Author Archives: anachostic - Page 25

Migrating Music

Posted by on August 2, 2018 No comments

I had mentioned in my last post that I was testing out the possibilities of streaming my music collection throughout my house and elsewhere.  The experiment has been pretty successful and I believe the cat is all the happier for it.  Some of the “phase 2” features I’ve been digging into haven’t been as easy to implement as I would have hoped, but there’s no rush on any of those.  But in the process of learning and applying, I made what could be considered a radical change to my music collection.

In long-ago posts, I’d talked about ripping my CDs to MP3, then re-ripping them in WMA Lossless only to delete it all and keep my MP3s.  Then the light bulb came on and I re-ripped them again to WMA Lossless and have kept that library for years now.  It’s grown to nearly 450GB and has served me well all this time.

Why WMA Lossless?  Well, I was in the Zune ecosystem all that time.  The Zune software was compatible with WMA and it was the only way to get lossless files onto the players.  For many years the open source crows have been squawking, “FLAC! FLAC, FLAC!” and I have been ignoring them.  Because of Zune, of course, but also, all the available FLAC music players sucked.

But finally, Microsoft caved to the pressure and built FLAC support into Windows 10, and the Groove player also now supports FLAC.  I still had my WMA library and was fine with it.  But in reality, I didn’t really use the Zune software much anymore, I just used VLC (which supports FLAC) instead. 

During my experimentation with Plex, I enjoyed a neat little feature that lets you see the current server activity.  That means I can watch the living room TV’s stream and see what song my cat is currently listening to.  Something that caught my attention on that screen was a status that said “Transcoding WMALOSSLESS to AAC”.  This was mildly concerning.  It meant that my media server was spending extra CPU converting my media files to a format the Roku on the TV could handle.  My server is pretty beefy, so like I say, it was only mildly concerning.  However, when I streamed my library to the GF’s Roku on her TV, I experienced some slight dropouts or other minor disruptions in the audio.  I wasn’t sure if this was a bandwidth problem or a conversion problem.  I read up a little on FLAC and it seemed FLAC might be a better choice for efficient decoding and possibly for streaming.

I gave this a little consideration.  If I converted my entire library to FLAC, it’s likely I wouldn’t need to do any transcoding anymore.  I could still play my files with VLC or Groove or Plex – no more Zune devices.  Is there really any downside anymore?  And so, I downloaded a program to batch convert my entire collection to FLAC.  It was about 4 hours of processing time, which actually isn’t too bad.  All the metadata was preserved (and some bad data was exposed along the way).  And I saved about 50GB of drive space, too.  I deleted my old WMA files and replaced them all with FLAC.

Because my collection was all new files, I had to refresh the Plex database, which probably means I’ll have to clean up the artwork again, but that’s fine.  I also need to rebuild the playlists I’d been curating, which is more of a bummer, but hopefully it’s a chance to do it better this time.  I quickly recreated the cat’s playlist and when I streamed it to the TV this morning, the activity monitor in Plex stated “Direct Play”.  No more transcoding – success!

Because I’m generally a contrarian, it hurts just a tiny bit to fall in with the FLAC crowd, because they’ve always been a bit pompous, like “if you’re not using FLAC, you’re an idiot” in the same way Linux people tout the wonders of their chosen OS.  But, the solution is working and I can’t complain about that.  So, now I have an Android phone and a music collection in FLAC.  I suppose the next thing I need to do is start coding in PHP and Angular.JS.

KATT Radio – Late Night Jazz

Posted by on July 24, 2018 No comments

My CD collection is pretty large right now.  I’ve surpassed 1200 albums and I’m not sure there’s ever going to be an end to the growth.  Sometimes, the realization of this prompts some soul-searching and the question comes up, “why?”  Yes, why do I do this?  What is the actual goal?  There is no real goal, it’s just an ongoing feeling of happiness, tending my collection like a garden.  But sometimes, the thought sneaks in, “That’s a lot of stuff to have.  You can only listen to one CD at a time.”

That’s right.  It is a lot of stuff for such a limited use.  It’s too bad I couldn’t share the awesomeness of it all with people.  And that thought led me down a path that ended up with me considering another potentially obsessive hobby – running a radio station!  You can get low-power AM radio station licenses pretty cheaply.  I started thinking up radio programs and what kind of expenses would come along with such an idea.  Everyone knows there’s no live radio now and all DJs pre-program their sets in advance.  I could easily do that, right?  No one really wants to hear my voice, so it wouldn’t be a banter kind of station, just music.  Hell, anyone can create a playlist, right?  That’s all a radio station is anymore.

