zen's journal

Still here on the web, looking for love and romance, and a little sanity in an otherwise crazed world.

what have i been busy with these days?
well, my music library. Everyone else is bored hearing about it, so I'll tell you so you too can get bored with it.
I've backed-up my and my sweetie's discs onto my hard drive--actually a number of drives. My library is quite large, literally expanding everyday. I can easily get 150 songs on the average day. a good day is 500 songs for me. I've gotten 5200+ in one shot; that being the complete Billboard collection from '46-05.

To be clear, I'm not using Limewire. I do not illegally download.
I simply get music that noone wants, adding it into the stew. It's amazing what I have got for free, or next to it. Sometimes bartering is involved. Sometimes it's a matter of backing-up a computer-less friend's 50 CDs or so. (There are those who are HARD on their discs, and need an external storage to counter-act their stupidity. [I like to provide this free service to my technologically-deprived friends.])
Not insignificantly, radio is a huge portion of my .wav captures. I digitize my tapes, LPs, 45s, 8-tracks, 78s, and any other electronic sound I can pass through my receiver I've caught. Even CB conversations were taped starting years ago.

I've actually saved alot of songs, good music, from obscurity (musical purgatory) through, well, surreptitious means. Our raids would yield promotional albums. These promos might well be listed in the category of things noone with good sense wants.
One story involves raids on the collection of promos accumulated by my friend's dad, Jimmy. Jimmy worked for record companies for a number of years. The UPS truck stopped by his house at least once a day. Most of the crap that he got was not worth saving, really; although a small slice of it was decent.

This massive store house of 45s, cassette tapes, lp records, cds, posters, teeshirts, ashtrays, paperweights, notepads--all bearing some band or subsidiary of the parent company: B.M.G. (formerly: A&M, Arista, RCA), has come to be know locally as the Jimmy Fund. Technically The Jimmy Music Fund.
All my promos, regardless of the origin, I still credit to the Jimmy Fund.

Did anyone say A&M Records? Yes, that was one of the companies. As I'm sure everyone knows, A&M was the brainstorm of Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962. The lable is most famous for introducing the album Frampton Comes Alive to the world. Subsequently, that album sold more than almost any other single album.
That album sold so many copies that Jimmy put an addition onto his house to hold his rapidly growing music, specifically LP collection. This room was dubbed "The Frampton Room." On the walls was hung, among all the spoils was his collection of Gold and Platinum disks he wa awarded with from the company.
We remember, musicals soundtracks can go gold and plat.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a company, especially not a record-business one. However, in there case i make an exception. They were a very progressive, and fair company. The artists and acts got complete creative control over the finished product, and a royalty rate that was second to none.
The company is a model for all businesses, but the record-business specifically.
They were generous with the employees, and field reps, like Jimmy.

Jimmy had so much promo crap, that he'd give out 45s and cassingles out at Halloween. We'd launch those into the pond at the end of the street every year.
They're all still there, as with all the hockey goals, pucks, broken sticks, no dumping signs, and bikes that were launched into the drink, when we were growing up.

These promos, and imports, cause nothing but problems.
First-off, no one is supposed to actually own them, even though they frequently get sold. They're stamped "company property, returnable upon demand..." or some such language.
Often, the cover is different from the actual one appearing in production.
The order of the tracks is frequently different, and there will be different versions not appearing on the production disk.
Frequently, the songs will not be recognized by Windows Media Player
...and before this gets into a technical issue of which player authenticates through which database, I'll tell you I've tried, and use, a number of players, out of necessity. Believe me, where it comes to these things, there is no "automatic". It's often entering the songs, info, and album art manually.
But that's OK. I love doing this stuff. Even though it's alot of work, I still love this job.
I've amassed a huge collection, for someone who's not a professional DJ. To maintain this thing correctly, it takes alot of work.
But at the end of the day, when I can introduce my friend The Kerbinator, a local dj to the A&M July/Aug. 95 Monthly Sampler, or the Atlantic 1998 Alt. Radio First Quarter Sampler promo I culled from The Fund.

What, one might well ask, was on said 1998 sampler?
Well, the best known of the bunch is probably Poe, with her well-known single: "Today".
Also offered by Atlantic Records that year: David Garza, Glitterbox, Victoria Williams (wasn't that the defunct Ms. America??), Athenaeum (a word you don't want to type baked), Mighty Joe Plum, and of course Kacy Crowley.
Beuhler?? Beuhler?? Anyone, Beuller??
This would have found its way to the bottom of Circle Street Pond Oct 31., I assure you.

