---

    Found out Jeremy would be in tomorrow. He was just back from Las Vegas and needed today to go the temp agency and go through paperwork first. Discovered soem interesting info in an e-mail which was sent to us. The production department is going broke! Someone accidentally left budgetary information in one of the attached messages:

1998           $470,326
1999           $737,985
2000           $715,000
2001           $619,387
2002           $689,920 forecast

However, despite the forecasted expenses, another attached message reads "I just received the budget for 2002 [...] last week and the total amount allowed for this service is $460,000."
    D'oh!
    So this explains why one of our fifteen channels would be decommissioned tonight at eight, after programming.
    I remembered how to access my credit card account online, and my irritation was renewed when I confirmed that that appliance store in Rahway NJ had charged me for the Pioneer HTP-710 which I still had not received. I called them again, and once again was put interminably on hold -- until they hung up on me. I tried calling a subsequent time, but instead of inquiring about an order (which seems to be code for "put me on hold please") I shrewdly asked them first if they had the HTP-710 in stock. I tricked them into staying online. I was told no, that it's being discontinued. "Then why", I said ready for the pounce, "did you charge me for it?" I was afraid they'd panic and immediately put me on hold again, but the guy said that my money would be refunded to my account.
    At eight:o'clock, I routed black to channel 300 and took it off the air, as instructed.

---

    Someone had finally uploaded a screener of The Two Towers preview to newsgroups. I didn't discover it till late, and then I had to wait for all parts of the file to show up in my newsreader. After waiting all that time and after downloading the 17 MB file, I found out it was a gag. (Still don't know the stupid little animation took up 17 MBs though.)
    Jeremy was back today, looking much the same. We quickly fell into gabbing about The Lord of the Rings as if no time had passed. On a whim I checked out Imladris.net and discovered they had a link to a Two Towers preview, and in fact they'd been linking to it for a day or two. So much for relying on newsgroups. I couldn't download it at work so I couldn't wait to get home.
    Had to stay late though since we had changes for Mexico. They were being moved to a new transponder, a change that would take effect at eight:o'clock. Dennis came by to oversee this. It only took a few minutes and we were heading home at around eight:thirty.
    The QuickTime Two Towers MOV I downloaded is dark, weakly-colored, and has an annoying flicker, but it still helped me relive seeing the preview on Friday.

---

    I checked my charge card account online and still saw no money credited to me from that store in Rahway NJ. So I went on the offensive, e-mailing them. "After waiting fourteen days without receiving the item, I phoned and was informed nothing had been shipped since the model had been discontinued. Nevertheless, there is a charge to my credit card. I was assured that this money would be refunded to my account, but I have yet to see this. Do you intend to honor your promise?" Ha! That that, varlet.
    I checked my account page throughout the day, but my e-mail appeared to be having no effect, damn them. Decided to stop at an audio store on the way home, Alma's Hi-Fi, but I couldn't find the place even though I'd been there before. I checked some online map sites when I got home, discovering I'd gone the wrong way, and in fact the store is not far from where I work. Late at night, I checked my account page again -- and lo and behold, the NJ store had indeed credited me my full refund! I was a bit chagrined to discover the refund was dated April 1 and only posted April 3. So I'd sent them my scolding e-mail for no reason. Feeling bad, I wrote them again thanking them for their "prompt attention". It was a great relief to finally be done with them. And also a bigger incentive to go to Alma's Hi-Fi tomorrow.

---

    I got an e-mail from my friends asking if I was interesting in going to Ann Arbor for Springfest, on the 13th. We also got a call from Dennis asking if we liked seafood. Reid was hoping that meant Dennis might be feeding us, but Dennis showed up empty-handed. It turns out Darryl was offering to buy us a seafood pizza from Pizza Papalis tomorrow, so Dennis had wanted to poll us without spoiling the surprise. After work I headed over to Alma's Hi Fi, now knowing I had to go east on Michigan Ave instead of west. I thought they were open till nine, but the place was pretty much empty except for two guys watching a loud and unrecognizable chase movie in a corner. I asked them about Home Theater in a Box kits, but the one guy said their systems start at around fifteen hundred dollars. So, so much for Alma's.
    I swung up to Ford Rd instead, going to Borders where they still did not have The Lord of the Rings issue of Cinefex I'd been waiting for. And hating to give up so easy, I went over to Circuit City to browse over their home theater systems again. This time I at least spoke with a salesperson. He played me a couple DTS ES systems, but none of them sounded that good. They all sound overly processed, either too much bass or too much midrange; nothing sounds natural to me. And I got the sinking feeling that my limited budget would never satisfy my expensive tastes.

