Category Archives: About Me - Page 17

All Things Must Pass

Posted by on May 10, 2018 No comments

It was a little over a year ago that I knew my phone was obsolete.  I was one of the few, brave Windows Phone users remaining and Microsoft had announced that there was a Samsung Android phone being sold as a “Microsoft Edition”.  That simply meant the phone was preloaded with all the MS Android apps and you could get assistance on using it at a Microsoft store.  Whee.

And this change was a surprise, but not really so, since there was a Microsoft division that was doing nothing but writing nice software for Android and iOS and not writing anything for Windows Phone.  The up-and-coming mobile powerhouse apps hadn’t been developing for Windows Phone for a very long time.  But none of that was a concern for me, since all I needed was a way to call, text, read email, and browse the web when I was bored.  And play Solitaire. A Windows Phone did all that just fine.  Until it didn’t.  And that became infuriating, because I don’t ask much from my phone.

Early in my WP days, I used to visit Yahoo’s news site, but then Yahoo changed something and the pages started locking up, where I couldn’t scroll anymore.  So, I switched to MSN and happily used their news site for many years.  Recently, though, an odd bug started happening.  After a minute or so on a page, the page would reload, sending me back to the top of the article.  And it would happen again a minute or so later.  And again.  Then the browser would literally give up.  It would display this message:

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Now, there’s a message to piss off your users.  “We’re having trouble so we’re not going to try anymore.”  And when you clicked Back, you didn’t return to the previous page, your history was wiped out and you went back to the Start page.  Keep in mind, this is a Microsoft device, using a Microsoft web browser on a Microsoft website.  And it doesn’t work.  I’ve determined the root cause of the bug is the advertisements injected into the page by script, but without any ad-blocker or other customizations, a fix is out of my control.

Another recent shutdown Microsoft did was of Zune>XBox Music>Groove Music.  I don’t use streaming services, so I didn’t think it was a big deal.  But I also didn’t think it was going to affect Cortana’s music search feature (which is like Shazam).  I searched for a song recently and I got:

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Good job finding that song.

So that’s it.  I made up my mind I’m going to do what Microsoft wants me to do, switch to Android.  Now, where before I had a few available models of Windows Phone, I now have a choice of probably thousands of phones.  Which one should I get?  As a creature of habit, I chose a new model from an old company.  The Nokia 6.1.

Soon, I’m going to be able to be up-to-date on all the apps.  I can start collecting rewards from stores and restaurants.  I can start tracking this and that through apps.  I can use any fitness tracker I want.  I can play games – all the games.  I won’t have to get all pissed off and feel left out when I see:

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And hopefully, I can browse a goddamn web site without the pages reloading until the browser just shits the bed.

I ordered the phone on Amazon for all of $287, which I think is pretty cheap.  What do current phones go for now?  A good place to buy Android phones is the Microsoft Store.  Let’s see.  5 models for sale:  1 Windows Phone (out of stock), 3 Android Samsungs, and 1 Android Razor.  They are priced from $699 to $929.  Nope, I will not be getting any of those.  I don’t need a $1000 Solitaire game device.

It Must Be Said

Posted by on May 8, 2018 No comments

Grief is a strange phenomena.  It’s more than strange, it’s insidious.  It lies in wait and pounces when you least expect it.  And sometimes it refuses to come out no matter how much you demand it to.

The grieving process is exceptionally singular.  No one can do it for you.  No one can tell you how to do it properly.  There’s no training for it, it’s simply a core emotion.  It would be hard to say grief is instinctual, since it’s closer to an expression of our individual personality.

So indulge me for a short while as I try to work through some of this difficulty and achieve some closure.  As much as I would love to write the tribute first and deal with the messy circumstances afterwards, where they could be reviewed sans emotion, I feel that ignoring the details of the experience might be akin to letting a wound remain sealed up to fester, instead of opening it up and airing it out to heal.

The grief I am processing is the loss of my cat of 13 years, Rump.  Her actual age is unknown, but she was an aged cat and had been showing signs of slowing down.  But with each of my three cats I’ve had in my life, the end is always brought about by a sudden physical disability that requires euthanasia.

Rump’s first sign of trouble was a few weeks ago when I noticed she was becoming very picky about what wet food she wanted to eat.  Around the same time, I noticed she wasn’t eating as much, or any, of her dry food.  She lost weight rapidly and her sides became sunken in.  She also became less social.  These symptoms also happened with my first cat, Mess, and although I’d never had it diagnosed, I assumed it was kidney trouble.

