If you’re in Baltimore, you owe it to yourself to go to Center Stage to see John Wilkes Booth: One Night Only!.

Note Wiring is not really complete– I need some additional organization and cable lengths to make things clean and ideal, but I think this is the core layout.

Signal chain

Polytune 3 Mini -> Keeley OctaPsi -> BSRI Magawa -> (Amp) -> Walrus Julia -> Chase Bliss Billy Strings Wombtone -> Walrus ARP-87 -> Walrus Fundamental Ambient -> (Amp)

(Amp) is mostly the Dr. Z Maz 18 I have a UA Lion ‘68 (pictured) that I’m using sometimes for home recording and also intend to bring to gigs to enable an amp-less setup/backup if needed. I’m also not 100% sure I’ll always run the modulation/time stuff in the effects loop. In fact, I’ve mostly been running entirely into the front of the amp at rehearsals because it’s less hassle. But I think that I prefer this stuff in the loop, so I’m going to be less lazy about using a four cable method going forward.

The Dr. Z amp pedal is not a switcher– it’s a built in boost. To my ears, I don’t get much volume, likely because I have enough crunch set on the amp that I just get more compression, sustain, and gain when I slap that on.

The Walrus Canvas Power 15 is new, as is the pedalboard (Pedaltrain Classic 2, versus the original Pedaltrain I had– the tilt is really nice). Both are great so far.

Why are things arranged this way?

The spatial arrangement of the pedals is intended to make it easy to switch between the four-cable method, getting the dirt before the amp or the UA Lion, then getting the send from the effects loop into the Julia or going from the Lion to the Julia.

I put dirt on the bottom because that’s what I hit the most often. Magawa alone, amp boost alone, or both combined are my most common switches. That’s definitely followed by the octave on, which I use in a few songs to fatten a lead or a part heavy in diads. Typically, I am only using one modulation or time-based effect on at a time, so having them be a bit more distant is no problem. The Fundamental Ambient gets turned on the most, so it’s also in an easy spot at the edge.

What didn’t make the board

I continue to futz with the Slö and Fathom, the other two Walrus reverbs. I owned the Fundamental Ambient first and love everything about it. I’ve never been quite able to worm to the “big brothers” the Slö or Fathom. They may just not be for me. I honestly want to read more about both and look at other people’s settings and see if I can find a way to love them. If not, I’ll probably sell or trade them soon. I think I may want another reverb still– perhaps something more classic, perhaps something built into a delay like the Wampler Ethereal Delay and Reverb I traded (which I may get again, or perhaps try and EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master).

The Nano POG got pulled off when I got the OctaPsi, but it’s so damn good at what it does I don’t know if I’m willing to get rid of it yet.

Other uncertainties

I’m not so sure about the ARP-87. I think I liked the Wampler Ethereal Delay more, so like I said in Remainders about a reverb, I may be looking for a different delay, perhaps one with a reverb as well. I’m considering something like the JHS Flight Delay, too. I love the way the Julia sounds in general, but I’m still dialing it to find a setting that really fits with what I play and makes sense for a song. I suspect if I am ever going to get along with chorus, this will be the one, but I’m not quite there yet with it.

I got the Wombtone in my Mystery Box and immediately found a great setting for what I like a phaser to do and what I use it for in the band. Is it markedly better than the BSRI Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter– not for me, I use it in an almost identical fashion and don’t find it that much more meaningful. That said, it can do more and it’s a smaller enclosure, so when by chance I saw someone looking for the BSRI on Reddit I made the trade. I don’t need two phasers around, and BSRI will be at the Baltimore Pedal Show next month so I can always pick up another if I want and support a local builder.

Speaking of BSRI and reverbs, I’m pretty sure I want to look at the Soft Rains and the Smell of the Ground. I loved this pedal last year, and only didn’t get it because I was practically willing to buy everything BSRI had to show. Given my current reverb situation, I think it’s pretty likely I buy one of these next month.

