Nancy Boys

So, I've been a little hacked off lately because everyone at work is calling in sick, which leaves me to work 12 or 16 hour shifts (after which I immediately have to go to class for four hours). I realize it's cold & flu season, but it's always chapped my ass how often "calling in sick" is really "calling in lazy" or "calling in hungover". I've had friends who have called in "just because I needed a day to myself" or because "I had some stuff I needed to catch up on" and it was all I could do to keep from going apeshit on them. I've called in sick twice the whole time I've been at my current job - once to go to the doctor when I had the flu (along with a case of strep throat that was inflamed to the point of my throat starting to swell shut), and once when I spent the day in the emergency room with a broken hand. I've come to realize that I was simply raised with a different work ethic than most other people, thanks to my parents. I mean, they just did not miss work. My father was able to retire seven years early because he had so much sick time, vacation time, & personal days saved up. This was instilled into them by their parents, who had an enthusiasm for dangerous, menial jobs performed for slave-labor wages that only first-generation immigrants seem to be able to muster. For everyone else, I have developed a short test based on these principles - feel free to print it out and refer to it when you are debating calling in to work:

-Click to enlarge-

(sorry guys, had to shrink it down to avoid page formatting problems)

Hope this helps - just trying to do my part.

Seventh Level of Discount Tire

So, as I mentioned in my previous post, I had some car trouble this past week. One of these problems was a FUBAR'ed tire on my CRX - I took it in for an oil change last week (yeah, I'm as D.I.Y. as the next guy, but I ain't crawling around in the parking lot when it's 20 degrees out) and the mechanic pointed out that one of my tires had a bulge in the sidewall. This happened to me before less than a year ago, when I hit a particularly nasty pothole:



I filed a claim with ODOT to try to get some of the expense reimbursed - of course they declined, and charged me $75 in "filing fees" for the privilege. So, it was off to the tire store - luckily, I purchased the "road hazard warranty" last time so it shouldn't cost me much...

The tire shop was populated by an interesting group of people. The important thing to remember is, I hate people. It's nothing personal. I'm just genuinely a misanthrope. As such, I usually expect the worst out of humanity, and I am rarely disappointed. Here's the cast of characters I was presented with during my nearly-two-hour wait:

The store manager: Pretty innocuous guy, the only annoying part was that he moved with the speed of molasses and talked with a twangy southern drawl. The accent wouldn't be all that unusual, except we're in Ohio and he was Asian.

Customer #1 was the man directly in front of me at the counter. The manager explained to him what they were going to do with his car, but I guess he didn't understand, because they had to explain it several more times, in great detail. He then proceeded to point to random tires on display throughout the showroom, asking "How much would those be for a 2001 Ford 150?" "Is that mounted & balanced?" "How much would those be for a 1997 Chevy Beretta?" "Is that mounted and balanced?" Apparently he was pricing tires for his entire family, while I was clearly waiting to be helped. Before leaving, he had to give the entire staff a rundown of things NOT to do to his vehicle: "Don't roll down the drivers' side window, it'll hop off the track and break." Don't touch the cigarette lighter, it'll blow the fuses." "Don't turn they key all the way off, or the steering column will get stuck." Something tells me the tires were the least of the safety problems with his car.

Customer #2 was a young (20-ish) girl who looked like she bought all her clothes at the Paris Hilton factory outlet (fake fur coat, neon stretch pants, etc). She had a small yappy dachshund sitting on her lap while she talked on her cell phone. She was one of those people who talk on their cell phones in public and have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE THAT THEY ARE SHOUTING THE ENTIRE CONVERSATION. Thankfully she left pretty quickly.

Customers #3 & #4 were a couple who must have decided that Discount Tire was the ideal place to work out some serious relationship issues. They were basically having a heated argument, while whispering the entire time. They would occasionally pause to shoot me dirty looks from across the waiting room, as if I had just barged into their marriage counselor's office with a six-month-old copy of Road & Track and plopped down on the sofa next to them.

Customers #4 & #5 were a mother-son team straight out of Dogpatch. The mother would wander around and offer helpful observations about the weather and pick through the magazines, and every five minutes the son would make the same joke at the top of his lungs: "HEY, MA! THEY NEED YOU TO GIT OUT THAR AND HELP CARRY SUM O' THEM T'ARS! HAW HAW HAW!"

