so I would have to lift that off to replace them. Sometimes that can be a pain, because the tolex is glued down so hard that it tears. That wasn’t the case though, because this dude had spilled so much liquid in there and left it that when I picked up a corner of the Tolex, it all just popped off.  What luck.

Underneath, the surface of the wood was a disgusting mess of rot and mold. The beer had to go somewhere, and where went was into the wood.  The bolts and nuts were rusted into a single piece, which had rusted to the plywood as well.  When I tried to take out the T-nuts, a whole bunch of the top two plies of wood came out as well.   I took the picture above so that you can share the beauty.

The rest of the wood is solid–luckily, Traynor uses good-quality plywood to build their cabs. If this had been MDF, like a lot of amps, the cabinet would have been a write-off.  I cleaned stuff up a bit, put in the new T-nuts, mounted the strap and bolted it on, and then glued the Tolex back down with some spray adhesive–You know, like in the Blues Brothers. Strong stuff.

The amp works and sounds great, and the handle is solid as new, but I’ve got replacement channel switches on order (~$2 each for factory replacements!  YAY TRAYNOR), and then I’ll open up the brain and replace the channel switch on the PCB.

All because of one beer.

There’s a moral to this story, and it’s s simple one: Kids, PLEASE don’t be like this guy–give your gear some basic care and attention.

A small thing, like trying to sit a beer on an amp that is NOT FLAT ON TOP can lead to a small problem, like spilling a drink on your amp, and if you do nothing, that can lead to big problems, like rusting and rotting an otherwise perfectly good amp.  It takes five minutes to get this amp apart and dry it out. You don’t need anything more complex than a Phillips screwdriver and a towel to do the job, and you don’t need any more brains than it takes to vacuum under the floormats of your car.

Filed under: let me fix that, Music by netdud
Tags: « Let me fix that - music »
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Or start leaving flowers in the same stall in a parking lot…

Bored?  No-one talking to you?  Try this:

- Put a bag of sand in the trunk of your car
- Run around a bit, until you look kinda sweaty.
- Drive up to a gas station or convenience store.
- Park right in front, head in, so that folks in the store can’t see the trunk
- Rush in, buy a bottle of water and a sandwich or something, look like you are in a hurry, and just grabbing the first things you see to eat and drink.
- Keep your face down. Pay in cash.
- Go to your car, open the trunk, throw the stuff you bought in and yell “THERE! NOW SHUT THE HELL UP!”
- Punch/kick the bag of sand a couple of times.
- Drive off really fast.

Filed under: Bad ideas, clever?, Excellent by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - Bad ideas - Excellent »
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Bumped into the nice folks from Mississippi River Distilling, who make, among other things, River Baron Artisan Spirit.  I bought a bottle, because I am an early adopter of beverage innovations.  You can read all about the liquour on their page.  It’s quite interesting on its own, but opens a lot of interesting doors for new cocktailery.  I present now my first successful mixological effort with this new spirit.

Fourth one takes a while going down

The netdud Smashing Disaster
1 part River Baron Artisanal Spirit
3 parts gin
a few drops of good peaty Scotch
Lemon zest

The first two ingredients should be cold.  You can shake them up quickly with some ice, or if you have some liquid nitrogen, kinda wave that around a bit.  Bruise the zest lightly, throw it in a footed glass, pour in the cold stuff, and then artfully drop in the Scotch.  Swirl, serve, repeat.

Filed under: Excellent, I can't feel my face! by netdud
Tags: « Bevvies - Excellent - short 'n' sassy »
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With lots of pepper!

A while back, there were some big takedowns of a couple very large spam sources, which caused an enormous drop in the amount of spam worldwide. It appears that other parties have recently picked up the slack.

There has been a marked increase in the amount of email spam firing around over the last week or two.  I’ve been seeing a few hundred showing up in my filters daily, and the number seems to be growing.  There are a couple of things that can be done to protect yourself and others.

Luckily, these new attempts are pretty clumsy (eg emails claiming to be from MySpace containing warnings about bank accounts), but these new spammers won’t stay clumsy forever.

