oh so _that's_ how you do that

I didn't know the tuners on my mandolin could be completely disassembled. Fortunately, I am capable of learning! Now that they're properly cleaned out and (re)lubricated - as opposed to the halfway-worked-out spray-injection cleaning and oiling I tried before - they're a lot smoother.

Todo: Boston

Mostly for my own use.

( To do )

_extremely_ briefly

tf:Zarathustra reports that the 30-year FNMA is trading down another 29/32nds mid-day. I'm not exactly sure of the translation ratios but I think this'll put the 30-year non-jumbo confirming first mortgage at somewhere around, hum, 6.1-6.2%ish, more than 50% over the target rate of 4% intended by the Treasury...

Okay, here's a chart now:
A waterfall like that will usually bring some sort of Fed or Treasury response, let's see what happens the rest of the day.

Variations of these graphs are going around

Okay, a second short thing. Remember the bank "stress tests" and the jobs savings projected by the Obama economic recovery plan? They had various assumptions built in. The first is the "stress test," which was supposed to determine capital requirements needed for banks to handle two scenarios - the "baseline" and the "more adverse" environment projections. Here's how that's working out so far, graph courtesy Mish Shedlock from his post, here:


The "baseline" scenario was consensus unemployment; the "more adverse" was a "really bad case" projection. That red dot is where we are. And unless that spikes back down soon, that's ... not good.

You're also seeing another chart going around, this one; the upper curve is the consensus forecast again, the lower curve is the with-recovery-package projection. I haven't verified this data but the upper curve does match the consensus forecast.

Both relate back to a paper I really need to get off my ass and finish reading, "Forecasting the Depression," on how most economists continually misread future trending throughout the Great Depression, and how there would good reasons for that - valid ones. But despite that, you get realities like this:


Chart courtesy American Economic Review, from the paper
"Forecasting the Depression: Harvard vs. Yale,"
by Kathryn M. DOMINGUEZ, Ray C. FAIR, and Matthew D. SHAPIRO.
Now, given how completely the usual suspects have missed this cycle throughout - the parallels are close enough to be disturbing - I am and have been reacting very suspiciously to projections for the better further out. The last time we had one of these, none of the systems behaved as per their usual histories. Keep that in mind.

I HATE TSA I HATE US SECURITY PARANOIA AGH HATE

So spazzkat pointed out - probably correctly q >_< p - that my BAND NAME gives TSA an extra EXCUSE to fuck with my travel case (and the bouzouki inside it), as in, say, KEEP IT or something else similarly idiotic. He popped out with this when he saw that I have a sticker on the top talking about Crime and the Forces of Evil tour:


He thinks it gives them an EXCUSE, so he says I should TAKE IT OFF MY CASE. And the thing is he's RIGHT. It's fucking AIRLINE TRAVEL in the fucking US. They've fucked people people for wearing the wrong T-SHIRTS.

And the big problem is that pulling it OFF means going ALONG WITH all this BULLSHIT that I HATE. I mean, I'm going to great lengths to avoid some of the crap I've read about on airlines - hardcore Anvil-made travel case, diagrammatic instructions on how to open the latches even though they're bog standard, multiple identification notes on the case... and THIS.

CHRIST this pisses me off.

He thinks I should take the Property Of sticker off, too, because it also has the band name in big letters, with my name, address, phone number, all that crap.

Here's what it looks like on the inside almost finished, btw. The only differences now are that the rest of the recessed blue area on top is covered with layers of egg crate foam. I'd put Kohaku back in and take another picture except the foam glue is still drying and I want it nice and dry before putting in the instrument. I'm really pleased with how it looks all cleaned up but AGH HATE TSA.

They've got to me, too. I mean, I had the same thought when I was making the sticker. But then I thought "oh settle down, it's a band name on an instrument case, don't be paranoid." BUT WAIT

one more thing

Here's a grainy photo of the final interior. (It was dark and I had to lighten the photo a lot.) Really, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out overall, even with surprises of hate like the top eggcrate foam being too thick - I had to reduce its thickness one little segment at a time with a thrift-store electric carving knife, and trimmed about 2cm of depth off it that way. The back really does not look as even as the front does. At the far right of the inside of the lid, there's a little section that's full thickness, if you want a comparison.

You can't tell clearly from the photo, but the large segment (the part over the bouzouki proper) has a lot of individual egg-crate-point adjustment. I'm specifically avoiding lid-foam contact to the string path of the instrument, and the bridge. I also height trimmed to a lesser degree over the body of the bouzouki as well - I want the bouzouki held in place, not compressed! ^_^ Where foam meets foam tho', I've kept as much height as I could - it'll add more compression resistance when it's in the luggage the stack, or so is my plan.

Anyway, I thought it cleaned up well, and I'm feeling pretty good about my foam-carving work. And I like my little latch-operation drawings:


Whaddya think, sirs?

one more thing

Here's a grainy photo of the final interior. (It was dark and I had to lighten the photo a lot.) Really, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out overall, even with surprises of hate like the top eggcrate foam being too thick - I had to reduce its thickness one little segment at a time with a thrift-store electric carving knife, and trimmed about 2cm of depth off it that way. The back really does not look as even as the front does. At the far right of the inside of the lid, there's a little section that's full thickness, if you want a comparison.

You can't tell clearly from the photo, but the large segment (the part over the bouzouki proper) has a lot of individual egg-crate-point adjustment. I'm specifically avoiding lid-foam contact to the string path of the instrument, and the bridge. I also height trimmed to a lesser degree over the body of the bouzouki as well - I want the bouzouki held in place, not compressed! ^_^ Where foam meets foam tho', I've kept as much height as I could - it'll add more compression resistance when it's in the luggage the stack, or so is my plan.

Anyway, I thought it cleaned up well, and I'm feeling pretty good about my foam-carving work. And I like my little latch-operation drawings:



Whaddya think, sirs?