Customers #5 & #6 were two teenage ghetto-wannabe white kids who drove up in some little shitbox held together with bubble gum and coat hangers. They asked to see the custom wheels catalog, and proceeded to sit down RIGHT NEXT TO ME even though there were a dozen empty seats throughout the room. (This is a pet peeve I am particularly annoyed by. Respect personal space, people).The driver proceeded to tell his friend every five minutes that as soon as he saved the money he would be "rollin' on dubs, yo". It took every ounce of self control I had to keep from knocking their skulls together, Three-Stooges style.

Customer #7 was a large black man whose cell phone rang as soon as he walked in the door. He proceeded to answer it and talked very loudly for several minutes in an African language I didn't recognize (it was actually kind of pretty sounding, sort of a singsong quality to it). He then hung up, glared at everyone in the showroom for ten seconds, and left in a rush.

Customer #8 was a mother who came in, dropped her two 9 or 10-year-old children off in the waiting area, then immediately disappeared somewhere. The kids were actually pretty well behaved, but the little girl was working on some schoolwork and kept asking her brother for help: "Do you spell "then" T-H-N-E?" The brother would reply, "No, dummy, it's T-H-E-E-N". This scenario was repeated multiple times, with the brother always giving a completely wrong answer. The little girl will no doubt be in the "special" class at school this time next week thanks to her genius brother.

Needless to say, after an hour-and-a-half of this I was ready to shove the air compressor line up my nose to try and force a brain embolism. Luckily, employee #2 came out and, after trying to sell me everything under the sun (apparently every part on my car is incorrect and horribly, horribly dangerous) charged me $14, and I was on my way. I'll be sure to do that again real soon...

Yeeesh...

...that's the longest I've gone without posting in a while. Sorry about that, it's been a week filled with overtime, emergency dentistry and car troubles, but I won't go into that right now. No new projects of note, I had hoped to have a new guitar to show you, but it's on backorder. I did pick up one of these:



It's pretty slick - plays like a full size, but small enough to stash just about anywhere (even, say, in a locker at one's workplace, if one was so inclined). The only other thing I've come across lately worth mentioning is this book, which pretty much sums up my interests lately to a "T":



If you're not familiar with Billy Gibbons, he's the guitarist for that little 'ol band from Texas. Even if you're not a fan, realize that Jimi Hendrix called a then-unknown Gibbons "one of the few guitarists I'd pay to see". Then listen to the riff in "La Grange" and recognize, fool. He's also a prolific collector of custom cars - everyone remembers the Eliminator coupe, but he also lays claim to such rides as Kopperhed and CadZZilla. Then there's his collection of guitars - most notably his '59 Les Paul dubbed "Pearly Gates", but there are dozens & dozens of others. "Rock + Roll Gearhead" is essentially a coffeetable book - half cars, half guitars. How kick-ass is that?!?

Family Style

Hey all -

Made it back from the 'Burgh okay - thanks to everyone who passed along their condolences, both on & offline. No essays/projects to post today, I am pretty physically & emotionally drained after the trip. It was great to see my relatives again, even though it wasn't the happiest of circumstances. I'm thinking I might have to write something vaguely inspired by them - to oversimplify, they are the old money/high society side of the family (I guess that makes me from the food stamp/carnival barker side of the family). Regardless, I get along good with them, and they're a hoot as people-watching fodder - kinda like Ayn Rand & Tennessee Williams got together, dropped acid, & wrote a one-act play. Check back in a day or so...

1914 - 2005

Hey guys. My grandmother passed away this afternoon, so I will be out of town for a few days. Check back the middle of next week sometime. -dG

Holding Pattern

...not much going on lately - it is cold & flu season, and my workplace has seven people who all share the same keyboards, phones, pens & pencils etc. This means that about half of the employees in my department are sick on any given day. As a bit of germ freak, I usually set off a few Lysol-bombs as soon as I get in and wash my hands constantly, so I remain pretty healthy - but this also means that I get called in for tons of overtime to cover other people's shifts (five times in the past two weeks, and a co-workers' father just passed away last night, so there's probably more to come). I also start classes on Saturday, and have been running back and forth to campus taking care of paperwork and whatnot. As I mentioned to Lucky in the comments for the previous post, I had hoped to have a new project to post here, but it doesn't look like that's gonna happen. Oh well, I'll come up with something. At the very least, I have some new gear coming I'll tell you about.

