Hi, I went to a new customer's house last week and when I opened up the bottom of the Howard spinet I was suprised to see a whole 5 part DC system. (They had just moved here from Maine.) But when I began tuning, it was down about 10¢, which I thought strange if the DC was working. I felt the humidifier bar over the tank and it was warm. But the "pads" were not damp. I reached down in the tank, and the "pads" were not even touching the water. The bottom part had deteriorated and fallen off into the water. These "pads" were those cheap, woven paper dish cloths. Since I couldn't find the genuine replacements I thought were in my car, we put some fresh dish cloths on temporarily. But when I finished tuning, they still had not started wicking the water onto the humid. bar. Guess I'd better get the real ones on order right away! Wally Scherer, Piano Technician, Norfolk, Virginia, USA Notice: important virus warning! If you receive an email entitled "Badtimes," delete it immediately. Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you attempt to play. It will re-calibrate your refrigerator's coolness settings so all your ice cream melts and your milk curdles. It will retune all your pianos to A=420. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. It will leave dirty socks on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will replace your shampoo with Nair and your Nair with Rogaine. It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye. It will give you Dutch Elm Disease and Tinea. It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to passive tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which grossly change the interpretations of key sentences. If the "Badtimes" message is opened in a Windows95 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, but it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk. It will replace all your luncheon meat with Spam. It will molecularly rearrange your cologne or perfume, causing it to smell like dill pickles. It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve. These are just a few signs of infection.
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