Four days off. Wow. Well I'm headed off to a birthday party and ballet recital after closing tonight. There are things which a daddy can't miss. I've got the shop covered through the weekend, but I'll leave it closed Monday. Sunday is Q2 close of books. So I'm gonna' be humpin' when I get back to figure out all the final numbers and process next month's rentals.

It looks like a pretty girl day on the avenue. I do enjoy those - but they are in fact quite rare occurrences.

Competitive intelligence reports, delivered to your doorstep. See over the last few years I managed to get my name into the computer at all the local rock-n-roll shops. And they all send me sales literature. I know what they've got and at what price. Some prices I can't match - most I won't even try. Lots of cartel brands that I couldn't get if I wanted to. But the key is the knowledge itself. There's an entire coalition of music stores trying to take on the giant of the industry, who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are Guitar Center. The rebel alliance. Well shouldn't I be fighting alongside with them? Not on your life. Well at least not for this calendar year and probably the next several. They're all in another world. An entirely different demographic. They're all fighting over miserable profit margins on over-priced rock-n-roll gear. I've got a bit of rock-n-roll gear. And it's not moving. What's moving? Most recently, flutes. Before that, saxophones.

Think I'm gonna' fire the accountant. I want Arthur Andersen to do the books. You can make it look like I made 4 billion this year? Cool. Sign me up.

Think I figured out the secret to incredible wealth. Negative losses. That's the key. Lose so much money that even the losses are in the red. When you stick it on a balance sheet it ends up (TaDa...) on the profit column. Course to do this you have to lose the same money twice and this is the feat for which they pay the big accounting bucks.

Poor old R. Kelly - accused of filming himself having sex with a fourteen year girl. It wasn't me and I don't know who it was on that tape you found in that camcorder in my bedroom. And his lawyer chirps in that the girl is legal age anyway. They probably should've talked before the trial.

The pledge of allegiance is ruled unconstitutional. One nation under god. Can't have that. I never found that even half as disturbing as the practice of making oaths to a piece of colored cloth.

Then all of a sudden everything makes sense. This intermittent pitch recognition thing. I've got tinnitus from a viral infection about ten years ago. the ringing varies in volume, usually under stress but it's always there. Most of the time it's soft and I've just filtered it out of my brain. It's almost precisely an E flat. That's so close to concert pitch, but everything nominally tunes to high E. Bingo. So there's a tuning fork in my brain but I have to learn how to use it. It also means I could be good with alto sax - it's an E flat instrument.

McSoft introduces a new software concept - security. Gee, like nobody ever thought of that before. Well I suppose it's a new concept for Redmond. The stuff which won't come out for two years creates an electronic vault where everything is encrypted. Gee, I've had that for years - just not using Windoze. But the incredible part is the name, Palladium named after a statue that was supposed to protect the town of Troy from invaders. Curious choice of names. We all know how well that worked. And with some 90+% of cumputer attacks favoring the Trojan Horse method of entry it makes it even more curious. Oh, and you'll have to upgrade your computer and get this special version of Windoze (whenever it comes out) to make use of it. Or you can just keep your insecure version and let folks steal your files and plant virii on your machine. You'll have to keep it another two years anyway since this is all vapor and hype - McSoft's primary product.

It's like that Jeff Beck tune. I'm goin' down. Down, down, down, down, down. That's what's in store for the markets tomorrow after the latest accounting fraud - this time WorldCom. Should be able to pick up something like Nortel for a buck a share. But don't bother. This one will roll on at least a few more days. Wanted: CFO for a Fortune 500 company. BA in accounting. Must have recent fraud convictions and forgery skills are a definite plus.

And the Bush finally spells out the current administration's vision for the Middle East. Dump Arafat and end the suicide bombings and we're all for a (mumble) provisional Palestinian state. Whoa. Rewind. What's this provisional thing? Care to elaborate? It's like not quite a state? How so? Everybody else is criticizing the decision to dump a foreign leader. They seem to have missed that one word. Big mistake. It was the most important word of the speech. Uhm, wait a minute. Don't they already have a provisional Palestinian state? They can fly their own flag, elect leaders and have their own police force (well those that are still alive). So what exactly in the Bush plan is different? Well get rid of Arafat and stop the bombings and we'll give you what you already have. What a deal. Where do I sign?