The only other news I have: I actually got asked out. On a date. By a real, live girl. And she wasn't blind or a hunchback or anything. In fact, she was pleasantly normal looking. Ladies, more of you should do this - men like it when women are direct. Well, I do, anyway - of course, I am a total retard when it comes to picking up "signals" from women. I'm probably going to politely decline - she is a friend of a family member of mine who, although I love her dearly, can only be described as a bible-thumper and a bit of a basket case. As such, she tends to hang out with other bible-thumping basket cases (her "support group"), and I just can't deal with that right now. Sure was a nice boost to my self-esteem, though...

DIY Files: Pedalboard

Since deciding to get back into music as a hobby, I have tried to be as frugal as possible. However, my G.A.S. has been rearing it's ugly head again, and I have acquired several effects pedals, with several more on the way (gee, thanks, eBay). Since pedal setups can quickly become an unholy mess of cables, it's easiest to have a place to keep them all. There are commercially available solutions (ranging from pretty cheap to rather expensive) but I have always preferred to build my own.

Now, this isn't you standard how-to file, as there are plenty of places on teh Internets where you can get that kind of thing. I'm gonna tell you how I build things. To start with there are three basic rules:

1.) Scrounge whatever you can - the less you buy, the better. Many of you are lucky enough to work somewhere that usually has lots of scraps and other useful stuff in the dumpster. If you don't, drive around on trash day and look for stuff. If you still can't find any, drive around until you see a bunch of kids on BMX bikes or skateboards playing on a homemade ramp, and ask them where they got the wood to build it. Chances are they "found it" somewhere - that "somewhere" is more commonly called a "construction site". DO NOT steal stuff from the construction site - but there's probably a dumpster there, check it for scraps.

2.) In a perfect world, we would all have huge workshops, beautiful workbenches, and instant access to any tool we could possibly need. However, in MY world, a "proper workspace" is "any workspace with enough room and a power outlet". For example, you will probably notice from the pictures that follow that this construction project took place entirely in my kitchen, as I don't have a basement or garage, and it was 5 degrees outside. You will also note that I am single. If married readers decide to get sawdust all over the wife's kitchen, do so at your own peril.

3.) You may have heard the old adage, "Measure twice, cut once". This is untrue. Measuring is for dance majors and Frenchmen. Same goes for safety glasses.

Okay, the first step is to gather the wood that has been scrounged for this project. For my purposes, this consists of a chunk of plywood about 40" x 16" (anything over about two-and-a-half-feet will work), a plank that is at least as long as the plywood is wide, and a chunk of 2"x4" (length is not as important with the 2"x4", but you want it as least as half as long as the piece of plywood).

(On the far right is a roll of carpet, we'll get to that later). I cut any funky ends off the plywood so it's more or less square. Next, I held the plank up to the plywood and marked the length (technically, this is not measuring) so it's the same as the width of the plywood:



I grabbed the nearest sharp implement and cut the wood. Next, I took a straight edge and drew a line (again, not measuring) from opposite corners, dividing the plank diagonally:



...and cut it:



(That's the kind of sweet line you can only get working freehand, with a $15 jigsaw equipped with a dull sheet-metal blade). Now, I put the the two "ramps" on the plywood, and put the 2"x4" between 'em. This is just a mock up for now, but, you can see that the ramps will provide the incline to the pedalboard, and the 2"x4" will provide horizontal support. After everything was lined up, I marked off where the 2"x4" hit the ramps and pre-drilled a few holes:



To add an easy power option, I picked up a cheapie power strip (less than $4 at Sprawl Mart) and set it in the middle of the 2"x4", and marked the outline (after taking twenty minutes to find the marker I misplaced):



Next, I took a big hoarkin' drill bit and drilled four holes near the corners of the power strip:



That's pretty much it for the "construction" phase, now we move on to the "assembly" phase. Here's were the carpet comes in - I picked up a roll of "automotive carpet" (available at Sprawl Mart, Autozone, Pep Boys, etc. - less than ten bucks). It's thin enough to be easy to cut & work with, but durable enough that it'll hold up for years. I prefer black. It's easier to pre-carpet the parts before assembly:



Now I can screw the ramps to the 2"x4". Of course I wasn't able to find the holes I pre-drilled through the carpet, so I drilled new ones.



It's kinda nice to have handles on your pedalboard - in the past, I have just picked the most gnarly-looking heavy-duty grain bin handle at the hardware store and mounted it top and center, but I was able to find some cool-looking black handles for the sides this time. I pre-drilled some holes for them:



Next, I moved on to carpeting the plywood. Some people might tell you that this would be a good time to put down some glue or contact cement on the plywood to keep the carpet secure, but why do that when you can get a good workout by shooting several hundred staples into it?



