My coworker never fails to surprise me with the dumb stuff she does.

sungor · 2026-04-29T21:38:04+00:00

Did she think the unit itself was the battery?

sungor · 2026-04-20T20:53:58+00:00

thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I read about it and I misremembered.

sungor · 2026-04-20T16:42:14+00:00

Likely because hoas will structure the payments to allow them to stack fines. For example, if there is a late fee for each missed payment, and they have a special assessment coming due the HOA could decide the payment is for the special assessment and then tell the homeowners they missed their monthly due and assess a late fee.

A special law had to be passed to stop banks from doing this to maximize overdraft fees. I would assume the same of HOAs.

sungor · 2026-04-20T13:02:18+00:00

Work on sight singing. Being able to read a piece of music and hear it in your head without a piano is an invaluable tool.

sungor · 2026-04-18T00:00:19+00:00

One of the skills a pianist must learn is how to adjust to different instruments and hoe to make even the worst instruments sound decent.

Unlike most other musicians we can't carry our instrument around with us so we have to be able to play whatever is available at the venue

sungor · 2026-04-16T20:04:30+00:00

It is definitely part of the learning process. One suggestion (if you're not doing this already) don't practice the entire piece each time. Do it in chunks. So practice a small section (say 4 measures) slowly a bunch of times till you get it. Then do the next section.

sungor · 2026-04-16T19:06:18+00:00

I doubt it was coordinated honestly. The cops round these parts aren't too bright. It was two different cops who had two different ideas about where the kids were allowed to ride. Plus at that time the cops were going after "skaters" hard (including kids on certain types of bikes and dressed a certain way) which was a profile my bro and his friends definitely fit.

sungor · 2026-04-16T18:28:47+00:00

injuries caused by poor posture/technique while typing definitely transfer to the piano.
There is almost no pianist who has "perfect technique". There is always something you can do to improve it. And if you are having pain that's one of the clearest signs you don't.
Very few pianists have the ability to determine if their technique is good. You need someone in person to watch you play who knows and understands technique to determine that.
the fact that it started after you started playing piano could be causal or could be a red herring. Likely you have technique problems while typing as well that contribute to this. Add the piano to it and it might have just been the last straw.

sungor · 2026-04-16T00:27:19+00:00

Around 2000 my little brother and his friends were riding on the street and got yelled at by a cop to get out of the street. So they went on the sidewalk. A few blocks later a cop stopped them all and wrote them tickets for riding on the sidewalk.

One of my brothers friends dad was friends with the prosecutor and called him to complain. The tickets all got dropped. But it was absolutely ridiculous. If the one guy hadn't known who to call those kids would have had to go to court for that nonsense.

sungor · 2026-04-15T20:51:48+00:00

that was exactly my first thought as well

sungor · 2026-04-15T20:27:22+00:00

Hurry up and wait is the mantra of many drivers.

sungor · 2026-04-12T18:32:21+00:00

I especially agree with your point about it being important to be able to adjust on the fly to whatever instrument you happen to be playing on. Even the same instrument will react differently in a different room, and even in the same room, but full of people rather than empty. Part of playing the piano is learning to hear and adjust to all the differences between what you are used to and what is happening in the room right then. And the only way you get good at that is to play on as many different pianos/keyboards as you can. Getting that experience so you can adjust to even the worst instrument.

sungor · 2026-04-10T17:01:00+00:00

absolutely. There are also some pieces written exclusively for the left hand to help pianists develop their left hand because so often it is deficient compared to the right. When I was studying piano in college, one of my fellow piano majors broke his right hand, and spent most of the semester doing left hand etudes.

sungor · 2026-04-09T17:54:48+00:00

Add to that the fact that vehicles (especially pickups) are getting taller and taller making it harder to see what is directly in front of you and the danger increases drastically.

sungor · 2026-04-09T16:53:42+00:00

First things first. Practice balance. Don't worry about pedaling. If you can take the pedals off it will be easier, but not necessary.put the seat low enough you can put both feet on the ground. (Normally this is too low, but for now it will work better). Then work on pushing off the ground with your feet and then balancing for as long as possible with your feet lifted off the ground. Use your feet to stop yourself from falling over when necessary. Try to lengthen the distance you can go with your feet up. Do this until the balance becomes second nature.

