The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 02: A Comma (is a Restful Pause)

MagicaPractica said:

It's in the cupboard, I switched to chocolate covered espresso beans.

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Thank you, Mags.
But you might have left a Note or something.

I fear a long night is in prospect. Too many of my photofiles have a curious CRC
and the bloody machine just stops, waits a while and then asks me if I want to skip it, cancel or try again.
There are days when I wish I'd kept up with my programming . . .

Meanwhile, coffee please . . .

Fresh coffee for the evening crowd.

One boat is complete and ready to be loaded on a trailer and outfitted. The other can wait as it is going in stock. It boat I had in stock is already gone and everyone is happy as can be.

I got some writing done last night so I think I'll try it again tonight. Housemate and houseguest are curled up with a new movie so I've got at least two hours without interruption. Not that I ever complain about their type interruptions.

TxRad said:

Fresh coffee for the evening crowd.

One boat is complete and ready to be loaded on a trailer and outfitted. The other can wait as it is going in stock. It boat I had in stock is already gone and everyone is happy as can be.

I got some writing done last night so I think I'll try it again tonight. Housemate and houseguest are curled up with a new movie so I've got at least two hours without interruption. Not that I ever complain about their type interruptions.

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Ah - the coffee. And very welcome it is, too. Many thanks.
Meanwhile, it's case of sweating while Windows 7 makes its bloody mind up whether to copy a file from a to b and if so when.

This is driving me round the bloody twist !
More coffee - please

Morning HP,

Alas, I remember the days when you told your computer to do something and it did it. Now it has to call home, report, and get permission to do what it was told to do. Of course a copy has to go to NSA and several other alphabet organizations.

Or everyone could use Linux.

Coffee, fresh coffee, come and get it before I drink it all.

I did get a couple of hours writing done last night. Then the movie was over and....

Still no coffee for me, not till after my cardiac jump-start tomorrow. Not even decaf or depresso. Not for me, anyway, but stop by and I'll have something brewed.

Meanwhile, it's been... ah, y'all don't want to know... but there'll be more of it. Feh. Let's look at the good stuff. The concert 'ukulele is now re-strung and tuned nice and mellow. It's cheap Chinese but well-made of decent wood with good tone. Some rag music only sounds right when 3-finger-picked on re-entrant tuning, like a banjo ringing.

Next for re-stringing is the 6-string tenor 'uke tuned like a Colombian quattro, the oldest known tuning in the colonial Americas. First and third courses are doubled in octaves, not in unison, Hawai'ian style. Gets chunkier-n-funkier that way. Kinda weird picking bass lines on the top, not the bottom.

Dang. Almost daybreak. Time to take out the trash. Haven't noticed bears around here lately so I won't need to pour bleach on it. There's a lull in the rain so now's my chance. Cowabunga!

Hypoxia said:

Still no coffee for me, not till after my cardiac jump-start tomorrow. Not even decaf or depresso. Not for me, anyway, but stop by and I'll have something brewed.

Meanwhile, it's been... ah, y'all don't want to know... but there'll be more of it. Feh. Let's look at the good stuff. The concert 'ukulele is now re-strung and tuned nice and mellow. It's cheap Chinese but well-made of decent wood with good tone. Some rag music only sounds right when 3-finger-picked on re-entrant tuning, like a banjo ringing.

Next for re-stringing is the 6-string tenor 'uke tuned like a Colombian quattro, the oldest known tuning in the colonial Americas. First and third courses are doubled in octaves, not in unison, Hawai'ian style. Gets chunkier-n-funkier that way. Kinda weird picking bass lines on the top, not the bottom.

Dang. Almost daybreak. Time to take out the trash. Haven't noticed bears around here lately so I won't need to pour bleach on it. There's a lull in the rain so now's my chance. Cowabunga!

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A cow playing bongos. Just what a Ukulele player needs for accompaniment.

Good luck with the jumper cables tomorrow.

More coffee for me. More writing also.

Hypoxia said:

Still no coffee for me, not till after my cardiac jump-start tomorrow. Not even decaf or depresso. Not for me, anyway, but stop by and I'll have something brewed.

Meanwhile, it's been... ah, y'all don't want to know... but there'll be more of it. Feh. Let's look at the good stuff. The concert 'ukulele is now re-strung and tuned nice and mellow. It's cheap Chinese but well-made of decent wood with good tone. Some rag music only sounds right when 3-finger-picked on re-entrant tuning, like a banjo ringing.

Next for re-stringing is the 6-string tenor 'uke tuned like a Colombian quattro, the oldest known tuning in the colonial Americas. First and third courses are doubled in octaves, not in unison, Hawai'ian style. Gets chunkier-n-funkier that way. Kinda weird picking bass lines on the top, not the bottom.

Dang. Almost daybreak. Time to take out the trash. Haven't noticed bears around here lately so I won't need to pour bleach on it. There's a lull in the rain so now's my chance. Cowabunga!

Click to expand...

Good luck with the restart.

what's re-entrant stringing ?

NOW I discover that I need some extra 'adaptor cards'.
E-Bay is taking a few more hits, I fear. [Sata and RS-232 to start with].

