Ah, the Life

For the record, I now have 63870 File(s) 532,513,758,385 bytes for a count in e:\music. Roughly, I have 200 CDs to convert and, after that, I will begin an audit of my collection just to verify that I have all of my collection converted. I would hope that the audit could be completed in a couple of months. The way I hope it would work is that I would insert the CD into the drive and immediately, Windows Media Player would report that the CD has already been "Ripped to Library" because, at least, that's the way it's worked out previously with CDs I didn't realize I had already ripped. Then, the other aspect of all of this, I want to group my CDs by band name. Whether I can accomplish that or not will only be able to be determined as I progress through my collection. I am hoping it will be a painless process.

This weekend is absolutely packed with activity.

• Friday, I am playing drums at Keith and Julie's wedding.
• Saturday, Alex and I are first going to the Iowa Hawkeyes football game at Kinnick. After the game, we have tickets to the 7:30 PM show Charlie and the Chocolate Factory play at Iowa City West.
• Sunday, Megan, Alex, and I are going to 11 AM Mass at STM. After Mass, Megan and I are going to Coe College in Cedar Rapids for a meeting about her trip to Europe with the Iowa Ambassadors of Music in summer 2014.

And then, I return to work.

This rocks!

Office 97 for Windows doesn't run on Mac

There was a lot of debate yesterday at work about whether to state, in user documentation, what is not compatible with a software system. In this specific case, iPads and Chromebooks are not supported. The suggestion was to include that information within the user guide. The technical writers in my department do not agree. The other side of the discussion is that putting in what is not supported will prevent calls to customer support.

Let me be clear: I don't buy that argument and remain unconvinced. When given a URL to a website, I don't believe a user is going to first go to the user guide. My opinion is that the user will go to the URL first. The scenario that is being proposed seems to be cut and dry:

1. User gets URL
2. User enters URL in browser.
3. URL doesn't work.
4. User reads ""I/C are not supported" in the user guide.
5. User thinks, "Oh, well at least it's in the user guide".

In that scenario, I think the user will still call customer support if for no other reason than to ask when the URL will support I/C.

The other dimension that comes into play is that we were discussing a new user guide for a new product. The suggestion was made that we should include what isn't supported as an "exception to the rule." The suggestion to include this information in a memo, in an email, and/or in training was rejected. As I watched the flurry of emails fly, I tried to analyze what I was reading.

As a side note, I consider myself flawed. I have the curse / blessing (pick one) of the ability to see both sides of an issue.

• Is Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) not a hero? Consider, just for a moment, that he was just a kid that was screwed up because he was in love and when he sought acceptance from Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was put in his place. 

I'm not the only one, though, with this trait.

• Fictional characters like "How I Met Your Mother"'s Barney Stinson famously considers "Johnny" to be the hero of "The Karate Kid", not Daniel LaRuso. 
• On "The Big Bang Theory," Amy ruined "Raiders of the Lost Ark" when she told Sheldon that Indiana Jones had nothing to do with the Ark of the Covenant being recovered - the Nazis were going to find the Ark and open it anyways. 

I get the 'both sides of the coin" idea in my brain. So, yesterday, after a flurry of emails from both sides of the discussion, I offered this analysis:

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I think there are two issues.

The first is the idea of setting a standard / precedent for this product. The product is "new" & the documentation is "new" so upon its release, we are defining rules so, right now, there are no 'exceptions' to the rules - just rules for how the documentation for our new products are going to be written.
The second issue is finding a balance between two types of information that need to be communicated effectively: what the product / system does and what it does not do.
Personally, I don't see an issue with stating, in a training class / demo / video that "This product doesn't run on ____" and not having that tidbit in the user guide. The user guide is intended to tell the user what is supported and what they need to use it.

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During the course of the discussion, Matthew, bassist extraordinaire for Lou's Classic Ride and my co-worker, summed up the issue we, as technical writers, face. With his permission, I give you these words:

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Back when we bought software in boxes, say Microsoft Office, the packaging would tell you what the enclosed software would run on and might occasionally say something like "This will not run on a Mac". The manual or other documentation inside would tell you only about what it did run on and how it worked.
Today, we download our software and the provider tells us up front which version to download or whether the software is for specific platforms. The documentation discusses how that software works on the platforms it supports.
I'm sticking with the industry standard here, guys. Sorry.
<snip>
We are producing the technical documentation about what the system does and how it does it. That is our job and we commit to do so as clearly and completely as possible and make changes as quickly as we can when changes to the software happen or errors in our information are found.
It not the technical documentation's job to communicate information outside that realm. We do not document policies, procedures, or what platforms the software won't work on. We're sticking to that now and setting the long term expectation.

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Ironically, when you go to the system in question, you select a value from a drop-down and click Next. On the page that displays, there is a note at the bottom that says "NOTE: I/C are not supported." The problem is that that page won't load if you are using an I/C so the user will never know why the page didn't load.


What makes the discussion even better is that there is no sense of "You must do your job the way I say you must." Instead, it's a discussion, an honest exchange of ideas. No one wants the user experience to be negative. Customer satisfaction is everyone's goal. Whether to state "I/C are not supported" in a user guide as a way to satisfy the user is where the fine line is being drawn. We say, "It won't satisfy the user" whereas others say, "It will satisfy the user."


More developments as they happen, but probably not today.

Finally! The full Bayside show from Des Moines!