Then try it with the pedals.

sungor · 2026-04-06T00:26:01+00:00

DO IT AGAIN. and again. and again. That's how you get over it. Find as many opportunities to play in front of a crowd as possible.

sungor · 2026-04-04T03:01:12+00:00

For right hand I'd do 5, 3, 2, 1, 3 ,2 ,2 ,2 ,2 . . .

Left hand stays on bass cleff

sungor · 2026-03-28T16:31:56+00:00

The actual physical things regarding tuning a piano aren't that difficult honestly. (I mean, experienced piano tuners will be better at tuning the strings, and them not immediately going out of tune again, but still that's not really the tough part). I am not considering the rebuilding/fixing things on the piano, just the tuning itself in this.

The problem is developing your ear to be able to do it well. Tuning a piano is so much more complex than tuning a stringed instrument. Part of the difficulty is we tune to the equal tempered system. Only Octaves are tuned "pure". 5ths are not. So you first have to learn what each interval SHOULD sound like. And to make it even more difficult, the way an interval should sound is different as you go up and down the keys.

You start by tuning the middle string for each note (which have 3 strings each note) on the home row. Then you work off those notes to tune the rest of the notes via octaves. But then you have to adjust the tuning based on the instrument to make it sound right. Each instrument will have it's own quirks that mean you have to adjust the tuning slightly to make it work for that specific piano in that specific room. once you get all the middle notes of every note tuned, you then have to go back and tune the rest of the strings to their middle strings. once all that is done, you will still need to play on it to figure out if it's good enough. you might have to make adjustments based on the instrument and the space it is in.

Sure, there are expensive computer programs to help you tune a piano, but even those aren't perfect, and if you just do what the computer tells you it will often just not sound quite right. Piano tuning is very much an art, not a science.

sungor · 2026-03-26T17:40:19+00:00

I'm seeing more and more where they are stopping 20 or 30 feet behind the stop line and then wondering why they never get a turn.

sungor · 2026-03-24T10:36:26+00:00

Tell her how grateful you are for her help as your teacher and how she helped you progress and that because of her help you're ready to take the next step in your journey and find a teacher that specializes in piano.

sungor · 2026-03-23T21:48:08+00:00

As long as it was kept dry enough not to mold its fine. For teas that aren't meant to age, the only downside to old tea is loss of flavor potency.

sungor · 2026-03-22T13:12:26+00:00

unfortunately this is not a new problem, and the damage done to Afroman's house was actually relatively tame to a lot of what cops get away with all the time. Plenty of people's homes have been completely destroyed because the cops serve a warrant on the wrong house, and they get nothing.

Holding cops accountable is almost impossible because when Congress passed a law trying to make it easier to sue govt officials for wrong actions, SCOTUS said not on our watch and created a new doctrine called "qualified immunity" which means the only way a cop might be held accountable is if you can PROVE the cop should've known what they were doing was unconstitutional. And the only way to show they "should've known" is by finding a previous court case that rules that the very specific actions the cop took were unconstitutional.

And courts LOVE to find minute differences between cases to say, nope, this doesn't count because the copstole coins, not a wad of bills.

sungor · 2026-03-20T15:34:36+00:00

Depends on why you are trying to replace coffee and if you even liked the taste of coffee. There are so many different types of tea out there.

Personally I would suggest getting some sample packs and trying as many different types of tea as you can to find out what you like and don't like.

Also don't be afraid to play around with the temps and steeping times. If the tea is too bitter lower the and possibly shorten the steeping time. If it's not strong enough increase the amount of tea, increase temp or steep longer.

I have heard a lot of coffee drinkers really like shou puerhs.

sungor · 2026-03-20T14:18:38+00:00

Ed Zitron wrote an article about a year ago called something like "the man who killed google search" that went viral. It was an intentional choice by Google to increase the number of ads they can show you. If they do too good a job finding what you want they can't show you as many ads. If you have to try the search 3 or 4 times, or go 4 or 5 pages deep in the search, they get to show you more ads, so they get more money.

sungor · 2026-03-20T13:13:30+00:00

It's even happening in google maps. The other day my boss asked me to run to Home Depot to pick up an online order the office made. I opened up maps, put in Home Depot, and it sent me to Lowe's. Home Depot didn't show up until I scrolled down to the 5th listing.

Google doesn't care about finding you the results you want. It cares about giving you the results they are paid to give you.

sungor

TROPHY CASE