When your grandkids ask you how world war 3 started, you can simply answer that it was a grand convergence. One day we woke up and all the great nations of the world were ruled by idiots. I'm gonna' check the translation of that old 'meek shall inherit the earth' thing. The meek will never inherit the earth. Imbeciles, perhaps. Some say this has already happened. My guess is that if you go back to the original text, 'meek' and 'imbeciles' were probably the same word and King James' translators decided to go with the former because it made for a better sound bite than the latter.

I nearly soiled my britches a couple weeks back when I started thinking about how to consolidate the various police and intelligence agencies into a cohesive force, and then the next day the president does just that. Except that he makes the most glaring exceptions by specifically excluding the FBI and CIA. Nothing political happens without a reason. The new department isn't spooks and it isn't investigators per se. It's beat cops that answer directly to the cabinet and prez. So I can't say that this similiar to the Russian style police state I mentioned earlier. No this is more like the SS.

Had to have a few words with my accountant. One bank account is bouncing off zero. And the business account relapsed into negative cash flow. He in turn blamed it all on the purchasing manager for buying way too much stuff. The purchasing manager of course blamed the boss for his policy decisions.

So the boss went to have a word with his major investor. There's no more outside funding for the business. Inventory growth is now terminated until such time as the books come into balance again.

So I guess it's the end of the startup phase. I'm either here to stay or I'm not. Now it's completely in the hands of the fickle consumer. There's still another month or maybe two in the red paying my book publishers. All part of the learning process. Thankfully, I've historically been a pretty quick study. The road to profitability is littered with the corpses of those who have gone before. Requires determination. And being able to shift the business plan on a dime. And a little bit of luck...

The piano tuning is on hold for now. Too much other stuff to do. It's about a quarter tuned and now sounds just awful. Then it struck me... I got them low down barrel house honky tonk and beatin' away at an out of tune 88 blues. Shoulda' recorded it. Would sound great with uhm, let's see... a tuba solo. Now that would be interesting.

Hey we all have to take a break sometime...

Rough day. Must sleep.

And once again I open the book with the pretty inlays. Then I look at the wall. There's the Martin with the incredibly fine abalone inlays on the fingerboard. Next to it is the bajo. Head snaps back for a second look. Absolutely zero fretboard adornments. It's difficult to do any kind of inlay on a guitar body after it's been manufactured unless you're prepared to completely strip and refinish it. But the fretboard is fair game. It has no lacquer finish. Just raw wood. And this one is a blank canvas. Hmmm.... If done correctly, I could add about two grand to this guitar's value by making it an artwork. Up to ten grand if it has precision detail and is well executed. Not that I could sell it. You'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands.

I've been trying not to think too much about the worsening middle east situation. Even though it casts a shadow over everybody's economic well being and bright future. For Israel, now's as good a time as any to shoot Arafat and force Palestine to find a leader. Hope they don't. They're too busy building their wall that I guess we're paying for since we already know they can't afford it and we're the piggy bank for their imperial fantasies.

Yet another Yellow Pages shows up at the door. This time a new one. Verizon. It's all a business scam. You really don't need fifteen different kinds of yellow pages. But each one of these guys extorts advertising dollars from small businesses like me. A hundred and fifty a month per one and three quarter sqare inches - which is undreadable. I've been hit up by yellow pages across the land. I've been warned of a thousand year curse if I don't put an ad in the Chinese yellow pages. Just kidding... but they were tough sales folks. But I'll stick with the real thing for now - the one put out by the people that own the wire to your home. Well, OK if you got screwed by the DSL meltdown a year or two ago they might not own the wire anymore. But I digress. I boosted the previous store ad a factor of three. That costs - each and every month. But the SBC art department did incredible things. They somehow extracted the essence of my scribblings and threw some great art on it.

That's also a scam. I only asked for a double space ad. And I hacked up something with Photoshop that was crude but acceptable. They gave me that option. But here's what it could look like if our most talented designers give it a whirl - but due to the complexity it can only be done in the large size. And they nailed it. Totally informal, but with class. Your eye isn't drawn to the caciphony of brand names and logos typical of the competition. It's drawn to the french horn and violin. Very simple yet totally appropriate. And they preserved every word of my original template - including 'And other cool stuff...'. The competition has Gibson and Yamaha and Remo, but I've got cool stuff. Where do I sign?

Another vendor comes in. US made electric guitars. Respected name, though it's a small shop and non-cartel. Whoa. Rewind. A respected US guitar company is willing to sell me guitars. Three grand a pop and that also helps me sell these thousand dollar guitars as I ranted about sometime in the last few days. Absolutely. This is going to keep my accountant a bit on the edge. I'm also a little worried about the stock boy. He's showing signs of stress...