---

    A lot of good downloads in newsgroups this morning. Someone had written about my posting of the A.I. score. Evidently a couple tracks had glitches. I listened to the CDR and discovered the break-up was on the CDR itself! Luckily the break-up was on a held note, so I was able to fudge a correction.
    Instead of getting a home theater audio system I decided to, for now, just buy a really nice pair of headphones. To be perfectly honest, I watch most of my movies at night anyway, when it's too late to crank things up to full volume. So getting a really nice pair of headphones would be a nice compromise or stop-gap measure. I went to the Koss site, since I really like their Porta-Pro headphones. I ended up ordering the A-250s since they had a nice 16-25,000 frequency response.
    I thought Dennis was suppose to go to the Tigers' home opener today but I think he conveniently happened to be at our office when Darryl showed up with the seafood pizza. I guess a seafood pizza is an acquired taste. The Pizza Papalis crust was very good though, but I kept thinking the pie would've been a lot better with pepperoni and green peppers on it.
    I don't think Dennis went to the home opener. He called us on his cell phone, en route to the game, to tell us the score was already 0-4. We would not be seeing Dennis next week, since he'd be in Las Vegas for the NAB convention. Back at home, I got back to work on Dennis's Narnia tapes. I'd already digitized them, now I needed to start turning them into CDRs. I also started a full repost of my A.I. promo MP3s.

---

    Spent the day working on Narnia WAVs. Since the tapes were audiobooks, I wanted to make a track out of each chapter. The time consuming part was having to read-along while the books were read, so I'd know where to cue the track change. I also discovered that the cassettes were terribly abridged. In some instances whole characters and subplots were passed over; whole chapters were dropped too, which made it awkward to create my cue sheet.
    At night I finished up my Forrest Gump rental. I was watched my VCR clock go from 1:59 AM to 3:00 AM, to mark the start of Daylight Saving Time. I unexpectedly had a mini Tom Hanks marathon when I put on Cast Away right afterward. I guess I wanted to make the most of my night, to feel like I hadn't lost an hour of my weekend, since I stayed up till around 5 AM EDT!

---

    I didn't get up till twelve, missing Ebert's show again. I saw complaints that another of my A.I. MP3s had a glitch...which I found out was also on my CDR "master". I listened to all of disc two, discovering a third glitch in the final track! What a piece of crap I'd been sent! Luckily I was able to patch up all three.
    I continued the Narnia work, shocked to discover I'd recorded book six badly. Somehow I'd recorded side two of the tape twice! I was at least able to finish burning CDRs of book five and book seven, but I needed to re-record and edit side one of book six.

---

    I saw word on the U2 listserv that there was an ALD recording from the Tampa show available. This was good news since I'd promised to make CDs of the Tampa show for Phil and Steve (who'd gone without me to see it). I was able to get SHNs of the ALD show from Direct Connect. But unfortunately there was a lot of static and interference and break-up in the ALD recording. I hated to give this to Steve and Phil, so I decided to undertake another project. I'd managed to get MP3s of the Tampa show through U2 Achtung, so I would mix the two together (like that Cleveland bootleg I have).
    Before I left, I ordered a CD of the score to The Changeling from Percepto Records. Supposedly it's a limited edition of 1,000 copies, so I was surprised I could still get one.
    Lots of fun at work: we lost connection to the public P:\ drive again as well as connection to the Xytech program we needed to type up tomorrow's schedule. Luckily connectivity returned before the day was out, but Xytech was very slow and buggy. It was amazing how quickly the day passed; it was also amazing how out of sorts I felt just from having lost one hour over the weekend. Everything felt palpably off.
    I started work on the U2 mix, but it wasn't starting off too well. I also finished up the fourth of my four day A.I. full repost.

