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Thread: The Random Pointless Observations about Things You Did Today Thread

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    Default The Random Pointless Observations about Things You Did Today Thread

    Meh.

    Went all the way out to a Walmart at just-before-midday in an exurb/suburb.

    Freeway driving all the way. Which I hate. But, I haven't forgotten how.

    I suppose it wasn't fruitless -- I desired a second mattress/boxspring cover to complete phase one of my bedbug-mitigation technique.

    Just some cheap vinyl thing — probably have to cover it with lots of duck tape, for the box "spring" part of the bed.

    EXCITING news, they had a four-pack of black T-shirts, with pockets, and in size L, they fit great and I can show off my pasty-white biceps without seeming too tacky on the job.

    Also some socks — while I was just looking for nylon liner socks, these look thin enough. I didn't pick this up from Ray Jardine, but he and I seem to agree that the best sock+footwear combination is the lightest and thinnest possible. ETA The idea is for doing a lot of work or distance with the feet — I love the thicker socks for around home, but I agree with Jardine that if you're going to be walking twenty or more miles, the thinner socks are more effective.

    ALSO it is a goddamned zoo out there. Never get off the boat. Fucking crazy people driving like maniacs, dumbass morons with probably six kids in the car.

    AND I think I have three and a half Steel Reserve 211 24-oz cans of beer at home, plus two Totino's "party" pizze, so I can fuck around with my diatomaceous earth and bedspring cover (the shitty vinyl one) and mattress cover (the supposedly good one with the like zillion zipper locks and whatever).

    AND whatserface, WareGirl was, as usual, nice to me at work. Not like a Mae West kind of nice, but I think she's coming back to getting warmed up.

    Must be the good time of the month, or something.

    Good reminder to self! During weekend, get a haircut, and, like, extract some pheromones from various insects and rub them into my scalp.

    That's the kind of sugar papa likes.

    I'm not giving up on her: she'll take it and she'll like it, just like a stuffed bird.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 08 Sep 2018 at 03:58 PM.

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    Russell. Performance. "Fresh Force." Socks. They're cops.

    No, not too bad. Not the gossamer nylon liner socks I wanted, but even though they're only rated up to a mere size 12 men's shoe size, they are acceptable. We'll see.

    Hanes "Comfort Soft" tagless T-s, with pocket. Extremely light-weight undershirts, shows off my Shatner tribute physique (plus massive biceps) and comes in a pack of four, all in black. They don't have a "loose fit," for these are undershirts, and while presentable in public, they aren't the usual baggy athletic Rocky-style gear.

    Yeah, not crazy about the socks — but you can't ever tell with socks. EETA No, fuck the socks. They're much lighter-weight than regular sport-socks, but I return them and get more Shatner T-shirts. I swear to effing god, if they made these in that horrible orange color, they could be a uniform on TOS. I love it!

    The women are going to be leaking about my Shatner T-shirt look, though. Hey. Four days a week, then I can launder and repeat.

    Lucky dames.

    I'm going to be getting so much tail.

    ETA Just a job. Five days a week. Rocket man. OK, that was gratuitous.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 08 Sep 2018 at 05:44 PM.

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    Ah, but that was kind of a nice ending to the shift today, just me and this new girl, kind of pretty (well, she seemed fertile and was pretty and not fat — she was pretty ethnic, but the good kind, and a native speaker of English), just grabbing a drink of water while waiting for the time-clock.

    I think I might be a terrible person, but I really hope whatserface WareGirl noticed me and this broad (no, I don't remember her name) sharing pleasantries in a relaxed fashion

    IN BROAD FLORESCENT LIGHT!

    Maybe WareGirl can pick up some ideas that, even if you may be a severe introvert like me, you can still learn to jump on my rod, or at least let me dive into your muff.

    Kids these days.

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    That whole last post was wrong.

    In a few ways.

    The facts were correct, but for one: I didn't actually ask what her name was. We were just talking.

    Literally around the water cooler.

    And "ethnic" is not a really good way to de....no....I'll stand by that.

    But I was right in that I'm probably a terrible person. Half of my mind thinking, "What a good chance to welcome a new person to the warehouse and show her that it's not that bad." I like that this woman is friendly and appealing, and I shall say a friendly hello if I see her again. Other half thinking, "Tchey, suck on that WareGirl, I can roll any chick in the house."

    Not that good.

    WOMEN are far too trusting, as a sex of younger age. Geez. Most men, one hopes, become socialized and not smarmy bastards, but it's like that thing from Conrad that Bob Dylan stole: "Men who live outside the law have to eliminate dishonesty" or whatever.

    I have very few things going for me, but being honest is the last thing that's going to go before my brain rots from dementia or whatever.

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    I just heard a pet dog squeal, from the rental complex next door.

    And, I really do hope a coyote ate it.

    And, no, I'm not sorry to say, I'm on the coyotes' side. I see between some and twenty each week, and I think they're magnificent animals.

    Well, the hungry ones straggling along in packs aren't exactly "pretty" beasts, but I admire their sand, and it makes me happy when I see them in my semi-suburban "community."

    Yes, I see maybe 0.5 per day (arithmetic mean, not one-half a coyote) going into to town, and those tend to be more sturdy, handsome creatures. I don't know what they eat, and I don't care.

    They're a magnificent animal, and anybody who disagrees can ess my dee.

    They don't cause crack-ups, like deer. They're just fine.

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    And the very last things I do before going to bed:

    (i)Put some toothpaste on my mechanical device, and try to remember to floss and brush.

    (ii)Try to decide which is a good Jesse Ventura line to say in unknown circumstances
    (a) "Take a good long look at these pythons"
    (b) unintelligible
    (c) "I ain't got time to bleed"'

    (iii) Still deciding if I should floss and brush before submitting this post.

    ETA None of the above. Eh, since I got the toothbrush out, I should use it (on my teeth, shithead). But the Ventura question is not going to be answered.

    EETA Yeah, brush thoroughly but not floss. My secret shame. Also, not sure if Jesse Ventura ever said (ii.a) but it is the best line for all circumstance.