I've always loved a well executed wood inlay. Comes from being around a lot of nice guitars. I've done it a few times with good results, but it makes me appreciate all the more the true artists of the medium. One of my new books is "The Art of Inlay", by Larry Robinson - who did all the wild guitars for Alembic in the 70's. Now he's doing much more incredible stuff. He doesn't restrict himself to the three or four typical shellfish making up a handful of dots. No, he uses the whole guitar from head to toe and paints you a picture using various colored woods, strips of gold, silver, brass, or whatever... jewels of all kinds in appropriate places - most any hard material. The scene changes as you look at it from different angles. He also shows you a guitar that's in the Smithsonian and from other masters of the craft. Wow. Gave me a sudden urge to go slice up some abalone and start sketching some inlay ideas for the acoustic I'm building. Well I mean I haven't touched it in a year, but it's not forgotten.

Loudcloud bites the dust. That's one of a few dozen companies that spun out of former Netscapers. OK, they didn't technically bite the dust. They just sold off their core assets and gave up the name. Forgot the new one already. That's not a positive thing either. Now they want to be a software company instead of a managed IT center. Why not...

Publisher number three arrived. Oops. I don't have the storage shelves done yet. Open any drawer or cupboard in the place and they're filled with books. A customer today wanted volume five of a popular piano series. I've got a dozen of 'em. But I had to ask him to come back later because it would take more than fifteen minutes to find it. It did. Finished the storage shelves but that just got most of the new books off the floor. Then comes the hardest part - organizing them all.

Happy Father's Day.

Did very little productive today. Went shopping. Pretty much followed the state of my life. At the grocery store - items for the shoppe, 7. Items for home, 2. Dropped by the competition for a few minutes to see if they had a bridge suitable for stretching the scale on a poorly made Gibson. Nope, they didn't have it. Sure, I could order one tomorrow and have it by Tuesday but it was a convenient excuse to go over and say hi again. Chatted about business for a few. Tried not to walk around too much and spy, though my brain couldn't avoid quickly tabulating everything in my line of sight. The way I figure it, I'd rather be friends with these folks than enemies.

I'll order the bridge. And I'll bet money so does he... a guy stops in from a rival music store - the nearest rival - and you don't have what he's looking for. I'll bet he orders at least six of 'em.

Always one to prove the pundits wrong, I pulled out a tin of albacore. I can tune a piano and tuna fish. At the same time. Reality sets in. I'll be tuning this thing for months. A handful of notes a day. I'm doing it in a haphazard fashion. Gotta' have all the C's. Then A and E in the lower registers. That'll give me a guitar tuning reference. Then do-re-mi-fa-so somewhere. I'll get a whole octave together next week some time. But I did pull off bottom A this time. Have to just ignore the note itself and concentrate on the harmonics.

I'm still finding leftover yummies from Easter that either got stashed away or never found. Last week a giant egg filled with jelly bellys in the family room sofa, Tonight, a dozen creme-filled chocolate eggs. Eureka!

Sir Mick ???? As in Jagger? The Brits are certainly loose with their titles. Paul was OK. But Mick? The dude who blew up thirty-foot penises on stage? Did Bette Midler and David Bowie both (or vice versa, they aren't talking). His satanic majesty himself - now a knight of the british empire? Oh yeah, he's really gonna' get out there on a horse and protect the country. Which reminds me of that time Keith Richards had himself hooked up to a dialysis machine. Couldn't get into the US unless he could pass the drug test. So being a rich dude, he just had all his blood replaced right before getting on the plane.

I'll bet he launched a campaign to get knighted only because Paul was. The Beatles and Stones were always rivals. Paul gets to be a knight? What can he do that I can't? Think I'll go have a few words with the queen about this...

The piano tuning wrenches arrived. As promised I checked out the first customer for the things - myself. Is he really good or totally crazy? Or both? I'm guessing it'll be about 5-6 weeks minimum before it starts sounding right again; based on my prior experiences with pianos and some recent work tuning autoharps. There are just over 200 tuning pegs and you have to tune it over and over again, waiting a few days each time to let everything settle. So I'm not all that good. What were the other choices again?

Of course this also points out the flaw with hiring a piano tuner. If you only pay for one visit you're just throwing money away. Three visits minimum. If it holds its tune after the second you're done, but that'll almost never be the case. All the autoharps I've worked on have taken about five tuning cycles before they started to hold.

