This week's projects......
Jun. 18th, 2004 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr1Days are numbers. I've stopped counting some time ago.
My sleep pattern is starting to resemble that of my cats.
This week's projects to keep my mind and body occupied have been:
1) [Ongoing] Go through some more old newspapers (no, I just can't throw them out without skimming through them).
2) Go through some old computer printouts of Usenet news.
3) Work on getting together with out-of-town friends B and D in a few weeks.
4) Finish the video CD of B and D's son, which was videotaped last fall when we last saw him.
5) Consider starting on digitizing some old cassette recordings of mine.
6) Expanding the offsite storage cell.
7) Continue to look for work.
Earlier this week, I found a small stack of printouts from articles from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp (for fantasy role-playing games). Many of them were funny or silly quotes from gamers. I built an index of the articles in Excel, with links to Google Groups....but they're not on Google groups because the newsgroup split off into subgroups and they don't have the root group. So I cut them down to 8 1/2" x 11" so that they'd fit in the scanner. Then I scanned them and OCRed them.....and sonofagun, the OCR program recognized the characters on the page! Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! Of course, it helped that they were printed on an IBM lineprinter with non-yellowing green-bar paper, on the white side of the paper. I can keep the text of each article (about 2-3 Kb) and not a PDF copy of the article (many more Kb).
I can probably finish this up by the end of next week. After that are the articles from rec.arts.comics. (This was a 2" high stack before I started cullling articles.)
I pulled out some old cassette tapes earlier this week to listen to some old and obscure songs. They were so old and dried that the adhesive tape connecting the magnetic tape to the plastic leader broke. So I have 2 tapes that need rescuing. No biggie; I used to do this years ago. Unfortunately, the cassette shells are glued together, so I'll have to break the shell to get the tape.
And so, I stopped at the local Radio Shack to get replacement cassette shells. They used to have them, but not anymore. But I picked up a bulk tape eraser/degausser and styli for my Palm IIIxe (both of which were on clearance), and a headphone adapter.
So now, in order to fix my broken tapes, I'll have to unscrew the screws from the shells from new tapes, put the new magnetic tape in a safe place, break open the old shells, remove the magnetic tape from it, and install it in the new shell. Then I can worry about splicing then tape, and playing the tape again.
I have a tape deck (and amp) near the computer, a patch cord from the amp into the computer's sound card, and a copy of Sound Forge XP (which had been recommended to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
filkertom). Some of these tapes are in horrendous shape, audio-wise. Is there a way I can restore the fidelity of these tapes to at least AM-quality sound? Is Sound Forge XP intelligent enough to extrapolate the low and high ends from the midrange only?
The employees at the Radio Shack store near me are two older men, both named Jim. One is the manager. There weren't very many customers in the store, so these guys were eager to help me. Too eager, if you ask me. They were suggesting other things I could buy. I told them "maybe next time". One of them suggested that I use the bulk eraser to degauss my TV. (Which would, of course, damage it.)
If there are two things I don't like about salespeople, it's when they get pushy or get sarcastic with me. I'm not good at telling people to back off or to tell them no, so I usually don't. (Then I'm mentally kicking myself later, after I'm out of the store.) My experience with these and other clerks at Radio Shack stores is that they often resort to suggestive selling. Why? Is it what they're tasked to do by their management? Do they work on commission? Do they see me as a fool to be separated from my money? I usually go in for a few specific items, and nothing more.
So, the next time I go in there, how can I finesse them into getting what I want (to be left alone and not have any suggestive selling), without having to resort to strong-tongue (and strong-will) tactics?
I have s many things to do I'll need an admin assistant. This is a full-time job in itself!
My sleep pattern is starting to resemble that of my cats.
This week's projects to keep my mind and body occupied have been:
1) [Ongoing] Go through some more old newspapers (no, I just can't throw them out without skimming through them).
2) Go through some old computer printouts of Usenet news.
3) Work on getting together with out-of-town friends B and D in a few weeks.
4) Finish the video CD of B and D's son, which was videotaped last fall when we last saw him.
5) Consider starting on digitizing some old cassette recordings of mine.
6) Expanding the offsite storage cell.
7) Continue to look for work.
Earlier this week, I found a small stack of printouts from articles from the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.frp (for fantasy role-playing games). Many of them were funny or silly quotes from gamers. I built an index of the articles in Excel, with links to Google Groups....but they're not on Google groups because the newsgroup split off into subgroups and they don't have the root group. So I cut them down to 8 1/2" x 11" so that they'd fit in the scanner. Then I scanned them and OCRed them.....and sonofagun, the OCR program recognized the characters on the page! Oh frabjous day, calloo callay! Of course, it helped that they were printed on an IBM lineprinter with non-yellowing green-bar paper, on the white side of the paper. I can keep the text of each article (about 2-3 Kb) and not a PDF copy of the article (many more Kb).
I can probably finish this up by the end of next week. After that are the articles from rec.arts.comics. (This was a 2" high stack before I started cullling articles.)
I pulled out some old cassette tapes earlier this week to listen to some old and obscure songs. They were so old and dried that the adhesive tape connecting the magnetic tape to the plastic leader broke. So I have 2 tapes that need rescuing. No biggie; I used to do this years ago. Unfortunately, the cassette shells are glued together, so I'll have to break the shell to get the tape.
And so, I stopped at the local Radio Shack to get replacement cassette shells. They used to have them, but not anymore. But I picked up a bulk tape eraser/degausser and styli for my Palm IIIxe (both of which were on clearance), and a headphone adapter.
So now, in order to fix my broken tapes, I'll have to unscrew the screws from the shells from new tapes, put the new magnetic tape in a safe place, break open the old shells, remove the magnetic tape from it, and install it in the new shell. Then I can worry about splicing then tape, and playing the tape again.
I have a tape deck (and amp) near the computer, a patch cord from the amp into the computer's sound card, and a copy of Sound Forge XP (which had been recommended to me by
filkertom). Some of these tapes are in horrendous shape, audio-wise. Is there a way I can restore the fidelity of these tapes to at least AM-quality sound? Is Sound Forge XP intelligent enough to extrapolate the low and high ends from the midrange only?The employees at the Radio Shack store near me are two older men, both named Jim. One is the manager. There weren't very many customers in the store, so these guys were eager to help me. Too eager, if you ask me. They were suggesting other things I could buy. I told them "maybe next time". One of them suggested that I use the bulk eraser to degauss my TV. (Which would, of course, damage it.)
If there are two things I don't like about salespeople, it's when they get pushy or get sarcastic with me. I'm not good at telling people to back off or to tell them no, so I usually don't. (Then I'm mentally kicking myself later, after I'm out of the store.) My experience with these and other clerks at Radio Shack stores is that they often resort to suggestive selling. Why? Is it what they're tasked to do by their management? Do they work on commission? Do they see me as a fool to be separated from my money? I usually go in for a few specific items, and nothing more.
So, the next time I go in there, how can I finesse them into getting what I want (to be left alone and not have any suggestive selling), without having to resort to strong-tongue (and strong-will) tactics?
I have s many things to do I'll need an admin assistant. This is a full-time job in itself!
