Category Archives: About Me - Page 23

New To Me Old School

Posted by anachostic on January 20, 2017 No comments

I am literally 10 years behind the times. But on the plus side, I’m saving lots of money by doing so.

As I’ve mentioned, I have two new idiot boxes in my house. I still don’t watch a lot of TV, so I needed to find a use for them. The obvious consideration was to get a video game system. On top of the entertainment value, it could work for some social interaction as well. You know, for all the guests I have over…

But what game system to get? I haven’t played video games seriously for 20 years, when the controls became so complicated and all in 360 degree, 3D style (if you want to know precisely when I quit, it was ID Software’s Quake that put me over the edge). So, looking at XBox/PlayStation nonsense was more of a detraction than a motivator. But there exists a game system for people like me, the casual gamer. The Nintendo Wii. Yup, it’s 10 years old now.

I’d played Wii at a friends house only a couple of times. I found it very curious, since it relied on motion input instead of traditional directional controllers. Moreover, the gameplay wasn’t hyper-competitive, just fun. That was right up my alley. So where do you go to buy a 10-yr old game system? To me, it was just like buying a 10 yr old music keyboard or guitar or effect unit – the pawn shop.

I’m definitely no stranger to pawn shops, and I have a pretty good sense as to what to buy and what to avoid there. I had a pretty good feeling about getting a Wii. At the very least, you could look it over for damage and whatnot. So, I made my rounds of the local shops, seeing who had what available in the best condition.

I ended up getting a system and some games on new year’s eve for $52. The next week, I bought some more controllers, some games, and a balance board for $48. So I had a full system for $100. That’s pretty good. When the Wii first came out, it was $250 for the base system, $40 for an extra controller, and $20 for the nunchuk. The balance board was $90 at launch.

And it’s been a good system. It’s fun and doesn’t require a ton of dedication or effort to use. It’s been enough fun that the GF has been considering getting one for her house. So today, I went on the hunt again.

The pawn shops around my workplace have historically been excellent for finding good deals on whatever I’m looking for (or something I wasn’t looking for). Today, with a planned purchase, I wasn’t disappointed. I got a Wii with one controller and nunchuk for $35, plus another controller/nunchuk for $12 – similar to what I spent last time. I figured we could share the balance board for a while. On a whim, I stopped at another pawn shop and was surprised to see a balance board sitting all by itself. Originally $10, it was marked down to $7. That was an immediate cash purchase and out the door. The only thing I regret is not buying the $2 copy of Wii Fit to go along with it. I’ll get that next week for myself.

So now we have Wii’s. Whee.

The Thrill Of The Hunt; The Agony Of Defeat

Posted by anachostic on December 30, 2016 No comments

I have a few particular traits that work together and are beneficial to my wants (not needs). They are: a love of driving, a strong sense of frugality, the thrill of the hunt, perseverance in the face of monotony, and a hobby of CD collecting.

I had the day off work, so last night, I have planned out a mega-run of 28 thrift shops to accomplish. I expected up to 30 percent of them to be out of business, so maybe I’d get 20 stops in as long as I could keep going. This is pretty much unprecedented in my exploration history. Even back almost two decades ago, when I would do such mega-runs for pawn shops, I would never try to hit 10 in one go.

This trip is a solo run. Even though the GF shares a lot of the same traits I do, this will be a level of monotony I wouldn’t wish on anyone else. And taking a passenger on such a trip would be borderline abusive. And, at points, it was very trying – self-abusive, possibly.

I started at 8:30 in the morning, hoping to get to the first store at 9:00 when they should be just opening up. Well, that didn’t go well. The first store didn’t open until 10:00. I wasn’t going to sit there for an hour, so I moved on. The next shop had a “be back at” sign that was set for 4:30, whatever that means. Then I had a string of DNFs (geocaching speak for Did Not Find) and when I did find an open shop (a few were closed for the holiday season), I didn’t find anything worth buying.

