Farewell to CDs

I know this may seem premature, but I am here to bid farewell to the Compact Disc. I grew up listening to LPs, those 12 inch round discs with grooves on each side that played music when touched with a diamond (or sapphire) needle. As I was growing up there was a brief coo in the status quo when the eight track tape showed up, but this wen away quickly, and the LP still reigned. As I was in high school a lot of people switched to cassette tapes. For the most part I held out, other than making taped copies of my records to play in my car. When I got to college some of my friends were switching to the perfect sound quality and indestructible composition of the Compact Disc. At the time the players were quite pricey, so I resisted technology.

As my college graduation approached, I found out my parents were planning on getting me a CD player, and I began buying CDs. My first was Michael W. Smith's The Big Picture followed by Vangelis' Chariots of Fire Soundtrack. I would listen on the CD players in the college library while I studied. The sound was so pure, so crisp and full. I knew music would never be the same. It had finally reached its full potential.

But as the CD aged it did not do so gracefully. The wonderfully built SONY player that I got for graduation lasted over 10 years before giving out. This kind of quality was replaced by $29 throw-aways from Walmart that may last a year if you're lucky. The booming sounds and subtle nuances of of the early CDs gave way to a barrage of mediocre music that in no way put the superior sound quality of CDs to the test (of course the blame for this lies not in the media, but in the music makers).

Then we were blessed with the internet, and mp3 files and pirated music. I knew CDs had nothing to fear, because the slow down load time and poor quality of these files. Music purists would never go for that. But then Apple invented this iPod and sound quality and storage size kept getting better. Now even my mom has an iPod (and I still don't and I'm dang envious). And so as the digital music age emerges we bid farewell to the CD. And in doing this I want to share a few things that tick me off about CDs before they go.

First of all I have always hated te CD for ruining album cover art. The 12 inch square that held an LP was the perfect canvas for amazing works of art (think Sgt Pepper's, or Kansas' Point of Know Return)

But the 5 inch size of a CD jewel box has stunted the art of album covers and reduced must covers to just a photo of the artist or band.

Another thing that bothers me about CD's especially in recent years is the compulsion to release several versions of the same CD. The way this works is an artist will release there CD with 10-13 songs. Fans will buy spend their hard earned money to rush out and buy the disc. Six to twelve months later the artist suddenly decides there were 5 or 6 more songs that should have been on that CD. So instead of giving us a new CD, they release a special deluxe edition with all the original cuts, plus a few new ones, tack an extra $3 on the price and resell to the same fans who of course must buy it to support their favorite artist. No wonder so many people just pirate music on line.

And along with the annoying special editions we have the "bonus tracks" and "Hidden tracks". Bonus tracks usually come when an older album is rereleased to CD, and some record executive decides instead of the classic "Dark Side of the Moon" you want a bunch of songs the band threw out when the released the classic, so they give you "Both Sides of the Moon" (note, so far this has NOT happened to the Pink Floyd classic, but it has to many other greats). I do not need alternate mixes or live versions tacked on to the front back or middle of a classic album. If you have extra songs, just save up enough to make a whole CD of extras. And most annoying are "hidden tracks" This is when some silly track or studio outtake is put on the end of a CD after 3 or more minutes of silence. This is supposed to be a nice surprise for listeners, but to me, I don"t want the silence. If I'm listening in my car and it goes to silence, I think something is wrong and I need to fix it. I probably have 20 or more CDs with "Hidden tracks" I've never heard because I just skip to the next track. I swear when I get an iPod I will not put any silence in, and will hide NO tracks.

Good bye CDs we'll miss you, go join theLP the cassette and the 8track in the music graveyard. NOW SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE ME AN iPOD!!!

Driving instructions

Lately i have been noticing that there are a lot of drivers out there who seem to need some basic driving instructions. If you find yourself noticing the same thing, please direct them here to my blog where today I will give instruction on two pieces of the cars mechanics that people seem to have forgotten how to use.

