I like a guitar that’s all beaten and bruised, road worn, one could say. It adds something to it, to know that it has been loved. I see something as loved if it shows signs of actually being used.

A few of my guitars have dings all over the place and people have remarked upon them saying things like “why don’t you get them fixed?” Well, they don’t need fixing. They need playing. The fretboards are usually worn from my intonation marks and you can tell which strings are my favourite from which ones sound the most horrible. Actually, a friend of mine has a guitar and the strings haven’t been replaced for a long, long time. As a consequence, it sounds amazing because they’ve bedded in and the guitar has gotten used to their sound.

Similarly, my laptop is... Well, it’s dead now, but the keyboard was full of dents and the keys were rubbed. There were lots of scratches on it from when I carried it around and generally thumped it, just through every day use. That thing didn’t have the easiest life for about two years. Now it is dead, but there are salvageable parts, so I’ll recycle whatever I can.

I love recycling. Now, I’m not saying this just to make myself look better, perish that thought, but I really do recycle a lot. Not just the general rubbish that one discards throughout their everyday lives, but other things - guitar parts, computer parts, stuff like that. Even a clapped out piece of string or a wire can still have some use. I’ll admit, I am a bit of a hoarder, but you know what? If it has a use, use it. It might look broken, but look at what it could be, instead of what it is.

Luckily for me, not enough people actually repair their own things, meaning I get to repair them for them. Also means that any bits that aren’t repairable, I get to keep and reuse. I had this Xbox 360 to fix and it was just beyond repair. I said to the guy that it was and he told me just to keep it. He had the hard drive, so there was no need for the full system because he had a spare, which I did manage to fix. There are valuable parts in it, so when another one came to me with a faulty RF controller, I just took the one out of the unfixable one and put it in the other, then sold the faulty one. Simple.

Speaking of simple, that’s what people forget to do: Check the simple things first. Someone had trouble getting a display on their monitor. Turned out they had the DVI cable out just a fraction, which caused it to not make a good enough connection. Rule of thumb: Before swearing, always check your cables.

I’m a little tired, but can’t be arsed going to bed. All I seem to do these days is sleep. Fun? Well, the dreams are nice. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes... Not so. Sometimes sexy. It’s no secret that I’m a horny person. Yes, I have horns. I bet you thought I was gonna say something different there!

I guess I often surprise folk. I want another guitar. I’ve always wanted an Aria Pro II bass. Any of theirs will do me, I just want one! Actually, what I want (stop me if I’ve said this already) is a really crappy guitar.

I want a new project, you see. I need a new laptop and I’m getting a faulty one for my birthday next month (or maybe this month, by the time this is posted... Let’s call it February), simply because I love fixing things, but in the meantime, I want a guitar to fix. I could fix my bass and that’s what I’m going to do (the action is horribly high), but that’s a very easy fix, so once I sell this laptop I’m using, I shall buy a guitar. I bought this laptop for £50 and fixed it for £4. Once I buy a charger, that’ll bring the total up to (damn... Maths!) £13, if I sell it for £150, I’ll still have made a big profit. Not bad for a couple of hours work.

Any readers in the UK, if you need a laptop fixed, gimmie a shout, I’ll help. Charge you, but I take PayPal. I should do more advertising.

That’s something I don’t do for any aspect of my life. About the most advertising/bragging I do these days, is in my musings. I don’t ask people to read them, I don’t beg for comments, I don’t pimp very much, I just let it stand upon its own merits. If people like my writing, so be it, but I write mostly for myself, so it doesn’t matter. No, that isn’t right, it does matter. After all, if it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t have been so chuffed when I got my Editors’ Pick. Or my Recommended Read. Those happen to be two of my favourite stories as well, so it made me even more happy.

To get an award for something like a musing about making tea, which was conceived early one Sunday morning, whilst dreading a day of crappy tea being foisted upon me, by a certain person who can’t make tea, is really an honour. It was actually a bit of a piss-take and sat in my stories folder, ignored and not having a home for a good few months before I posted it. The one about the woods, that just happened. The germ of the idea, I woke up with, quickly went downstairs and had my breakfast, had a shower, thought more about it and the wrote it, and was posted two days after being written with hardly any editing done upon it. It was fun to write and I found myself smiling when I re-read it recently.

Do you ever read something you’ve written, or listen to something you played and think “nope, that ain’t me!” Sometimes I do.

I’m rambling here, aren’t I? Given adequate time, I could rant ‘n’ ramble for a very long time, just ask Aria. She’s so beautiful.

I guess I’ll end this and listen to more Queen. Or maybe a bit of Led Zeppelin. Yeah, a wee bit of Led before bed, that’d be cool.

Kittylove
Andrew =^.^=