The pianoforte design comes from an age of craftsmen. Over-engineered to the point of absurdity. The high notes are tripled (three individual strings per note). Below middle C it drops to two and then finally one for only an octave. Each hammer assembly is completely different than the one next to it. They can't be interchanged. My guess is you could probably build an original piano (single notes struck by identical straight hammers) for a few hundred a piece in quantity - providing a mass market piano for well under a thousand bucks. The Asian assembly lines would be cranking these out by the millions except for the electronics revolution - which changed everything. You don't even need hammers or strings. A 2 dollar chip and a battery and about 3 bucks for the microswitches by the yard with some chincy looking plastic keys.

It's an old family joke - much too long and involved to try and explain. But we call it the packrat gene. Most of the time it's a liability, but it's a blessing in disguise running a retail business. The store is just swallowing up all these crates of stuff. I'm amazed just looking at the cardboard going through the place how much I've stuffed into the place and still have a little room to walk. I note that mom's good at this too. Tee hee...

Then Murphy struck. Completely lost my sense of pitch while trying to get the low piano notes in sync. Can't tell an A sharp from a B flat. Oh wait... OK how about an F# from a B flat seventh minor suspended eighth? It's low A fercrysakes. 110 cycles a second. That's just far enough off of the power line major harmonic to wig you out completely. I'll come back to that one later. I've got a few C's and a few A's tuned up. That's enough that I can at least do the rest of the initial tuning by ear. Not today though.

I find it a bit amusing to find out how much I had been blinded by vanity. Hey at least I'm honest about it. Spent some more time working with my personal collection of electric guitars - trying to get them right. Man, Gibsons really suck. And I'm not saying that because of their distribution rules. Let's go back to the guitar I was working on a few days back - thought it needed heavier strings to bring in the adjustment range. Nope - that's not it at all. The bridge pins were drilled in the guitar a quarter inch off. There are no strings I can use and no new bridge I can put on that can correct this huge of an error. To make it right I've got to re-drill the bridge anchors in the right place, leaving a gaping hole behind in the old location. It's an '82 Gibson ES-335S - basically a 335 but solid body. It's worth $650 as a vintage guitar - precisely what I paid for it. It'll be worth a hundred bucks if I fix it - but it'll sound good. Think I'll just sell the wicked thing. As is. And I'm certainly not going to tell anybody about the scale length.

The Les Paul DC (which coincidentally is the same body as the 335S, but with an arched top) has it's own problems. I bought this new for a little over a grand. They didn't trim the ends of the friggin' frets. The frets stuck out a minute fraction and could really cut your hand. I spent about eight hours finishing up what should've been done at the factory. There's an intermittent short in the electronics. Came that way but I never took it back for that either. I'll fix it one of these days. A thousand dollars. Pure vanity. None of my three hundred dollar guitars at the store are screwed up that bad. The vee is perfect though (but only with factory strings). One out of three. I'd say I got ripped off - except for the fact that I'm in a rather unique position to be able to off them for about what I paid. I get vain dudes in my shop everyday. Got any Gibsons? No? Really? Are you an idiot merchant or what? Gibsons are the guitar man. You aren't sh** without 'em. OK, I got your Gibson. No refunds...

And next time I pay retail for a guitar (could happen) - I'm walking in with electronic tuners and elaborate scale and flatness measuring apparatus. And the complete factory walk through. Step 16. Trim the fretboard bindings. Was the guy who did that particular step good or was he stoned that day?

There's a lot of interesting news these days, but I have to get it condensed and don't completely trust the motives of the sources. So I won't try and make any informed comments on world events because I'm not informed sufficiently. But I notice that medical interns are now restricted to 80 hours a week and can't work more than twenty-four hours without a ten hour break. Used to work with med interns back at the farm. It's still way too much. But that's the way they break these folks into the real world of bloody people and occasionally bodies. Much like boot camp for the military. This is how bad it can get in real life. You might be the only doctor in town and a gunfight can erupt. You've gotta' be able to suture wounds in your sleep, because a time might come went you won't be able to get any. It also helps that your eyes are glazed and you're hallucinating those strange sleep deprivation dreams. So that's what a stomach looks like. Far out man...