Coming soon

This is getting ridiculous. I need to devise some other way to track the conversion project because creating a daily post with only a number, like today's count is 63742 File(s) 532,230,467,066 bytes, seems a waste of cyberspace. Granted there is a lot of cyberspace that is wasted by others, but why continue to do so?

So, coming soon, I will have a new way to track the count.

Cnoversion Project Status

I need a solution to the idea that I can update this blog every day with a count of the e:\music file count and what to do when I forget. For example, this:
63440 File(s) 528,450,480,850 bytes
is the count for 10/24/2013.

Oh how the Mighty have Fallen!

Thinking back to the days of Kennedy High School, when our band director wanted to insult the percussion section or to otherwise get our attention, he would call out "Drummers!" with the tone of voice that he considered the word an insult. In retrospect, I never should have even considered it an insult. The collective noun "drummers" includes Buddy Rich, Neil Peart, and Dave Weckl. It includes Steve Gadd, Steve Smith, and Billy Cobham. It includes Alex Van Halen, Lars Ulrich, and Gene Hoglan. So if someone wants to group me in with those musicians? I am all for it!

All of this crossed my mind in light of the recent flurry of words and things now being considered offensive. They're everywhere in our culture at this point in time. Here are three:

• The words "citizen" and the phrase "brown bag" are potentially offensive: http://eaglerising.com/2482/thought-police-ban-words/
• The name of a NFL team is potentially offensive: http://baystatebanner.com/news/2013/oct/24/washington-redskins-name-controversy-latest-battle/
• Dressing up in specific Halloween costumes is potentially offensive: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/23/university-tells-students-to-avoid-offensive-halloween-costumes/

Where does it end?

63435 File(s) 528,386,176,063 bytes

Giddy with Glee

It almost was a sign that I need to rededicate my efforts in the area of writing music reviews.

Prior to leaving the house to take Karen to work, I was in the den and noticed a cassette in the 'to do' stack of cassettes I am converting to MP3 as part of the conversion project. I noticed a band called Marilyn Suicide. I've had the cassette for at least 20 years but I couldn't remember what they sounded like so I stuck it in my pocket.

After I drop Karen off at work and I am alone in the van, I put the cassette in the van's cassette player. These are the lyrics from the first of four songs by this band.


Sick of all your late night bitching
Tired of all your Sunday preaching all of the time
What's wrong with you baby, I'm ready to split
All I get from your mouth is just a bunch of babbling lip


Instantly, I'm a senior at Mount Mercy College, writing reviews for the Mount Mercy Minstrel as the Arts & Entertainment Editor. I've just started to get the idea that I can send a letter of inquiry to bands, in other states, and state that I'd like to write a review of their music for the newspaper. In the beginning, I know I would actually buy the cassettes I was receiving. Bands like Marilyn Suicide, Witch Bonnie, Erotikill, and Cherry Street sent me cassettes and I was just so tickled to listen to them. I began to have my current attitude about music I hear on the radio.

• For every Green Day, there are bands like Bayside who are at least as talented.
• For every Metallica, there are bands like Disarray who are at least as talented.
• For every Nickelback, there are bands like Watershed who are at least as talented.

Yet, Green Day, Metallica, and Nickelback get a lot of money to play their songs; Bayside, Disarray, and Watershed do not get that type of money. Are all six of these bands fantastic? Yes. I'm listening to Watershed's "Star Vehicle" and "Black Concert T-Shirt" after it and WOW! Great music.

All of this is to say I checked the mail yesterday and there was a package from BB Gun Press, who does publicity for Metallica, with the "Through the Never" soundtrack. Getting promo packages in the mail has never gotten old. 

Getting Cold

Now that Metallica has announced they are going to play "Antartica" - I don't know if that's how you refer to an ice continent that has no cities - the obvious joke is that they need to include "Trapped Under Ice" in the set list. This is a track from their second release and it has never really gotten a lot of popularity.

In fact, take a quick look at http://www.livemetallica.com, Here's some results. When you do a search for:

• "Trapped Under Ice" -http://livemetallica.com/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=Trapped+under+ice&x=9&y=15 
• "Enter Sandman" - http://livemetallica.com/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=Enter+Sandman&x=0&y=0
• "Master of Puppets" - http://livemetallica.com/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=Master+of+Puppets&x=0&y=0
• "Creeping Death" - http://livemetallica.com/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=creeping+death&x=0&y=0
• "Fade to Black" - http://livemetallica.com/searchRes.aspx?searchStr=Fade+to+Black&x=0&y=0

Do  you think I'm going to take the time and figure out which Metallica song has been played the most? Hmm, tempting, but I have other projects to attend to.


63440 File(s) 528,450,298,833 bytes

Conversion Status - 10/22/13

63455 File(s) 529,053,061,928 bytes

On the way to work...

