Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

I thought about writing a long essay here about why I'm neither Republican nor conservative. But I think I'll reduce it to a few bullet points.

* I grew up in a union household. Dad was a member of the UAW.
* I have friends and allies of many faiths -- Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, pagan, atheist.
* I married (and divorced) a Wiccan.
* I value diversity over conformity.

In the end, I don't think I need to defend or justify my political position or opinion to anyone. If they don't like it, screw 'em. Real friends accept me as I am.

One of the side projects I've been doing this past week is to upgrade a colleague's PC.

Julie is the office manager where I do my volunteer work. She had an older system running Windows 98 SE, and another friend recently gave her a DVD burner, which she wanted to use in this system. The problem is, Windows 98 doesn't know about DVD burners. So this started a chain reaction of upgrades.

( The story so far. )

A representative for Time Warner Cable called me today. (Actually, they've been calling me for a month, but I wasn't around to pick up the phone when they called.) They wanted to sell me digital phone for $20/month.

They seemed so confident that I was going to switch. But I said no. And then they persisted: "I understand your resistance.....". What makes them think they're going to persuade me? (I know, it's in their script.) I had to think of something fast. Something that conveys, "No, no, hell no!" I thought, "Tell them I work for their competitor, or own stock in the phone company I have, and that switching over would create a conflict of interest." So I did. And it worked. I should have added, "Put me on your do not call list", but they were off the phone by then.

Don't people understand that if I want something, I'll go ahead and pursue it myself? I don't need people slamming me, trying to slam me, or verbally twisting my arm to buy their product. I hate that.

I often don't agree with what Fox News says, but this article has me agreeing with them. Hasbro had a pink Ouija board that was marketed toward teenage girls. Thankfully, it's being phased out.

I really don't believe this product -- or any other type of Ouija board -- should be marketed to anyone who isn't a serious practitioner of the occult. It's not "just a toy". There's too much potential for psychic and/or psychological damage.

( In the summer of 1985, I was witness to a bad Ouija board experience. )

One of the things I've wanted to do with my computer is to use it to digitize my record and tape collection, and convert them to audio CDs.

Last week, I picked up the Honestech Audio Recorder 2.0 at Big Lots. It's a package which contains adapter cables and software to perform audio capture and editing. Overall, the package is inexpensive and easy to use. It doesn't have any special settings to remove tape hiss or record scratches, though. And I had a hard time figuring out how to break up the audio stream into tracks.

So far, I've digitized two albums that I had previously recorded to cassette tape. One was a tape of the Caroleers' "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", a Christmas album I've had since I was in kindergarten. The other was a tape of Billy Joel's first solo album, "Cold Spring Harbor", that I obtained from a friend in high school. This 1971 release has notoriety because it was mastered at a speed slightly slower than normal, resulting in Billy's voice sounding higher than natural. The album was re-released in 1983, but the orchestral tracks were removed.

One thing I've discovered is that the source has to be high-quality to have a CD-quality result. Cold Spring Harbor was recorded on one side of a TDK D C-90 tape nearly 30 years ago, and whatever high range it had has been lost. As a result, the final product sounds a bit muddy. I'd very much like to get my own copy of the original 1971 album and re-digitize it, if I can find a copy. I think I saw a copy on EBay for $40.

I may have talked about this topic already in my LJ, but I can't find the original post.

I think my first exposure to keyboard-played bass lines was in 1974. The tune was Gino Vannelli's "People Gotta Move". It just had this incredibly groovy funky sound to it. Soon I was hearing synth bass in other songs -- Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City", Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver", and so on.

I think I have the right-hand chops to play synth bass lines on the Minimoog or any other keyboard. I just need an opportunity to do so.

(I need a better computer icon. This one is supposed to denote complexity.)

Some time ago, a few of you were discussing the technique of putting a dead hard drive in the freezer in order to revive it temporarily -- long enough to get all the data off it. How's it done? I remember double-bagging the drive so that it doesn't get any water inside it.

A few months ago, a good friend gave me an external Iomega hard drive unit that failed. Inside was a Seagate 1.5 Tb disk. I plugged it in and I couldn't read anything from the drive. Not even my GetDataBack program could do anything with it. So now I'm considering the freezer trick.

In the last couple months, two hamburger places -- Five Guys and Smashburger -- opened near me. I've since visited both. I would have to say that Smashburger has the edge for me. I like their Smashfries, seasoned with rosemary and olive oil. And I can select my cheese (I prefer Pepper Jack).

Some folks I know aren't crazy about the name. It comes from how they cook their burgers -- they smash 'em on the grill.

I don't think I'll go back to McDonald's, unless I'm with my daughter.

What are your favorite burger places?

This past month, I've used Ubuntu Linux almost exclusively. There have only been a few times where I've needed to use Windows or Windows-based apps. One was to download some videos from YouTube.* Another was to rip a CD.

One major disadvantage of Ubuntu Linux is that I've found is that many laptop modems don't work with it. That's because many PCMCIA modems are really winmodems, using the OS to perform some of the functions that a normal modem would use. This would impair my ability to use a Linux laptop or PC in places where I don't have a network available, such as my mother's house.

Other than that, I intend to keep using Ubuntu Linux whenever and wherever I can.

*I know I can download videos using youtube-dl. But it doesn't give the .flv file a nice name. I've been looking for PyTube but the website that it's supposedly on is no longer available. [Updated 22:15] I found a copy of PyTube at http://www.marcosrodriguez.me/pytube/.

Last night, I went to a friend's New Year's Eve party. I left at around 1:30am and got home soon after that.

Woke up at 11am. I pretty much stayed in my sweats and wool socks all day as I watched the Tournament of Roses Parade, the NHL Winter Classic, the Rose Bowl (OSU Bucks won), and the Gator Bowl (UC Bearcats lost). In the meantime, I made some bread in the bread maker and cooked a batch of chili for dinner. And I cuddled with the cats.

Is this how I intend to spend all of 2010? Probably not. But it was nice to have been a lazy slug for a day.