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Bill M.

New England

Interests: Packratism,mathematics,collecting and playing odd musical instruments,comedy

Recent Activity

Sunk Cost and Mobile Game Addiction

The Story After 5 or 6 years of playing, I've made the decision to give up my Game of War: Age of Fire account. Those of you who are well familiar with the game may read that and think, "Gee, Bill, I didn't think anybody was still even playing that... Continue reading

Posted Jul 14, 2021 at A Place for My Stuff

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Movies Critics Hated, But Audiences Loved

TL;DR: With the help of data from IMDB, I compiled a list of movies with the biggest "audience likes it" to "critics like it" ratio. I was thinking of a good place to publish this information. Then I realized, "Oh wait, I have a blog, don't I?" When Critics Hate... Continue reading

Posted Jul 13, 2020 at A Place for My Stuff

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Update. And March 16, 1989.

I think it’s been about 10 years since I started this blog. Most of its visitors seem to be people who search the web for a particular topic, and come to one of my pages. People who had followed it in the past may have concluded that my clutter problem... Continue reading

Posted Mar 17, 2019 at A Place for My Stuff

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Cleaning up Sheet Music (Alice Cooper, "Pain")

Intro This is a blog post where I babble a lot about sheet music, and eventually show the details of my attempt at making a semi professional-looking copy of the transcription to Alice Cooper's song "Pain" (1980). Skip or skim as you like. I still like the album version of... Continue reading

Posted Oct 23, 2018 at A Place for My Stuff

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Happy 30th Anniversary to "Hysteria"

On August 3rd, 1987, I walked into my local Strawberries record store. I walked over to the "D" artist section of the cassette tapes. There I saw a male clerk putting copies of a brand new cassette tape into the vertical shelves. I realized the album he was putting in... Continue reading

Posted Aug 1, 2017 at A Place for My Stuff

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Low balances on too many Vanilla Visa cards? Here's one solution.

One of the biggest magnets for clutter, at least for me, is the open space around my desktop computer. Recently I had to clear this out because my ISP was giving me a new modem. In cleaning the area, I stumbled across a couple of Vanilla Visa cards. I had... Continue reading

Posted May 7, 2017 at A Place for My Stuff

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John Wetton, RIP

Here's something I had posted to my Facebook page at the end of January when the news broke. JOHN WETTON 1949-2017 There have been plenty of famous musician deaths in this past year following Lemmy, but this one really hurts. I knew it was coming. I followed along on all... Continue reading

Posted Feb 10, 2017 at A Place for My Stuff

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Brawndoism: When Stupid People Misunderstand the Smart as Stupid

When I got to middle school, I had to pick a foreign language class. While most students were taking Spanish or French, I wanted to do something different, so I chose German. I ended up taking German in middle school, high school, and college. It's come in handy professionally for... Continue reading

Posted Jan 19, 2017 at A Place for My Stuff

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Introduction I was reading the news about the Ringling Brothers circus closing. It made me think of my very first time I went to the circus. I’ve always had a pretty good long-term memory. One of my many childhood memories is going to the circus with my father when I... Continue reading

Posted Jan 16, 2017 at A Place for My Stuff

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Happy Pi (and S&BJ) Day

"I am repelled by wholesomeness." - George Carlin, 'Brain Droppings' (New York: Hyperion, 1997. Print.) "Steaks and orgasms: how empty life would be without them." - The Residents, 'Insincere' (2006) I love mathematics, so I'd love to talk about "Pi Day" (3/14). However, there are already plenty of sites for... Continue reading

Posted Mar 14, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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My 2016 Election Predictions

My predictions for the 2016 election aftermath: 1) Many people who voted for the winner will now expect everything to be fixed within a few years, and that the new president will do everything he promised to do. It won't, and (s)he won't. 2) Likewise, people who voted for the... Continue reading

Posted Mar 13, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 2

Here's part 2, some details on how I fixed up a beat-up book that was falling apart on me. I talk about the whole history behind this book back in part one. Now, on to the fun. In My Time of Binding Items used: 9x12" binder, with no push-down opener... Continue reading