I often listen to James Patrick, a Rock 108 DJ, after I drop Karen off at work. Today, he read a story about an elderly man in Arizona who found his wife in bed with a naked 22 year-old. I just googled "911 arizona old man 22 year old wife in bed" and the first hit was this story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2470187/Elderly-husband-shoots-naked-man-22-finding-bed-63-year-old-wife.html

Conversion Status - 10/21/13

As of today, 10/21/2013, here's my count:

63458 File(s) 529,088,155,214 bytes

I've rewritten the DOS batch file to do what I want. I first create the "reports" in the root directory, then I create a date-specific directory, then I copy the files to that specific date, and then I delete the reports in the root directory.
Here's the code:

cd\
e:
cd music
dir e:\music\*.mp3 *.wav *.wma /s /od>e:\music\mostrecentcount.txt
dir e:\music\*.flv *.mp4 *.web* /s /od >e:\music\videofiles.txt
dir e:\music\*___* *-* *_* *___* *--* /s /od >e:\music\needtofix.txt
dir a* b* c* d* e* f* g* h* i* j* k* l* m* n* o* p* q* r* s* t* u* v* w* x* y* z* >e:\music\allfolders.txt
SET Today=%Date:~10,4%_%Date:~7,2%_%Date:~4,2%
rem | echo %today%
REM | mkdir e:\music\(_______Date\%today%
cd (_______Date
mkdir %today%
cd %today%
xcopy e:\music\mostrecentcount.txt
xcopy e:\music\videofiles.txt
xcopy e:\music\needtofix.txt
xcopy e:\music\allfolders.txt
del e:\music\mostrecentcount.txt
del e:\music\videofiles.txt
del e:\music\needtofix.txt
del e:\music\allfolders.txt
e:\music\(_______Date\%today%\mostrecentcount.txt

Conversion Status - 10/21/13

• Everyday of my life, I make choices. Sometimes I make good choices. Other times, I make poor choices. When I make a choice, I am deciding how I want to be remembered at that moment in time by those around me, but, more importantly, I think when I make a choice, it is about either adding a sliver of evidence or, perhaps, subtracting a sliver of evidence, that will ultimately decide whether I go to heaven or I go to hell. I believe  heaven is beyond description. I believe heaven is where my favorite people that have died (Grandma Simons and others) are awaiting my arrival. I hope to join them someday. I hope the choices I make today give me the opportunity to see Grandma again. I hope that John Bonham will let me sit in with Jimi Hendrix, Cliff Burton, Randy Rhoads, and Ronnie James Dio for at least one song - maybe that's why I've never sold my Ludwig Vistalites so that I can use that as evidence as to why he should let me play his set in heaven. 
• Just when I thought I had the DOS batch file doing what I wanted it to do, it doesn't. Still a work in progress.

I call this a "Busy Life"

I only have a few moments so not a lot of details follow:

• Last night, I attended the Gene Hoglan drum clinic with Alex @ the Iowa City Yacht Club. I intend to create a page with videos and pictures. 
• I still have pictures / videos to upload from the Bayside show in Des Moines on Monday.
• I have been trying to rewrite my DOS batch file so that it will create a "current date" folder prior to doing the regular "dir" command. I've not had a lot of time this week. To recap, my week was like this:
• Bayside on Monday
• Cleaning house on Tuesday
• Sounds of the Stadium concert on Wednesday
• Gene Hoglan drum clinic on Thursday
• Lou & Jean are en route to our house for Alex's birthday.
• I owe dailyvault.com the following:
• review of "Through the Never" soundtrack
• review of Bayside show
• review of an awesome Billy Cobham CD that's been floating in my work bag for a while.
• Bayside's lead singer had to leave the tour to go home for the birth of a new child in his family! Congratulations to him! 
• Makes me glad Megan & I saw him on Monday!
• I had an awesome 1:1 meeting with my manager. It was supposed to be 30 minutes but we talked, freely, for nearly 1 hour.

I think that's all I have time to write.

An Open Letter to Big Picture Media Publicists

Natalie / Dayna,

Thank you for setting up the passes for Megan and I! I have to tell you that over the years of going to concerts to write reviews, I have had experiences where press passes “work” (like last night) and experiences when they don’t “work” (like when I drove to State Fair in Des Moines in 1998 to interview Dana Strum in Slaughter and when I got to the box office, no one had heard of me and they thought I was just trying to get into the show for free.) I don’t keep a list of “good press people” but if I did, Big Picture Media would be on it! So thank you for your work.

As far as the concert itself, it was excellent. As my reviews on dailyvault.com indicate, I’m a fan of Bayside & they played very well. Their performance was worthy of the 2 hour drive to Des Moines. I had a great time – screaming the lyrics to “They’re Not Horses, They’re Unicorns” with Megan just as loud as me – was a highlight in June 2012 as well as last night.

However, when Bayside ended @ 10 PM, we decided to leave as I had to be up today @ 6 AM and Megan had to be up today @ 6:30. And while I was originally disappointed that it wasn’t Bayside as the headliner, I was kind of glad they weren’t headlining. Thus, I plan to include some sort of an apology to Motion City Soundtrack for skipping out before they played. We listened to their songs on the drive to Des Moines and missing “When You’re Around” live is a regret.

As I was driving home, I was joking with Megan. I said we should go to the Iowa City show tomorrow night after her high school’s band concert. I said, “After all, Bayside came on ~9 and your band concert should be over by 8:30. Then we could see Motion City Soundtrack.

I don’t think she thought I was very funny.

Paul

Motion City Soundtrack

I am just now, on the day of the show, figuring out that Motion City Soundtrack is a fantastic band! Here's a playlist of the songs they played on 10/11/2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLPls1g88XU&list=PL1a3FKGGAwbbSN_qTZtPvVrVAgVIINVcY&feature=mh_lolz

1. Better Open The Door
2. When "You're" Around
3. The Future Freaks Me Out
4. Her Words Destroyed My Planet
5. True Romance
6. My Favorite Accident
7. This Is For Real
8. Inside Out
9. Time Turned Fragile
10. Last Night
11. LG FUAD
12. A Lifeless Ordinary (Need A Little Help)
13. Cambridge
14. Everything Is Alright
15. Hold Me Down

Bayside Tonight!

