This was the fourth time I've seen Joe Bonamassa in concert and the fourth time I've left the concert wondering, "Why isn't this guy way more famous?" His guitar playing is in a class by itself, and his voice just keeps getting better and better.
This was my first concert at the Moore Theater in Seattle. We had seats in the center toward the back, under the balcony. The Moore theater is really run down. The crowd was pretty rough looking compared to the crowd at Jazz Alley where we saw Joe last time. (By rough looking I mean lots of bikers with shaved heads and lots of tattoos and body piercings. Everybody seemed friendly enough.) The crowed was also older than expected. Median age was probably 50-55. The Moore theater serves hard alcohol, which contributed to the rough feel.
The opening act was Crosby Loggins (eldest son of Kenny Loggins), who's got a new album coming out, the first one on Joe's new record label. He played guitar, and Paul Cartwright played violin, and that was it. I've heard guitar/violin combinations in blue grass music, wasn't expecting it at a blues concert, and it worked great. Crosby's voice sounds a lot like his dad's. None of their songs really knocked my socks off and I kept thinking that these guys had much better playing and singing skills than the songs they played showed. Nonetheless, several songs had passages that were great. Notably, Paul Cartwright's violin solos and the guitar/violin duets when Paul came to the front of the stage. The only thing that was a little disconcerting was that Paul moves his bow so fast and swings his body around so much that I kept thinking if he wasn't careful he was going to cut his head off! I suppose it isn't really possible to cut your head off with a violin bow, but if it was ever going to happen, it would happen to somebody playing like Paul.
Joe took the stage with authority and played 2 or 3 songs before he said a word to the audience. He didn't talk much overall. His main comment was that he was supposed to appear at the Moore theater in 2002 with Peter Frampton, but Frampton got sick and so the concert got cancelled. That was kind of an interesting comment because I remember Kasey Kasem telling a story in the 1970s about Peter Framptom falling off stage at a concert, breaking a rib, and continuing the concert anyway. Sad to say, age affects us all.
Here are my favorites from this concert:
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Walk in my Shadows - great, as always
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Woke up Dreaming - also great, as always. This song really shows off how fast the guy can play, and I swear he's gotten faster on this song each time I've seen him.
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High Water Everywhere - In the middle of the song Joe did a long segment where he'd do a riff for a few seconds, and then the drums and bass would put a punctuation mark on the end of the riff, and then he'd riff again. This went on for 10-15 riffs. On the one hand, it seemed like it went on for a long time, but he mixed up the riffs enough that I thought it was a great add to the song.
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Sloe Gin - title track off his new album, I like the concert performance much better than the version on the album
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Asking Around for You - Joe and the band performed an especially sensitive and moving rendition of this. I liked the way he brought back Paul Carpenter, who played an amazing violin solo, and Crosby Loggins, who added some nice vocals.
Joe's voice gets better on every album, and to me he's sounding increasingly like Paul Rogers, which isn't a bad thing.
A couple of minor nits:
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When Joe started the sound mixing seemed a little off on the first three songs, and I could barely hear Joe's voice. Mainly it seemed like the bass was mixed in too heavily. But Joe's guitar on Walk in My Shadows came through loud and clear, and it would have been a great concert even if they hadn't fixed the sound mixing.
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Even after they got the mixing fixed, his voice kept going from barely audible to loud and distorted based on how close he was to the microphone, and that was a little distracting. Sure, I'm there mostly to hear him play the guitar, but I'd like to hear the words, too.
The band
Joe's playing with Bogie Bowles on drums, who basically finished the main set with an extended drum solo, another high point of the concert. Rick Melick played keyboards. He played a "solo" early in the concert, which was hard to hear because of the bad mixing with the other instruments. He played solo again on Asking Around for You during the encore, and that time his playing came through beautifully. Carmine Rojas played bass. I was surprised that he didn't get a solo; I would have liked to hear that.
Requests for Joe
He mixed in a riff from "Do you Feel Like We Do," which seemed appropriate considering his comment about being scheduled to play this venue earlier with Peter Frampton. But all he did was play the riff and then move on to his regular stuff.
That made me think that a really great album would be Joe doing his interpretations of famous guitar riffs. For example I'd like to hear what he could do with Eruption from Van Halen I. He could first repeat the riff ala Eddie Van Halen, and then did his variation on it, and then just totally took off and played with it to show what the Joe Bonamassa version would sound like. Jimmy Page's riff in the middle of Heartbreaker would be another one I'd like to hear Joe's take on. He could also do variations on Do You Feel Like We Do, While My Guitar Gently Weeps. I'd love to hear what he could do with Ain't Superstitious, the Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart number. People Get Ready would also be great. The Album could be half rock, half blues (Side A & Side B), mostly covers, with one original composition by Joe on each side. Are you listening Joe?
