Here I go with music again!

  

  About four or five years ago I started the massive task of recording my old LP albums digitally but life, an insane 60+ hour per week work schedule and heart surgery, got in the way. Recording my albums went by the wayside with only about two dozen recorded, cleaned up, and remastered.  Both of my turntables have been sitting idle and gathering a very thick layer of dust.  Seriously!  My *ion turntable doesn't have a cover and the last album I was working with has such a heavy layer of dust that I'm not even going to try and clean it up.  Bad attitude to have?  Definitely.  It also got scratched too badly to play so I'll just look for another copy.

    Why record and digitize the albums? Why don't I just listen to the albums the way they were meant to be listened to?  The main reasons:  #1.  I can't play to a vinyl LP in the car.  I've seen pictures of turntables that were mounted in a car in the 1960's but that technology (thankfully) didn't last and is extinct. Can you imagine having listening to your favorite album on the way to work and getting back to your car to find the summer heat has melted the album?  #2.  Even if I could play the albums somewhere other than at home I have no desire to carry a heavy crate of albums around with me.    #3.  I grew up playing one album at a time and having the music stop every twenty minutes or so because the disk needed to be flipped or exchanged for a new one.  It didn't bother me then but it bugs the fire out of me now.  Gimme a five hour playlist any day!

    Sound a little ridiculous?  Yeah, I guess it is even though they are real reasons.  All joking aside, there are serious reasons I want to record and digitize them.  The first is that they aren't portable.  A turntable and music I can only listen to in one place doesn't fit my lifestyle.  The second is that vinyl albums get scratched no matter how much care is used when getting them out or putting them up.  If you're lucky you only wind up with clicks and pops instead of a scratch that makes the needle skip on the album.

    No, that's not right.  The main reason is that I enjoy working with audio files and like tweaking the sound to my version of perfect.  The other reasons are just as important though.

    There is another aspect of this as well.  "Why not just stream the music, buy it on CD, or download it (legally) from a music service like Amazon or iTunes?" is something I was asked when I started this the first time.  Aside from the fact I don't want to spend thousands to buy digital copies the main reason is that too many of these albums aren't available digitally.  Not at all.  

     You are probably asking what lit a fire under my feet and got me back to working on all of this again. Aside from the fact that every time I have sat at my computer I have seen the turntable and album gathering dust and thought that I really need to get back on it but have said, "Later." and loaded a game or movie instead.  What got me going again is that I have recently acquired hundreds more albums to work on from a thrift store that is closing next week.  I plan on getting another load before they close.    

I now have several boxes of albums that are mainly from between 1940 and 1970.  These boxes are full of old country, jazz, big band, and other artists who are all but forgotten. Their works appear to not be in demand enough for the modern music companies to have gone to the expense of re-releasing them.  Many of these fall into the category I mentioned earlier:  Not available in a digital format with the exception of singles that were released and are available in compilations.

No, I'm not going to be recording all of them.  A lot of them are albums I will never listen to, especially the two dozen (or so) from Lawrence Welk.  My grandmother would have disowned me for saying that but they just aren't my style.  Others appear to have been so poorly cared for that I doubt the recordings could be cleaned up enough to be enjoyable.  

Regardless of what I do or don't record I foresee several months of recording time on my horizon.  At least it will keep me out of trouble, mostly.    

Communicating via social media is great. Or is it?

 

To make things clear I need to point out in this entry that I am mainly referring to direct messaging between two people via regular old text messages.  There are those who say this is not social media since it is direct and not public.  There are those who say it is.  I am in the camp that says at least on the most basic level texting is a form of social media, although it really doesn't matter.  The situation that is on my mind right now could happen if the messages were in a thread on Facebook, X, or any of the other non-verbal platforms.  It could even apply to good old physical correspondence. 

 

Okay.  Down to business.

In our modern digital world text messages in whatever form they take have become as much, or more than the normal way for people to communicate.  My kids’ generation seems to prefer communicating by text rather than voice but there are plenty of people who are my age (older than dirt) who agree. As a result there are several people I keep in touch with on a regular basis with whom I have not actually spoken to in months and in a few cases, years.  They prefer it that way.  I don’t but if I want to stay in touch I have to respect their wishes.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I like the convenience of being able to drop a quick message to someone to let them know something they should be aware of.  There are situations where a voice call is not practical because of one of us being unavailable or whatever is to be said is brief and not urgent.

“Well,” you think, “What is the problem with this?”

I feel that only communicating by lines of text on a screen is dry and impersonal.  It is extremely hard at times to know how your message is being received.  You can’t hear the tone of the recipient’s voice.  You can’t tell if they are mad and typing so hard they are about to break the screen on their phone or damage their keyboard.  A little joke can be taken as completely serious and therefore could be offensive if the person on the other end of the conversation is upset when the message is sent and the person or just isn't in the right frame of mind to receive it in the context that was intended.  It doesn't even have to be a joke.  It could simply be that one or the other could misunderstand the meaning behind the message.

