Walt's Corner

Seen on the internet recently. “I find atheists confusing. It’s like going to a restaurant and believing there’s no cook in the back.”

To which, an Elle Pohl, Me bless her soul, allegedly responded, “It’s like going to a resteraunt (sic) and ordering food, but it doesn’t come. And the waiter tells you to keep ordering because the cook will hear you and your order will come. But it’s been hours and your food still hasn’t shown up and the waiter tells you you’re not ordering hard enough. And also sometimes the waiter is inappropriate with kids.”

This wins the internet for the day. Bonus points: the waiter being inappropriate with kids is a super tasty icing on the cake.

ITunes Love

Yeah, I know it ain’t called iTunes anymore. You’ll just have to get over me calling it that. Old habits die hard, and that one is not dying at all in my vocabulary.

Been reading a lot of iTunes hate recently and I’m sure for good reason. I guess I just don’t use it enough to feel that way. At one point, I had my entire music collection ripped from my CDs. My CDs had replaced all my tapes, records, and 8-tracks. Eventually, all my new purchases were digital until there were no more purchases to make. Now that we’ve got Apple One (under one name or another) I no longer buy music.  I gorge myself on the media highway for a couple low monthly costs. I’m lazy. I don’t want to have to take the time and minimal effort of choosing something. I want something to choose it for me most of the time.

I had it all digitized, the CDs went into cold storage. After 5 years of cold storage and not once needing to grab a CD, they went into the trash. The CDs were just taking up real space in my house. I have yet to regret that. 

So how do I consume my digital music? Mainly via SiriusXM. Satellite radio. Because a 3^rd of my year is spent in areas where there is literally little-to-no cell phone service as well as no radio stations to pick up other than NOAA stations – and I’ve got them covered with my GMRS. That’ll make a music lovin’ mufucka mad af. That is why I subscribe to satellite radio. 

Since I have that satellite subscription, I also use it at the house to stream my music at night whilst sitting in my cigar lounge sippin’ whiskey and smokin’ a stogie. Channels I frequent and have programmed in the truck and favorited in the app: NPR Now, 70’s on 7, Classic Vinyl, Watercolors, The Coffee House, Symphony Hall, Octane, and Liquid Metal. Classic Vinyl and 70s being my favorites. 

While camping I’ll use iTunes on the iPhone. I’ll have it steam via bluetooth to the stereo in the RV and play over the outside speakers. Always have downloaded music on there. Until it isn’t. Sometimes songs will just disappear from a downloaded status. Uh oh.  Have I found a reason to hate on iTunes? 

Maybe 5-10 years ago, an ex-friend asked me how I used iTunes. He had music unlimited, but also subscribed to some other streaming service I don’t recall. Spotify. Pandora. Something.

So how or what do I use iTunes for? New music I guess. Remember New Movie/Music Tuesdays back in the day? I find that new music gets released anytime now. As I light up my stogie and pour my 3 fingers of my favorite bonded whiskey, I’ll check out the latest releases. Sometimes they’ll show up, sometimes they won’t. I’ll notice them months after they were released, and see they were released months ago, but they never showed up on my “Listen Now” tab. But that’s about it. After playing something new I’ll revert back to a satellite radio.

I might have a hankering for a particular artist, whether it’s old school Chicago, KC and the Sunshine Band, or Slayer. I’ll go to an album and play. iTunes will take over and continue to play like songs after finishing the album. Sometimes I’ll just let it run through whatever it decides to feed me until I’m done with that cigar and whiskey, generally 1.5-2 hours a night. Other times I’ll switch back to satellite.

Everyone has their own music preferences and where they feed those preferences from. It’s all good. Variety makes the world go ‘round.

Then there are the other 2 apps that spawned from iTunes – podcasts and TV. I have only listened to 2 podcasts. The first was called Angry Mac Bastards and can no longer be found. The 2^nd is the God Pod, which is still in production. A highly irreverent and blasphemous podcast, so of course I love it. The TV app? Rarely used. We use Amazon Firesticks for our video consumption. We cut the cable years ago and only stream our TV via streaming services and directly over the air.

I’ve always been an avid reader. The first story I can remember reading that was not a children’s book in the sense of The Velveteen Rabbit or Charlie the Choo Choo, was My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George. 4^th grade I think. During the afternoon, our teacher would pull out her book and read. Us students would pull out our copies and read along. She’d get us started and we’d run down the rows of desks, each taking our turn reading a couple pages out loud. This would go on for maybe 30-45 minutes. My favorite part of the day.

This  book is about a boy who runs away from home. I can’t recall the reasons why or anything. But I do remember he makes his way into a forest on a mountain, hollows out a huge tree to live within, and ends upraising a baby falcon. Him and the bird of prey develop a bond and together they live off the land. That’s about all I can remember from it but has stuck with me ever since. Perhaps this was a catalyst for my love of the wilderness, along with my father.

There are many opinions on the story. You either hate it or love it. “That could never happen,” being the most used excuse. To which I say, so what. It entertained me. It led me through a fantastic journey of the mind, which is the fundamental goal of any good story.

About once a decade, this book makes a reappearance in my life. This was one of those times. This particular fellow also read it as a child and dreamed of having his own falcon one day. His dreams have come true. Well played, old man. Well played.

My current adventure is Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House.

Well wadayaknow? Honest advertising works. Even a broke-ass clock is correct twice a day. Unless said clock’s hands are literally broken off. Then I suppose it’s never correct.

