I have been playing guitar for about 10 years now, and until today, I never bothered to set the inonation of any of my guitars. My main guitar is a lefty Steinberger GU Deluxe (http://musicyo.com). I discovered Steinberger guitars around 1999, and I ordered a black GU Deluxe. I didn't play it that much because it was a right handed guitar, but I loved it's headless tuning system. I gave the guitar to my brother a few years ago.

I've been playing the lefty Steinberger for about 2 1/2 years. The EMG select pickups are very quiet, and work well with my Boss GT-6 effects pedal. The guitar stays in tune better than everything else I've tried. Today I set the intonation on it for the first time, which is strange. I always knew that I could move the saddles on my R-trem bridge, but I didn't know the procedure.

This site is a pretty useful guide for adjusting things on a Steinberger.

http://www.musicyo.com/planet/steinberger.asp

I just had to adjust the saddles so that the 24th fret is exactly 2 octaves above each open string. The guitar comes with a mini hex wrench to move the saddles. I found that after I moved a saddle, I have to get in tune again. I tune my guitar with the tuner in my GT-6. After I adjusted the inontation for each string, the guitar sounded much better, especially since the strings are getting old.

I also read about adjusting the truss rod. I loosened it slightly, and the neck made some creaking noises.

Maybe I will even adjust the action height sometime.

Okay, I am typing this in for the second time, because last time I hit some sort of weird key combination that erased my post. Blah. You know what, I am now writing this in my email program so I can save every now and then. I had the awesome story going on too.

Last night, after attepting to sleep for over 3 hours, I finally got some sleep. A whole 2 hours. I woke up with a cool dream in my head, so I mustered the strengh to get up and write about it.

I am in a math class. I often have dreams where I am back in high scool, and I get the thought "didn't I already finish this?". This is one of those times. I am not understanding my math. My friend Darren comes home with me to help me with my math. Darren is a friend from grade school that I haven't seen since Jr. High. He was one of my friends that played 4 square during recess. He would hit the ball very fast, with a backspin. It worked pretty well as long as it landed inside the court. A lot of times it didn't, however.

Darren and I are walking up the hill to my mother's house. It seems like it's farther than it is in real life. When we get there, I am playing an electric guitar. I am playing a right handed guitar left handed (I am left handed). I am playing some pretty melodies, the kind that I am usually too lazy to learn how to play. Plus I am playing them 'upside down', in guitar terms.

Now we are in the computer room. My brother is upstairs in his room, and he yells about the guitar being too loud. I'm not even using an amp. My mom comes in, and she has this computer game that's supposed to help me with math. She shows me how to play. There are a bunch of sqaures arranged in straight lines, and she clicks on the corner squares to make the attacted line dissapear. Sometimes there is a spider inside a square, then she has to also click on the spider before erasing the line. I say "anyone can figure out 90 degree angles, maybe if they had a hexangonal grid or something".

Next thing I know I am in the dining room, and my mom has this motivational speaker guy to help me with math. He has blond hair and always seems too happy. He has me fill out a survey on a computer. I forgot what the questions were, but it seemed like a scam to me.

The next thing I remember I am in this motorized cart thing going up a hill. My brother is in the passenger seat. It's on a track, and I am in some sort of game. Apparently I have to stop the cart using the brakes at some point. That guy tells me to stop, which I do. I stop at 99 out of 100, which means I win. The guy says I just won my team a cruise. Next thing I know I'm on a cruise ship with my team and that guy.

Something about him compells me to jump off the ship. As I am falling, I notice that I am in between 2 ships. I plunge deep into the water. I start running out of air as I struggle to reach the surface. I hear the guy tells my teammates to come rescue me. It seems like I've been forced into some sort of happy cult, and I want to get away from all of them. I swim towards a wall. I skirt along the wall. Some girl is behind me, she's coming to capture me. Somehow I manage to climb along the wall like spider man. There are a couple windows in the wall. There is an office worker in a window. I tell her about this crazy guy that is after me.

Now I am in a building, running through hallways. I run up a bunch of stairs and into this room. I figure that guy will never find me in here. Next thing I know, there he is. I run down some stairs, and he is still here. In desperation, I jump from a great height to meet my end. But I fall slowly. Someone catches me, and that guy is there. "I can't even die?", I think. "I must be in hell".

I wake up an throw my blanket off me. I realize I am back in real life.

I got a OX3+ digital microscope for Christmas. It's pretty fun to play with. I was taking pictures of a CD and I found a tiny green bug walking on the CD. I put it in a observation container and took some pictures of it. I can even see its brain if I focus the right way. I'll make a gallery of my microscope pictures sometime later.

So I signed up for a Feedster account to try it out. I happen to have created an RSS feed of my blog a little while ago, so I am adding it to Feedster. Here goes!

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

I am redesigning the web page for San Diego Coalition To Stop the Genocide in Sudan.

It was a good excuse to start a new design from scratch, and I am also helping a worthy cause.

---

I have been having problems with being logged out after posting something here. I am trying to get to the bottom of it. I made a small change, but it will take a while to see if it works since the problem happens intermitantly.

Yesterday Dani and I went to my mom's house around 7 PM for an Amnesty International Meeting. My mother is the coordinator for the Scripps Ranch chapter. Twice a year they write letters to prisoners of conscious, which is what we did last night. I wrote two very generic letters.