Ye gods, I'd like to throttle the idiots at Redmond. . . .

TxRad said:

A cow playing bongos. Just what a Ukulele player needs for accompaniment.

Good luck with the jumper cables tomorrow.

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Thanks on the wiring. Alas, no cattle nearby. Maybe I can persuade a puma. Some cat-dancing on the tympani, hey? [/me invokes Omaha the Cat-Dancer]

Handley_Page said:

Good luck with the restart.

what's re-entrant stringing ?

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Thanks again. As to tunings: Most stringed instruments have linear tuning as a standard -- each string is higher than the last. In note and octave, a guitar is usually tuned E3 A3 D4 G4 B4 C5. In re-entrant tuning, the next course is lower in pitch, like if I replaced the guitar's low E3 with a higher E4 or E5. Open chords especially sound a ringing tone.

The most common instruments with re-entrant tunings are the 'ukulele, 5-string banjo, and the Andean charango (with or without the armadillo-shell body). Guitars and mountain dulcimers may be tuned re-entrant as desired.

On the 5-string banjo, the short bottom string is pitched higher than all others. On a standard 'uke, the bottom string is pitched the same or one whole tone lower than the top string. The charango's middle course is the high one, making it like a weirder-than-usual 'uke. (Many odd nonstandard 'ukes exist.) I get odd ringing tones on my ancient soprano banjo-'uke.

Why go re-entrant? For the ringing sounds, yes, but also for close voicing, with all notes in a chord fairly close together. This gives each instrument in an ensemble a fairly distinctive voice.

Next, we'll talk about cheap-n-easy conversion of an 'uke into a totally re-entrant mandolin. And weird 'ukes. Dangerous 'ukes. Mutant 'ukes. Beware.

NOW I discover that I need some extra 'adaptor cards'.
E-Bay is taking a few more hits, I fear. [Sata and RS-232 to start with].

Ye gods, I'd like to throttle the idiots at Redmond. . . .

Click to expand...

Spoiler: Ya don't need no adapters with the right laptop. That's why I gave up desktops in 1996.

Hypoxia said:

Thanks on the wiring. Alas, no cattle nearby. Maybe I can persuade a puma. Some cat-dancing on the tympani, hey? [/me invokes Omaha the Cat-Dancer]

Thanks again. As to tunings: Most stringed instruments have linear tuning as a standard -- each string is higher than the last. In note and octave, a guitar is usually tuned E3 A3 D4 G4 B4 C5. In re-entrant tuning, the next course is lower in pitch, like if I replaced the guitar's low E3 with a higher E4 or E5. Open chords especially sound a ringing tone.

The most common instruments with re-entrant tunings are the 'ukulele, 5-string banjo, and the Andean charango (with or without the armadillo-shell body). Guitars and mountain dulcimers may be tuned re-entrant as desired.

On the 5-string banjo, the short bottom string is pitched higher than all others. On a standard 'uke, the bottom string is pitched the same or one whole tone lower than the top string. The charango's middle course is the high one, making it like a weirder-than-usual 'uke. (Many odd nonstandard 'ukes exist.) I get odd ringing tones on my ancient soprano banjo-'uke.

Why go re-entrant? For the ringing sounds, yes, but also for close voicing, with all notes in a chord fairly close together. This gives each instrument in an ensemble a fairly distinctive voice.

Next, we'll talk about cheap-n-easy conversion of an 'uke into a totally re-entrant mandolin. And weird 'ukes. Dangerous 'ukes. Mutant 'ukes. Beware.


Spoiler: Ya don't need no adapters with the right laptop. That's why I gave up desktops in 1996.

Click to expand...

I fear that much of the E3, D4 stuff went over my head. I feel a Wiki lesson coming on.

Laptop ? Nah. I need a couple of hard drives (got to keep the OS from the data), and I need a couple of printer ports (oh, go on then, a switch) and two serial ports (a lot of my stuff is old but it [more-or-less] works and requires a serial port or two in order to do it's business.

Beware the mutant 'Uke. . . indeed

Handley_Page said:

I need a couple of hard drives (got to keep the OS from the data), and I need a couple of printer ports (oh, go on then, a switch) and two serial ports (a lot of my stuff is old but it [more-or-less] works and requires a serial port or two in order to do it's business.

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A parallel print port? Yikes!

They make usb-to-rs232 adapter cables that let you plug your old serial device into a new USB port. We have one in my office. You might consider that as an option rather than getting an rs232 card.

NotWise said:

A parallel print port? Yikes!

They make usb-to-rs232 adapter cables that let you plug your old serial device into a new USB port. We have one in my office. You might consider that as an option rather than getting an rs232 card.

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I have the USB converter and a parallel print port, together with a four-way parallel switch. I have RS232 cards in my old computers that could be cannibalised. I haven't used the four-way switch for a decade.

Back to guitar tuning. My seven-year-old grandson had his first guitar lesson on Sunday. His tutor told us the bridge was too high. Our local music shop lowered the bridge this afternoon - no charge. They are expecting our grandchildren to be customers for decades to come.