    Especially against pantywaists at the warehouse.

    EEETA Not people who actually wear panties. Most of those can stay. More like, theologians and shit. That kind. The fancylads. Take a good long look at these pythons, boy. And then get that rump into the barrel which has no name. Yeah.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 08 Sep 2018 at 11:54 PM.

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    Ah, finally, the magical shrunken stomach of the Jizz returns in force.

    One pound of fatty ground beef (I don't know the weight of the fat that was released into the pan and the air), about a pound of skirt steak, and 3/4 of a "fifth" of whiskey plus 1.5 of those little bottled coffee+sugar+milk drinks.

    Natch, I was dehydrated this morning, so drank a bunch of water.

    Ah, familiar vomiting mostly liquid into the toilet in the morning. With some errant chunks of meat.

    Don't know what it smelled like, but probably the opposite of victory.

    And yet "I eat it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart," I think is the line from that Crane short poem.

    //////////////////////////////////

    Also, yesterday at work I got stuck unloading boxes off pallets onto a conveyer belt. On direction to speed up or slow down pace, I adjusted the spacing of my boxes from between five and eight feet.

    But, no, this simpleton Isaiah working the other side of the belt just keeps throwing shit willy-nilly.

    If he had any personality greater than a wet dishrag, that could be tolerable, or at least understandable. I think he is a limp-dick mama's boy.

    Dumbass kids screwing with my method.

    BUT Morgan was about twenty feet down the line scanning the boxes and marking them for sorting (or if you think this is a word, "sortation") — ah. She understood my method, and my consistency.

    I'm going to go ahead and assume she infers I apply firm, deliberate pressure to all tasks where such attributes are required.

    Yeah, that's a ticket to Finger Man, admission two.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 15 Sep 2018 at 04:42 AM.

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    Huh. Apparently XOR can be applied to create a nice, compact, doubly linked-list.

    I suspect the authors of the C++ "standard library" have exploited this fact for their own code.

    One never knows exactly what's in the C++ standard library code, and I don't have the energy to try to reverse-engineer (i.e., look at the many thousands of lines of code, in assembly) this, but I get a Peter Falk kind of hunch that may be what the idea is.

    Of course, I could be wrong.

    Hmmm.

    Well, that's a kind of brainless activity I can explore, looking at dis-assembling the STL for the doubly-linked list. ETA Oh, god, I forgot what a PITA it is to try different tools to "uncompile" code. First you get the hex, then you rely on some tools to partially "re-assemble" into some kind of assembly language. Jeez. There's probably reason one I decided to become a professor of comp lit. And also the desire for accuracy is the reason why I didn't finish my dissertation.

    Sort of like watching TV, I guess.

    To me it's kind of amusing. I won't win any prizes, but it's not without uses.

    Not a Russian hacker.

    NB: the late jazz pianist Frank Hewitt used to favor wearing a white ballcap.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 15 Sep 2018 at 05:56 AM.

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    I should amplify a bit about the above: it's that the "standard library" for C++, which contains many very useful pre-built functions or classes so that one doesn't have to re-invent the wheel or write a linked-list or a string class from scratch (both common exercises CS students are expected to be able to do in any programming language).

    Well, the source code for these "bits" are compiled to binary machine code, so you can't actually see how any given class is implemented (I suspect many of them are written directly in C, not C++, and the various platform-specific compilers are designed to optimize, or not, any such loop and so forth).

    So, since you don't have the source code, but you do have the API in the form of what arguments each function or class can take and return. That's where the "standard" part of the library comes in handy — they follow a general template, if you will.

    But, if you want to know exactly what methods are being used by the libraries, it's a black box, so you're stuck reverse-engineering or "disassembling" the various bits.

    And, when you do that, you typically lose any helpful mnemonics like "Red-Black Tree Rotate" or "Traverse backwards."

    So, it's about as much fun as watching Wapner on the toob. If Wapner consisted of a vast amount of code that can only be understood by following carefully line by line.

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    Oh, but the real RL.

    Ever since Thursday when I directly gave a time and place (albeit on short notice) to my WareGirl and asked for her phone number — which wasn't so bad, she said she still had my number and she can text me with hers.

    Hmmm..

    Maybe she thinks I'm going to cut off my ear and send it to her in a box.

    Well, I think a good job of defrosting some of the ice today casually, but what I would have liked to have said (not a good opportunity) was, "look, don't worry about it, we're both adults."

    /////////

    In happier news, this Nigerian immigrant and I had a few laughs while towards the end of the shift — I think he's about my age.

    And while we were chatting and stuff, this newer girl, a hispanic American who is pretty fun (but also very good at her job, which is same as mine), joined in the fun.

    I wouldn't mind a little of her, even though she's old, like my age or, in girl-years, probably five years younger.

    //////

    And, of course, me and James decided to do a *Cool Hand Luke* style "fill up these rows with bags as quick as possible." Under five minutes we did. I think he might actually think we'll get an award or something, but it does make the job go faster to make a game of it and just shovel asphalt as quick as possible.

    //////

    Ehh. People are pretty funny.

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    Apparently two packets of ramen noodles, quite a bit of macaroni, powdered cheese, olive oil, and about five croissants is enough to make me hurl chunks in the morning after drinking about a liter of water.

    Now you see why Paul counseled Timothy to drink a bit of wine, for his stomach.

    A liter of wine, an empty stomach, and I think the raging storms within are quieting down. Too much food can indeed, as the commercials say on TV, be like a storm raging inside you.

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    Ah. Yesterday.

    Will have to wait to see how my new dental insurance works for my out-of-network regular people, but, man, is Elisa (I think that's her name)....in girl years, she's probably about my age. What a nice set of jugs.

    Oh, sorry, what? Well, she gave some good head or mouth, or whatever.

    I think my teeth and gums are like an open sewer to her.

    But she tried.