First of all there is the gas pedal. If you are a driver, the gas pedal is the long skinny pedal on the right on the floorboard of the driver's seat. It is located next the brake pedal, which you all seem to be very familiar with. The gas pedal is used to make your car move forward at an increasing rate of speed. What you do, is you press down on the gas pedal, this allows gas to flow to the engine and move the car ahead. When you want to get somewhere, this is the pedal to use. When a dark gry Matrix is behind you, and the man in the driver's seat is looking quite irritated, us of this pedal will increase the gap between you and the Matrix, and relieve the irritation of the man in the driver's seat.

The second piece of equipment is located on the steering column directly above the gas pedal, and to the right of the steering wheel. This is the turn signal switch. This device is used to turn on your turn signals. It is quite simple if you are planning to turn left at an upcoming intersection you lift the lever up until it clicks into place. You will notice a small flashing arrow on your dash board pointing left. This arrow corresponds to small lights on the front and back of your car which will flash telling people around you that you are planning a left turn. If you are planning to turn right, you push the lever down until it clicks, this will produce a flashing arrow pointing right, along with the corresponding lights on your car... Do you get the concept? And don't worry, once you make your turn, the flashing arrow and lights will stop, and the lever will magically click back into the neutral position. And there is a secondary function of this lever and these lights. If you are driving on the freeway, and wish to change lanes, you merry lift the lever if you wish to move to our left, or hold it down if you wish to move right. This will signal drivers around you of your intention to change lanes. Once you have moved over simply let go of the lever and the flashing lights will stop. And one final use of the lever: if you are parked on the side of the road and ready to enter traffic, raise the lever up, as in making a left turn, and then, before entering traffic, check your rear view and side view mirrors and look for other cars. What was that, you don't know about the mirrors, I guess that will be a lesson for another blog post.

Always Backup!!

Jesus and Satan have an argument as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they agree to hold a contest with God as the judge.

They set themselves before their computers and begin. They type furiously for several hours, lines of code streaming up the screen.

Seconds before the end, a bolt of lightning struck taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over. He asks Satan to show what he has come up with.

Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing! I lost it all when the power went out.”

“Very well, then,” says God, “let us see if Jesus fared any better.”

Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers.

Satan is astonished. He stutters, “But how?! I lost everything, yet
Jesus’ program is intact! How did he do it?!”

God chuckles, “Jesus saves.”

This joke came to my mind after lunch today as a vivid reminder of the panic I could have avoided before lunch....Okay, here's the story. I am an aspiring writer. I have several children's books written, along with 19 chapters of my first novel, and about 7 chapters of a young reader novel, a few short stories, and several poems. All of these are saved on a compact little zip drive. I keep this zip drive in a small holder, which clips into a mesh net on the inside of the case I carry my portable DVD player in. The case is with me always, at home and at work. Today at break I went to get my headphones out of my DVD case. I find that it is not zipped up. I also find my zip drive is not clipped to the mesh. Panic insues...I don't even worry about the fact that my DVD player could have fallen out and broken. All I can think of is that I have no back up for most of the stuff on this zip drive. I have paper copies of some of the items, but all that typing...argh!! So I paniced... I sent a text message to my mother-in-law to pleases check around my desk for the zip drive. She was helping out in my daughter's class room, but said she would look when she got home.

So as I waited to hear from her, I was trying to calculate how long it would take to retype all the lost material, and how much this would cut into my actual new writing. I remembered the scene in Little Women where Amy (a young Kristen Dunst) throws Jo's manuscript into the fire. I remembered the anger/agony in Jo (Winona Ryder) as she realized her work was gone. And i realized I was both Amy and Jo in this case...If my work was lost it was only me to blame. As I was eating my lunch, two and a half hours after the initial discovery, I received the message that my zip drive was safe on my desk. My two and a half hours of panic and fear and stress was over.

Oh, yeah, when I got home I made a back up!!