I don't know what the band will play tonight in Des Moines, but this is what they played 10/5/2013:

1. Devotion and Desire
2. Already Gone
3. They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns
4. A Call To Arms
5. The Walking Wounded
6. Seeing Sound
7. Blame It on Bad Luck
8. Kellum
9. Masterpiece
10. Roshambo (Rock, Paper, Scissors)
11. Killing Time
12. Duality
13. Landing Feet First
14. Montauk
15. Sick, Sick, Sick
16. Dear Tragedy

I couldn't find any youtube videos of recent shows, so here is a stellar show from Boston.

Proud of Lulu?

Regarding Metallica and their experiment called "Lulu" - Lars, you know I love you man, but "Lulu" is *not* a good release! I stand by my review: http://www.dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=7020

Faith

Is it still about the music?

When did it stop being about the music and more about numbers? Here I am, feeding a CD player to convert CDs and I can't tell you what the music sounds like. Is Meshuggah's "Nothing" the best release I have in my collection? I have no idea, but I'm converting it to MP3 and I'm going to include the 10 songs on the release when I post that e:\music has XX,XXX songs.

Battle for the Boot

Undefeated Iowa City West walked into Iowa City High football stadium and lost 14-7 in a hard fought battle. I wish it would have been a West victory. I also wish the officials wouldn't have started the game clock prior to the ball being snapped because there were two times where at least 5 seconds went off the game clock prior to the snap and that's wrong. Unfortunately, pointing that out doesn't usually work as coaches and fans are usually complaining about something anyways so when it is a legitimate complaint, it sounds like moaning and groaning. As it is, City won and the boot trophy goes back to City until next year. Last year, West defeated City 44-0 so I'm hoping that next year, when Megan is a senior, West is able to be dominant and win.

ObamaCare

The United States government has been shut down since 10/1/2013. President Obama says he won't negotiate about the implementation of ObamaCare, saying it's the law of the land and was deemed a legal law. Conservatives, like columnist Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, do not agree. They are stating, over and over, that President Obama is already changing the law, through executive order, that delays the implementation of ObamaCare for a year for businesses. Republicans seem to say, "Look, we are not giving in on this issue so *you* are the ones responsible for the shutdown. That's how Coulter ends her article:

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If you are in the minority of Americans not already unalterably opposed to Obamacare, keep in mind that the only reason the government is shut down right now is that Democrats refuse to fund the government if they are required to live under Obamacare.

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You can go to youtube and see people on both sides (Republicans & Democrats) arguing their point. You can read about how President Obama wants Americans to 'feel pain' during the government shutdown in order to pressure Republicans to pass a bill that doesn't remove funds for ObamaCare. I wonder how long this will be drawn out, how many times President Obama will say, "I'm not going to negotiate" and how many times Republicans will say, "He won't negotiate" as a way to give up this fight. Conservatives like Erick Erickson at Redstate.com are saying delaying ObamaCare for a year is acceptable.

Conversion Last, Finances First

If I kept inline with the history of this blog, I would not write the following: we are in a good place financially. For a lot of years, in order to make our bills, I would need to pull funds from a savings account. I hated doing that as I always had it in my head that our net income - what is deposited in our checking account by our employers - should be enough to pay our bills. While there are "good" and "bad" months, I'm happy to say that it looks like, for the rest of the year, I will not need to use the savings account. Of course, things change and such, but if our monthly bills "play out" like I expect, I will be very happy.

I also have to say that it is extremely ironic that I, the English major that hates numbers am the one that keeps our checking account balanced. I used to do really really poorly in math class. I had a math tutor from 7th (or 8th) grade through my junior year of high school just to get me through. It wasn't until I arrived at Mount Mercy College and had Nancy Rhodes as my math teacher that I felt like I was not an idiot when it came to numbers. I smile when I think about my reaction to actually getting an A on a math test. I couldn't believe it.

Finally, I crossed 63000 after rehearsal last night!

63009 File(s) 535,874,910,363 bytes

Brian Guitar said he was doing the same type of project - I told him I'd take his CDs!

Quick Update

These are the songs we rehearsed:

1. Lonely Boy 
2. Get Off My Cloud
3. Rocky Mountain Way
4. Paranoid
5. I Think You Know What I Mean
6. Rock & Roll All Night

The following songs are for next time:

1. Wanted Dead or Alive
2. Love For Sale
3. Fight For Your Right
4. Seven Nation Army
5. Jessie's Girl / I've Done Everything for You
6. Rock & Roll Hoochie Coo
7. Hoochie Coochie Man

Love / Hate Relationship

Every so often, I'm supposed to send out prayer requests to members of our CEW community. I've always skated along and never really invested in setting up a distribution list or keeping an up-to-date list of the email addresses. I've always gone to the last email I sent, copied the addresses I used last time, created a new email, pasted the new addresses, change the subject, adjusted the text, and clicked Send.

Now, as I go to send out the next one, it appears in my haste to clean out my gmail account, I've wiped out the last email I sent so I'm scrambling. I need to sit down, maybe this weekend, and get this all set up correctly. I need a distribution list and to do this right because the stress I feel right now is not very fun.