But that idea faded as I thought about the reality of trying to make enough music shows (I mean playlists) to keep the station interesting (as I daydream about upending my local radio stations… ha).  So I considered an easier route:  An Internet radio station.  And I researched that and found I could get licensing for about $60/mo, and the licensing software would integrate with some common radio software.  I looked in the radio DJ software and immediately felt less enthusiastic.  It’s like my dilemma when I want to do music.  You have to master this software before you can actually start a project.  And by the time you understand how, you don’t care anymore.

At the same time I was kicking around this idea of broadcasting in my mind, I was pursuing another thought.  The idea that I had all this music doing nothing was nagging at me a little.  I do rip all of my CDs to my home computer (sitting at about 430GB right now) for playback at my desk.  And the idea that I could only really play it at my desk was a slight annoyance.  That’s a lot of music to sit there and do nothing.  So I gave consideration to how to broadcast it.  It would be a nice start to have devices throughout my home that could play my ripped music.  It would be even cooler if I could play it from my phone, anywhere.

As it turns out, there is such a way to do it.  Actually there’s plenty of ways to do it.  And the idea wasn’t all that new to me.  Back in my Zune days, there was a way to have Zune broadcast your music and videos to an XBox.  And I was actually sort of on board with that.  But since I never actually went through with buying an XBox and pursuing the “media center” dream, I had to reconsider my options.  As it turns out, the old XBox software grew up and broke its dependency on XBox.  That software is now called Plex.  And this software will broadcast to all kinds of devices, near and far.  Lots of people use Plex to share their music and videos with their friends.  That’s pretty cool, whether legal or not.

So I installed Plex on my home computer and had it go to town on my music library.  It grabbed a ton of info on my albums and artists from last.fm and it was flexible enough to let me edit anything left over on my own.  I went out to my living room and installed the Plex client on my Samsung TV.  It worked, which was impressive.  What wasn’t impressive was my TV’s sound quality.  So, I wrote the experiment off as useless.

Fast forward to today, I was dealing with cat issues.  My new cat has millennial-grade anxiety about everything.  Every sound freaks him out.  He hid under a bed for days, leading me to think he was dying.  But in the short time I’ve had him, I’ve discovered he likes music – a lot.  He likes a lot of the new age, smooth jazz instrumental music I like.  So I thought I would start playing it while I was out of the house, maybe to keep him chilled out.  I was getting ready to grab a Sansa Clip MP3 player and was sort of dreading all the work that would go along with that.  The player needs charged, I have to choose the music to play, the music has to be transcoded to fit onto the Clip, there won’t be a lot of music on there.  This was going to suck.  But wait, I have my entire music library available to stream to my TV.  And I doubt the cat is going to be overly picky about the sound quality…

So I popped back on the living room TV and this time installed the Plex client for the Roku.  It installed quickly and I was off and browsing my collection.  I chose Acoustic Alchemy, which was the music he had heard on his transport to my house.  I played all tracks from all albums on shuffle.  And it just worked.  My TV has a video mode where you can turn the screen off and just use the audio, so I didn’t have to worry about screen burn-in.  I think I have a solution here.

I came back from dinner and the cat was not hiding under a bed, so I consider the music plan a success.  I will try again tomorrow while I’m at work and see how well that works.  And in time, I can build a huge playlist of instrumental songs for him – his own radio station.

He Just Snapped

Posted by on July 19, 2018 No comments

Just so we’re clear where I’m coming from, I’m old.  In Internet years, I’m a fossil.  But I am an active user of technology, so I do have at least a small idea of what’s going on in the world.  Because of my age, a lot of things fall into the “I don’t understand this” bucket.  Not because I don’t understand how to use it, it’s more an issue of why would you use it.

I’ve only recently gotten into the modern phone game (meaning Android), having been a Windows Phone user for its limited lifespan.  And I recall one must-have app that caused a lot of WP users to move on to Android or iPhone – Snapchat.  So when I did upgrade to a can-do mobile OS, I was sure to install and utilize Snapchat.  Snapchat falls so hard into the “I don’t understand this” bucket, it punches a hole through the bottom.

