Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Lately....

Here's a brief update of all kinds of stuff...
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The one job that I was really pulling for gave me a 'not at this time but maybe later'. That was very much a drag and very depressing for me, but I'm getting my head back up and will continue on the search.

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Ian and I went to the record show. Well, it's more like we were in the same building since we really didn't get to talk much and we didn't do lunch afterwards. I managed to get 6 or so albums. Amazingly, most of them WEREN'T dollar bin records. I got an album called 'Moog España' which I've already listened to. It is what it sounds like... some 'spanish' songs done with a Moog synth. Not horrible, but not that good either. I picked up a Railroad Sounds album on the Audio Fidelity label; this was a record I remember that my dad had that I played when I was growing up (listen to it on YouTube here). I picked up some bizarro album that I can't even describe except to say that it is a 1950/1960s album in the Hawaiin/Polenesian vein of things. For $3 I finally picked up the Rollings Stones 'Sticky Fingers' album with the zipper on the cover. I also picked up Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds (released in 1978); obviously there is still come interest in this since there is actually a web page for it. I swear that I picked up another album or two, but I can't remember them for the life of me.

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When I got home from the record show, the wife asked if I was going to listen to any of the albums I bought. I then realized that since moving into the house a year ago, I hadn;t actually hooked up the record player. So, I went downstairs to do that. I don't have a proper stereo to play it through anymore, so I knew I was going to have to hook it through the computer, which was fine since I wanted to rip some of the albums. Well, let me tell you that the onboard audio for my PowerSpec is, to put it politely, very tempermental. When I was recording the Devilcake stuff for Ian, I pretty much had to restart the computer every time I stopped Cool Edit because it would get all confused. Plus, it wouldn't let me monitor anything so I was kinda doing everything blind. I wouldn't know if I had a good signal until I stopped Cool Edit. Anyhoo... the last time my parents brought more of my crap back from Portsmouth, they brought one of the few remaining junker PCs. It pretty much only has a motherboard, a case, an old 4x CD drive and.... a sound card. Since it was a computer I build for my parents, I think, or maybe it was one of my original ones that I gave to my parents... anyways... it had a 5.1 sound card / game card in it. I plugged it in and of course, being Vista Home Basic, it puked on the plug and play. But I refused to be denied so I cracked open the computer case again and tried my best to find my model number and all that happy crap. And, with a few swift keystrokes I had the Vista drivers. I hooked up the record player into the mixer board Todd gave me eons ago (while tempermental, missing some knobs and occasionally gives some nasty feedback if the cords aren't just so, it's still works like a champ), plugged the mixer into the Line In and viola. I had sound. Luckily Vista didn't get all weird and it worked without me really having to do anything. Thank goodness. So I ripped the Moog España and another album, Walter Carlos By Request whilst half-watching the Super Bowl. Looking forward to ripping some albums.

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I have too much crap in my house. Note, I said "I" not we. Whlie my Mrs may have some things, she also moved alot and any non-essential things were usually tossed in the transition. Me? I never moved that much and continually moved into a bigger place each time, so I kept everything. Well, now I don't have as much room for things but the piles are the same size and there is STILL more stuff in Portsmouth. So I'm going to have to do some soul searching, some selling and some trash dumping. I am admittedly a collector of just about anything. I like things. I don't like throwing things away that still have purpose. So I tend to keep things WELL past the time that most people would have chucked them. But, honestly, being in my little man cave is now a bit suffocating. There's just too much stuff and it all my stuff. So, it's got to go. I tried doing a CD purge before the last garage same and only managed to fill up one CD tower. I have 8 or 9 or something. And that's not counting the 5 or 6 boxes of CD boxsets. And it's certainly not counting the 600 cassetts I have. Nor is it counting the teb 12x12x12 uHaul boxes full of LPs. Or the one crate full of 78s. TOO MUCH STUFF. And that's just the music crap. That's not counting all the other things I keep which ... honestly.. i can't even enumerate or even elaborate on. Obv, it can't mean THAT much to me if I can't even put into words what I have.

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I've determined that "Storage Wars" on A&E is very curious to watch. I mostly enjoy it, though you can usually see how each episode is gonna play out. Dave's just an ass, but he has the money and skills (and luck) to shut most people up. Jerrod gets pissed off with Dave and usually ends up spending too much money on things (though sometimes, like for most, it works out). Darrell despises and taunts Dave with every molecule in his body... and of course Dave usually returns the sentiment. And Barry, never seems to know what he is doing and just baffles me to no end on the things he purchases and keeps and whatever.

I also started watching Gold Rush Alaska on Discover. I've only seen one episode, but it's gotta be close to the end. Basically these guys sunk 250k into equipment and leased a plot of land known for having gold. But they wasted 3 months using their homemade equipment that pretty much didn't catch any gold for various reason. So now, they've fixed the stuff but only have like 6 weeks or so left in the season. It's bizarro how you could sink that much money into and not do ALL of your homework. Sure, the dude's dad was a miner at one point, but cheese and rice, make sure that what you've cobbled together is going to do SOMETHING other than catch much and let all the gold flitter away downstream. C'mon!

3 comments:

Ian Stewart said...

Nice haul at the record show!

And I'll take whatever assorted music crap you wanna unload, records CDs or tapes or whatever. I still listen to at least two of the discs you gave me the last time you purged your stuff. (Those would be Aztec Camera and Xymox, fyi). I can expand into the crawlspace.

i

Todd S. said...

And...if you manage to fill I's crawlspace, I have a shed that's largely going unused. Just saying. If you need some space (not like a LOT of space...but...what's there you're welcome to. My salt and pepper shakers won't mind).

Darrin said...

Thanks guys.

I checked and the other two LPs I picked up were:

K-tel - Power Play (I'm certain I have this one already, but it's one I grew up with and I'll be damned if I'm NOT gonna have a copy of it. This copy is REALLY clean, so regardless, it was worth it.)

Walter Carlos - Clockwork Orange soundtrack. This should be good n freaky. I've seen the movie. It's not as violent as everyone seems to think it is. Are there disturbing scenes. Yes. Would they pale in comparison to graphic horror movies like Hostel and Saw. You betcha. Shocking in 1970 or whatever it was, but would probably be PG-13 now.