New Tech and Old Tech

So, almost a month ago, I bought a new external hard drive, and shuffled around our home network a bit.  The way it had been was an network attached storage (NAS) with an external via USB, plus a smaller external attached directly to my computer.  Our music collection (as well as shared photos and other documents) was on the NAS-external, and syncing our iPods was something we would do over a weekend.  It was just slow.

With the new external, I moved the small external to the NAS and each laptop got an external.  Then the real shuffling began.  The NAS and its external are formatted with a UNIX file system.  So there was a bit of file movement to perform.  And some other things as well.

1. Attach new external to my laptop, and copy (over wifi) complete contents of old NAS-external to new external.
2. Connect old external to my laptop, reformat, and copy contents.
3. Connect small external to NAS, reformat.
4. Connect old external to Jennifer's laptop, redirect iTunes look locally for files
5. Redirect iTunes on my computer to look locally for files
6. Spend some time deleting music of Jennifer's from my external
7. Spend more time renaming folders for consistent naming.
8. Realize the majority of folders have been renamed, so re-import music for iTunes.
9. Reorganize playlists
10. Attach iPod to re-sync, get notice that Windows needs to run a disk check.
11. Check disk crashes iTunes, making restart necessary.
12. iTunes requires Restore of iPod, but Restore locks up iTunes, and three repeated attempts yields same results.
13. Attempt Restore using Jennifer's laptop, locking iTunes again.
14. Setup appointment at Appel Store - Genius Bar.
15. Go to Apple Store.  iTunes not seeing iPod, but Genius gets it working after a few restarts of iPod.  iPod is Restored, but iTunes is not seeing the iPod.  I am wished luck.
16. Plugging iPod into computer brings up Checkdisk requirement again.  I hold my breath and do it again.  This time no crashes.
17. iTunes require a Restore of the iPod.  I hold my breath, and do it.  Again, no crash.  Trying to hide excitement.
18. After Restore, iPod begins syncing.

Now, as I mentioned before, syncing the entire iPod (an iPod Classic with 160 GB) used to take from Friday night and often run all weekend and might be done by Tuesday morning.  I was about 30% synced in less than 3 hours.

And so, happily, when I got up this morning the sync was complete.  So all is well, and I can put off buying a replacement for a while.  But I may buy one anyway, just to have a spare.

In the Village

So, I have three songs by the Village People on my iPod.

One is "YMCA", because it's "YMCA".

Another is "In the Navy", because it's also a fun song, and has good memories attached to it.  I remember more of the emotions associated with it, but they're happy and fun parts of childhood.

The last is "Go West".  I first heard this last one in the movie "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert".  It's jsut one of those songs that strikes all the right chords.

So today, on my ride home, I was just about to turn onto Alcatraz Avenue, and "Go West" came on.  That kind of thing just has to be acknowledged.

Minor Expectations

One thing I've been noticing recently with the iPod is that the song you expect to follow the song you just listened to is not the song that comes up.

For years I listened to cassette tapes and CDs, and learned what song was next. The albums were ordered and song followed song in a way that I got used to.

For example, I was just listening to "Cuddly Bear" by the Monkees. It used to always be followed by the deep bass drum beginning of "Randy Scouse Git."

No longer with Shuffle, but I'll still take my over 6,700 songs on shuffle than having to flip a cassette tape, or change the disc.

***

Yeah this is rambling and incoherent. Oh well.

iPod People

Yesterday I went on a bit of an adventure.

I had been having issues with my iPod. It would hang after syncing or when I would disconnect from my stereo. Also, it would skip on certain tracks. well, I guess not skip, but pause in the middle of a song for a second and then resume.

So i took it back to Costco, and got a refund. Unfortunately they were not carrying the 160 GB Classics at that time, so I had to go on the hunt for an iPod somewhere else. I called Fry's and it rang and rang until it disconnected. Then I called Best Buy, and let it ring. I got tired of waiting for an answer, so I drove off for Best Buy. It disconnected after ringing for seven minutes. I called again, and it kept ringing. Finally, I arrived and hung up.

It turned out that they did have the 160 GB Classic, so I bought it with my refund, plus a bit more because it was a higher price.

Today, I got an e-mail from the Best Buy Reward Zone. It was three coupons for 10% different items. One of those items was small electronics including MP3 players and iPods.

I printed the coupon out, and after my workout, I stopped by Best Buy. I went up to the returns desk, and placing the receipt and the coupon on the counter said, "Yesterday, I bought an iPod, and today in my e-mail I got this coupon..."