What else am I considering? I think I want some more dirt options. The Magawa sounds and works great. The OctaPsi is untameable, like any Muff style pedal should be. But I still have interest in adding more textures and subtly. I think I’m most interested in a Browne Amplification Protein, the Boss OD-3, the Boss BD-2 or maybe instead a Boss Angry Driver JB-2, or possibly a Wampler Tumnus. The Benson Deep Sea Diver is also really interesting for another version of just “blow things up” in one pedal. I have tried hard not to gas over the Walrus Qi Etherealizer, because as much as I absolute adore Yvette Young, I can’t play even a little bit like her so I can’t “trust” the demos of what that pedal would do in my hands. But that being said, some of the sounds are absolutely crazy. I really like the idea of being able to create spacey pads of sound on guitar that are not just walls of fuzz. I also keep eyeing the EarthQuaker Devices Swiss Things. I do a fair amount of tap dancing sometimes to go from clean + Fundamental Ambient -> Magawa and amp boost on. It’d be kind of neat to have dirt in a loop so that I could set up any of my stacking how I need and one switch get to where I’m going. Plus, with the UA Lion, my Dr. Z amp, and the Valvetech amp, A/B/Y starts to get pretty interesting in terms of options.

Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems completely insane to prevent solar installations in Baltimore County. Another chapter in bizarre NIMBYism.

It turns out, one of the best burgers in Baltimore can be found at Camden Yards.

The AVAM in Baltimore is such a weird, precious treasure.

I recommend seeing Sinners in movie theater in Baltimore.

We don’t actually need a maglev train between DC and Baltimore, and we don’t even really need one along the NEC. It’s really a distraction from the HSR we should pursue. But:

1. Neither are going to happen in my lifetime, especially because of this administration.
2. This NIMBYism makes me want to support maglev.

And with the cold fiercely back in Baltimore, my heat is out, just three days after I had the HVAC folks out to do my quarterly service.

The Baltimore weather shift in the last 24 hours was an act of violence.

I’m actually adjusting my vacation plans around the Baltimore Pedal Show.

OH: “He said that Elon is a troll. He’s just a troll trying to get a response, which he is. But he’s also a fucking Nazi.”

Love Baltimore.

This article focused on the measure to reduce the size of Baltimore’s city council, but I think the results on Harborplace are more interesting.

The closer neighbors were more “YIMBY” than the parts of the city that started red lining a hundred years ago.

Six years ago, Elsa and I went to The Senator in Baltimore where she got to watch Die Hard for the first time.

Last night, we went to a Regal in Battery Park where she saw The Fifth Element for the first time.

What I’m saying is she has really needed more Bruce Willis in her life.

Great news for Baltimore City— we’re finally going to tax vacant property at a higher rate.

Having the largest Patagonia store here in Baltimore is great. I found a tremendous winter coat in the outlet section for greater than 50% off. It was “irregular”, but myself, Elsa, and an employee couldn’t identify anything off– which the employee said was virtually always true.

Sinclair media is such a cancer on Baltimore City and its schools– this is a remarkably good faith settlement from City Schools.

My first car was a 2001 Honda Accord. My grandma leased it and put about 7000 miles on it over three years, just in time for me to get my license in 2004. I chipped in the money I had saved for a car and my parents chipped in the rest to buyout the lease. It was a great car. I used it, then my sister for a couple of years, and then I took it back in 2007. I drove it until about 2011/12, when it was totaled.

I didn’t have an accident, we just turned on the car one morning and it made a god awful sound. I drove about 8 miles to a dealership that day to have them check it out. Somehow, there was a large gash in my exhaust. It would cost about $4,000 to fix, and the car was worth about $1,200. I was early in my career and had just bought a condo. I did not have money set aside for a new car. I basically said to the dealership, while wearing my pajamas, “What’s the cheapest way for me to leave here today with a car?”

