“Myriad Discourses in Objective Reality”
Expositions by Steve Whittlesey
God Talk
I would love to see the improbable; people loving and helping one another rather than hating. Crazy, but that’s how it goes Millions of people living as foes Maybe it’s not too late To learn how...
About Talk
Hi, I’m Steve. Officially Stephen Thomas Whittlesey. I am a Dad to 2 awesome kids, son, brother, uncle and friend. I am a photographer, backpacker/hiker, climber, biker, private pilot, web designer, senior systems...
Music Talk
I love music, I love guitar! The diversity and range of notes on the guitar are limited only by our imagination. The guitar has never become burdensome nor stale. The guitar has always been there through good times and bad times. After...
Tech Talk
Welcome to Tech Talk. These pages are filled mostly with notes to myself and hopefully to help others starting out or already neck-deep in matters related to the field of information technology (IT). No matter what operating system you or your...
Politic Talk
The old saying: “never talk about religion or politics”, is a good one, unless you want a heated debate. I bring up the latter on this page because of the division of the world, nations and my own beloved country. I was born and raised...
Resolving Tuning Issues
There is nothing worse than being half way through a song and your tuning goes whack. Sometimes you can ballpark it mid-song and keep the show going. If your guitar just never seems to want to stay in tune, and you find yourself tuning after (or worse, during) every song; there is hope, hopefully.
The first thing you need to do is do a proper setup on the guitar. You can check out my notes on this here: Intonation & Setup 101.
Many high-end guitars justify their price with quality parts and designs that naturally keep the guitar in tune. Many, not all. I’ve bought low-end guitars that with some simple modifications maintain rock solid tuning.
One of the first things I’ll do on inexpensive models is block the tremolo, if it has one. If you have a $200 guitar, odds are it doesn’t have a $200+ tremolo (Kahler, Wilkinson or Floyd Rose), and that cheap tin plate will not help your playing nor tuning. Blocking consists of simply cranking the tremolo spring screws all the way down until the tremolo block rests against the body. This essentially makes the tremolo a fixed bridge (i.e. a block of tin).
Next, I’ll go over all of the guitar parts and make sure every screw is tight. I have received so many guitars (even new from the factory) with loose screws on the tuners, bridge, etc.
If you have an extra $50 to drop, locking tuners are well worth the upgrade price. I’ve used Schaller, Grover, Spertzel and Gotoh to name a few; all are good. Your guitar and tuner configuration (i.e. 6 inline, 3×3, etc) will most likely dictate the brand, and some build tuners for specific manufacturers and designs (i.e. Fender uses Schaller). Even if my guitar doesn’t have tuning issues, I prefer locking tuners as string changes are much faster, cleaner and tuning becomes a mute point.
Read MoreMigrations
Whether you are going through a merger or acquisition, migrating from another operating system, or just cleaning up a mess, a migration may be in your future. I’ve spent the last decade migrating Microsoft domains and products to new versions, as well as to and from other vendors, and all migrations follow the same 5-step path:
1. Protect your data!
2. Plan
3. Test
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as much as you need, for as long as you need
5. Migrate!
As soon as the migration is started, it needs to be completed professionally and expeditiously to minimize pain and impact to the end-users. Large (10,000+ account) networks can be successfully migrated in a month or less, small-medium migrations should happen over a weekend or within a couple of weeks at most. As soon as step #5 is kicked into action, all eyes of your entire company and all of your customers will be on you.
Migrations fail because steps 1-4 are skimped on, or skipped altogether, and the migration fast becomes a disaster because it is drowning in step #5 (and nobody took swim lessons).
You can spend a year or more planning and testing, this is OK. The very instant you begin the migration process, pain and suffering will be felt by your end-users. Migrating is like pulling a Band-Aide off; do it professionally, do it fast!
Guarantee Data Backups!
A smart person learns from their own mistakes. A wise person learns from the mistakes of others.
Many clients I have worked with had no (zero, zilch, nada) data backed up. None. What they had was mediocre at best (consistent errors). All had backup software and tape drives purchased, but often their staff never found time to set it up properly (nor installed it for that matter).
The companies had experienced major data losses, multiple times. I could only scratch my head as to how they tolerated it, how their customer’s tolerated it, and interestingly enough they still had zero backups in place when I arrived, sometimes months or years later.
Remember, there are only 3 simple rules to follow in IT:
1. Protect the data
2. KISS
3. When in doubt, refer to rule #1
Always:
- Backup the data
- Test the backups
- Move on!
Another side effect of testing your backups properly is the benefit of knowing how to restore the data. If, or better said when, disaster strikes, you’ll be prepared!
Read MoreWelcome!
Yo, and welcome to the new site.
I hope to provide some real discussions on real matters in near real time.
There is a lot of information available to everyone across the internet. Unfortunately, the massive amount available results in overload, with much not reaching the relevancy meter.
I will try to keep the information contained herein trimmed and relevant as much as possible. Again, more detailed information is available elsewhere, but if you have a need to just ‘git er done‘, hopefully these pages will benefit you and others.
~God bless!