Joe's an amazing talent. I've read some criticisms of his current Sloe Gin album that say it's too unfocused. I like the fact that he blends blues and rock and moves back and forth across the genres. Overall, the guy's at the top of his game and just keeps getting better. Seeing this concert was like seeing another chapter in an undiscovered legend.
I put an epoxy coating on my garage floor last year. As I mentioned in the post on my website, I wasn't all that thrilled with the way the color turned out, and after living with it for a year I decided that I would make a second attempt to get a color I liked.
Background
Here's the bare concrete floor I started with last year:
Here's the "after" picture from last year:
And here's a close up of the epoxy I used last year.
It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but the base coat of epoxy, which was called "tan," really looks more yellow. The flakes that I used in the floor were a mixture of black, white, and gray. After living with the floor for a year, I concluded that the gray flakes didn't have enough contrast with the yellow base coat and just made the floor look washed out.
Attempt #2
I used iPaint.us's "Epoxy Kote" product for the base coat both this summer and last summer. Aside from the color, I've been happy with the performance of the product, i.e., it hasn't chipped, I haven't experienced any hot tire lift, etc.
Last year I bought iPaint's simulated granite kit (http://www.ipaint.us/sigrfl.html). I wouldn't recommend buying the kit for 3 reasons. First, the top coat in that kit is epoxy, which is a little amber colored, and not as good as urethane. I couldn't find a source for urethane last year, but this year iPaint has started selling it. Second, the paint flakes they sent me weren't very uniform in size, and this year I've found other paint flakes I like better. Third, you can pick your exact base coat color and flake color(s) if you don't buy their kit.
The materials I used this year were as follows:
Base Coat: Epoxy Kote, color D41:
http://www.ipaint.us/poshwh.htmlPaint Flakes, 2 parts black to 1 part white: http://www.adpolymers.com/. I also ordered samples from JNK products, and their paint flakes also would have been fine: http://www.jnkproducts.com/epoarmor.htm. They couldn't offer me any discount on my quantity, so I went with adpolymers', but price aside it was a toss up. Based on what I'd read online and talking to a professional installer, I bought 50 pounds of flakes for my 3 car garage. That was WAY too much. I used only about 10-15 pounds. If I had used even 25 pounds I wouldn't have be able to see the base coat at all. So I have a lot of flakes left over. I was glad I painted a test patch first and then bought samples of the flakes and sprinkled them on the test patch (after it's dry) to see what color combination I wanted. You can just vacuum them up when you're done. JNK has a ton of different colors and shipped very quickly. I bought about a dozen different color samples, and I was surprised at what I ended up with -- simple black and white. I've got twice as many black flakes as white, but not because I like black. When you look at the floor you'd think the black and white flakes were broadcast equally. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't done the test patch first.
Spiked shoes. You can also buy the spiked shoes at adpolymers that allow you to walk on the wet epoxy to broadcast the paint flakes. The spiked shoes make it way easier to broadcast the flakes well.
Top Coat: Moisture Cure Urethane for the top coat: http://www.ipaint.us/clwomocuhigl.html. I can't vouch for the long-term performance of the urethane top coat, but I will say that it looks absolutely fantastic at this point -- far better than the epoxy top coat I used last time. It really is crystal clear. It's supposed to be much tougher than epoxy too, but like I said, I won't know for sure until I've had it in my garage for awhile. Couple tips about that -- you're definitely going to want a respirator when you apply it -- the fumes are incredibly noxious, even with two 20" box fans going. You can get an AO respirator for about $30 at Home Depot or Lowes that works well. Second, the directions say don't put it on too thick or it will get milky. As far as I could tell you could do several thin coats, however. If I had it to do over again, I'd do a third coat of the urethane just because it looks so darn good. The stuff is so shiny that it's hard to tell where you've put it down already; I ended up going through my garage before doing the second coat and putting pennies on the floor on the spots I'd missed so I'd be sure to get them the second time. I had to look at the floor from several different angles to find all the spots.
Summary of Steps
My whole process was (keeping in mind I already had epoxy on my floor):
Day 1: Scarify existing epoxy surface; wash with TSP; rinse *very thoroughly*; squeegee off excess water. You wouldn't need to do this if you were starting from scratch with bare concrete, but you would need to acid wash your floor, flush it with clear water, then TSP wash your floor and flush it with clear water.