---

    Since I wasn't buy a home theater audio system, I gave some thought to improving my computer's audio. I'd been meaning to buy a digital audio card for a while, especially since my Turtle Beach "Montego I" card isn't supported all that well for XP, so I gave some more thought to buying one of the M-Audio cards mentioned on the Core Sound page. I wasn't sure which one to get, since I assumed I'd have to replace my Turtle Beach card. In truth, none of the three M-Audio cards had what I wanted (analog in and out). And by the end of the day I ended up choosing the cheapest one, the Dio 2448. I ended up getting it at zZounds.com, and I even got another pair of headphones too. I got talked into ordering a pair of Audio Technica ATH M-40s, just becaise of the glowing user reviews (and because Audio Technica was my first favorite brand).

---

    I'd been meaning to get a new pair of shoes for a while, and I finally forced myself to make time this morning. It was getting too warm to wear boots, and the laces were starting to fray too. I got a black pair at Payless; they had Velcro on them, which made them look something like hospital slippers, but they were the pair that fit best.
    Reid was having trouble with his Fark addiction. He was having fun provoking people on the message boards. When someone got scolded by a moderator for using racist language, Reid couldn't help goading the moderator -- which ended up with Reid getting banned. However, he'd been on the computer I usually use, so now I was banned too. I could at least read the homepage, but after a while that became inaccessible too. TORn was saying Cinefex was out at last, so I went to Borders after work, and finally got their Lord of the Rings issue. I got my Koss headphones tonight. They were a lot bigger than I'd imagined and the treble was surprisingly weak.

---

    Reid believed Fark was having server problems, but I'd been able to access it easily at home. I began to wonder if our (i.e., Reid's) constant use of Fark had finally caused it to be banned by our corporate firewall, if Reid had lost access to Fark for the entire company. Reid however was in contact with a guy named Slayerswine, consulting on how to get reinstated to Fark. Slayerswine said he was having problems accessing Fark too, so maybe it was their server. I guess it was a bad time to have problems since the Fark webmaster was out of state.
    Since I couldn't screw around on Fark, I screwed around on Blogger by randomly visiting other people's web logs. I was intrigued by a couple people's comments pages. They were running customizable CGI scripts right off their own servers. So I started juggling another project as I gave some thought about customizing the script for my own site.
    Some CD cases I'd ordered had finally come in, so I would be able to finish up Dennis's CDRs of Narnia artwork and all. I read rumors that Schmoe might've had to put his dog down, after it attacked another dog. And the comments thing might be too complicated to bother with.

---

    I finished up the U2 Tampa project this morning. I'd originally tried to create two separate WAVs of the ALD recording and the audience recording, but they would not sync up. Instead, I had better luck syncing the recordings up song by song. I saved my mix and finished creating the track cue points for when I burn the CDs.
    Fark was back, but only one computer. Reid had been able to sweet-talk his way out of the ban. At around six, I got a call asking if we were still broadcasting; the production receivers had gone black. Right after that, our receivers went black too. Remarkably, even though it's only April, we got our first instance of Summer-time rain fade.
    I got another audio project going. Someone had uploaded MP3s, in the soundtracks newsgroup, recorded off the rear-channels of the surround mix of The Lord of the Rings. This had created a pretty decent recording of the entire movie score (with sound effects but not much dialogue). And I wanted to soundtrack CDs of it. I worked on that tonight.

