I'm almost done listening to the original spindle of MP3 CDs. The counter has been updated. Nearly 12,000 songs and 750 hours of listening time. Wow.
However, at the moment, I'm hitting a bit of a brick wall as far as patience goes. From the original spindle, I'm left with: 1 CD of Elvis, 4 CDs of Kiss and 1 CD of Smashing Pumpkins. Not alot of variety there. You tend to get tired of listening to the same three voices.
Luckily, today I brought in the majority of the MP3 CDs that I had left at home. Some of those are just random goodness from the days of random websites and Napster when it was rare to find complete albums. There would be days where I would find someone with a huge collection and a super fast connection and would just download everything they had. Those were the ones that really paid off 'cause you would end up with just randomness from ABBA to Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa. I found out about alot of groups that day and purchased many CDs because of that. So I've got those to look forward to.
I also have... (sound of dread) ... 2 DVDs and 3 more CDs full of Elvis to get through. At the time, I was in a big Evlis phase, or at the very least a big Elvis downloading phase. I think it was RCA that had all of Elvis' records out on CD in a 50 CD collection, which were numbered. That is the worst thing you can do to a complete-ist. I did manage to get them all, thank you very much. I also found LOADS of outtake CDs from his movie soundtracks and many many soundboard and audience boots out there as well. Did I really need every day of his 7 day stand at some casino in Las Vegas. I dunno. But I have it.
On the upside, I brought in my Have A Nice Day collection which consisted of 28 CDs (2 MP3 CDs) chock full o' 1970's goodness. That will be a nice relief. Then there are the others that I already had here at work: Another DVD full o Kiss, DVD full o Chicago, a DVD full o BeeGees, 2 DVDs full o Pop Culture goodness (anything from Superman 'audio comics' to children's records to Sammy David Jr. Christmas albums), ... looking at pile ... 1 DVD full o Smashing Pumpkins (I also had a SP phase, can you tell?), CD full o King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, DVD of Beach Boys (lots of outtakes), CD full of 80's music, DVD o Rush, CD o Genesis, DVD o random Rock goodness (lots o ben folds), DVD o Pink Floyd, DVD o Beatles (I don't recall exactly what's on that), CD o random Rock goodies, DVD called Metal Mayhem, 2 DVD of Psych and Garage Band goodies, hey... there's my copies of Dream Theater's Score album... and a few more... other than the 50 random CDs which I talked about earlier.
But I'm glad that I'm almost to that milestone of getting through that spindle. I figured it would take me a while. I guess if I think about it, it's taken nearly a year since I believe I started this project about the time I started my new job. Ha!
I remember in H.S. listening to all of the cassettes I had. That took me nearly a year as well. I had alot of cassettes. Had? Still have. They're down in the basement keeping the cats company. Same goes for all my CDs. That took something like a year and a half. But I got through it, and I'll get through all of these MP3s as well.
Here's to another year of music!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Kill Bill Vol. 2 and other things this weekend
This weekend was, well, a weekend. But I got some things accomplished and that is good.
What did I do on Saturday? In the morning, I got my hair cut. It had been about 2 months and I was starting to look like a scruffy Beatle wannabe. After that I went to Lowe's to pick up some shit for fixing some things in the house (see discussion on that below). When I got home, the wife, the kiddo and I _tried_ to go to Sonic for lunch, but it was a bust with all the 'stalls' filled up and the drive-in lane literally all the way around the building. So we ended up going to Chik-Fil-A instead and then straight back home. That was a bit of a disappointment, but, on the upside, at least we have a Sonic in Columbus now. And man, they make some tasty hamburgers (and chili dogs... and I really really want to try their country fried steak sandwich). Oh yeah, and I got a migraine after we got back so I took some meds and laid down for a few hours.
I really worked about as fast and hard as I could at work on Friday. That left my brain spinning and my neck all in a twisted mess. I wasn't even recovered when I woke up Saturday as I still felt woozy. It's not often when I wake up with a headache, but Saturday was one of those days. Luckily, this coming week is the last week for testing this Build of the software. It's been pretty rough on me. My hours may not compare to some factory workers, I know 'cause I've done that too, but it still doesn't mean that I don't become physically fatigued and more so mentally fatigued. Just knowing that after next week, I'm done for a couple of weeks (plus, having the help of others help me catch up on the test cases) is starting to put my mind at ease.
Oh yeah, so the wife and I came up with a list on Friday of what needs to be done upstairs and downstairs in the next few months. The good ol' Honey-Do list. I dread the Honey-Do list, but, for someone like me who is... well just weird about getting shit done, it's a good thing. I dread putting it together, but then it gives me something to drive for. It also puts things into perspective. If it's not all laid out, I tend to bunch it all into one big ball of sh*t and it just starts getting to me and I freak out in the way I tend to freak out. But once there is a list, usually I see that it's not _that_ bad of a list and I'll start cranking sh*t out.
