Yeah, Dawg

The hard work on my amp is all done. From here on out, it’s small strokes. Here’s what I got:

There are two hollowed-out places behind the front panel now. The first one is where I put all the stuff you see now. The other one will make it easier to mount switches and a light, although it really isn’t needed, since switches have long threads and the light has a long housing.

I may forgo a cabinet. I’m very tempted to turn this into an industrial-looking all-metal amp. Not steampunk, but closer to that than Fender. I would need to come up with a nice-looking cage to go over the top and protect the tubes. Hey…I wonder if I could fill copper tubing with epoxy, bend it to a suitable shape, and let it harden. By itself, copper is too flimsy. Although I suppose pipe might work. I have things for bending tubing.

I can’t wait to fire it up and see if it explodes. Maybe tomorrow. I won’t have knobs by then, however. Unless I go with Radio Shack.

I need a reasonably priced tool to check capacitances. I don’t know why, but capacitors are marked in ways nobody can read. My Fluke meter only goes down to nanofarads. I have a whole drawer full of capacitors, and I can’t read them. Even the Internet is useless.

I don’t know what I’ll do with a 30-watt amp. Put my speaker cabinet in an isolation box, maybe. My speaker is only rated at 25 watts, though.

I am loving this project.

And now I think I’ll embed a stupid commercial because it cracks me up.

Someone please tell me what a bro-stache is.

No, don’t.

Them’s Fightin’ Words!

A certain blogress grand diva has impugned my culinary skills by pointing out that my recipe for BBQ beans starts with canned beans and ketchup! Oh, the treachery! She says her beans have to be cooked from scratch!

You know, there are some things you shouldn’t try to cook from scratch. Try making Rice Krispies Treats from scratch some day. Not going to happen. I make my own guitars, amps, bullets, beer…but dang, I’m not going to make my own ketchup or grow beans again. The climate down here kills everything. I couldn’t grow tomatoes if I wanted to.

I respect the whole SHTF movement, but you pretty much have to take over a county if you really want to be self-sufficient. Even in the old days, people bought things like sugar, coffee, and flour.

Anyway, I will defend my beans to the death. They are totally righteous.

Jeremiah 29:11

Drudge links to a remarkable story today. Some guy got involved with a woman who had student loans she wasn’t paying off, and a SWAT team broke into his house in the middle of the night to search the place. They put him in a patrol car and left him there for six hours. The part where they attacked him and not her makes perfect sense. This is the government we’re talking about. The people liberals trust to solve their problems.

I had no idea Uncle Sam got this crabby about getting his money! I know some people who might want to start wearing expensive underwear, so they look their best when the cops drag them outside at 4 a.m.

Student loans are bad news. You can’t get out of them by declaring bankruptcy or crying poverty. You pretty much have to be dead or dying in order to get forgiveness. If you don’t pay, the interest just keeps building, and then Sallie Mae gives up and adds it to the principal. Then they have the right to charge you interest on the interest you didn’t pay. So you can turn a $100,000 debt into $200,000, if you really try. And the IRS can come in and collect by force, so even if you turn your life around, you may find yourself taking home a tiny piece of a big paycheck. Welcome to sharecropping.

I know someone who has a 16-year-old debt which amounts to at least $190,000. I don’t think it could have been more than $100,000 to start with. And this is someone who had the money to pay. Go figure. Obama might as well hogtie and brand this individual, because until that money rolls in, this person is a slave.

The only good thing about the SWAT story is that the victim may have a lawsuit which will turn his six hours of captivity into a nice retirement account. Meanwhile, his ex may be in for some interesting times.

It’s encouraging to see the government making a serious effort to get our money back. That much, I will give them. I didn’t think they were trying very hard.

I no longer believe in borrowing. I’ve done some dumb things. I bought $1500 speakers with loan money. But I now believe that borrowing is a good way to curse yourself. Even mortgages and car loans. We have gotten so used to buying things we can’t afford, we think it’s normal. I disagree. Like the Bible says, “A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.” It also says the borrower is the servant of the lender. If you owe money on your house and car, they’re not yours, no matter how you spin it. Someone else has the power to take them away if you falter. Then where are you?

It’s a lot harder to take what you have when you own it outright. And you won’t find yourself forced to do things you don’t believe in, just to keep the payments up. A man who has a stack of loans is a target for temptation and coercion, just like a politician with dirt in his past. If you’re not in that situation, you are truly blessed.

I always wonder what our streets and parking lots would look like if all the cars that weren’t paid for disappeared.

Christianity is largely about short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain. Debt works the other way around. In Christianity, you give this life to God, and after seventy or a hundred years you get a magnificent, lasting reward. When you borrow, you usually get a car or a crappy stereo or some other trinket that loses value, and you pay much more than it’s worth. You get something better than you deserve, and you get it fast, but it doesn’t last, and you end up worse off in the end.

Christianity is amazing. It frees you from scratching to make this life as good as it can be. If you don’t believe, what is life? Childhood and adolescence are somewhat unpleasant, and during these years, you probably won’t have freedom, success, or wealth. Then you hit your twenties, which are supposed to be the best time of your life. You’re healthy. You look good. You feel good. But you don’t have much by middle-aged standards, and older people boss you around. If you’re really lucky, you have money and other trappings of success by the time you hit 30. If you’re a woman, that gives you about five years to enjoy them before you fall out of the first tier of physical beauty, and you have to get very busy burdening yourself with kids. If you’re a man, you don’t have to worry about that stuff, but you’re still aging.

By 45, you’re over the hill, especially if you’re female. Now it’s time to worry about retirement. But you probably won’t save enough. At this point, you feel like you’re a success on the downhill slope to grey hair and wrinkles, or you feel like you’re a failure who no longer has a chance to make it. If you’re on top, you want to stay there, but time will not leave you alone. Even Madonna, with all her money, can turn into an old woman kids don’t admire any more. Botox, fetal stem cells, collagen, and plastic surgery can’t keep you young.

When old age hits you, it’s time to look at what you have and what you’ve done and decide whether it meant anything. Maybe you have money, but you’re going to die, and your money is going to stay here. Maybe you’ve accomplished a lot in your career, but your career can’t follow you to the grave.

The other day I was flipping channels, and I saw a listing for Teen Wolf. And I couldn’t help thinking how absurd it was, to see yourself as a success because you’ve been in movies. We admire and worship movie stars. But…Teen Wolf? Come on. Is that a legacy? When you think about it, all movies are stupid. Actors stand around playing make-believe, just like kids in a playground. Try it sometime, if you’ve never acted. Read a scene with your friends. You feel silly, right? This is what John Wayne did every day, and we think he’s wonderful. Could anything be more ridiculous? Is that any way to spend a life? And I emphasize the word “spend.”

If you live by the world’s rules, age is your enemy. It takes the things you value. It robs you of looks, health, and social relevance. It takes away your career. It takes away the things you enjoy.

What if you’re a Christian who walks by faith? Different story. Suddenly age is wealth. Your life is measured in eons, not years, so no matter how you see yourself, you are extremely young and full of potential. You’re just getting started. And the things you do have lasting value. God will guide you and help you do things that have lasting impact. You’ll even be able to help people enter paradise, where they’ll be your friends for eternity.

Instead of seeing earthly success as important and having great respect for earthly institutions, you’ll start to see the earth as what it is: a silly, corrupt place where things don’t work the way they should. A planet in a disease state. Not a good place to spend a long time. Not a place you’d want to retire to. The older you get, the closer you are to getting off this wretched rock. If a Muslim beheads you, great. Your sentence is finally over. No more wrinkles. No more joint pains. No more reading glasses. You’ll never get a cold again. You’ll never crack your toe on a piece of furniture. You’ll never worry about where the rent is coming from. Really, you should thank the person who martyrs you.

Christians are basically God’s Peace Corps volunteers, except for one big difference: God’s Peace Corps works, while the world’s Peace Corps tends to send idealistic kids to foreign countries where they find that everyone thinks they’re CIA (because a lot of them are), and the locals expect you do do all the work. Which kind of explains why they need the Peace Corps. You get seven different kinds of bleeding diarrhea, and if you’re lucky, you dig a couple of wells that get filled in by Marxist guerillas the day after you leave. Hooray.

Anyway, God suffers us to remain in this awful place so we can rescue others and bedevil the ruler of this world. God makes things more pleasant and rewarding for us while we’re here, if we really know him and submit to him, but this isn’t what he wants for us in the long term. He can’t wait to bring us home, like soldiers returning from a filthy, bloody war. After all, this IS a war. It’s THE war; all others are imitations.