---

    The day had come for the Springfest in Ann Arbor. I got to Mike's house around nine:thirty. It had rained the entire way, until I got to the expressway exit; at Mike's it was cloudy but dry and Mike had absolutely no idea it was raining everywhere south of him. Greg showed up. Schmoe showed up with his kids. Mike brought his own kids. The kids were bundled up with rain gear and heavy coats, but we never got rain. In fact, the sun came out around midday and it got quite hot. I hadn't know this event was such a family affair, so the chances of tailgating were at a minimum.
    The first stop was "Krazy" Jim's Blimpy Burger. (You can tell he's crazy because he spells funny.) Schmoe had been sending e-mails on how he couldn't wait to get a Blimpy Burger and how he was going to call up to make sure when they opened. To be perfectly honest, I was not impressed with the place. We took some group photos outside -- hopefully I'll be able to post one soon -- and an old man offered to take a picture of all us...only to drop Schmoe's camera in the process.
    The big event turned out to be watching the Wolverines practice at the stadium. It wasn't even a scrimmage; all they did was run different plays with no score and no clock. I couldn't believe the amount of people who'd shown up just to watch this. I was bored silly, but at least I had the chance to sit in the sun. Even though it was mid-April I actually got sunburn on my face and arms.
    Mike had mentioned their Fore-Skins golf league was dissatisfied with using EX Boards for their discussion board. They were sick of all the pop-up ads; some of the ones with women in bikinis (the X10 ones) were dangerously close to being inappropriate for work. So once we got back to his house, I offered to host their own board on my website's server. I was shocked to discover I was once again maxed out on disk space, so I deleted some of my U2 MP3s for the time being just to make room. We even discussed making their Fore-Skins golf league home page into a web log, so it could be updated easily at work.
    I sat around with Mike and his wife Sarah on their patio afterward. It had been finished late last Summer, so they discussed buying some patio furniture for it, for the first time, tomorrow. Mike also needed to get mulch so he could start landscaping around the patio. His brother's band, Government Honey was playing nearby, so there was talking of seeing them. None other than Harpoon Man Greg "Fingers" Taylor was in town too. Unfortunately I hadn't brought my recording gear and it was too late for Mike and Sarah to get a sitter, so nothing happened. Speaking of Fingers, Mike confessed we might not be able to make the Buffett road trip to Chicago after all. He'd forgotten he was taking his family to Disney World the week before. He could leave Friday and be back the following Friday, and still make the concert on Saturday; but his son Brian has a soccer game Friday, so because of that the vacation might be bumped to Saturday through Saturday. I hadn't been all that fired up to go anyway, and finding out I might be going alone was even less incentive. So it looks like we might both be selling our tickets on eBay.
    I got home around eight, and spent the rest of the night on the computer. First off I burned a bunch of CDRs just to clear out some space on my overworked "MP3" partition, then I worked on editing The Lord of the Rings surroundsound soundtrack CDs.

---

    I finally woke up in time to watch Ebert's show, at eleven:thirty, only to find out some health show was on instead. A crawl on the bottom of the screen said Ebert had been moved to Sunday midnight...but I wasn't sure if that meant it would be on tonight or had been on last night. I spent the rest of the day working on my audio projects again. I worked on The Lord of the Rings surroundsound CDs in the morning, finished off Dennis's Narnia CDs in the afternoon (including finally re-recording side one of tape six), and returned to The Lord of the Rings in the evening. Oddly, the CD labels I was printing up were coming out wrong. They'd been fine in the morning, but now my new batch was printing off to the side.
    I remembered to transfer my U2 MP3s over to my Troubled Loner space. I doubted anyone would miss them, since they'd been offered for almost year. Oddly, my websites Control Panel was still showing me as maxing out my disk space. I poked around, looking for stuff to delete. It irked me that my "statistics" were taking up about a hundred megabytes themselves. That's what I'd love to delete, but they wever evidently inaccessible, since I couldn't find any kind of statistics folder. It had been such a long time ago that I'd installed the stats utilities that I could not remember any URL or password I might need to get to them. This bugged me enough that I was tempted to use my Control Panel to reinstall the tools just so I could uninstall them. Which is what I did. And at long last, I retrieved all the space I was entitled to!

---

    Tax time did not bother me. I'd already paid my Michigan tax and gotten back two hundred bucks from federal. I was disappointed Mike hadn't configured his discussion board yet. I stopped at the nearby McDonald's for lunch; I hadn't been there in about a week and I discovered they'd upped the price of a Quarter Pounder by twenty-one cents! Another change lay in wait, during my drive: the expressway around Lincoln Park looked different. For a moment I thought I'd missed my exit and had gone too far, but then I realized that the overpass in front of the Dix Rd exit was completely gone!
    I continued work on The Lord of the Rings music, back at home. Mike called me up, asking me to walk him through setting up his discussion board. I hadn't realized Buffett's tour had already started, and had in fact debuted in Nashville on Saturday. MP3s off Radio Margaritaville were already available at Holylands, so I had a chance to hear what the new tour sounded like. I was aghast to hear Jimmy trying to rap as the show started! I couldn't believe it. The guy who founded the "No DRALS"* movement had no succumbed to the thing he'd been fighting! To quote a favorite Internet expression: WTF??!!
    *"No DRALS" refers to "No Disco, Rap, or Lip Sync", a movement founded back in 1991 during "The Outposts Tour".