So, when I got up today, I had it in my head that I would get some sh*t done.
1) Fix the light switch in the office. This has, no lie, been in my head as being something that needed to be done for no fewer than 9 months. So today, I got out the screw driver and fixed it within 15 minutes. Why it took this long, I have no idea.
2) Fix the toilet in the master bedroom. It's been 'making dripping noises' for the past few weeks and it was driving my wife nuts, which pretty much means it drives me nuts. I had the same problem with the guest bath about 2 years ago. So I bought the parts yesterday and, hell, they had the exact same kit that I used before. So it went fairly easily. Only one 'where the hell is this water coming from moment' and after I figured out what I did wrong, I remembered that I did the exact same thing 2 years ago. It is the next to last step where you're attaching the guts to the main water line. There's a little fastener that connects the two and I was so focused on that part that I forgot to do the OTHER fastener which makes the guts snug to the tank. Duh! Getting ahead of myself. So once I got that figure out, the rest was peachy.
That's it for the official Honey-Do list.
So after I did those two things, I went to the library, picked up my reserved copy of Kill Bill Vol 2, went to the store, picked up my meds, did some grocery shopping, came home, handed the wife the groceries (which she quickly put away as I lugged two 40lb. boxes of kitty litter into the basement.
Then I sat down in the basement on the computer with the headphones plugged in so I wouldn't wake the little one sleeping directly above me and watched Kill Bill Vol 2. I enjoyed it much more than Vol 1. I'm sure that's partly because I could hear the actors and the music and the sound effects whereas with Vol 1 I had to pretty much watch it on mute with subtitles. But I also think I liked the direction of this one more. As Quentin says in the 'Making of...', Vol 1 was done more in the Shaolin samurai movie kinda vein whereas Vol 2 was more Spaghetti Western-ish. Yeah, I can see that.
I watched the extras (what few there were) later on in the evening. I learned from the Kill Bill Diary that David Carradine wrote, that there was this fight scene with this huge black guy that got cut. David said he hoped it would make the DVD extras. It did. But it was, honestly, a bit disappointing. It was much shorter that I was expecting. Seemed like it only lasted 4 minutes, though I'm sure it was longer than that, but probably not by much.
Anyways... I'm babbling. And I need to get up bright and early tomorrow so I'm just gonna end it here. Sorry that most of my thoughts tonight were only half-written. I don't consider myself much of a critic, so I tend to just stop myself before I go there. I guess that's how it goes sometimes. I can tell you, though, that the mexican meatloaf my wife made this even was tasty! Yummy stuff.
G'night!
What did I do on Saturday? In the morning, I got my hair cut. It had been about 2 months and I was starting to look like a scruffy Beatle wannabe. After that I went to Lowe's to pick up some shit for fixing some things in the house (see discussion on that below). When I got home, the wife, the kiddo and I _tried_ to go to Sonic for lunch, but it was a bust with all the 'stalls' filled up and the drive-in lane literally all the way around the building. So we ended up going to Chik-Fil-A instead and then straight back home. That was a bit of a disappointment, but, on the upside, at least we have a Sonic in Columbus now. And man, they make some tasty hamburgers (and chili dogs... and I really really want to try their country fried steak sandwich). Oh yeah, and I got a migraine after we got back so I took some meds and laid down for a few hours.
I really worked about as fast and hard as I could at work on Friday. That left my brain spinning and my neck all in a twisted mess. I wasn't even recovered when I woke up Saturday as I still felt woozy. It's not often when I wake up with a headache, but Saturday was one of those days. Luckily, this coming week is the last week for testing this Build of the software. It's been pretty rough on me. My hours may not compare to some factory workers, I know 'cause I've done that too, but it still doesn't mean that I don't become physically fatigued and more so mentally fatigued. Just knowing that after next week, I'm done for a couple of weeks (plus, having the help of others help me catch up on the test cases) is starting to put my mind at ease.
Oh yeah, so the wife and I came up with a list on Friday of what needs to be done upstairs and downstairs in the next few months. The good ol' Honey-Do list. I dread the Honey-Do list, but, for someone like me who is... well just weird about getting shit done, it's a good thing. I dread putting it together, but then it gives me something to drive for. It also puts things into perspective. If it's not all laid out, I tend to bunch it all into one big ball of sh*t and it just starts getting to me and I freak out in the way I tend to freak out. But once there is a list, usually I see that it's not _that_ bad of a list and I'll start cranking sh*t out.