Elsa and I were together a couple of years and had just moved in together. We didn’t know how long we’d stay in Providence. We didn’t know yet if we wanted to start a family maybe someday. Electric cars were early, but seemed like they’d be coming along at some point. It just felt hard to make a huge decision like buying a car, which in my mind, meant choosing what we’d use for the next 10+ years. We also hadn’t done any research. So when we were offered a 3 year lease on a new Civic for $215 a month, that seemed pretty great. I think I had to put nothing down, just some taxes and fees, because of the tiny residual value on my Accord. So we left the dealership having leased a car, and that felt pretty good. No commitment before we knew what we needed and an affordable price– it felt like we managed to delay a major decision we weren’t really prepared to make.

What happened over the next year was pretty great. It turns out, a 2012 Civic is a lot more efficient than a 2001 Accord. We were spending easily $50-75 less a month on gas. Our insurance went down for some reason by about $400 a year. And then I looked back on what I spent on things like brake pads and calipers, a battery, tires, etc over the past few years. When all was said and done, I’m pretty sure that first year with the Civic we saved about $150 a month in costs we had with an aging, but good condition Accord. Our total cost to lease a new car was probably closer to $50-75 a month.

Over the next few years, we realized there are some nice things about leases, especially when you’re young and have good credit. The costs are consistent. There were no unexpected issues during an inspection or from a strange noise. Everything is in great shape, and within the first three years, virtually none of the regular wear and tear stuff happens. We know exactly how much we’re going to spend on a car.

Two years into our lease, we moved to Baltimore. We decided to move on a Monday. We sold the condo and moved to Baltimore that Saturday. That same night, Elsa’s mom arrived with her dog to live with us. The short version of the story is her mother had serious surgery and was diagnosed with cancer, and we needed her to move in with us from Mexico for her treatment. Suddenly, we had an extra dog and an extra adult. The idea that “we don’t know what our lives will be like over the next decade” turned out to be quite true– the car we needed in October of 2016 was nothing like the car we needed in 2014.

We traded up to the Honda HRV for our next lease. It would fit all three of us plus both dogs better. It would have been helpful in the move. I had only ever driven sedans, but Elsa liked SUVs, so the emerging crossover category was a good compromise. An HRV drove a lot like a Civic, so the choice was easy. Our costs barely budged. And we’ve essentially continued to lease HRVs since. I think we’re on our third… maybe fourth? We only drive about 6-7,000 miles a year. We can easily predict our costs– it’s the lease, oil changes, and gas. And each time we are up for a lease, I review what’s going on with the EV market because that’s what I have really wanted for some time.

In 2022, we almost got an Hyundai Ioniq 5. They were new and looked like exactly what I wanted. But a coworker of mine got one and had an immediate problem. It spooked me a little bit. This turned out to be a tiny blip– he loves that car and it’s been great to him, and he actually regrets that his small issue even happened because he knows it’s a part of what scared me off. But what really messed me up was how strong residuals on used cars were at that point in time. We were able to lease an HRV again, and our costs when down $50 a month. It was pretty hard to turn down lower monthly costs in favor of doubling my lease costs while working for a start up. I would have been fine, but I can be a bit conservative.

But now it’s time to look at cars again. It’s a lot easier to find the same EVs I was considering three years ago. And for various reasons, lease costs for EVs can be had quite affordably– if I’m paying $275 a month right now for an HRV and I can get an EV in that ballpark, it’s hard to keep leasing a gas car. And EV tech is still new, and many of the attractive models haven’t been around long enough to prove out their viability. A lease is much lower risk than buying a car that will massively decrease in value once it’s off the lot and may have troubles that don’t show up for 7 or 8 years.

A car is a consumption good for us. We don’t drive a lot. We have three adult drivers in our house and we all share the one car. This keeps our costs down but it also reflects our light needs. Consistent, predictable costs, without committing to the kinds of needs we may have or where technology is going seems to make a lot of sense to me. People always say don’t lease, but cars are all around terrible investments. I can pay these monthly costs indefinitely and afford it. It’s not really that important to not have any payment in 5-6 years. And I don’t really want to trade a higher car payment for 5-6 years followed by large unexpected costs in years 6-whenever versus a consistent, affordable monthly fee for now.