Also, because so many people are depending more on “private” messaging services (Facebook, Skype, etc), and/or have got new devices that use mail apps with limited  or hard-to-find controls, a lot of folks simply aren’t aware of what spam is and how to deal with it.

There are lots and lot of resources on the Weebs to help you find out if a message is spam.  Here’s an old one that is still pretty good,  and here is one more with more detail and a charmingly naive opening sentence.   I recommend you learn more about this stuff, but the most basic way to protect yourself is simply not click on anything–either a link or an attachment–unless you know FOR SURE that it is OK.  This applies even if the message has made it past your spam filters.  You can always send a reply to whomever sent you the message and ask if it is legit.

Oh, and spam occurs–and usually looks similar, on all them fancy chip jewelries you kids spend all day rubbing as well.

A quick and simple way to identify spam is copy a couple of sentences from the message and then paste them into a Google search, surrounded by quotes. It doesn’t always work, but if the spam has been around for a day or two, you’ll usually see search results about it.  This also works quite well with heartwarming stories and pithy quotes that have political overtones, talk about “a local [profession]” or use the term “studies have shown” but don’t cite any ACTUAL studies.

Some basic mail account maintenance would also go a long way in slowing this stuff down.

A lot of people have moved to newer email providers (Gmail being the most common) over the last two or three years, and just abandoned their old accounts without emptying or deleting them.  This provides a great hunting ground for bad guys, because:

•  Those old addresses still seem legit to the people who used to receive mail from them
• A lot of those old accounts were started back before people learned to use stronger passwords
• Those old accounts are full of email addresses that are probably exploitable as well

If you have old accounts out there that you no longer use–especially if they are web mail accounts  (like yahoo.com or whatever MS is calling hotmail this week), please take a moment to shut them down.

If the mail provider is foolish enough NOT to provide means to delete your old account, you can do the following:

1. Log into the old account
2. Send a message to all your contacts telling them that you are no longer using that address, won’t be receiving messages sent to it,  and that they are free to block it.

   You should probably include something that makes it obvious that you are you, such as your current email address, in case they have questions.

3. Delete everything in the account, including all sent messages and especially all contact/address book entries.
4. When you are sure that you will never need to get back into the account, reset the password to a very long string of gibberish with capital letters and numbers.  At that point, you can just mash the keys at random, using caps and numbers and stuff, and make as long a password as the thing will accept.

Spamming asshats will always be with us, but we don’t have to make it easy for them.

Filed under: Curse These Confounded Figuring Machines!, let me fix that, that nuttty interweb by netdud
Tags: « nerd - that nuttty interweb »
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Werds werds werds

This  article, which was found by a link from an site with no other known connections to the article, is thought to be quite illustrative of a counter-productive tendency within a certain community.

Speaking for myself, I would venture to assert that it was indeed exposure to this form of writing and speaking style that gave rise to the increased popularity of what I would deem, to coin a phrase,  ”Long-Speak,” if you will.  This form or mode of writing relies heavily at its base on the considered opinion that more words—and words of longer and, shall we say, more rarified usage—lend more meaning to the statements at hand which are being made by the speaker, if you will.

As one, or indeed, all of the people involved, if you will, progresses in this style of executing the writing of a thought or placing words on the page that reflect the thinking of an individual, the reader, or listener, if you will, will notice at some moment in time the marked tendency to repeatedly fall back on entrenched habits and time-worn clichés in terms of the choice of phraseology, as this proven technique has repeatedly shown great success in the explosive growth of what is soon to be known as “content-free elevated diction.”

If you will.

The end result of this continuous upping of the anté vis-a-vis the on-going competition to enhance the putative and nominal importance of what is being said, if you will, while in point of fact ignoring or indeed, if one parses the content being mooted by the writer and/or producer in the harsh light of day, negating the need for content or at any rate, the clear display of what that content may be, per se.  A view might be held by some parties in certain camps that the end result of this was always the intent. That is to say, the objective of this idiom of the writing arts is to artfully obscure the originating motivator for the writing’s existence, and is rather the aggrandizement of the author or voice of the piece, while distancing that self-same entity from any possible repercussions resulting from what content manages to filter through the sieve of the medium and catch in the public eye, if you will.

