Aviation Tech of Tonopah are on the lookout for a couple of dozen stolen jet engines. At 1-2 million bucks each, these are used in military aircraft. If you see any strange objects travelling very, very fast - please contact the Reno police. I'm reminded of an incident several years ago where the Darwin Award was given to a couple of deceased Nevada locals who strapped a stolen jet engine onto a car - which went airborne and splattered them into a nearby hillside.

Though I find it strange that somebody could walk or drive away with 24 jet engines and not be noticed by somebody. Also strange is that a company would leave piles of things worth a million bucks each lying around unguarded.

It was about a year ago when I wrote about my efforts to learn to play guitar left-handed, instead of upside down and backward. Well, I have to report that I gave up on that effort - only a couple of months later. It turned out to be too much to learn to think right-side-up instead of the upside-down way I have been playing for almost fourty years. But I started thinking about why I wanted to play that way. It's because I've always wanted to finger-pick properly, and when your guitar is upside down and backward, the thumb is on the wrong side of the hand to thump out the bass lines. It's resting on the high strings. Nevertheless, over the years I've gotten pretty good at making a passable imitation of Travis-style picking using just index finger and thumb. The index finger thumps the bass, and the thumb picks the melody. But it still ain't 'clawhammer' picking where your whole hand becomes an orchestra - bass, rhythm, and melody rolled into one.

Then it finally occurred to me that if I can train myself over many years to use my index finger for bass lines, why not my ring finger? That leaves two fingers for rhythm and the thumb for melody. (I can forget about using the pinky for bass - I tried, not even in the realm of possibility). It's all totally unnatural, so it's no harder than what I'm doing already; which is of course totally unnatural. So now I'm going through syncopation basics once again. But it's a whole lot easier to make progress this way than playing upside-down. Playing upside-down was totally alien and almost involved re-learning the entire instrument. The chords were all backwards, strumming and running scales goes a different direction than I was used to. Ouch. I can already play this way (right-side-up to me, which is backward to you) - it's just a matter of adding a couple more fingers.

The London Sun published a photo of Saddam in his underwear. Just like the Abu Ghirab prison scandal, it's clearly a violation of international conventions to publish photos of war prisoners in compromising positions. This falls under the description of 'public humiliation'. I read the story on CNN online. Right next to the photo of Saddam in his underwear. Doesn't that make CNN (along with the Sun) guilty of war crimes? Don't count on it. The lawyers are hard at work finding loopholes (that's their job after all). Technically, he's no longer a prisoner of war.

Four customers. All in uniform. I have a quick look at the lapels and shoulders. Two PFC's, a spec, and one sarge. Airborne Division. One is looking at guitars. Think this one will hold up well in the desert?, he (the sarge) asks. Unfortunately, I have to tell him it probably won't. The glue on these guitars melts at about 110 degrees F. You need a solid-body electric or something like an Ovation. Another (the spec) chimes in - we'll have to find you one over there. One of the PFC's is a girl no older than 19. Looking for maybe a book to read on the long flight. The other (PFC) looks no different than the pimply faced high school kids that try my guitars every day. All very somber. Very quiet. The eyes tell a story of recent anguish. Half-hearted smiles, but nervousness simmers beneath. All on their way over there.

Newsweek has officially retracted its story that Guantanamo guards flushed a book down a toilet. This comes after world-wide rioting over the report. It also comes after considerable pressure by the US government to retract the story. They're now looking for somebody to take the fall. The Newsweek staff is in siege mode. Going forward, they will now require three independant sources for every sentence that appears in their magazine. Consider the effect this will have on mainstream media. If there are less than three reliable, confirmed witnesses telling the same story, it didn't happen. That makes it pretty easy for a government that wants to suppress information. If you've got three witnesses, you only have to intimidate one of them to keep the story on ice. Individual whistle-blowers will no longer be tolerated or taken seriously. But let's get back to the story in question. The news media can't talk to detainees. The only news sources they have are guards, former guards, and officals at the camp. And we're being told that one of these folks just made up the story about the book flushing for no apparent reason.

Right.

A new book that I'll have to pick up is about a man's quest to find the perfect guitar. All kinds of trivia about famous artists and the instruments that gave them a voice. What grabbed me is a quote by a guitar maker... "Most people confuse buying a guitar with falling in love." I had almost forgotten this, and I shouldn't - especially since I'm in the business of selling guitars. In fact I haven't been playing on this emotion at all. I've gotten buying a guitar confused with buying groceries. Bonk! Work it into the presentation. Size up the existing girlfriend (if present). What are they after - sultry or sweet? Trophy wife or girlfriend? I need to spend more time selling the long term relationship instead of the cheap date.

The town of Hibbing, Minnesota is where Bob Dylan grew up. The town fathers are naming a street after him. 'Dylan Drive'. If they want to be historically accurate, shouldn't it be called 'Zimmerman Drive'?

They found who lost the finger that ended up in a bowl of chili. Friend of the husband. Case closed.

Oh yeah - Happy Birthday to me... I'm a 49'er now.

Toldjaso... McSoft announced their new subscription service, Windows OneCare - which (for a fee) purportedly will protect your computer from wily hackers. Let's call a spade a spade. This is an extortion racket. You will be paying Microsoft to prevent people from exploiting Microsoft's poorly written software. Now they will have zero financial incentive to fix the bugs, and a strong financial incentive to create even more bugs. It's a novel and interesting business model for the software industry. Make the customer pay extra for the bugs you create.

It isn't just the queen bestowing knighthood on anybody these days. Now the new pope has requested that the old pope (John Paul II for those of you with short memories) be on the 'fast track' to sainthood - which starts with the beatification process. This was announced exactly 24 years after he got shot. Then all they have to do is find one miracle that could be attributed to him and he's there. Hmmm, it's a miracle he didn't die. See, it's easy.

