A New Guitar With A Fine Pedigree

Ok, so my dear wife is driving down the road and sees a sign that says Guitar Outlet. She tells me and we take a little field trip. I've been stuck in the house for a couple of weeks because of my back surgery and this was one of my first days out.

The storefront is Dean Zelinsky’s Guitar Factory Outlet at 3080 Skokie Valley Road in Highland Park, IL. First, if you have not heard of Dean then you don't play guitar. He is a guitar innovator and has a long history of designing and making great, interesting instruments. Dean guitars was born with his name. DBZ guitars was also his product line. These guitars a beautifully made and have extraordinary playability and sound.

DBZ Imperial

So how did I pick a guitar. It was a snap. Dean designed a guitar that is incredibly thin and has an amazing sound. This solid body guitar is 5/8" at the edges and no more than an inch at its thickest. Its a set neck guitar with a stop tailpiece that is set farther down the body giving the guitar a great feel and lots of sustain and I think a very mellow tone. All the components are top notch and the finish is incredible. Metal is gold and the fingerboard and fret work is as good as any guitar I've played. It reminds me of my custom shop Gibson that was Pleked at the factory. This guitar is so beautiful its really a work of art. Oh, almost forgot. Its light as a feather, well, maybe half the weight of a Les Paul.

Click above to learn more about Dean's Private Label guitars.

Or read about Dean at Wikipedia

A New Fender..........

Fender keeps coming up with these reissue guitars from the 60's and 70's and I am such a sucker for them. As the Fender website says:

The Starcaster® guitar is back. Virtually fabled since its original mid-to-late ’70s tenure, the seldom-seen Starcaster occupies a special place in our history as Fender’s one and only offset-waist semi-hollow electric guitar. Prized decades later by a new generation of adventurous guitarists with a flair for appealingly unconventional Fender style, the Starcaster now returns in fabulous new Modern Player form with greater sound, build and beauty that’ll have you seeing stars.

The Fender Starcaster guitar’s thin semi-hollow offset body has a bound maple top and back, with stylish bound f holes. Its “C”-shaped maple neck has a 9.5”-radius maple fingerboard with 22 medium jumbo frets, black-dot inlays and the distinctively curvaceous Starcaster headstock. Other premium features include full-voiced dual Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups with three-way toggle switching, three-ply black pickguard, four skirted “amp”-style control knobs (volume and tone for each pickup) and an Adjusto-Matic™ bridge with anchored tailpiece. In Aged Cherry Burst gloss finishes.

Pictures? I thought you'd never ask: 

 

Books I've Read - 2013

This is only the second year that I have kept track of the books I read. I believe that I might have missed a couple but I believe I enjoyed them all. Hardly enough hours in the day for me to read. With less driving back and forth to Wisconsin I seem to have less time to read.

1.     Mad River - John Sandford
2.     Poseidon's Arrow - Clive Cussler
3.     Cuba - Julia E. Sweig
4.     The Faithful Spy - Alex Berenson
5.     The Ghost War - Alex Berenson
6.     The Silent Man - Alex Berenson
7.     The Midnight House - Alex Berenson
8.     The Secret Soldier - Alex Berenson
9.     The Shadow Patrol - Alex Berenson
10.     The Fear Index - Robert Harris
11.     Fatherland - Robert Harris
12.     Enigma - Robert Harris
13.     Pompeii - Robert Harris
14.     The Last Jihad - Joel C. Rosenberg
15.     The Jerusalem Assassin - Avraham Azrieli
16.     Unintended Consequences - Stuart Woods
17.     The Empress File - John Sandford
18.     The Devil's Code - John Sandford
19.     The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
20.     Hanged Man's Song - John Sandford
21.     Silken Prey - John Sandford
22.     Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
23.     Inferno - Dan Brown
24.     The Passage - Justin Cronin
25.     Zero Hour - Clive Cussler
26.     Red Sparrow - Jason Mathews
27.     The Tombs - Clive Cussler
28.     The English Girl - Daniel Silva
29.     The Holy Thief: A Novel - William Ryan
30.     The Darkening Field - William Ryan
31.     The Twelfth Department - William Ryan
32.     The 9th Girl - Tami Hoag
33.     Never Go Back - Lee Child
34.     The Hidden Order:A Thriller - Brad Thor
35.     The Lions of Lucerne - Brad Thor
36.     The Path of the Assassin - Brad Thor
37.     Doing Hard Time - Stuart Woods
38.     The Quest - Nelson Demille
39.     The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
40.     Black Cherry Blues - James Lee Burke
41.     A Morning for Flamingos - James Lee Burke
42.     A Stained White Radiance - James Lee Burke