    Although, for people who are flirting with smoking cigarettes, the straight dope is that it fucks with your gums and other periodontal shit big time. So don't do it. Much of the 1.5 hr cleaning was spent in pain on about a 6 or 7 on a ten-point scale. It hurts like a bitch.

    And those nice jugs occasionally pressing against various parts of my body didn't help too much.

    It's fucking painful.

    So, I have to make a new rule and just use cigarettes for in the car-commute and during a break at work.

    Not difficult, just that's the rule for me now.

    ////////

    ALSO, why is it that I can't keep from bashing into cars in a parking lot? I did a short stint as a valet parker for a while, so I know how to park probably better than the next guy.

    Maybe I just don't give a shit.

    Like, cars aren't people, so I don't care so much.

    A few scrapes adds character to the (other person's) vehicle, so I'm really doing them a favor.

    /////////

    OH, and that "hispanic woman" has a name. It happens to be Claudia. And she continues to be nice — same ethos as me and a lot of people, just keep things light and funny, just to get through the day.

    Hot name for a hot girl.

    And, no, I really couldn't say her ethnicity. She's a native speaker of English. And, no, in her case her ethnicity I don't think is part of her outward persona, so it's not relevant. For some people, it is. Often I can't tell how they perceive themselves, so I err on the side of including specifications, for want of excluding an important detail.

    One thing I would counsel any younger people is that humor can be pretty universal, sort of like smiling and laughing is part of humanity.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 20 Sep 2018 at 06:13 AM.

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    Ah. Claudia. She is kind of a ray of sunshine. Me and the Nigerian Prince were picking an aisle together and she comes over doing an aisle next "door," and says "Hey, my two favorite men!"

    See?

    Maybe she's a bit of a flirt, but it's all in good fun, and makes the job tolerable.

    ///////////

    Heh. This gal Shelby is a spitfire. She's like the younger sister you can make fun of and she gives as good as she gets. I can't even remember in detail our latest jabs at each other, but it's all in fun,

    It all boils down to her saying "Yeah, well you're old! You're like forty!" and me calling her a kid.

    "Oh NO! dammit, SHELBY's on this aisle....ugghhh...well, I'll take one for the team"
    —"Shut up, John, you're the one who's in MY way!"

    See?

    It's pretty amusing and easy to entertain oneself in the warehouse.

    Oh, she and I and two "ambassadors" (they're sort of floor-level supervisors, but they don't have any authority) had a good little convo going about calculus and the continuum.

    Natch, Shelby hates it.

    Meh, I don't care about operations on R, but it still comes up a lot IRL.

    I don't know why work on expansion of infinite series and algorithms on multivariate polynomials is lumped in with first-year Calc, but it is the way it is.

    Yeah, so this ambassador (I think he's like 19 or something) did pipe and say, "well, calculus is pretty useful" (in response to my outburst that the front desk manager probably flunked her one term of calculus getting her BBA).

    So, we agreed, and I silenced Shelby by saying, "yeah, well, you try building a catenary suspension bridge."

    I think I got lost in what I was trying to post, but whatever.

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    Yesterday. I woke up too late, so had to make it an hour late to work.

    Natch I used the web interface to report I would be late, citing "reason" as "Menstrual cramps."

    So I come in, pass by one of the managers, he asked, "You're the one who put in the late starting time on the employee site?"

    "Yeah. I did put down menstrual cramps as the reason, but I didn't say whose those were."

    True fact. I thought it was funny, anyway.

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    Today I discovered that all one needs to do to retain precision in day-to-day life after a change in scheduling and tasks is to recalculate and reassign priorities to things that were once habitual.

    Such as, properly cleaning one's kitchen or teeth, or allotting precise times for "leisure" activities such as technical work in music, or readings, or whatever.

    Very simple, however, I find it is required for me to restore an acceptable "home life."

    Other people, certainly, do this sort of thing regularly.

    However, my method is superior.

    For me.

    But they're wrong.

    Probably.

    ////////////////

    OK, well, I won't say more about my opinions of others' methods of allocating time, but I'm mildly irritated that I could have written a nice little program that would have allowed me to assess areas of competence or deliquency.

    And, to boot, I could have done it in that shitty language Python, because I still need to get better at exploiting it for simple little things like that.

    Although, who am I kidding, I probably would have made a simple linked list in C with multiple priorities and struggled with how to add a nice GUI to it or how to import a CSV Excel/spreadsheet file.

    No, Python would have been the easiest tool to make something stupid like that. I could have even bit the bullet and expanded my knowledge of some of the Java libraries.

    But I wouldn't have liked it.

    Therefore, I'm sticking with pencil and paper.

    If I don't write it, it's not any good.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 24 Sep 2018 at 12:12 PM.

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    Against very sharp odds, I managed to get approved to work a different shift at the warehouse.

    Starting at 1000.

    On the one hand, waking up at 0200 every morning has been limiting my ability to pursue better careers, you know, salaried, wearing adult clothes, all that.

    On the other hand, this new shift (starting this Sunday) is a bit of a sausage fest — I'm actually going to miss light banter with, particularly, the women on the old shift.

    On the other hand, I don't have to deal with the contract panel-van drivers — most of them are just wanting to their stuff and get out of the warehouse ASAP, but the scheduling is done with extreme incompetence by their handlers from within The Company, who are useless morons.

    On the good hand, on the new "mellow" shift, we actually tend to get a break after two hours, as opposed to 3.5 or four hours, which renders fatigued manual laborers as much a liability in terms of production as the boobs who handle the workers.

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    Quote Originally posted by Jizzelbin View post
    Although, who am I kidding, I probably would have made a simple linked list in C with multiple priorities and struggled with how to add a nice GUI to it or how to import a CSV Excel/spreadsheet file.
    I should have corrected myself — there are GUI libraries, even for C, but that's not really what one typically does with the language.

    Also, it's not hard to parse out a comma-separated Excel file, but, also, that's a lot of extra writing in C to do something that more "hurrdurr" languages have well-documented libraries for.