Very soon afterwards, Rump could not stand up on her hind legs and her right rear leg seemed weak.  Thinking the end was near, I started the golden treatment.  She was fed tuna fish twice a day, which she enjoyed immensely.  The fresh intake of food started filling her out and her leg strength came back.  This inspired hope, so I scheduled a vet appointment to see if her current condition was treatable.

The vet said that the hind leg issue was simply arthritis and the lack of eating was due to pain from an abcessed tooth.  They would need to extract the tooth, which was a fairly routine procedure and cats typically bounce right back after 12 hours.  So the surgery was scheduled and performed.  Along with the tooth extraction, Rump was caught up on all her shots.

When I picked Rump up from the vet, I was told she shouldn’t eat or drink for a few more hours, and that she was probably still a little dopey from the pain meds and anesthetic.  I followed their directions for that night.  Later that night, she got a little food, which she devoured.  I was a little concerned about the unsteadiness she was exhibiting.  She walked very unbalanced and was very distant.

Before bed, I checked up on Rump again, since she wasn’t coming to me, still being anti-social.  I was told the meds should wear off by 11 or so and it was around that time.  But when I comforted her and gave her attention, she just had a distant gaze.  One moment she turned sharply and stared down the hall, like she saw something.  Then she walked away from me and sat in front of the sliding glass door, staring at her reflection.  It was the most foreboding behavior I’d ever seen from her.  It was when I started to worry.

Rump did not come to visit me that night in bed.  When I woke up, she was sitting in the bedroom doorway, guarding the room.  Before leaving for work, I gave her a full portion of wet food, which she cleaned up in a hurry.  Her gait was still unstable, her back legs were weak.  I was happy to see her eat enthusiastically, but was concerned about her legs.

When I came home from work, Rump did not meet me at the door.  I called for her and she didn’t come.  Remembering how Mess began hiding when his legs started giving out, I started searching the house, dreading what I would find.  I found that Rump had been in the bean bag, because there was a puddle of urine in it.  Incontinence is a death knell, so my worry started settling into emotional preparation for what was to come.  I looked under the bed, I looked in the closet, then I noticed that Rump was curled in her bed in the bedroom, right behind me.  She didn’t make any sound of acknowledgement.

She had also urinated in that bed and had no interest in climbing out for me.  I picked her up, which brought out a pained meow and stood her up on the floor.  Her front right leg was paralyzed and her back legs were extremely weak.  Rump immediately went back into her bed and curled up.  So, this is it.

I called the vet, who told me to call a 24-hr vet hospital since their doctor had already left for the day.  I called the vet hospital and briefly explained that I needed put my cat down.  They set me up with an appointment in an hour.  It would take me about that long to drive there, too.

Rump was loaded up in the cat carrier because she proved mobile enough to jump – jump – out of her bed as I was carrying her in her bed to the car.  A stubborn bitch to the end.  The drive was long and somber.  Rump was quiet the whole way and rubbed against my fingers that were poked through the cage door.  At one stop light, I thought I could open the cage door and get my whole hand in there to pet her.  Nope, as soon as the door opened, Rump started pushing her way out.  Stubborn!

In the exam room at the hospital, I opened the carrier.  Rump charged out and I explained to the assistant that Rump just had surgery yesterday.  The assistant said, “And this is the result?”  It’s something I will probably never forget because of its (probably unintended) insensitivity.  I never intended to blame anyone for this.  Rump is an old cat and there are certainly risks with surgery, plus getting a heavy load of booster shots.  You can only hope for the best.

Rump and I waited for the vet to come in seated on the bench seat.  At times she was docile, other times, she wanted to roam.  I kept her by my side and tried to keep her calm.  The vet came in, checked Rump out and confirmed what we were going to do.  Then he took Rump back for weighing and installing an IV catheter to administer the drugs.

She was brought back to the room and I continued holding her on the seat.  The vet came back with a wee pad and a large pink towel that I could wrap Rump in.  He explained that they would be taking care of the billing soon, which is something I felt down about.  The last couple of times I’ve put my cats down, they perform the procedure, give you your time, then you leave and you get a bill in the mail, after a respectable period.  This paying in advance stuff was slightly hurtful for me.

At this time, Rump was alternating between sitting at my side against me and lying on her side on the bench.  I leaned down and listened to her chest.  No purring and a quick, light heartbeat.  She didn’t exactly seem “with it”, just dazed and staring.  On some level she was probably happy for me to be there, but I don’t think she was able to be interactive.  Rump then decided she wanted to be on the table, so I hoisted her up to the table onto the towel and she laid down right away.  I wrapped her up in the towel, to which she did not protest.  It’s not something she would ever have allowed before.