Reading:The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabelle Wilkerson

Getting Near The End

As some of you may already know, I will be terminating my employment with Cardinal Stritch University as of the end of this month. It has been a wonderful part of my career. I started at Stritch in the mid-80's under Jim Kasum and Linda Simmons. Meeting these two people was probably the best thing that ever happened to my career. They were both wise as scholars and as people. They helped me mature as a teacher and guided my way while I was at Stritch.

As part of my Masters program in Computer Science Education, I did a bulletin board. This was before the internet and when telecommunications was something for airlines and big corporations. We logged over 50,000 calls before we shut it down and went all internet. It was suppose to be my Grad project but I never gave it up, until the internet made us.

Here is the brochure that I used when I went to professional conferences to hawk our program and the board. This was so cutting edge that many people could not get their heads around what we were talking about.

SIE 1988HORIZ.rotated.rotated by jmsklar on Scribd

SweetWater.com is my new Favorite Guitar Store

I just bought a new guitar, ok, my friends and family know that's not a big deal. In this case I bought it from a new store. SweetWater. They are in Fort Wayne Indiana. Here is what is so neat about them. They act like my new guitar is a big deal. They talk to you on the phone like a person and then behave as if you are valued. Where do you find that kind of service online.

They offered to set it up and put my brand and guage of strings on it. Not only did they set it up and restring it, but they sent me pictures of my actual new guitar. They must have a guitar portrait studio. 

And the service.... Unbelievable. Bought it on Monday, arrived on Wednesday with my gauge and brand of strings and all set up and ready to play. Not just restrung but actually set-up. Spot on intonation, pickups adjusted. A pleasure to play right out of the box. These people are incredible. If you need a guitar, give sweetwater.com a peek, they deliver in many ways. They even threw some candy in the package for my grandchildren.

This guitar is just like my first electric guitar. Originally Fender wanted to grab jazz guitar players with a special circuit just for Jazz. Now later in my life it has a great set of my favorite features, including the belly cut for my past middle age middle. It also has single coil pickups and a great look. This model has a little hotter pickups than the original but it still has that single coil pop that I love. It also has that great jazz circuit, just like I remembered it. Thanks Sweetwater.

What is this Omer Counter Thing doing here?

As a child, holidays came and went. Each had its own rituals and foods. Some I didn't even notice, others were pretty much good for a day off from school. Now that I am older, and have time to think about these things, I spend a little more time wondering what it is all about.

When my dear daughter asked me to write her an Omer counter I had to look it up to find out what it was. I find the idea interesting for many reasons. Most of which it makes the counter, if you choose to be one, congnizant of the passage of time and the season more than ever. It gives us a chance to prepare for the holiday that celebrates G-d giving us the Torah.

The Torah, everything you need to know about life in one easy to handle scroll, is an amazing gift and however you believe it came to be, it certainly has had a profound impact on Jews and non-Jews alike.


I found a couple of interesting articles on Counting the Omer. The first is from the blog PunkTorah regarding the counting:

So, what does this all mean to us now? Well, it can mean many things. Counting the Omer can be used as a tool of self reflection. We can take this time to recognize the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt, from the gift of our freedom. The Sages tell us that G-d freed us from slavery in order to give us the Torah on Shavu’ot, so this should be a time of preparation. Counting the Omer gives us the time to learn from the gift of freedom G-d has given us and incorporate it into our lives, to grow one day at a time, taking a spiritual accounting, to make sure that we are heading in the right direction, to look at what we are doing that is right or wrong and to try to make ourselves ready to receive the honor of the Torah.
Counting the days is another way of directing our mindfulness to the passage of time. Be aware of the days as they pass, count them, give them meaning. We have been freed from slavery, rejecting the confusion and idolatry (philosophically, literally, and spiritually) of our own Egypt’s and are being made ready to re-focus our lives.