Without even needing to say anything else, the woman at the register, took the receipt, refunded the purchase, and then re did the purchase with the coupon. So it worked out that I got a new iPod for about 10 dollars cheaper than my refund from Costco.

I'm happy. And I'd recommend either Costco or Best Buy for electronics purchases. I've had great luck and good service at both stores for many purchases.

A Bit of Randomness... Or Not

At present, my "Rock" playlist has 6,276 songs in it. I call it "Rock" for simplicity sake, but it does have the occasional instrumental (like the soundtrack to Batman Beyond) and one or two Enya. But otherwise it's a pretty good classification.

And so I've tried various ways of sorting it. Sorting my albums groups too much, and alphabetical sorting gives too many repeats of covers and such. For example I probably have four versions of "Across the Universe".

So I play it on Shuffle.

One must remember that Shuffle does not necessarily mean Random.

Now I'm sure that if it truly randomly selected songs that there is an approximately 1:6000 chance that I would get repeated artists, but there are days it seems to happen way too much. Perhaps there's an algorithm I don't know about, but it still seems odd.

***

And as an aside, may I just say once again how crappy the dictionary is for the Blogger spellcheck?

Music and Memory

So today I've had three songs so far come on my iPod that make me think of people from my past.



"Michelle" by The Beatles - A girl I was fascinated with in college, and I believe was named for this song. One a related note, my first crush (in second grade) was on a girl named after The Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann".



"Don't Give Up" by Peter Gabriel - My senior year of high school, I got turned down from all of the universities I applied to. I listened to this with my then girl friend, Kim, and the two helped me through it.



The Extremist by Joe Satriani - I wasn't paying enough attention when this came on to track the song title, but the whole album has importance to me. My friend Steve (SecondLife not The Rooster) drove me to my first and only Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) event in Stockton. He said I could go through his music and choose what to listen to, and I found this album. We left it in and it was the soundtrack for the drive to and from the event. I think this was the point where Steve went from being just an RPG buddy to a full on friend.



There are a lot of other songs that I catch that bring back other memories. Any that were on the radio in early 1984 remind me of Ultima III (which I got for Christmas 1983). Sometimes I'll be in a store and some song will come on over the music system, and I'll turn to Jennifer, and say, "This is an All-Skate." And the music from 1995 to 1997 is embedded in my head from being in grad school.



That's why I love my iPod.

Things I Hate

Primarily, waking up at 3:00 and not being able to go back to sleep.

Secondly, managing my iTunes and stupidly having the CTRL key down when de-selecting one song... which then de-selects ALL of my songs. If it weren't for playlists, I'd be totally screwed.

Incomplete

Some things never seem to be done.

We're still working on our office at home. We did pick up a piece of furniture at IKEA on Sunday (Expedit sofa table) which we'll be using as our table for our printers and scanner. We also got some good ideas for the craft table. It has a light table option. And then there's some cabinets and shelves. It really congealed as we looked.

And then if Jennifer has as busy a week as it looks, then we'll finally be able to get me my new laptop. And then we'll just need our Network Attached Storage (NAS), and we'll be all set at home. The prices aren't too terrible really, so I have to decide between 2, 4, or 6 TB. Probably the 4TB would be best for storage and back-ups. Buffalo (which is the brand of our current external storage) has nice ones with two USB ports. That way we could tie in the 500GB to the NAS, and the printers as well. I'm getting kind of Igor (Dork Tower, not Frankenstein) over it all.

And then as far as incomplete, I keep finding something about my MP3 files I want to update. First it was getting artwork for all of the files. Then it was assigning grouped tracks (like "of 12" if there were 12 tracks on an album). Now I feel I need to assign the Album Artist. Don't ask me why. I think it's the blank spaces. They must be filled up.

And finally there's my adventure that I have just under two weeks to complete. Forget for now that we still need to get chairs for the game. I have a skeleton of a game structure, I just need to add traps... I mean, flesh it out.

Okay, not finally, but I also am having a dilemma over what to read next. I have First Man, the biography of Neil Armstrong, but I'm really tempted to re-read the Discworld series. Again.

Pom and Painting and iPods

So Pom has been fine. No more insane perfume and potpourri smell. Jennifer wants to keep her inside all the time, but that'll just driver her crazy.

I did a little more painting on miniatures. I'm, working on Jennifer's mini and one called Spirit of the Forest. He'll make a great wood elemental. And my mushrooms are not going to be all sweet and spotted either.

And then Sunday, I killed most of my evening having to rebuild my main playlist. I was meaning to delete a song from the list, but I hadn't selected a song yet, so it deleted the whole playlist. I had to reconstruct the list of over 6,000 songs.

My knees and ass were sore from sitting so long.