Day 2: Base coat of Epoxy Kote
Day 3: Second coat of Epoxy Kote and broadcast paint flakes onto the surface. The spiked shoes are key to doing this well. It's also a good idea to throw the flakes up, not down, so you get a better distribution.
Day 4: Rest day -- allow epoxy to cure (the iPaint contact told me to wait 48-72 hours to apply the urethane, but there's a small window here in which the epoxy is cured enough that it can be top coated but not so much that the urethane won't adhere to it.)
Day 5: scrape paint flakes (very important step that I didn't do last year -- makes the floor much smoother); blow them away with an electric leaf blower; apply first urethane top coat. You can get the floor scraper at Lowes or Home Depot.
Day 6: Scrape paint flakes again; blow them away again; and apply second urethane top coat
I haven't actually parked my car in the garage yet. The iPaint.us guy I talked to said to wait for 7 days, but I'm waiting for 14 just to be safe. I dragged my heavy refrigerator across the floor last night (after 7 days) and the floor was absolutely unaffected, so it would probably be fine to park my cars in the garage now, but I'm waiting anyway.
Here's what it looks like:
Here's a little closer view:
And here's an extreme close up of the paint flakes -- you can see the flakes and also get a good sense of how shiny the urethane is:
I went through an intensive waxing program on both my car and my wife's SUV over Memorial Day weekend. I was inspired by a picture of a black Porsche on Chemical Guys' Website at http://www.chemicalguys.com/MIRROR_SHINE_p/gap_104.htm. I wanted to try their Wet Mirror Finish glaze, and I also wanted to finish polishing my wife's SUV, which I had started last summer. (In other words, I needed to start over.) This post describes my experiences with both cars.
Wife's SUV (black)
I started by buffing the SUV. The SUV's finish is in "good" shape, in that my wife keeps her vehicle pretty clean, but it wasn't in pristine shape, in that she doesn't wax it every other week like I do with my car! After trying several polishing products (including Griot's Machine polish 2 and 3 and Chemical Guys' (CG's) All In One polish, I settled on my old stand by, Meguiar's Crystal polish as producing the clearest, deepest shine. (You can get this stuff at places like Schuck's and Pep Boys.) The Griot's stuff just didn't seem to do anything (maybe because the finish was not clean enough to start with), and the CG polish actually produced some hazing. It definitely could have benefited from claybarring, but I wasn't that committed to working on the SUV.
I then tried all my new wax products on her car, and I ended up back up using Chemical Guys' Butter Wet Wax just as I did last year -- it just seemed to produce the deepest, most reflective black color. That stuff has also had amazing longevity on her car. I waxed it in July 2006 and it was still beading very well in May 2007. It might have something to do with her using the CG Extreme Bodywash with Synthetic Wax/Gloss Enhancer. Maybe there's something to their claim that that product actually adds a little wax to your car as you wash it.
My Car (Pewter, basically gray with a hint of tan)
I clay barred my car twice. I didn't set out to clay bar it twice, but after I claybarred it the first time I wanted to try claybarring it with a solution of a few drops of car shampoo in a spray bottle of water. I found that created some suds, which seemed messy, but it was way slipperier than the speed shine I'd been using as the lubricant, and I knew it was dirt cheap so I felt more comfortable using a lot of it, and I found the effect to be noticeably smoother than the initial claybarring had been. So I went ahead and re-claybarred my whole car.
I then tried various polishes on my car, and I can't swear that any of them made any difference. I kind of thought Griot's Machine Polish 3 made the car shinier, but I really couldn't tell. Then I tried the glazes and sealants, which is where the real action turned out to be.
1. CG Wet Mirror Finish also seemed to haze the finish a bit on my car, again, which I couldn't believe after seeing the pictures of the Porsche on the CG website, but that's what it looked like to me.
2. CG FS Pure Acrylic Crystalline High Gloss sealant -- seemed OK, but not the best.
3. Black Magic Wet Shine Liquid Wax -- this had scored tops in Consumer Reports recent ratings, but it didn't work well on my car at all. I couldn't get the stuff off my car! It was a lot like when you use too much Zaino. I wiped and wiped and wiped, and it just wouldn't come off. (I actually did this before Memorial Day weekend, so it literally got washed off my car before trying the rest of the waxes.)