So, when I got up today, I had it in my head that I would get some sh*t done.
1) Fix the light switch in the office. This has, no lie, been in my head as being something that needed to be done for no fewer than 9 months. So today, I got out the screw driver and fixed it within 15 minutes. Why it took this long, I have no idea.
2) Fix the toilet in the master bedroom. It's been 'making dripping noises' for the past few weeks and it was driving my wife nuts, which pretty much means it drives me nuts. I had the same problem with the guest bath about 2 years ago. So I bought the parts yesterday and, hell, they had the exact same kit that I used before. So it went fairly easily. Only one 'where the hell is this water coming from moment' and after I figured out what I did wrong, I remembered that I did the exact same thing 2 years ago. It is the next to last step where you're attaching the guts to the main water line. There's a little fastener that connects the two and I was so focused on that part that I forgot to do the OTHER fastener which makes the guts snug to the tank. Duh! Getting ahead of myself. So once I got that figure out, the rest was peachy.
That's it for the official Honey-Do list.
So after I did those two things, I went to the library, picked up my reserved copy of Kill Bill Vol 2, went to the store, picked up my meds, did some grocery shopping, came home, handed the wife the groceries (which she quickly put away as I lugged two 40lb. boxes of kitty litter into the basement.
Then I sat down in the basement on the computer with the headphones plugged in so I wouldn't wake the little one sleeping directly above me and watched Kill Bill Vol 2. I enjoyed it much more than Vol 1. I'm sure that's partly because I could hear the actors and the music and the sound effects whereas with Vol 1 I had to pretty much watch it on mute with subtitles. But I also think I liked the direction of this one more. As Quentin says in the 'Making of...', Vol 1 was done more in the Shaolin samurai movie kinda vein whereas Vol 2 was more Spaghetti Western-ish. Yeah, I can see that.
I watched the extras (what few there were) later on in the evening. I learned from the Kill Bill Diary that David Carradine wrote, that there was this fight scene with this huge black guy that got cut. David said he hoped it would make the DVD extras. It did. But it was, honestly, a bit disappointing. It was much shorter that I was expecting. Seemed like it only lasted 4 minutes, though I'm sure it was longer than that, but probably not by much.
Anyways... I'm babbling. And I need to get up bright and early tomorrow so I'm just gonna end it here. Sorry that most of my thoughts tonight were only half-written. I don't consider myself much of a critic, so I tend to just stop myself before I go there. I guess that's how it goes sometimes. I can tell you, though, that the mexican meatloaf my wife made this even was tasty! Yummy stuff.
G'night!
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Breaking the 10K mark
Well, finally broke the 10K mark on ye olde Music Counter. Actually, I passed it a while ago. I'm about it pass the 11K mark now. But no matter. The Kiss MP3 CDs have been going rather quickly. Actually, they all have been since I've had to keep my head down and my fingers testing. And when you're pulling 10 / 11 / 12 hour days they tend to move along a little faster as well.
The hours are starting to wear on me, but I think the 9 hours I got last night helped out quite a bit. I went to bed at 9pm. It's been a while since I've done that. Woke up at the ass-crack of 5:45 this morning, my wonderful wife was already up with our sick daughter and made me some bacon and eggs. It was quite a nice way to start the day. Then at lunch, I got 10 Banquet meals for $5.38 _with_ tax! They had some BOGO coupones in the freeze section for pot pies, so I got 5 of those. Then the reg meals were 10 for 10. And on top of that, K Rogers was having some weird promo where, if you bought 10 banquet meals you got 2 dollars off your bill automatically. Wootage! So yeah, 10 meals + 5.38 = awesome. Better than the $2 I would spend in ONE MEAL at McDs.
Um.. what else.. I already exclaimed about my 50 musicals DVD thing. Still haven't had a chance to watch any yet. I wonder when my Kill Bill Pt 2 will be coming in. Started reading a book on bad casting in movies. Like John Wayne as Gengis Khan (sp?). Yeah, how that got through the studio heads is beyond me. That's a good book for when you're not really in a reading mood. You read one little blip and then you can be done and not retain ANY of it to memory like you would with a reg piece of fiction or even a biography. I made a feeble attempt at starting Turn Turn Turn, a book about the folk-rock revolution of the 60's, but I don't think I have the mental capacity for that right now. It's like 300 pages, which wouldn't be a big deal, except that it's in microscopic font... so 1 page is like 3 pages of regular text, which makes it a 900 page book. And nil pictures. It's put out by Hal Leonard, so I think it might be used as a text book as well.