Eat Your Fingers

Corporate Prisoner, the band I was in with Jon, Steve, and Ralph from 1999 - 2000, tried to play Tool's "46+2" and, frankly, I was the weak link. I was reminded of that this morning when Rock 108 played this song on my way to work. During the amazing Danny Carey drum solo, I was stunned.

Horizon

As I wrote about previously, the next few weeks are nothing short of chaos. I am hoping that something materializes for Friday, December 20, 2013, but it's impossible to state any details about it - I do not have any idea when I will be able to write about it. If it does happen, I will be very excited during the 74 days (2 months, 1 week, 6 days) leading up to it! I can only say it has something to do with Lou's Classic Ride.

Significant Anniversaries

• On this date in 1997, dailyvault.com published my first review. It is Sammy Hagar's "Marching to Mars" http://dailyvault.com/toc.php5?review=261.Wow, I sucked as a writer! <grin>
• On this date in 1991, I had the worst day of my life as a student teacher. My supervisor was there to watch me teach a group of 10th graders very poorly. They were the thorn in my a$$ and I was an ineffective teacher. I was a rug and they sucked the joy of teaching out of me. That afternoon, at our weekly 'status' meeting, I remember I moved my chair and my supervisor took it as a personal insult and, after everyone left, she lit into me verbally. She leveled me like a wrecking ball on a building and I crumbled in front of her eyes. I started crying after it was over. I remember I sat on the hill on the Mount Mercy College campus that is now apartments, and I cried. I said, "God, if you're there, why are you doing this to me? Why are you making me feel this way?" I questioned every thing in my life, ranging from "Why do you want to be a teacher?" through "Why am I even here?" 

I think it's good to recognize anniversaries that are of negative things because it makes the good things in life that much better. Tonight, the plan is to go with Kevin to the Metallica "Through the Never" movie in Cedar Rapids @ 7:30.

Through the Never

Rather than trying to copy / paste embed code for 11 youtube videos, I created a playlist of the videos I was going to include here so, in the future, I can partake in what I hope is the greatest concert movie I've ever seen. I am going tomorrow night!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZaYYIN5Bwo&list=PL1a3FKGGAwbZXlKTCL75eTGXxg4_GFwQL

Big Bang & Two and 1/2 Men Awesomeness

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Debacle

The Iowa Hawkeye football team was dealt a blow yesterday and lost to MSU. It was a showcase for how to dominate another team. While watching the end of the game, I mocked up how the rest of their season could play out. It starts with the loss to MSU and progresses through the end of the season.

Basically, with victories against both NW & WI, they could be able to sustain late season losses to both MI & NE and still end up a .500 team. I am writing off the OSU game. When they do get back to Kinnick and face NW, they will be fighting for a .500 record in the Big 10. If they win and win against Wisconsin the following week, they are 3-2 in the Big 10. Purdue is never a gimme game, but I am hoping they win. They will need a game in which they march in and dominate because the following week, MI comes to Kinnick. MI is a powerhouse who defeated MN yesterday at home 42-13. MI has a 4 games before Iowa - 2 relatively easy, 2 difficult. They will be ready for battle, especially if they lose either (or both) of the difficult games as they come into Kinnick. If Iowa does manage to beat MI, that would make their final game @ NE, who currently have a 4-1 record,  a test. This season was never going to be an easy season for Iowa. I've not thrown in the towel yet as I see the potential for a good season. They have to beat some teams that simply do not want to be beat. They have to have more than 6 minutes of good football, which is all they had in the MSU loss. They have to shake off MSU and begin to mentally prepare for a buzzsaw. OSU can be defeated - it's happened before - but it's going to require a lot of Iowa playing flawless football and OSU making mistakes. If Iowa can force OSU to make mistakes, it's possible. Here's the table.

Stompin' On Toes Would be Better

Kevin used to give me a bunch of data CDs. His data CDs would have anywhere from 10-12 albums. Instead of building my music collection with a copy of a data CD, I would painstakingly burn each release to an individual music CD. I specifically remember thinking that if I wanted to play a release from a data CD, I'd have to have it in the format of a "music CD" for my CD player in my stereo system to be able to play it. Thus, as I continue through what I hope is my last 200 CDs in the CD to MP3 conversion, I have a lot of CD-Rs that I know were created through that process of burning a music CD for each album on a data CD.

Because I built my music collection in this manner and because I was doing this in the early 2000s, there wasn't such a thing as a "1 Terabyte" external hard drive, which is what I have now. If I could go back in time, I certainly would not have went the route I did with hundreds of CD-Rs. When I take one of these CD-Rs and put it in my CD drive to rip to MP3, there is never any artist, album, or song title information so I rely on the database within Windows Media Player and awesome sites like  http://www.metal-archives.com/ to track down the song titles of what I am ripping. It drives me nuts to see MP3s called "Track 01.mp3" within a folder so I am trying to be more conscious of what I am ripping to my e:\music folder.

Another side effect of how my music collection was being expanded through the above methods is that I often was overwhelmed with new music to listen to. If I was borrowing 10 data CDs and there were 10 albums on each, that was 100 new albums being added. For a long time, perhaps too long, I tried to maintain an Excel file and religiously add each new album to it with the intended purpose of trading. I was really into that for awhile, especially with cassettes. I traded cassettes with a guy in Philadelphia at least two or three times and got some most excellent Metallica bootlegs.