We return home in boxes, and that’s unfortunate, but it beats staying here.

The older you get, the closer you are to parole, and you’re racking up credits in heaven. You’re filling your retirement account. The Bible makes it clear that what we get in heaven depends on what we do here; we’re not all going to have the same rewards.

You’re also growing to be more like Christ. Your supernatural power–the gifts of the Spirit–is increasing. Your good character–the fruit of the Spirit–is improving. By earth’s standards, you stop growing and start dying when you’re about 20. In God’s kingdom, you haven’t even hit puberty yet. You’re going to get better and better and better.

My life keeps getting better. People jab me about my age, and I don’t care at all. You can have this world. I don’t want it. Get yourself botoxed up and let the good times roll while they may. You’ll still end up in a nursing home, and everyone will think you’re irrelevant, annoying, and superfluous. I have a better destination, and I’ll have a better time during the trip.

No wonder so many martyrs were happy to die. The more they became like God, the more disgusted they must have become with this place. I enjoy life tremendously, but I don’t want to spend the rest of it HERE. Please. When the time comes, please airlift me out of this dump.

You’re not going to see me do any heavy borrowing any time soon. I want my rewards in front of me and my work behind me, not the other way around.

Get Knock on Door From Joyful Cops

Here’s what I got so far:

I had a lot of fun making tube socket holes in 3/16″ aluminum. I had to use a 1 3/16″ hole saw for the big tubes and a 3/4″ Forstner bit for the small ones. I should buy stock in WD40; I used so much to keep the bits from binding.

The stuff on top will be held down with wood screws. There is no need for nuts when the metal is this thick.

This is extremely cool. Can’t wait to turn it on.

Priorities of San Franciscans as Revealing as Their Protest Attire

A long time ago, Aaron used to tell me Israel and the Jews got a bad deal from the press. I thought he was nuts, but gradually I started to notice the press’s increasing hostility, and eventually, the crescendo became impossible to ignore. And since the press is the mouth of liberalism, I realized that the left, generally, is against the Jews.

Most Jews have not figured this out yet, which is amazing. I will never forget the sand-aspirating ostrich who told a reporter he voted for Kerry because he thought he would be better for Israel. If you can believe a thing like that, you are beyond hope. Whatever your objections to Bush may have been, he was on the pro-Israel side of the American political spectrum, and Kerry would have been much worse.

Today, via Sondra, I heard about the new Jew-hating comic, Foreskin Man. No, you are not dreaming. Regrettably.

Many people in San Francisco worship the principle male organ of reproduction, so it is not surprising that they are trying to ban circumcision. To them, circumcision amounts to defacing an idol. Foreskin Man is a cartoon hero who goes around battling–see for yourself–evil Jews.

You’re not supposed to circumcise it, but it’s okay to split it down the middle and put rings and chains in it, or to cut it off entirely and turn yourself into a grotesque, farcical, pitiable imitation of a woman. I’m not sure what the logic is, but that’s how it works out.

I emailed Aaron about this, and he made a reference to Julius Streicher. I had to Google. Streicher was a newspaper publisher in Germany. He published many of the famous Nazi-era photos and cartoons disparaging Jews. You have probably seen the big-nosed, sweaty, leering caricatures. If you look at Foreskin Man artwork, you will see that Streicher’s work is being continued.

In America. In 2011. In a major city. Among people who consider themselves socially enlightened. Openly.

The hero himself is an Aryan paragon. Tall, lean, heavily muscled, blond, and blue-eyed. He looks like Dolph Lundgren’s kid brother. He’s basically a gay hearththrob. So what we have is a perverse merger of Nazi propaganda and homoerotic art. If we can just work the green movement, unlimited abortion rights, and gun control in there, the picture will be nearly complete.

The obvious question here is why it’s okay to sever a baby’s spine with scissors and then suck his brain out, when it’s a crime to remove a piece of skin from his penis in observance of your Constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion.

In other news, an eco-nut in Australia is seriously suggesting forcing global-warming skeptics to accept arm tattoos labeling them as unbelievers. That kind of makes sense. Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel had her own Krystallnacht moment a few years back, when she suggested rescinding the accreditations of climate professionals who questioned the scientific conclusions of divinity school failure and law school dropout Al Gore. We are talking about “progressives” here, and progressives progress. First we go after your livelihood. Then we put tattoos on you. Next thing you know, your skin is a lampshade in Bill Maher’s study.

The gloves are coming off. In a few years, anti-Semitism is going to be fashionable. It’s already fashionable on the left, especially among self-hating Jews, but it will eventually spread to the rest of us as cowardly anti-Semites look around and see that it’s safe to emerge. And because Spirit-filled conservative Christians support the Jews, we will be in the same boat. And like the St. Louis, it’s not going to find a safe port.

Christians who believe in the Rapture generally think it’s going to be a magical event where we just disappear. Not me. I think we’ll be massacred along with a lot of Jews. Our heads will lie in the gutters next to each other while naked and pierced progressives hoot with satisfaction and engage in various creative and unimaginable types of celebratory fornication. Tell me I’m a kook; then go look at photos of what’s already happening in San Francisco. Naked protesters lining the streets and sodomizing each other on the sidewalks? They call that “Thursday.”

In God’s temple, animals were slaughtered and bled, and the priests read from scrolls made from their skins. In Nazi camps, Jews and other enemies of the Reich were slaughtered, and their skins were tattooed with filthy cartoons. Satan loves parody, since he’s not orignal enough to come up with anything new. We’ll be seeing these things again in the future. The birth pangs of the Antichrist are well underway.

God’s Voltage Will Find a Path Around Man’s Resistance

All sorts of stuff is going on.

For like two years, I’ve been trying to get friends and my sister to pray in tongues. Back in the Eighties, I started to feel sure that this was the key to spiritual growth, and my experience since then has confirmed it. I believe the Holy Spirit is the nervous system (the “Force”) of the Body of Christ, and without it, we will always be ineffectual and self-defeating, so I try to get people to build the Holy Spirit’s influence inside them by praying in tongues.

People I know are starting to listen. They get timers, and they make sure they pray in tongues every day. They come back to me changed. I feel like I have help now. I don’t have to be the lonely voice of tongues. If I drop dead, they’ll keep going and multiplying and growing.

It’s like The Matrix, in reverse. We’re the agents, and we’re the good guys. That little surveillance kit an agent wears, with the plug in the ear? That represents the Holy Spirit, connecting us to our guiding power. We submit. We listen. We are in agreement. We act as one. Neo? That’s the guy who thinks he’s special. He thinks he can do it without God. He believes he knows better. Basically, he’s the Antichrist.

Remember how Agent Smith touched people and turned them into clones of himself? That’s what Jesus bought us on the cross. On Pentecost, he came down and sent the Holy Spirit through the Upper Room, turning 120 people into his younger brothers and sisters and enabling them to grow to be like him. Now we can lay hands on people, quite literally the same way Agent Smith did, and we can give them this gift. This is what being “born again” really means.

People love their pride. They love to feel like they have special abilities no one else has. They love their narcissism. That’s why the image of Neo is so appealing. You put on a cool black coat and nifty black shades, and you load up with all sorts of sexy weapons, and you wade through the sheep who oppose you in ignorance. You slaughter them without remorse, because they’re part of the problem. If they were as hip as you, you wouldn’t have to shoot them, but they’re just not cool, so down they go.

That’s pretty much how Satan works. He didn’t like God’s plan. He figured he could do better. He was beautiful and smart and strong. He was persuasive. He was aggressive and self-confident. Today we would call him “empowered” and “centered.” He didn’t care about the little foolish people who weren’t very bright or very strong and who therefore had to depend on God. He was all about the special ones. The elite. He was Morpheus.

God is not like that. He isn’t a modern model of self-aggrandizing cockiness. He is humble. The Bible says, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.” God doesn’t look for cool people who have it together, so he can let them do him the favor of applying their amazing gifts in his service. He looks for the weak and the grateful, so he can build them up to fight with HIS gifts. He uses foolish things to confound the wise. His strength is made perfect–“perfect” means “complete”–in our weakness.

So now my prayer group is spreading the infection. And I know there are other carriers all over the place, doing the same thing, even if they don’t talk much about it in church.