Ah the missing saxes and trombones from Connecticut. Now I'm puzzled. I got a duplicate order shipped out and it arrived yesterday. They were going to take care of the missing box. Today the missing package shows up - literally dropped at my door by who knows who, and there's no history on the package that it ever went anywhere but here. But two weeks since it was sent. Oh well. Somebody is really screwed up. This box wasn't in CT, but lord knows where it's been hanging out. So whose shipping label is really on the Connecticut box? Where did this one go? It's bruised. It was in motion, not sitting in a depot. It'll take two months to sort this out. I'll need everything in the second shipment a month from now. So I called the supplier and told 'em I'd just keep it so just run my card through again and we'll save months of hassle trying to return it and sort out the credits and figure out what the hell happened to it.

So one of my publishers called. This is from one of the orders that arrived last week. My name was thrown in a hat - and I won the drawing. It's for something like $1000 in books the next time I order from them. Cool... That's nothing to scoff at. Now I only wish I hadn't ordered a year's supply and paid for them so quickly. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that increased the chances of my winning just a bit...

Knocked out one more book order, even though I pretty much had myself convinced to just wait a while. It's a medium sized order. I split the difference. 7 or 8 boxes.

Now to figure out what happened to the saxes and trombones. They shoulda' been here a week ago. This is an overnight supplier usually. And what happened to the tenor? Shoulda' also been here by now. The supply side of this business is dysfunctional to say the least. And it's costing me. I could've sold and or rented two of the saxes, but I didn't have 'em. And I paid for 'em a couple of weeks ago. I've still got the broken cello in the stock room waiting for Airborne to come out and take it away before I can get the credit for another. How many weeks ago was that?

Glad I checked. The saxes and trombones are in Connecticut. How? Somebody sent out my boxes with the wrong shipping label. Now who got the Connecticut order? I didn't. That means at least three stores are affected by the mixup.

The red, white and blue clarinets came in. And green and yellow too. Now these are US made. And they're in tune. And you pay extra for that. You pay even more for the Grenadilla wooden clarinets from France. Got those too. Nice stuff. And the big baritone horn. That'll run you about three grand. I bought it to rent out, but I'm not sure I want to now. There's no other place I know of in the region where you can walk in and buy one new. US name brand. Granted it's a small market for new horns of that size, but ya' never know. One or two little niches like that could be interesting. And what ten year old is gonna' want to lug that monster around when I've got the compact baritone? It's not much bigger than an alto sax overall. Wish I knew about those when I was young...

Unknown caller at home. Trepidation as I answer. Hi sir, I'm with David Bally's harp strings and wondered if you had a minute. Intrigued but how did they get my home number? Uhm, tell me more.. Well sir we just renovated our harp strings resort and wondered... click. That's hot springs. Annunciate...

In Sunnyvale, two Mexican restaurants side by side. Both have a sign in the window proclaiming the best burritos in town. I tried one of them. Best in town is a bit of a stretch though they're pretty darn good. Now I've got to try the other to be fair. My guess is both places are run by the same family. If so, what a marketing coup.

Started out as the typical day of rest - but it took some strange turns along the way. Ended up being a day of relaxation and decadence. Went out and had an ice cream. Looked at some art work. Got the laundry done. Joe came over and we cooked up a huge steak dinner. The complete fixin's. Haven't done that in a while now. His opening comment - tell me why I shouldn't move to Thailand. Hmmm... hope he wasn't depending on me to do a reality check. My reality is pretty distorted lately. Nope, can't find any compelling arguments. I did ask if there were many moslem extremists in the country. Not many - mostly buddhist. He's checking on the prevailing wind direction with respect to India and Pakistan, but beyond that, what the heck.

I've been methodically going through my personal guitars and getting them all perfectly adjusted. Finally made it to the speed daemon electrics. Some background is in order. Whenever I bought one of these things the first thing I did when I got home was to put the lightest gauge strings possible on them and then lower the bridge until a pimple on a dimple on a red ant's chin above where it starts to buzz. Now I'm trying to set the scale length for these strings precisely. The stock Gibson bridge doesn't have enough adjustment range to do it.

Though I've known most of my life how to adjust a guitar bridge, I usually have left it alone. They set it at the factory. Works for me... But it doesn't. Lighter strings have different scale lengths. Whenever I've tried to adjust one, it always seemed to go from horrible to worse. The electronic tuner which I'm using now doesn't lie. That's exactly what was happening. There is no setting you can make that's perfect.