    Even in C++, there are certainly specific libraries comparable to PyJava, but it's not really what the language is for, so you end up hacking your way through some odd libraries and fixing it all up together.

    Not very productive.

    OTOH, Python or Java make these sorts of things more "mainstream," however, I'd just as soon use a command-line shell to input and execute.

    I don't know why I felt compelled to specify, but it seemed good to correct some flaws in my post.

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    Well, I did one thing I don't like to do, but a woman asked me, so I had to.

    One of the contract van drivers piped up as I was walking by, "Hey, can you help me?"

    Medium-sized garden spider was in her van complete with its web.

    I felt like a savage, but I just smashed it with my hands and stepped on it.

    Oh well. It was a very sitcom-esque moment — she was not a tiny shrinking violet woman. Bold and sassy, I could say. Apparently she just didn't dig on spiders.

    FTR, I like spiders — they control flying pests, and, they don't bother me at home so I don't bother them and vice versa.

    ETA So, I guess I'm an executioner. Oh well. It had to be done, I guess.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 29 Sep 2018 at 12:26 AM.

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    Ah, that was kind of a nice favor today.

    My mother and father were in my neighborhood picking up some prescriptions at my grocery/pharmacy (no, I still don't know why they switched to this QFC vs. their closer Fred Meyer — just better service, and fewer mistakes, I guess).

    Eh, they were both able to help me put pest-proof (supposedly) covers on my bed frame and mattress.

    That's kind of nice. They're still only in their sixties, but I think they enjoy lending a hand if it's convenient, and it was certainly a challenging chore — those bitches are heavy, and awkward to haul around by oneself.

    Maybe I should make some friends.

    Nah. That'd be cheating!

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    Holy shit.

    I look at a clock and see "1500" and think "Well, time to take some Benadryl and get ready for bed."

    NO!!!!

    Dude, I can like stay awake until like 2200 or even 0000! With time to spare!

    Wow.

    Like an actual person!

    I like it, but it's still weird!

    //ETA How weird is it, you ask? It's pretty fucking weird. I suspect the various neural interconnects are going to sap some energy while I readjust to normal-person hours.

    Eh, fuck it. I still got some of Dr. James Crow and plenty of wine, and a big bottle of Benadryl, so, I just have to wait out the hours until normal people go to sleep.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 29 Sep 2018 at 05:14 PM.

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    Very strange, waking up at 0700 and spending a few hours prepping for work.

    VERY mellow shift.

    Ferchrissakes, they had Duke Ellington playing on the PA.

    And...I don't know the military sizes of troops, but, say, instead of a platoon (what is that, 30-50 troops?), it's more a squad this shift.

    And we can take a break after two hours or so, without being measured to the millisecond. As opposed to working up to 3.5 or 4 hours at hard labor before some cunt decides, "yeah, OK, I guess we'll allow it."

    True, there is much less prime grade-A poontang, but that's OK too.

    And I was able to off-handedly mention when one of Duke's boys on tenor was blowing a bitching solo to this chick, "Man, that guy is smoking his balls off on tenor!" (I don't remember exactly what I said), and it wasn't like crazy or weird or anything, she's just like, "Yeah, he's blowing his ass off, damned right!"

    It's all the fun of working at a tedious job in a warehouse, but we're all adults and so we just TCB and are trusted to do so.

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    Ah. After almost exactly a year, and a successful vote to completely replace everyone on the HOA board (we're still stuck with the property manager), they start to fix the giant hole in my roof. Well, the big hole is mostly on the other unit, but they're actually doing the whole roof. After wasting all the HOA reserves on stupid shit like concrete stairs and shit.

    Also, there are women on my new shift, and we get along just fine, but ain't none that's going to be my "best girl."

    Probably for the best. Just show up and do the job, is really all I should care about.

    It's just a job. Five days a week. Rocket man.

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    Holy fucking shit. I come back home today and this crew has got the entire roof down to the bare frame.

    They are not fucking kidding around. Say what you want about the hispanics in labor, but they get shit done, and no kidding around.

    They stripped it down to the wood frame in...what, like eight hours since I left this morning? And already a good of plywood laid up, combination of screws and nails.

    Well, I hope the six million dollar "assessment" is worth it.

    Stupid HOA assholes.

    At least the entire board has been voted out. There's some kind of visceral satisfaction in that. But that was at least a month ago. The board doesn't do shit except jerk each other off once a month, so it hardly matters.

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    And, today during work — I don't know if it was satellite radio or somebody's playlist.

    Pretty much the entire album of Tower of Power's Back to Oakland (?) — you know, the one with Chester Thompson on Hammond organ, "What is Hip?," "Squib Cakes" and all that.

    Fucking A damned right this is a mellow shift to work!

    How many times a day at work do you get to play "air Hammond organ" (if you think nobody's watching!)?

    Oh, "air organ" involves using both hands on the two manuals/keyboards, plus using the LH to change the Leslie speaker, plus adjust the drawbars with either LH or RH.

    "Air organ" is a whole intricate process, and I suspect most people would think you're insane if they watched you do it.

    ETA wait a damned minute — was somebody playing a joke about the Raiders/Browns game yesterday? That would make sense, but, still, it's a pretty subtle joke.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 01 Oct 2018 at 08:11 PM.

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    All right. All I know about this new crew/squad is that they are all, pretty much, super American football fans. Women+men, everybody seems to "bond" over "last night's game" or whatever.

    About that, I can't really add to the group vibe, but I guess I know roughly as much as the next person — difficult to avoid hearing stuff. Although I still don't care to follow.

    ///////

    Hey, you all probably heard in financial news that The Company is giving a higher hourly wage for beginning employees.

    I don't know what that means for me, but also down the grapevine I heard about some improvements in comprehensive health insurance, as well as some fiddling with stock options and a few other things.

    No, AFAIK, nobody really knows the nitty-gritty yet, at least at my warehouse, but that's the word.

    I'm skeptical, but even a few bucks per hour for an hourly-worker adds up, and may make buying into group insurance affordable to those who desire it.