Pastors and teachers tend to underestimate the importance of tongues. Most flat-out deny the power of tongues. Many slander the Holy Spirit, saying tongues are demonic. That’s fine. The Holy Spirit doesn’t have to speak from the pulpit. He can speak in the parking lot or the men’s room. That’s what he does in my church. He’s like electricity. He finds a path of low resistance, and he takes it.

Why didn’t God make this happen 2000 years ago? The simple answer: he did. But the church listened to Satan, as it always does. Satan told our leaders hard work was what mattered. It was WRONG to expect God to change people simply because they prayed words they did not understand. It was SELFISH. You should EARN your favor with God!

Never mind the obvious hypocrisy. You can obtain salvation, which includes eternal life in health, joy, and wealth, by uttering a few words. But if you expect God to change you just because you pray in tongues every day for years, well…that’s just too easy! Does that make sense to you? I hope not. You would have to be stupid.

God does not force the world to work properly. He gives us the tools, and then he steps back. And we fail him, over and over. Adam failed him. The entire world failed him before the flood. The Jews failed him in Egypt and in the wilderness. Christians failed him, even after he gave them easy salvation and the gift of tongues. God let these things happen. He did that because making the world work is our responsibility, not his. His kingdom is not of this world. This world is supposed to be our kingdom.

Every once in a while, God returns and gives us what amounts to a bath. He cleans us up and puts us back on the path. He gives us knowledge our ancestors should have held onto and passed on to us (“A good [man] leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children). Then he steps back again. Over the last century or so, he has been pouring the Holy Spirit into us like a French farmer force-feeding a pate goose. The Holy Spirit is back. We have another chance. And we’ll eventually blow it. Meanwhile, we can do a lot of damage to Satan’s kingdom.

This weekend, our pastor taught about the prayer of victory. I was afraid he was going to pass on something Steve Munsey came up with. I was afraid we would hear that we were supposed to give a huge monetary offering in exchange for a super Pentecost dose of the Holy Spirit. That didn’t happen. Instead, at the altar call, he said he wanted people to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit…en masse! It was wonderful. It was beautiful. This is exactly what my little group prays for! This is what changes lives. God armed a bunch of new recruits. We don’t have to feel so outnumbered now. I hope we see more and more of this. I don’t want to see my pastor do things that aren’t going to bring him a fit reward for a lifetime of service.

We have a conference coming up, on South Beach. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. Sometimes we do things that make me very uncomfortable, in order to attract kids. But we got this big Holy Ghost blast this weekend, and the conference is taking place on Pentecost. Now I’m a little excited. Maybe God is in this after all.

I feel like there is more hope for my church than I realized.

I’ve learned some discouraging things since I’ve been there. We have a pattern of taking qualified people out of positions of power and putting them to work as beasts of burden. I’m a cook, a writer, a lawyer, and a physicist, but I can’t cook, write, or practice law for the church. I wander around doing security jobs. We have one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen, but his service consists mostly of cooking in the cafe and playing for kids. We have a guy who went to college on a vocal scholarship, and he was removed from the worship team and required to teach small children. I could go on and on. We put less-qualified people in charge, and we waste the talented people God sent us. It’s like the Body of Christ is walking on its hands, eating through its ears, writing with its feet, and so on. It’s so bad, I quit giving things to the church, because I know they’ll be wasted. I give to other organizations that do a better job. But now I have hope that the Holy Spirit will be allowed to put things back in order. This is the power that puts flesh on the “dry bones” and puts them back together in an organized body.

We listen to Australian music in my church. This stuff is really…it’s not good. The musicians are not overjoyed about it. If you gave me all of it in CD form, it would be in the trash in ten minutes, because there is no way I’d ever listen to it. Think of every bad thing the word “white” means when you apply it to music, and that’s Australian worship music. And the lyrics are, well, I’m not going to use the word that came to mind, but they’re…if I wrote lyrics like this, I would seriously wonder if I had any business writing lyrics at all.

Meanwhile, the church is about 80% black. It’s an American church. America has the best popular music in the entire world. We created gospel. We created the blues. We created jazz. We invented soul. Isn’t this obvious? Do I even have to mention Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta Tharpe, Ray Charles, the Stanley Brothers, Kari Jobe…even Hank Williams wrote church music. Importing music from Australia is like importing chefs from England or comedians from Germany. It’s almost an insult to American culture. Would you export watches to Switzerland?

We had a guy come in and sing a couple of bluesy numbers a while back, and people went nuts. It was like they were starving.

We have unbelievable musicians. They’re dying to write and perform real music. But they don’t get the chance. I’m encouraging them to come to my house to work on their own stuff. My church won’t accept the blessing, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do what they were born to do. I told one of them they should get together and start playing at other churches. Do what God does. If one person rejects a blessing, give it to someone else. You can’t ruin your life by wasting time doing things God did not create you to do. Consider Psalm 37, verse 4. Your natural gifts and desires are not what make you a good Christian, but God does provide them for a reason, and they are not to be ignored.

I quit giving extra money to my church. I found other organizations that made better use of what I had to offer. I quit working in the church kitchen. Now I’m building amplifiers, and I hope to be able to help Christian musicians get good equipment. I was rejected as a writer, which is really beyond belief, considering what I can do and how limited the church’s other writing resources are. We have no other writers of any consequence. Now I either write here, or I do something more productive with my time. If you are bearing God’s fruit in your life, YOU HAVE TO DROP IT SOMEWHERE. You can’t wait around while the people you want to bless give you the straightarm and treat you like a burglar. I just can’t do anything for this church except pray and help with security. So be it. Until they come around, I’ll do for someone else.

Honest to God, I feel like renting a warehouse for these kids. I want to say, “Just go in there and PLAY, and don’t come out until you have ten good songs, and if anyone who even looks Australian shows up, bar the door.”

This has to be how God feels. He has so much good stuff waiting for us, but we choose our own hog wallows. We die in the desert instead of crossing over into the Promised Land. I remember how sad Jesus was when he talked about the things he wanted to do for Jerusalem.

If the revival continues, we should be able to get things in order. If not, I will continue to bless and be blessed, and the good things that come through me will go somewhere else. A current has to find ground. It will not be stopped. I am not going to let human beings thwart God himself. Jesus had to go to the Gentiles in order to bless people; I’m no better than he is.

The amp-building goes well. My only problem is that I’m learning so fast, I can’t finish my latest amp. Every time I think I’m ready to put it together, I learn something that makes me want to change it. But I may be able to get started soldering this afternoon.

I am going to have to go back over some mathematical foundations. Monkey-see, monkey-do is not going to make me an amp expert. I need to know how to calculate impedances and so on. I don’t think any of the math will be challenging at all, but the material will be fairly dry, so it will take effort to swallow it.

Life is beautiful. I hope I can help other people get on the same train. It looks like God is giving me success. In the meantime, I do not intend to let God’s work in my own life go to waste, regardless of who gets in the way. I am too old to put up with nonsense.

My Loss is Heaven’s “Gain”

I guess I should post an update on my amplifier.

I decided to make a Fender Bassman clone. I got all the parts except for the chassis. A new Chinese chassis which doesn’t look too good runs something like $50 plus shipping, and I thought that was stupid. If I’m going to shell out that kind of cash for a piece of bent metal, the quality should be good.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

Here are the pieces of surplus structural aluminum I bought. Two are 4″ square tubing with 1/8″ walls. The third–this is really cool–is 6″ Aluminum Association channel. “Aluminum Association” means the walls are not tapered. The inner surfaces are parallel to the outer surfaces. This makes it easier to mount stuff in the channel.

The tubing is thin and easy to work with. The channel is very thick, and it poses a lot of problems.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

I’ll put that on my tombstone.

I am using the channel, with the long side up. The transformers and choke will be mounted above it. Actually, the power transformer is sunk into it, because that’s how you mount them. But most of it is up top.

Here is the tube layout I’m considering. The rectifier is hidden away from the other tubes, and the 12AY7 (the most sensitive preamp tube) is way down there by itself, far from the noise. I hope. Someone pointed out that using a triangular layout may make it difficult to wire the circuit board, but it’s so cute, I think I’m willing to put up with that.

The eyelet board, which I have not made, will be under it. The knobs and stuff will go through the front wall. The whole thing will sit in a wooden cabinet which I have not built yet.

This thing is monstrously rigid. If I mount it in 3/4″ plywood, it will be like a Sherman tank with input jacks. It weighs around 6.5 pounds, contrasted with roughly 3.5 for the tubing.

I don’t care about the weight. This is a head, not a combo. It won’t have a ton of speaker attached to it. If it weighs 15 pounds instead of 12, who cares?