Once on the table and wrapped up in the towel, Rump fairly surrendered.  She stayed motionless and occasionally, I would check her heartbeat.  It seemed to be fading quickly.  I thought if the doctor doesn’t hurry up and get in here, Rump is going to go all on her own.  Then it struck me.  Maybe I had misheard everything.  Maybe this was the euthanization and Rump was going to fade off to sleep slowly.  That’s radically different than anything I’d been a part of before.  I stepped out of the room and asked if that’s what was going on.  A vet tech came back and clarified that no drugs had been administered yet.

When I went back into the room, Rump had her head raised, but put it right back down when I came back to her side.  She stayed still as the doctor eventually came in to clarify once more the procedure and the choices I had made.  And we went forward with it, what’s more to say?

The procedure itself was quite peaceful, since Rump was already so close to the end.  There was no struggle, gasp, or sigh.  And of course the immediate mourning came on, but it was relatively brief.  I headed home with an empty carrier and waves of tears.

Which brings me back to the grieving process.  In this case, I never really have had a total breakdown.  I will get a wave of sorrow, which brings on the sobbing, but then I straighten back up again and continue on.  Relating to current events, it’s more like the Kilauea volcano and less like the St. Helens volcano.  And until the pressure subsides, there will be unexpected lava flows.

Something I’ve been trying to keep in mind is a concept explained in Theosophy.  The phrase I use for the concept is slightly crass, but is meant to reduce the seriousness of death: “back to the bucket.”  To impossibly simplify the lessons of Theosophy, there are two things to consider.  First, humans have a soul that evolves over many lifetimes through reincarnation.  Souls are unique personalities, shown that every human on earth is unique.  Second, animals are still evolving into unique personalities and until they reach that point, have a “shared soul”.  The analogy is that animals are born and a portion of a single soul is instilled in them from a “bucket”.  The animal lives its life and when it dies, all that it has learned and experienced is returned to the bucket for all future incarnations to learn from.

So, when you comment that your pet “has personality” and you notice how your pet forms relationships with humans and seems to genuinely care for humans, you are witnessing the evolution of an animal soul.  If you have participated in that growth, by showing care and compassion and demonstrating trust and forging that relationship, you are contributing positive experiences to your pet’s next incarnation, when they go “back to the bucket.”

Considering that Rump found and chose me 13 years ago, which was about a year and a half after losing Mess, it’s not unfathomable that she chose me based on experiences from the same bucket as Mess.  It’s also not unfathomable that I will see her again in her next life.

So, Are YOU A Collector? Clearly Not.

Posted by on April 12, 2018 No comments

As I posted recently, I went on a CD safari and ended returning with 20 CDs.  15 of those were purchased from two flea market vendors, both of whom said they were collectors. 

In the first booth I went to, I felt I was in a hurry for time, so I scanned the discs very quickly, looking for smooth cases.  However, I saw one CD that I had scored on my last flea market trip that was a valuable find.  The CD wasn’t in a a smooth case (actually a shitty, flimsy case), so I was curious what a normal edition of that album looked like.  When I opened the case, I was surprised.  Similar to my previous reaction to finding gold, I said, “Oh, it’s a red-faced Polydor.  Nice.” 

Only a real geek would say “a red-faced Polydor”, right?  That’s a statement that would come out of the mouth of an orthinologist.  Like, you should log that in a bird-watching book along with the time and location.  But, I didn’t log it, I bought it.  WHY?  I already had one and it was a valuable one at that!  Sometimes, you can’t explain these things to collectors.  Different is good.

When I got home and cleaned the CDs all up, I researched what I had purchased.  Now you may recall the post about my $300 find for $3.  Well, this time, I paid $5, and wouldn’t you know it?  Someone has paid over $500 for this CD.

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I now have both of these CDs.  What’s the difference?  100% appearance.  These are the two CDs.  They have the same music.

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And when I say they have the same music, I checked.  They DO.  I posted this on Relative Waves.  It’s the same.

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That’s two waveforms overlaid on each other.  There’s no green or white peeking out anywhere.  That means no differences. SAME SAME SAME.

Anyway.  So now I have a new most valuable CD.  Again, by a large margin.  In fact, my collection value went up by over $1000 from this last trip.  After all, I did find a bunch of other rarities.