    Yeah, The Company's weird thing is that we're covered pretty well for dental and vision, but not for, you know, a GP, PCP, regular doctor in, say, internal medicine.

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    That was kind of fun. The roofers are still pounding away, so I put on the Allman Brother's Band Brothers And Sisters album and just played along on piano. Well, I made it as far as the tune "Southbound" before my hands/forearms got tired, but that was still a good, what, twenty minutes of HEAVY pounding on piano.

    Hey, fuck 'em.

    If they can pound with hammers, then at least I can get some more exercise too.

    My little Onkyo stereo amplifier + the 12" Dynaco/Altec speakers gets pretty damned loud. I don't know how much compression the mixer/mastering engineer used for the redbook CD, but it's a pretty loud album, without a lot of dynamics.

    One of the few albums where the compression doesn't really bother me — maybe it's just I'm used to that mix.

    And, of course, Chuck Leavell (now with the Stones since the early 1980s) and his piano comes through just perfect.

    It's fun to try to just copy exactly what he's playing — I think he was only in his early twenties when this was recorded.

    A true badass rock and roll piano picker.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 02 Oct 2018 at 08:30 PM.

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    Yesterday, I did an extra shift at my "job" at The Company. Just for the extra money and partly to make sure "my people" were doing it right.

    It was kind of exciting — I'm not really exaggerating, it was like "the king approacheth!" Hey, we need you back on pick&stage! Hey how's the new shift!

    And, yes, even Shelby admitted that I'm not "old" — according to her, "like, 40 is old. You don't look that old!" I'm pretty sure she has no idea what she's talking about. But still that was fun. Well, I don't want to tell all of her stories.

    We're not going to talk about Morgan. She did, apparently under duress, eventually mumble something about "How you like the new shift?"

    OH, and on the next shift (my new regular shift), one of the floor supervisors (who'd also been there since 0500, just like me), actually said "You know, I don't think anyone's thanked you today." I said, "well, what for, really?" (something like that). She: "Just you're doing a good job."

    So that's kind of nice — she's kind of a tough broad who does all the same physical stuff everyone else on the floor, and isn't exactly emotionally or verbally forthcoming.

    Although, the first day I started, back in March, she seemed shocked when I piped up in a breakroom conversation about Ichiro (baseball), "You into baseball?" I guess that pleased her: maybe she thought I was a fancy lad or didn't like regular stuff.

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    ETA yeah, that was a common theme since High School. "You wouldn't think he'd pitch in and help the stage crew, but he gets it done."

    I don't know if that's my patrician appearance, or somewhat introverted character, but people seem to be surprised I just get it done without needing specific instructions.

    I just put it down to working since a young age — picking berries in the field, working retail, whatever.

    What I've found at this latest blue-collar job is that there just isn't any room for people who don't pitch in.

    As it should be, IMHO.

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    AND, I'm pretty sure Claudia gives a nice little wink/smile to me. Actually, not "pretty sure": that's just how she does, although not with everybody.

    She's a good looking woman.

    I'm pretty sure she's hooked up with the usual boyfriend or whatever, but she's got the flirt down pretty good.

    That's not a criticism at all — I like the nice, friendly flirt.

    It's all in good fun, and, AFAIC, everyone knows what it is. Just it's nice when people speak the language.

    As an aside, she's a pretty nice-looking woman.

    She seems to have almost an antagonistic-joking quality to the newer hire whom she's training.

    Sometimes she seems to go a bit too far. I.e., "STOP! DON'T MOVE!" to her underling, but maybe that's some kind of hazing. Such that her underling/trainee literally stops and almost bows deferentially to her "master."

    Well, that's between them.

    I find it amusing, anyway.

    No, there is no way that Claudia (no, I'm not inventing the name — in fact, I hope she never finds this forum) is "on the hunt," like a lioness, but yet one more amusing aspect of human behavior. Well, maybe she has some crackhead BF or something, but damned, she is a pretty woman.

    Nope. Not pursuing. Not for me, anyway. I still like Morgan, and maybe her self-confidence is driving her down. Oh well, nothing to be done about that. I would like to try to build up her self-confidence, and at least we can be friends. But, that's not up to me.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 05 Oct 2018 at 09:44 AM.

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    I must say </Ed Grimley> I'm glad I put my bed back together.

    Something is probably good to say for sleeping out of the "dust zone," i.e., not just plopping a mattress down on the floor and being like, "meh, it's fine."

    Not really interested in seeing how many bedbugs crawl up through the diamotaceous earth — meh, they're OK. Don't really both me if I can't see or detect them.

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    Actually, I disapprove of Claudia's method of training.

    It reminds me of that scene from the movie Dazed and Confused, where whatserface......whatever, senior cheerleader is like "fry like bacon!!!!"

    In fact, I don't like it at all.

    Yeah, I know, good for me, whatever.

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    Quote Originally posted by Jizzelbin View post
    I don't know how much compression the mixer/mastering engineer used for the redbook CD, but it's a pretty loud album, without a lot of dynamics.

    One of the few albums where the compression doesn't really bother me
    That's kind of wrong, and it bothers me.

    I should have said it was mastered and mixed with about the right amount and quality of compression.

    In no way is that album a victim of the "loudness wars" or whatever else.

    It just happens to be a loud album with impressive, musical mixing.

    ETA And, yes, I suspect Claudia probably takes it like a knife she enjoys. (To non-cis-males reading, that's a good thing). Just my opinion.

    EETA And why "musical" mixing? Easiest is just listen to Leavell's piano -- I don't know how they got the resonance of the bass strings, but while the sound of the piano is, to be sure, most in the mid and mid-highs (I don't remember the exact octave numbers in Hz), it's still got the full sound of the acoustic piano.

    I don't know if that's from the microphone(s) used, or what equipment from the board, but that's what I mean.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 06 Oct 2018 at 04:51 AM.

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    Nothing much. Got to know some of "my" new crew better at work.