I have two disastrous examples that I am going to relay here.  Both are of messages between one close friend and myself.  I will not identify the person since this blog is public and I WILL NOT air my differences out publicly.

I will refer to my friend as “Jay”.  He and I have been friends in real life since the early 80's.  For the past two decades he has lived about 1,500 miles from me and has not been back "home" in at least fifteen years.  We texted often but due to his preference rarely spoke on the phone.

The first example occurred about ten years ago. Bear with me here, context is needed.  Jay had gotten into a dispute with a local business.  He had marijuana in his possession that was legal since it was prescribed.  The business is a tourist attraction and he had purchased an annual pass.  I don’t know how staff members determined he had prescription marijuana with him but the business had a policy that marijuana wasn’t allowed inside.  I don’t know all of the details but as I understand it he was approached and told he had to throw his prescription out if he wanted to enter.  He did so.  He was then told that despite having a pass to enter he was forbidden to enter and was banned from the location for life.  Management even refused to refund the cost for the remainder of the time on his pass.

As Jay was relaying this to me I could tell how upset he was.  I was expecting him to take legal action and fully supported him.  As I was understanding the situation what that did was wrong and I was looking forward to him getting things corrected.  Remember, all of this was relayed by texts.  Jay doesn’t not like to talk on the phone much.  I don’t recall exactly what I said but stated my readiness to sit back and watch the drama unfold.  I was eager for the fireworks he would unleash.

Jay took my response in a completely different way. He somehow got the impression that I was supporting the business over him.  I immediately got blocked and unfriended on Facebook.  I was soon told by a mutual friend that he thought I “threw him under the bus” and that he couldn’t believe that a friend of twenty plus years would do that.

I refused to draw our mutual friend into the matter and endanger her relationship with him so it took between two and three years for me to get the opportunity to reach out to him and patch up our friendship.

Now we are back where we were before. Last month Jay blocked my text messages and has unfriended and blocked me on Facebook.  I don’t know what I said.  I know what the last message I sent to him was but I don’t understand how that could have offended him so badly that he would immediately block me and cut off all contact. Again, if we had been speaking to each other he could have heard the tone of my voice and I could have heard his and known he was upset and said something different or at least kept silent.

Are those examples of the failing of communicating by social media enough?  

These are just two examples. I used to spend a lot of time in IRC chat rooms and regularly saw similar situations get someone kicked and banned from a channel simply because their post was misunderstood.  I have had friends (IRL or online) get mad enough unfriend me on Facebook or stop talking to me IRL because they were offended or angered by a comment I made. In all of the cases they had misunderstood what sentiment was being said simply because a line of text on a screen cannot properly convey the mood and tone that I had in mind when posting. 

I’m open to your thoughts on this.  Leave a comment and I will get back to you and, hopefully, not be misunderstood.

 

Adventures in Coffee II

 My new espresso machine. It's as automated as it can get and makes great coffee.

I've been putting off getting an espresso machine for way too long. Rich sent me a link to a near automatic machine that was at a price too low to ignore so I grabbed one. I am still drinking moka, cold brew, and pour over styles but I am pleased to add espresso drinks to the at home routine.

Y'all who know me know I love coffee and that until the past few years I spent a lot of time in coffee shops. I still go from time to time but not as often since Bridge closed. Yes, I know that I was spending a lot of money but it was as much about a relaxing evening out as it was about drinking good coffee. Kinda.. With Bridge gone it has become more about the coffee. Pines (the shop downtown) is nice but it doesn't have the atmosphere to keep me there for too long but it's not uncommon for me to drive in two or three times a month just to get out of the house (I retired from law enforcement and work from home now).

I've heard it said to skip that daily cappuccino or latte if you are trying to save for a large purchase. I believe it now. I figured out that the price of leaving the house solely for the purpose of driving to Pines, staying to get two drinks and driving home is about $15.50 with current prices for drinks and gas.

Now, two of the same drinks at home cost me $1.50.

The machine cost $96 with tax and will pay for itself after only having used it enough to save seven trips to Pines. I haven't tried to figure the price for Starbucks, Yukon, or 7Brew since those are drive thru and leaving the house to get a cup and drink it while driving home isn't something I do.

As I stated in a previous post I still believe that drinking great coffee is a luxury. In the five years since that post daily life has gotten much more expensive and, even with a little more income in my pocket, a lot of luxuries I enjoyed have been put aside. Thankfully even with the addition of espresso to my home routine great coffee is still a very affordable luxury.

A side note here.. If you are scratching your head after looking at the picture of the machine please understand that I still haven't decided where I'm going to keep it set up. There is no shelf space left in the kitchen and, yes, that is an old baking tray under it. I have it on a small bookshelf that would not hold up to very many spills. I may keep it where it is but will have to find a better tray to put under it if I do.