---

    One of the packages I'd ordered had sat out on the porch all night. It contained my new M-Audio Dio 2448 digital sound card and my Audio Technica headphones. I finished the third of three Lord of the Rings discs, and brought them into work to let the others decide if they wanted copies. It was so sunny and hot Reid had returned to his Summertime routine of lunching outdoors. I found out he'd gone ahead and subscribed to the Total Fark pay service. Dennis came over, so I was able to give him his Narnia CDs (and his orginal tapes). While he was over, I finally got around to asking him about my medical coverage, since I needed to get my eyeglass prescription updated and my stupid left wrist was still bothering me. He logged into the company website and we found my doctor is not part of the plan, but I'd still get 70% coverage.
    I got The Changeling CD tonight. There was a damned ugly black spider in my hairbrush! I wondered if I'd caused that by reading the "Shelob's Lair" chapter of The Two Towers last night. I toyed around with my CD label printing software, trying to calibrate it again; but it seemed each document needed its own calibration! This was ridiculous and it was also wasting a lot of ink and paper.
    Now that I had all that disk space for my website, and since I presumably wouldn't have the chance to record 2002 audio for my Buffett page, I decided to work on uploading a full concert from my older tapes. I started with the 1987 show, which was easy since I'd already duped it to CD. I made MP3s of disc one and gave them ID3 tags ready for upload.

---

    It was still sunny and hot outside but frigid in our room. I liked it, but Reid and Jeremy had their jackets on. A building services repairman came to check on our air conditioner units. A short special broadcast was being aired on channel 301; it was a last minute addition and the production department was getting on our nerves by continuously changing things on us. They said it was twenty-five minutes when it was thirty; they said there was no countdown when there was one; and then they stopped showing the countdown later in the day. Reid had I revised the schedule several times.
    In the middle of this, one of our encoder boards went bad. Actually it seemed to be working fine, but it was reported as bad. We let it sit though, not wanting to mess with it till after programming. Reid swore we'd replaced this board already, not too long ago.
    The air conditioner guy discovered a piece of copper tubing had two leaks in it; one was spraying a fine mist of water into the bottom of one unit, while the other leak was spraying a fine mist of water beneath our raised floor! Luckily he had a replacement piece in his office. And having repaired that, he discovered our intake reservoir wasn't working either. Luckily he had a replacement for that too. It was nice getting those repairs done and not having to worry about any expense.
    I faulted the encoder board after programming, only to get a report that the board had gone bad again right after it reconfigured. Sounded like we'd need to get a replacement again...and we'd be doing so well.

---

    Worked on making MP3s of disc two of the 1987 Buffett concert. I saw word on the U2 listserv that someone was auctioning off a VCD of the May 25 Toronto show I'd been to. I wondered if I could get that through Direct Connect, but found out that I now needed to be a "registered user" to access the U2 Hub -- an unexpected change which had been put in place since the 8th.
    The warm weather brought back memories of drinking California Coolers at Chip-e-water Park, so I listened to Asia on the way into work. Reid got the San Diego support group to send us a new encoder board. I screwed up tonight's override schedule, accidentally overriding channel 107 for a few minutes. Hadn't done that in a while. There's talk channel 300 might be brought back from the dead for one special show; but by the end of the day, the production group said they could get by with just channel 301.
    I listened to Mike & the Mechanics now, on the way home. I finally started uploading the Buffett MP3s. I guess I was a soft touch tonight, I suddenly bought Zone Alarm Pro just because of an e-mail, and I came close to buying some more RAM hust because of an e-mail.

