RIP Eric Bolvin

 

 

 

I only found out about his passing away last year in a thing on Reddit on r/sanjose, about a concert being given by a band "in honor of their late trumpet player". I took a few lessons from this guy. He could really yell. He also showed me what inspired him by playing for me a clip of a famous, late, trumpet player noted for "screaming" IE playing high notes. It sounded like pigs being slaughtered and did not inspire me. This guy was really, really serious about playing the trumpet. He published books of easy songs, and a guide for working through the Arban Method that I'm still considering buying. He was 62 when he died, the age I'll be in a few months. Maybe it was the yelling. RIP the Bolvinator.  

It looks like all text in this post will be centered. Too bad Eric Bolvin's not around to yell at the designers of this blog software. 

After Ken being over and then some YouTube and plenty of wine, I went to bed and woke up at 11. That's the trouble with associating with a night owl. "My schedule's contagious", Ken's been known to say. I'd looked at Pilates exercises for sciatica / spinal stenosis and they seemed to be about strengthening the general area of the "abs" and stretching the glutes, so I tried some glute stretches I can do lying down. Just using my arms to stretch each leg. This is promising. The trouble is, if I've got spinal stenosis as 11% of Americans do, my life is going to get a lot more difficult. 

I might end up being like this wheelchair athlete I met at the Olympic Training Center. He was a real card. We talked about the possibility of going down the steps while doing a wheelie or something so he tried it. The result was him going ass over teakettle, him going one way and his chair another, my doing something like going "Oh no!" and before I could do anything he'd scrambled over to his chair and gotten back in it. 

Fortunately I can still ride my bike just fine. I'm kind of like a guy I knew named Clark Howard in that way. His problem was just being old and very overweight. He had a Moulton bike and when he wasn't able to walk well he'd tootle around on it at the ham radio swap meets. He owned the geodesic dome house in Alviso - he'd built the thing himself. 

"Back in Hawai’i everyones filled with so much aloha and welcoming and there’s a sense of community and family no matter where you go..." - noahtargaryen on Reddit. Well, it was sure not that way for me. There were friends, fellow haoles, and places where I was more tolerated and less, but one had to be always on watch, always aware of possible danger. 

The news is scary as has become the usual. I guess I need to get my papers in order, get a new passport, so I can travel. I've sold my guns because I felt that if the time comes that I need them, I'll have waited too long. But I wonder ... on paper I am "white" and should be able to buy new ones. But where I had a .22 rifle and a 9mm Glock, I think this time around I'd get a Ruger .357 revolver and a carbine chambered for .357 also. I guess I should prioritize getting my papers in order though, because the last time I bought a gun I had to buy a fishing license also because for some reason the fishing license is a federal form of ID. Never went fishing, and it cost me $50. 

If I put off being a paying member of the temple for a year, and they won't push me about this, I can afford to "gun up" again. I'm an outlier in preferring a revolver but I like the simple "manual of arms" of a wheelgun and since I can shoot accurately with one, I can do more with 6 shots than most people can do with 10. If I'm able to go to Israel, I'll sell 'em to someone in the temple, cheap. 

Today I'm prepping items for easy listing tomorrow. I also had time to scramble some eggs for "lunch" (breakfast was a mug of Elite coffee with cream) and then pack everything that has sold. I can *really* relax with regard to having to get things done because anything that sells won't have to be shipped until Monday. I'm really enjoying observing Shabbat. 

Long ago I wrote in this very blog that there were two reasons I'd fallen away from converting to Judaism and retiring in Israel. One was that I'd be required to hate the Arabs. Well, that problem solved itself on October 7th. The second was that I'd have to believe in God and I have decided to. 

I was sitting on the steps of the old Japanese Hospital in Japantown, a favorite place to sit and eat a bento, and was watching a swarm of gnats doing their gnat thing. They must have some awareness, as they were very good at staying in one place in space, yet there's no way they'd be conscious that one of the large lumps near them is a living creature who could kill them in one spray of bug spray, or set out gnat-food and care for them for 1000s of generations. 

Another thing that's decided me is, when I was in Gilroy we had a flock of chickens who were in abysmal conditions. In a horrible 4x4x4 foot metal cage, stepping on each other and in their water, dirty eggs scattered about, living in a sea of mud, eating their food out of the mud. They had no way of knowing I spent a week building them a big, bright, clean chicken house with lovely nesting boxes and perches galore, and two separate watering systems. Then I took the chickens out of the horrible cage and carried them, one by one, to the new house. All the chickens knew was some horrible ogre was grabbing them and taking them off, then coming back for another. Oh, the wails of despair! Chickens invented opera. It was so tragic it was kind of funny. 

A third example is, if you have people who don't understand RF electronics/physics/electromagnetism, and you say things have to be done in this certain way, and you have to have metal here and something that's an insulator (which they may not understand the idea of) there, it would sound weird and crazy and complicated for complication's sake. 

So I choose to believe in God, and the bases for my belief is pretty science-fiction-y, but that solves the 2nd problem. 

I had time to sort and label a LOT of extension cords, then got the idea to take some CAMAC memory units apart for the DIP ICs because I think we can get more for the ICs than the whole units. Then I made some scrambled eggs for lunch, and packed 13 things that were all that had sold. I left here at the usual time for the post office, then FedEx. I had $2.65 on hand and went into H Mart and was able to get a package of jalapeno peppers. 

Then I picked up packing materials and dumpster-dived some small things to sell, so in the end I have a good batch ready to photo and list tomorrow, and can worry about sorting the IC's into batches to sell, later. I aim for 50 things listed a week, and I'll be set for that.