Tomorrow, we are attending a mixer called The Science of Fine Wines.  This is a seminar/fundraiser for the Discovery Museum Science&Space Center in Sacramento so we're there to help with the science.  Sure, you can tell by the title the science is not the paramount issue, the wine is, but I'm always going to take the opportunity to get a little smarter and if other people listen, that's great too.

Because I have played guitar some 30 years, I have always been interested in guitar construction.   I have multiple guitars because they all have different tones and are used for different things - that doesn't always make sense to people because a guitar is a guitar but I am not even in the top 50,000 guitarists obsessed with tone.    

Eric Johnson, most famous for "Cliffs of Dover"(1) says he can hear a difference in the batteries he uses in his gear - and I believe him.  There are too many instances of elite (yeah, I used that word) people doing extraordinary things to pass it off as placebo effect.

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1.  You've all heard that blondes have more fun.   There is even a recurring urban legend that they are becoming extinct, which seems like an effort to get them to have even more fun while they are still around, but what about that most rare hair color, redheads?

Apparently they are in their 50,000th year of not getting enough respect.

Our offices are in a building in sunny Folsom, California, a town made most famous when Johnny Cash had a concert at the nearby prison (*).   It's one of those full service places where they have the phones and the furniture and a kitchen in the middle.   It's obviously more expensive than a regular office lease but the riverboat gambler in me doesn't like long-term leases and I am convinced I could work from my house if my wife didn't say things like, "You can't work from the house."

On Thursday I was walking toward the kitchen to get my 11th coffee of the day when I passed two fellows talking in the hallway.   "No, the cost to run it is $3 million a day," says one.   "That's ..."

I kept walking.

"That's ..."