the tech at long & mcquade's is gone for two weeks, and he charges by the minute, so i'm going to open the thing up and take a good look at it. i'm thinking that if it's close enough to the diagram i'll get a soldering iron and give it a go. otherwise, what i want to do is probably to strip it before i go in, which is going to require a soldering iron either way. that way, he's not charging me for disassembling it....

i picked up the blu-ray drive, though. it's going to need to wait until tomorrow for an install. right now, my feet are killing me. that was a good twenty-five km on foot today...

it's a nice day, taking advantage of it. got some compost dropped off this morning...

the city doesn't accept compost, and i hate throwing it out. what a waste of nutrients. so, i leave it in the freezer until it builds up (it's just fruit cores, egg shells and coffee grinds, split into those three components) and drop it off at this local muslim community group that uses it to grow tomatoes to give to homeless people. that's a useful recycling of material. but fucking capitalism, right? i mean, i'd rather see the city do something like this than a religious group, but it doesn't. you work with what's available.

it means a lengthy walk with a knapsack full of decomposing shit every few months, but it's worth it. it's actually good exercise, and gets me some vitamin d.

i picked up a brita on the way back, as well as a drill set for the shelves i want to build. i was expecting drill sets to be like $150 and that i'd have to improvise to get the shelves in. but it turns out that there are much cheaper options. the drill was $30, and the bits were $10. it's bare bones, but i would have spent that much for a falling apart "fancy" drill at a pawn shop. what i need is stability, not power. just shelves...

the brita is important for the neck experiments i'm doing. i needed coffee for the walk. but i may just be dehydrated. i know - i'm grasping. but, i don't drink *any* water, and i've noticed that increasing my water intake has had positive impacts in the past. i mean, i drink tons of coffee, tons of juice, tons of soy....but no water. the reason is that i'm perpetually iffy about the water out of the tap. so, when i get that set up i expect to notice a positive difference one way or the other. at the least, i can say i've controlled for it when i get to the doctors.

as it's so nice out, i'm going to get a few other things done today. i've got a blu-ray burner waiting for me at the best buy, which i'll need to bus to. i've been waiting for them to come down under $100. this one is $99.99, so, hey. that's my grandmother's christmas present for me, i guess. the track i'm currently working on would require 4 dvds to back up, and that's going to be the norm moving forward into the trivial group material and beyond, so it's time to move to blu-ray for back up.

i'm also going to stop at long & mcquade with my fake strat and see what they're going to charge to resolder it. i took a closer look at it, and it seems like the previous owner mangled the insides up altogether. the switches are not stock. i can follow a diagram and get the logic down and stuff, but i don't want to fuck around with something that's already been fucked with. i only need to fuck up once to fry myself. i doubt many guitarists really realize the kind of current they're dealing with it. playing the electric guitar is actually pretty dangerous. there's some spots in the track i'm working on that would benefit from the skinnier pickups, which was the point in picking up the fake strat. so, it's time to get that fixed...

so, lots of exciting things for the day, for me. even if the rest of the week ends up spent as a zombie...