Ya’ll know I hate advertisements. I’m not against them. I mean, someone’s got to pay the bill for Facebook, right? But if I had my ‘d’rathers, I’d absolutely choose to get rid of them if I knew I could also keep the service I was after.

It’s rare, but one advertisement got me today. NAPA. You know, the auto parts store? I change my own oil, because a penny saved is a whisky drank, or something like that. As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed today I noticed an add for NAPA motor oil. The price was showing in the ad, and much like the good lord looking over all that he had created, “It was good.” Not to mention, it was fully synthetic oil. I did a quick search of the web site, fully expecting to not get that price for my oil, but nope. There it was. 5w20. 5 quarts for $18.99. Wait, the Hemi sucks in 7 quarts. Then there’s the Kia. It takes a meager 3.5 quarts. Let me just look at the price of the quart bottles. Holy shit, $3.59. Wait a minute. <does some quick math in his head> It would actually be cheaper to buy it by the quart, by about a dollar per 5. I dumped 11 quarts into my checkout cart.

Great, now to setup my account. I’ve never shopped at NAPA online before. Use my address, new password, sure I’ll sign up for emails and texts. And what? Some reward program? No thanks. I had just heard some story on NPR about what data these reward programs are selling.

Now I can go checkout and pay. But wait! The website knows, by my phone number presumably, that I had bought something before, and would I like to link that rewards program to this new account? Sure. Why not. Not only did I get the discounted oil but they applied my $5 credit from the previous reward program. That made the deal sweeter than the deals at that car place on Alameda. That $5 dollars totally ate the cost of taxes *and* some. So yeah. Sometimes the ads do work. Pay online. Pick up in store. Gotta love it.

Orient Blog talking about their first digital watch. I remember that. My paternal grandfather, known to us as Grandpa Basil, had one. I remember seeing him wearing it. Placing it on the shelf. I’d touch it to turn on the display. Had to be a major battery hog as that tech had not gained the efficiency of today’s battery sippin watches.

By the time I was in my teens, digital watches were produced by the millions and sold for $5 at your local grocery stores at the time. These watches had little light bulbs that turned on at the push of a button. I wonder how much longer my batteries would have lasted had I not turned that light on every 5 minutes I was awake at night in the dark.

I have a penchant for mechanical watches. This is why I have yet to get into the whole smart watch thing. Old me? Pre-2000 me? I would’ve been all over that shit. Early adopter of old PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants, some are old enough to remember that revolution). Apple Newton. REX. Palm Pilot. Palm III. Palm V. Palm LifeDrive. Dell Axiom. I had them all. 3^rd Person in line for the original iPhone. Even that Casio watch databank/calculator. I was addicted to tech, and deep into computers, of which, I had them all. Mac (both pre and post X). Linux. Windows NT. IBM’s OS/2. Windows 2000. Remember the early days of the Computer Shopper magazine? The big one. 2 inches thick. I can still smell it. Holy shit that made me hard. Going through that thing. Piecing together systems. Proudly seeing my BBS listed in there. Getting a major discount from U.S. Robotics if you used and advertised that shiny Sportster on your BBS. Quite the nerd, I was.

These days I don’t even have a computer I use for personal use. I consider myself fortunate that way. That spot was relegated by my iPad Mini many years ago, currently held by an iPad Air. Personally, my needs are very small. Email. Browsing. Reading. Writing. Planning our camping trips, which really falls under the “Browsing” category. The majority of these needs can be met on my phone now.

Post 2000 me developed a greater love for regular old wrist watches. A couple contain quartz movements. Movado Museum Watch SE. Seiko Coutura Solar. My real love is mechanical movement watches. Auto. Wind. It doesn’t matter to me.

The watch company that truly stole my heart is Orient and Orient Star. Orient Star is to Orient what Grand Seiko is to Seiko. Orient is the small sibling to Seiko. Their parent company is Epson. Orient focuses on boutique watches and from what I’ve seen, things that get truly noticed and loved about Orient usually end up on Seiko watches.

My favorite is the Grand Seiko Heritage Spring Drive. A conjoined movement of quartz and mechanical. In sum, it operates off a spring. But instead of that spring “tick tocking” that escape, or balance wheel, the Spring Drive moves that wheel in one direction only. This is what gives that second hand a smooth flow without any ticks or tocks. When that regular watch wheels goes back and forth providing the sweep of the second hand, it is allowing that spring to slowly unwind. But you want it to unwind in a controlled enough manner that it can do it in a steady release, keeping time. On the Spring Drive, there is this mini alternator that the wheel turns to produce an electric charge that then powers a quartz for the purpose of providing a calibrating frequency. This frequency is then compared to the frequency of the mechanical wheel by putting on the the breaks – literally slowing down the wheel, forcing it to keep perfect time at least when measured in short durations like months. Regular mechanical watches – good watches – that keep good time are measured in +/- 5-15 seconds per day.

That is the beauty of the Spring Drive. It keeps perfect time. I set it to the second based off the time on my phone, which is then kept in time itself through the servers. These servers are kept in time by the atomic clock in Colorado. A month later, the second hand of the Grand Seiko is still in perfect sync with the “second hand” on the small clock of my phone display.

This is why I can’t have nice things, like an Apple Watch. I have too many other watches that I love to wear and complement my Hawaiian  shirts. Like today’s shirt/watch combo – a  custom Islander watch with a Seiko NH36 movement inside, which is really just an unbranded version of Seiko’s 4R36. That’s the same movement inside my latest Seiko field watch, the SRPG33.