Finally at stop #13 (13!!!), a Goodwill, I found 2 cds I wanted. I thought my luck was turning, but then hit another DNF. I had pre-programmed my GPS with multiple stops as a single route and I was out of stops for that route, so I made a random stop at a pawn shop to enter the remaining stops. When I went into the pawn shop out of curiosity, I was surprised to see a rather large section of CDs. I worked through the shelves in short order and came away with two more CDs, one of which was a target CD – highly unexpected.

I get up to stop #19 with no luck in finding stores or CDs. It’s 2:00 now and I’m hangry. I planned this to be a stopping point for food, but I was also about 2 hours behind schedule. A short stop at Fuddruckers to recharge and I’m back on the hunt. Despite the exponentially increasing traffic, I amazingly completed all the stops, but sadly, I gained nothing more for my collection. I could have stopped after lunch. I battled my way home through Friday rush hour traffic and got home around 6:30.

So, that’s the sad stats, there. 28 stores in 10 hours to acquire 4 CDs. Not the most efficient way to spend a day.

Being The Best You Want To Be

Posted by anachostic on December 2, 2016 No comments

On a forum I frequent, a question came up wondering why there are people who do not aspire to find and appreciate the best sound quality possible. The answer is probably obvious on the surface – it’s just not something that interests them. Like some people don’t have a care for paintings or photographs, or interior design, or anything else a person could be passionate about.

But on another level, on my level, what about people who do like music, but don’t like crappy sounding audio systems? There’s a few sub-questions in there, like: Why don’t you have the best-sounding stereo possible? Why don’t you own the highest-rated-in-terms-of-sound-quality CD for each of the albums you own? Why aren’t you into vinyl? Why aren’t you also up in arms about people settling for MP3 and earbuds or playing music through their phone’s speaker?

Because I used to own a dedicated stereo system and because I plan to own one in the coming future, I felt that I needed to consider this question. There is a certain “floor” of quality I insist on, but as far as a “ceiling”, I can’t be sure.

Regarding playback systems, I am not compelled to buy $3k speakers or $6k amplifiers to get the sound quality I require. At the same time, I can’t really tolerate a $100 sound system either. I swap out the stereo in each car I get, always to an improvement. Despite having sound systems at the house, none of them are really satisfying. My home theater system is a booming, bass beast – not good for music. I have a couple small speaker docks that are ok for background music, but not for listening. My best sound system is my computer running through my Event studio monitors. Next year, I’ll get my listening system for the living room.

When I do buy my stereo, I’ll be buying what my budget allows from a quality brand. For a true audiophile, this wouldn’t be satisfactory. Consumer brands have lots of quality problems, and they would be able to identify what they are. I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to tell by listening either. After all, I don’t have any opportunity to compare systems, since I don’t have any friends (with stereo systems). Neither do I have the money to swap out components to try and make small to moderate improvements that I may not even notice. So, what I have is what I hear and what I will enjoy.

As far as listening goes, I’m not sure I have the ear to be an audiophile. I can identify obviously bad sound (like my theater system), but after a certain point, I can’t identify differences. I can say that I don’t like it, but I wouldn’t be able to explain why. More discerning people could say it was because of compression or eq or “presence” and some of the best could say it was because of speaker placement or wiring or the amp’s power supply. I can’t do that.

The last piece of the loaded question is why not take the time to evaluate different masterings of albums to have the “best”? My current stance is to own a version as close to the original as possible. Before, I didn’t really have a position. I’d just buy whatever was available. I’ve decided that the original mix/mastering is the authority. That’s what people liked. A remaster is not a re-release. It’s not like an album from 1986 is going to re-enter the charts because it was remastered. All remastering is for existing fans. It’s like version upgrades of software.

When Bad Meets Good

Posted by anachostic on November 28, 2016 No comments

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the GF and I did something bad. It wasn’t something I was planning on doing, intending to take a stand against change. We went out shopping on Thanksgiving night.

And, as you can probably expect, we weren’t alone out there. It was actually a pretty surreal experience. I hadn’t been out shopping on Thanksgiving in many years, just assuming everything except gas stations and convenience stores would be closed. But here we were, in the local mall, with a relatively large crowd, late at night. The mall was open until 11:00pm.

I have long expected this holiday shopping season to be insane, mostly because of what I see in restaurants. Restaurants are crowded again. People have money again, somehow, and they’re spending it. That’s going to translate into big retail gains. Mark my words.