I've been playing out-of-tune electric guitars for years. I've noticed that I compensate - I tend to stretch every note a little bit more going higher in my playing. Just something I learned to do. I need a few new bridges. Or (shudder) have to revert to big thick nasty strings. I've gotta' have one speed daemon. That would be the flying vee. It also has the most adjustment range already so I can get it really, really close without a new bridge. And stretch the notes like I've always done. Just not nearly as much.

Suppose I'll slap heavier strings on the others. It's not optimal for speed thrash but that's not all I play. Once they're back in harmony with the universe you never know what might come out of them. Time for me to find out.

Didn't find out yet. Got side-tracked on the bass. You can't always' get what you want. That's the tune that found it's way out. Like you've never heard it before. Two octaves of bass chords. At her feet was a bleeding man... But if you try some time - ya' just might find... Didja' ever try sometime? I did. Long time ago. Sold my last silver dollar I did. Had an old Ford van that was home. Fixed stereos for five bucks. Saved up enough to put an ad in the paper. Cost me ten bucks. Got seven or eight jobs for 5-10 bucks a piece. As I recall, I bought a bag of pot with the first month's proceeds and was penniless again. And since I was stoned and happy, I wasn't out hustling new business. Times grew even darker, but I never starved. I was never without shelter from the elements. Scrape a little here and a little there and a coupla' good friends that let me use their shower and split the cost of a few burritos once in a while - and ya' know - life was good. Cut to its basics. Sometimes it was just a whisper of salad dressing on the tortilla. That's it. Tortillas were 29 cents for three dozen at the mexican market. We rolled 'em up and pigged out on 'em.

Think I'll forego the other two publishers for now. I'll pay more for missing the sale deadline, but I just don't need another ton of books right now. I could use maybe 2-3 boxes from each of these warehouses. Maybe 40-50 different titles. But not today. Need to sell some of the books I've got.

The DSL authentication server went down last night some time. Wonder how many million people were on the line to SBC this morning. Tech support wouldn't even let you hold on the line. We have too many callers - goodbye. Click. And it made me thankful. Why? I'm not one of the guys who got paged at oh-dark-thirty and had to fix it.

As I survey the wreckage on the tech landscape - I find that there are a surprising number of people like me. Or I suppose that means that I'm a lot like them. I bought some dijeridus today from another silicon valley startup. He makes them out of PVC tubing from Home Depot, and they're pretty cool. Another tech refugee bought the drum store in cupertino. Then there's the Phoenix musical instrument company which I get the great inlayed stuff from - in Santa Cruz.

Those that have been here for a while understand. It truly is the land of dreams. But you have to flow with the tide. Two years ago it was the internet. Five years ago, network hardware. Ten, disk drives and Unix. Twenty, the PC itself. Twenty-five, the chip industry. Thirty, stereos and water beds. We're survivors. Seen 'em all boom and bust. But we're out there every day hustling up the next rent/mortgage check. Ours are a bit higher than the rest of the country so we sometimes have to hustle just a wee bit harder. But I recall several times thinking - these people want to pay me huge sums of money to sit in a corner and write communications software. Cool. They want to pay me huge sums to keep their plasma processing equipment going. Really cool. They want to pay me huge sums to fix their stereos and TV's and oscilloscopes. Cool. All of those days are gone. Today I'm selling guitars and saxophones. Cool. The huge sums were nice while they lasted.

Think the prez was supposed to do a speech and propose what I mentioned yesterday - the perfect police force. Haven't checked in to the media stream today, but that would certainly be ironic.

A new senate committee is probing why the CIA and FBI don't work very well together. I'll start by saying that even the word 'committee' is full of reduncancy. Half the letters are doubled for no good reason. Comiti would be just as good. It turns out that one of my customers was part of the advisory force that put them together in the same room some 20 years ago. It worked for a few years, and then infighting eventually made a circus of the program. This guy has stories to tell. Got shot a few times in Nam. Joined the intelligence services. He was *in* Tienamen Square when the tanks rolled in. Now he does telecom ventures in the far east. Wink, wink.

Remember this is a war against terrorism, not against Islam. Nevertheless if you are from a predominantly Moslem nation and here on a student, tourist, or work visa - we're gonna' register and track you. Gee, that covers about 25-50% of everybody I worked with in high tech. No matter how it works out as a percentage of the general population, it's a lot of people to track.