I look through dreck like this, or the A&M offering above mentioned, and think to myself, that's alot of crap. Is it worth the effort I have to go through to enter each song info by hand?
Or what about the 5-song EP featuring the same some, 5 different mixes? To be sure, awesome for a DJ, but I don't listen to very many of the average alt. mixes. Madonna perhaps. Underworld, yes. Most though, remixes aren't worth it.
Eventually, I decided that all the 5-same-song EPs will go into my SHARE folder. Hell, they're such a pain in the ass to track, that I gladly share them with the world, the rare occasions I do f-swap online.
Personally, I think that all music should be available to everyone, despite the amount of money in his or her bank account. Why can't I have all the Metallica songs, you selfish, greedy prick?
Last week I moved a log blocking the middle of the road. Everyone could benefit from my work, but do I ask every single person to pay me for that? Society benefits by being non-selfish.
Besides, on principle alone, given the choice to give the artist money directly or through the means of the royalty system, I'd prefer to give it to the musician directly.

But that's a discussion for another time.
I'm talking about free music in this discussion.
Promos are usually given freely, unless they're part of a huge collection, which the caretaker stored they away like a squirrel his nuts. In that case a raid to liberate the crappy promos is usually in order. With the help of the Fund owner's son, it was really fun.

Jimmy has since departed his mortal coil, about 2 yrs ago now. He is eternal. His many boxes, and boxes, and boxes, and boxes of records, tapes and stuff has been split among 5 principles, myself included.
I have thousands of Fund cassettes, most are crap. I'm digitizing the few worth while ones, while they're till playable.
The LP records are the true jewels of The Fund. Many of them never-used, or unopened. All in the Inventory Control bags protecting them till the end of time. Thousands, upon thousands of these things; many to be digitized, many probably never will be, forever lost to time. Perhaps, that's not such a bad thing in the case of some of them...better off a slow painless death.

This post was edited by zen on Aug 30, 2007.

My skin is flayed
every nerve
raw
exposed
to you
don’t touch
please don’t touch me
as long as I can recall
i’ve always felt this way
contageous
unclean

Dirtified in
your presence
dirtified by
ur lack of presence

Im available
but not for you
im available
but not
im unavailable
at all

Jesus Christ alone
can’t save me
its all there
a thousands years
living under
a millenia of sins
nerves are raw
and i feel ur thoughts
pressing deep

Youve dirtified my nind
i knew it all along
dirtified my soul
with your burning

Im not here
unavailable
to your touch
I’m available
but not for you
your love

What's new with me...
it's 209pm, my time, and i slept in this morning. Since we didn't have class, i thought I'd make it a point to stay home, get high, and update my NAO journal. It's one of the few journal/blog things that I've started over the past few years, that I still maintain with any type of regularity.
And considering how little I'm spending over here lately, that's saying alot.

Hmmm...the biggest news all year and I never said anything to let you guys know my great and wonderful news: I got a new car. Actually it's a 97 Saab 900s convertable, with 132,000 on it now. Fire-engine red my boss calls it. That's probably the best descriptor.
It was ell, my stepmom's, car first. She got an '04 Saab 93, so she sold me this one. We worked-out a deal where I'm going to build her stone walls around her pond in exchange for the car.
At this point, I'm down to 145 hours left to pay off the car. Singly, this is the nicest car I've ever owned, and it's in incredible condition.
Not to mention I got it a year earlier than we had originally planned.
All of which is really cool.

The walls are going very nicely. I have pictures I'll post soon. It's funny, I don't show them to many people because I know that most people can't really tell what they're looking at when they see a stone wall under construction.
My friend cj, who does construction-based stuff, can decypher the heiroglyphics of stone wall construction. So we talk about the project and he gives suggestions, as friends are wont to do.
However, for the average person, say rich my ex-/roommate, who doesn't do that kind of work for a living, or for fun for that matter, and it's much different. His eyes glaze over. I consider him to be the average.
In all fairness, since he does know ell, has been to Christmas Dinner ther for the past 6 years, he knows the property. Since he's acquainted with the area I'm working, it's interesting to him to see how it's progressing. He's following along from an interested parties' stance. Because this makes me happy, he's more willing to be receptive to "rock talk."

At work I got a new boss. She has experience with auto-related things. She's ASE certified for brakes. She's doing well, but it's always tough getting a new boss. Lots changes.

Which brings me to sign-off, as I have to get ready for work.
A day on-a day off this week. I love that, but of course I'm not getting paid. Well, my sanity is a large price to pay for the rent...

2:03 am

i'm drunk.

and high

and listneing to 10cc "i'm not in love"

and i'm trying to convince myself that i'm not in love with you.

and i can't

so then i remind myself of your bible

and eyes glaze

mind drifts

love eludes

Zen thoughts

all is one

all is love

all is lost

all is life

all is the all

all is excitement

all is exhileration

all is adreneline

all is peace

all is tranquility

all is harmony

and in the end

all we're left with

is one question:

In those moments hidden from all else, did you have fun, or did someone else have your fun for you?