I was able to trim it to an accurate size using the table saw. You have to love that.

I have to figure out how to polish the aluminum on the front and top. I considered using a fly cutter on the top, but my vise is like 6″ wide, and this thing is 20″ long. I don’t know if the vise will hold it firmly enough for fly-cutting. I may end up using an orbital sander.

You may be asking yourself (if you’re still here) why I’m making a head. Simple. I want to make one amp every month. If I put speakers in all of them, it will cost $900,000 a year, and they won’t be all that portable. If I use a couple of interchangeable cabinets, I’ll save a lot of cash and work, and I’ll be able to take my heads around and play them through my 1 x 12 cabinet.

By the way, here it is, all finished. Or at least it WILL be here, as soon as my camera’s battery charges. I might add a few more touches, but this is basically it. I chose not to cover the cheesy sign paint. I thought that added an extra layer of testosterone or something. The edges are all radiused, and it has big rubber feet. It’s very stiff. You can sit on it all day. By using variable-output power transformers, I’ll be making heads that can be played through this high impedance with no problems. This sure beats carrying a 4 x 10 combo every time I want to use the amp.

The channel is causing new problems every day. Last night I realized I may have problems with the potentiometers, because the metal is so thick. The shafts have to go through it. I may have to order new pots. The other answer is to mill down the front face. I would have to do this from inside the channel in order to avoid it looking like an abortion. Another option: Forstner bits and an angled drill, to make small cavities for the pots to sit in. And of course, I have no angled drill. Yet.

I think I can mill the front down using a straight end mill and holding the channel on its back in my vise. I only need about 1.5″ of thin area. It might work. Depends on how much the aluminum likes being milled that way. It may flex around and drive me crazy.

I’m going to need legend plates. I don’t want to make a nice amp and then use a P-Touch for the labels. I need to find a local place that makes the plates cheap. Prices on the web are completely mental.

I got some neat videos to help me along. A guy named Gerald Weber has a video on understanding tube amps, and he also has one on servicing and maintaining them. I’m still burrowing through the first one. It’s helping me understand what I’m working on. Some of the things he says about electronics are a little dubious, but maybe that means he learned by doing instead of learning by watching someone scrawl on a chalkboard.

In case you doubt his wisdom, here is a video that proves he’s a real pro:

My buddy from church initially wanted me to help him with a Super Reverb clone, but now he’s talking about a Dumble Steel String Singer. Unfortunately, Mr. Dumble pours epoxy into his amps to hide the circuitry and prevent people from determining exactly how much unicorn poop he puts in there, so there aren’t a whole lot of schematics out there.

He has also been talking about building a Bassman AND a Super Reverb and using them together, like this Youtube guy. I can’t argue. They sound great.

I’m also fantasizing about building a Herzog. This is the effect used in the original “American Woman.” Turns a guitar into an organ. Pedals make this sound now, but I don’t know whether they do it well. In case you care, it turns out a Herzog is just a Fender Champ rigged up so it won’t blow up your main amp when you use it as an effect.

I can’t believe I’m getting to do all this stuff. Finally the torture I inflicted on myself by getting a physics degree is paying off. Sort of. Anyway, Psalms 37:4.

The guitar playing is going well, but the amps are taking time away from it. That’s why I want to get this thing DONE. I love my cheap Epiphone Riviera P93 more every day; I still can’t believe it turned out to be so great. On the day when I bought it, I seriously felt as though the Holy Spirit told me to go to Guitar Center and pick it up, so I made a left turn and did it. When I bought it, it had shortcomings. The pickups were pretty lame, and the tone capacitor was not right. Now it’s a monster. Great tone and super-low buzz-free action. And the size and weight make it stable for fast picking.

I play mostly through my homemade Firefly amp now. The sound level is perfect. I adjusted the tone using a new capacitor, and it worked out very well. I still have oscillation when I use the gain circuit. I have to fix that.

I picked up a Blues Driver. Very nice pedal. I gravitate toward the Blues Driver, Plimsoul, and Fat Sandwich more than my other two pedals.

That’s how things stand at the moment. Updates will be posted when I feel like it.

Never Hire These Characters

Let me give you some time-honored advice which is accepted by professional pest control technicians all over the US: when you have a honeybee infestation, always hire an expert to get rid of it.

Now let me give you INTELLIGENT advice: when you have a honeybee infestation, NEVER hire ANYONE to get rid of it. Do it yourself.

The people who advise you to hire “experts” are almost always people who get paid to remove bees. They never put forth a good reason. Bees–even demonic Africanized bees–can’t hurt you, as long as you wear the right stuff. It’s not like you’re jumping into a tank of hungry sharks, people. They’re like big ants with wings. Do not let them intimidate you. If it lives, I can kill it. Trust me on that.

I had bees in a soffit. Some bee guys came out. They pass out promotional items that say “guaranteed” on them. They tore out the soffit and got rid of the bees. I asked about “bee proofing.” They rejected the idea.

They charged $900 and left a giant hole someone else had to be paid to fix.

Think what a great racket this is. You go to someone’s house, tear it to pieces, and leave. Then you charge almost a grand. This is brilliant. I wish I had thought of it. Seriously, if you want to make money quickly and easily, doing something any monkey with an axe could do, consider bee removal.

Anyway, I fell for it. Now the bees are back. I called the bee people. They deny they said bee-proofing wasn’t necessary. They said two years without bees was “pretty good.” So evidently, you’re supposed to pay around $500 per year to be free of bees.

The “guarantee” on the promotional stuff? Oh…that means they guarantee they’ll get rid of the bees. They don’t guarantee they won’t come back. Kind of a stupid guarantee, since they wouldn’t have gotten paid if they hadn’t gotten rid of the bees. That’s MY guarantee. I guarantee myself I won’t pay you for failing. So far, I have been really good about honoring this guarantee.

I hung up on them. I guess I’m still not a perfect Christian.

Here’s what I’m going to do. First I’ll put Sevin dust and boric acid solution out for the bees. This will get rid of them over time. Then I’m going to get a bee veil, for about $20. I’m going to rent an inspection camera on a long shaft, suit up, drill a few holes, and find the hive. Then I’ll cut a small hole and scrape the hive out. Then I’ll repair the hole and pump the whole thing full of foam. Total cost? Probably under $75.

I wish I had a hive to put them in. They are obviously extremely tough, and I know they produce, because I saw the honey that came out last time.

Anyway, never pay a bee removal guy. It’s like paying a monkey to destroy your house.

And whatever you do, avoid sites that say things like “BEE REMOVAL HOW TO REMOVE BEES BEE NESTS BEEHIVES BEE EXTERMINATION BEE CONTROL BEE EXPERTS BEE REMOVAL SPECIALIST.”

Zechariah 4:6

First off, Heather’s mom still needs prayer. Her kidney function is improving, but she will need dialysis anyway. Apparently she has edema, and they believe dialysis will get rid of it:

Mom’s doctor and I have discussed dialysis since her kidney function numbers aren’t getting any better(they are a lot better but still not where they need to be). This is mom’s primary physician so he knows the score as to all of her health issues. He really feels like giving her dialysis will be the best chance to help her body get rid of this edema and recover. So at three pm today they will be surgically implanting a dialysis catheter.
Please pray that this is successful and she’s able to recover.
God Bless,
Heather Page

That being said, here is some Holy Ghost weirdness.

Years ago, although I had failed algebra in high school, I decided to get a physics degree. I was over 30, and I had gone back to college so I could find something productive to do with my life. Through a series of strange twists, I found myself studying physics. I learned algebra and calculus at the same time, I got my degree, and I went to grad school at one of the nation’s finest departments. Then I got burned out, quit, and went to law school. I was glad I had learned about math and physics, but I felt that I had failed.

A couple of years back, I started going to church. A guitarist introduced himself to me, and we started talking. I took up the guitar again. I made cheesecakes for the church’s cafe. Another guitarist ate the cheesecake and became one of my fans. We got to know each other, and he started helping me with the guitar. He started asking me if I could build tube guitar amps.

It sounded pretty crazy. But I took two semesters of electronics courses while I was studying physics. And in my garage, I had–this sounds like something I’m making up–a powered breadboard, a Weller soldering station, woodworking tools for cabinets, tons of components, a lab power supply, and a beautiful old Hitachi oscilloscope I bought on Ebay. Plus machine tools, a drill press, a welder, and a plasma cutter. Whatever has to be done, I can do. I felt like I was going nuts when I bought this stuff, and suddenly it was turning out to be just what I needed.