Safari 2018

Posted by on April 8, 2018 No comments

A little over a year ago, I went on a CD hunt, and I recently chose to indulge myself again.  This time, I would travel to a remote metro city with a whole new, fresh collection of thrift shops to plunder.  The trip would be two hours to get there (and coincidentally, two hours to get back).  But that’s quite ok, because driving is something I do.  The MX-5 has 263k miles on it right now and shows no sign of giving up.

I plan on making a couple of alterations to the car before this road trip.  The first is removal of the Zune integration with the stereo.  It’s been fun, but as time wore on, and Zune support in Windows went away, it’s less of a thing now for me.  I’ve gotten back into CDs, which seen to have more fidelity than the Zune audio pumped through a 3.5mm cable, even when the files are lossless.

While I have things disassembled, I also plan to implement the traffic power cable for my GPS and hide the ugly bits behind the dash.  Right now, I have a frankencable coming up from my center console and up the dash.  It doesn’t provide a traffic antenna for the GPS and said GPS bitches about every single time I start it up.  It will be nice to be rid of that stupid alert and also to have the traffic info for better routing.  This will involve purchasing an add-on 12v socket that I’ll hide behind the dash and plug the GPS power cable into it.  I can’t understand why they don’t design GPS power cables to be plug-in or hard-wired.  Anyway, it’s been a while since I’ve torn the interior of my car apart.  I used to do it on a monthly basis.

And then, a trip like this is something that must be done solo.  I can’t imagine the mind-numbing boredom of sitting in a car as a passenger for hours on end, then slogging around dingy shops for a full day.  I have a list of 20 locations to hit in the remote area, including one bona-fide music store.  I’m not sure if I will have time to hit the flea market while I’m there, but I’ll certainly try.

Friday after work, I spent a couple of hours fighting in the car, routing the power cable for the GPS and removing old audio stuff.  That was a success, or so I thought until I went out for dinner that night.  Now I have an alternator whine in my front right speaker, so I’m going to have to take the dash all apart again and be a bit more cautious with my power cable and audio cable routing.  Worse, it means my Saturday trip (two hours each way) will be in silence.  Oh fucking no.

I headed out early in the morning and made it to the flea market just as it opened.  I found two large CD sellers and spent more than I usually would at a flea market.  I paid more per CD, but I think I got some good items.  (Wait for the post on this.  You have no idea!)

The rest of the day was pretty sad compared to the flea market.  Many thrift shops were closed or out of business.  The music store I went to had outrageous prices, like $8 for used CDs, and nothing remotely collectable.  Well, that’s not true.  I treated myself to a Gold CD for $50.  I’ve said before, you can’t really go wrong with those.  They keep their value.

I finished the day at an old favorite Thai restaurant, which was amazing as usual.  Just like the good old days when you would judge how good the food was by how long your tongue would burn after the meal.  And it was a while.

The traffic feature on the GPS did its job and told me when construction was coming up and when I would be delayed by traffic and for how long.  At one point it was counting down when the traffic jam would end and almost as soon as it said it was over, we started speeding up again.  Amazing.

So tomorrow is car stereo repair time.  And tonight has been cleaning, logging, and ripping.  I’ll do some relative waves posts with some of the new editions I picked up tonight as well.

Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed

Posted by on April 5, 2018 No comments

I was browsing my old posts and found a semi-promise to relate a story about a massive keyboard I didn’t want anymore.  And the thought of that coincided with something I’ve given thought to in the past with collections.

But first, the story.  At one point in my studio, I had five keyboards.  Two 88-key and three 61 key synths.  On one rack, behind my desk, I had the General Music Equinox and the Casio CZ-1.

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On the wall to the right of my desk, I had the Roland RD-600 and a CME UF6.  The CME did not have any sounds; it was just a performance controller.  Sadly, the computer drivers went out of date before I could ever use it.  I’ve actually forgotten where it went or what I did with it.

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And in storage was an old Ensoniq ESQ-1, my first professional-grade keyboard.  It was awesome to the end.  That keyboard was eventually sold for a pittance to a guy I was in a club with.  I should have just kept it in storage.

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Anyway, I didn’t have a real use for all these keyboards, especially two 88-key controllers.  The Equinox had to go.  I wasn’t looking to make money on it, I thought it would be a fair trade for a mixer, which is something I did have a need for at the time.