In such cases as might occur in the form I describe, a fine balance must be artfully struck between the soothingly meaningless tropes expected by the core audience, and some amount of novelty which defines the voice of the writer as unique within the market structure. This gives rise to further twisting of the language, as writers personfully strive to create new but instantly and easily digested terms based on the acceptable limited dictionary of common vacabulatory usages, verbifying nouns, nounifying verbs, and adverbingly adjectiving. Also, sentence fragments, the end of which unnecessary prepositions are put at.

It is this self-same line of thinking which provides both the writer and audience, if you will, with new coinages, per se, while at the same time reambiguizing the terms that the audience might have a glimmer of recognizance of, but not full defination, particularly those of foreign or non-native origin to the audience. These terms are the cookie dough of the language, taking on whatever shape the writer, or word-baker, if you will, decides to impose upon it, and accepted without question by an audience, listener or reader, raised on words that, like sweet foods, are pleasing in the mouth and do no good elsewhere.

Additionally, weak and obvious metaphors—analogies, if you will—become an qualifier of distinguished letterpersonship, as they stand out like a tall mountain against the flat plains of the level of the remainder of the bulk of the writing, in the main, if you will.

But as Knute Rockne once said to Walter Cronkite “Mens rea, Tempora mundi!“

Filed under: clever? by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - nerd »
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Nice warm clipping

Should you ever need to repair a Seymour Duncan Tweak Fuzz, you will probably find this schematic.

It is largely accurate, and I am always grateful to anyone who takes the time to make such things available. But there is one correction you should know about:

P2 (the Gain potentiometer) is a 2KC. That is, a 2K pot with a REVERSE AUDIO taper. At the time of writing, the only manufacturer for this part appears to Alpha, and this part is only available from Mouser in North America. Here is a link to the exact part.

I’m going to say Seymour Duncan Tweak Fuzz one more time. For the search engines.

Filed under: let me fix that, Music by netdud
Tags: « Let me fix that - music - nerd »
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As a part-time IT crank, people ask me a lot of questions. One of the questions I get asked a lot is “What’s the difference between ‘emulation‘ and ‘virtualization?’”

This is a good question–both are ways of using one type of computer to do things as if it was some other type of computer. They are different in how they work, but is that what matters to the basic end user?

I’ll answer that question first: No. It is not.

Here then, is the best working distinction between the two, as far as users are concerned:

Emulation means that someone has figured out how to make games from some other system work on a computer that currently has a resale value greater than $1000. So when someone says “Have you tried the Intellivision emulator?” they actually mean “You should have your childhood destroyed by realizing how crap Body Slam Super Pro Wrestling actually was!”

Virtualization means that someone has figured out how to make a computer that currently has a resale value over $1000 pretend that it is a computer that you didn’t actually want to buy, except that it won’t play any of the really good games that you would have played on that other computer. So when someone says “You can do all the work you would normally do in Windows in this virtualized environment on your Mac.”  they actually mean “We really REALLY don’t want you to play games on this computer.”

Filed under: clever?, Curse These Confounded Figuring Machines!, Uncategorized by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever »
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I just read this article on the always entertaining and informative Consumerist site, in which three exercise toys advertised on TV are shown to suck.

I now introduce to you, the discerning physical mess, The netdud TV Workout Method.

This workout method combines the best effects of ALL THREE of the workout products reviewed at the link above. I highly recommend that you get yourself a block of Gruyere to gnaw and read through the article and watch the video before you continue with this, or any other workout routine.