Computer expert by default

In my house I am the resident computer expert. With that said, let me give you a quick background about me and computers (or is it computers and I?) When I was in college my roommates Dave and Steve both majored in computers, an emerging field at the time. I majored in what I thought was something much more stable, communications (theatre/radio emphasis), thinking that computers were just a passing phase. Then Al Gore went and invented the internet, and computers went through the roof. Now most of the stuff I learned about radio is done by computers. (Oh to travel back in time and study computers).

Now for a shocking revelation from the computer expert of the house. I have never bought a new computer (hope to change that soon). My first computer was a used laptop my brother-in-law let me have. I had to buy a new power adapter for it, but didn't pay thing other than that. It worked fine for my writing, and for playing games. Really slow online, but it was okay. The computer I'm using now was my father-in-law's home computer. He got a new one two years ago or so, and I took over this one. It is 13 years old, and full of all kinds of junk I can't get rid of. "Why not," you ask? I don't know? 5 years ago or so, we flushed the memory and rebooted everything on it, and somehow, the guy who did this fix managed to lose our control panel (Can not get to it anywhere) and any time I try to delete or uninstall a program, it says I need to get clearance from my administrator... I have no administrator...what do I do?

Okay, you see my level of expertise. And let me be open with you, I have no clue when people start talking RAM and hard drive and MB or GB...Okay, I know a GB is bigger than an MB, and the higher the number the more space you have for storing junk on the computer. Other than a 6 hour class on Powerepoint I have never had any computer training. So how, you may ask have I become the computer expert? It is quite simple really, because I'm not afraid to do stuff. I teach myself. I print all the didgital photos our family takes (I use Paint Shop Pro, not photo shop) I make mini posters out of just about any picture my wife, mother-in-law or daughter find. And of course I'm the guy who can google anything (although Dakotah is also a darn good googler now).

The funny thing is because I take the time to learn stuff on the computer, everyone else gives me all the computer tasks, leaving me little time sometimes to do what I want to do (write, write, write). So the middle age guy on the old computer with no formal computer training is the man with all the computer answers in our house... I think our house is in trouble.

Hair as a sign of growing old.

This is my first attempt at a blog, outside of myspace. I hope you'll enjoy it. I chose Growing Old Gracefully as my blog topic, because I feel it gives me a wide range of subtopics to expound on.
Tonight I'm going to talk about one of the most obvious signs of growing older, at least for men; your hair.

There are three distinct signs I have found, dealing with a man's hair and aging. I discovered the first sign in 1989 when I was visiting my sister Sharon in Chicago. I was a scarce two years out of college. I had been in California nearly a year, and was visiting Chicago for a music festival, not rally feeling like I was aging terribly. One evening I was watching a movie in the living room, lying on the floor next to my darling niece Debbie. Suddenly she said, "Uncle Stevie, you have a gray hair!" and she proceeded to pluck it out. A few minutes later she proclaimed "Oh, look, another one." and again yanked it out. After another few repeats, I told her to please stop before I went bald...

This leads to the second sign of aging that hair shows, the loss of hair. My wife's grandfather used to say, "Half my hair turned grey, the other half turned loose." I found that funny, until my widow's peak began peaking higher and higher, and the spot in the back of my head got thinner and thinner. I tried to convince myself that no one could notice the bald spot. This notion was blown away one Christmas when my oldest daughter Dakotah was only four. It was actually a week or so after Christmas, and we were getting ready to take our tree down. I was under the tree loosening the tree from the stand. Dakotah looked down at my head and said, "Daddy, you have a hole in your hair! There's nothing there." It was true, I was going bald.

The third sign hair give of aging is its appearance in places it doesn't belong. I speak specifically of the two places I have been cursed with hair growth, the inside of the ear (and sometimes the top) and the nose. Now I know nose hair serves as a filter for incoming air, but does it have to grow long and white? A few years back I broke down and asked for an ear/nose hair trimmer...yes I use it...yes it works...kind of. Point is, my hair, or lack there of shows me, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am growing older...gracefully?