Of course, I started building amps. I built an amp with less than two watts of output. I thought it was too loud. I built an amp with a much lower output. Both amps worked well. All this time, the guy who liked the cheesecake was bugging me about building a Fender Super Reverb clone for him to gig with. I decided to look at bigger circuits, as preparation.

I decided a Deluxe Reverb was the way to go. Then I listened to a Hot Rod Deluxe, and I decided it was even better. I asked questions on an Internet forum, and someone told me that what I really wanted was a Fender Bassman 5f6a. I looked it up. Sure enough, they sound fantastic. Exactly the sound I like. I decided to build one.

Over the last few days I’ve been choosing parts. Yesterday I ordered them. The amp should be complete in about ten days.

This morning I went to breakfast with my dad. At the cash register, I felt something in my pocket. I took it out. It was an audio tube. I had forgotten it was in there. For some reason, it made me think of a friend of mine; an audiophile I’ve been trying to get to go to church. I realized I now had the ability to build tube amps for stereos. I thought it would be funny to send him a photo of the tube and let him know what I was up to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone with me. But I texted him when I got home. Now he’s all excited. He wants to see the Bassman clone when I finish it.

When I got done texting him, a friend of mine called me. His name is Leo. This is one of my armorbearer friends from church. He works with the VA. You won’t believe what he told me, but here goes.

They help people learn new skills, both as hobbies and for vocational purposes. He knows a guy who just received…a tube amp kit. This guy is not highly skilled, and he’s freaking out at the complexity. I told Leo I’d be happy to help. I’d need a schematic, et cetera et cetera. Leo said the amp was a clone of a Marshall JTM 45, and he sent me a link to the assembly manual.

How many amp models has Fender produced? Two hundred, maybe? What about Marshall? Same story. Why does that matter? Here’s why: the JTM 45 is a Fender Bassman 5f6a with a Marshall label. It’s a direct copy. So I’m building a Bassman for myself, and then a week or two later, I’ll be building the same circuit for someone else. And the online manual Leo provided will be a big help to me, not just with the JTM 45, but also with the Bassman.

So this is a testimony.

Where does this all come from? What is the source of all these “coincidences”? They come from praying in tongues. I recently learned that one of the benefits of praying in tongues for long periods is that you prophesy over your own life. You speak blessings into existence. You declare how God will tie up the loose ends and put you on rails headed for success. A guy named Glenn Arekion teaches about this; you can find audio at Sid Roth’s site.

The vast majority of Christians have lives that only work a little better than ungodly lives. They pray for things they don’t get. They divorce. They can’t quit smoking. They can’t lose weight. Their enemies beat them. They don’t have peace or joy, to any great extent. Why is this? It’s because they’re not plugged in. They’re like appliances with the cords cut off. Prayer in tongues makes the difference. It’s the power supply.

You need to quit saying it can’t be that easy. If you’re a Christian, you already accept easy success. At some point in the past, someone told you that you could get eternal life in a mansion in heaven, just by saying and believing one sentence. If you can believe that, why can’t you believe praying in tongues will give you the power and the character you need to live a victorious life here on earth? Do you understand how ridiculous that is? Effort required to receive eternity in paradise: speaking one sentence. Effort required to be blessed for the few years you have here on earth: copious daily prayer in tongues. Which is easier? Isn’t it obvious? If you can believe you received eternal salvation in ten seconds, surely you can believe God will give you a few decades of help in exchange for hours of prayer.

This works. I have zero interest in your scholarly arguments and your time-honored doctrine. I have seen this working, over and over. It works, it works, it works. You can argue with someone who reads about God, or who studied God in a university. You can’t argue with a witness.

God is sending people to me, to receive this message. It’s happening in my weekly prayer group. People notice that there is something different about me, and about the things I say, and they are trying to get ahold of it. Some of them took my advice and didn’t even tell me. I have five people now, using timers to make sure they spend time praying in tongues every day. They are changing. I see it. They don’t need me any more. They’re going to go on whether or not I continue.

This is why the gospel was called “good news.” It’s not just about salvation. The Jews had salvation before Christianity existed. What they didn’t have was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit rested ON some of them, but he did not become part of them, the way he does now. This is why Jesus said he who was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John the Baptist, who was greatest among men “born of women.” Today, you can be born of the Spirit. It’s not the same thing. It’s what “born again” really means.

Watch this space. Things are breaking loose.

1 = Loony; 3 = Cult

The weekly prayer meetings at my church are impressing me a lot more than the sermons these days. The sermons are generally good, but they are aimed at a fairly weak group of Christians, many of whom will pack up and go home if they don’t hear what they want to hear. The prayer meetings tend to attract people who really want to advance in their relationships with God.

Even the prayer meetings suffer from a Gideon effect. If someone who is highly placed in the church shows up, attendance is higher than it is the rest of the time. On the weekends when a less-prominent person leads the meeting, attendance falls steeply. Someone let me know that this happens because people show up to score political points. I didn’t realize it because I don’t think in terms of butt-kissing. By the time I realize there is a butt-kissing opportunity, the butt has usually left the building with its entourage.

I call it the Gideon effect because it pares the group down to a small but effective group of people, the way God pared Gideon’s army down. I don’t know if the purpose is the same; God sent most of Gideon’s soldiers home because he wanted everyone to know that Gideon and his men were not numerous enough to win without divine help. I don’t think that’s what God is doing with my group. Still, it works out the same. Nine people one week, three the next.

This week we ended up with the only three people in the whole church (that I know of) who pay any attention to me when I say prayer in tongues is extremely powerful and that it is the most important activity in a Christian’s life. I’m one of those people, so you can see how my ministry is growing. Next year there might be five of us! Pardon my foolish pride. I dream big.

One of these guys is an unemployed construction worker who boxes professionally. He’s a wonderful guy, but he does not get a lot of respect at church. He’s eccentric, and he gets excited easily, even by charismatic standards. Quite frankly, some people think he’s nuts. They are not completely without justification, but I think his extraordinary zeal, which is an asset, makes weaker Christians think he’s a little off. It’s funny, we tell each other to BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE, but when we run into a guy who takes us seriously, we tell each other, “Keep an eye on that nut.”

I’ve talked to him a lot, and my take is that he is one hundred percent sold out to God. I think he’s the real thing. And it’s wrong to sell him short. He’s not a highly educated person, but sometimes he’ll show up at just the right time and tell you exactly what you need to hear. That quality comes from God. People do not appreciate him. I get a lot more good out of him than I do from a lot of people I know who are successful and stable.

In our prayer meetings, he has caused a certain amount of disruption. Sometimes he would come in and talk more than he should. He has a lot of problems, and earlier this year, he was very discouraged. He would come in and tell us how hard Christianity is, and how you have to struggle and fight. I kept trying to get him to try tongues, to build himself up and change his outlook and his character, and to get God’s power moving in his life.

A few weeks back, he came to the meeting in a bad state, and we tried to help him, and at the end, I told him not to bother me any more unless he had been praying in tongues. At the next meeting, I gave him a kitchen timer I didn’t like. I bought it a long time ago, for things like prayer, music practice, and cooking, and it was aggravating to use. One day it occurred to me that it would work very well for my friend, and I would be rid of it, so I turned it over to him and told him to do what I did: set it to three minutes and pray in tongues. Every day. I told him his life would change.

After that, when I saw him at church, he would tell me it was working. He felt peace. Things were getting better. He was increasing the prayer time.

Yesterday, he got up and spoke at the meeting, and it was one of the weirdest things I had ever seen. We used to teach him. Yesterday, he taught us. We used to try to get him to shut up. Now I wanted to listen. He had been getting revelation from the Holy Spirit. He spoke so wisely, it was almost creepy. And he looked different! You would have to know him to understand. There is a strange radiance and look of well-being you get from praying in tongues a lot. They say my great grandmother’s face used to shine from it. I’ve seen it in the mirror. It makes you look younger.

I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if God had made my friend smarter. And I suppose that’s possible. I’ve always felt that in the Bible, the word “wisdom” usually does not refer to intelligence. But sometimes it does. And the word of wisdom is one of the gifts you get from prayer in tongues. James said God would give us wisdom if we asked for it. Maybe God makes people brighter, not just better informed.

It gets even stranger. I didn’t realize how much impact I had had on the third member of the party, my friend Alonzo. He said he had been hitting the tongues hard, too. This explains all the wise things he has been coming up with. He has been freaking me out for quite some time now.