First, the app offends me from a technical perspective.  I do understand that all modern applications have eschewed any form of friendly UI design and that design quality is called “clean” or “immersive”.  That design style involves removing all identifying command buttons, so you have mystery navigation where you have to randomly tap and swipe to figure out what the apps capabilities are. This app is no different.  Resource-wise, Snapchat is a killer.  I will give this a pass because the real-time video filters are impressive.  But, man, it hurts my phone.

Next, the app offends me as a photographer.  Here is the full text of their website home page:

Snap Inc. is a camera company.

We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way people live and communicate.

We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.

I am painfully aware that the word “photography” is not used anywhere in that manifesto.  And if you wanted to take issue with my issue about Snapchat offending me as a photographer, you could use that against me.  But for the main populace, a camera is the gateway to photography.  And photography is about recording a moment in time.  And what does Snapchat do?  It makes photos that disappear.  That’s the opposite of photography.

An advertisement for Snapchat says: “It’s a camera for talking because a Snap says more than a text.” This is probably true in the sense that a picture is worth a thousand words.  But if that picture disappears, your words have been lost.  You have said nothing of value.  The ad also says, “So, yeah, Snapchat is a camera—where how you feel matters more than how you look.”  This is clearly a dig at Instagram.  I have read elsewhere that Snapchat is intended to be used spontaneously instead of having heavily “produced” photos like those in Instagram.  But that goes back to recording a moment.  You plan and produce an Instagram shot to capture a mood (or feeling) to be shared. So yeah, Snapchat is a camera, where how you look or feel doesn’t matter.

Next, the app offends me as a communicator.  If you haven’t noticed, I blog.  I also email and text.  When I write something, I am creating something.  It’s meant to persist.  And what happens in Snapchat?  It doesn’t.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a picture or a chat, it’s all disposable.  It’s “living in the moment” as Snap wants you to.  It’s a YO-fucking-LO, get out of jail free card, where your past can’t be brought up to hold you accountable for your actions.  At the same time, it’s an admission that you don’t matter.  The things you create are not worth permanence.  The past is useless and there is no reason to preserve it.  How depressing.  And maybe that’s how things are for the youth of today.

But how about those filters?  I said, they are impressive.  It’s a very clever use of technology, but it’s also pointless.  The issues I take with Snapchat dovetail nicely with the filters.  “…How you feel matters more than how you look.”  Oh really?  I’m going to call bullshit on an app that distorts every face into an anime-grade caricature, smoothing out skin blemishes, enlarging eyes, contouring cheeks – it’s all about how you look.

But it doesn’t really matter anyway, because it’s all transitory.  The silly augmentation filters, while good for a laugh today, are going to be the MySpace embarrassment of the future, if any images manage to survive.  Wait and see.

New Cat Journal, Part 2

Posted by on July 11, 2018 No comments

I got a new cat last night.  It’s the same cat I got last Saturday, but it’s definitely a different cat.  He’s changed from a timid lap cat to an obnoxious, wild kitten.

As I’d discussed previously, new cat Charlie has been having a pretty rough go in his new home.  He has been scared of everything, every sound, every room, every corner.  All he wants to do is sit in my lap in the office and be pet.  His food, water and litterbox are all in the office, so he has no reason to ever leave.

Yesterday, I had to go to work, like most people have to, so that left Charlie in the house all by himself for about 10 hours.  When I got home, as soon as I got in the house in the laundry room, I called him, hoping he would be out of the office.  Well, he wasn’t in the office.  I eventually found him in the laundry room, tucked in a corner.  I walked right by him and he didn’t make his presence known.  Sigh.

The night went on and Charlie got his attention in the office, but I had to go to bed, like most people have to, so I left him as I had before and went to bed.  At around midnight, Charlie starts crying for me.  I wake up and go give him some attention.  I go back to bed and around 1:15, the crying starts again.  This time, I carry him back to bed with me.  I make him stay on the bed for a while and he seemed mostly happy, but restless.  So I let him jump down and figured he’d just disappear under the bed for the night, which would be perfectly fine as long as I could get some sleep.

Instead, Charlie started exploring the bedroom, closet, and bathroom.  Because I know he hates the open area between rooms, I picked him up and carried him back to the office.  I put him down a little outside the office and sat down on the floor.  Charlie wasn’t interested in going in the office and sleeping.  He was now interested in exploring, as long as I protected him.