Next I screwed the top onto the support, only breaking one drill bit in the process. After that, I used some zip ties to secure the power strip through the holes I drilled in the 2"x4" (of course, I often have to use a screwdriver, ice pick, steak knife, etc. to find the holes through the carpet):



Next, the batteries in the drill go dead. Of course, the spare batteries/charger got unplugged at some point. I stopped and made a sandwich.

After a couple hours' charging time, the handles were mounted (sorry, black handles on black carpet aren't real visible in this pic - they're more visible in the next one):



One thing I didn't count on by following my "no measuring" rule is that my plywood was just barely shorter than my carpet, so I didn't have enough carpet at the edges to fold over both ends:



But, hey, don't the Chinese use the same word for "crisis" as "opportunity"? In this case, it was an opportunity to use some carpet scraps and my hot glue gun:



That's pretty much it for assembly. Next, I took the whole thing upstairs and mocked up where I wanted my pedals to go:

(Left-to-right is: Zoom expression pedal, clean/overdrive amp switch, Danelectro Tuna Melt tremolo, Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi, Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz, Zoom 505 II multi-effects unit).

The patch cables I used are the cheapie multi-pack available at any music store. Some people swear by cable kits that allow you make custom lengths, such as Planet Waves or George L's, but I'm not the king of Siam, so the cheap ones will do.

For a long time, there were only a few options for powering your pedalboard: 1.) Use individual 9-volt batteries for each pedal (inconvenient and expensive in the long run); 2.) Buy an expensive multi-pedal power supply; or 3.)Use a inexpensive (and potentially noisy) power supply without isolated outputs. A relatively new product is the 1Spot power supply (a similar product is available from Godlyke:



The long and short of it is that most 9-volt adapters are around 200 milliamps, and even then, most pedals only use a fraction of that (some effects, such as digital delays, are the exception). The 1Spot is 1700 milliamps max, so it can power many pedals (someone on a forum made a claim of somewhere around two dozen, although I probably wouldn't recommend that). The 1Spot uses a "daisy chain" that plugs into the adapter and has five outputs. Additional daisy chains can be connected together.



The adapters that are built into the daisy chain are the standard center-negative 2.1mm barrel connectors used by most effects manufacturers (Boss, DOD) but you can get different adapters to power other pedals (like Moogerfoogers and older MXR pedals). As a last resort, you can buy an adapter that simply has a 9-volt battery clip on the end, for really oddball pedals or ones that don't have an AC outlet at all (like my Big Muff):



After the power is sorted, velcro is added to the bottom of the pedals so they can be affixed to the board. The nice things about the automotive carpet is 1.) after a little while, the nap in the carpet "fluffs up" and obscures all the staples (although if you're really anal, you can go over the staples with a black permanent marker), and 2.) it is "fuzzy" enough to act like velcro - all you have to do put the stiff side of the velcro on the bottom of the pedals. You can staple-gun a few strips of actual velcro running the length of the board if you want it to be more secure (if you are playing gigs somewhere and have to leave your board unattended, you might want to zip-tie or even bolt your pedals down to the board). One problem with the velcro is that some pedals won't work well - for example, my Big Muff has rubber "feet" that wouldn't come off (the soft screws stripped out immediately when I tried to loosen them) and prevent any velcro on the bottom of the body from reaching the board. To solve this, I heated some wire and pushed it through the feet - this allowed me to wire a small pad of velcro directly to the feet.



Many people drill holes & use grommets to route all their power & signal cabling on the bottom side of the board. I didn't do this because I'm a long way from having my pedalboard in any kind of permanent state (FedEx is bring me an EQ pedal as we speak). I simply took a length of velcro and made some loops to hold my cables down where I wanted them.

Everything was set up and tested out:



Works great. One thing I should mention is that this pedalboard has a pretty extreme tilt (45 degrees) - some of the commercially available ones are just a flat board, and most only have a slight rise. The reason I did this this is 1.) It's easier to build, with only one diagonal cut, 2.) I prefer it, because it forces you to poke at the pedals gently with your toes, rather than stamping straight down on it (as a big guy, I could easily destroy some of less rugged pedals on the market by accident) and 3.) when I am playing I am usually sitting down in front of my computer, and it makes the pedals easier to see. So, that's what I did with my holiday weekend. I can't imagine that anyone has read this far unless they're at least considering building one of these, so email me some pictures if you do and let me know how it turns out.