We could go ask the Russians. They know how to solve these problems. You need one security force for everything. Internal hoodlums, spies, criminals, terrorists, whatever. One police force. Down to the neighborhood level where they can monitor everybody who comes and goes anywhere. Oh, and you also have to train generations of citizens to be the eyes and ears of the state. You ready for that? Anything less and we can't succeed in this new war. It's only a matter of time before somebody proposes it. Merge the CIA and FBI completely. Then give them fat pipes to all the local law enforcement agencies. Federalize them. Throw in the ATF and Secret Service and Border Patrol and agricultural and baggage checkers. Oh heck, throw in the IRS and the NSA and the INS and DEA as well. Give 'em all guns and the same badge. Now you've got a police force.

Uhm, honey ... there's a man at the door with a machine gun that wants to ask you about line 72 of your tax form...

Rudi's back and she didn't lose the sparkle. I'll eat crow. Yummy.

So I get a chance to do an appraisal on an old violin. Very old, with an Italian label. That automatically justifies due diligence. Reputedly made in 1757 by one Carlo Bergonzi. Carlo has some published work in the Smithsonian. Turns out he was a student of Stradivarius. Hmmm. Interesting. So I check out the pictures at the Smith. Lovely florentine violins. One piece flamed maple back. Then I look at mine. German fittings - with a two-piece back. The fittings may have been replaced but the back wasn't. The shape wasn't. It's a German violin - or a copy of the Germans impersonating Mssr. Bergonzi. The piece de resistance - Carlo died in 1747. Considering it's been cracked a few times - probably worth about the twenty bucks I bought it for.

I'll have it sold next week. Fifty bucks. The crazy man who rides by on his bicycle every week looking for strads... As soon as I mention Smithsonian he'll be drooling. Nah, first I think I'll taunt him with it for a while. Nice violin, eh? It's not for sale at any price. Well, maybe it is. How much you got in the bank?

The harmonic zen came and went today. Finally got a guitar tuned enough to practice some Bach. Found some pieces I haven't tried to play since I was 19. And I still can't play any of them well. Since I play guitar backwards and all my thumb is on the wrong side of my hand. Amazing that I can pull of the first half of the Bouree at all. The second half is meant to contort the right-handed player. The leftie is done for. So I left well enough alone and found some new harmonic progressions of my own. That started to turn into a tune - you know like something you can get into the groove to. That's a couple of really cool new tunes in a couple of months. This breaks a long artistic dry spell. Another one or two and I'll have to get the old band back together and cut a new CD.

The first tune kinda' came to me a few weeks back whilst I was tuning all these guitars. It's kindof Kottke'esque Van Halen. On acoustic guitar it comes out more Kottke'esque. On electric, a bit more Eddie. On the jazz box it's just a tad bit Joe Pass. It's more a new system of finger-picking than any one song. It's a system that works for us lefty-righty guitarists and no other and it sounds way cool. An acoustic blues jitty that just dances along until everybody's too tired to dance no mo'.

The second tune is (hey, I'm doin' the best I can to try and describe them to you) kindof like Joe Satriani trying to do a Pete Townshend song. Also kinda' reminds me of a Skorpion song but I can't remember which at the moment. Sorry, but that's the best description I can give you.

I sold the collector's edition Förnikatör guitar. I offered him the generic version or the house label and he chose the house brand hands down. Should probably keep his name and number. That guitar might be worth a fortune someday... He had already been in here last week and snuck a peek at the label. He wanted it. Had to have it.

Nobody told me there was going to be a parade in downtown Mountain View. Apparently the promoters were a bit slack because nobody else seemed to know about it either. It was the annual Portugese parade - like I've seen in other venues. Anyway I'm at the store working on book orders (remember those?) and all of a sudden there's a parade outside. Talk about free precision-targetted advertising. My shoppe is in the dead zone between the two performing regions. And there's hardly anybody on the sidewalks. So I've literally got waves of marching bands strolling by looking at shop windows. And they're all looking and pointing - check out that music store...

Then a half hour later they come back - going the other direction... Double exposure.

Bush's declaration that the new US policy is basically shoot first and ask questions later is a bit unsettling. First that he does it and second that he can do it at all. Yup he can. Can wage war pretty much whatever way he wants. The only thing he has to worry about is getting congress to pay for the troops. They're only too glad to oblige right now.

About 4:17PM. The house started crackling. I didn't experience any motion - just the timbers crackling briefly. My guess is a moderately large earthquake far away. Not a peep from the snare drum this time - but I was in another room so I might have missed it.

