Things I Learned Today

At work:

1. The mail server we use as part of our server environment is, in fact, scriptable, but only exposes a COM interface. I now get to figure out how to hook in to it from C#, and pray that I can write managed code to talk to it in a sane way.
2. Energy Option Swaps are weird. They’re not as weird conceptually as Weather Derivatives, but they’re up there.
3. I have played way too much Foosball over the years, as I managed to be on the winning team of the Friday afternoon tournament.

At home:

1. The amount I swear increases proportionately to how tired I am.
2. I am really, really fucking tired today.
3. The chairs in my living room randomly re-position themselves so that I always walk in to them. You would think I would learn to expect this. You would be wrong.
4. Occasionally my neighbors don’t take my packages and put them just inside the front door I don’t have a key too, so I have to bother Dave to use the random door in his room to look in there for them. Sometimes they just leave them outside where I can actually get to them.

About guitar:

1. I’ve owned a guitar for two years. I bought mine just after my friend Ken bought the same model a couple weeks earlier. His came with a gig bag, and he had to haggle with Guitar Center to actually get a case. When I went to buy mine, it came with a case. Apparently, in 2008, the models came with hard cases, and the top of the guitar was made out of mahogany, like the rest of the guitar. The 2009 models came with gig bags and had a maple top. I have decided I win at guitar buying.
2. The best way to clean a rosewood fret board is with 0000 steel wool followed by some wool to buff out any slight marks left by the steel wool. Afterwards condition it with a bit of lemon oil. Stubborn dirt can be softened with a bit of naphtha (or lighter fluid which is naphtha based).
3. Apparently there’s a brass polishing cloth the army used that is really good at cleaning strings. At some point they started actually marketing these to guitarists. I may need to get one of these as I have very oily hands and my strings get dirty fast.
4. Every guitar maintenance resource I’ve seen and luthier I’ve talked to recommends stringing the way I do (you basically tie the string on, leaving enough slack for a few winds) if you’re using standard tuners. Despite this I’ve been told it’s wrong too many times to count. These people claim that it lets the string slip more than if you just wind it on. I call bullshit on that, and now have citations to back me up. I will grant that one resource notes that some people just wind a bit more on the thicker strings without the tie sometimes. Apparently B.B. King winds the whole damn string on. The point is people can shut the hell up and just let me string the way I think works best.

What did you learn today?

– B