Hacking On My Friend's Phone

At the show tonight I took a closer look at a friend's cellphone and noticed that it probably qualifies for membership in AARP.
Then the jokes started flowing until we were crying.



Hidden under the battery is an original Dead Sea Scroll.

The blueprints were discovered in the Great Pyramid.

It's processing chip only has 1 pin.

The State Phone Of Arkansas.

Patent #2.

Solid state? No. Tubes.

Has both dowsing and witch identification apps.

The LCD screen is backlit with crushed-up fireflies.

Only cellphone that's succeptible to damage by termites.

The camera takes pictures that are 20x20 pixels.

This phone is so old, it still owns 3 slaves.
A paperwork thing.

Capable of sending text messages containing an amazing 5 characters.

Endorsed by Methuselah.

It's capacitors are made by silkworms.

The only game on it is Tic-Tac-Toe.

Default wallpaper was actually taken at The Last Supper.

The only phone allowed by the Amish.

The ringer uses an actual bell.

On a party line--if it rings 3 times the call is for the farm down the road a ways.

You roam on a horse.

The OS wishes it was Windows Vista.

Still recieving signals from Sputnik.

Texting is done in Morse Code.

The previous model's speakerphone resembled a Victrola.

Lincoln wrote the 1st draft of the Gettysburg address on the notepad function.

Free accessories include a saddle scabbard, compass, magnifying glass and steamer trunk.

Grandma can work it just fine.

Calendar only goes up to 1975.

The only people who can accurately explain your billing plan are the Knights Templar.

ALL custom ringtones feature banjo.

9 Monty Python sketches had this phone somewhere in the background.

Repair shop is at the blacksmith's.

Battery life is measured with a sun-dial.

The only "Bling" available was a 20 ton cat statue.

Updates come via Pony Express.

The "leather" case was discontinued when the dodo bird went extinct.

Travis tried to call for reinforcements at the Alamo, but couldn't get any bars.

Original calling plan was 40 pieces of eight for 17 minutes.

Text message notification is via smoke signal.

Speech-to-text function only recognizes Aramaic.

And yet it still doesn't drop calls as often as the iPhone.




We've forgotten at least a dozen more.
Feel free to add yours in the comments.

Bugs And Basses

Waiting for my best friend Buz to arrive from Phoenix late one night last week, I spotted this cicada shedding the dirty exoskeleton it had inhabited for years in the dirt:


Prepping for his visit has taken a lot of my time, which is why postings have been a bit scarce in these parts.



During the years I was in The Hitmen and The BeWires, Buz was my favorite bassist that graced those bands, but sadly he never put up with the politics and bullshit long enough to suit my desire to listen to great rock bass night after night. We agree on most details of equipment and technique, and now that he's here I got to take pictures of a truly rare and crappy bass in his collection:
Resonator guitars (usually called Dobros after an early and popular brand) used a vibrating steel diaphragm to make them louder in the pre-electric days, but they are a terrible idea for bass guitars. Fender made a few in 2003, and I have the honor of doing a little work on this one.


Mostly we're helping each other out while enjoying good company and doing a little damage to our livers. I repair his headphones and bass gear while he upgrades all of our computers.
We play to our strengths and resources, then take an occasional (solo) pee in the back yard in this fine post-rain weather.

Hope y'all will forgive me for neglecting my internet friends in favor of real flesh and blood ones for a change.

The News Media...

...are clueless.

Accompanying a story in the SA Express News today is this photo of gunshop owner John Dury.
I think he's wearing that wonderful smirk on his face because he totally played the reporter and/or photographer.

The story was about the new ATF requirement that gun dealers turn-in the names of anyone buying more than one semi-automatic rifle of a caliber larger than .22LR.
In the story, pretty much every dealer contacted claimed ignorance of the new rule, which isn't surprising since the ATF have problems doing anything right.
(Randy Weaver, The Branch Davidians, the recently discovered operation that let a buttload of AKs and ARs get to the drug cartels with no arrests...and then got caught lying about it! Jeez...)

Anyway, I think Mr. Dury is laughing inside because he managed to get the reporting team to photograph a Remington 7400 instead of an "evil assault rifle" like the AR15's on the wall behind him.
The 7400 is a nice and expensive hunting rifle that only holds a 5-round box magazine, and while it's definitely under the purview of the new rule I seriously doubt that the cartels would EVER be interested in one due to the lack of firepower.
(By firepower I mean lots of bullets, since the 7400 can be chambered for cartidges that are WAY more powerful than the so-called "assault" rifles).
What he managed to do was promote the fact that law abiding citizens who happen to need two such guns at a time are now subject to a rectal exam by a reckless and irresponsible gov't agency, all because criminals are able to get guns no matter what anyone does. Which has ALWAYS been true--just look at NYC and Chicago.
Rather than let the clueless media demonize AR15s for the millionth time, he managed to inject a bit of truth into an otherwise biased report.

So us citizens lose a little more of our rights, and the criminals keep on as before.
This new rule is just an attempt to LOOK like they're doing something.
Trust me--it'll have zero effect.

The only way to keep guns and drug cash from crossing the border into Mexico is to control the damn border better.
Keep terrorists and illegals to the south, keep the guns and money to the north.

The Berlin Wall worked pretty well.
Mines, sentries, tanks, whatever it takes.




In unrelated news:

Man, that little storm on Sunday was delightful!
Finally got to use my windshield wipers for something besides bugs.

Faith Fixing

Last week I fixed an amp for the band.
Opened it up, poked around inside touching this and that, made sure the connections were secure, bent a few wires around...
Never found a clear cause for it's failure to function, but after I screwed the lid back on and hooked it up it worked perfectly.
I think I've mentioned before that this happens a lot.
I call it "Faith Fixing" because whenever I lay my hands on the inside guts of electronic things, they come back from the dead.
Now, I'm also good at finding real problems and fixing them--don't get me wrong--but the unexplainable repairs probably account for 50% of my successes.


When our Honda's air conditioner suddenly stopped blowing air last night, we feared for the worst but tried to be brave.
After all the fuses checked out fine (don't forget the ones under the hood!) it started looking like a lot of money was going to be the only solution. Bummer.
Still, with nothing better to do after shop hours I turned to the Google and within only a minute or two found a chart that explained how to make the AC diagnose itself--COOL!
Hold these 2 buttons down, turn the key, release the buttons, count the blinking lights.
12 blinks means the blower motor or it's transistor are bad--now we're getting somewhere! And since an electric motor will almost always warn you of impending failure through loss of efficiency, weird noises, and bad smells, I figured it was this mysterious transistor.
I tried to "sleep on it".
Early this morning after dropping Honda Girl off, I returned to Mr. Google instead of dropping the car at a repair shop--the water pump cornholing we got on my truck was still too fresh in my mind.

Found a YouTube video on how to replace the blower motor, which showed me just how easy and cheap THAT repair would be, if needed.
Don't even have to take the dashboard apart? So where's this darn "transistor" then? Must be close by...

Within an hour I've returned from Radio Shack (+HEB) and soldered a 1 ohm resistor across 2 poles on the offending module to simulate the correct load, then re-installed it to check the blower...which works fine! Looking good...
An hour after that and I've returned from O'Reilly's with a replacement module and am driving around the block in bare feet enjoying cold cold air.

The broken part on the left ended up costing $60 to replace, which was a surprise after the $90 I was seeing on the web and the $180+ it would've been had I gone straight to a repair shop instead of mousing and typing and wrenching and soldering.

It was also nice to successfully use my knowledge and skills on a job where I knew exactly what I was doing for a change.
The internet is a wonderful thing, especially when it not only saves you money but also makes you feel better about yourself.

Just A Heads Up

If you leave your Harley parked for longer than 1 day, spiders will take advantage:


I was about to haul our trash container down to the street when I spotted this spider finishing a web between it and my brother's bike.
After shooting the video I decided to let the garbage wait until next week.
If Ken needs to go anywhere, wrecking a nice new web will be on his conscience.

Real-Time Weather Blogging

Don't think I have ever seen a storm front span all of Texas, from Del Rio to Texarkana. That's a big'un!

All that matters is the rain, and it's about time!
Haven't had any rain here in SA since early March, and it's been hot and dry ever since.
An "Exceptional Drought" is a terrible thing.


Update: Just seeing water from the sky dripping off our brown plants does wonders for my heart:

Unless you've been through a drought or three like we've had recently, you'll never know how uplifting a few minutes of rain can be.
I feel better right now than I have in several months.