One day, I’d like to not need a car at all. But for now, leasing continues to make sense for us.

I can’t tell if this is a Baltimore thing or decline of rock music thing, but it’s genuinely hard around here to find and try out common guitar equipment.

I cannot believe Alsobrooks might loose her race. Hogan was a horrible governor who somehow remained popular and will absolutely crush the national agenda in the US Senate — do you think we get Red Line support with the guy who killed it and harmed Baltimore for a generation?

I don’t know why we have slow, bad service on the light rail because of all these Baltimore County stops where we refuse to do transit oriented development. Ever backwards.

I had a strange experience today with dynamic ad insertion on a podcast. First, I heard a hyperlocal ad about the expansion of Baltimore’s Charm City Circulator. Then I heard an ad for Kia in German.

The thing that is miserable about Baltimore weather is we go several months where night time temperatures remain above 70 degrees without break. I need summer nights that require a light jacket. I need to want to throw open my windows.

Baltimore— restaurant full of working class white people upon learning someone seems to have taken a shot at Trump, “Did they get him!?” Followed by universal disappointment. Staff and patrons alike.

Around the time I started at Allovue I started tracking my travel with TripIt. There are a lot of advantages– most importantly, the quality calendar syncing with information like check in times and addresses of hotels, flight time, and flight information. One of those advantages is I have a lot of data, particularly about my flying. ¹

I am not sure that all of this data is 100% accurate– I may have missed a cancelled trip or leg along the way when I had to move things around– but to a first approximation, these stats are pretty good. And what’s even better is that my favorite flight tracking app, Flighty, syncs with TripIt and provides great summaries.

The very first flight I tracked was on Jun 27, 2014, when Elsa and I flew from my parents in New York (LGA, before it was nice) to Fort Lauderdale to meet up with her family before flying to Port Au Prince, to visit more of her family. So this post has some fun facts from 10 years of flying.

I have been on 447 flights totaling 443,966 miles (714,494 kilometers).

My total flight time was 48 days and 11 hours across 76 distinct airports and 12 airlines.

Wednesday is the day I fly the most– having racked up over 100 flights.

November is the month I fly the most at just under 75 flights. I travel the least in January– under 25 flights, followed by June and then December.

2016 was the peek of my flying at 72 total flights. Unsurprisingly, 2020 was the year I flew the least– though I still managed to take 8 flights before the COVID lockdowns and by 2021 I took 24 flights.

My longest flight was JFK (New York) to TPE (Taipei) clocking in at 7,794 miles.

My average flight time was just 2 hours and 26 minutes– I suspect this is so low because of the amount of Providence to Baltimore and back flights I’ve done, as well as quite a few Baltimore to Midway (Chicago).

I have flown in or out of BWI 320 times– the next closest airport is Providence at 91 times.

I have flown Southwest 395 of the 477 flights for a whopping 82.8% of all air travel (how’s that for loyalty!).

I have flown 210 distinct routes, with the most common, unsurprisingly, being PVD to BWI (at 42) and BWI to PVD (37). It’s pretty obvious that moving to Baltimore in 2016 had a profound impact on my flying.

I’ve only been to 11 countries in this time, which makes me sad, and shows how flying a ton domestically has reduced my time and energy for international travel.

I’ve lost 73 hours to delays, with 172 flights out of 477 (36%) having some kind of delayed arrival. But actually, 60% of my flights arrived early, so the “net” of delays and early arrivals is 8 hours and 37 minutes of delays.

The newest plane I flew on was just 25 days old, whereas the oldest was 31 years old, with an average age of 18 years old.

It feels like Baltimore outside in Baltimore and I don’t like it.