4. CG Extreme Shine EZ Creme Glaze with Acrylic Shine II -- This was the clear winner for me. The shine was noticeably improved, and the second coat was even better than the first. After putting this stuff on, I was reluctant to put any kind of top coat over it because I didn't want to reduce its shine. Since Memorial Day weekend I've put on 6 more coats of this stuff. This is the only product I've ever used that truly seems to be layerable. Every application of it seems to bump up the shine another notch.
5. CG 5050 Wax. I ended up topcoating with this wax. I tried several other products on top of the EZ Creme Glaze, and this was the only one that didn't seem to dull the shine. I don't think this improved the shine in the indirect light in my garage, but it didn't hurt it, and I think it might have improved the shine in direct sunlight. With my light-colored car, shine in direct sunlight has become my holy grail. I'm not 100% sure whether the EZ Creme Glaze or the 5050 wax is responsible for the reflectivity under direct sunlight. Right now I don't have the 5050 on my car, and I think the reflectivity in direct sunlight is worse without the 5050 wax. In indirect light, I think it's better.
The main drawback with the CG 5050 wax is STATIC. Holy cow. You can almost see the dust getting sucked onto the car's finish after you put on this wax. My microfiber towel was literally crackling with static electricity as I removed the wax (and I am not making that up).
The EZ Creme claims to be anti-static. I don't know if it's "anti" static, but there isn't any static applying it or removing it. When I went out to the garage the morning after I'd put the 5050 on my car, my car had attracted a fine layer of dust already -- and that's just sitting in a clean garage.
Summary: One clear standout product for my car -- EZ Creme Glaze. And two clear standout products for my wife's SUV: Meguiar's Crystal Polish and Chemical Guys Butter Wet Wax.
"Rain Gutters" isn't a metaphor for a software engineering idea. This post is literally about rain gutters.
In the Seattle area we get a lot of rain. My house has some rain gutters that are more than 20 feet off the ground, and I decided a few years ago that I didn't want to get up on the ladder to clean them out. We don't get a lot of debris in our gutters, but our house is next to a green belt with some tall maples, and so one side of the house gets a lot of big maple leaves in the fall. When I say "big," these leaves can be 10-12" across, and they definitely clog up the gutters.
My first line of attack was to go to Home Depot and Lowes and see what kind of gutter protection systems they had. I picked a flat plastic screen product that had a honeycomb pattern in a stiff plastic layer and then a screen material like a window screen on top of that. I bought about 12' worth of this stuff and installed it in the lowest gutter on my house. That took about 1/2 hour and scaped up most of the knuckles on both hands. I started out wearing gloves, but I couldn't manipulated the screens to get them under the shingles, so eventually I gave up. Plus the shingles were wet, which made it hard to get a grip on them. So it was on to Plan B.
I'd heard ads on the radio for Gutter Helmet, so I thought I'd check them out. We had the Gutter Helmet consultant come out to our house. He measured the gutters and gave us a price quote (and I am not kidding) of $18,000. We talked a lot with him about why it was worth the investment to have worry-free, free-flowing gutters. He pointed out at one point that it would probably cost about $300 to get our gutters cleaned. Let's see-- $18,000 divided by $300 -- I could get my gutters cleaned 60 times, which ought to be good for at least 30 years. He also pointed out that it would probably cost me $3000 to get new gutters installed on my house if my old gutters fell off because of the leaf collections causing them to rot, or some such thing. It was hard for me to see why I should pay $18,000 or even $15,000 to protect something that cost $3000.
After all this discussion, he said if we signed their contract right then and there he could reduce the price to $15,000. I learned a long time ago that I never sign a contract "right then and there," so I told him we'd think about it, but really it was on to Plan C.
When we made the appointment with the Gutter Helmet guy, we hadn't investigated gutter protection systems at all. Considering the price tag, I thought it was time to do some internet research. What I found was an absolutely dizzying array of approaches to protecting gutters. Despite some differences, they seem to break down into several distinct categories of products:
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Screens you put over the gutter, which allows water to pass through the screen but collects leaves and other debris on top of the screen, where you can sweep them off or wait for the wind to blow them off. This is like what I found at Lowes. Some are hinged. Some are snap in. Some are snap on. These seem like they would be effective if they can be installed on your kind of gutter.
Disadvantage: Some debris still gets through, and they still require some cleaning. For my specific problem, the big disadvantage was that they just wouldn't work for my kind of roof and gutter system.
- Foam inserts you put into the gutter, which allows water to pass through the foam but debris stays on top of the foam or blows off.
Disadvantage: Foam breaks down over time, though some foams claim they don't decay as much as others.
