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04/28/18
Ads on the internet piss me off. Currently the big problem is on a tablet or phone, where as the ads load they make it impossible to read anything. What could take a few seconds to scan ends up taking minutes, and that's only if I don't unintentionally click on one of the ads as it resizes the screen.
It's so bad that I went looking for a search engine that only returns results for pages without ads. Seems like an obvious option but so far I haven't found any such thing. The closest I've come to a search engine not built entirely around advertising revenues is Million Short. What it does is allow you to ignore the top 100 to 1,000,000 sites returned by a search, showing you what you've been missing. It's interesting, and I requested an option to filter out sites with ads. We'll see...
Meanwhile I've started keeping track of the sites I visit that don't have annoying ads. Now, according to everything you see online, ads are the only thing that powers the web, and the only question is how much of your personal information you're willing to surrender in order to use it. This is bullshit. This website, as pathetic as it is, costs me around about $10 a month. Yes it would cost me more if I were getting 100,000 hits a month, but I am getting thousands of hits per month, and it is entirely ad-free and has been for over 15 years. It's pretty cheap to do this.
So is there an ad-free internet out there somewhere? Here's my list so far...
Wikipedia
Craigslist
Project Gutenberg
Internet Archive
Freesound
National Weather Service
It's a short list, and I'm still looking for one of the most important services- a good ad-free news aggregator.
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04/23/18
Tommy and the Traps
Willie Marble is working on his latest thing, and on Sunday we had this guy over to record some drums.
Tommy Leanza gave the old set a workout- drums for 9 songs recorded in less than 5 hours. And we all had a real good time!
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04/12/18
The saga continues.
I called the parts department number for the company that currently owns the brand for the old amplifier I'm repairing. Conversation went something like this...
Hi, this is Mike. How can I help you?
Hi Mike, this is Jeff. I'd like to buy some parts.
I'll need a C something something dash something...
OK, let me look that up.
(long pause...)
Oh that's kind of pricy. We've got a bunch in stock at $$ each.
Yeah, I knew that from the email I received. I'd like two of them, but let me just confirm the specs on them.
OK, that's a 10,000 uF electrolytic, blah blah blah...
Sounds right. That's got screw terminals, right?
Well, I don't know, there isn't a picture.
Oh. Well, what's your return policy?
Hold on- let me see if I can get a picture of this...
OK
(really long pause...)
I can't seem to find a picture- boy, that's a really old amp, right? 1970's era?
Yeah, I guess that's why the parts are so hard to get. What's your return policy, in case they don't fit?
Well look, why don't I just send these to you. What's your address?
Oh great! It's blah blah blah
OK, well we just missed the truck for today, but I'll get them out tomorrow. Good luck with your repair.
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