Stumbled

Recently, the youtube channel for "undertakerfreak1127" came to my attention. I don't think I will watch every video he creates, but these three were interesting enough to embed below.

This is a warning about the curse words contained in the videos below...You've been warned!

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Comments about the above in reverse chronological order:

• I like the Metallica song "Hardwired" and smiled when it was pointed out that 80 minutes divided by 12 songs is 666.
• When Colin Kaepernick was in the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I viewed a video about his life's journey. The details are fuzzy, but the general impression it gave me is that he is an intelligent individual. It's worth noting that shortly after watching the video about Kaepernick sitting down, I read this article.
  
• Panic! at the Disco is not going to flood my ears on a regular basis anytime soon. I am pretty much aligned with the comments about their version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" that was on the Suicide Squad soundtrack. This is the live version:
  

Dedication

How many hours did the people who made this video spend?!?

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Seis Horas de GRANDES EXITOS

"6 Hours of Big Hits" from two big bands - Iron Maiden & Metallica.

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When "f" is not a "c"

Eagle-eye prhmusic was alert to "theif" in the graphic below last night. Oh, by the way, Gene Wilder passed away at the age of 83.

Editor's Note: The "funny stuff" label is used on this post not because of Gene Wilder passing away. It is being used because it is humorous to make such a simple typo in font that large on the graphic. No disrespect intended towards the Wilder family as they grieve their loss.

Dumb

Some articles / pages on the Internet are beyond my comprehension. For example, if you are titling your page "How to Convert to MP3 With Windows Media Player," why would you have a tip at the bottom that says "This procedure will likely only work for .WMA or .WAV files."

The title indicates the article's subject is converting to MP3 but the tip says the procedure "will likely only work for .WMA or .WAV files."

That's like saying, "In order to reuse the same words across multiple documents, follow this procedure" and then having a tip that says "This procedure will likely only work for graphics."

I was so dumbfounded I pasted the text from the article below. The original page is here.

How to Convert to MP3 With Windows Media Player

Submitted by Jason Gordon

Windows Media Player is built-in to Windows and is not a very powerful software application. It is primarily designed to rip Audio CDs to WMA or MP3 formats and play them back. This means your options are to either use Windows Media Player to burn a CD and then rip to MP3 or find a program that will convert to MP3 without wasting CDs.

The Main Steps

Open Windows Media Player. Insert a Blank CD and choose "Burn" from the menu. Select "Audio CD."
Add the audio files that you want to convert to the Now Playing Field.Click on "Start Burn."
Click on "Rip" when the CD is finished. Select the "MP3" format from the drop-down Menu. Click on "Start Rip."

THINGS YOU'LL NEED

• CD-Rs

TIPS & WARNINGS

• This procedure will likely only work for .WMA or .WAV files. To convert from other file types, try one of the programs listed in the "Resources section."

How FUN is this Band?!?

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It was when Jason shaved his head Metallica started going downhill

Jason Newsted, Metallica's former bassist, gets no love in the comments on this article.

I read that and wondered if that statement is an attempt at humor or seriousness...

In other news, if Metallica was "Nu Metallica" (as in "nu metal"), this is what they'd sound like. Personally, I would like to hear the video below without drums - I think it'd be fun to play along to it on the electronic set.

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Project

As I wanted to have a single place where I could update the progress of this project on a daily basis, I created a new page and moved the content that was here to it. Also, I think it will be easier to see all the steps of the transformation on a single page instead of clicking through multiple pages.

To go to the new page, see here.

Not Big Enough

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Varney#cite_note-modernguitars-7:

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Mike Varney began collecting recordings prior to the beginning of his career in 1980. His current collection includes over 40,000 LPs and CDs, extensively covering the hard rock, metal, progressive rock, blues-rock and jazz-fusion genres and subgenres.

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There it is - 40,000 is my threshold for when I will cease collecting music. If all of Varney's music was on a CD and if all of those CDs (40,000) were on a spindle that holds 100 CDs each, Varney would have 400 spindles. In contrast, I have ~38 spindles of 100 each.

Typography

The practical guide to why laying out type never quite does what you want . . .

Ten at 25

I only listen to the singles and of those, I hate the song Jeremy. Love Even Flow. Probably my favorite Pearl Jam tune, followed by Better Man.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/pearl-jam-ten/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=newsletter_4511503

Before

We are going to a dude's house this evening and buying a beautiful desk. It will be put in the den. The following pictures are for documenting the "before" the den transformation. Yes, it was a mess. In my defense, I have been not doing anything in the den the last few months due to a busy life. For example, we're going to be busy on the weekends between now and the end of the year. Literally, we have a scheduled thing every weekend. Hell, I have 26 more CDs to rip before I am done with Spindle #4... And there are likely to be 48 spindles of 100 cds each when I get the cds on the wall of the den put onto spindles!

Photos of the den are at this link: http://www.myroll.com/moment?token=e16e941129156bd5

My Blogger app is buggy when it comes to attaching photos from my gallery.

Yes, Why?

From this article:

"This was straight out of loving Iowa City and loving Kinnick," Luber said. "It's such a great idea. Why didn't we do this before?"