---

    Lots of soundtracks to download off newsgroups; I left my computer running while I went to work. There was supposed to be bridge work by my house and a closure by work, but all roads were clear. Shockingly, programming was done at four today! This was too sinfully early to leave, so I figured I'd hang around till seven. Our new encoder board had come in; I swapped it leisurely. I checked MDOT's road construction page and discovered the Southfield Expressway closure would start at 7:00 PM tonight, so I changed plans so I could leave before this. I'd left the encoder chassis open for a while, but I closed it as I got ready to leave -- which caused that encoder board to go bad again! Maybe Reid was right; maybe the board wasn't bad. It was a worrisome thought, but maybe the chassis itself, or at least that slot, was bad instead. If so, it would require major work to fix.
    I got home quite early, and immediately set to doing one of the chores I'd planned this weekend: printing up CD labels for all the CDRs I had lying around. My stupid software still wasn't working properly; so I was loath to print up labels for my LOTR and U2 CDs, but these were just to simply label all the MP3 albums I'd been downloading and burning. There were about twelve of them.
    I stayed up quite late, watching Ghost World. Not sure what to make of the ending, but, as a loser, the movie spoke to me.

---

    Finally installed my Dio 2448 digital sound card. I'd since found out that I should supposedly be able to run with dual audio cards, so I left my Monetgo card in place for analog stuff (like my desktop TV and outputting to my speakers), and will use the Dio for digital stuff (for duping my DAT recordings and for playing CDs and DVDs). Seems to be working fine so far.
    Haven't installed it for Windows 2000 yet. And also discovered my system was quite buggy until I rebooted, even though the installation mentioned nothing about rebooting.
    The other chore I wanted to do this weekend was updating this here Diary page. I got that out of the way in the evening, writing down entries from April 4 till today. It's kind of nice to get my two big jobs out of the way so quickly and easily. I now have all day tomorrow to screw around.

---

    I discovered bootleg video of the U2 Toronto show I'd been to were available online as MPEGs. I was able to download this through Direct Connect. Someone was also downloading my Detroit SHNs from me at the same time, so I had to leave my computer on all weekend. I spent a good deal of the day revamping my Buffett web pages. I finally got around to offering my 1987 concert as MP3s, which required adding new links to my existing 1987 setlists page. And while I was at it, I decided to renovate my Buffett homepage into CSS.
    I took time out to watch the Lone Gunmen episode of The X-Files while also watching What Women Want on pay cable and my rental of Highlander.

---

    I hadn't made an official announcement of my Buffett MP3s until late at night, but already my counter was showing lots of activity. I made a point to call up my doctor since my left wrist was still bothering me. I kept expecting the pain to go away, but it had been around two months now and it was still there. I made an appointment for eleven on Wednesday. This was kind of close to my shift, but it wouldn't be a big problem.
  Reid and I discussed what I'd seen on Friday: that the encoder board had faulted right after closing the chassis door. He'd had the same thing happen when he'd closed the chassis door this morning. The San Diego support group wanted me to call them at eight, after programming, and they'd walk me through some tests, wanting to reenact the problem over the phone. There was talk of sending someone out here though. Sure enough, I could not get the problem to repeat itself at eight. But luckily the technicians were willing to take me at my word. (As they should, since I'd had to repeat then same story two or three times to two or three different people.) They agreed it was pretty suspicious the encoder board had worked fine for two hours on Friday and had faulted only after I'd closed the chassis door. Still, they were loath to make any promises.

---

    I made copies of the Toronto MPEGs for Phil and Steve, since they'd gone to the show with me last year. I needed to pick up some CD jewel cases so I stopped at Office Depot on the way in. I tested the MPEGs at work, pleased to find out Windows Media Player could handle them. If I could get them to play at work, it seemed likely Steve and Phil could play them on their home computers. (Oddly, the MPEGs had played a trifle fast on the Windows 2000 computer.)
    Some RAM I'd ordered had come in, back at home. I'm up to 512 MBs of RAM, but sadly I've maxed out my available slots. The computer ran noticeably faster, but booting up takes forever as the computer counts each megabyte of RAM.