I have a Guitar Center in my town, so I loaded up the Equinox in the GF’s car and we headed down to make a deal.  This keyboard is a beast, all metal case, weighted keys, hard drive, floppy drive, sequencer, the works.  But when I get to the equipment guy at Guitar Center, he looks it over and just says, “nah.”  Not literally, but he said as politely as possible that they did not want it.  I explained that I didn’t want cash for it, I wanted to do a trade.  That didn’t change his mind.  So I was bummed out and got ready to pick the monster back up to haul it outside again.  But then the sales guy asked, “What were you looking to get for it, anyway?”

And I can’t definitely explain why that question caused me to see red.  Maybe I thought he was mocking me after telling me my keyboard was worth nothing to them.  It was a pointless question, completely unnecessary.  Like if I said, 50 bucks, he would change his mind?  Did he want to see just how desperate I was?  Was he looking to either take advantage of a low price or laugh at me for an unrealistic price?  All these thoughts rushed through my mind and I just snapped at him.  “Nothing, if you’re not interested in taking it!”  And things got awkward, partially because my outburst didn’t really make any sense.

I stormed out of Guitar Center carrying my massive anchor under my arm and the GF followed me out, silently and probably sheepishly.  I’m not one for making a scene (unless someone forgets my SPOON), so it was just bad all around.  And you know what kind of hurt the most?  I bought that keyboard used from the Guitar Center in Plymouth Meeting before I came to Florida.  They’ll sell it, but they won’t trade for it.

So fuck Guitar Center.  After calming down and reassessing, I decided to try the other option, Sam Ash Music.  This would require a longish drive, like an hour away.  So I loaded the Equinox up and headed out solo.  This sales guy tried to set my expectations low.  He said that nobody really wanted these old synthesizers anymore and the best he could do is try to sell it as a MIDI controller.  Yeah, yeah, I hear ya.  He said he could give me $150 for it.

As insulting as that was, I pressed on.  I asked if I could do a trade for a mixer and he warmly agreed.  We walked over to the mixers and I reviewed what I could get for $150.  There was an ok model, but a much better one was there for $200.  So I asked him if I could get the $200 mixer.  He said yeah, we could do that.  We had a deal.  (Spoiler: we didn’t.)

The sales guy gets the mixer, does up all the paperwork for the keyboard trade and he sends me off to the cashier.  She punches everything in and says that’ll be $54.  Excuse me?  This was a trade.  She says yeah, the keyboard is a $150 credit and your mixer is $200.  The sales guy gets called back over.  I ask him what’s going on and he reiterates that we agreed the keyboard would be $150.  I explain that I thought when we were looking at mixers and I asked if I could get the $200 mixer, we were negotiating.  Nope, we were not negotiating at all.

I didn’t want to storm out of a second store in a blind fury, so I sucked it up and bought my $200 mixer for $50 and unloaded an anchor.  In hindsight, I should have kept the keyboard in storage.  I could have gifted it to someone who really wanted to play music.

So that’s the story of the Equinox.  I said that that the circumstances of that story made me think of collections.  The other night I did a quick Craigslist search for CDs and found someone selling his collection of “over 750” CDs.  First of all, you don’t have an accurate count, that’s strike one.  You don’t have a list of albums or even artists, strike two.  You can’t make out any titles from the photos you posted, strike three.  And for your strikeout, what were you looking to get for it, anyway?  $2,250?  hmmmm. Ok.  $3/CD is fair, if I want ALL the CDs.  But at this point, from what I know about the collection, I want zero.

This is the curse of all collections, that the bigger they get, the less aggregate value they have and the more individual value they potentially have.  It’s the same problem with thrift shops and many flea market dealers.  They make the incorrect assumption that every CD is worth the same.  Any intelligent person would agree that is not true at all.  And as the valuable CDs are snatched up, you are left with nothing but junk that is worth far less than the price you are asking.

Listen To This Story

Posted by on March 26, 2018 No comments

Amin_Bhatia_The_Interstellar_SuiteOn a regular CD shopping run last week, I picked up a random album.  I didn’t know the artist, much less the album, but the name was intriguing: The Interstellar Suite By Amin Bhatia.  Peeking inside the case, the liner notes stated: “The orchestral textures on this recording are a complex blend of synthesizers.”  Well, consider me sold.

The tracks of the album were named very specifically and initially it somewhat bothered me.  Songs named explicitly like, LAUNCH: Mission Control and Liftoff/Jumping to the Speed of Light. Another one was: BATTLE: Planning the Attack/Return Fire/The Last Missile.  I wasn’t entirely keen on being told what I should be thinking about as the songs are playing.  Despite that, I did review the track names as each song came on.