The three of us started talking about carnality in our church. There are things holding the church back. It amazed me to see how we agreed. In the past, I would sit at prayer meetings and do my best to get a few words in on behalf of the Holy Spirit, while other people talked about hard work and self-improvement, which are relatively worthless things compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, I didn’t really need to talk at all! Both of my friends were saying things I already knew. And we kept confirming each other. We were in “one accord”! Sound familiar?

The Holy Spirit is the nervous system of the body of Christ. I say that all the time. Jesus is the brain. When we are not in harmony with each other, it’s because we’re not praying in tongues and increasing the Holy Spirit’s power in us. Yesterday I got a taste of what it was like to be part of a body in which the nervous system worked properly.

The Holy Spirit is what makes life work. Haven’t you noticed that human effort doesn’t work? Diets don’t work. Exercise plans don’t work. New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Self-help books don’t work. Therapy doesn’t work. Marriage counseling doesn’t work. Christian teaching that doesn’t involve using the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t work. MOST Christian teaching doesn’t work (because it’s stuff we made up). God designed us to be plugged into his power outlet. Without it, your efforts have about as much impact as an air ratchet that isn’t hooked up to a compressor.

I know people will retort that the things I criticized DO work. Sure, they work. SOMETIMES. With LIMITATIONS. With COSTS. TEMPORARILY. The general rule is that the things we do to change our lingering problems don’t get us very far in the long run. The Holy Spirit works, works, WORKS. No hidden costs. No strings attached. No unforeseen consequences, except for good ones.

I get so tired of soulish “teachers” telling me and my friends how to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Have you ever thought about that expression? It’s intended to be witty; it’s not supposed to be taken seriously. The whole point of the expression is to show us that we can’t lift ourselves up without help. Try pulling your bootstraps and see what happens. It’s a joke, yet people say “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” in complete seriousness. God never intended us to pull ourselves up. He intended us to allow him to pull us up.

If one more preacher tries to sell me a stupid book, DVD, or seminar full of brilliant self-help tips that don’t involve God’s power, I think I may do something that will give me a great chance to start a prison ministry. From inside.

What if Jesus had stood around handing out pamphlets entitled “How to Think Your Way Out of Paralysis and Blindness”? He would have died rich (from running seminars), nobody anywhere would have been healed, and we’d all be going to hell. Yet we pay good money to preachers who tell us that positive thinking and hard work will get us where we want to be. Blind guides. They never got there themselves, but they make money selling other people maps!

I’m not saying that everyone who prays in tongues will have a perfect life. You can always overcome the Holy Spirit’s guidance if you want to. You can remain unimproved. Perry Stone knew a Klansman who prayed in tongues. But it seems pretty clear that if you DON’T pray in tongues, you are not going to develop the way you should.

We’re talking about forming our own prayer group now, so we can focus more on the Holy Spirit.

I have the feeling that I should buy 5 timers and put out a challenge to the people I know: take a timer and pray in the Spirit every day for three minutes, and get back to me after one week. Give me and the rest of us your testimony. I think I’m going to get some timers this week.

Obviously, you don’t need a timer, but it’s a helpful tool.

I think there are certain people who can be reached, and I should be content with them. If that is correct, I would be in the same boat as people like Jesus and Moses, who never succeeded in getting the whole flock to go through the gate.

Fascinating stuff. It amazes me more and more all the time.

Geez, I wanted to write about the guitar. I guess I can cram it in at the end.

Today I took my homemade amp to church and let my young musician friends check it out. What a blast. We have some extraordinary talents in my church, and I am trying to help them in any way I can. I don’t want to see them end up working in grocery stores. My interests in music and electronics are really helping.

My young friend Zach is an incredible blues guitarist and singer. He fired my amp up on the church stage and tried it out, and it sounded wonderful. We’re going to build a Super Reverb clone. The church’s rhythm guitarist is named Joe; he’s also a very talented singer. I tried to get him to try it out, but it can be hard to get a rhythm guitarist to play after a soloist! He says he wants to build an amp, too. Another guy is rebuilding a Strat, so we may end up collaborating.

Yesterday I finished my second amp, a “Powerman.” It doesn’t work yet. I put it together in a blur of flying tools and wires and components. I really amazed myself. And of course, I did something wrong, and now I have to find it.

The guitar is going extremely well. I’m learning to slow the music down in my head and really get my heart behind my fingers. That brings smoothness and speed.

I’ve been trying to play the intro to “I Know a Little” as well as Steve Gaines played it. Actually, that’s wrong. I’ve been trying to play it better than he did. I didn’t realize it until today. I listened to him playing, and I realized that the sound I have in my head–the sound I’m aiming for–is better than what he achieved in the studio. There are some parts he doesn’t play perfectly. That’s amazing, given that I’m so close to conquering them. He had endless takes in a studio, and presumably, he used the best one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to beat it.

I’ve got a modified pick design that gives me unbelievable speed, control, and tone. I’m getting my amps to do what I want. The Chinese Epiphone has an action that beats any other guitar I’ve tried, and the new pickups and heavy strings make it sound fantastic. I’m going to win. It’s not that far off.

I don’t know where I’m going, but someone else does, and he speaks it through me every day. All of this stuff is going to turn out to be worthwhile and rewarding. You can’t get that from Anthony Robbins in sheep’s clothing. You can’t get that from Tom Cruise.

That’s all I got for now. I hope it will be useful to someone.

I am an Electronics Expert & Tool Ninja

Today I installed the new Shark Guard on my table saw, fired it up, cut a chunk out of some grade XX phenolic sheet, drilled a few holes in a Hammond aluminum chassis, grabbed some hex standoffs and screws, and made…THIS:

That’s going to be a 6021-powered guitar amp. A 6021 is a subminiature tube about an inch and a quarter long.

The Shark Guard is wonderful. It even has a dust port on it, so I can attach a shop vac.

I cut that panel out, taped it to the chassis, and drilled the mounting holes through both items. The holes are perfectly round; I guess the board held the bit nice and steady. So far, it’s beautiful.

I love my tools so much. This was a breeze!

Ps. 37:4; Zech 4:10

I Need to Get Up and Do Something

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I felt pretty bad for him until we both met a guy who was just a head. Then all three of us met a guy who was just an eyeball. We decided to go to the mall and buy him a nice monocle.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. It worked out okay, though, because chicks dig guys who cry.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. He called me a pansy and tried to punch me for crying. But I outran him pretty easily.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I’m glad I wasn’t crying about not having a hat.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. Suddenly I felt new gratitude for my vast collection of expensive boots.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I stopped crying and asked if I could have his shoes. Hey, he wasn’t using them.

Help Appreciated

My family on my mother’s side grew tons and tons of cigarette tobacco. My mother’s sister died from lung cancer in 1994. My grandfather died a month later, and his cardiologist suspected the stress of his daughter’s death was one of the causes. My uncle (who smoked and chewed) died of stomach cancer in 1995. My mother died from lung cancer in 1997. My sister was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer last year, but it appears God has healed her.

Yesterday one of my two remaining aunts told my father there were two spots on her x-rays. She smoked for forty years or so. She quit a few years back, but a lot of damage was already done. Please pray that she will be healed, and that God will help her draw closer to him, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and serve him better. Pray that he will glorify himself in healing her. Thanks.

Now this, from Heather:

Please keep praying for my mom, Penny. Since she hasn’t been able to speak, her nephrologist thinks she may have had a mild stroke. However the cat scan did not show this. She was alert tonight and knew me, but ignored the doctor when he was talking to her. Her kidney numbers are getting better, so I know that your prayers are working. Please ask the Lord to restore her ability to speak. Thank you & God Bless!

Finally Grounded

I had another remarkable day.

I’m trying to build a “Powerman” amp. Some tinkerer on the web came up with this. He took the case from an old PC power supply, and he crammed a bunch of amp parts into it, hence the name. I listened to some sound samples online, and I thought they were tremendous. Clear, hot, and sort of shimmery. Just what I want.

Today while I waited for the parts to arrive, I tried to get going on a PCB, or printed circuit board. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a slab of plastic coated with copper. Instead of using wires to connect things like resistors and tubes, you cut away the copper on the board until you have separate electrical paths separated by plastic, and they become the “wiring.” You solder your components to the board in the appropriate places, and you have a circuit that works.

The “printed” part comes from the fact that you can literally print these things. You create some sort of template and print it onto the board, and then you apply a solution that eats copper. The printed stuff protects the copper you want to keep. What’s left is the pattern that becomes your circuit. I don’t know if they do it much differently in factories, but this is the basic idea. I am too lazy to look up industrial PCB manufacturing.

