Modern Music Sucks? - yes and no. In the lamestream, oh hell yea! Look Gene Simmons and Howie Epstien, when are we going to end this dirge of EDM teenager-exploiting pop dance music? Christ, this has been going on since 2006 and it's now almost 2026! That's 20 fuckin' years! Lady Gaga has already sung with Tony Bennett and Elton John! If this was rock n' roll, we'd already passed the inaugeration of the 27 club in the late sixties, and everyone would already be applyign Distortion to their guitars instead of playing them clean. But underneath a outdated and overrated industry that failed to catch on to what was happening when Napster came around (which BTW - I told ya so (that there would be no music industry in 10 years)), there lies several somewhat, well....fragmented bits of people doing various things. I mean, c'mon. IN the new days there's lots of great stuff out there: the Retrowave of artists like FM Attack, Timecop1983, Lazerhawk, or Kavinsky on the more mainstream front! There's the misanthropic punk folk of GoHang Music! There's many local bands out there still playing around with little/no hope of getting a deal but trying to make it on their own and doing it right! Modern music doesn't suck - YOU DO! Heck, even my measley ass is one of them just rocking out in my den periodically when I have the time to pick up a guitar. I even support the whole A.I. music thing because there's some funny/weird shit out there, inclduing my own.

The 1990's Sucked - They started strong, and then petered out, and gave us a much more agreeable lot of bend over and take it Corporate Rockers in their place, and then the people who were all "punk" and "DIY" too became "corporate". You know the 1990's really sucked when the corporate rock bands they shit on all through the 1990's are more punk-rock than they are. I'm pretty sure had Kurt Cobain lived, a possible future, assuming he was truly tired of the industry, would have been him refusing a Nirvana reunion and pissing everyone off anyway, because he would be happy just strumming his Stella in peace in his cabin, drawing and painting, not running around the country as a legacy act playing the same tired songs from the same three albums over and over - he could barely play Smells Like Teen Spirit without cringing before his untimely demise. But some of these guys that lived make Loverboy look like Black Flag! Heck, they make new music and release it for freakin' FREE on YouTube. Not to mention, the entire decade drove the cost of Offset guitars up. I'm not at all saying I hate 90's music - I just hated 90's culture. It was basically Baptism rebranded as northwestern transplants posing as northwestern natives saying "do anything you want" an then adding a "but that" to the end of everything you're doing if it was not wear a bowl cut, play a Jazzmaster, write songs about being angry or depressed, and pretend you don't do "lockerroom talk" about girls all the while doing just that! (rolls eyes) - I'm not that fond of the 90's in the mainstream sense. There, I said it.

The 1980's Ruled - C'mon...if I gave you an alphabetized list of my favorite bands, about 2/3rds of it would be bands that existed sometime between 1976 and 1994! I mean c'mon, we had AOR (Album ORiented Rock AND Arena Oriented Rock), Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave, (REAL) Goth, Pop Metal, Thrash Metal, Speed Metal, Groove Metal, West Coast Cali Punk, Skater Punk (haha to the 2000's), Funk, Soul, Rap, Blues, Country, Comedy Music, Rockabilly, Rock, Fusion Jazz....christ....what is there NOT to love here! And while I don't have favorites in ALL of those genres, I definatley borderline like even the ones I'm not as fond of. Honestly, one life I'd live would be to be comatose in front of 1980's MTV for all eternity! And the culture kicked ass! Everyone was on a good positive kick, even though we had a man with a joke of an economic system in the whitehouse, and the Satanic Panic - seems Gen X made good use of it somehow. Cheap Offset guitars for College rock, and nobody batted an eye if you were drilling holes in a vintage Stratocaster in the 80's - or better yet, a Jaguar - so as long as you had the chops to back up your Eddie-Van-Halen-Like insanity! The video games were cooler, the toys were cooler, the cars were cooler, computers were mysterious, fun, and cool (not to mention financially lucrative) - all my favorite 1990's rides were designed in the EIGHTIES. Sure, you had Thatcher, REgan, and all that shit, and a recession, but man, it seemed people managed to pull it together somehow. Compare 1984 or 2024, when everyone thought George Orwell's book was a prediction of a future where we'd all be bossed around on a big screen by Colonel Potter rendered by an IBM PC, today is far more fearful. Honestly, I'd probably get my ass gagged with a spoon by Potter for laughing at him too many times for saying "horse hockey"! But Musically - the 80's ruled all!

Fender - I like Fender but I fear they are on the same path Gibson was on about 10-15-20 years ago, making overpriced instruments as a "Lifestyle Brand" instead of making reasonably priced tools as a manufacturer of quality Musical instruments. I just don't like the idea I'm joiing a "club" anymore when I buy a guitar. I'm not joining a club, I just want a electronically diverse plank with a wiggle stick that stays in tune!

Gibson - I don't hate Gibson, not at all, I'm just tired of every balding boomer to late-era-Beatles fan bugging me to buy this $3000 guitar or THAT $3000 guitar or telling me my "Epiphone is not a Gibson" - well....I don't even think a Gibson if I owned one would still count as a Gibson, after all, you know I'd hot-rod the hell out of it at some point, right? Next thing I'll have some old crank screaming at me because I put a Floyd Rose and EMGs with a PI2 and graphic EQ into a 1958 Kornia Explorer reissue. Personally, I DO like them, I just can't afford them.

PRS - Nice guitars, but too bloody expensive. I've played a Custom 24, and that is the yardstick I judge my OWN setups against! Now I have a pile of Chinese partscaster guitars worth sub-$200 that play like they are well over $2000....well that, and a Hondo Paul Dean II that somehow got touched by the gods of Fretless Wonderdom while it was living in that Closet for 30 years.

Steinberger - Man, if there's any ONE Piece of gear I'd love to have, that I've never played, let alone owned, it'd be a Steinberger with a Trans-Trem! Seriously, I dont' care, GL2T, GL3T, GL4T? ZT-3? Don't care, just would be cool to see the real McCoy in action in my own hands someday, evne if it was just playing someone else's for 15 minutes. Problem is, a good Steiney with such huardware is like...$6000, and the Tremolo alone pulls about $1500 on e-bay! Why does everyone wonder why I'm trying to make Washburn Wonderbars and Mustang Trems do this stuff?

Hipster Guitars - Stop calling them that! Hipsters were the guys who spent $400 on a Staytrem or a Mastery, just to gently strum the damn thing! I'm the guy who spends 2 hours sharpening my Japanese Fender Floating tremolo knife edge like a lawn mower blade to make cricket noises like Brad Gillis from Night Ranger, and dive-bomb like a Panorama trem. Give me a Jaguar, I'll use EVERY darned switch on it - all of em', and that cute little Vibramute too if it has one. Mustangs and Jag-Stangs are metal machines!

The Jag-Stang - People think it's ugly but I think it's a form of insane genius - so what we have is a Fender Mustang that takes all the comfortable bits of a Jaguar body and squeezes them down 2/3'ds the size, doesn't look stupid on a big oaf like me, has a humbucker, and a crazy tremolo system that can do Running with the Devil and Eruption in the same set strung up with .009's, and get's all the BEST sounds....I'm talking bits of strat, Tele, Jaguar, and even some super-fat Les Paul in there. There's reasons I use one as my main. They're also reliable like a Toyota, they never break, when they do they "get you home" - like a Jaguar (or a old Ford Ranger based vehicle ie Ranger/Explorer/BII), they also don't seem to give a crap about weather or changes in climate. I think my JAg-Stang has only needed a Truss Rod tweak once in 20 years. I played a show in the rain once, the Jag-Stang shrugged, but the Jackson started to rust.

Tone Wood - I side with the people who say there's no such thing as "tone Wood" - but I do believe the WOOD matters - but what matters is Density and Hardness, and how much it matters is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I've built guitars out of all sorts of horrific shit, pallet wood, even the "P" grade stuff (wonderin' when I'm going to get sick), leftover pine from Lowes, a box planter of elementally worn wood! Everything that makes the balding old dude at the guitar show cringe in terror! Denseness = sustain. Hardness = sustain. Sustain comes at a cost of losing sympathetic movement which makes the guitar seem more "alive" and sound a little "warmer" to my ears. But the amount of change is so small we might as well not even bother whining about it at all! I LOVE LOVE LOVE that crazy "Fish Magnet" Plywood everyone used in the 1980's, you know, the one that kind of smells like the aftertaste from binging at a Baskin Robbins all afternoon? Nothing like routing guitars with a strategically placed chisel and using the plywood as your "layers" for depth! Poor man's router!

Solid State vs. Amp Modeler vs. Tube Amp - Here's my take on this. Solid State amps got a bad rap because they did not sound like tube amps because they were not tube amps. To guitarists (but not me), this is "BAD" because it does not sound like a Marshall Plexi, JMP-45, Fender Twin, Fender Champ, or Fender Deluxe, or Mark IIC. But that's because THEY ARE NOT TUBE AMPS! Everybody forgets that all of Dimebag Darrell's work in Pantera was done on a SOLID STATE AMP! Amp Modelers are laughed at because it's "not rock'n'roll" to put a "computer box" on the floor and have it go through teh Front Of House system. And yes guys, I get your pain of the nazy Soundman who wants you to turn the damn thing down to the point you listen to the recordings of the concert and all you hear is the bassist, drummer, and singer! also, tell that to DEVO....those guys were playing with all sorts of weird little boxes everywhere - even taped to their guitars - and I don't see some baldo in a ponytail holding an L-5 he just got signed by Pat Metheny jumping on stage to invade "Freedom of Choice" with a very not-so-free announcement about the band's equipment! Honestly, I'd be cheering one of the Bobs or Mark to knock that moron off the stage...maybe with the Tele covered in stompboxes! Seriously, the future is here - embrace it, that is the mOST Rock n' roll thing you could do. As for TUbe Amps, they're liek Carburated cars, everyone wants one because of the hype, but once everyone gets one they fail to realize how much work those old moody things are. I own ONE, a Bugera 333XL, and it's like a third member of the family, and I'm a surgeon...so I give it free "surgeries" once in awhile to keep it going. I can't imagine what maintaining more than that one would be like....my wife would never see me again! My Line 6 HD500 doesn't need that.

Why I won't ever Build guitars as a job - I traded my passion for modern I.T. stuff for money already, like I need to do that with anything else. Also, I'm going to make a pretty damn honest self-assessment here. I know what I'm doing well enough to make a great sounding, great playing instrument, but something a lot of people in my life don't seem to realize is there's a tremendous difference between being your own luthier in your own garage making instruments only you will ever play in your lifetime, and being someone who is making guitars for other people and technically a small fry competing with the Fenders, Gibsons, PRSes, and STrandbergs of the world. AS a builder, I'm pretty good at the core points - playability, and tone, but I SUCK at things like finishing and fit-and-finish at times and still make a lot of mistakes. I've never made a guitar that sounded bad, maybe a few that played not so well, but tone? Never had a problem with it. Recently, I just built not one but TWO guitars for relatives and it has been the most stressful thing dealing with that much ordering of parts, budgeting, and logistics - it's like a dry run for running a guitar company. And mind you, I'm doing all this WHILE I'm working a job doing I.T. - and being on-call through parts of it as I'm I.T. for the healthcare sector....so having to switch into work-ready clothes from rags for painting like I'm the local fireman getting ready to put out a multi-story building ablaze while trying to fan paint and solder fumes from the garage does not help.

Why I build/modify/rebuild Guitars as a Hobby - I build as a hobby, because there's a few things....to start, I've always enjoyed the process of construction or reconstruction. I used to build with Legos, build model cars as a kid, I enjoyed making a balsa wood bridge in technology class (and made the strongest bridge in the class as a result), I got into guitar, started modding/building/customizing those, and then that expanded into computers, and it's taken almost every fiber of my being to keep from expanding into doing the same shit to my otherwise perfect vintage Ford Explorer truck. While I'm not as active as I used to be as a musician, I still do play ALL of the guitars in my collection, and do enjoy tinkering. These days though, I need to really wind down the whole shadetree luthier thing as I'm turning 50 in about 9 years as of this writing, and I don't see a reason to keep building a rockstar sized guitar collection. I already have ENOUGH Worries about my work finding a new home when I pass from this mortal coil to begin with.

Guitar Center - It's the Wal-Mart of musical instruments without any of the advantages that Wal-Mart can have (ie lower prices), and a few unique disadvantages. For example, when I bought my Mustang Bass in 2008, the asshole at the Lynnwood store said "get this FENDER out of my hands, it's burning them" of course, it was an asshole GIbson fanboy. I don't like participating in that brand-loyalty bullshit. Because that's precisely what it is. Just went through that with some young brat going on about a guy who came in and his Ernie Balls broke in 5 minutes - well yeah, he probably strung up his guitar like a coked up monkey and not a skilled technician like I am (looks CAN be decieving). Or how about the parts-guy who wanted to play his game of "Potentiometer Bingo" - seriously, the dude must have been the bingo hall guy as his second gig "250! 250! 50K! 100! 250! 300! 250! 500!" the guy probably thinks "Ohm" is where he goes when his GC shift is over. And jeezuz, $24 for a restring - I hope that wasn't the guy whose Ernie Ball strings broke 5 minutes in - either that or the guy plays Jazzmasters....yes, they will unravel due to that, but that's nothing a little solder won't fix (I speak from experience). Or how about the time I brought in my Les Paul build to size a nut for it and some guy starts pushing dollar amounts at me for an incomplete guitar - offensively LOW ones at that. Or following people around the damn store to find ONE person who'll give you a guitar cable to try something out with. Seriously, there's a reason they are going bad, shame is, they already ruined a LOT of cool local guys in the process of their madness.

Other Guitarists - Now, I need to clear something up right off the bat, I've met and talked to at least 3 famous guitarists in some form or another, and those guys don't act like any of those sanctimonious, fanboy, self-righteous, assholish dicks who think they are rock-stars on these internet guitar forums, facebook....or what have you. But some of these asshats on social media and guitar forums act like real self-righteous dicks about things. What's funny is the latter acts like a self righteous rockstar because they are not, and they are too concerned with being one. It's like the guys who constantly talk about sex like it's the ultimate thing on the planet, yeah, that's because you're NOT getting any! Those famous dudes....they know they have had storied careers and the stories to go with it, and so they know they don't need to act self righteous. BE a rockstar - don't act like someone who thinks they are one!

Atari - Right now, I have to give credit where credit is due but Atari is doing it all RIGHT! Seriously, those peeps at Nintendo could learn a thing or two. It's a damn shame nobody in the industry is paying attention to what Atari is doing right now. It's like they're actually managing to make up for all the baloney in the past like tha glorified computer called the VCS, or the 1983 game crash! They don't sue/shut-down ROM sites for downloading - it's like they actually understand if you don't want something on the internet, then don't even show it to anyone in the first place! That's actually the reason I'm alright plying a guitar that is shaped like their logo - because Atari has really been doing what Nintendon't! This new Atari is a step in the right direction for the industry with their reissue "Consoles" like the 2600+, 7800+, and reissuing the old controllers, including the CX-78 gamepad, and even the WIRELESS versions of those that work with the old Atari and with the PCs, new consoles, and Bluetooth!

Nintendo - Oh Nintendo, how you guys have lost your way! Nintendo is like the Apple of gaming, consistant, hand-holding, and a bit authoritarian, but there are ways around it. But also like Apple, they'll spread tons of FUD (with some actual action behind it **cough**suinggamersfordownloadingromsofoldstuffhtyewillneverrelease**cough**), and tell you you need to buy their new stuff and forget about the past. Well you know what I say - the same thing I say to Apple - fuck that noise, I own my console, I play my games on that console, and if I want a digital copy since an NES is incapable of being portable, and I'm not taking my $166 copy of Dragon Warrior IV out on the road with me....I'm going with emulation. And I'm not the only one, I'm one of billions strong upholding this. IF Nintendo wants to do something GOOD for a change! Then follow what Atari did right - RE-RELEASE your old consoles in updated format, even as a ROM emulation player, not as some glorified RetroPie thing like the "classic" series consoels were - and make enough of them that they stay a stable staple in your stronghold. Heaven knows, it might allow you profit-wise to make something truly amazing. Seriously, just put out a new NES+, or Famicom+, re-release the games on cartridge, and then let's see what happens! I have one word for today's gaming market with the big names like the big N - Greed.

The Atari 2600 VCS - Seriously kids - GET ONE! Even the 2600+! It'll be worth it. I'm so out of touch I don't know how well the 2600+ is doing, but I am in touch enough to realize with everyone screaming they have ADHD today (even people diagnosing ME as having it, and they're nto even doctors), how the Atari 2600 VCS is somehow not scaring the AAA game companies. YEs, I know, it's old, it's got blocky graphics, intonation-less music and sound (save for Pitfall II), the joystick has ONE button - but that's the beauty of it, it has the attention grabbing in the older titles and arcade titles of your average TikTok post! This is what we did in the 80's instead of doom-scrolling TikTok and Instagram! We played the Atari! What, you miss your thirst traps on social media - then why not invite some of your preferred gender over for Strip Video Poker for christsake! And even if it's primitive, the primitivity is what makes it fun - the old noises and blocky graphics are freakin' HILARIOUS once you open up your imagination and let it go wild. This was the classic activity of the Atari 2600 - you'd get a big shoebox of games from the thrift shop/garag sale/boot sale/clearance bin, and just dive right in, no manuals, and make up your own story or scenario, and then laugh maniacally like some kind of stark raving madlad at your crazy premise based on the game's primitive assets!

The NES Is an undisputed classic - It's just a rotten Shame Nintendo refuses to put out an official replacement and/or reissued cartridges! So we're all stuck paying in the hundreds for Dragion Warrior III and IV. I have a feeling it's the American side instigating all this ballyhoo though. I guess someone has to keep up with the Microsofties over beer and an Indie Hipster band at The Lime I guess! It's like Nintendo wants to forget they ever created that system, and focus on giving us a limited library of classics - which means guess what, if they don't have it on their Nintendo STore....then you have to download it...but wait, you can't download it, so now you're fighting with everyone else online to find astronomically expensive NES cartridges! Oh joy. Seriously, that Wata Auctions shit needs to stop! It's not like these are vintage guitars used by musicians to make a living. These are friggin VIDEO GAMES! ENTERTAINMENT! As an old timer who collected for awhile for fun - I must say, while the $1K return on investment was nice, It shames me to think these once ubiqutous grey pieces of plastic now are like currency to some freakin' people. I think it's nuts when I can buy a $3000 Gibson Les Paul new for the cost of a bloody NES cartridge everyone ignored in the 7/11 rental shelf in 1991!

China('s Bootleg Stuff) is Frickin' Hilarious! - Seriously, Kid Nikki 3 with Mario, inserting Contextual Japanese games into the multicarts and bootleg consoles on Temu and AliExpress, and just the fact their Original content comes from a company called "Hummer Team" LOL!!! Seriously, you want some sideways staring entertainment - get some of this stuff, while you get a bunch of old Black Label NES Games (That Nintendo can't do jack shit about), but you might get some of the wackiest stuff you've ever seen. Like a Pachicom game with a rant in Japanese taking up 3/4ths of the games code, peopl'es mis-uploaded ROM Hacks from the 90's getting put on there like Mr. Mary (Mario Bros) or Super Mario 14 (Kid Nikki III). Seriously....let's play as Chip N' Dale Rescue Rangers all Roided up in an Alien Space Station (Rescue Rangers 3) or the dramatic death music of that indie Bomb game on my Sup' 400-in-1! There's a reason I try to break your web browser with a 315 game-long list of wackiness on a bootleg handheld from 2023! C'mon, Bird Week - isn't that a Magazine somewhere in the world?

Dragon Quest is BETTER Than Final Fantasy - Sorry, I do like Final Fantasy, but my heart belongs to Dragon Quest! Final Fantasy still gets the heart pumping, Dragon Quest is like a nice, relaxing, puzzle to pace yourself between frenetic rounds of Super Mario! Dragon Warrior IV is still my favorite in the series, and I prefer the 8-bit versions to the newer ones. THe Newer ones are good too, I do play them, and Dragon Quest Builders kicks ass (got to play it on a PS4 or PS5 - can't remember which....prob a 4 tho)...but man, nothing makes me feel more at home than grinding for hours with a little gray and red plastic block in my hand staring at some old creaky CRT that needs a recap!

Game Corruption is RAD - Seriously, I'm one of the pioneers of this activity. Back in the 90's, us bored virgin losers guys going our own way were taking to our ancient toys of entertainment from your misspent youths, leading to misspent teenager-hoods of trying to find every absurd and sonically discombopulating way of playing Super Mario Bros. 3 through a Galoob Game Genie! For 10 years, I released "Game Genie Krazy Kodez" On my YouTUbe Channel of me just recording this stuff - and honestly, that was my FIRST foray into video TBH. The original episode was a local CHurch VHS taped over with my own video game madness this side of the dark side of PLanet Zebes with my own maniacal laughter and mock-MST3King of the codes as I played the NES audio and a microphone through a P.A. Mixer back into the TV, and punched in codes I made up myself and some found via the internet at the time. Now we've got guys like the Chip Furnace making REALLY Crazy shit that's comedy gold!

Save the Old Computers - Seriously, if the internet becomes more of a dumpster fire in my lifetime, I'm literally taking my balls and going home....to a nice beige 486 that's on my home LAN running through Bulletin Board Systems like it's 1986 again! The way the corporate side of the industry is going, the Tech Industry is becoming a fucking joke! Cheap chinese PC's with faulty capacitors, running an Operating system created with a tyrannical edge in REdmond WA to deliver more advertising for more revenue to create more even more authoritarian and irritating products to irritate the masses and drive them to another big evil corporation that makes excellent hardware, but has planned obsolescense on the mind before their equipment hits store shelves (Apple). You have to serve a HTTPS only internet now, with websites that have a script bigger than the whole of The Secret of Monkey Island just to read some regurgitated dreck posted at 9 other websites by the same four or five people who hold a cult-of-personality over some social media page or webforum somewhere! MEanwhile, we get cloud based SaaS bullshit for office and productivity software that changes it's settings when it's updated, or falls out of development and leaves you fumbling for an even worse solution! We have bulshit AAA Title games that are incomplete being released to use "DLC" As another damn cash grab! I Miss the days of paying $45 for ULTIMA in the big box, and then coming home and having the whole game there without needing to listen to 40 interviews with Richard Garriott about how it's not getting released....hell, he DID release a game that was buggy (Ultima IX: Ascention) and it's basically what KILLED Ultima (and Origin). Now this is acceptiable behavior. But in a Post Trump world, why should I be surprised. So if you find any old, aging, PC compatibles or Macs - save em', give em' to a friend, it seems this hobby has gotten mainstream enough now everyone knows sOMEONE Who could use an old 8088/286/386/486/Pentium1/2/3/4 PC to relive their past childhoods, or explore the times before they were alive. So don't chuck' em, don't believe Dell when they say they recycle them - give em' to a loving owner and a good home. After all, the things in these old computing products are not good for the environment anyway when scrapped/recycled.

Windows 11 - Probably their worst dumpster fire, even worse than Windows Vista or Windows Me. They keep removing crap from the O/S that once made Windows a usable piece of software that works for you, into a useless nazi-like advertising vector to bolster even MORE consumerism for useless shit you neither want nor need. It seems I'm not alone in fully dumping Windows at this point either, every damn day I see a boatload of people on YouTube babbling about switching to Linux from Windows or to Apple From Windows...hell, I HAVE TWO friggin Macs and a Jailbroken iPAD 4th gen and all of those run better than Windows 11 does and they're all running such outdated OSes they don't work as Apple intends them to anymore.

USB-C Docking Stations - Somethings, just because you can, doesn't mean you should, and one of those things is tethering a 15x9 laptop computer on a precarious Ikea desk by a 1/4" wide cord attached with a 1"-long piece of plastic hosting a pinky-nail sized metal connector intended for cell phones! Just want engineering genius thought this was a great idea? You basically have a little lever intended to rip connectors off motherboards, rip connectors off in sturdy USB-C ports, cause intermittant screen connections, unintended circuit shorts that lead to hard to diagnose hardware problems, and then to add insult ot injury, put a microcontroller int he damn thing (docking station) and make it into a computer itself! Seriously, so I have buy ANOTHER computer to make my laptop computer serve as ANOTHER computer. I think I'll just buy a good Desktop instead TYVM! IF I wanted Chinese Russian Dolls, I'd go to Temu!

Right To Repair - It's electronic, it's in my house, I paid your astronomical sum of money for it, so I OWN IT! Yeah Apple, I don't give a rats ass what you say, I'm giving your orphaned old boxes a new lease on life, whether you like it or not! Even if I have to resort to trial-and-error electronics poke'n'prod. I'll jailbreak my iOS devices, put LInux on Macs when they pass their prime to be useful, or keep using the old version with restricted perms for internet/network securituy reasons. Right now, I'm using a 15 year old Mac Mini with OSX 10.13 Sierra on it and it runs great. I have a late 2015 iMAC 21.5" that is still kicking butt fairly reasonably...on spinning rust no less....with MacOS 12 on it. My 4th Gen iPad is Jailbroken with Zebra and Socket and now acts as a research tablet a lot of the time. And when they die, they'll just be replaced with more dead Apples....because that's what I like to do.

Apple - Apple is the lesser of the two evils at this point because Windows 11. While Windows has turned into the Die Furher of Operating Systems, Apple has one thing good going for it for sure - Consistancy! And being as Apple IS based on a *nix type O/S, I can do a lot - not everything - but a LOT Of what I do with Linux on MacOS. And then when it gets too old to be useful, I can trim it down for specific tasks such as gaming or a DAW, or I can just rip out MacOS and put LInux Mint on there. About Apple's worst traits with their MacOS based products is just being moderatley annoying int he form of saying "We don't trust the publisher of this app so we're going to make you diddle through 20 windows to click a slide-switch to let you run it after you install it" - which is a heck of a lot better than Windows constantly bugging me to "Tru Microsoft Edge with Co-Pilot! It's fast, it's Secure, and will heighten your productivit with the power of A.I." - every time a goddamn Windows update comes out. iOS is where Apple gets more than downright annoying but people have figured out how to easily Jailbreak iOS anyway....so uh.....yeah. All that said their HARDWARE kicks ass! Which is why I bitch about right to repair and their planned obsolescence that has been a a problem since hte original Macintosh released in 1984.

Linux - Now, while I love the power of the almighty penguin, I must say, I'm not one of those Linux fanboys who will bombard you with tons of hype just because I hate microsoft and have some beefs with other products as well. I've worked in I.T. for 20 years, and if I've learned anything, it's that ALL of this technological stuff is basically crap in some way, even Linux. But Linux is the best bet we have right now IMHO. So let's get the negatives out of the way. First and foremost, being a newcomer to linux is confusing as hell, and it does not help that a lot of the support-user base on forums and wherever else you might go for support (Reddit/Discord/Facebook/Forums/etc.) are full of these Linux "Wizards" who hang their eliteness over your head on repeat as you can't figure out how to sudo grep | something something something -o -v -a -t -twvmc and then bombard you with one line statements of "noob". Also, not everything on LInux is chronically updated or Stable! And often time finding soloutions on your own can be time consuming trying to find the most current solution for the most recent release of your distribution. That said - here's everything Linux does RIGHT! I can see what's being done at boot time by pressing ESC, IT does not need SecureBoot or some other UEFI Security garbage, it is more secure than windows, mostly by obscurity, maybe a hair more than apple for the same reasons, it's surprisingly fast even on old hardware - almost all of my computers are 7+ years old at this point...the longest I've had any, and that's saying something. It's free, so I have no right to complain much. Updates don't decide to do their thing at random times like Microsoft, nor do they take 1000000 years like a lot of Apple's updates do. It boots faster than Apple. It can run Windows, Android, DOS, and other software from other platforms without much issue. So yeah, I'm a pretty big supporter of Linux, even if it's not perfect, it's the best thing going right now IMHO.

The Modern Internet - Web 2.0 introduced a dumpster fire! I miss the days when websites were coded in cold-hard HTML like this one (with maybe a sprinkling of CSS at most - also like this). I miss Social Media being like Myspace and letting you put your individuality on display, rather than being some homogenized eas-eof-use-advertising-platform to drive you nuts daily with constant advertising. I miss things like AIM or Yahoo! Chat where you talked to a live person about fun shit, not every corporation on earth putting some AI chatbot on their damn site in lieu of "customer (dis-)service represenatives". Modern discussion platforms like Reddit are a dumpster fire of fake news, political rhretoric, toxic people reporting non-toxic people for being toxic, permabann - seriously, REddit gets it's own special place on this page. And places like Quora are just too f***ing confusing even for a tech guy like me....and require such dedication to the craft of a reply that I just don't feel like I'd make a very valueable contributor. Search engines are basically advertising funnels meant to funnel you into some kind of good or service now - not information. Seriously, Berners Lee's invention has been BASTARDIZED so much now by commerce I'm not at all surprised "doomers" are a thing anymore. Honestly, I spend a lot less time online. And also honestly, despite that dumpster fire called Fakebook - I like Instagram the best, I just post pictures of projects, and have a little fun - even if the spyglass insists on serving me more thirst traps than some kind of demented Super Mario Bros. ROM hack desert level!

A.I. - A.I. is not really artificial intelligence so much, as it's just complex maths emulating human creativity and productivity, and that's about it. Sure, it can seem human, at times, but crazy people like me do a great job of exploiting A.I. for what it REALLY is, because A.I. is not for people like me who are curious and want to figure out how to manipulate it for our own kooky purposes such as writing scatalogical songs about flying robots or creating artwork that looks like Mad Magazine covers made by someone with a serious drug problem and all that goes with it. No, A.I. is for that person who wants to write a happy birthday tune that's oddly specific for their crush, or make pictures of imagined creations for social media - again, not weirdoes like me who like hearing a guy who sounds like a 1960's soul man singing about people who "talk like a man with a cardboard asshole" with self-written lyrics nearly as dirty as your average GoHang music post. Everyone whines that it's going to take over art and leave us doing the dishes, but ya' see, A.I. Can't do the dishes, not without a Robot to be a part of the equation, and that's the part that scares us. Not in a Jetson's malfunctioning Rudy the computer sorta' way, nor a "terminator" sort of way, byt more like Windows 95 first discovers USB ports sort of way...last thing I need is a robot controlled by AI in my kitchen flinging Meat Cleavers around due to a software glitch.....just doesn't sound all that safe! THis automatically banishes anything "Microsoft CoPilot/Cortana/AI-something-else" from my home BTW! Seriously, I don't feel like losing limbs due to a Windows controlled Furby because of another Crowdstrike Bluescreen scenario!

Fuck Reddit! - Seriously, fuck reddit. Reddit is the only place I know a Maga Hat can doxx you and then get you permabanned for "doxxing". Seriously. The place pretends to be more woke than a 1960's Alabama Diner sit-in! But the moderators and the company itself, afraid of litigation and losing shareholders, are only interested in taking the laziest way out even if on-principle they should put in a little more screen time and work harder to see what's really going on. But hey, I believe we will all get permabanned from it at some point, especially when people figure out how stupid the whole thing is anyway. Also, the new interface on reddit sucks shit! Seriously, if this is the "voice of the internet" - we're in big freakin' trouble!

Google - Google is a pure sign of the old sayings about living long enough to become the thing you were once against. When Google started, it was a do-no-evil, feel-good, good type company in the early days. Then as the 2000's went on and people kept using it, it started to slip, more and more, and then the 2010's were the death throes of what Google once was as it turned into the giant evil corporation it is these days. Hell, their slogan at one point even was "do no evil" - now it seems their slogan is "data farming, that's what we do". I miss when they were a humble search engine, and a humble webmail service, and not trying to be everything on the internet all at once. That's what killed Yahoo!, and it's grim reaper is killing Google....and it looks like DuckDuckGo is going to be the next one with all these "security apps" and whatnot.

The Best internet Security... is COMMON SENSE!!! Seriously, 90% of where all these spyware, adware, malware, viruses, and othe rnefarious shit that tears up people's computers, are the result of doing things in an unethical, senseless, feckless, reckless manner. And common sense is a hot commodity these days in short supply that if it were tangible and saleable. I'm talking about these dark-web-rejects who use less savory channels - and I'm not being moralistic about it - I'm just speaking about how society creates these bubbles of chaos in general, which acts as a catalyst...or a "penis-brain-fly-trap" if you will for certain types online to get eaten by...including the device they rode in on. Basically, don't download Warez, don't surf porn (and no, incognito mode won't save you), and don't trust anyone who calls you up randomly claiming to be from places like "Microsoft" "Google" "Amazon" or "Nordstrom Internet Security" (HAHAHAHA) - especially, and I'm not being racist here, if they have a..uh...."eastern-ish" accent. It's not racism, it's the result of lax laws for cybercrime in other countries! Sorry, but if I hear one more guff call up saying "Howdy dootings, deese eeez Bolb from de Microsoft Virus Detection Center...can you go to Anydesk.com and put in your So-so Securitee Nomber Pleeeeeze!"...I'm going to scream! Hear that shit, either have fun fucking em' around with Windows 3.1....or better yet, hang up (or do what I did, cause a massive rave up in the GTA game of your choice in god mode and pretend like you're caught in the middle of a gurilla war zone!).

Modern Websites Suck Shit - That's why I'm here at Neocities and not at Squarespace! Because I LIKE The aesthetic of the "oooooooold" web. Back when passionate REAL people wrote about passionate REAL things on their websites, and not some corporate shill with a mission statement shows a bunch of clipart of what they want you to think their company looks like while trying to sell you multiple tiers of the same shit through their company or merch program. I'm tired of the navigation bar taking precidence over the CONTENT! I'm sick of people who make websites, and repeat the same boring dreck everyone else's site has over and over, often times outdated and untrue. I'm sick of making content on stupid social media platforms where people get all judgy and want to start a flame war - regardless of if you are right or wrong, or have the resources to back yourself up or not. That's why CreepingNet's World does not have a "phone" setting, and why CreepingNet's world instead was designed to leverage the HTML Design itself to be (fairly) usable on a smartphone while retaining that oldschool innocense the web severely lacks today. I miss places like Emode.com when it was quizzes, or the rants of the Misanthropic Bitch website! I miss old band E-zines, and being able to use an adblocker without everyone asking me to disable it every fucking where. I miss when people saw a "Wall-o-text" and instead of calling it a "manifesto" they called it "someone whose really passionate and knowledgable on the subject they are writing about"....unlike today when they cite their various mental health issues as a reason for not wanting to read your six page long "Diatribes".

Shopping (Brick & Motar) - I hate going out of the house to go shopping. In a store, I have to spend not just money on the item of my focus, but I also have to DRIVE There, spending $$ on gasoline, and then maybe even spend more $$ for parking if it's some parking-challenged place like any California Metropolis, Portland, or Seattle. Then after I've paid a king's ransom for travelling, I have to play a human game of Frogger in the parking lot with people who are so stuck in their cell phones they're blinder than Mr. Magoo! Only to go in some crowded store with political weirdoes, judgemental millennials, cranky parents, and their poorly reared children, drunk people, drugged up people, the apathetic staff who are overworked and underpaid for what they do, teenage girls (in mind OR physical) taking selfies in the bloody aisles, people who walk like their legs are made out of lead, constantly saying "I'm Sorry" or "Excuse Me" to every damn person in the store because they man a shopping cart just SLIGHTLY better than they can a motor vehicle. And then I have to fare a row of empty checkouts, only one human there, some poor old lady who probably can't afford her rent doing God's work in the Cigarette checkout, and end up faring the self-checkout for 30 items even if the sign say's "15 items or less" over the top, because there's only ONE friggin human in the whole store checking anyone out. Then of course, something glitches, and "Help is on the way" - in like, 32 minutes - and then I check out, have to give them some stupid loyalty card they keep trying to sell me on to save more $$ on groceries since it's highway robbery to feed a family of two in 2024, and then go home dealing with all that started this rant, but going in reverse.

Shopping (Online) - I hate going out of the house to shop, but online isn't as convenient as they make it out to be either. First off, I have to go price-comparison-shopping - for me that means surfing at least 2-3 websites for the same item, or what likely is the same item, at three or more drastically different price points, then lookup the seller's feedback rating, then look up for any shipping issues (especially if it comes from China - oh no - no issues with China, my ISSUES are with COURIER SERVICES) I might have to endure while I wait for the damn thing to arrive a month late and all binged up by the coked up warthogs who work for USPS/UPS/DHL/CHINAPOST/4PX/UPU/DHU/Ace Ventura - assuming it even makes it here at all. And since I live in Apartments because my generation can't afford any of these fucking houses, I have to deal with the catastrophic nightmare that is recieving packages either from some Amazon/Luxer One locker thing, or hoping the postman doesn't punt my brittle 1993 NEC UltraLite Versa onto the porch like he's trying to hit up Joe Montana on the slant or somesuch s***! Look, I know they don't care, but hey, this is what happens when people turn things into Stats farms! Seriously, shopping on the internet is just trading one set of problems for another set, and adding the risk of Identity Theft to that list of problems on top of it.

Cussing - Did you know that in 2021 CNN Did an Article on the Benefits of Swearing and how people who do it are more intelligent - well no shit. We're the only people on this planet smart enough to realize just how fucked up shit actually is! There, I said it, using TWO of the many lovely "four-letter-(but not necessarily four letter)" words that probably will make people reading this page picture me as one of those chinstrap beard millennial Hot Topic assholes who plasters everything in Naruto Stickers and has a wallet on a chain! Smart people have many reasons to cuss ranging from "Fuck that hurts" when a hornet stings them because the landlord did not get the bug company out fast enough - all the way to "Jesus Motherfucking Mary of Fucking Goddamn Hairy Cunt Christ did our country fuck up" when Donald Trump got elected! People who hear me talk like this in the deep south tell me to "find god" or "Find religion" - well, I have some opinions on that as well.

Religion - I have been a religious tourist all my life pretty much. I got to visit many great ports of call (and not so great ones): Lutheranism, a little bit of Catholicism, Baptism, Messianic Judism - basically, Jewish but you believe Jesus (Yeshua) Died for your sins - and even got to learn a little bit about Buddhism from other musician friends. And honestly, I have no problem with religion whatsoever, whatever floats your boat. Just don't go pissing on me because I don't conform to what most likely you are misquoting. If I've learned one thing about visisting all these religions and learning things from them, they are often very much alike - far more than you ever could believe. After all, 72 Virgins in Heaven? I don't think that's just for Allah! PErsonally, if I had my pick of pre-configured religious afterlife, I'd pick Heaven from Monty Python's Meaning of Life - what looks like a 1970's English topless party. Seriously, I don't care what you believe in - that's not the important part - the IMPORTANT part is the morality that goes with it, which outside of all the cult-like behavior of some, and the contradictory indoctrination of others, is roughly the same across the board. Teh difference is the culture. They can all be good - they can all be bad - just depends on the content of the character of the believer you're listening to. If the deep south taught me anything, it's that a lot of people pick and choose the parts they want to believe, and many do so in a very malicious and judgemental way....which is hilarious, especially in varying forms of Christannity because, well, ever heard "May he without sin cast the first stone?".

Hustle Culture - Everybody be huslin' huslin' - fuck that noise. Right now, I want to sleep, but I got too much shit to do.

Lack of Proper Preparation - I write this on a Tuesday night when I should be sleeping for work but instead am cleaning a house that I have been telling the wife we needed to start cleaning up on since SUNDAY! Because guess what, tomorrow, we have company, I and know for a fact the inevitable fight is going to come along. Now, it's nothing personal towards her, seems this is a problem with a LOT of people in my life who are generally younger than Gen X. It seems my generation has this fucked up idea that everything is *easy* and then when it comes down to it, they're pissed off, trying to risk a coronary on Monster Energy Drinks, in order ot catch up. Now while I'm not fully innocent, after all, I spent about an hour of the evening after work relaxing and working on another fucking guitar for myself - because THAT is how I can relax these days - I still came back up and worked on shit. But my god, if your list has more than 10 items, GET STARTED 2 FUCKING DAYS EARLY!!! Christ. It's called preparation and it's a dying breed these days.

The Cost of Everything Going the Fuck Up!! - IDGAF WHO you voted for, hyperinflation has been a problem going back further than you realize. A lot of BOOMER parents even took lump sums of money from their parents (ie your grandparents) to buy a frickin' house. Now it's so damn expensive I deem it irresponsible to have children (unless you can afford them) because there's no way any sane, *normal* - and I use that term lightly, person could have a child and possibly afford to take care of it without sacrificing so much of their life to the child it basically makes life as a parent unlivable, and the ability to rear a child next-to-impossible for most regular people.

Bees, Wasps, and Hornets - Me and these little guys don't get along too well. They seem to like to sting me, and I like to see them make their home somewhere else. 2024 has been horrendous for the summer as an entire nest of hornets or large yellowjackets have taken roost in our Apartment soffet, and this is a really nice apartment, and even though they TRIED to take them out, we still have a...uh......problem with these assholes forming sizeable clumps on the columns outside our door just to hang out....STRANGE behavior.....not sure what their whole deal is TBH.