A Geek Goes Flying

The NUX Mighty Air seemed like it would be a workable practice solution  back in January , but, uh, yeah. No. I don’t know if its a battery issue or saturated wireless bands or what, but it kept cutting out, and even when it was reliably connecting to the guitar (i.e., via an instrument cable), there's just only so much you can get from two 2" speakers and "8 watts" (however measured). The presets were kind of fun to play with for a minute, but against the overall limitations of the system, I never loved it, frankly. I have the FM3, and my tone chasing is best left to that device. The one (huge) downside: Dragging out the huge FRFR-112  for practice sessions is a drag. The more friction between me and practicing, the less I’ll practice ... Yeah. Anyway. So for wireless I found a used Line 6 Relay G75 system for a good price, and I can patch that into the FM3. For lower volume practice sessions (apartment living, yay...), I was looking at getting a single powered stud...

So I started taking guitar lessons a few weeks ago. I played in junior high and high school, not well, but I enjoyed it. I picked up an immaculate then-$349 (new) Bright Blue  Jackson JS32 on eBay for $150 (a steal!) during the pandemic with the earnest intent of getting back into it, but it’s been collecting dust ever since (September 2021... 😮‍💨). Also picked up a Roland Micro Cube for $89 (which at the time was a great score). Ibanez S521 in Sunburst Red, stock photo But none of those were as good as the deals I found this week. A $399 (new) Ibanez S521 for $180, on Facebook Marketplace. That listing was pretty matter-of-fact, but another listing (different guitar) revealed the seller was “on the streets,” and when I met him it was at a Motel 6 in Palmdale. Still, the guitar is exactly as advertised, also in near-perfect condition, and exactly what I needed for lessons (a fixed bridge, first and foremost ‡ ;). It’s going to live at the office for those times when I can’t ge...

You see this a lot in aviation, and in law: “I do it my way.” Even when all the research has established that way is obsolete and based on bad, old information. See the ever-present debate over lean of peak vs. rich of peak. (We follow the teachings of Mike Busch and John Deakin in this  hangar! Lean of peak.) Or shock cooling . Or WordPerfect. (Okay, the last one’s debatable, I hate some of the idiosyncrasies of Microsoft Word, and as much as I wish it was up to the task, LibreOffice still falls short in key areas, like generating tables of authorities. But network effect is real and the battle’s won; it’s a Word world.) Researching severability clause language (because that’s a thing I do, apparently; childhood dreams fulfilled), I stumbled across this blog, now offline but thankfully captured in the Wayback Machine . Here’s an excerpt that spoke to me: It’s just possible that “your way” is made up of all that is clearest and most effective. But the notion of doing things ...