---

    I would've the doctor was going to diagnose me with carpal tunnel, but in fact he said I had tendonitis. I guess to save me money, or just to empty out his office, he gave me four boxes of free samples of some anti-inflammatory pill called Bextra. At least I didn't have to get a prescription filled. The boxes contained three pills each, and he said to take these one a day and if the problem remained then I might have to come in for a shot. I was done at quarter to twelve and so was able to make it to work on time.
    I went to Best Buy after work. I wanted to buy a Walkman, basically to have a cassette player. I also impulsively got The Evil Dead DVD. I already have the Elite Entertainment laserdisc, so I basically got the DVD for its "Book of the Dead" packaging. I dedicated the evening to figuring out to realign my Lexmark printer with my Neato Mediaface II CD-labeling software. I ended up creating a plain template (just the outline of a black circle for the CD labels or the outline of a black square for the covers) and printing this over and over on plain paper. I'd match each sheet with a labeling sheet until by trial and error I got the outlines to match up. Perhaps my findings might be of use to you:

CD labels:
X-Offset: 0.120
Y-Offset: 0.010

front cover (booklet):
x-Offset: 0.020
Y-Offset: 0.060

back cover:
X-Offset: 0.155
Y-Offset: 0.060

cd labels (imported from Mediaface I):
X-Offset: 0.240
Y-Offset: 0.250

---

    I had to admit, my left wrist felt better this morning. The morning is usually when it feels worst. Now that I'd solved the riddle of my printer alignment, I printed up labels and artwork for my LOTR Surroundsound soundtrack CDs. I'd fixed my Neato problem just in time to find out I was running out of back covers. I brought copies in for Reid and Jeremy but didn't have enough sheets to make one for Dennis. By coincidence, Jeremy had brought in a 3-CD set of Glenn Miller music for me, since we'd been discussing the big band era yesterday. I had to go back to Best Buy after work to buy more Neato CD cover sheets.

---

    I finally found time to go to the post office before work and mail out Phil and Steve's CDs. I sent them the Tampa show from December and the Toronto MPEGs from last May. Fred, the guy who is our usual field engineer, would not be flying in tomorrow. Enrique would be instead. We'd worked with him infrequently, but it would be easier for him to fly in since he was already in Toronto. Reid requested that Enrique show up at eight tomorrow morning. He'd chosen such an early time just to make sure our repairs would be over before the Red Wings and Vancouver Canucks began their playoff game.
    I got an e-mail during the day, from Etronics.com saying they had the Pioneer HTP-710 in now. I'd kind of given up on the HTP-710 after the unpleasantness with that store in New Jersey; but I had more confidence in Etronics, especially since I'd done most of my initial research there. I wasn't quite brave enough to place an order, but I was definitely thinking about it.

---

    I forced myself up at six so I could get to work by eight. I treated myself to a breakfast burrito combo at McDonalds on the way in. There really was no reason for both Reid and me to be there: Enrique knew what he was doing and there wasn't room for both of us to watch what was going on. Enrique pulled all the boards out of the chassis -- storing them in our decomissioned Mexico chassis -- and then removed the empty metal box from the encoder system. We were disappointed he hadn't brought any diagnostic tools (he hates bringing tools in through customs), which meant the only way he could find a problem was by eyeballing it. Enrique noticed the side of the box where board had kept faulting was loose; he tightened it, but that was the only repair he made. Then he put the box back into the rack, slid the boards back in, powered everything back up, and attached his laptop so he could monitor any errors. He discovered a couple boards were not working properly and some power supplies had apparently been fried. Once again we were able to use the Mexico chassis to cannibalize it for working boards and two modular power supplies. We got everything working by around two thirty or three:o'clock. Enrique was unsure how to get back to Metro Airport so since we'd heading in the same direction I had him follow me till we got to I-94.
    I would've loved to nap but I needed to meet my parents. We'd bought band booster tickets from my brother for an evening at Greektown Casino, from six to eleven:thirty. My parents took me to church and then to the parking lot of the Woodhaven Kmart where we boarded our chartered buses. My dad was upset with himself since he'd forgotten his insulin bag. He told me to keep an eye on him to make sure he didn't eat too much or to make sure he walked around a lot. My brother's in-laws came too, and I found out even my Aunt Grace (my dad's sister-in-law) was aboard.
    I wonder what kind of profit the band got since tickets cost $20 but included $15 in tokens and $5 for food as well as transportation. My parents got their $15 slip redeemed for quarters and nickels, but I went for the big money getting fifteen dollar tokens. I did not feel like gambling though. I'd already learned back in November what a huge waste of time and money playing slots is, so I ended up aimlessly walking around. I spent my $5 slip on a hot dog and chips (what is it with casinos and hot dogs?). I told myself that if I heard a slot machine calling my name -- if it for instance had some movie theme or tropical theme that I could not resist -- then I'd go ahead and gamble, but instead I ended up hanging around the first floor bar watching the Red Wings game. I'm embarrassed to say I paid for two beers out of my own wallet before it dawned on me I could cash in my tokens for beer money.