One was to an American that was solider who was deployed to Iraq. After a 6 month deployment, he came back on a 2 week leave. He decided that the war was wrong and that he would not go back. This action landed him a year in a military prision after he was sentenced for desertion.

article

I wrote another letter to a guy in Syria that's in prision for downloading some articles from the Internet. Apparently the Syrian Internet doesn't promote free speech. Here in the US, usually the worst thing that could happen is getting sued by the RIAA for participating in a growing trend on rampant music piracy.

----

In other news, Dani pointed out that the water I gave her from my mom's water dispenser was brown. She wanted to know if she was going to get sick. I assured her she wouldn't, I have drank the water from the refridgerator on several occasions.

I noted that the water could have been in there for ten years, since no one gets water from there. I drained the water into a tupperware container. The first couple fills had a brown tint, and it slowly became clear again. Next I decided to tackle the ice cube dispenser. The ice had specks of rust all over them. I dumped the container into the sink and melted the ice with hot water. The bottom of the container was covered in brown sludge. It came off pretty easily. It seems to all have come from the spiral piece of metal that churns the ice to make it come out. I wiped off most of the rust and put the whole thing back in the freezer. I turned off the ice maker since my mom doesn't use it.

Poor Macy hurt her left paw the other day while she was chasing rabbits. She got her dewclaw stuck in something and tore it out a little. Now she is bandaged and is hopping around.

Last night I had a dream I went to church with my brother. I was dressed in a big light blue robe with a white ruffled collar. I felt like it was bringing undue attention to me. Some other people were dressed this way as well. I was in the pews, fiddling with my compact flash card. Somehow I broke it in half. I was relieved that it was only a 32M card and that I still had a 1G card.

From the night before:

I am in a car, Dani is driving. She has some vanilla pills in a bottle. She says she got them from a pet store. I wanted to try them so she put some pills in a glass of milk. It tasted like a vanilla bean frappachino. We are driving in Scripps Ranch.

Last night I had a few strange dreams. I haven't received enough sleep tonight, but I figured I'd better write about them before I go back to sleep, or they'd be gone forever.

here goes:

I am visiting my old apartment in the college area. I know I'm not supposed to be there. It is pretty much empty except I find some stuff I left there. I find my backpack. I wonder "haven't I used this backpack since moving out?". I find a bunch of other assorted stuff on a shelf that doesn't actually exist in that apartment. I open a shelf and find a bunch of books in the bottom.

I open the door and leave, I hope no one notices me. To my dismay there are 30 or 40 people in blue shirts lined up to do something. They must work for the apartment. I walk past everyone and no one says anything. When I get on the street I get on a motorcycle and go on my way.

The next thing I know I'm on a freeway offramp on the wrong side of the road. I thought, "this is strange, I've never had this happen before. I'd better turn around before the cops show up." Just then a motorcycle cop circles around. Now I am in a car. He comes up to my window, pulls out his handcuffs, and says "Are you gonna live?".

Now I'm in a therapy session with the cop. He's my age or younger. I don't remember any dialouge from the session. When I was over, we walk out the door. He heads down the hallway to the right, laughing and talking about smoking weed. I walk out the door in front of me, and I'm outside. Some security they have.

I wonder how I'm going to get home. I don't remember what comes next. I think I'm driving with my mother through a city and everything looks foreign to me.

In another scene, I'm at some sort of conference, and I'm leaving. There are 6 elevators, each of which goes to different floors of the parking garage. I go to the last one (I'm going to floor 101, which is actually one below ground level). I get in the elevator with some other people, the elevator starts and goes way past our floor.

In yet another scene, I am some sort of mass transit thing. There's this thing with a bunch of leaflets someone put there. They have little packets of shroom spores and other unknown seeds. Some guy is watching me. Later he comes over and sprinkles a bunch of the seeds into a paper. Next thing I know I'm holding an action figure that seems to be alive.

That's about all I remember...

I've been having a hard time sleeping. I tried for about 3 hours last night before I relented and got on the computer. Yesterday I had a dream where I was inside a video game where bubbles were growing and cutting off my air supply. I had to throw shapes at the color coresponding bubbles to pop them.

Last night as Dani used me as a pillow she was smacking her lips and talking about peppermint.

I read an acticle about PHP caching in PHP Architect and copied the source code into a file. I had to write another script to delete the line numbers from the cache script. I'll have to figure a good way to use caching on the site.

About a week ago I bought a Bionaire BAP825 HEPA air cleaner from Costco for $80. I had been suffering from allergies and have wanted an air cleaner for a while. The BAP825 is an ellipital tower about 2 feet tall. Most of the front is covered by the air outlet, the intake is in the back. The controls are on the top. It comes with a remote with all the same controls as the main unit.

To set this up, you have to open the back, where you find 2 HEPA filters in plastic bags. You take them out of the plastic bags and connect them to a mounting point using clips. Mine came with 2 extra HEPA filters as well. They are supposed to last for 3-6 months. A filter indicator light lets you know when it's time to change the filters. There is a foam pre-filter which can be cleaned in soapy water.

There is a built-in ionizer and a button to turn it on and off. I have been using the ionizer the whole time.

So far, I think I've been sneezing less. I'd like to have another filter so they can clean two rooms at once. I am curious to see how long the filters last. Bionaire sells filters for $40 for a 2 pack (the BAP825 needs 2 filters). Amazon has the same filter pack for $25.