So we worked our way around the house and just like that, Charlie got all of his confidence back.  He jumped up on the bar bench, the kitchen counter, and drank from the open-area water bowl, then we worked our way back to the bedroom.  He jumped on the bed, crawled under the bed and came right back out, went in and out of the closet.  All things he was too afraid to do before.  So, great, he’s fine with the house now and I can go to bed.

No, I can’t.  Charlie also found his voice.  He’s quite vocal.  He chirps, squeaks, and meows a lot.  And he’s active.  He jumped on and off the bed many times, laying against me, then leaving over and over.  I got little to no sleep.  And on top of that, he suddenly decided he likes chewing on fingertips.  So petting his head has to be done in a very careful manner because he used to just headbutt, but now he snaps at you.  The change in personality is drastic.

We’ll have to see how he behaves when I get home tonight.  It’s always a mystery bag getting a new cat.  You never really know what you’re getting.

New Cat Journal

Posted by on July 10, 2018 No comments

Saturday, I brought home a new cat.  It’s been exactly two months since I lost my old cat.  This was an adoption from a friend of a friend.  His name is currently Charlie, but it’s hard to say what it will eventually be.  He’s your average white and multicolor tabby cat. 

I drove him home today and this is the first cat I’ve had that does a freakout in the cat carrier – scrabbling and thrashing around.  He was so spastic he scratched his own nose.  Great, injured on the first day of parenthood.  That makes me look like a perfect pet owner.  However, I turned on some smooth jazz and he was chilled out for the rest of the trip.

Then when I got home, I let him out of the carrier and he was expectedly a little upset by his new surroundings.  I let him do his exploring, which didn’t really go how I expected.  After leaving him on his own for a little bit, I went in search of Charlie and he had jammed himself in a corner behind a drawer unit.  That’s pathetic.  He let me reach in and pet his head, so he wasn’t panicked, just scared.

A little while later, he came out and hid a little more in the open.  I picked him up and he was ok with being held a little.  I sat with him on the floor and he stretched out against me but after a bit, he went back to his corner.  The next couple hours were spent on the floor beside me while I wrote this.  I once carried him out to the kitchen area where his food and water were and he had no interest in it, slinking back to the office.  I guess if there’s going to be a favorite room for Charlie, the office might as well be the one.

His acclimation took quicker than I thought given his initial behavior.  He started coming out of the corner to my hand within half an hour.  He would chill out beside me at the desk.  Sometimes he would do some quick grooming licks, which was encouraging.  Within two hours he would jump up onto my lap on his own accord.  During an extended lap session, he started swishing his tail.  Up to that point, he had kept his tail tucked or tight against his body in a fearful posture.  He explored and sniffed some objects nearby, but still was skittish at every sound the house made.  I don’t think he realizes he’s the only cat here.  Now he’s on the floor stretched out and grooming, tail extended.

Charlie ended up spending the first night in the office alone.  When I woke up in Sunday morning, I went to see him and he was sociable.  I carried him to the master bedroom and held him on my lap while he stressed about being in a new room.  After a while, I let him down and he slinked back to the office.  Once back in his room, he was happy again and I praised him for the effort.

A couple hours later, I pulled him back to the bedroom and tried again.  Charlie was less upset this time and when he jumped down, he didn’t leave the room.  Instead, he crawled under the bed.  The foster family told me he likes to hang out under furniture, so I figured this would be fine.  He spent many hours under there.  When I would check on him, he seemed content, stretched out or grooming.  Lots of yawning.  But he didn’t want to come out just yet.  After about 8 hours , Charlie still had no interest in coming out.

At the 11 hour mark, I’d had enough.  He wasn’t coming out for food or play or petting, so I pulled the mattress down and dragged him out.  He didn’t protest, but at the same time, he did not like the transport through the house to “his room”.  Once in his safe zone, though, he started purring again and was eager to jump up and sit in my lap.  Then he noticed the food and had his dinner.  Then more lap time.  Then down on the floor.  Then MORE lap time.  He’s a pretty clingy cat when he’s not hiding.  If he had his way, he’d sit in my lap all day.

In the second overnight spent in the office, Charlie used his litterbox, which I consider a great success.  In the morning, he was eager for his wet food, and drank a lot of water while I supervised.  As far as I can tell, he hasn’t explored outside the office, although at one point earlier in the evening, when he was happy and excited, he unexpectedly chased me into the hallway.  Without wanting to push his comfort level, I stopped and we went back into the office, where he stayed.