---

    I swear I'd just put new inkjet cartridges in my Lexmark but it was already printing poorly. So aroudn midday I went out to Office Depot and bought two new cartridges. I stopped at KFC to try their Blazin' Twister combo. It wasn't bad, albeit a bit vinegary; but I still preferred the normal Twister taste. I'd gone ahead and ordered the HTP-710 from Etronics last night, but they wrote me back today saying they were out of stock again! I guess it is not meant to be.
    I won an eBay auction this evening. I bought myself a big honking Sony 3/4" tape player, like I used to use at the cable company. I dind't buy it for old times' sake but because the master tapes of the show I used to produce are all on 3/4" tape and I have no way of playing them anymore. I got the player suspiciously cheap, but the deck reportedly works. (I'm assuming it was so cheap because it's only a player and not a recorder. BUt a player is all I need.) We'll see if it works when it gets here -- and we'll see if I can find a place big enough to store it!
    Like last week, I watched X-Files live rather than taping it. I also watched Inside the Actors Studio with Bruce Willis, only to discover the movie they were talking about, The Sixth Sense, was on ABC at the same time!

---

    It wasn't a big surprise to find out our encoder was still reporting errors. This time it was the right power supply. The guys in San Diego suggested this was just an alignment problem and all we'd need to do was fault the multiplex board, which would give the encoder a little jolt and make it take better stock of what was going on. I had to wait till after programming to do that, and it was agreed San Diego support would dial into our system and keep an eye on any new errors.
    Programming ended at ten to eight, so I called up San Diego. Even though it was before five their time, I got the recording for "After Hours" support. I was able to get someone to page a tech. I got a callback a couple minutes later. This tech could not dial in, since he was already driving home. He had me fault the multiplex, but the errors continued. In fact they went from one every twenty minutes to one every ten. The tech called back once he got home. Faulting back to the original multiplex board dind't fix anything either. So he finally gave up and said he'd send us out a new power supply in the morning. I assumed that was it, so I began composing a last-minute letter before I left. And as I got ready to e-mail it, I got the same error as last week -- the same error which had caused Enrique to fly out here -- the same error we thought we'd done away with Saturday. I called San Diego back up and let them know. It was agreed this seemed bigger than a power supply problem, but nothing could really be done until everybody got back in the office tomorrow.

---

    I don't know what it is, but every couple months my letters from the Buffett and U2 listservs (at Yahoo! groups) dry up and vanish. This is despite the fact that people are still writing and I can see their posts at the Yahoo! groups archives. I'm not sure if this is a problem in Yahoo!'s sending or in my mail forwarder's receiving. I tried to fix this this morning. Instead of using my Short Fat Guy.com e-mail I created new addresses at my Troubled Loner.com account. Since these dot-coms are hosted by two different services, I could see if the problem was theirs or mine. Now I just had to wait for Yahoo! to send me the stupid e-mail verification so I could reply to it and add my new address to their database.
    Enrique had suggested, Reid had ordered replacement boards and power supplies yesterday (not including the right power supply we also needed) so we could rebuild the Mexico chassis. These showed up today. I was to use one of the power supplies tonight to see if we could get rid of the right power supply errors. Dennis came by in the late afternoon, finishing up work with Mexico now that their receivers had been successfully migrated to our new transponder. I was able to give him his copy of the LOTR CDs.
    I got in touch with San Diego before eight again. They had me physically swap the right power supply with one of the new ones, but the errors continued. They were still convinced that swapping the multiplex board would realign everything, so this time they had me swap it by physically removing two working multiplex boards and trading them. This actually seemed to do the trick. The right power supply errors were gone, but this still did not explain the return of the multiplex error last night (which apparently and fortunately had not been repeated). I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets sent out here again, and hopefully they bring an entire new encoder system with them.

---

Next Month
Back to Trouble Loner homepage
To Bitter Old Man site
To SFG World