    I think I've been spinning my wheels trying to do basic text munging and sorting using Python — I may have mentioned that I find the syntax complicated, and I also rebel against the idea of "one way to do it." (By that I don't mean avoid writing nicely commented, non-obfuscated code, nor do I really mean using the whitespace convention).

    So, since any work in basic Machine Learning I do is going to be in a C++ library, or, puke, in some crap like Java, using these....differently-abled....conventions for Python for just sorting text (csv, tsv) is a major headache.

    So, partly inspired by some thread on some other board, since I already know what are called "regular expressions" (more or less a way of encoding "wildcards" to specify what you're after in any given file), and since I use *nix BASh and all that, I can't believe I just haven't been using Perl to take care of text-processing tasks. No more double-underscores, none of that — I can do all that in a language I already know the conventions for.

    "Michael! How could you have been so blind? This Sicilian Thing that's been going on for centuries!"

    Well, better late than never to just use the easiest tool.

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    And, yes, I'm aware most people would say "You find PYTHON's syntax and conventions frustrating, and yet you prefer C or C++? Whatever, pointer-head!"

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    Oh, here's my second warehouse bug-killing "story." A few aisles down there was some women talking animatedly about "that's a stinkbug!"

    So, naturally, I was curious and came over.

    It wasn't a "stinkbug," it was a box elder bug. So, without thinking, I just smashed it and moved the carapace out of the way.

    Of course the two kinds of bugs are closely related, and they both stink, but one of the "gals" didn't really approve of my disposing of the bug.

    Well, fine, lady! If you wanted to catch and release, that's fine with me — maybe you should have done that before creating a mini hysteria! Mind you, there's plenty more where that one came from.

    I guess we all have our preferences about bugs and stuff — I don't care about box-elder bugs, but I'd as soon not kill a spider.

    God, I thought she was going to cry or something or call PETA on me.

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    Oh no, the shit's out of the bag now. I pulled into work this AM and saw Shelby waiting out front for her ride. She waved "Hi!" so I came over and said 'hi!'

    She knows all about me and my crush on this girl I call "WareGirl" — she wouldn't reveal her source, which I agreed she shouldn't do, but she also agreed that a behaved like a perfect gentleman, although ruled by his urges.

    Apparently some supervisor, about my age, got "suspended" for doing some shit like buying gifts and shift for this 20-year-old woman, whom I didn't recognize by name.

    Well, that's not an issue between me and WareGirl, because we're the same "rank" and I just asked her out and left it at that, because I'm not some perv or somebody trying to weasel into being "friends" with ulterior motives.

    Anyway, that's about it.

    Just some anecdotes probably only amusing to me.

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    No shit.

    I think what I and a lot of people have been calling "boxelder bugs" are actually "stink bugs," around here.

    Visual identification seems a near certainty — I don't have much of a sense of smell, and I rarely crush them and savor the aroma.

    They're not so much a problem, although I don't like them inside my place (they're very loud when they buzz around ineptly, crashing into things, like everyone's favorite brain-damaged dipsomaniac uncle).

    But there sure are a lot of them, pretty much every year. Several- or more- dozen "congregating" on a sunlit wall is pretty common — and while we do have acer macrophylla (big-leaf maple), supposedly a prime source of food for the boxelder aka "maple-seed" bug, not really a lot in my immediate neighborhood. Alnus rubra, and pseudotsug. menz. and tsug. het. are the main trees in these acres. And some vine maple,and a few proper maple.

    I guess "people" in the neighborhood just call them boxelder bugs because "stink bugs" sounds crass or something.

    ////////////

    ETA But in actual news. I did get to have a short "Hey, how you been, etc." with KNOWN FLIRT Claudia.

    Actually it was good to see her again — some people from my old shift stayed overtime to do some shit with the Laverne and Shirley conveyer belt.

    And now I know who is responsible for that shit-sucking goddamned dance club music — it's that dried out old hag Natasha. God I wish she'd just die, preferably after killing her family.

    Yeah, I have to put up with more dangling bits on the later shift than I prefer, and less more...appealing, or pudendic, if you will...but at least we don't listen to shit music.

    And, no, I don't actually have to inspect the genitals — that's not even close to my job description. "Men" who are complete nerd-pussies << Actual people who happen to be women.

    In general.

    And, no, jackasses, "<<" is meant to be the common shorthand for not just "<" but, like much "<"
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 12 Oct 2018 at 12:12 AM.

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    EETA AND, I have a new use for my strangely large collection of Sharpie colored pens. Green, light blue, and red, are the three color codes for routes that have to be staged, so I can just use those to conveniently encode my paper sheet of distributions by hour.

    So, therefore, I can have an extra glass of wine during break and at breakfast, and not get confused.

    Shuddup.

    It's very Continental.

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    The rechargeable marine horn is going to be my new best friend.

    Good for at home AND in the car.

    I don't know what kind of drugs or alcohol or stupidity or loudness these people 200-300 meters away are on, but it is some of the stupidest shit I have ever heard.

    Cocktail party my ass. A bunch of birds in a field? No fucking way.

    If they were capable of masticating instead of just huffing paint I could just throw out some poisoned steaks while doing a drive-by.

    My PA speaker doesn't have enough throw and encourages my neighbors to call the pigs on me.

    I would like to throw gasoline on them and burn them, but I'm not smart like the Unabomber.

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    Yesterday was OK -- picked up an extra shift at 0500, then did my regular stuff.

    Got to "train" somebody on her first day.

    TBH, I think I'm an excellent teacher, and I hope she remembers a few little tips and tricks for just how to get through the mess of the warehouse while being both correct and chilled out, mentally.

    She was probably only eighteen or so. I'd never seen such wide-eyed observation in a long time.

    And, no, she will not be found in a dumpster somewhere: I have doubts she can lift some of the heavier freight, but I think I gave her some pointers to not worry about it so much, just ask for help and a few shortcuts.

