Coping: With “One of Those Weeks”

Been “one of those weeks” so far.

Turns out the doc appointment is this morning – not Wednesday.  I missed a meal for nothing.  Why I had both days marked in Outlook is a mystery.

And then the replacement treadmill showed up Tuesday.  The delivery truck couldn’t get onto the property (too big) and they weren’t keen about driving on pasture land for some reason.  So, out comes the tractor and we moved it in that way.

(Continues below)

 

With the treadmill up to the top of the car & tractorport, it was time to move it into the shop.  Elaine held the hand truck in place and I gave it the old heave-ho.

Non-trivial, this.  Getting the box out of the Kubota bucket was a simple push of the hydraulics.  But, getting it up on the hand truck?  Not so fun.

As Elaine was pushing on the upright box, while I lowered it to get it into the shop, I managed to get into a position where a good bit of the 223 pound box weight was on my neck.  Not especially smart, now that you mention it.

Note to self:  Get a measuring tape ahead of time and don’t eyeball heavy stuff so much when you get older.

Once in the shop, the box decided to try and fall over.  Again, another burst of High Intensity Training (*HIT) and the box was back upright with Elaine carefully putting a board under it to hold it steady.

10 minutes later the BP was down in the 113/76 range.  I oughta buy more treadmills.

Then I went to the studio where I’m having a devil of a time with my recording processes getting ready for the podcasts.

There’s a certain “personal level of excellence” demanded.  When you do a quarter if a million newscast minutes in your life, you get kinda picky about how things should sound:  Just so.

One reason I don’t think most video podcasts are worth listening too (other than for the novelty of it) is they generally have low production values, low energy people, long rambles and arcane discussions that would put the dead back to sleep.

I’m got a couple of ways to “skin  the cat” figured.  (Zeus the Cat gets nervous when I write that, lol.)

I can get the jingle and sound effects dispenser working fine OR I can get the mics working.  But all at once?  No sir.

The problem is that Windows audio (MME or WDM) is basically two channels.  We don’t do no stinkin two-channel Windows audio.  We’re grown-ups on ASIO. 16-tracks of DDG (drop-dead-gorgeous) audio.

Which normally is way cool – since Reason ties in drum loops and such via ReWire.  And the Aria player with Garritan Personal Orchestra has a dandy VST driven by the KeyStation 88 USB.

BUT in this instance, the problem is routing lots of short .MP3 clips into the show.  The Presonus 16.0.2 ASIO drivers hog everything and Jesus will be back for the Second Show before I get ASIO4ALL working to my satisfaction.

Resolution?

Yet-another online trip to Amazon.  We already have a direct injection box – which retired broadcast engineer Hank out on the Big Island will laugh about, since everyone has problems and stories about D.I. boxes who’s done real audio work.  Needed a four-pack of XLR gender-changer plugs.  (At least in today’s world until 20 years ago, we don’t have to explain that nowadays…)

The final layout for recording will be mastering in Samplitude Pro with a separate computer coming in on the Presonus ASIO channel.  The D.I. box will feed the snake (audio harness in the middle of the room) and from there, feeding the D.I. box will be my laptop which doesn’t do anything when I’m home anyway….so that should be all good.

Samplitude has a nearly-perfect MP3 encoder – super small file sizes which is a huge plus.

I was able to get everything rolling in OneBroadcast – nice software and all, but to be stuck with a dead-end final product (Flash audio)?  No, I want real high sample rate .wavs and an integrated .MP3 out because life’s too short for filing conversions.

Elaine’s been a great sport with me being manic in the studio.  One of the tasks started Tuesday was rounding up sound effects.  Understand that this project has been in the works for five years and just now bubbled up to the top of the list.  It IS getting done.

While E  was doing “her thing” in the house, I was working my way through several “licensed libraries” of sound effects.  Apparently, after listening to me select the “ideal baby crying noise” (I figure for political stories and complaints from globalism & free trade supporters where the sound of a baby whining would fit)…well,  Elaine had enough.

Can you use headphones, darling?

I complied, but only until I got to the farts and belches which I decided in a rare moment of adulthood, not to deploy.  At least for now.

I final useless series of space sounds and I was spent.  Time to call it a day.

Today, the real work of life gets underway again:  A replacement treadmill motor will arrive (which if you’re keeping count, will give us two treadmills if the solution works).  And the doc visit, well, that’s always a hoot.

I’m half-expecting he’ll find some illness and want to push some pills at me. I’m just sure of it.  That’s where the money seems to be in his business.  But, his office is on the way to the hardware store, and then there’s the Chinese buffet just up from there.  Besides, with the lack of food, I figure I will really get my money’s worth out of lunch.