So let me say first off that this is an amazing album for many reasons.  The music is exquisitely composed and performed.  It is extremely orchestral and melodic and that’s made even more impressive because it’s done on a collection of synthesizers circa 1987.  The first track reminds me strongly of ELP’s Pirates and has a lot of John Williams influence, which isn’t a bad thing.  The thing that makes this album stand out from a Star Wars soundtrack, is the addition of sound effects, including some minor character dialog and atmospheric sounds.  And maybe it’s just the geek in me, but space ship launches and flybys and missiles and lasers and explosions, all rendered by 80’s synthesizers… consider me a fan.

I have probably played this a dozen times on repeat; it does not get old for me.  And that part is what is most interesting to me.  This particular album is what is termed “program music”, which I had not been exposed to before.  With program music, the songs are meant to conjure up specific imagery in your mind as you listen to them.  And this album does that amazingly well.  To carry the example of Star Wars, when you hear the Star Wars themes, you can visualize the scenes in your head, you’ve seen this before.  But there’s no movie with this album, all you have are the song titles, which I originally thought were too much.

Something about me is that I don’t re-read books.  I also don’t re-watch movies (except concert videos).  So, I find it peculiar that this album is very much like a movie or a book in that it tells a story, but unlike books and movies, I can leave it on repeat.  In fact, I’m playing it right now.  It’s a soundtrack for a movie that was never made or a book that was never written.  It’s also theme park music.  If you’ve gone to any Disney or Universal park, there is atmospheric music playing all the time that keeps you in the theme of the sub-park you are currently walking though.  This music would not be out of place in the slightest.

Hearing this music has made me think of a couple things.  I have a project limping slowly forward that involves a musical soundtrack.  Hearing this suite of music has given me serious reservations of calling my music a soundtrack.  Despite that feeling, I also realize that I have done something similar to this before, although nowhere near as grand.  It was a short-lived time where I wrote two multi-track songs I called Spy Song and Airlock.  The first was a short little song that could be considered intro/chase scene/romance scene/intro reprise.  And Airlock was just a short scene of someone trapped in a space ship and eventually ejected into space.  Neither of these little songs would be useable for any projects just because they’re too short – a couple minutes or so.

So I now have a whole other genre of music to explore now.  I used to buy random CDs at pawn shops when I felt my listening habits were getting stale, but I haven’t done anything like that for a long time.  And sometimes you get really lucky when you do that.

So, Are You A Collector?

Posted by on March 25, 2018 No comments

Yesterday, I had one of those days.  The GF texted me and asked how it was going.  I replied that I was out and about looking for treasure and I hadn’t found any yet.  I didn’t know at the time, I was going to strike gold.

When I say looking for treasure, I’m just being really dramatic about my hobby: searching for CDs.  I mean, if I can buy a CD from a thrift shop and it’s worth $5 online, I’m pleased.  You’d be surprised how many CDs I buy that have a value of nothing.  But sometimes that’s just because the CD is everywhere and it’s not valuable because it was made in such large quantities.  Or maybe, no one likes it.  My tastes are all over the place.

If you’re going to really get into CD collecting, you need to be knowledgeable.  Duh, right?  Well, not really.  You can just collect stuff you like to listen to, or you can collect stuff that’s rare, or you can do both.  But you need to know what’s rare and how to identify it to take advantage of it.

I hit a few thrift shops and picked up some CDs that were common and a couple that I’d never seen before but were identifiable as early CDs, which are valuable to the right person.  And it doesn’t hurt that the music is all 80’s.  I’d probably like it even if it was worthless.

Moving on, I made my last stop, at a flea market.  I found one CD seller and he had SO many CDs.  Well over a thousand, for sure.  But they were fucking busted.  Broken cases, dirty, some discs were damaged.  But he made up for it in quantity and breadth.  I did manage to snag some uncommon finds, including a target CD of ELP’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  It’s reported to be a common target, but it has a printing error on it, so to a serious collector, well, they might get excited.  The printing error makes it immediately rare.  Like a double-struck coin.

As I was finishing up, I asked the guy if he bought these CDs in bulk or was it a personal collection.  He said these were bought from all over the place, but he had his own collection, too.  I thought it was a little odd to sell a target CD for so cheap instead of finding another collector who was willing to pay more.  But there was little else he had that was remarkable, so maybe he really did know value.

Anyway, after looking at every CD there, I found another large CD seller, who had much better quality of product.  As I worked my way closer to her and her register, she said, “lots of good stuff, especially in these stacks here.”  I took my time and when I got to those stacks, I discovered she was right.  As I was pulling first pressing CDs and stacking them up to buy, I asked, “Are you a collector?”  She said she was and that she had a whole bunch of CDs of her own.  And that’s when I realized I was a collector unlike other collectors.