Thinking back to Rump’s acclimation process, she spent many of her first days shut in the spare bedroom.  Ever since then, that was “her” room.  If you were in her room, she was very pleased to spend time in there with you.  I expect the same thing will be true of Charlie, that he will always have his room in the office.  As long as he gains enough confidence over time to roam the house, that will be fine.  But we’re only on day three right now.  Plenty of time to grow.

I Can’t Sleep – Web Crawl

Posted by on July 5, 2018 No comments

This crawl started by seeing AK in a snapchat picture with a BK+Budweiser filter.  I wondered what that bullshit was all about and ended up reading a press release saying Burger King had a limited time burger for sale.

The burger was hyped as best as it could be, I suppose.  It was a double cheeseburger with more shit on it.  The part that caught my eye was “features two savory flame-grilled beef patties totaling more than ¼ lb.* of beef”  Wow, guys.  Two patties to make a quarter-pounder, huh?  I’m not going to say it’s more than a quarter pound, because otherwise they’d be bragging it was 1/3 pound.  Or maybe not, since stupid Americans don’t understand 1/3 is more than 1/4.

Anyway, that got me reminiscing about how I used to love double cheeseburgers at BK.  They were the absolute best value on the menu.  And then they shrunk the fuck out of them around the great recession, 2008 or so.  I wish I could prove it.

Maybe I can.  I went looking for nutritional information and ended up on a site that had these impressively accurate meter thingies about the BK double cheeseburger.

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Does the taste good?  Of course the does!

And from this page, I got a number, a serving size.  171 grams, which is .377 pounds and must include the bun.  So, how do I find out how good things were back in the day?  Well, I use my favorite tool for exposing embarrassing facts, the Wayback Machine.

Looking at the nutritional info for the double cheeseburger on BK’s site from 1999, I get another number, 198, which is .436 pounds.  So, you do the math and see how much it’s lost over the years.  Tip, calculate it as a percentage to make it sound more impressive.  The Fake News Media does it all the time. (Seriously, I don’t care which side you’re on or what you believe.  If you see an article on anything that only uses percentages, be skeptical.  They’re selling it to you.)

But that’s not the end of the data.  After I got the serving size from the old archived BK website, I felt like an idiot for not just going to the current BK site instead of this “Durr, click Delicious or Disgusting button, pleez” website.  And when I went to BK’s current site, I got yet another number. As of May 2018, the size of a double cheeseburger is 148 grams, or .326 pounds.

To summarize, in 1999, BK’s double cheeseburger was .436 pounds, and in 2018 it is .326 pounds.  That’s a reduction of .110 pounds, which is a 25% reduction from the 1999 size. Oh no! Percentages!  I’ve destroyed my credibility by at least 108%.

Things I Can Do Without

Posted by on June 30, 2018 No comments

Whether my newest CD finds are 80’s pop (Phil Collins) or 80’s metal (Mercyful Fate), I am constantly irritated by shitty lyrics.  it could explain my preference for instrumental music.  The two previously mentioned examples have shitty lyrics for completely different reasons, but most of my gripes are with pop music.  Last night was Loverboy and I think I pulled a muscle rolling my eyes so much.

At the top of my hate list for shitty lyrics is rhyming girl with world.  I’m not a huge fan of near rhymes anyways, but this combo just really grates on me.  It’s not like there aren’t other options, even if they are somewhat weird.  “Curls” and “pearl” (both Rick Springfield) or “unfurl” (XTC) are somewhat daring choices to rhyme with “girl”, but whenever I hear “girl” in a song, I will sing along and try my damnedest to fit in the most superior rhyme: squirrel.  You should try it too. 

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She’s an American squirrel.

This has to be a well-known substitution, but anyway… It’s shitty that so many songs want to talk about love, but the options for rhyming with love are terrible.  You know them all: shove, dove, above.  There you go.  Instead, just start changing the word love to drug or drugs (drug if using love as a verb, drugs if noun).  It is a universal replacement.

Another sore point for me is how songwriters completely do not get the concept of “forever”.  Forever is a long time, and even if the song says that line specifically, it’s still not accurate.  Forever is forever, long after everything in the universe has died.  And you want tonight to last that long?  You’re insane, buddy. You’re going to wait that long?  It’s impossible.