But anyway, I didn’t want to go out on Thanksgiving. I did want to go out on Black Friday, probably in the afternoon, after the pre-dawn madness died down. I wanted to get televisions. I was at the point that I had zero televisions in my house. The only one I did have was a 27” mono tube TV from the 90’s. I hadn’t used it in years and finally disposed of it in the great purging earlier this year.

So this year, I wanted to get somewhat up with the times. I couldn’t really expect to do any entertaining without a TV in the house. That would make me seem just a little weird. I figured I would get a TV for the living room and one for the master bedroom. I spent a little bit of Thanksgiving morning comparing models and prices. I had some options from HH Gregg, Sears, and Best Buy, with Best Buy being the pretty obvious leader.

At the mall, we hit a clothing store and got the GF all hooked up in the wardrobe department. That’s really all we came for, but we just meandered down to Sears to see what was going on there. Sears is widely believed to be on the ropes and is expected to close up next year. The death of Sears has been predicted every year for the past decade, but they just keep chugging on. The prospect of Sears closing does make me sad, because I like Sears. They’ve pretty much always been there when I needed something.

We end up in Sears and go to the electronics section. It’s pretty empty. There’s some people looking at appliances, but the other sections are unexciting. The shelves seem lightly stocked and it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of choices. Something seems depressing about the whole setup. I repeat, no excitement.

Regardless, we start looking at what TVs are available. I’m initially disappointed because all I see are 4k TV’s, which is not what I need. As I move down the isle, getting tucked into the corner, I see the 1080p TVs, and the prices have gotten more in line with my expectations. In fact, they’re pretty good. The GF is checking out smaller TVs, in the 24” range, and they’re reasonable, too.

Since television is not a high priority to me, I can easily get by with a lower-end TV without a lot of features. Accordingly, I budgeted about $450 for each TV, hoping to get somewhere in the 45”-55” size range. These TVs at Sears fit the bill.

Then, about the service. There were a few salespeople milling about and one came up to us asking if we had questions. We asked about the capabilities of some of the smaller TVs and then discussed some of the bigger TVs. We made our choices – a 24” Samsung smart TV for $120, a 50” Samsung for $349, and a 60” Samsung for $579. We walked out with the 24” and arranged to pick up the bigger ones at their pickup area around back. Really, no more than 10 minutes and we were done.

That needs some extra emphasis. We got personal service and were done with our transactions in about 10 minutes. You try that at Best Buy. You try that at Best Buy on any other day, even non-holidays. And the Sears staff loaded the TVs into the car for us. I didn’t even wait more than a couple minutes in the pickup area. I was more than willing to pay extra to avoid the experience of fighting through Best Buy. One of the salespeople commented that he just got off the phone with a friend who was over at Best Buy. They had 2-hr checkout waits. There you have it.

After we got our purchases home, I jumped online to see how much of a premium we paid for the Sears experience. Turns out it was pretty much all the same. Because I wasn’t researching 60” sizes, I was surprised to see the prices were the same between the stores. The 50” might have been $40 more, but it may have been a slightly different model, too. The 24” was the same price, too.

I had planned to go to places that weren’t considered to be ground zero for technology deals, anyway. But I am amazed at how well it all turned out. No stress, personal service, and great prices. You should always go off the beaten path and explore. If you don’t get better service, you will probably get something more unique, both of which have tangible value.

The idiot boxes have arrived.

A Little Bit Of Tim Taylor In The Kitchen

Posted by anachostic on November 23, 2016 No comments

Thanksgiving is almost here and that means it’s time for cooking. I believe I probably think like most guys in that in order to do something properly, you have to have the right tools. If you don’t exactly know what the right tools are, it’s best to just have all the tools.

And so, in this year, I’ve been building up my kitchen tool chest. I pitched my ad-hoc cookware and bought a brand new starter set of pots and pans. Then I augmented that set with a couple more small pots, for flexibility of course. And last night, I saw two more pieces from the same model line (in the same color, too!). I hadn’t ever seen them before, and I wasn’t entirely sure I would ever see them again, so I picked them up. Now I own a stock pot and a deep sauté pan. Will I ever use them? Better to have and not need than need and not have. Clearly, a man composed that line.