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    Quote Originally posted by Jizzelbin View post
    and since I use *nix BASh and all that, I can't believe I just haven't been using Perl to take care of text-processing tasks. No more double-underscores, none of that — I can do all that in a language I already know the conventions for.
    In fact, that's wrong. What I should have said is just use awk+sed — Perl may be a nice language, with nice well-tested scripts for all sorts of stuff, but for just simple data munging, I think it's more useful to just use a BASh script with sed+awk, and still reserve part of the brain for advancing with Python's very nice libraries, like "pandas" and other stuff.

    For me it's about what's more versatile and is likely to be more useful in the future.

    Yeah, the conventions of Python and its libraries are irritating, but it still doesn't stop me from using awk and other tools. It's just slightly less a PITA than anything else. Plus, play nicely with others — it's not exactly hieroglyphs, the language, and most people, including me, can at least read and write Python. It's a volume and efficiency game.

    /*
    ETA Actually, I noticed Claudia poured the Spanish accent on pretty thick yesterday. I don't know if that's code-switching, or what, but she really almost went overboard. I think she was training somebody as well, so, maybe make them feel comfortable, I guess.

    Kind of odd to observe someone ... well, that's not very odd. If I speak or think in French while conversing with someone, I still have a French accent in English when trying back — sort of franglais. It's an unconscious, because the whole shape of the mouth has to change. And FR is only a second language to me: although it is very familiar to me, I was raised by anglophones who were my parents (my father's father dropped FR and, true to immigration behavior among FR Canadians, more-or-less assimilated) and peers (who were rednecks, so that's my peer group from a young age). But I'm convinced Claudia is familiar with hispanic culture, in some ways.

    I'll keep an eye on her.*/
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 17 Oct 2018 at 09:17 AM.

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    Bleh. I stupidly agreed to take an extra shift starting at 2015 this evening. I have no idea how long the shift will last, but be assured driving on a Friday night is not something I look forward to.

    Especially since having retired early last evening and woke up at 0300, after a solid eight hours sleep.

    Oh well, maybe this new crew will take umbrage at my reeking of wine and they'll fire me or send me home. That would be a good outcome.

    /*
    Oh, each of the two extra early morning (start == 0500) shifts I picked up.

    WTF Morgan.

    I think she's being a bitch.

    Everyone else is friendly to me, and happy to see me again.

    Whatever.
    */

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    Huh.

    The Ecosense refillable marine horn is not as flimsy as Amazon reviewers make it out to be.

    And after three or four short blasts from two feet from one ear, it is likely to have already caused more hearing damage to the user.

    However, the Schrader bike valve is easy to access, and the device is easy to operate, as well as being very light in mass.

    I suspect the higher-pitched shriek will discourage generation Z from maltreating their dogs, by allowing me to intercede from a distance of upwards of 200 meters.

    It will not enable to cut out the egg-producing parts of the human females, nor burn the testes of the males.

    But it is a start.

    Very good device.

  44. #44
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    Quote Originally posted by Jizzelbin View post
    Also, there are women on my new shift, and we get along just fine, but ain't none that's going to be my "best girl."
    Well, that's still true, but one "girl" (maybe she's in her mid-twenties) seems especially friendly. I'm not so much into her, but it is nice to be able to respond to friendly gestures. Of course, there are a few other women on the shift, but that's pretty much "just the facts, ma'am," even though we get along and I'm learning the new routine from them.

    I'm still burned up about how The Company is running their employee website: really? Apparently, I have to keep paper records of every little thing, because some differently-abled back-end web developer doesn't have his or her shit together. Major PITA.

    I almost think it would be worth it to try to go back to the earlier shift, mostly because I kicked ass at that and had a good, fun rapport with everybody. But that's...I think I'm stuck with this new shift, which is pretty goddamned boring.

    Ideally I could work double shifts for half the days, but I don't think The Company has much in mind except some kind of dumb management technique of "rise through the ranks, and you'll get the shifts you desire!"

    Whatever.

    It's just a job. Five days a week. Rocket Man.

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    Here's random and pointless: I was just doing a little thing on piano, like an 8-bar kind of "Trouble in Mind" thing. Real slow, then I started getting into it and modulated all over into different keys, until almost getting to a pretty fast boogie/rock.

    I guess my LH is used to that kind of abuse, but the RH has forgotten how to be loose and flexible.

    Which I think is the only way to be able to play.

    Something entirely different than RL, b/c the wrist rotations used in keyboard playing are not something you do in regular life, especially at manual labor.

    I don't know what they'd call it, like axial motion about the wrist or something. Every other RL action is more about creating rigid, supportive structures in that part of the arm/hand, but I guess it's true. A little more limp-wristed action is needed for fast, non-tiring work at the keyboards.

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    Well, this is a few days ago.

    I guess most fun is Friday there was some downtime and this kid during the earlier shift and I were chatting, along with one of the van drivers — my little buddy from the earlier shift is from Somalia, originally, which I didn't know (yes, I tried my few phrases of Somali and failed miserably), but the other guy was from Kenya.

    I didn't know that Swahili was spoken much more widely than Kenya. We chatted for a few minutes in French, and the other guy, my little buddy, was like "John's not saying anything, he's all making it up!" "—No, no, it's good!"

    So that was sort of a compliment, I guess, not to mention just fun.

    OTOH Apparently I got "in trouble" for using the online employee "report an issue" form using some....unsavory language. Apparently that is not "the Company Way." Not a big deal, just you probably should not write, "Have my timesheet fixed, you cocksucking retard database administrator," because apparently such things actually get read by people.

    No, I'm not "in trouble," I was just "verbally instructed" to stop doing that.

    Actually, the manager admitted as much that "because of my military background I'm used to that language, but HR sees these comments, so I have to let you know it's not The Company Way."

    So, that was pretty cool as far as a "dressing down" gets.

    And my response was pretty bitching — contemplative, calm, "Consider it fixed: I understand, sir." With correct, earnest eye contact when appropriate.

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    Hunh.

    I guess I ordered two pairs of eyeglasses from Zenni Optical.

    I'm kind of sceptical.