The Dilbert calendar hasn't been that good this year, but I'm sure it'll pick up. It's Dilbert which means it ALWAYS applies to me. I see the project creep mentality first hand. Except, 'round here it seems to be feature swipe, where it's in your project until they look at the time line and don't like it, so they swipe it from your project and put it on a later project.. which makes it this huge thing... and then when they look at that project's schedule... you can guess what happens. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Um... been having some odd dreams lately. One involved me looking around a warehouse full of pillows to find two matching ones that would look ogod with the couch, but they had to be on sale with a little orange clearance sticker.
And this morning, I had another one of my 'I'm late for school' dreams. So, I was heading to school and following some dude who 'knew the way' and had to cut through a shipping warehouse (at which point he disappear)... I ended up on top of one of the trucks but then safely swung down and ran out the back door... but then I noticed at some point I lost my pants and was wearing only boxer shorts... and I didn't have any in my gym bag. At first I thought that maybe I could just go to school that way, but then decided that maybe falling out in the middle of class might be frowned upon, so instead of going back through the warehouse, I attempted to go back home another way which involved cutting through an old apartment building. At that point I started to get mugged, until a TV crew showed up. So the main mugger dude (there were about 8 of them) put his arm around me like we were pals, to which I responded to by repeatedly punching him in the face, which didn't seem to phase him. And then I woke up. Yeah, take that one to your shrink and see if they can decipher THAT. At least there wasn't an overflowing toilet. That's a common reoccurance in my dreams as well.
Well, I gotta get back to the grind. Later!
The hours are starting to wear on me, but I think the 9 hours I got last night helped out quite a bit. I went to bed at 9pm. It's been a while since I've done that. Woke up at the ass-crack of 5:45 this morning, my wonderful wife was already up with our sick daughter and made me some bacon and eggs. It was quite a nice way to start the day. Then at lunch, I got 10 Banquet meals for $5.38 _with_ tax! They had some BOGO coupones in the freeze section for pot pies, so I got 5 of those. Then the reg meals were 10 for 10. And on top of that, K Rogers was having some weird promo where, if you bought 10 banquet meals you got 2 dollars off your bill automatically. Wootage! So yeah, 10 meals + 5.38 = awesome. Better than the $2 I would spend in ONE MEAL at McDs.
Um.. what else.. I already exclaimed about my 50 musicals DVD thing. Still haven't had a chance to watch any yet. I wonder when my Kill Bill Pt 2 will be coming in. Started reading a book on bad casting in movies. Like John Wayne as Gengis Khan (sp?). Yeah, how that got through the studio heads is beyond me. That's a good book for when you're not really in a reading mood. You read one little blip and then you can be done and not retain ANY of it to memory like you would with a reg piece of fiction or even a biography. I made a feeble attempt at starting Turn Turn Turn, a book about the folk-rock revolution of the 60's, but I don't think I have the mental capacity for that right now. It's like 300 pages, which wouldn't be a big deal, except that it's in microscopic font... so 1 page is like 3 pages of regular text, which makes it a 900 page book. And nil pictures. It's put out by Hal Leonard, so I think it might be used as a text book as well.
The Dilbert calendar hasn't been that good this year, but I'm sure it'll pick up. It's Dilbert which means it ALWAYS applies to me. I see the project creep mentality first hand. Except, 'round here it seems to be feature swipe, where it's in your project until they look at the time line and don't like it, so they swipe it from your project and put it on a later project.. which makes it this huge thing... and then when they look at that project's schedule... you can guess what happens. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Um... been having some odd dreams lately. One involved me looking around a warehouse full of pillows to find two matching ones that would look ogod with the couch, but they had to be on sale with a little orange clearance sticker.
And this morning, I had another one of my 'I'm late for school' dreams. So, I was heading to school and following some dude who 'knew the way' and had to cut through a shipping warehouse (at which point he disappear)... I ended up on top of one of the trucks but then safely swung down and ran out the back door... but then I noticed at some point I lost my pants and was wearing only boxer shorts... and I didn't have any in my gym bag. At first I thought that maybe I could just go to school that way, but then decided that maybe falling out in the middle of class might be frowned upon, so instead of going back through the warehouse, I attempted to go back home another way which involved cutting through an old apartment building. At that point I started to get mugged, until a TV crew showed up. So the main mugger dude (there were about 8 of them) put his arm around me like we were pals, to which I responded to by repeatedly punching him in the face, which didn't seem to phase him. And then I woke up. Yeah, take that one to your shrink and see if they can decipher THAT. At least there wasn't an overflowing toilet. That's a common reoccurance in my dreams as well.
Well, I gotta get back to the grind. Later!
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