I guess a good take-away from all of this is that one must make each day count. Make each day worth living for you and the people you love. 

(This is a repeat of a post from a few years ago)

Computing in the Clouds

Welcome to my personal Blog. I will have all the websites, links and goodies from our session, Monday March 11, 2013 assembled here for you to use. It will stay here so don't worry about losing the resource.

These presentations are shared from my cloud.

• Don't Blink 
• Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing II 
• The Death of Flashdrives   
• The Perfect Marriage (Web apps)

Can I take a Post Back?

About a year ago I did a post about a new printer. I was pretty excited about a wireless printer that installed itself and had an email address of its own. Wow, I could email documents to the printer no matter where I was and it would print out and be there when I got home.

The quality of the printing was excellent and I printed a lot of very nice snapshots and other documents. Worked great for a while and then one day my computer couldn't find it... I could see it but the computer drivers were taking a break, I guess, and I need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall of the HP software. HP product software is the very definition of "bloatware" I guess that's not a big deal until the third or fourth time you do the uninstall/reinstall thing for no reason at all.

This is a common problem with these printers but HP does not address it, they just offer a discount on ink and free shipping....  

Then there is the way it uses ink. The cartridges seem to empty automatically. i.e. not just while you are using it. The ink costs a fortune and seemed to always need replacement. I knew that inkjet printers were expensive but this was ridiculous. 

I finally decided to use up the ink and dump the thing. In the middle of my wait HP sent me an email saying that I hadn't used the email printing feature in a long time and I should try it again. Of course, I did and it didn't work.

That's right, I have three little brothers on my desk!

So today I gave up and installed a new printer. A Brother MFC-J825DW. Very easy installation it seems to work great. I'll let you know after I get to know it a little better.

BTW:I turned it on, used the tiny touch screen to configure my network SSID and it immediately was able to print from my iPhone and iPad. I can even scan from the IOS devices and have the files printed or saved to an SD card in the printer. Pretty cool. 

Books I've Read - 2012

I'm certainly not done reading for the year, its just the 28th of December. I'm just don't think I'll finish another book so here is the my completed list. 
I decided to keep track just for the fun of it. I learned a few things that are probably pretty obvious to those who read a lot.  Some books are better than others; I'd rather read than watch TV and  some books are more fun and easier to read than others.  
My favorite author this year was Stuart Woods. Lee Child was a close second. 
I shall continue in 2013. If you have a suggestion I'd love to hear it. I will probably read it too.
  