The netdud TV Workout Method

• Prepare 16 pints of Irish Coffee
• Put on your skates (sold separately)
• Move to the couch
• Watch TV at the highest volume you can stand (beginners!  Be careful here!)
• Drink 16 pints of Irish Coffee. This keeps you jiggling, just like the Rhythm Rocker.
• If anyone tries to take the remote, you punch them, and the alcohol in your system provides the much-needed resistance that makes your muscles work harder.  TO AVOID INJURY, REMEMBER TO MAINTAIN PROPER FORM HERE! 
• You’ll need to run to the bathroom about every 15 minutes.  Doing so  in skates while hammered and coffeed up will strengthen your core and train your balance. PLUS those regular standing/running breaks will help fight off deep-vein thrombosis.

You are welcome world. You are welcome.

Filed under: clever?, Excellent by netdud
Tags: « Excellent - short 'n' sassy »
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It all starts with my mother. 

My mother has an Intel Mac Mini that she got a few years ago. It works like a champ, and she has had fewer problems with it than any other computer she has ever had.  She does not have the need, interest, eyesight, or digital dexterity to use chip jewelry.

Before she got the Mac, she was using a Windows 98SE machine.  It was old, she’d had it quite a while, and it worked just dandy for her.  She liked it very much, and was pretty choked when she finally had to replace it.

There were two programs that she particularly liked on her Windows machine:  Quicken, and Maximizer. Maximizer is/was contact management software, which she used as an address book, calendar, to-do list and more.  (I used to work at the company that made Maximizer).  These two programs, along with a Web browser, email client, and some Word-compatible word processor, were pretty much all she used on the computer.

They don’t make a Canadian version of Quicken for Mac. Maximizer has unfortunately remained convinced that their only market is Windows users (too bad, as it was very useful stuff, and there was nothing quite like it).  Mom had to make a decision, and at the time, any new Windows machine she got would have run XP, which was as different to her as anything else would be. Also, I was using a Mac as a daily driver, and I’m the one who gets called when Mom has questions.  So Mom went with the Mac because the reasons for doing so were stronger.  It doesn’t matter whether you agree with this or not.

It is hard to explain to people who don’t know much about computers but actually think about what they are buying why computer X can’t run the same software as computer Y.  Normally, when dealing with boring products that perform a function, we define product Foo as being “better” than product Bar largely because Foo can do everything that Bar can do, and/or do more than that, or do it better.

You know–”This vacuum can pick up everything that vacuum can, AND it can pick up bigger things, and it can do stairs and it filters more crap out of the air.  So it’s better and it costs more.”

But because the personal computing market has been fundamentally defined by operating systems, we’ve been comparing apples to oranges (sorry) the whole time.  You can not buy an operating system that does everything the other operating systems do AND more.  Not simply.  And shut up about virtualization unless you are willing  to go set it up for my mom.

We use really screwy metrics to make our purchase decisions for personal computers, like:

1. Computer X is faster (which is usually irrelevant, as all options are usually faster than the user needs)
2. Computer X is what more people use (which is irrelevant, if you are only using formats that are cross-compatible)
3. Computer X has more software titles available (which is irrelevant, because most people use their computer for a very small number of tasks, and almost becomes  a contradiction of #2 anyway)
4. Computer X is ready for the next operating system (which is a really stupid argument, because despite what you see in ads from operating system manufacturers, most normal people don’t buy computers in order to get an operating system. They buy computers to do things.)

I used to look down my nose at people who bought computers because they looked nice, or were thin, or fit in their luggage, or matched their eyes. But you know, those are probably more reasonable arguments in most cases than any of the four above.  You’re better off making sure you like the screen, the keyboard and the mouse than the processor.

But let’s get back to Mom’s problem.  Last year, a friend of Mom’s sent her a Flash e-card.  It was one of those nice advent calendar thingies. It looks like an old town. You go to the calendar every day in December, and you click on the number of that day, and something nice happens–some decorations go up, some birds fly around.  It’s a sweet little thing.

This year, Mom got two of them.  She followed the link to get the cards, and was told that she didn’t have a compatible version of Flash. So she tried to update her Flash plug-in and was told that she didn’t have a compatible version of her browser. She tried another browser, and got the same message. So she tried to update her browser, and was told that the browser no longer supported her version of the operating system.

So there we are: Mom has to install a new version of her operating system JUST TO RUN AN E-CARD.