This is the album I bought for $3 from her.  This screenshot is from Discogs, a collector website.

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One thing to note is the entry doesn’t show the album cover.  It shows the disc face.  The importance of this is so that other people do not log that they have this particular release in their collection based solely on the album cover.  This disc is rare.  How rare?  14 people have logged it and 60 want to buy it.  But, those aren’t the interesting numbers.

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The disc is also quite valuable.  And I have one now that I bought for $3.  It instantly became the most valuable disc in my collection, by a long shot.  It’s kind of like an Antiques Roadshow moment.  When I first saw the CD, I knew it was an early pressing because of the case.  When I opened it, I thought, “Oh, it’s a Polar.  Cool.”  I’d heard about Polar pressings and they seemed a little mythological the way some talked about them, but I didn’t figure it would be that valuable.

So anyway, go me!  My collection as ranked by Discogs is worth between $4,200 and $12,500, with a median value of $7,100.  Feels odd when you’re buying CDs for $1-$5 each.

Cosmetic Surgery

Posted by on March 7, 2018 No comments

What seems like forever ago, BMW added halos to their car’s headlights and the world went apeshit.  They had a poignant ad campaign focused on the headlights with a deep message like, “The eyes are the window to the soul.”  Oooooo.

I recently changed out the headlight lenses on my car because they were completely fogged over; they were almost useless.  And let me stop you here, the fogging was on the inside of the lenses, so buying one of those polishing kits would not have fixed it.

The lenses were not cheap – at all.  A little over $800, if you’re wondering.  They took a significant amount of time to even get shipped to me, then they sat in my garage for weeks until I had a free weekend to do the work.  And the work has now been done and I couldn’t be any more pleased.

I never noticed that I am constantly looking at other cars’ “eyes” to gauge how old they are.  After I changed out my headlight lenses, it was like the car was brand new again.  And I say that with a lot of sincerity – it is really that big of a difference.

Back in October, this is what the car looked like (photo courtesy of AK):

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She was dressed up for Halloween as a vampire.  See how the lights are a dull, matte finish?  It gives the car a lifeless look, which may be fine for a vampire, but when someone is checking out your car and they see those dull headlights, it really shows the age.

Over the weekend I got to work., this is what my car looked like, mid-procedure.
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A couple of close-ups of the lenses before they came out.

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And even more surgery,

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Now, after the change, the difference is amazing.

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And just look how happy she is!  Young and pretty again.  Sometime in the future, she deserves a fresh coat of paint, since the fiberglass surfaces of the roof and retractable hardtop deck have faded and lost all their shine.  But for now, the light is bright and clear, and the eyes reveal a well-travelled soul.

Minty Fresh

Posted by on February 25, 2018 No comments

It’s been four years since my last attempt at creating a bare minimum Linux Internet machine.  I figured I would give it another try.  All my previous attempts were either failures, or they left me with a laptop that I didn’t know what to do with.

This time, I am creating a travel laptop that is just for Internet.  And for anything else, I’ll connect to my home machine with TeamViewer.  So that limits the installs I have to make down to:

  • Web browser – Now that I use Vivaldi for everything, I don’t have to worry about the differences between IE and whatever else I have available on Linux.
  • KeePass – I need to log in to websites, of course.  And the KeePass database is held in the cloud, which means I need…
  • DropBox – I had the foresight to use DropBox instead of OneDrive when I first set up KeePass.  Although there are OneDrive clients for Linux, none are official MS products.
  • IM – A chat client for keeping in touch when I am on the road.
  • VLC – For playing music and videos.  Fortunately, it is cross-platform.
  • Some image viewer – Still evaluating which one to use…

And that’s all.  I’m pretty much in Netbook territory here, but this is a spare laptop and I should make some use out of it.  It won’t be my bedside laptop, since I need some other software there that isn’t Linux friendly.  But anyway, this post is about Linux Mint.

In my prior adventures with Linux, both Ubuntu and Mint, the install process and compatibility issues were an absolute clusterfuck.  This time around, I blindly installed the latest Mint version on a USB stick and ran with it.  The Mint OS loaded up without a single hiccup and I had sound and network in the Live CD desktop.  That is a very positive sign.  So without any other testing, I chose to install the OS, completely erasing the hard drive.  That’s usually when things go south, but to my amazement, within 15 minutes of starting this whole process, I was on a functional Mint desktop with no strange errors, warnings, or bugs.