Ah - a bad vibe day. Had trouble tuning the guitar. Time to perform my experiment. Tried to tune the bajo sexto. Couldn't get it right for the life of me. Picked up a violin that I already knew was in tune and drove G-D-A-E (mate) into my brain. Didn't work. When I got home later the guitar sounded terrible. I'll have to wait for the harmonic zen to return again before I can conduct the rest of the experiment.

They've begun the evacuation of US citizens in India. A couple of million folks now hanging out with ak-47's in the kashmir. Pakistan is boosting missile production. A senator (I think) laments that we need to boost recruitment efforts. We've got troops now in 80 countries and they're spread a bit thin. Troops. In 80 countries. That's a few more than I remember counting. There are only somewhere around 100 countries in the world.

There's probably only one way out of the growing mess, and the likelihood of it happening is beginning to slip away. We have to somehow acknowledge that the lightning rod decisions by the UN in 1947 were flawed. And we've got to get all these people in a room and figure out how to fix it. No - not divide it. We already know that doesn't work. Fix it. Or do we just wait until the bodies pile up and they finally acknowledge that squabbling over it is really pointless?

Columbia changed hands last week. The new prez is vowing to root out the drug barons forever. There's a clear motive. He'll get stinking rich because the US will give him everything he wants - including plenty of guns and most importantly hard cash. But his life insurance policy is now gonna' cost him a bundle of that cash.

Saturdays can sure be brutal when the weather's good. During the week there's a natural business lull in the mid-afternoon in between the lunch and dinner crowds. On Saturdays it's full tilt boogie most of the day. I'm trying to explain the rental program to a family at the counter whilst a few kids are checking out all the expensive guitars. And then another family comes in to inquire about flutes. I've got a bunch of different kinds - that'll take some explaining. Then while they're all standing there somebody comes in that needs his guitar worked on. Then another family - cellos this time. Have to pull each one down and tune it for them. It all becomes a blur after a while.

Another month bites the dust. And...and... I'm running cash flow positive. By a few pennies. OK, to be fair it took some creative bookkeeping to get the last column out of the red. Like I deferred a couple of payments until tomorrow when it will be reported against next month's sales. Technically I'm under the accrual system so the lie becomes obvious if you look at it close enough. But I pulled it off. My accountant gets a bonus this month. Two dollars and 13 cents. It's only fair. He's been putting in 70-80 hours a week for six months without a paycheck.

Yesterday a lady brought back a rental trumpet that's been out for the last school year. Her son (the musician) was with her. He hated the thing. Beat up, lacquer coming off; and it has old horn smell. I informed her that this instrument will never again be rented out from Mountain View Music. I'll find a happy home for it in Central America. But the kid enjoys playing trumpet. Just not that one. Well how about my shiny new trumpets? You've got six months of rental credit. You can take one home today for a hundred bucks. They took it.

Well the month isn't completely over yet. I've still got a few hours, and people are buying stuff today. Wahoo - my first paycheck. This is cool.

They just gave out the names of all of this year's coming hurricanes. Wait. Rewind that. Somebody actually gets paid to figure out names for tropical storms. That would be a cool job. Not as cool as running a music store but it would be a cool job. You could walk into a bar and talk about hurricane Andrew and say yeah, you named that hurricane.

No I haven't seen the Osbornes - though no doubt curiosity will eventually get me. Ozzy is at heart a shocker entertainer. That's how he stays alive. Can't sing worth a shirt. He latched onto a good guitarist once and lost him about a year later when he got way too stoned and decided to buzz Ozzy's tour bus in a Cessna. The first guitarist (Iommi or something like that) was pathetic. I'll give him credit for being a lefty, but he really sucked on guitar. I recall one show where I moved to about ten feet of the guy and sent him mental vibes to the effect of 'Hand me the friggin' guitar. These people want to rock and you're not doin' it dude.' He must've caught the vibes because he did start playing much better. But he never really rocked.

I recalculated everything after day's close. Five hundred and twenty bucks. Pure profit, no tricks. I'll take it thank you. That's the first paycheck.

Also today a bajo sexto player visited my shoppe. Coincidence? He has precisely the same model that I have for sale. And he showed me the glitches. Nothing major - but you really have to hand pick a set of strings that will work with these beasts; and then shop around to find each and every one of them. Same guitar, different strings. His has an absolutely thundering bass. But realistically how many loop-end phosphor bronze 98 gauge strings am I likely to sell in ten years? 2 or maybe 3? And as always they cost about half as much if you buy double the amount. Do I really need a twenty year supply of 98 gauge phosphor bronze loop-ends? Nope but I'll buy two of them.