Along with forever is the reference to eyes.  Oooh, eyes are the window to the soul.  So expressive!  So vulnerable!  Yeah, well, notice how often songwriters will use 3 beats when talking about eyes: “in your eyes”, “in my eyes”, “sultry eyes”, back door eyes”, “(dun) (dun)… eyes”.  Here’s a game changer for you.  Next time in your car playing secret karaoke with the lame pop music blaring, substitute any of these three-beat phrases with “penis size” and see how often it fits.  Try it now. 

It took so long to realize/I see you now through your lies/There’s got to be more to love than…

Revisiting Taxes

Posted by on June 22, 2018 No comments

For a few years, I used to do a post on taxes, specifically regarding the “marriage penalty”.  It was a rant post because I was married at the time and we were getting dicked over by this penalty.  Things have gotten a lot better in that regard lately (as in me getting divorced), so I stopped making those posts back in 2013.

I saw a post by someone who was complaining that the new tax laws were changing his taxes for the worse.  By using an estimating calculator, he had to increase his withholding rate, but was getting more back per paycheck.  It sounds like a strange con game, give me more and I’ll give you more.  And simply because of that weirdness, I got wondering how the marriage penalty shakes out under the new tax law.  So I went looking.

Here’s the surprise, there is no marriage penalty anymore (for the common person).  If you are a married filer, your tax table breaks at 2X the single income – at every bracket.  Except… if you make over $300,000 each.  Like I commented, not the common couple.

It would make sense that any tax “improvement” would offer a gain for normal income people and a proportionally higher gain for extraordinary income people.  That’s a gripe for another post.  The point of this post is that the marriage penalty is gone.

Just for retrospective kicks, let’s look at what could have been if we did not have the tax “reform”.  Looking at the 2017 tax brackets, as in all other years, the disconnect happens in the upper tier of the 25% bracket.  If you are single, you would be bumped to the 28% bracket at $91,900.  If you have two married people making $76,550 each, that couple will be taxed at 28%.  That is the marriage penalty – you are bumped to a higher tax rate sooner from your combined wages.  Said another way for clarity, if you and your partner made $77k each and were not married, you each got taxed at 25%.  Then you get married and with no change to your salaries, now you’re paying 28% in taxes.  And that sucks even harder if you get married later in the year, because your employer has been withholding taxes expecting you to be in a 25% bracket.  You will have less withheld when you do your taxes and learn you’re now at 28%.

You might think this new tax table is awesome, especially if you were previously hit with the marriage penalty, but it’s not better or worse, just different.  The marriage penalty primarily affects DINKs (dual-income, no kids), especially young professionals, and in these modern times, married gay people.  The tax system up to now has favored and encouraged one married member being a breadwinner and the other being a homemaker.  This high income of the breadwinner has no extra income from the homemaker and is able to utilize the full deduction of both people against one income.

So, now that the incentive is gone to have two people living under one income, all the people who structured their marriage in this way, on purpose, or by accident, or by default, they are going to pay more in taxes.  That could be the case for this post I read.

The (Sea) Eagle Has Landed

Posted by on June 9, 2018 No comments

It was many years ago, in 2012, that I started the hobby of kayaking.  I was fresh into a new relationship and had experienced kayaking for the first time.  It was pretty clear that tandem kayaking was probably not going to work out for us.  That meant I needed my own kayak in which to isolate my terrible paddling technique.

As luck would have it, Woot was selling inflatable kayaks at a pretty good price, so I bought some.  Two is some, right?  I did the research and these kayaks, by Sea Eagle, were pretty well respected.  Obviously they had their detractors – those who would never use anything but a solid kayak.  But, there are a lot of conveniences to be had with these inflatables.  The most important is that I could transport it in my MX-5.  Not only that, but I could transport both of them.

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Years have gone by, and I’ve been wanting an upgraded version of the Sea Eagle.  I find it very odd they have such a good entry level model at a reasonable price, $200, but if you want the real deal, the model that really earns its keep, the price is over $1000.  There’s nothing you can do in-between?  Damn.

So I watched and waited.  Actually, I let CamelCamelCamel do the watching.  When I created the watch, the Sea Eagle model I wanted was a little over $1000.  I set my target price at $850.  And I got nothing, for almost a year.  I had nearly completely forgotten about the watch when I got an email notification that the kayak was now being sold for $822, and that was the cheapest it had ever been.