That’s not the only thing I’ve done in my tool refresh. I pitched my dinnerware and bought all new, matching pieces, including things I shouldn’t need, like a serving bowl, a platter, and a gravy boat. And although my meals are typically for one, I have 4 large plates, 4 small plates, 4 bowls, 2 additional large bowls, and 2 more additional small bowls. I like soup and salad, but still, that might be pushing it. I have the additional plates and such in case I have guests. ha ha ha ha

I also swapped out my flatware. Just because. The old set was over 10 years old, and a change was needed. Also, more knives. I have two carving sets. I have multiple whisks, multiple peelers, multiple strainers, multiple cutting boards, multiple crock pots, and more wooden utensils than I can use in a week. More mixing bowls than I expect to realistically use, but they’re in all different sizes, so I will have the perfect size bowl for whatever it is I plan to do. You need to have the right size tool for the job, right?

Last night, when I picked up the most recent pot and pan, I made the joke that I was a “completist”. But then I looked up the definition, which is: “an obsessive, typically indiscriminate, collector or fan of something.” That doesn’t sound fair. It’s not an obsession, nor is it indiscriminate for me. For one, it’s opportunistic. (This also applies to my CD collecting.) Also, my purchases serve a purpose. I’m not exactly acquiring these things for the sole purpose of having them. I do intend to use them when there is a legitimate need. I just need to create that need.

More Space; Going Vertical

Posted by anachostic on November 22, 2016 No comments

Well, as I last mentioned, it’s time to grow the CD storage. It cost just as much to buy a new storage tower as to build one, so I went the pre-built route.

After the new tower arrived, the first step was to clear out the old tower. Surprisingly for me, I gave some thought as to the stacking of the CDs so I would be able to put them all back into the new tower in order. Unload from Z to A, then reload from A to Z.

The new tower has shelves that are pretty much the same width as the old tower, but there are two additional shelves to work with. Those, times four sides, gives me 8 more shelves worth of space. Compared to the old tower, the new one is quite impressive.

Replacing the CDs, I was able to leave space on every single shelf, and even with that, I had almost two free shelves at the end.

In all, quite a nice upgrade. And if I manage to fill that, I have the old tower I can start using again.

DIY…NAH

Posted by anachostic on November 10, 2016 No comments

Tonight I had a thought. I need a new CD tower. The one I have is totally maxed out. I pulled up an old picture I took during the assembly of my tower and realized, this is nothing. I can build this. All it is is a bunch L shapes joined together into a swastika shape.

I got thinking further, if I’m going to build my own, I can make it HUGE. The measurement of my current tower is about 18” per shelf and about 5’ high. I figure maybe 24” shelves and 6’ high would be amazing.

So I spec’d out what I would need. First, I’d need some tools:

Pocket hole jig: $40
2 Clamps: $40
Shelf pin jig: $35

I have all the power tools I’d need to cut down the wood, so now for the actual parts:

2 sheets of 4’x8’x.75” MDF: $60
1 sheet of 4’x8’x.5” MDF: $24
Swivel base: $15
200 shelf pins: $20
Paint: $20

This comes to a grand total of $254. That’s not bad. But it’s the same price as some reasonably priced shelves. Jeez, I can’t even build this thing myself for less. And, I know me. It won’t be perfect. It’ll probably be passable as far as quality goes.

How Cute.

Posted by anachostic on November 7, 2016 No comments

In my random browsing about CD collecting and storing, I came across a website for “CD collectors”. Some people were posting pictures of their collections and some would post pictures of their finds at stores. It was kind of cute, and I mean that in a patronizing way.

Post titles like “Started 2 weeks ago, full collection so far” and “After 6 months, this is my collection”. And then there’s a picture of a dozen CDs, or maybe two dozen. And when I think about my 800+ collection, I snicker a little inside. And when I see that the CDs are mostly new releases, I snicker a little more.

And boy, isn’t that pompous of me? It is, I admit it, and I accept that. I mean, I could make a post saying, “After 30 years – my collection” and there would be people snickering at me. “30 years and only 800? I bought that much in the last 2 years! My collection of 3,000 laughs at you.”

Despite the holier-than-thou ranking and hierarchy of collectors in which I probably place in the 70th percentile (The curve is exponential. Once you break a certain level, you are in rare company), at the same time, I am encouraged. These are people just discovering the joy of collecting physical media. Judging by their selections, they are young, which means there is still life in physical media. It’s not dead.

There is another reason for encouragement as well. I’m not going to pretend that piracy doesn’t exist, whether software or music or video. I can admit that I used to be a pirate. In the old, old days, we used to have dual cassette decks that would copy tapes. There’s really no legitimate need for a dual-deck unit otherwise. So, I had plenty of copied tapes. Why? Because I was young and poor. I also had lots of pirated software. Why? Exact same reason. I couldn’t afford $500 for Photoshop. As I grew older and started making money in my career, I didn’t need to resort to piracy anymore. I didn’t need to “settle” for a copy. I could get an original. And I started valuing having that original in my collection.

If these budding collectors are anything like I was back then, that means they are beginning to advance in their life, making a living wage, where they can afford the luxury of not stealing. That means the world is getting better. Also, they take pride in their collection. Consider the pride between showing someone 200 gigs of downloaded albums (which may elicit some praise from some people) vs. showing someone a collection of 100 CDs. “They’re all real. They’re permanent.”

You can copy off that 200GB of music to your friend and not feel a ounce of pain. But, giving up a CD from your collection, you’re actually losing something. It’s the same psychological trick pundits use when they encourage you to live a cash lifestyle. By handing over physical cash when you buy things, you feel a loss, more so than when you just swipe a credit card.

So even as these beginners are showing off their tiny collections, it’s still something to encourage and cheer on. They have many years ahead of them and decades and decades of music to discover and collect.

Yay, Someone Did It!

Posted by anachostic on November 3, 2016 No comments

Check out my post from March, 2008. Yes, 2008. Someone finally implemented this.

BackerKit, after filling in your information, allows you generate a post bragging about what you just did. and they offer selectable values for key elements.

This allows someone to be themselves and also capture some data about the experience.

You’re welcome, BackerKit. Believe it or not, I have an entire document somewhere discussing the entire business case for doing this and how the results can be calculated and analyzed. There’s even a prototype website with an entire functional database structure. Ah, if I only had a lot more free time and even more motivation.

Never Let Your Guard Down

Posted by anachostic on October 6, 2016 No comments

Today, I learned I had been “hacked”. I say “hacked” in a figurative sense because there wasn’t really a whole lot of hacking involved. I somewhat left the door open and someone just fiddled around and got in.

I have my own email server that manages a few domains. I have one domain I don’t do anything with, and on that one, I had created a couple of test accounts for, well, testing. The problem is, I never disabled them when I was done. It’s been a while since I did that, so either I didn’t think about the consequences or assumed that since I was working on an inactive domain, no one would try accessing it. You can’t assume that.

Since “hackers” just use a bunch of scripts to automate “hacking”, they can just let the scripts run and go eat some more pizza. And that’s what happened to me, probably. A script found my domain, then immediately went to work trying out different common username/password combos. And although I have security features that will temporarily blacklist an IP address after so many failures, that had no effect. The script will just wait until the ban is lifted then continue on. Time is not a concern.

So, once they got some working credentials, then it was time to deliver the spam. And boy did they ever. I had gigabytes of log files and 22k email messages queued for delivery. How I learned I was hacked was by chance. I happened to try sending an email during one of the spamfests and got the email returned with the message:

DED : You’ve reached your daily relay quota

At the time I got that message, I thought it was being returned by the domain I was sending to. Later, on a whim, I decided to check my own server and was shocked at what I saw. I immediately shut down the email service and started clearing out all the trash. Then I changed all the account passwords and disabled all the unused accounts and restarted the server. The log files showed someone trying to log in using test2@mydomain.com and failing. Bastards.

It’s my own fault, for sure. But it’s terrible that you can’t stop being paranoid for a second on the Internet. They’re always out to get you.

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