What I attempted to do was to keep track of all that information in that Excel file. Again, this was prior to the explosion of being able to have a blog or a free website to post all of the information I was tracking in that Excel file online. I have never been a web developer so the suggestion to create a website and somehow use that Excel file as a database was totally beyond my comprehension. I do remember investigating and trying to understand what that meant and what the mechanics of creating such a website would involve, but before I could implement any of it, I realized I did not have the time resource to invest. As with other things in my life, the requirements of family, work, and other high priorities took the time away from me to both keep the Excel file up-to-date and to create a website that I could use to track my collection. I've resolved that both of those projects will never be attempted.

So that has left me with my DOS batch file that I use to list my MP3 files in my e:\music folder. I've downloaded some free "music collection" software as I know that using Windows Media Player is not a long term solution. I've also realized that a lot of my music collection are bands that I can't recall listening to in the past. That was the case with the CD-R I just ripped. Written on the CD-R is the following information:

X-Sinner
20011013
A5

Obviously, X-Sinner is the name of the band. 20011013 means I created the CD-R on 10/13/2001 - so That was it. X-Sinner is, so it was created approximately 12 years ago (yes, technically, 11 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 1 day - thank you.) I could not tell you a single song on the release. I could not even tell you  if I had ever listened to it on 10/13/2001. Unfortunately, I couldn't use metal-archives.com to retrieve song titles because a search for "X-Sinner" yielded no results. So, thanks to Google.com, I found the band's website: http://www.x-sinner.org/index.html, which boasts a design so amateur and, okay, "ugly", I'm thinking it should be totally redesigned. I did learn, through listening to a few lyrics on the release, that the name of the album is actually called "Get It" and, surprisingly, I liked it but certainly not to the degree that I like Bayside, Metallica, Five Finger Death Punch, and Godsmack. The lyrics to "Steppin' On Toes" are pretty rebellious, perthis website, though, in my humble opinion, "Stompin' On Toes" would have been not as cliche as "Steppin' On Toes." Either way, I like these lyrics.

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Authority in my face, looking out for you and me,
It's a battle of spirits all over the place,
Tell me what you want me to be,
The enemy won't let go once they get their hands on you,
They'll chew you up, and spit you out, and stick to you like glue.

I don't see what you want me to be, and I don't care what you suppose,
It don't matter what you see, I don't wanna have to step on your toes.

I don't need my fortune told; the future's already known,
I got my covers, sisters and brothers, to keep me from burning in Hell,
You don't like who I am, or the words that I have to say,
The world keeps turning, fire keeps burning,
The clock keeps ticking away.

I don't see what you want me to be, and I don't care what you suppose,
It don't matter what you see, I don't wanna have to step on your toes.

Oh.

The game ain't over yet; a winner's what I want to be,
Ain't cutting no cards or throwing no dice - luck's got nothing on me,
The choice is made for me: Heaven is the place to be,
You might say I'm crazy, but he'll be coming back for me.

I don't see what you want me to be, and I don't care what you suppose,
It don't matter what you see, I don't wanna have to step on your toes,
I don't see what you want me to be, and I don't care what you suppose,
It don't matter what you see, I don't wanna have to step on your toes, no.

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I doubt that X-Sinner will become a band as big as the four I mentioned above, but I have to say, that is my glorious burden with this CD to MP3 conversion - I get to discover bands I have had in my collection for nearly 12 years and it is like I just returned from Best Buy with their CD wrapped in plastic.

Idiot

I know there used to be a bar in downtown Minneapolis - apparently near the U of MN campus - called "The Library" but this guy was in North Liberty. I remember the sign outside "The Library" said, "Tell your roommate to tell your Mom you're at the Library".

- Broken link - http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/North-Liberty-Man-Accused-Of-Urinating-On-Library-Books-226292931.html- Broken link -

First CD?

In summer of 1989, I had just finished my freshman year of college at Mount Mercy College. Mark, nicknamed Nieman, had a really sweet stereo system but he didn't have room for it to go back to his parent's house in Waukegan, IL, for the summer. Mark let me use his stereo over the summer. It had a CD player & he allowed me to borrow his CDs, which included REM's Green & Van Halen's OU812.

When Mark came to pick up his stereo, after deciding not to return to Mount Mercy, he let me keep OU812 because he knew I adored Alex Van Halen as a musician. I still have that CD and, whenever I listen to that CD, I think about Nieman and I wonder how he's doing. It's a lot like that movie "Stand By Me" where I think about the friends I've had in my life and how there's an ebb and flow to it all. We used to write letters to each other (Mark and I), but that has become something I just don't do anymore, for a myriad or reasons. Maybe, someday, we'll reconnect.

Forgotten and the Need for an Organization Strategy

I left my wireless USB mouse on my desk at home, but, thankfully, Matthew (Lou's Classic Ride bassist) had one in a drawer. Then, suddenly, the song I heard just the other day on the "Classic Rock" station came through my brain. The idea of working today and being productive and only using my laptop's mouse pad ranks up in the world as one of the worst visions of hell I can fathom.

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Meanwhile, I worked on the conversion project last night. After running the DOS batch file, I have this for a total:

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62366 File(s) 525,387,949,119 bytes

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Because I am well over 62,000, I am feeling good about the project. Actually, just by looking at what I accomplished last night, I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know I have two spindles of 100 each waiting for me. I just remembered I do have a box of CDs in the sump pump room that, I think, need to converted - I think they are all ones I have to manually enter song information (title, artist, album, etc) because they are either local bands or bands that aren't in the database that Windows Media Player uses to obtain that information automatically, but if I had to guess, I don't think there's more than 100 in that box.