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Downspout protectors to keep the downspouts flowing. There are options ranging from inserts that look like big pipe cleaners that you place in the gutter over the downspout, to little wire cages that you insert into the downspout to keep other stuff from going into the downspout.
Disadvantage: Doesn't solve the problem of the gutter getting clogged somewhere other than around the downspout, but these things are super cheap compared to other options, so seems worth trying if you're not worried about other clogs.
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Bigger downspouts and downspout openings, or specially designed downspouts. The idea is that if you have bigger downspouts and downspout openings, they won't get clogged as easily.
Disadvantage: You have to do a lot of work to retrofit the bigger downspouts, and for me personally I already had pretty good size downspouts.
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Rigid caps you put on the gutter that minimize the size of the opening that goes into the gutter itself. Some of these have a curved edge supposedly lets the water cling to the edge, and leaves and other debris will fly off instead of following the water around the curve. Others just have a narrow opening that's too small for larger debris (e.g., leaves) to pass through (Gutter Helmet and Gutter Topper fall into this category). Others have holes about 1 cm square that let the water pass through.
Disadvantage: Very expensive (e.g., Gutter Helmet), usually need to be professionally installed, may require repositioning the gutter (as it would have on my house), can change the appearance of the roof line of the house, and many consumers have reported that these still clog.
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Rain diffusers -- replaces the gutter with something that causes the rain to break into a fine spray and projects it away from your house instead of streaming off your roof.
Disadvantage: This approach seemed interesting but impractical in my area (Seattle) where I don't just want the rain moved away from my house and broadcast into a 4' stripe around my house; I need to have it collected and carried away completely.
I ended up looking at dozens of products, all of which claim to have superior performance and several patents each, and many of which criticize all the other products in convincing ways. The net effect of all this was that I was convinced that none of the products would actually work.
Finally I stumbled across Gutter Love It (www.gutterloveit.com), and their approach struck me as just obviously better. It's like in software design when you've been considering numerous mediocre design solutions and carefully studying strengths and weaknesses and deciding which lesser evil you want to go with. And then finally somebody says, "What if we just do this?" And you slap your forehead and realize that it should have been obvious the whole time, except that you've spent hours thinking about it and it wasn't obvious at all until someone else had the idea. Gutter Love It struck me as being like that. It's a ridiculously simple idea that works.
Their approach is to take flexible drain pipe and stick it into your rain gutters. The corrugated edges of the drain pipe allow plenty of rain to go through on the edges, and the interior of the pipe stays clear of obstructions no matter what piles up on top of the pipe. Since it's drain pipe (i.e., designed to be stuck underground for decades), the durability is a given. And drain pipe doesn't have to be custom manufactured, so it's cheap. I can buy 100' of it at Home Depot for something like $30, and if I can get that kind of price on it, I'm sure someone who's buying a lot of it can probably get it for a lot less. So I had that installed in my gutters.
I considered just doing the job myself, but I thought the Gutter Love It company deserved my business for coming up with an idea that was obviously better and that I hadn't managed to think of on my own, and neither had any of the dozens of other companies selling various gutter protection products. It also turned out that there were numerous little techniques involved that I wouldn't have discovered on my own. There was also a little machine that flattened the drain pipe temporarily so that it could be forced into the gutter more easily, which I didn't have.
I've had Gutter Love It installed for a year, and it has worked great. We do have some leaves that have their stems stuck in the corrugated gaps, so some minor drain cleaning maintenance work is still required. But those don't block the flow of water through the pipe.
I should mention that I built a gardening shed after the Gutter Love It was installed, and since I had Gutter Love It on all my other gutters I installed drain pipe in the shed gutter so that all my gutters would be the same. It took me about an hour to do about 10' of gutter. It is a lot harder than it looks. I was really pleased that I had done it, though, until about a week ago when I figured out that the shed gutter hadn't actually been working all winter. The way I installed the drain pipe, the drain pipe itself was blocking the downspout opening. Oops! If I had tried to do gutters on the house myself I probably would have made that mistake on my whole house!
Resources
Gutter Love It: www.gutterloveit.com
Extensive Rain Gutter products web sites:
I'm splitting my blog into two blogs -- one focused on software development topics "10X Software Development" -- and one focused on personal topics -- "Waxing Philosophical." This is the personal blog, where I'll discuss:
- Car wax and other car detailing
- Gardening and landscaping
- Home theater
- Home improvement
- Life philosophy
and, occasionally, I might even blog about