After studio burnout, the rest of Tuesday was spent watching the market sneak up on what should be a nice rally going into options today (indices) and tomorrow (underlying stocks).

Then I got down to wondering what would make a kick-ass column for Thursday morning.

As should be obvious, I didn’t come up with one.

A Note About Comments

A number of people sent in posts Wednesday that were addressed to the Peoplenomics piece that was shared with subscribers.

Here’s the deal:  When comes to Peoplenomics (my baby) I don’t suffer no fools.  If someone is NOT a subscriber and sends it a post responsive to Peoplenomics, sorry, but it goes to the round file.

If that hurts your feelings, here’s a dime.  And there really is a 1-800 number for Dial-a-Prayer.

In fact – hold onto your socks – there are 646-THOUSAND hits on dial-a-prayer in Google.

More to the point, over here in the government Trademark database, we find that Dial-a-prayer (TM) is a dead trademark.  You might wonder why more people don’t connect that with Rev 12 September 23rd.  Or maybe you wouldn’t.

Hell, there’s no telling what people will figure or connect these days…

Write when you get rich, or send in column ideas…

George@ure.net

16 thoughts on “Coping: With “One of Those Weeks””

  1. Shure makes a 55s reproduction. Not a ribbon like the original, but it sounds ok. The reason you want to buy one (c $100) is for photos. Many “artists” will like shots with “The Elvis Mike.” We bought two years ago, and made huge use of them for photo ops. I also found one wrecked and all badly dinged up and preserved its “15,000 miles on the road” look — and that got a lot of use as well.
    https://www.amazon.com/Shure-55SH-II-Unidyne-Microphone/dp/B0002GZKWU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1502974036&sr=1-1&keywords=shure+55s

    Any “audio guy” seller can get ’em for lots less than the ‘Zon price… 73

  2. So your doc appointment was this morning not Wednesday morning. That’s funny because yesterday morning I went out to do something that can only be done on a Thursday morning, when I discovered the location closed I checked my phone calendar and realized it was Wednesday, not Thursday. I was bewildered because I was positive it was Thursday. Strange days.

    • Sure sounds like they changed the timeline again because it sounded like war and then now Kim is backing down yep sounds like they changed the timeline again
      I ordered trailer full of wood chip mulch but instead it was just the hot mulch without the big wood chips I kept it because I can still use it that’s the way I am ,it changed my design of how I am doing things and so for that slippery fall,
      now is this timeline going to have anything to do with the financial structure in addition to a back down War
      Did you notice anything peculiar about Trump or about Charlottesville.
      And I can’t believe I had a headlight on my head outside at 3 in the morning shoveling dirt over a not filled in water line.
      because it’s so hot and humid out everyday now I’m going to start doing things with a headlight on my head every morning and relax inside in the daytime in the air conditioning.
      Yepper strange things going on indeed

  3. George, I envy your skills every time you write about your adventures with HAM radio or computer related equipment. I am great with machines and handyman type projects, but all things electronic leave me nearly helpless. Yesterday, I received the cheap MP3 player I ordered and read the instructions repeatedly. It appears simple enough, yet I am struggling with pushing the buttons in the correct order to accomplish what I want to do. These devices just don’t make sense to me.

    I bought this so I could listen to Coast to Coast downloads when away from my PC. I finally figured out how to transfer the files and listen to them, but am not yet confident about how I did that so it can be easily repeated.

    Perhaps one of the reasons we reincarnate is that eventually we get irretrievably beyond our “useful by date” so to speak, and must be rebooted to function well.

    • Theory falls apart. Early humans had no annual software updates or massive tech to re/learn. Yet died.

      No, the real reason we reincarnate is so churches get ongoing revenue.

  4. Hi George,
    We once had a treadmill that had a few intermittent bursts of motor failure then died.
    The fault was a 2.2M ohm fusible resistor feeding one of the motor drive transistors on the controller board.

  5. , the concrete slab that goes to my back door was a little slippery and I fell down on my side there I was in pain, waiting for the strengh to get back up again wondering how much has been hurt on this old body and above me is some overhead chickens and roosters looking down at this big old clown And over not too far around is cats and dogs all worried whether they’ll get another meal and not too far are goats that are going baaaaaa but I sure swore it sounded like they were saying beggggg beggggg

  6. I am prolly the only one who knows you from the KOL-FM days. Don’t forget the froggy noises. Seems to me you did them personally in a few of your newscasts. Not sure what the station management thought at the time…

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