Stuff and Such

I got Jennifer's iPod all loaded up last night. She is very happy.

I gave up trying to read Deus Irae by Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick. Insanely too surreal for me. I remember slogging through it as a college student, but I don't feel the need to try so hard this time. So I'm on to Coils by Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen. It'll help keep me in the mood for our GURPS Psionics campaign.

It turns out I'm going to be traveling to Seattle at the end of April. I'm going to meet a friend and see a play she is directing. And sight see a bit.

And finally, I vow never to buy a Mazda unless they come up with cheap fusion cars. the people at the Mazda dealership in Santa Clara have been rude and unresponsive over some access issues. I hope to get it all worked out by the end of this week, but if not our schedule is going to be screwed.

Now with Three Quarters Capacity!

Today Jennifer picked me up for lunch and we went to Costco where we finally got her a large capacity iPod. She's been running around with a 2GB antique. Plus she was upset with my comparing our players and telling her she had 1.25% of the capacity of mine.

So we bought her the biggest that is available: 120GB.

Now she's only 75% of mine.

My assignment tonight is to load hers up. This'll be fun.

"Blow Me Away" - MP3 Divination

So I'm bringing something cool over from Facebook (yes, there are some cool things in Facebook). It's reminiscent of bible divination where you ask a question and open the bible and point to a verse. This one involves putting your MP3 player on shuffle, and after you read each question, you press the skip button, and then write down the title to that song in answer to that question, no matter ho strange or inappropriate it is for that song.

Of course the Facebook thing is to get others to do it to you, but I'll put it up here just for the weirdness. And hope for others.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY? "High Hopes" - Pink Floyd {Possibly.}

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY? "Devilman" - Rob Zombie {Not as such.}

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL? "Birdhouse in Your Soul" - They Might Be Giants {This could work.}

4. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE? "Junkie Doll" - Mark Knopfler {Getting someone off stuff, maybe.}

5. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO? "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free" - Sting {It worked the time that counted.}

6. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU? Theme song from "The Flash" - Danny Elfman {Well, aside from CSUS band flashbacks, I'll take this in a positive way.}

7. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN? "That's All" - Genesis

8. WHAT IS 2+2? "Stop Trying" - Huey Lewis {... okay}

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND? "Freeing One's Mind" - Dialogue from Mallrats

10. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE? "Sun is Shining" - The Fireman {... you make me happy when skies are gray...}

11. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY? "Why Don't You Come Over" - Garbage

12. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? "Justin" - Korn {Not really.}

13. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE? "Angry Chair" - Alice in Chains {Not gonna touch this one.}

14. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU? "Rock is Dead" - Marilyn Manson {Geology is defunct? Really?}

15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING? Main Theme (Expanded Version) from "Futurama" - Danny Elfman {Nope}

16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL? "I Don't Love You" - My Chemical Romance {I here I was hoping for "I Grieve" by Peter.}

17. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET? "Only the Good Die Young" - Billy Joel {Does that make me evil?}

18. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS? "Sleep Together" - Garbage {Do they really?}

19. WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN? "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist" - Muse {Whole new insights.}

20. HOW WILL YOU DIE? "What I've Done" - Linkin Park {All my fault.}

21. WHAT IS ONE THING YOU REGRET? "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" - Me First and the Gimme Gimmes {Do you?}

22. WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH? "Desire" - U2 {If it's done right.}

23. WHAT MAKES YOU CRY? "A Thousand Years" - Toto

24. WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED? "Blue Blue Sky - Eric Stewart/Alan Parsons {meh.}

25. DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?"Human Beings" - Seal {Animals only tolerate me.}

26. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE? "First We Take Manhattan" - Leonard Cohen {::whiff:: Swing, and a miss.}

27. WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW? "Second to None" - Styles of Beyond {Yup.}

28. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS? "Blow Me Away" - Breaking Benjamin

Christmas Travel and Music

The weather was just good enough to fly on Tuesday, so we are now in Portland.

Today Jennifer and I spent the morning shoveling the in-laws' driveway. It was a fair trade for the drive they had to make from Yamhill to PDX and back to pick us up. And the shoveling wasn't too bad with two of us doing it.

It was above freezing by about 10:00, so the melt was on for quite a while. I'm sure it's dropped back below, but it's supposed to be above tomorrow, and then all day Friday, so we'll make it back to the Bay Area just fine.

While flying, Alanis Morisette's "You Oughta Know" came on the iPod, and it took me back to when it was a new song, and I was driving cross country with my cousin the Air Force pilot. We traveled fast, and made it to Louisville from Concord in 37 hours. With an 8 hour stop somewhere in Wyoming (or Colorado).

There are a few other songs that transport me. Most of them are ones that I used to listen to on the radio while playing Ultima III on my Apple II+.

Frustration

My MP3 collection is large and ever growing.

Last night I was taking songs off of the iPod and dealing with duplicates. Towards the end, I was selecting unconnected songs by holding the CTRL key down and then clicking on the song for later deletion. I made the mistake of clicking on the check box to load the song instead of just the song name.

iTunes then unchecked all of my songs.

Last night was a loss, and I know what I'm doing tonight.

I am sadness.

Music

Well, I found my extra headphone pads stash.

Music is much better than the silence of the office.

And through my random rotation I got to hear the main theme to the old "Alien Nation" television show. Great song.

Musica Caliente

I haz a new stereo. My stereo let me show you it.

So with my birthday money from my penitent in-laws (who forgot my birthday) and a little from my own, I bought a new stereo deck for my car. Now I can plug my iPod and play any of my own music there.

Jennifer has been able to do this for a while as she has a tape deck. So she's got a $20 adapter. My adapter cost a little more than that.

The fun part was getting it installed.

We decided to get the deck Friday night, and it ended up being after installer hours. So I went Saturday morning. It opened at 10:00, so I was there at 9:45 ready to go. They opened up, check the stock... They don't have the in-dash install kit. It seems the ones for the 2002-2004 Altimas are out of stock, and Best Buy was in-between suppliers. The installer called a local installer to see if they had the part in stock; they didn't. I said I would be back and ran over to Fry's. I tried calling, but couldn't get anyone.

At Fry's install center, I found out that first, they didn't have a spot available in their schedule until Monday (Best Buy is first come, first served) and that their computer system was down. The guy at that shop pulled out a catalog, and gave me the part number, and said good luck inside. I went inside, and called Circuit City to find out if they had one in case I couldn't find one inside at Fry's. It turned out that both stores had it. I found the unit at Fry's, and went to get in line.

Remember me saying that the computers were down? Fry's, home to techies and electronics geeks everywhere, was having to create hand written receipts on triplicate forms. It took me an hour to get through the line.

Back at Best Buy, I got an estimate, and was told it would be 45 minutes to finish the vehicle ahead of me (luckily just one), and then 45 minutes to an hour to install mine. This will put me right at 1:30 for completion. I have two other events for the day: John's Birthday Cook-out at 3:00 in Albany, buying food for the above, Yuko's Wedding Celebration party at 8:00, and getting a gift for the second above. Plus I hadn't had lunch yet.

Boys, time for a
walk.

So to Chipotle for lunch and a much needed beer, then Bed Bath and Beyond for a gift, Rite Aid for a Pepsi, and finally back to Best Buy. I still had about 15 minutes to wait, but they finished early.

So I got the stereo installed, and I love it.

Labor's End

Monday we finally slept in. We did get some ideas, and Jennifer said I could chose our splurge: a new deck for my car (something to play my iPod), or an iKick.

I was sold on an iKick when Uncrate said it was better than the Bose iPod dock... and was cheaper.

So we went to look at car decks first. Too many choices, and I still wasn't sure, so we went to Fry's where I had seen the iKick on sale.

WE ended up buying two. One for the library, and one for the bedroom. They're awesome, and I cannot recommend them enough.

Birthday - Part Three

And so the birthday finally comes to an end with Saturday's dinner and drinks with Jennifer and John.

We all took BART in, but Jennifer and I had the joy of waiting in the East Bay sun, dressed for San Francisco, for thirty minutes. First the northbound platform was out of service, so trains were coming on the other platform in both directions. Then the train came, we got on, and we told to get off since it was having trouble and was going out of service. But the train finally came, and we rode off to the City.

The ride was fun, I watched a movie on my iPod, and Jennifer listened to music.

We walked up to Scala's Bistro which was about half a block up Powell past Union Square. Jennifer trooped up in heels and said no more walking once we got to the restaurant.

John got me two really cool gifts (as well as paying for dinner for both Jennifer and me). First a great t-shirt, and then an even cooler necklace.

Then we went to Bourbon and Branch. That was amazing. The speakeasy atmosphere, and the drinks, and the decorations. That was a fun time.

It was a really fun evening with my wife and my best friend. I hope it's not long before we go back to B&B.

Musica Eclectica and Fun with Parentheses

So, as I have mentioned before, I have an iPod.

And I have a strange span of attention linked to an even stranger taste in music. This is the primary reason I tend to not say what I'm listening to while I post. (Face Down - The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus which has just switched to Rock of Ages - Def Leppard) I listen to quite a smattering of music, and yet, still don't listen to everything. I like the Beatles and Beach Boys, but would rather dislocate a digit than be subjected to the Rolling Stones. I like the Alan Parsons Project and the Genesis family including the solo experiments of the former members (Peter Gabriel is the best of those, of course). I like some 70s and 80s metal (mostly Def Leppard and Queensryche), but I continue to branch into other stuff like OK Go and 30 Seconds to Mars which are my newest favorites.

(Betrayed - Avenged Sevenfold)

But usually I can't read to "rock music" which I classify as anything with words and electricity. So I have a small collection of classical music which is not really experimental, but more the equivalent of the Billboard top 100 from the 1700s and 1800s. And then there is my first passion: Movie Soundtracks.

Now first of all, soundtracks are rarely rock music although those do pop up occasionally. My first real album was the two LP set soundtrack for Star Wars way back in 1977. I listened to it whenever I could, and for a while dreamed of joining one of the orchestras that did soundtracks. One of my time travel goals would be to go back in time and play under Karl Stalling and be the background music on the classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

So now I have a large collection of soundtracks (and scores too, as they are now stupidly called). And they are great for background music because I can envision the movie in my head as I hear the music from that scene. (The Rhythm of the Heat - Peter Gabriel) Of course there are some, specifically Jennifer, who can't handle the music playing in the background because the tension that the music is used to help build in the movie, becomes too much for them in the real world.

Now, it's not that the music I'm listening too doesn't affect me. I have several pieces that I cannot listen to in the car. I cannot listen to Gregorian Chant in the car because I used to use that as relaxation music, and I don't want to be that relaxed while driving. (House Full of Bullets - Joe Satriani) The dog fight music fleeing the Death Star from Star Wars makes me aggressive in a dodging around manner.

And I'll give you this free advice: Never listen to the theme song from Speed Racer while on the freeway. Ever.

My favorites remain John Williams and the full collection of Star Wars, but Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings trilogy is amazing. I need to get John's Harry Potters, but have almost everything else he's done. Did yo know that John Williams has done the soundtracks for nearly all of Steven Spielberg's movies? It's really an amazing range. Another recommendation I have is the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. Hans Zimmer does some great stuff. And of course, Danny Elfman and a new favorite in Steve Jablonsky and his score for the live action Transformers movie.

I leave you now (My Global Mind - Queensryche) to return to work, and my music.

iPodicus Restoratus!

So, Saturday I began having strange problems with my iPod. I'd had it outputting to the stereo in the library, and when I took it down I noticed that it squeaked. Now this is supposed to be a precision machine, and the last thing I would expect delicate electronic components to do is squeak. I mean, where would I put the oil?

So I very careful and cautious when I plugged it into my computer to adjust the playlist. And it started squeaking.

So, I got nervous. I unplugged it, reset it, and while the Apple logo was up for the reset it squeaked. Then I went to the Apple support page, and there was nothing about iPods that squeaked. I followed the Rs, and ended up going through all of them up to the Restore. I ran the restore (squeaking away), and then went to sync it, and it kept hanging between 0.75 and 1.3 GB.

So, I made an appointment at the WC Apple store, getting in Sunday afternoon. I went in, and told them what had happened. And of course it did what all devices do in the presence of a repairman... It worked fine. It loaded up over 2 GB and never squeaked. The Genius (I use the term as a title, not as a rating of the guy's intelligence, although he was very nice and understanding) said that if he couldn't experience the problem, there was nothing he could do. He did wrote down the problem on a business card, and said that if it happened again to come back in and talk to him.

So, I got home and tried to sync again. And it started squeaking. I immediately went and made an appointment for Monday afternoon. And things went incredibly smoothly. I went in, and the store was probably half the decibels (yes I know it's a logarithmic scale) it was on Sunday (less children mostly). And I'm all prepared to show it squeaking. I take a seat to wait, and they call three names of those with appointments before me, and none of them answer. So I'm next, and without even asking for him, I get the Genius who helped me on Sunday. I told him I had been there the day before with the squeaking drive, and showed him his card as a reminder. He looked at me and said, "Well, to show you I am a man of my word, I'm just going to switch it out for you."

So, I have a new iPod. The old one was only 3 months old, but now it's relatively pristine. I went home with trepidation, and opened iTunes, and plugged in the replacement in attempt to sync. It didn't squeak, and in began to fill up. I decided to read, and check it every chapter. And all through the evening it slowly filled up. By the time I went to bed it was over 35 GB and still syncing. This morning I had the joy of finding a completely synced iPod.

So, I am happy.