1. Micro - Michael Crichton
2. Zero Day - David Baldacci
3. Red Mist - Patricia Cornwell
4. American Assassin - Vince Flynn
5. The Hunter -John Lescroart
6. Deeper Than Dead - Tami Hoag
7. Secrets to the Grave - Tami Hoag
8. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
9. Rough Country - John Sandford
10. Bad Blood - John Sandford
11. Shock Wave - John Sandford
12. Down the Darkest Road - Tami Hoag
13. Kill Shot - Vince Flynn
14. Private Games - James Patterson
15. Unorthodox - Deborah Feldman
16. Devil's Gate - Clive Cussler
17. Judas Gate - Jack Higgins
18. Night Probe - Clive Cussler
19. The Snowman - Joe Nesbo
20. Night Probe - Clive Cussler
21. Stay Close - Harlan Coban
22. A Heartbeat Away - Michael Palmer
23. Home Front - Kristin Hannah
24. The Innocent - David Baldacci
25. City of Thieves - David Benioff
26. Shadow Pass - Sam Eastland
27. The Eye of the Red Tsar - Sam Eastland
28. The Storm - Clive Cussler
29. Force of Nature - C.J.Box
30. Stolen Prey - John Sandford
31. The Columbus Affair - Steve Berry
32. Canada - Richard Ford
33. Bloodline - James Rollins
34. The Third Gate - Lincoln Child
35. The Fallen Angel - Daniel Silva
36. Mission to Paris - Alan Furst
37. I, Michael Bennett - James Patterson
38. Phantom Prey - John Sandford
39. Archive 17 - Sam Eastland
40. Invisible Prey - John Sandford
41. Mind Prey - John Sandford
42. New York Dead - Stuart Woods
43. Dirt - Stuart Woods
44. Dead in the Water - Stuart Woods
45. Swimming To Catalina - Stuart Woods
46. Worst Fears Realized - Stuart Woods
47. L.A. Dead - Stuart Woods
48. Cold Paradise - Stuart Woods
49. The Short Forever - Stuart Woods
50. Dirty Work - Stuart Woods
51. Reckless Abandon - Stuart Woods
52. Two Dollar Bill - Stuart Woods
53. Dark Harbor - Stuart Woods
54. Fresh Disasters - Stuart Woods
55. Shoot Him If He Runs - Stuart Woods
56. Hot Mahogany - Stuart Woods
57. Loitering With Intent - Stuart Woods
58. Kisser - Stuart Woods
59. Lucid Intervals - Stuart Woods
60. Strategic Moves - Stuart Woods
61. Bel Air Dead - Stuart Woods
62. Son of Stone - Stuart Woods
63. D. C. Dead - Stuart Woods
64. Unnatural Acts - Stuart Woods
65. Severe Clear - Stuart Woods
66. Trip Wire - Lee Child
67. Running Blind - Lee Child
68. Echo Burning - Lee Child
69. Without Fail - Lee Child
70. Persuader - Lee Child
71. The Enemy - Lee Child
72. The Hard Way - Lee Child
73. One Shot - Lee Child
74. The Lawgiver - Herman Wouk
75. Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child
76. Nothing To Lose - Lee Child
77. Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
78. 61 Hours - Lee Child
79. Worth Dying For - Lee Child
80. The Affair - Lee Child
81. A Wanted Man - Lee Child
82. The Panther - Nelson Demille
83. Mad River - John Sandford

 

Wow, do I love to read...

When I retired a few years ago my daughter suggested a couple of books to me, thinking that I would have more time to read without the bother of working. (Its not that I have anything against working, I think its good for many people to have activities that keep them busy and avoiding poverty.)

She got me started and this year I decided to keep track of what books I've read. There is a list on the left, sidebar, of my blog. Anyone looking at it might wonder why I've settled on Stuart Woods for the last couple of months. I simply like his characters and "Stone Barrington" is main character in this series in particular. He reminds me of those old New York detective movies from the thirties and forties where the main character wears a dinner jacket each night and finds beautiful women in a posh New York night spot.

So if you follow my reading list, you will be happy to know that the Stone Barrington series will soon end, at about 25 novels. It appears that Stuart Woods is prolific and Stone seems to be aging nicely so we will see what other books he writes with him as the main character.

BTW: I think Lee Child might be next. Any suggestions?

Help Us With This Project...

I'm never sure how many people read my blog. That's what you get for blogging infrequently.

My grandson, Sam, is in the fight against AML (leukemia). He is at Children's in Milwaukee. My daughter, the blogger rabbi, started a blog so that family and friends could keep tabs on Sam's progress.

 

He needs to know how many friends he has. My daughter started a photo project just to show him. Already his room is papered with pictures from around the country. 

 

His blog is: http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com. Below I have a repost of her call and challenge to friends around the world for support. It started when he questioned just how many people were in his corner and wanted to support him. 

 

Would you like to help show Sam how many Super People are supporting him? Join his team! And keep Sam in your prayers*

A family portrait I never would have imagined...

Take a photograph of yourself wearing your favorite superhero shirt 
(or holding up their logo...or just smiling!)

Print out the picture.

Put it in an envelope and mail it to:

Sam Sommer, E571

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

P.O. Box 1997

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-1997

We will hang all the pictures on Sam's wall...Team Superman Sam! 

*(And I know that many of you are not Jewish, and your prayers are just as important and precious to me - God hears us, however we pray. And let me tell you - we will take all the praying we can get!)

Paris Was A Dream