Of course, even if I had 300 more CDs to go - and I don't know if that is a realistic count - I need to audit my CDs. What I told Matthew this AM while borrowing his mouse for the day is that I didn't have an "organization strategy" for this project when I started. I didn't mark the CDs as I converted them and I didn't designate specific locations within the den for where I would put "done" CDs and where I would put "not done" CDs. I also have to decide what to do with the inlays / booklets for all of them and how I ultimately want to be able to access the physical CD in the future. I have thought about some sort of Excel file or perhaps even some user-defined field within Windows Media Player that would identify the spindle the physical CD is located on. That would also allow me to identify if it is a promo CD or a non-promo CD, which would be helpful in figuring out just how many promotional CDs I have accumulated. I don't remember my very first promo CD I received - I don't think I have it documented anywhere because while I thought it was awesome to get a free CD (or maybe it was a cassette?) I had no idea I would accumulate as many as I have from that day. 

But, back to the conversion projects. Just because I seem to be nearing the end of the CD to MP3 conversion does not mean there is not more to do. Once I am convinced I have all of my CDs converted to MP3 and I "sign off" that it is complete, I will resume work on the cassette to MP3 conversion. That child story of the parent Conversion Project story has rapidly slipped down the list of priorities in life. I will need to wrap my head around the VHS to "digital" (I hate saying VHS to DVD because I can't imagine the undertaking of completing a 1:1 VHS:DVD conversion with the number of VHS, VHS-C, and Mini-DV tapes we have floating around in our house. I think we would simply be better off to convert to digital and then, if necessary, to burn a DVD.

That said, I don't really see a lot of free time in my schedule - our family's schedule - for sitting in the den and working on these conversions. While the rest of October is totally crazy, November into December doesn't look much more relaxed. I'd love to squeeze in a few Lou's Classic Ride rehearsals - tentatively, we are rehearsing next Wednesday night - so as to not lose the momentum from the Courage Ride gig and to progress to playing at Gus' or playing at J&A Tap or playing at Todd Philpott's bar in Tiffin or some other place I'm not thinking of at the moment. We are not rehearsing this week, but are getting together on Wednesday, 10/9/13.

That leads me to next week, which is obscenely crazy:

• Monday - after conferences at school for the kids, go see the Metallica movie in 3D in Cedar Rapids with Phil - hopefully, Matthew joins us - at 7:30. 
• Tuesday - Alex has basketball and I need to pick him up @ 8:30 (maybe I can work on the conversion projects)
• Wednesday - Lou's Classic Ride rehearsal from 8 PM to 10ish PM
• Thursday - Alex has basketball and I need to pick him up @ 8:30 (maybe I can work on the conversion projects)
• Friday - Megan has surgery
• Saturday - Kids have the band car wash fundraiser and then we have our parish picnic, which is a fundraiser for NCYC
• Sunday - Maybe, possibly, nothing!
• Monday - Bayside in Des Moines with Megan
• Tuesday - Possibly a Lou's Classic Ride rehearsal
• Wednesday - Sounds of the Stadium band concert (why I'm seeing Bayside on Monday in Des Moines instead of in Iowa City on 10/16) 
• Thursday - Gene Hoglan drum clinic at the Iowa City Yacht Club!!!!
• Friday - Maybe, possibly, nothing!
• Saturday - Maybe, possibly, nothing except I know Alex serves @ 5:15
• Sunday - Alex has Confirmation class

The week of 10/21 looks remarkably bare, as of now, but I'm sure it will fill up!

Why I Never Speak about InDesign in a Positive Light

If you see me walking down the street and you want to get up a soapbox lecture about the evils of InDesign, I will jump up and spout off for a long time. I will tell you about my career path and where I've been over the last few years. Late last week, the subject of InDesign & FrameMaker came up on the Techwr-L list and, off-list, I wrote the majority of what you are about to read. The prologue to this story is that I love working at Company 5, my current employer, and I have zero regrets, now, about where I am on my career path.

While I think the road to where I am now could have been much smoother, I also believe God said, "Hey you. I have a plan for you and when you get to the other side of my plan for you, you will be smiling." I believe that as I smile a lot at Company 5 to the extent that I see no path that would leave me elsewhere. Of course, I thought that about Company 1 when I started there on 2/10/95. I sincerely hope to retire from Company 5.

Here's the email I sent and, again, I took some editorial liberties.

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[What issues did you face when you used InDesign?]
You may regret asking me by the time you finish reading this, but here goes.

First of all, I’ve never, ever, used Framemaker. I’ve worked at 5 companies since 2/10/95. All but Company 4 used MS Word.

At company 4, InDesign was used to maintain a 100+ page user manual and, for the most part, it was somewhat functional. The issues I ran into centered more around the lack of using the built-in functionality than anything else.
Specifically,

• styles were not used and the TOC was manually typed.
• part of the publishing process was to print the entire user guide simply to verify that the TOC was correct.
• When I suggested setting up styles, it was blown off as "too complicated" to implement by the “senior” member of the department, who was my team lead.
• had to draw a line from the end of the last word in a heading to the right margin, as in:
  Adding a Widget_________________<margin>
  Except that I couldn't use a underline - that would make sense. I had to manually draw each line and then because the line float and not connected to the heading – and honestly, I did not think to look into grouping the heading with the line or if that was even possible - when there were pagination shifts, the line would "float" and have to be manually moved.