When you do this at home, you have to create a black and white pattern and print it on photo paper. Then you use an iron to melt the toner (I guess) onto the copper plate. You remove the paper, and you’re ready to add the solution (“etchant”). You can also use a battery and a salt solution and remove the copper through electrolysis.

Feel free to correct the details, because there is no way I’m going to do it.

Here’s the hard part: making the diagram. I guess if you really wanted to, you could draw it on a piece of paper, scan it, and print that. But that’s no fun, plus it would be ugly, and it would be tedious. So what do you do? You use circuit design software, and then you use special software that turns your circuits into PCB images.

I spent like 4 hours today trying to understand a free program called PCB Artist. I never did get anywhere with it. I can understand calculus. I can understand physics. Sometimes I almost think I can understand my car insurance policy. But software written for engineers? It tends to be pretty hideous. Engineers have their own culture, so when they come up with new stuff, they kind of assume you already have all the old stuff memorized, because all you do is sit in your room smoking dope and doing nerd stuff. And sometimes they get angry when they have to accommodate normal people who know what the sun looks like. There are probably still engineers who think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will burn in hell for giving up on command-prompt computing.

PCB Artist has a help file. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man. Engineers…WRITING. Never a good thing. It has flow charts where it ought to have paragraphs. Even Dilbert would vomit.

So I gave up. But then I made an amazing discovery. I already had free versions of two expensive programs: Multisim and Ultiboard. Don’t ask me how I got free versions. I downloaded them a long time ago. I don’t think they support them now. But they work fine. On top of that, everything is pretty intuitive.

I managed to create my own schematic symbol for the 6021 twin triode vacuum tube. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest on roller skates. I haven’t figured out how to get it totally integrated into the software, but I don’t really have to do that. The tubes are going to fit into op amp sockets, so as long as I can come up with a circuit with two sockets in it, I’m fine. The software already knows about sockets.

Very cool.

A bunch of the parts arrived. I have a Hammond aluminum chassis, lots of resistors, numerous capacitors, et cetera. I felt like dumping them in a pile and letting them pour through my fingers. I love this stuff.

Over the weekend, I located an amazing book on vacuum tubes. It was written in 1952, for the military. The great thing about that is that the military EXPECTS you to be stupid. It’s not like university math and science texts, which always have incomprehensible, agony-inducing passages preceded by the word “obviously.” Now I know how vacuum tubes work! Fantastic! I should be done with the book next week. I looked at an awful book on tube guitar amps, and it was as useless as a Honey-Baked Ham store in Pakistan. Totally worthless. But the military book was a breeze. Why aren’t there more books like that?

I’m actually going to be able to do this. Not just this circuit, but circuits in general. Simple ones. And it’s coming together just as the guitar is starting to work. It is now easy for me to do things that were impossible a month ago. My hands are doing things which, I’m pretty sure, aren’t even physically possible. I’ll be brave and say I expect to be able to play “I Know a Little” very well, at 90% speed, without fear of screwing up, in a month.

The nuttiest things are happening. When you pick a guitar, you have to be accurate to within a couple of millimeters on every stroke. The natural impulse is to crab up your hand and move the pick with cramped movements of your fingers. I’m swinging my hand from the elbow, not looking where I’m going, and I’m whacking the strings I need to hit, reliably and smoothly. It’s like sinking a basketball over and over from 50 feet. When you play this way, you can play much faster and more rhythmically than you can by moving the pick with your fingers. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. A person with no fingers at all should be able to flatpick as well as anyone, as long as he can find a way to hang onto the pick.

As I get more accurate, I spend less energy on mechanics, and I have more brain capacity to apply to making the music sound good. I can listen to it and enjoy it. And my left hand feels like it’s swimming in the fretboard. Sometimes I feel like I’m singing with my hands.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a month or two back, I got the definite impression that my life was going to start working much better toward the end of April. I saw it as a pivotal week. I think from now on I’m going to succeed in areas where I used to fail.

This morning, I started feeling that God was blessing me. I felt that he was putting things in motion for me; bringing me wonderful things. It’s hard to explain, but I couldn’t help bending my knees at one point, as if someone were showering me with heavy gifts. I thought I’d blog it. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be just another crazy, and no one will care. If it does, I will have given God his glory, and unlike most people, I will have done it in advance.

God works. And the ideas I’ve had about him are all panning out. Especially tongues. I’ve only managed to get two people at church on board with it. One of them is using a timer to pray in tongues every day, as I suggested.

I’m going to go on ahead. I’m going to be like Joshua and Caleb. I don’t know how to bring people along with me; I wish I did. Jesus himself had limited success at that. But I have learned that when you get ahold of something good, and you decide to embark on a course of action that will dramatically improve your life, nearly everyone you know will find an excuse to stay behind and rot. The slavery they know looks better than the milk and honey they’ve been promised.

Maybe this is why a good marriage is such a treasure. Maybe the best thing that can happen to a man is to find a woman he doesn’t have to outgrow and leave behind.

I know there are disappointments in this way of life, but they are always disappointments in human beings, not God. I don’t care about those things. Human beings were created to be disappointing. We are told most of them go to hell. If they manage to achieve salvation, it’s a big deal. Asking for any improvement beyond that is wildly optimistic. Most Christians remain babies until they die, just like unsaved people.

I pray sincerely for people to change, and I go on with my progress. There is hope for anyone who will submit. I don’t know who will change and who will not. I hope some of the folks who disappoint me will come around.

If I manage to make a PCB amp, I’ll put up photos. This will be so cool, I may not be able to stand it.

Give me Your Tithes, You Fat Moron

I had an interesting experience last night.

A guy came to our church and preached. He has his own church in another state. He sang some bluesy tunes and got a great response, which makes me wonder why we never have music like that. But the really interesting thing was the sermon.

He spent the majority of the time badmouthing the people at his church, even making fun of them for having big behinds (though he probably weighs 300 pounds). Our congregation went nuts. I don’t think they were thinking clearly. He was funny, and we didn’t show up to worry about his church’s problems, so it’s understandable that people responded to him favorably. But think about it: this man traveled over a thousand miles to go to another church and insult the people who pay his bills! That’s incredible.

He wasn’t reaming out his entire flock. He singled out people who criticized or left the church. Still, they feed his kids, and look at the gratitude he shows them.

He said a lady came up to him and said, “You know what’s wrong with this church?” And he supposedly replied, “You’re IN it.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s not a great story for a pastor to tell? Jesus was generally critical of people in authority but kind to his followers. Did he have it all wrong?

The preacher talked about the Good Samaritan, and he completely misunderstood the story. Here’s how it works. A traveler is robbed and beaten on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A priest and a Levite pass by, on the way to Jerusalem. A Samaritan stops and helps him. You know about this. The significance of this is that people often do evil by neglecting human need while pretending to serve God.

The Levite and the priest could not touch dead bodies without becoming ritually unclean. They were on their way to Jerusalem, which was the location of the Temple. They wanted to please God, and they knew that if they became impure, it would interfere with their work at the Temple. Therefore they chose to avoid touching a man who, for all they knew, was dead. That’s what Perry Stone says, anyhow.

The Samaritan did not worship at Jerusalem; that’s one of the things the Jews hated about Samaritans. He was free to help. And by showing his love for his fellow man, he pleased God more than the others.

That’s not what I heard yesterday. I’m not totally sure what the lesson about the Samaritan’s good deed was, but we were told that the dying man got beaten up because he left Jerusalem. And we were told that our “Jerusalem” was our church. And if we left it for another church, we would be open to attack.

The obvious question is: what if I decide to quit my church and go to yours? I guess it’s an evil place, right?

Another question: assuming my church and your church are both good, are you saying all other churches are evil? Sure sounded like it.

Finally, how can you promote the idea that there is only one good place to worship, when the hero of the parable belonged to a group who refused to worship at the Temple? Is that irony or what?

I just read the parable of the Good Samaritan. Guess what? Nowhere does it condemn the victim for having the nerve to travel. In fact, as any Jew or Christian should know, one of the worst crimes in the ancient Middle East was maltreatment of travelers. Traveling, itself, was not wrong. How else could people do business? Paul traveled. Jesus traveled. Come on.

Sometimes it amazes me how we miss the obvious. This guy came to us and proved he was immature and disloyal, and we didn’t even notice.

