I took the pickguard off of my Kramer Strat clone to check the joints on the volume pot (it crackled when the knob was jostled) and discovered that the pot was falling apart. Even though I thought I was being careful the *&^%$! ground somehow pulled off of the back of the bridge when I lifted the pickguard.

Now, in addition to replacing the potentiometer -- which is an almost insufferable pain -- I also have to break down the bridge/whammy-springs to get to the spot where the ground popped off and resolder it. I figure that it's gonna be be at least an hour's hard work and I have to be very careful when I solder because my apartment's smoke alarm is sensitive to the slightest hint of fumes.

The wires inside are so short that it's hard to see how they got the pickguard on in the first place. I know they're saving a couple of pennies by cutting tolerances so tight, but with an electric guitar the *&^%$! parts should be user-serviceable.

Feh!

Guitar Center's the nearest place that I know of to match the part and it's a haul from here so I ordered a new potentiometer from a guy I've dealt with on eBay. Surgery is going to wait until the part gets here.

'Not looking forward to it.

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The black is gone.

As I've mentioned before, the black-on-black template that the site's used since March of '09 and the logo were temporary.

In addition to the new color scheme and the new logo/mascot -- with hair! -- I've dropped the third column and reworked the content in many of the panels.

I've also installed a new comments module because the old one made a mess under the new template. The new module is pretty barebones, but it meshes nicely with the theme. I have my fingers crossed that it's not easily exploitable by spam-bots.

I'm not totally happy with the hair on the mascot, so that may be replaced in the coming weeks or months, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty happy with the current design and expect to keep it for awhile.

All of the old articles have still not made it back. I'm only up to mid-2005. I've got around 150 more pages to port to Joomla. It's a painful and slow process, but it'll get done... some day.

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My friend Susan asked about the auctions that I occasionally attend and when she told me that she'd never been to an auction before, I promised her that I'd upload some photos from one.

I hit the VA Tech Auction back in August and with the permission of the auctioneer I took a bunch of snapshots of the more interesting stuff. They hold the auction in a building that used to be a K-Mart, so you should be able to imagine the size of the thing... BIG. In addition to computers, personal electronics, clothes, furniture, gym equipment, office equipment, cameras, radios, cell phones, lab-equipment and all that other stuff, they have automobiles, trucks and occasionally construction equipment outside.

It's pretty cool when you first step inside, but they've got so much stuff for sale at each auction that the thing drags on interminably and the excitement wears thin after the first couple of hours.

The folks who attend the auction are generally pretty sharp about picking the best items out, so it's rare that a person will get a good deal on anything of value, but it's still fun to bid so long as you remember to bow out when you hit your top-dollar.

Since I've been making a lot of site-updates lately, I took the opportunity to test out a new Joomla module that facilitates making slideshows and liked it enough that I've added a "Slideshows" category to the Main Menu on the left side.

Click here for a direct link to the slideshow.

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