Non-taco Sunday

So...

My wife quit her job, and has taken a new position that will let her mostly work from home. She's just sort of done with being the boss, and figured it was better to find something new and different rather than to stay and suffer and probably screw up out of pure burnout and get fired. The pay is similar, but without having to be on call one week a month. Since she's going to be working from home, she needed a home office. Since we're amazingly running out of room in this huge-ass house, we're going to be sharing my music room. I'd move the guitar stuff into my office, but I'm afraid the cat will piss inside the amplifier again.

We're also on a really tight budget, because she's having to pay back part of the signing bonus we got to move here. So her last check might be a big fat goose-egg. At some point the new job will be supplying her with a large fax machine and a laptop to do her work on, so she needed a really large desk, or a smaller desk and a separate cart for the fax machine. Rather than blow a ton of cash on either... I built a desk!

I went to Lowe's and bought a 6'x2'x3/4" sheet of aspen, and a couple of wire shelves, and hooked them all together with some metal hardware that cost about $10. The whole thing was less than $125, and is really solid.

Also because we're suddenly (but temporarily) poor, and don't know when the next real paycheck is coming in, we had to cut our grocery budget by more than half, and bought a whole month worth of food. No tacos tonight, we're making a big pot of green chile stew that we're going to eat tonight and then freeze for my wife to take to work for lunch this week. She loves that shit... I'm kind of indifferent but don't mind it occasionally.

Worth it to be a little broke for a little while, and have a happy, healthy, less stressed-out wife.

TACO SUNDAY!!!!!

Jeez, I love me some Taco Sunday. I'll be sober tonight, since there's no Walking Dead on.

Figured out that I can watch free movies from Amazon Prime on my TV through the PS3, which is sweet because between that and Netflix I have a seemingly-infinite selection of movies to watch.

I've been pretty happy with my baby amplifier these last few weeks. Nice to have a more quiet option for when my wife is sleeping or when I'm trying to learn new stuff through the Internet, since all my other gear is A) LOUD and B) in a different room from my computer. And since some of my effects pedals can have their software edited online, an amp next to my computer lets me do that without too much extra cable wrangling across the house. Plus, Formerly Office Kitty likes having yet another place to sleep:

Speaking of that other room, I will soon have to share or surrender my music room to my wife, who needs her own office space starting in the next 2-3 weeks. Probably "share" since the cats still sometimes use things other than litter boxes to pee in, and I don't want any of my good stuff "marked" by them.

So apparently there's a thing called a red-ruffed lemur? (and movie trailer complaints!)

Can't say that I love it.

You know what else I don't love? Trailers that give away all the cool parts of the movie! I saw a trailer for Iron Man 3 that basically gave away the moment that, had I not known it was coming, would have got me to jump out of my seat in the movie theater and started screaming "OH FUCK YEAH MOTHERFUCKERS!!!" until I got arrested. Now that I know it is coming? I can wait to see it at home, thanks. And that goes for all the spoiler-filled interviews and articles in the weeks leading up to any movie's release.

Someone needs to explain to me... or maybe not, because obviously there's market research behind advertising. It must tell the people cutting the trailers that people are too goddamned stupid/broken in the brain to go see a movie unless they know everything that it going to happen in advance. To me, that ruins the experience of seeing a story unfold, especially if the point of the unfolding is to surprise me at some point. If you tell everyone everything they need to know to figure out the surprise, or just give it all away weeks before the movie starts? Fuck you, I don't want to see your movie that much anymore. If you don't have enough confidence in your movie to not show me all the cool parts in the trailer, well... Netflix or HBO will have it on eventually.

Anyone else remember The Sixth Sense? The reason it was so huge was because no one knew the secret twist at the end. Today? The twist would be in the trailer, in all the advertising, and in every interview with cast and crew. Of course it would. They did it in the inferior "horror" movie remake When a Stranger Calls.  The "twist" in that movie was that the babysitter is getting creepy threatening phone calls, and they're coming from inside the house. Normally, that would get a spoiler warning, except in the trailer they play the part where the police call her to tell her that they've traced the call, and you hear the cop say in the trailer "the calls are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!"... and then they show some of the jump scares when the killer is chasing her in the house, in the trailer.

Yep, didn't bother to see that one.

Wow, it has been awhile...

At least I have a ring-tailed lemur. :)

So life is in fact pretty good!

Otherwise, there's sort of so little going on that I have a hard time thinking about something to blog about. Plus I'm on Twitter, so the trivia has a place to be. Deep thoughts? I don't think I have anything original to say. I could make fun of libertarians some? I guess?