Zen~

I probably should post this in hardware...perhaps I'll post an official link over to the pruduct, so that you readers can get a much better explanation as to what this little gem is, but suffice to say, for the time being, that my new MediaGate 35, by AL Tech (

)
is a multimedia disk drive(enclosure). It interfaces digitally via USB or network capacity. All other ports are out or thru-puts (optical in.)

I'm trying not to get too technical, there's other forums for that. It is, however, hard to talk about this cute thing, without being somewhat technical. I do know to steer clear of the networking capabilities...definitely geek material...

Its primary task is to play media (pictures, video, music) into analog and digital a/v. It has a remote. It has an adaptor for household current (no batts.), and a USB.
It has great potential.

Part of its problem is the poor programming of the bios. I'm wondering how much work is involved in hacking one oif these things...
I wonder if they'd be gracious with the source code.
So then I started thinking about all the Linux freeks over here, and started thinking about how much some of your clowns really know about that shit...it's kinda scarey.
<play us a scary one David {I'll have to tell you guys about David Gedge [formerly of The Wedding Present] play at Conn College at Halloween; and I of course asked David in a mock tutor style to " Daa-Vid' plai uus a scah-rey wun,"
A "wh/Ut? " He replied in his Cockney back, never understanding what on the face of the planet I was talking about...
well, uh, where was i?
Ummm, Perhaps someone might build me a scary bios in liux that could take full advantage of the full ability of this...basically it needs to have a better display when it's playing on the television at NTSC.

The thing is, I would be willing to pay to have someone do this. I would GLADLY buy that person one of these absolute gems if he/she could make the thing giddy-up and go, go, go.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to.
This was my birthday present from my step-mom.
My dad thought clothes would have been much better.
What a clown. ...always first with queer jokes like that...

So with that said, I'm going to sign-off here, disembark onto the shores of a dirrerent landscape. Those driven by the engine of Geek (factor), I sail for bluer depths, at nigh unto 12:46 stars in the night sky...
gotta go.
pox
zen

This post was edited by zen on Oct 18, 2006.

This is more of my free-form writing.
This is open-letter to the technical department of AL Tech, to the mfg. of my new toy...((see above post for details))
This post is fairly straghtforward. I love this thing for what it does...
as well as it's potential.

**********************************************

To: &lt;a href=&quot;mailto:techsupport@airlinktek.com&quot;&gt;techsupport@airlinktek.com&lt;/a&gt;

My system: Gigabyte GA8Nx-deluxe; Athlon socket939 CPU, WinXP 32bit, 1GHz DDR400 Ramm, , USB 2.0.; West. Dig. 40GB IDE-100 drive in enclosure.

Sirs:
After long deliberative searches, I chose MG35 unit because it offers the best value for my money. I think it has incredible features; an amount of which is stellar. I'm excited to use this product.
I chose Al Tech's Media-gate for a wide variety of reasons, all of which is this unit's ability to liberate user from his Central Processing (i.e. Windows-based) Unit. The fact that it has a self contained bios is a cause for joi, and celebration.
I think it's fair to note that I'm posting this as a record on my blogs, and I'm posting it verbatim. This is just a courtesy to let you know I'm posting.
For the record, I did choose this product despite a VERY BAD review about your service. I'm hoping this is an episode of one, singular, rude employee who has been found out by this point, and disciplined. I would hate to think that that is a system-wide failure. I do promise that if I get bad service as well, your next letter from me will be to send back your product. That to me would be a great loss on my part. I'm hoping that I will be getting great service from your company.
I think it's important to have a good reputation. So in the interests of hearing your replies, I'm posting my emails on my website. If you'd like the address, I sall be glad to oblige.
I would very much like to purchase more of these units, as it stands. I do have one small technical problem, which is the sole reason for this missive. Sometimes I find it amazing, Technologically, how much more advanced the consumer electronics market is in Asia, Korea, Japan and China are. Here is a truly mind-blowing product from Korea!! Yay :)
I've downloaded the latest update from your website, version 1.45. I've tried updating the firmware, but I can not get the program to load, run, nor open. My Question: What application do I use to open v.1.45, as it appears on your website?

Thank you in advance for your kind attention to my request.

yours
Zen Living-ground.

***************

Hopefully, by applying some pressure in the right ways, I can get better service than that last poor shmo who had issues.
I'm hoping i can rate these guys highly in Cust Support....
Let's hope so, any way.

And for anyone not seen the image of this thing yet, here is THE BACK:

and here is THE FRONT:

This post was edited by zen on Oct 18, 2006.