• Does the e-card even use the new features of Flash?  Who can say?
• Does the browser actually need its new features to run the Flash plug-in? Who can say?
• Does the browser actually need all the functions of the new operating system just to run the Flash plug-in?  Who can say?

But nobody is going to say, and it wouldn’t matter if they did, because the answer is still “Install a new version of the operating system.”

Despite what it looks like in the ads, updating or installing a new O/S is not a super-fun happy time. You should back up your stuff first.  No matter what, a bunch of your settings will change, and a bunch of stuff will be in a different place, or have different names, than what you were used to.  It takes a long time too.  Oh yeah–and it costs money.  I live about half a continent away from Mom, so I have to bug a friend to help her out with this.

Yes, the easy way to look at this is particular problem is “It’s not worth it just for an e-card.”  But while it’s a masterfully-chosen example, it’s not just e-cards that this affects. I have recording hardware and perfectly functional computers in my basement which are no longer considered usable because they are no longer supported by operating systems.  The recording hardware and software I use on the current Mac I am writing this on will stop working if I “upgrade” the operating system.

It works just fine now.  And after I upgrade, it won’t work at all.

And the only solution is to buy more stuff–stuff that doesn’t work as well for me as the stuff I am using, by the way.  And of course, the new operating system does more, but not necessarily more of what I want it to do, and it does so at the cost of performance on the computer I am using.

In short, upgrading will make this computer worse.

Everything all the way along here is broken, as far as the user is concerned. Every link of this annoying chain of compromise was forged by a decision that something was more important than providing actual daily value to the user. And the user is the customer.

Here I go again: Software companies exist to make money.  They want to sell a new version of the same thing on a regular basis to an ever-increasing user base. I say that so often that even I am tired of hearing it, and I love the sound of my own typing.  It’s true though, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea.  The problem is that the model operating system manufacturers use is more appropriate to applications than operating systems.   I believe it was JWZ who said “My application shouldn’t break just because you did something as trivial as replace an operating system.”  I think he was going at that from a different angle, but it still obtains.

And it could get worse.  There is some conjecture that Microsoft wants to move to an annual OS update schedule like Apple’s. That’s a new operating system every 12 months. That’s an ASS-TON  (Kelvin) of broken drivers, suddenly obsolete software and hardware, and seriously non-productive users. Which is nothing but good news for hardware and software manufacturers and IT types, and thus pits them squarely against users.

You should not need to buy a bunch of new stuff just because a small thing on your computer has changed.  And when you get new stuff, it should work better than the old stuff.  All rationalizations about why this is not so ONLY make sense if you accept that this broken system is how It Has To Be.  It is not.

Right now, personal computing (including mobile) is a marketing scheme that happens to involve computers, and it is hurting itself and its users.

I had an idea though.  I’ll get to that next time.

Filed under: clever?, Curse These Confounded Figuring Machines! by netdud
Tags: « .5 over clever - nerd - tech rant »
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Just in case the weaker among you think I don’t understand your pain:

I was at a grocery store yesterday. The Hostess stuff was pretty much all gone, and right next to the nearly-bare shelves a dude from Little Debbie’s was PACKING their shelves with product. I mean that he was there for at least 20 minutes emptying boxes onto the shelves.

Now, there was a brief period in my checkered past in which I was a Hostess consumer, because Hostess fruit pies and warm beer put back the precious nutrients your body loses when playing 4 hours of polkas. But it’s been decades since I have cared about these products.

[Brief shout out to various Red Rooster food stores in the Edmonton area in the 80's goes here]

Even so, I still had the momentary urge take Little Debbie’s guy down with my signature finishing move* and then dump out of one the bags of Donettes over him, for my fallen friends.

I did not do this. I bought some nice cheese.

*You ask the person to help you read some small type, and then headbutt them just below the ear, making it look like an accident. Then you check their wallet for ID, palming their cash,  call an ambulance and apologize and show great concern when they wake up . It’s called “The Plausible Deniability”

Filed under: clever?, I never noticed that about my navel before by netdud
Tags: « I never noticed that about my navel before »
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