Plus I'm really really really sleepy right now, which is making it hard to even finish THIS blog post. Nap-time it is!

Making real progress!

Here's some before and after pictures of my amplifier:

BEFORE

DURING

And here's where I am today:

It isn't perfect, and I have a little more cutting and gluing to do on the back, including building a brand new back panel. But on the other hand, I've made some real solid progress, and it is nice that it is coming out more or less the way I imagined it. Good times!

Giving my ears a break

For the six of you still reading this blog, you know my amp is in pieces around the house. So no plugged-in guitar goodness for Joe... I've been practicing putting the green vinyl on the amplifier cabinet and cutting the corners, and I had to take a full day to repair the cabinet and paint the inside of it and let everything dry. The mail with my amp hardware has been delayed by the big winter storm that hit the middle of the country.

Plus, I've been sick all week. Woe is Joe... woe is Joe.

Anyhoo, I finally said "screw it" and put the amp semi back together. The speakers are back in the bare wood cabinet, and the electronic guts are sitting on top. All hooked up, and I cranked it up and played for a few minutes this morning. I'm just blown the fuck away by how GOOD it sounds. Rich and dynamic and full... and then I kicked on a distortion pedal. Didn't have the levels matched like I normally do, so the distortion was LOUD and I was standing close to the amp and I felt it right in the nuts. Literally vibrated my sack.

I'm sure I'd down to five readers now.

I think sometimes you forget if you play every day, everything starts to sound sort of samey and blah. Even switching guitars, even with all these effects I've got. The same way it doesn't matter how awesome a restaurant is, if it is the only place you eat eventually you'll get bored of the menu. I haven't played plugged in for 4-5 days, and I missed it, and it only took a couple of minutes to remember exactly why.

Yeah, totally worth making this amp look as good as it sounds.

*edit*

Did I mention new tubes? Yes, new tubes. The clean channel sounds the same, and the gain channel sounds more... gainy? Pretty great sounding.

Oh wow, oh no... the madness!!!

Look what I did to my amp!

No covering, the speakers aren't attached properly, the electronic guts are sitting on top, no control panel... what the hell was I thinking?!?!

I can do this. I know I can do this. It is going to take me a few months to afford to do this, but I can do this. Because no single part is expensive, but the whole thing done right with the parts I want is going to be a couple of hundred dollars. Luckily, and almost unbelievably? The amp actually functions like this.

Music Room almost done!!

Let's get the picture out of the way first, right?

I haven't even pulled the plastic film off of the Strat yet, so it still has the sticker on it. I've got a couple of stools in there for me and my Audience of One to sit on.

And the amp is currently taken apart, for my re-tube/restoration project. I found someone who will reproduce the faceplate/control panel for less than $100, since the current one is rusted and the numbers are all faded. The amp is supposed to go to "13" and instead it goes to "weird red rust spot"!

When I'm done, the amp is going to look very much like this:

My amp is a Peavey, not a Marshall, so I won't put a Marshall logo on it. The color scheme is the same though. Wish me luck, I've never ever done anything remotely like this before.


And my amp is taken apart. Holy crap. Crap crap CRAP. In PIECES!!

I WANT I WANT I WANT!!!

Sorry...

Part of the past weekend's trip to the guitar shop included grabbing all the free readable stuff at the store. One of these things is the Taylor 2013 Guitar Guide. Taylor guitars are really nice, and almost entirely out of my price range. The mid-range stuff is between $1600-2500... yeesh! I'm wanting an acoustic guitar, but I'm probably going to aim more towards a mid-range Ovation in the $650-900 range. 

At least I finally got my ring-tailed lemur. YEAH!!!!

Because literally ONE PERSON demanded it!

Hi Cicely!

Jeez, it has been three weeks since the last entry, and pretty much nothing of any note has happened.

I'm almost done restoring my wife's old not-a-hope chest. 150 years old, and hopefully it will last another 15? I just need to get the brass corners in the mail and it will be all set. Here's a before and after thingy:

BEFORE

AFTER

Pretty big difference!

So we went outside this weekend, visited my guitar and got my wife a purse, and had some sushi for lunch. Good stuff.

NUMMY!

And at some point, I got my first Surly-Ramic. 

For my next project, I'm refurbishing my amplifier. It currently looks like this:

You can't even read the numbers around the knobs... which sucks because they go to 13! So new covering, new grille cloth, new knobs and handle and most everything else. *grins* I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING!