Car navigation crap

You technically can get car navigation for as cheap as 6 bucks if you know where to look.

A big reason I don't use the phone for car navigation is because using a Garmin is simply more reliable.

The model that I use currently is the Garmin DriveSmart 66, although you could get a less expensive Garmin Drive 53 to get the job done.

However, yes, if you have a local thrift store near you (such as Goodwill), it's possible to grab an old Garmin nuvi for literally 6 bucks. I've even seen some selling for as little as $2.

If you're able to score a cheap Garmin that has the car charger, mounting clip and suction mount, that's almost everything you need. You do need to buy a 32GB microSD card to store the modern map data and a USB to mini USB cable to connect to the computer so you can update the maps via the free Garmin Express software.

Does the Garmin have maps as up-to-date as Google Maps? No, but you can always get the GPS coordinates and save favorites that way.

In the end, what really matters is that your navigation works, and a Garmin works, be it something new or old. It is also very important to have a navigation system that does not change. Map apps for the phone are notorious for switching things around every time an "update" happens. Buttons are moved, colors are changed, fonts are changed, features are added that you don't want, features that you like are removed... it's a nightmare.

And you would think, you would think, that adding a favorite (as in saving a location and naming it whatever you want) should be the simplest thing to do in a map app. It's not. Your favorites are "tied" to an account that you must login to just to see them. Not logged in? You see nothing. Sorry, Charlie. Renaming a favorite sometimes works but other times isn't "allowed". Then there are times when your favorites just DISAPPEAR! Where did they go? Well, it doesn't matter because they're gone.

On the Garmin, any favorite you save STAYS THERE and doesn't randomly vanish. You can rename any favorite at any time and it WORKS. You NEVER need to login to anything just to view your favorites. You can SEARCH all your favorites easily. You can even CATEGORIZE your favorites by use of the categories feature that you can name whatever you want just by editing any favorite.

That kind of favorites management, which has been in Garmin GPSes for over 15 years, is just too big of an ask when it comes to the phone. Evidently, even though the phone is far more powerful than a Garmin GPS, it's just not possible to have decent favorites management on it.

And yes, that means a $6 used Garmin nuvi has better navigation favorites management than a $1,000 phone.

Tweed cloth jacket guitar cable for 7 bucks

Another reason to love the Amazon Basics line.

Firstly I'll say that tweed cloth jacket guitar cable for $7 is the price right now at the time I write this, so it may change in the future. For now, it's cheap.

I remember cables like this easily selling for over $20 just for a 10-foot length. These days with modern machining, the cables still have the same quality and can be manufactured for less. So yeah, total win here.

Are tweed cloth jacket cables any good?

My answer to that is any braided guitar cable is good, including the one mentioned above, and it's for one reason:

It doesn't tangle anywhere near as much as regular guitar cable does.

If you play guitar mostly at home (as most guitar owners do), it's probably true that more often than not you're just leaving your cable plugged in the guitar all the time. You pick up the guitar, play, put it back on its stand, and repeat whenever you feel like strumming a few chords.

If using a regular guitar cable, yes it will tangle even just doing those simple motions. Braided cable is far less likely to tangle over time. It's obviously not impossible for braided cable to tangle, but you have to really neglect it for that to happen. On the other hand, regular guitar cable manages to find a way to get tangled even if well cared for.

There's also something else that cannot be denied about tweed cloth jacket guitar cable. It looks cool. Whether you get the black-and-white or the traditional tweed look, it just has a much more interesting appearance compared to plain black.

Again, it used to be that cable like this was double or triple the price compared to regular cable. Not anymore. Go ahead, get a few, and enjoy.

The clock is wrong

Time zones and Daylight Savings Time are really annoying to deal with.

Part of the reasoning for buying a watch with atomic timekeeping is so that it automatically adjusts for time zone changes when traveling and when DST happens twice a year.

I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't even bother with time zones nor DST anymore.

What would we use? Universal Coordinated Time, as in UTC, the same thing that pilots use. All pilots use UTC for flight schedules as far as I'm aware. Why? Because it eliminates confusion and complications. All the pilots use the same clock so everybody is on the same page, and that makes sense.

I'm also of the opinion that we should ditch AM and PM for time as well and use 24-hour time instead. Why? Again, to eliminate confusion. The two places in daily life where people could appreciate this the most is when looking at business schedules and setting alarms.

For a business schedule, if the sign showing the business hours on the door states they're open at 9 AM and close at 12 AM, it's guaranteed there will be people that confuse the midnight closing time as 12 PM, leading them to believe that business is only open for 3 hours a day. However, if the sign stated they open at 9:00 and close at 0:00, there is no confusion at all as to when they close, because 0 is always midnight.

For setting an alarm, it is way too easy to mistakenly set the hour as AM when you wanted PM or PM when you wanted AM. In 24-hour time, setting an alarm for 9 absolutely means the morning hour of 9 and not an evening hour, because in 24-hour time, 9pm is 21. I guarantee you would never confuse 9 for 21 or vice versa.

At the time I write this it's 12:25pm CDT (Central Daylight Time). The UTC time is 17:25. Believe me, it would be so unbelievably convenient if the time was always UTC. It would be fantastic if I never had to worry about time zones or DST ever again.

I wouldn't have a problem adjusting to UTC because I already have a Casio watch that can show local time and UTC at the same time, meaning it would only take me a few days to adjust to UTC. It really would not be a problem.

The awful television of 1981

This is awful, but still comforting.

The very-early '80s, generally speaking, was an awful time for television. However, being that television was the #1 form of home entertainment then, people were very willing to watch bad television shows.

To put this in perspective, these were the top American television shows of 1981: 60 Minutes, One Day at a Time, Alice, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H, Three's Company, Too Close For Comfort, The Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas.

Even if you have a passing familiarity with those shows and are thinking, "Wow, that's not exactly a stellar lineup", again, those were the TOP shows of '81. Everything after that was downhill from there.

I was really young in '81, but even I can even remember television just being bad back then. All I really cared about were cartoons, The Dukes of Hazzard and not much else (bear in mind The A-Team and Knight Rider weren't released yet). If I wasn't watching those shows, I would have been playing games on the family Atari 2600 video game system or playing outside.

A very good example of how bad television was in '81 is Tush, which is pronounced like tuh-sh and not toosh, named after Bill Tush.

I have a full episode of Tush below, but before you watch it, let me explain to you how bad this show was.

Ted Turner wanted a comedy/variety show, so he threw a bunch of money at Bill to do it, who already had working experience at WTCG channel 17 in Georgia, which Turner owned. WTCG would change over to "SuperStation" WTBS.

Bill, not being one to turn down such a generous offer, said yes.

However, there was a problem.

Bill had no clue how to put together such a program (and is quoted as admitting that).

What did Bill do? He got a set together and then he and crew wrote sketches about what they knew. What did they know? Television show production...

...and there is no such thing as funny television show production people. People in that profession are trained to be competent serious professionals and not funny dudes and ladies. Comedy writers are the ones that make the good jokes and not the people that set up the lights or operate the cameras.

I have some knowledge in this as my college degree is in Video & Radio Production, meaning I know very well that production people, broadcasters, journalists and so on are not exactly good at comedy. In fact, most are awful at it.

Not deterred by any of this, Bill soldiered on. He had a pile of Turner's money, hired some actors, had a set with tens of thousands of dollars worth of video equipment ready-to-use and just went for it.

The end result is Tush.

You can watch it now below or read my thoughts on it below that (which you probably should) first.

Video (on archive.org): Tush Show Late Night Television

The angle the show took was "We're professional television show production people and we're making fun of ourselves. Ha ha! Funny, right?" No. Not funny. At all.

Have you ever been watching the local television evening television news where one of the anchorpeople cracks a joke, it absolutely doesn't land at all (and never does), and the other anchorperson and the meteorologist do the fake-laugh thing before moving on to the next segment? That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. The entirety of Tush is exactly that.

People only remember this show for one reason, and it wasn't Bill. Jan Hooks was on this show. Yes, that Jan who was on Saturday Night Live later.

It is safe to say Tush has aged like milk. It was a terrible show even in its time and its badness can still be felt now.

To the show's credit, it was very self-aware. Bill and crew who made this knew it was awful, and the show routinely takes jabs at itself as if to say, "Yeah, we know you're watching a big steaming pile of crap. Sorry." That at least gives a sense of honesty. The show knows it's bad and doesn't make any attempt to prove otherwise.

So what did I mean at top when I said watching stuff like this is comforting?

1981, at the time I write this, was 42 years ago. America and the world in general was very different back then. Not only were there no smartphones and no internet, almost nobody even had a home computer.

In addition, this was a time in America where everything more or less coasted. The cars were boring and bland, but kept up the status quo. In music, disco was totally out but rock 'n' roll wasn't exactly in just yet, so a lot of the music was, again, boring and bland, but kept up the status quo.

The first few years of a new decade is an extension of the last one. 1980 and 1981 might as just have well been 1978 and 1979 and you couldn't tell the difference. Nobody at this time knew what The Next Big Thing was going to be.

Tush is a great example of "everything is boring and we've got some money floating around, so throw a dart at the board and see if you hit a bullseye". Obviously, this show was not a bullseye, but there is a comfort to be had in its unfunny blandness. You don't have to think when watching it. Just sit back, turn off the world for a little while, watch as jokes are trying to be told that don't land at all and immerse yourself in the bland.

How long did Tush last? Production was just one year. After that, reruns ran until '83 and then it was off the air.

Car fans describe the late '70s and early '80s as producing "Malaise Era" cars. Boring, uninspired and slow, but comfy. Tush is Malaise Era television. It's a comedy show that's not funny and hardly entertaining, but it's comfy.

The social stigma of guitars

Letting go of brand is important when it comes to guitars.

This doesn't mean I'll just play any ol' ugly guitar that comes my way and/or something that just looks ridiculous. For example, it's probably true you will never see me playing any guitar with mirror stuff on it. I don't care if it's on the body, pick guard, headstock or anywhere else. If the guitar has mirror-anything, I don't like it.

There's inexpensive good and inexpensive bad when it comes to lower cost guitars.

Inexpensive good is when the guitar looks right, feels right, plays right, sounds right. Inexpensive bad is when you make compromises just to save money with your guitar.

Acceptable compromises are for things you can improve, such as tuner replacements and/or maybe better pickups.

An unacceptable compromise is if the cheaper guitar has a neck that doesn't agree with your hands. You can't fix that. Same goes for the body. If it's a shape you don't like or it's too heavy or too light, you really can't fix that either.

In other words, provided you stay on the inexpensive and good side of things, you're doing all right and it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks of the guitar you play.