Part of me wanted to sit back and think about it.  The other part of me went to Amazon and saw there were only two left in stock.  There’s a lot of expenses that have suddenly crept up on me lately, so I couldn’t justify buying two of these, so I just bought one.  The next day, I went back and the price on the remaining one had gone up slightly to $835, so I guess I did the right thing.  A few days later, that one remaining kayak was up to $913, so, yes, I think I did do the right thing.  However, that’s not the cheapest I’ve ever seen them.  Woot, of all places, once sold the Fast Track model in the $600 range.  Now that’s a great deal.

The package arrived a couple of days earlier than the the initial tracking estimated.  The box was compact and heavy, just as I remember my other kayaks arriving.

I inflated it to get an idea of how it compared to my original Sea Eagles.  There is no comparison.

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Where the SE330 hugs your sides, the 385FT gives you plenty of width.  The floor in the FastTrack is firm and has little give.  The material on the FastTrack is substantial and much less pliant.  I’m left it inflated overnight to let it sort of stretch out.  And of course identify and potential leaks.  It was fine for days (because I’m lazy).

I have yet to take the craft out, but I am eager to try it out this year.

Getting By Giving Back

Posted by on June 7, 2018 No comments

A while ago, I was reading a forum thread about why record stores keep closing.  The majority of commenters posited that it was either Amazon killing them off or that physical media was dead and gone.  But among the “hear hear” for the majority, there were a few anecdotal stories of local stores that were doing well and those voices were defiant.  They made the point that a well-run record shop is a prize to the community, nearly on par with a library, as they both serve the artistic needs of a town.

I am lucky to have a very robust music store in my general area, with two locations that constantly have new stock to browse through.  My downtown used to have a used CD store, which closed, then another opened, with a half-hearted selection, then closed.  Recently, another music store has opened, which I have visited occasionally and each time, I do find something to buy when there.  That’s a pretty good sign.  Their CD selection was relatively slim, but always had interesting items.

So after reading a lot of these posts about how your local store is to be treasured and valued, because honestly, they do have it rough, I decided to stop by my local shop after work to browse around and maybe throw some money.  When I got there, I saw they had greatly expanded their CD section, which was good for me.  I ended up picking out a few albums.  As I was browsing the CDs, I was reminded of one of the sub-topics discussed in the forum.  If a store’s inventory becomes stagnant, the store is not going to make it.  They must have fresh new inventory to attract return customers, and there needs to be enough diversity of existing inventory to capture new customers.  It’s a difficult balance to keep.

While considering that, it dawned on me that I could help this store in more ways than just buying from them, I could sell to them and increase the quality of their inventory (I’m actually a modest person).  On one of my other blogs, I do comparisons of different CD masterings, which necessitates duplication.  I have a few duplicates in my library from that side project.  As I paid for my new CDs, I asked the owner where she sourced her CDs from.  She replied that it was just people selling their collections.  So I told her I would bring in my dupes for her to evaluate.

Today, I took them in.  Probably about 80 CDs in a large canvas grocery bag.  She pulled out the first handful and flipped through them.  I said, take what you want, skip what you don’t, I won’t be offended.  After the first handful, she said, this is a very good start.  So I left her to see the rest and browsed the CD racks.

Shortly, she calls to me, “I’ll take all of it for $80.”  I said, there’s nothing in there you don’t want?  I’m thinking, you really want 3 copies of Van Halen, two copies of Heartbeat City and that other unknown stuff?  She said there was some stuff she didn’t recognize, but that was fine.  The price was more or less a dollar a disc, which is actually much more than I expected.  I would expect a buck for the well-known stuff and maybe 50 cents for the unknown or hard-to-sell stuff.  So we had a deal.  I walked out with $80 (Well, I bought a $3 CD anyway) and an empty bag.  I said I hope they move quickly for you and she said it wouldn’t be a problem, there was a lot of great music there.  Intentional or not, it made me feel good about my collection.

And I do hope they sell.  The prices at that shop are usually $3-5 for a used CD – a fair price, so she has the opportunity to make a few hundred in profit if she can sell them.  And I couldn’t have made a dollar a disc on EBay with all the effort of photographing, posting, mailing and the materials and postage.  It should be a win-win for everyone, and I supported a local business in the process.

It was a good day.