Coffee is available but I'm off to bed. I've had too much of children and grandchildren today. Don't they know is NaNoWriMo? I only managed 1,400 words today.

NotWise said:

A parallel print port? Yikes!

They make usb-to-rs232 adapter cables that let you plug your old serial device into a new USB port. We have one in my office. You might consider that as an option rather than getting an rs232 card.

Click to expand...

I have one and the software does not deal with it right. It asks awkward questions like 'which com port are you using', and, of course, COM 1 does not actually exist, so for much of the time the software has a bit of a problem. Naturally, a 'modern revision', permitting USB ports has yet to arrive.

oggbashan said:

I have the USB converter and a parallel print port, together with a four-way parallel switch. I have RS232 cards in my old computers that could be cannibalised. I haven't used the four-way switch for a decade.

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You have reminded me, Ogg. I used to have a switch, back in the day; I wonder if it's in the loft or the garage. . . .

Happy Hump Day.

I guess I need to freshen up the coffee before HP has a melt down with that antique computer equipment. Most things take 50 to 100 years to reach antique statues. Computer parts only take a few years. I have some of the high dollar antique crap in the bottom drawer of my desk and the back of my closet. The only business where antiques go down in price.

Ah yes, the good old days when you needed to know the difference between a video card and a sound card and the operating system had a clue what it was also.

Science fiction plot bunny for sale.

TxRad said:

Happy Hump Day.

I guess I need to freshen up the coffee before HP has a melt down with that antique computer equipment. Most things take 50 to 100 years to reach antique statues. Computer parts only take a few years. I have some of the high dollar antique crap in the bottom drawer of my desk and the back of my closet. The only business where antiques go down in price.

Ah yes, the good old days when you needed to know the difference between a video card and a sound card and the operating system had a clue what it was also.

Science fiction plot bunny for sale.

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

TxRad said:

Happy Hump Day.

I guess I need to freshen up the coffee before HP has a melt down with that antique computer equipment. Most things take 50 to 100 years to reach antique statues. Computer parts only take a few years. I have some of the high dollar antique crap in the bottom drawer of my desk and the back of my closet. The only business where antiques go down in price.

Ah yes, the good old days when you needed to know the difference between a video card and a sound card and the operating system had a clue what it was also.

Science fiction plot bunny for sale.

Click to expand...

This 'new'[to me] computer is not that old; merely sufficient to cause me some grief, with its inability to copy photo files from one old disk to a newer one and a version of Windows I wot not of.. The total is about 167 GB, and if Windoze had a copy programme that was any damned good, I'd probably be further on.
That said, the new parts have not arrived yet. . . .

And I have lost my copy of Office/ Word 2004.


coffee, gimmee Coffee.

ChloeTzang said:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

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A truer word never spoken.

Crap! I left my thumb drive with my stories on it at the office. I was just this close (thumb and forefinger held up almost touching) to finishing my most recent story, and I hoped to be completely done with it tonight.

I've been thinking of writing a story with the same female protagonist and very similar plot as a holiday contest entry. It took me a week to get through the first story. If I can do the second story that quickly then I'd have no trouble getting it in on time.

Maybe I'll start it tonight.

Fresh coffee for the evening crew is now available.

Boat number two is ready to go except for the lake test. I'll do that tomorrow. Then it goes up on blocks and covered with a tarp until the day before Christmas.

Got to finish up an edit from my mainstream editor. The usual screw-ups on my part. I know most of it is wrong but just don't seem to ever catch it on my own. Maybe one day but then again, it makes my editor feel needed. My editor is the best thing that ever happened to me. I'd marry her in a second but her husband would probably object just a little. Not to mention the housemate.

TxRad said:

Fresh coffee for the evening crew is now available..

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Sounds like a busy day. Me, I was up early, finished two chapters off. Went to work. Got home. Drinking coffee (see below). Writing third chapter. That roll is just rolling. I was thinking my story thru all day at work.....

ChloeTzang said:

Sounds like a busy day. Me, I was up early, finished two chapters off. Went to work. Got home. Drinking coffee (see below). Writing third chapter. That roll is just rolling. I was thinking my story thru all day at work.....

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Congrats on all the writing but working in a horsepital and thinking about porn all day.... Come to think about it, I've known several nurses like that over the years.

................

KindofHere said:

And because of this, several unsuspecting trauma patients were given handjobs instead of morphine.

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If it stops the pain then....

KindofHere said:

And because of this, several unsuspecting trauma patients were given handjobs instead of morphine.

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And died happy..... there last words were.... I'm in heaven!

..............

ChloeTzang said:

Sounds like a busy day. Me, I was up early, finished two chapters off. Went to work. Got home. Drinking coffee (see below). Writing third chapter. That roll is just rolling. I was thinking my story thru all day at work.....

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First Intel chip guy: "Watcha doing?"

Second Intel chip guy: "Trying to quadruple memory. Bloody Chloe's on a writing jag."

First Intel chip guy: "Have you tried breaking her fingers?"

"No point, she's just as quick with her tongue..."

electricblue66 said:

"No point, she's just as quick with her tongue..."

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I'm starting to think that Chloe has become a fantasy for some of y'all. Not that she minds so much.