    (i) They weren't as cheap as I expected

    (ii) I have no clue what they shall look like if they arrive (yes, I'm using the modal future tense correctly, you jackass).

    (iii) OTOH, even though I have vision insurance, I'm pretty sure sixty or so USD is about what I would have paid in co-pay, examination fees, and parking, much less for one pair of prescription sunglasses and one pair of (probably dorky-looking) regular glasses.

    And the hottie bartender said they looked OK, from the computer screen.

    Meh. Fine. Just wait until they show up.

    Just like zee woomen. How much for zee women???

    Fuck it.


    Meh, see what happens.

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    While I enjoy having "more" sun in the mornings, it is really difficult to stay awake in the evening.

    Although, sorry Redskins fans, you all got your asses beat. I think that was the most American football I've ever seen in one sitting (the last 1.3 quarters, which, typical to American football, took about an hour and a half to get through). Kind of annoying with all the throngs of crowds, but its still the only decent cheap place on my way home from work.

    Jeesus, Britt was working her ass off — only person behind the bar and there were probably fifty or sixty people crammed in there to watch "the game." She may be a hottie, but she knows what she's doing. For context, it's a tiny place with a couple of pool tables, a kitchen, and mostly cabbies or warehouse workers (and some errant hipsters), aside from it being nominally a sort of sports bar which occasionally gets some American football or that abomination the British call "soccer" fans.

    What I didn't realize is that American football players aren't generally, as I initially thought, just huge blocks of meat hidden behind robotic gear. I suppose they could be called athletes.

    It's still not my favorite game to watch, but I'll grudgingly allow it.

    AND I ended up sitting next to someone who was a "ringer" for John Goodman's "Walter Sobchek (sp?)" from TBL. The haircut, the bulk, the, when I asked him towards the end of the game if he thought there was going to be a riot in the bar, said, "I don't care."

    AND I had a chance to use my Wittner "Super Mini" metronome at work, since it was really slow and most of us were just doing make-work. It really does make things more interesting to find a good tempo and try to work on subdividing rhythms or just use it to inspire some mental practice of any given piece of music.

    ETA AND when I was exiting work one of the "flex" drivers (private individuals with their own vehicles who deliver random shit we give them) had their car with a cute...I think a Pomerian doggie. Of course I said "Hi, doggie!" I think the driver's teenage daughter was in the passenger seat and the doggie gave some good protective barks at me. We both had a good moment of amusement at the doggie's vehemence. And, no, I was not perving on some underage girl, it was just a neat scene.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 04 Nov 2018 at 10:30 PM.

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    Well, finally today my Řrberg edition of some of Petronius's Cena arrived. I used to have a similar student's edition, but I lost it a few year ago, although I still have a photocopy.

    This is a cute little text of a good bit of Petronius, with all the vocabulary glosses provided in Latin — there's not a scrap of English in the text. Similar to the old "ad usum Delphini" texts.

    Not especially rewarding, as a text, but it's cargo-pocket-sized and is much easier to carry to have something to puzzle out instead of my much larger Vulgate edition of the new testament. That's not true — Petronius is hilarious, even if he's no great poet like Vergil or Horace.

    And, no, I'm not a masochist — Petronius's prose is not very challenging, but my Latin is rusty. I just prefer to use the language, however abridged, or annotated, just for the fun of it.

    ///////////

    AND, a few days ago, even though I've been playing Bach's 3-part inventions (sinfonias) as part of a daily routine for a few years, I've been using printed out copies from the Busoni edition of the 3-parts, as well as printed pages from the Wiener and the Henle editions.

    So, I finally was tired of always losing pages here and there, so bought the Alfred's publishing spiral-bound of Bach's 2-and 3-part inventions.

    Just to not be as annoyed, especially since for most of the 3-parts I've already done the painstaking work of figuring out fingerings and which hand covers which parts.

    Surprisingly, the printing and suggestions of separation of the hands (one doesn't have three hands, don't you know) is extremely readable, especially if you already know the pieces and just never committed to memory all of them.

    In fact, I think the Alfred edition, at first glance through, preserves the "right" way of dividing up the parts between the hands in the three-parts — that's the only reason I used the Busoni edition, anyway, when learning. They seem about equally practical, and in many cases about the same.

    Yeah, the appearance is kind of as a cheesy "student book," but I'd put the 3-part inventions up against or over many of the pieces of the Well-Tempered Clavier — so, I don't have anything to prove and I'm glad to have a bound edition I can just flip through much easier than photocopies when at the keyboard.

    ETA And, yes, even the simpler 2-part inventions are great examples of composition and improvisation, and some of them, like the Bbmaj, give a good isolation workout for some wrist rotations in LH. I don't spend very much time on the 2-parts, but I think it's reasonable to ear-transpose the C major into all twelve major keys (no, I can't do that by ear yet, but it's a good goal that probably few people bothered to do), as well as invert the voices as an exercise, and to use some others as a "spot-check" on some technical problems (the A maj, the Bb maj, and some others probably). Even the E is sort of a companion piece to the Corrente from the E minor Partita, so it's nice to have it in a convenient volume to just read through.

    ////////////

    When I get my next paycheck, I'm going to get an actual bound version of Bach's English Suites (Henle), Debussy's Préludes (Henle) and Beethoven's Op. 27 no. 1 (Henle). Many of them are familiar to me, but it will simplify my music "corner" of my front room to do away with a lot of scattered photocopies and so on.

    Of course, I consult with many editions for these and all other pieces, but for having something to easily read to refresh the memory, I think it's very nice to have a "reading" score for reference/refresher of memory.
    Last edited by Jizzelbin; 06 Nov 2018 at 09:45 PM.

  50. #50
    Oliphaunt Jizzelbin's avatar
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    Still wondering if this rube van driver on an earlier shift I picked was trying to instigate a fight when he said "You got some balls."

    Jackass. Don't fucking stand in the way of an 800-lb hand-carried cart and be surprised when a slack-jawed-appearing person just silently waits for you to move your stupid ass.

    Cunts.

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