Outside of not using the tool to its fullest, I dealt with other issues.

• The standard for communicating navigation within the system to the user was to use the three periods at the end of the menu option name that, in the UI, means a new window opens. The formatting “standard” was to bold the menu option name and write in this style:
  From the <bold>File</bold> menu, click <bold>New...</bold>.
  That resulted in three bold periods, followed by a non-bold period.
• No style guide – just personal preference.
• This was evident when I asked the lead writer whether I should use one or two spaces after a period. Her reply was, "Use one unless it looks funny - then use two." Defining a standard with the phrase "unless it looks funny" was a symptom of the issues I faced.

The underlying source of my bitterness about this time in my life is that I had been working for Company 3 for a dozen years. I had built a documentation empire. I had taken the documentation from miscellaneous Word docs and help text written in a totally independent tool of Word (a text-based word processor - think Notepad) into an awesome WebHelp system. I was frequently asked what I thought about screen design, about error message verbiage, and anything related to writing. I was even sent to two WinWriter conferences – one in Boston, the other in Long Beach – and sending anyone to a conference was not done. At the time, the CEO was known for losing his temper and lashing out verbally at any time, but he never, ever, raised his voice when I spoke to him.

Why would I leave? Three things:

• Some in the company didn’t think they needed to follow the rules of our software development process. On numerous occasions, software changes that had an impact on the UI were released without coming through me to review them for doc changes. [Snip a lot of specific examples.]
• The industry the company created software for can be likened to a company that makes LPs – there is a market, but that market is drying up and, someday, will not exist. I didn’t want to be there when the market no longer existed.
• The CEO was in his early 60s and when he would be asked what his plans were for the company, he would say he was going to let “Sebastian” run the company. Jacob was his 3 year-old grandson. I remember years of monthly staff meetings where he would tell us we had to plan for our future and yet, he wouldn’t reveal what he intended to do with his future.

All of those factors played into my thinking as I was interviewing with Company 4. During this interview process, I was led to believe that I would have the opportunity to build an empire within Company 4 as they were just starting to get into software development. Company 4 offered more money as a starting salary, the promise that I would be able to move to their new building that was being built 3 miles from my house, and a bonus plan.

It turned out to be too good to be true. Company 4 had documentation for hardware devices and expected the same standards to apply to both. The people were not nice people at Company 4, which made me miss my friends fiercely at Company 3. While I waited for Company 4’s new building to be built, my commute doubled from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. The release of the software I was working on was delayed due to a feature that would not be implemented (seen as a required feature) until a 3rd party contractor finished their software development and that was 2 – 3 months away. That made my daily work transform into copying / pasting translated text. My stress level rose and I began to doubt my abilities and coupled with that, I admit the quality of my work was not the highest quality work I have done. The more I tried to adapt and learn from the edits I received, the more stressed I became until ultimately my self-confidence was lower than dirt.

All throughout my time at Company 4, I had regrets and wanted to return to Company 3, but I was also determined to make the new place work out. My former manager at Company 3 had hired my replacement and did not have room in her budget for me, meaning I could not return to Company 3. I worked my contacts and interviewed with my current manager here at Company 5. The circumstances around that are amazing for me to think about – how lucky things worked out for me.

As things have turned out, I have my doubts regarding if Company 3 would be a good fit for me today. My replacement died, literally, shortly after I began at Company 5. They were purchased by a larger company and have since moved to a different building. Those that thought they could circumvent the processes in place still work there and the company still serves an industry I don't think has a bright future as they still serve a niche market. A few years back, it was announced on a Monday that the Company 3 CEO’s last day would be that Friday and so, after founding the company in 1979, he was out the door within a week in 9/2011. Read into that what you want.

That all said, I realize I have a bad taste in my mouth regarding InDesign, but mainly because I do not think it was used correctly at Company 4.

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5 x 3 Years Ago...

On October 1, 1998, there were a lot of things going on in life. I began a new job, my second since leaving my first technical writing position in February. I had left Company #1 to go to Company #2, but they were having money issues - when you sit around waiting for the mail to see if anyone sent in a check, that's bad - so there was a lot of anticipation and relief that I was moving on. Alex was a mere 22 days from being born and Megan, our princess, was very excited to be a big sister.

Looking back on my life then is easy to do from where I sit now. I have been through a lot of crap since then, especially starting with October 2010 until May 2011. I am not boastful, but damn, I wouldn't go back for any reason I can conjure in my head.

I am happy. Home is good. Life is good.

And, just for the record, I didn't work on the conversion projects last night. I watched WWE Raw and then watched how the government is shutting down. I have to confess, I agreed with a "Democratic Strategist" (DS) who said that the Republicans are not being smart about this whole ObamaCare issue. He said they have tried to defund it 40+ times so yes, it's on record that they don't like it. It would be perfect for the Republicans to let ObamaCare "begin" and then, for the 2014 elections, run on the platform that "Hey, we voted against it and if you vote for a Democrat, you're saying you like it." The DS pointed out that if the Republicans would let ObamaCare fail instead of shutting down the government, they would be able to use that in the future. Instead, they are going to be known as the party that pouted, basically, and didn't get their way so they shut down the government and pouted. I don't normally agree with Democrats - after all, they think that killing a baby is a woman's choice - but I agreed with this DS.

I'm very curious to see when the government reopens.