Interesting... I'm continuing the effort to revive my electronic bookkeeping abilities, but without spending any money. Excel is the tough one. I need to be able to read my old spreadsheet data, generate new data, and print monthly summaries. A search of the web finds Sun's Star Office which I know has that capability. But Star Office now costs money ($59). It was free a couple years ago, but it really sucked a couple of years ago. It sorta' worked sometimes, but crashed often and mangled system settings. Not sure I want to pay to find out if it has improved.

Then I surf over to the GNU site - the original home of free software. I could tell you what GNU stands for but it gets lost in translation. They've got a product called 'gnumeric' which claims to do it all. Best of all, it's free. So I download it and run it through the ropes. Yeah, it pretty much works for reading and writing Excel files. But it won't print. Pages come up blank. I notice in the release notes that Windows support is only a month or two old, and lots of hits on the web if you look for 'gnumeric printing bugs'. It isn't quite ready for prime time. Close, but no cigar.

Then a random search for 'reads Excel files' leads me to none other than microsoft.com, where they have a free download called 'xlviewer' - which reads and prints Excel files (but won't let you make changes to them). I gave it a try. Yup, it prints nicely. Reads my old data. But then how to generate new data?

Then it dawns on me that I've got the answer right in front of me. Gnumeric creates Excel spreadsheets, but won't print 'em. Xlviewer reads and prints Excel spreadsheets but won't let you create them. Bingo! Put the two together and it's a winning formula. Not terribly convenient, but it does what I need to do. I only print spreadsheets on the first day of the month. So it's not like it's horribly inconvenient.

One of the next projects at the store will be getting rid of the pegboard which lines all of the walls. Sheets of pegboard talk to customers. They say "This store is really, really old". Most modern retailers use a system called 'slatwall', which is grooved wall panels you can hang stuff off of. I looked at what it would take to upgrade all the wall panels. Slatwall is expensive. At 1/2 inch thick, it's also extremely heavy. I would need about 20 4x8 foot sheets. Each one weighs about 80-90 pounds.

Oops. Logistics problem. I've got no place to put 20 4x8 sheets of anything. And they're too heavy for me to install without help. And most of the expensive material would be wasted. There's no need to cover the walls with horizontal slats if I'm only going to be using two or three rows to hang guitars. It would look as ridiculous as walls full of pegboard.

But every problem has at least one solution. So does this. I can buy a T-slot router bit that fits on my home router. It's the same bit they use to make slatwall. I'll make my own slats. And instead of 4x8 sheets, I only need a few wood strips with the slats in them. These I can manage and install myself. And save about a thousand dollars in material costs and 2-3 thousand in labor cost. I like those numbers...

Happy Mother's Day!

There's the guy on the East Coast who is the latest to find a finger in his food. This time there's no question whose finger it was. A worker lost it earlier that evening and it landed in a container of custard. Should this latest finger-finder be able to claim a huge emotional trauma award? I wouldn't give him a penny. Why? Because he didn't give the finger back! That would've been the right thing to do. There is a window of opportunity where it can possibly be re-attached, but instead he kept it as proof of his ordeal. It's now in hiding. Look, I respect the weirdness of what's happened, but this isn't finders-keepers. It isn't a set of keys or a C-note. It's a body part that belongs to somebody.

Got the first inquiry on the Gibson SG since I pulled it from the window. You still have it?, he asked. Oh yeah, there in the back. Wait - is that the same one? It looks different... Yeah, I re-finished it. He looked like he was going to cry. Why on earth would you do something like that? Isn't that like an original '70 SG Standard? Yup. And it doesn't matter why. It is no longer for sale. But... but I wanted that guitar! And now you've ruined it. Dude, get a grip. This isn't a museum. You could've bought it any time in the last three years for the cheapest price on the planet for that make and model. What difference does it make what color it is now? You didn't buy it. It isn't yours. In fact, the original finish was horrible. And the neck was too fat. I reshaped it. The bridge sucked. I replaced it. It's a much better guitar now, but it doesn't matter because it isn't for sale. You missed the boat. You can't have it. Get over it.

Writing checks today and I realize it's 5/5/5. Won't happpen again until 6/6/6.

Can't rant too badly about google this week. For whatever reason, I finally made it back to page 1 of musical instruments on the Mountain View local page. There was a noticeable improvement in both page hits and walk-in business when this occurred. So I can complain about them all I want, but I should never underestimate their importance as far as reaching potential customers is concerned.

One of my high school classmates writes that there's an initiative to rename Devil's Mountain (Monte Diablo) in Contra Costa County to "Mount Kawukum"; which purportedly means 'laughing mountain' in some local indigenous tongue. It is felt that living near a site linked to the demon world is derogatory. Laughing Mountain? How about 'That Little Bump on the Horizon' or 'Mount NotQuite'?

As a side effect, what do we call the Diablo Valley? It will always be Devil's Valley to some of us. Laughing Valley? Laughing Valley College? Get off it! OK, it made me laugh...

The latest sales figures seem to indicate that the recession which we thought we were putting behind us - is back. The American consumer is losing his/her resiliency. My business is about to get slammed by higher prices - at a time when nobody seems to want to buy anything at any price. Wonder how that's all going to play out.

I've taken a whirlwind tour of a few hundred blogs just to find out what other folks talk about. The most common topic? Food. What I ate today. Many even take pictures of their dinner. So what did I eat today? Mac-n-cheese. And a couple of beers. My daughter crushed up some leftover Halloween candy in a bowl and handed it to me for dessert. Yes, she still has some. I'll spare you the pictures.