I started right away downloading and installing the software I needed, which wasn’t much.  I learned quickly what worked well and what I should not bother investigating further.  Some tings I will eventually need to learn more about – the things that Windows makes so easy, like setting a program to launch at startup.  Some things involving permissions were a pain, but I also have an appreciation for security, so it’s ok.

And now, I’m writing this post on my Mint laptop, connected to my Windows desktop via TeamViewer.  It’s been almost pleasant.  And while I still can’t recommend Ubuntu or Mint to a neophyte, because I wouldn’t be able to assist them if they had issues, I applaud the Linux teams for the progress they have made in the four years since I last attempted this experiment.

Keep It Going

Posted by on February 15, 2018 No comments

Happy After-V-Day.  So, how did it go?  Did you brave the crowds or stay home?  Did you feel yourself up or were there others involved?  Doesn’t matter.  The day for that is past, now it’s just normal life again.  Well, except for the bros out there just tapping their feet waiting for Feb 21 – Steak and Blowjob Day.

Me, I spent a lot of it in airports and in the sky and on the road.  My V-Day dinner was alone at Wendy’s.  Not really alone, there was a family there.  I’m not sure if there were celebrating V-Day by fighting or arguing or disagreeing or just having an intense conversation.  Everyone has their relationship rituals.

But, there a secret that the marketing firms don’t tell you about V-Day, and it’s not that there is such a thing as Steak and Blowjob Day.  It’s that you don’t have to wait until February 14 (or 21) for you to get your candy, flowers, attention, steak, blowjob, or arguments.  You can do it as often as you wish, every day even.  Buy a bag of gummy bears.  Every day, eat one, give a blowjob and have a fight about it.

Or you can be normal humans and just care about each other every day.  Or whenever you feel like it or whenever it is required or appropriate.  Do it in your own way.  Some people show love with food, some with fighting, I guess?  Here’s a few random ideas for you and your partner.  Stupid kids who have no relationship experience like to call bullshit like this #RelationshipGoals.  Don’t make it a goal, just do it as something.

First off, have a movie night.  But give it an edge.  Make it slightly dangerous.  Go to a pawn shop.  Wait, hear me out.  If you haven’t been to a pawn shop before, you would be floored at the number of DVDs they have.  And they want to get rid of them, badly.  They are cheap as hell.  It’s cheaper to buy than to rent.

And when the price is so low, there’s no emotional investment in choosing a good movie.  The emotional investment should be with each other, anyway.  So here’s the deal.  You each choose one or two movies each and you must watch them to the end, together.  You’re going to find some weird stuff at the pawn shop, for sure.  If the movie sucks, have sex while it’s playing, it still counts as watching.

Maybe movie night is an all-day thing, maybe not.  But here’s an idea for daytime.  Do you think you’re well-grounded in reality?  Do you think you’re pretty run-of-the-mill normal?  Do you want to challenge those impressions of yourself?  Maybe have a fierce battle with inadequacy?  Well, this date idea will do it.

Go on a model home megatour at some housing developments.  Maybe you’re not living in a place that has a lot of real estate booming going on.  That makes it even better, drive to one and you’ll be able to resist the siren call easier.  But if you haven’t been home shopping, it’s like going shopping for Maserati’s.  See, because no one makes cheap homes anymore.  Cheap homes are used homes, older homes.  Builders can’t make money on starter homes.  Even if they could, and maybe they would try, they are not going to make a model house show you what you can get for bottom dollar.  That’s not how things are sold.

So tour a bunch of model homes.  You’re see excess and grandiosity and features and fixtures that will leave you shaking your head.  When you get to the 4,000+ sqft house with multiple game rooms and a bathroom that could be a studio apartment in itself, you will have a new appreciation for the simple life and a fresh disdain for the metaphorical Joneses you’re supposed to keep up with.  And hopefully, if your partner is of the same mindset as you, which I would hope so, you will walk away collectively stunned and grateful to have each other and that you share the same values.

Finally, and this idea is simple, generic, and simply honest.  Do something together that exposes a vulnerability.  You always want to show your best side to your partner.  You always want to be perfect.  But, it’s healthy to let your guard down occasionally.  Let your partner know you really are human and can do embarrassing things, or can fail to do something correctly or well.  Couples painting?  Wall climbing?  Ice skating?  Karaoke?  These are things that don’t have to wait for V-Day or Steak/BJ-Day.  You can do them whenever and as often as you want.  And it’s perfectly fine to suck at them, because those things are not your relationship.