My new bass: Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Bass

I recently started playing bass in one of the Artisan bands. They needed a bassist, and I'd been wanting to learn how to play, so we decided to give it a whirl. I decided I liked it enough to justify trying to get a bass of my own, because borrowing instruments is a pain.

So I made the difficult decision to sell my Strat: my first electric guitar, one I'd spent time and money upgrading to suit my tastes, and a very serviceable instrument, but one that had been played for a total of about two hours in the previous year since I bought my Hamer Echotone. I didn't have any disposable cash at the time, so something from the collection had to go. The Strat was the odd instrument out, poor thing.

Armed with a (small) bit of money, I began bass-shopping. I knew from borrowing basses from my friends that Ibanez was out of the question; their necks are not good for my constantly aching wrist tendons. I was pretty sure I wanted to get a Fender Jazz Bass, or possibly a Precision Bass, and that I'd have to look at the Squier imported line.

On a whim, we went to Guitar Center one Sunday afternoon, and as I was walking around the bass room, a beautiful sunburst jazz bass caught my eye. It had a nasty ding on the front under the knobs and was discounted as a result. Just the sort of thing you look for when you're strapped for cash and want to buy an instrument. I pulled it off the wall and was surprised to find it was fretless. The inlaid fret lines were so clean and nice that it fooled me until I had it in my hands. Otherwise, I would never have pulled it down at all.

Since I already had it in my hands, I figured I'd give it a try. And as it turns out, I quite enjoyed the fretless experience. Such a cool sound, not actually terribly difficult to pull off when you are the type who already has to look at the fretboard constantly anyway, and quite easy on my wrist as a bonus. Still, it cost more than I had in my pocket. Imagine my delight, then, when the salesman came in and told me there was a used one in better condition for 40 bucks less on the other wall. No ding, but still cheaper because it was used.

I played it for about five minutes and decided to buy it. I love playing it, and it's teaching me to listen very carefully to what I play so I can keep it in tune. It's a Squier Vintage Modified Fretless Jazz Bass. Here's a photo:

Man Tease

According to the AP (via Yahoo! News), the Florida Marlins baseball team "is creating an all-male, plus-size cheerleading squad to be dubbed the Manatees."

This is probably a sign of the apocalypse, and it definitely confirms my theories about the moral inferiority of the National League, but I still had to share the story, if only because "The Manatees" is an absolutely perfect name for a fat male cheerleading squad.

Leopard Update: 10.5.2

I'm gonna like this. A few key highlights from the release notes:

Dock
Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.

Desktop
Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.

Available now via System Preferences "Software Update" pane. Go get it!

Hot chicken

Twice in the past week, I've sat down to the computer to write an entry for P.F. and been sad to find nothing coming to mind. I felt like writing, but had nothing to say. I moved on to something else, confident life would send something my way worth writing about.

It didn't take long.

Today Abel and I dropped the car off at Delta Sonic for an oil change and interior cleaning—the latter, by the way, is a great deal: $7 for a full vacuum, interior window washing, and fragrance; you can't beat that—and walked across West Henrietta Road to get something to eat. This was surprisingly easy in spite of the fact that the town of Henrietta, like most Rochester suburbs, hates pedestrians and wants them to die grisly deaths. Once we crossed to the other side, we had two options: KFC and Arby's.

Now everyone knows that aside from the delicious curly fries, Arby's serves absolutely nothing worth paying to eat, unless you need to induce vomiting or have a bizarre pregnancy craving for the taste of sweaty meat. So that was right out. We proceeded to KFC, which turned out to be the worst fast food restaurant I've ever frequented. (Admittedly, I have not frequented the KFC on E. Main Street.)

I won't go into detail about the poor customer service. No need to harp on the fact I had to repeat my order three times and still couldn't quite get it across clearly enough; that's par for the course at KFC. I expected it. The only reason it was frustrating was because of the almost oppressive heat blasting me in the face while I stood at the counter for 10 minutes. I assumed it must have been the heat lamps warming the piles of greasy chicken behind the registers. While the workers plodded around bagging up my food—which, forebodingly, they assumed was "to go," even though it wasn't—I took off my down vest and hung it over one of the the chairs at the table Abel had chosen.

When I finally sat down, I dug into the sludgy chicken, but the heat didn't stop. I soon realized that this was no stray heat lamp; they must have the heat set impossibly high. This seemed odd to me because all the workers were already wearing long sleeved shirts, most of them sweatshirts. The increasingly long line of customers were all unzipping their coats and pulling at their collars, glancing at one another, growing testy.

Eventually, I noticed the digital thermostat on the wall near the employee entrance. Curious, I leaned over and saw a large 86 on the display. Eighty-six degrees! That's hotter than my wife's crazy housemates set their townhouse thermostat in college. (I took great pleasure in surreptitiously turning it down to 64° whenever I visited.) Seriously, 86°? Who sets it that high?

That's when it dawned on me: the larger number on a digital thermostat is usually the current temperature, not the target temperature. And the heat was still blowing. That meant...

I had to see. I stood up and walked over.

It was set to 99°. I'm crapping you negative. It was set to ninety-nine degrees.

Maybe I had it backward; maybe the heat lamps were broken and they were using the HVAC system to keep the food warm. In any case, I bundled up Abel and went out to brave the crosswalkless suburban superhighway once again. The only nice thing about sitting in an indoor heat wave is that it actually feels good to walk outside in February.

Super Bowl Pool

Every year I write a contest for Artisan Church's Super Bowl party. It's mostly a prediction contest, similar in some ways to the pools you might see around your office (though no money changes hands). What makes it unique and fun is that half of the questions are about the commercials that will air during the game. I do a bit of research in advance of the game to see which companies have bought ads and what their creative looks like. This keeps everyone interested, even the non-football fans in the crowd.

Sample questions to give you an idea of what's on the pool:

5. What will happen first for Eli Manning: Touchdown or Interception?

14. Which FOX show will get the most in-game promos (of any type): American Idol, House, or Terminator?

I've shared it for you (in both Word doc and PDF formats) in a folder on Box.net. Enjoy the game!

(Artisan people, you're on your honor not to cheat.)