Posted Feb 16, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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Rebinding the Mighty Led Zeppelin Real Book, part 1

Here's the short version of this two-part blog post: I have a book that I use a lot, called The 'Just Led Zeppelin' Real Book. The book has gotten rather beat up through years of use. So I fixed the book by rebinding it. In part 1, I talk about... Continue reading

Posted Feb 16, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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Fixing the "SIM Card Removed" error on a Samsung Galaxy S4

Recently my smart phone has been doing strange things. I'll look down, and I'll get an error message saying "SIM card removed -- Unable to detect your SIM card. Your device will restart to check for your SIM card.", or something along those lines. No, I didn't open up my... Continue reading

Posted Feb 15, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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Muddy Waters, 2/10

Over on my Facebook page, I regularly write notes from the various gigs I do as a musician. These have included the open mic nights I host, performances with one of my two bands (Tsunami and I'm Gonna Crawl, both linked from ZepTribute.com), or whatever other musical adventures I find... Continue reading

Posted Feb 10, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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2015 Projects & Accomplishments

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize progress if you don’t record it along the way. Fortunately, this digital age makes pretty easy to look through your past photos by date, or past updates on social media, and find some highlights. Here’s a list of some personal accomplishments and milestones for me... Continue reading

Posted Jan 3, 2016 at A Place for My Stuff

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The Lawnmower Starter Dream

I get the nagging feeling that this whole dream of me and my broken starter was symbolic. Continue reading

Posted Nov 20, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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A night of musical dives

The local coffee house owner extended me an offer to MC the open mic night. They have a PA head and one speaker, but not the rest. Well, I wasn't going to stand for that. As planned, I drove down the street to the local music store, where Rainbow’s “Stargazer”... Continue reading

Posted Jul 9, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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Freezer explorations, spring 2015

My freezer is pretty magical. Just when I thought I've dug up and thrown out the expired stuff, I find even stranger things. Take this, for example. The "sell by" date? June 13, 2013. Yep, this has been sitting in my freezer for at least two years., invariably buried under... Continue reading

Posted May 29, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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Holey Shoes, Batman!

"I got holes in my shoes, I got holes in my teeth, I got holes in my socks, I can't get no sleep. I'm tryin' to make a million." - AC/DC, "Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round To Be A Millionaire)" It's good to be thrifty. It's good to creatively find... Continue reading

Posted May 27, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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9 Nasty Things to Throw Away Today

A relevant article: http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-04-2013/9-nasty-things-to-throw-away-photos/?cmp=BAC-OUTBRAIN-MOB-SLIDE-DSO_27739317_9-Nasty-Things-to-Throw-Away-Today#slide2 Continue reading

Posted May 26, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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Site Changes and Upcoming Posts

After realizing just how crappy my blog looked on a mobile device, I decided to update its looks. I was almost ready to just quit Typepad and move to Wordpress, but found a way to work through it on Typepad. Typepad has some great support, too. They were able to... Continue reading

Posted May 23, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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Obama '666' lottery... debunked!

A friend of mine brought this story to my attention: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/lottery.asp The short version? The day after Obama's 2008 election, the winning numbers of the Illinois Pick-3 state lottery was 666. So naturally, the conspiracy theorists freaked out over it. After all, the chances of this are 1/1000, right? Well,... Continue reading

Posted Mar 25, 2015 at A Place for My Stuff

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The Kid Who Fell Off the Basketball and Hung Himself

Have any of you ever heard the following urban legend? When I was a kid growing up in New England in the 80s, I heard a story that went something like this: "A little boy was playing around in his house. He tried balancing himself on a basketball. While on... Continue reading

Posted Jun 24, 2014 at A Place for My Stuff

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"The government is hiding the AIDS cure! The internets told me so!"

Conspiracy theorists are both amusing and sad people. Michael Shermer writes a lot about the conspiracy theorist mentality in his book "Why People Believe Strange Things", which I'd suggest for a more comprehensive view on this topic. I've noticed that when you keep pushing a conspiracy theorist to back up... Continue reading

Posted Feb 23, 2014 at A Place for My Stuff

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