This reminds me of the old saw: a dog that will bring a bone will carry one. A person who badmouths other people to you will badmouth you to other people. I wonder what this guy is going to say about my church when he goes to other churches. I don’t think my pastor travels across the country and tells other congregations we’re a bunch of idiots. I can’t see him turning on us like that.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to align yourself with someone who mistreats others. You may think you’re special, and that you’ll get the benefit of that person’s bad behavior, with none of the curses. Wait till the tide shifts! Some day you’ll be on the dirty end of the stick. Ask a woman who dates bad boys, or a man who has dated nasty women who make a living on their backs.

I know a woman who likes to verbally abuse waiters and cashiers and so on. People who can’t fight back. Meanwhile, her favorite way to say goodbye to people is, “Have a blessed day.” This is a vicious individual, but if you listened to her talk about how much she loves God, you might take her for a saint. You can’t listen to the things people say about themselves; people are their own press agents. If you want to know them, you have to consider what they do, especially when they think they’re safe from punishment. Like when they’re a thousand miles away from the people they’re insulting.

Christianity has always been screwed up, just like every other religion. These days it seems like one of our worst faults is our tendency to assume that anyone who has a big church is favored by God. I wonder how the megachurch proponents would explain the success of Scientology or the Mormons. God isn’t the only one who helps people succeed, and what we think is success is often a curse in disguise.

He also lambasted people who start small churches “in hotels.” That borders on despicable. What an offensive thing to say about anointed ministers who are giving up their secular lives and stepping out in faith, starting their careers as well as they can. Not everyone has a church handed to him on a platter, as he did. He said he was given a facility. It was a former funeral parlor. He was complaining about it, but I’m sure there are a dozen ministers in Miami who would cry tears of gratitude if someone gave them a funeral parlor or even a warehouse.

I think this guy means well, but if you’re so loud and self-assured you can’t hear the Holy Spirit, you are bound to say foolish things. I’ve certainly done it.

I get tired of having blind guides paraded in front of me. There are a lot of wonderful people at my church, and they want to do the right thing, but what chance do they have when we give a platform to folks who are just plain wrong? Some of them go home and try to put this craziness into practice! How awful is that? They’re worse off than if they had stayed home smoking weed.

No one from my church reads my blog, and I don’t mention names. I guess some day someone will find out that I’m not totally on board with everything that happens there, and then maybe I’ll get a lecture, or I’ll be told to quit working as a volunteer. What can I do? Right is right. When the enemy misleads people and puts them to work with time-wasting nonsense, someone with a little bit of the Holy Spirit’s clarity needs to say something about it. The story of the Good Samaritan shows that you have to be good to men in order to please God, but it does not say you have to PLEASE men.

I try not to be proud. I try not to be self-righteous. I should think about love at least as much as I think about pleasing God. Maybe I go off the reservation sometimes. It’s hard to say.

I believe modern pentecostal churches are developing a phobia of healthy criticism. We keep bringing in people who slander and deride helpful critics. Critics are the tools of Satan! They’re going to be left behind while we go on to victory! Thing is, I’m going on to victory, and most people in the church are not. God does great things for me all the time, and my biggest frustration is that I am leaving people behind, when I want them to go forward with me. What we’re hearing is the opposite of the truth.

A hatred of criticism is one of the tools Satan uses to build impregnable fortresses of evil. Think of the Communists and the Nazis. What happened under those regimes, if you opened your mouth? You were imprisoned, or you got a bullet in the head. So criticism was very rarely heard, and sick, Satanic regimes flourished. Islam is the same way. The church can go the same route.

Look what happened to the prophets and Jesus. Did Al Qaeda get them? Did Charles Manson get them? No, of course not. Their greatest enemies were people who were totally devoted to serving God. Jesus and the prophets didn’t stand around hugging the high priests and calling them “great man of God.” They were extremely critical. Think about this: they were killed for criticizing! It’s the God’s honest truth.

Think about the things they said. Repent, or God will strip you naked and expose your genitals, and you’ll eat your own babies. Your sons will be castrated and forced to serve other kings. Whitewashed tombs. Prisoners of hell. Generation of vipers. One of the reasons the gospels are hard to read is that they are jam-packed with criticism and correction. Positive thinking? Get real. It’s not in the Bible. Faith is in the Bible, but that’s not the same thing. Faith means believing God. Positive thinking means believing in man.

Obviously, you can’t have an effective church when every malcontent feels like he can stand up during services and offer pointless whining and excessive fault-finding. But that’s not the only thing the positive thinkers want to prevent. They want to cut off helpful, vital criticism, and they try to portray it as grumbling and whining, because if you silence a critic, you can go on doing what you want.

In my own church, I’ve seen many, many problems that could be fixed very easily, but I’ve found that I sometimes get scolded for pointing them out and offering simple, workable solutions. That’s not unity. That’s a crippling disability.

Why does this happen? Bureaucracy. That’s a big word that means “looking out for Number One.” When you point out problems, you’re threatening jobs and reputations and wildly distorted self-images. Each person cares about holding onto his territory and his prestige, even if he isn’t a paid staffer, and if you point out failures, you put those territories at risk.

Yesterday I realized that churches are God’s civil service. What happens in the civil service? People get hired, and then they work out a system that protects them, no matter what they do wrong. Churches are the same way. If you want to see how churches run, go look at the Post Office or the DMV. Merit means nothing. Connections and seniority mean everything. So if you’ve been going to a church for five years, and you wonder why the doors don’t work or the hedges are dead or the worst singers always get to solo, there’s your answer. Man’s craving for power and security outweighs God’s desire for us to improve and excel.

Like government employees, people at churches have no one to answer to. As long as they can get people to donate money, they don’t have to do a good job. They don’t have to sell a good product. They don’t have to offer good services. They can show up late, leave early, overpay themselves, deliver bad (or plagiarized) sermons, and ignore the Holy Spirit, as long as they know how to raise cash. This is how people like Robert Tilton survive. In the real world, they’d last ten minutes. Many of them would be in jail. Now that I think about it, some of them have gone to jail.

I know a guy who is utterly, abysmally incompetent. He holds a high position with a church. When people talk about obstacles to progress at that church, his name comes up over and over. He probably thinks he’s doing great, and that anyone who criticizes him is from the enemy. If he ever gets a real job, he’s in for a rude awakening. He’ll be fired in two days. He’ll be flipping burgers, at best. Jesus told us we could think very highly of ourselves though we were actually blind and naked and poor. This guy is a prime example. Because he is shielded from correction, he is never going to grow up or develop into a capable man.

I live for the times when I’m with other Christians and the Holy Spirit shows up and guides us. Those are the events that really bring me to church. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. Generally, this happens at prayer meetings more than services. I wish that atmosphere and that power would take over the sanctuary. I feel God’s presence much more often when I’m alone than I do in services.

Here’s a strange thing I’ve noticed. Although criticism is strongly discouraged in my church, there is no shortage of people who are willing to criticize me. They’ve done it many times. Am I complaining? No way. I’m very grateful. It’s a blessing. I’ve grown because of it. Sometimes people criticize me out of ignorance or arrogance, or because I inadvertently make them look bad. Who cares? Dogs will bark. But often people who point out my mistakes are right, and their criticism helps me. This stuff is gold. Check Psalm 141. The sad thing is that our bad attitude toward criticism is robbing many other people of the benefits I’ve received. Again, I find myself being blessed, and I find myself moving forward, but I can’t seem to drag many people along with me.

Oddly, sometimes the people who criticize me are the same people who preach the anti-criticism gospel.

I was born an idiot, and it took me a disgracefully long time to get on God’s path. He had to beat me pretty hard to get me there. I would never have found it on my own. I think he needs to give churches a good beating, too. He needs to do us an undeserved favor, reaching in and pulling out the folks who are blocking his will. They’re like placques in the brain of an Alzheimer’s victim, preventing the signals from getting through. Man is supposed to fix the world, and that means that when we screw up, we end up with churches that don’t work. It’s our obligation to correct and strengthen churches, and to pass on godly ways. We haven’t done that, so things are a mess. The only solution is for God to step in like the Salvation Army or a social worker and change our diapers for us. Again. If he does, there will probably be a wave of firings, deaths, and prosecutions. Maybe we should be praying for the problem children to wake up and change, before God does the changing for them.

I wish atheists understood that man is responsible for making the world work. Maybe they’d quit moaning about how suffering and evil prove God doesn’t exist.

From here on out, I will take special notice when a preacher insults the people who feed him. That’s a good lesson.