Seasonistas general thread: yakking, joshing, news and pictures

my depression is still getting worse. can't wait for winter to be over. gout is over(again) and recovering from a doozy of a cold. thanks for the concern.
 
Well, because I learned the hard way and wised up because of your advice. This is the one time I was happy I did the icloud thing. I had my backup HD and Icloud to help out. I hadnt done a recent backup this month so icloud saved me on my vids.

My iMovie and Garageband were both acting up so I did the typical restart only to get stuck on the white apple screen :/
Getting the backups in play saved my butt!

Linda - it is good to hear that you took steps to protect yourself against mis-haps. I'm proud of you! :)

If you have Time Machine setup to an external drive, after the first time it runs to make a full backup (usually takes a few hours, but only the first time), it will then run automatically every 15 mins and only backup files that have changed (usually takes only seconds when doing so).

Setting it up is like 4 clicks. If you have not used Time Machine yet, this hiccup should serve as a wake-up call.

In IT support, there is kind of a rule in that you can never have too many backups, and each one is important. If the iCloud failed for some reason, you'd have no fallback.

Common wisdom is to have both a local backup going (like Time Machine) as well as a cloud backup (like iCloud).

Local backup is for convenience, and cloud backup is in case the house burns down or your computer is stolen along with all the items attached to or next to it.

Also, hard drives fail, and cloud services have outages and other problems, so redundancy here is really a minimum requirement.

Hardware and software can be replaced, but digital photos and videos of family cannot.
 
...as an aside, I put down the uke for a couple months since I got ill again and stored my uke under the desk. Somehow in the interim it looks like ice cream got spilled on the fretboard. I tried lemon oil but it wouldn't dissolve the stain. Any suggestions? :p

Maybe it's worth trying some DAWN dish soap. I say DAWN specifically because it is a great solvent while still being gentle. When the Exxon Valdez had the terrible oil spill, the wildlife folks were using it to bathe the birds and small critters to get all the crude oil and other residue off them. Maybe it's ok to use on wood.

My thinking is to use a sponge with warm water and liberally apply the soap, let it sit a while as you need the soapy water to soak into the wood pores and via osmosis force the ice cream with the sugar and dairy up out of the wood pores, and then wipe it off with water, and repeat as necessary.

Keep in mind that when the wood is wet, it will appear a darker color and may be difficult to see if the stains are lifted, so you might need to let it dry out completely, and then repeat again in a few days, and might have to do this all a few times....

Once the stain is out completely, I would then re-apply the lemon oil to replace the moisture that was displaced by the soap, maybe a good 2-3 coats of lemon oil, letting is soak in longer (a few hours at least) than you might have done previously.

I've not actually done this myself, but if this is not a vintage or high-end uke, I'd think that you'd have little risk of damage, and at the worst, a somewhat soapy fretboard until it dried out properly, but proceed at your own risk and only if comfortable with this idea.

Also, sorry about your health issues. back in Dec, I had a flare of gout myself for the first time, and the pain in the feet and tingling is like no other pain I've ever had, so I can empathize. I drank tons of water (at least a gallon per day), and cut all carbs and sweets from my diet for a week, and about a week after that, everything was back to normal.

A friend of mine who's had flares often told me to drink a certain berry juice to help (the specific berry name escapes me at the moment), but I could barely walk from the pain so could not get to the store, but the water and diet change seemed to help a lot.

I hope you can feel better. :)
 
Maybe it's worth trying some DAWN dish soap. I say DAWN specifically because it is a great solvent while still being gentle. When the Exxon Valdez had the terrible oil spill, the wildlife folks were using it to bathe the birds and small critters to get all the crude oil and other residue off them. Maybe it's ok to use on wood.

My thinking is to use a sponge with warm water and liberally apply the soap, let it sit a while as you need the soapy water to soak into the wood pores and via osmosis force the ice cream with the sugar and dairy up out of the wood pores, and then wipe it off with water, and repeat as necessary.

Keep in mind that when the wood is wet, it will appear a darker color and may be difficult to see if the stains are lifted, so you might need to let it dry out completely, and then repeat again in a few days, and might have to do this all a few times....

Once the stain is out completely, I would then re-apply the lemon oil to replace the moisture that was displaced by the soap, maybe a good 2-3 coats of lemon oil, letting is soak in longer (a few hours at least) than you might have done previously.

I've not actually done this myself, but if this is not a vintage or high-end uke, I'd think that you'd have little risk of damage, and at the worst, a somewhat soapy fretboard until it dried out properly, but proceed at your own risk and only if comfortable with this idea.

Also, sorry about your health issues. back in Dec, I had a flare of gout myself for the first time, and the pain in the feet and tingling is like no other pain I've ever had, so I can empathize. I drank tons of water (at least a gallon per day), and cut all carbs and sweets from my diet for a week, and about a week after that, everything was back to normal.

A friend of mine who's had flares often told me to drink a certain berry juice to help (the specific berry name escapes me at the moment), but I could barely walk from the pain so could not get to the store, but the water and diet change seemed to help a lot.

I hope you can feel better. :)

This is roughly what I was thinking too, but I really didn't want to be the cause of damage to your fretboard if it went wrong. Anyway, it's what I'd try if the uke wasn't too valuable and I was prepared to take a risk.
 
Ugh. The electric uke just bombed hard at open Mic. The A string popped out of its saddle because it wasn't cut right. Made Ain't That A Kick In the Head a complete write off. Thankfully I brought the Korala along and still managed to get a decent set in.
 
This is roughly what I was thinking too, but I really didn't want to be the cause of damage to your fretboard if it went wrong. Anyway, it's what I'd try if the uke wasn't too valuable and I was prepared to take a risk.

Cheers Robin :)

Yes, usual disclaimers should apply to 'proceed at your own risk' and 'do your own research' since at least for me, I have not done these procedures myself yet with the DAWN soap.

But I think it would be safe enough compared to using some other solvents like acetone, naptha, isopropyl alcohol, bleach, or ammonia, all of which will likely dry out or otherwise damage any kind of wood unless very special care is taken.

I would NOT use these other solvents on a uke myself under any circumstances.
 
Ugh. The electric uke just bombed hard at open Mic. The A string popped out of its saddle because it wasn't cut right. Made Ain't That A Kick In the Head a complete write off. Thankfully I brought the Korala along and still managed to get a decent set in.

Maybe you can fix the saddle slot with a needle file or even simply with a few gentle strokes of a hacksaw blade or coping saw blade, emphasis on FEW STROKES so as not to cut the slot in the saddle too deep.

Also, you learned about why it is important to have a backup instrument with you 'just in case'...

Glad to hear you made it through to the end and did not have to lose out on the performance.
 
Yeah I brought the spare because I was wary of the pickups being too temperamental, I've been struggling getting a consistent sound out of them but from what I heard (there isn't a monitor at this open mic) the sound was pretty good.

The sound girl there is a wizard though.
 
Yeah I brought the spare because I was wary of the pickups being too temperamental, I've been struggling getting a consistent sound out of them but from what I heard (there isn't a monitor at this open mic) the sound was pretty good.

The sound girl there is a wizard though.

Great that she had your back and made it work. :)
 
So I saw this, and will kindly ask the rest of you to please play along and suggest a suitable caption...

8s5SF6M.gif
 
thanks for the tip to try dawn. was afraid of watermarks with using it but since aesthetically it is already challenged I don't see the harm in trying. And I feel you about the gout Booli. The first time I had it my foot felt like it was shot.

Cat: "wow, an adult who plays with toy instruments!"
 
Ugh. The electric uke just bombed hard at open Mic. The A string popped out of its saddle because it wasn't cut right. Made Ain't That A Kick In the Head a complete write off. Thankfully I brought the Korala along and still managed to get a decent set in.
the saddles are a kind of odd design, that's what i thought when i first got mine. when i put a low g on, i was worried the slot might not hold it, but its been ok so far. but, i have been playing it rather gently, i got the uke to totally rock out on, but have playing and singing a rather mellower groove lately, i dunno WHAT that's about :confused:


When Ylle accidentally picks two names out of the hat for that Brüko next week!
lol!


my thought for a caption was "and then she said i had too many ukes..........."
 
Hey all -

These captions are all so clever and you got me laughing quite a bit, so thank you!

Let's keep 'em coming.

Surely theres more? \m/
 
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