I firmly believe if Metallica were booked to play Kinnick Stadium in 2017, there's no possible way the concert would not sell out. The Twin Cities concert sold out in 10 minutes! I profess that Iowans would make Kinnick Stadium sell out in 9 minutes.

Justified

What I Should Call You Now

I've been listening to Bayside's "Vacancy" release daily - sometimes multiple times - since I was sent the promo, via download, on 8/19. It is an amazing record. I have started a draft of a review of it for dailyvault.com and, like when I reviewed the Count the Stars "Never Be Taken Alive" release a few years back, it's very hard for me to not gush fandom all over the band. I want to have a quick turnaround and get the review submitted to dailyvault.com early this week.

NEW GD

I did this

http://www.howtogeek.com/268249/how-to-turn-an-old-hard-drive-into-an-external-drive/

Glocks Not Cocks

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/08/texas-college-students-bring-sex-toys-gun

Told you so...

I knew Trump would spout off something stupid....

At least there's Metallica

I had zero idea who Kendall Jenner was or that she existed until I saw this article. Nice shirt.

I've babbled endlessly on this blog about Metallica's "And Justice for All" album. It was 28 years ago on 8/25/1988 that it was released. Unlike when the Black album was released, I don't remember under what circumstances I purchased the cassette I still have in a box in the basement storage room. Sigh. Cassettes are sorely missed. Here's an article about it. including the wrong years:

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"With nine songs demoed by the end of 1997, Metallica entered One on One Studios in North Hollywood, Calif., in January 1998 to begin tracking with producer Mike Clink,..."

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Damn numbers!

Elkader Floods

It's like a repeat of June 2008 in Elkader. There are floods and as I posted on June 11, 2008. There's not a lot of difference between 27.8' and 26.5' so it's devastating. We were not planning to go to Elkader this weekend - Alex has marching band tonight - so the next time we had planned to go up was next weekend. However, as of this moment, it's somewhat doubtful we will camp in Elkader on Labor Day weekend. Lou, Steve D, and Jim R were up in Elkader yesterday and moved our camper out of the Deer Run Resort for us. Ans while accurate, this KCRG article about the 2016 floods provides no comfort and neither does Looking at the National Weather Service site shows me this:

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Catching up on the Political Trail

Sometimes, I think NBC Nightly News is a liberal powerhouse and only focuses on the negative when reporting about Republicans and only focuses on the positive when reporting about Democrats. On the surface, seeing the following two headlines might seem like evidence for that assessment. However, it occurred to me that the reason articles like these can be published is - gulp - Donald Trump said what he is quoted as saying in them. It's not fiction and you can read more in the links under the headlines later in this article. But first, I want to touch on another matter.

I first read about this when Erick Erickson wrote about this on Thursday, 8/18/16 so it's slightly outdated, but still relevant in the discussion about the media. The state of LA has had floods. Devastation everywhere. Donald Trump went to LA. Back a few years, President Obama criticized President Bush for not visiting the devastation in LA that came as a result of a hurricane. Fast forward to when Obama could do the opposite of what Bush did. Instead, in this article published on Saturday, 8/20/2016, Obama was on vacation. From Martha's Vineyard, Obama warned people to not be racist when it came to distributing help. They even had a nice picture of Obama in the "MinutemenNews.com" newsletter:

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Here are the headlines:

Trump Seems to Pivot on Immigration, While Asserting Clinton is a "Bigot"

In an attempt to reach minority voters - most who hold overwhelmingly negative views of him - Donald Trump has appeared to attempt an adjustment of his immigration plans.
Learn More

'He's Taking Hate Groups Mainstream': Clinton Lashes Out at Trump

In a speech in Reno, Nevada, Hillary Clinton went further than ever before - painting Donald Trump as an extremist that attracts his support from hate groups.
Learn More

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I am curious as to how reporting that "Trump has taken hate groups mainstream" and then publishing that information in the mainstream media are different? It doesn't really matter as I'm pretty sure Donald Trump will say or do something today, Friday, 8/26/2016, to make yesterday's news seem like a drop in the ocean.

Editor's Note: Just noticed this relevant article.

Ready

Who's ready for some Iowa Hawkeye men's basketball?!? I AM!! Here's the 2016-17 Big Ten Men's Schedule and, unlike last year when there was not a single Saturday evening game, there are two this year.

Skepticism

I happened to see Trump talk about the Chicago PD so I found this information to be interesting.

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/08/chicago-police-refute-donald-trumps-claims

Redemption Sought

I read an article about Ted DiBiase who was known as the "Million Dollar Man" for a number of years in the WWE. He was flamboyant and flashy and wow, he was a great character. The article traces his journey as he transformed himself from a WWE Superstar to a minister, I felt like a lot of missing puzzle pieces had been laid into place. I had known that he had "found Christianity" outside of the squared circle, but I hadn't seen a clear explanation. I learned that it was because he was unfaithful to his wife and she called him out on it.


I think what I liked the most about this article is the way it doesn't make excuses for his behavior - it doesn't try to say "Oh, he was rich and that's why it's okay to do what he did." Nope. Read the article here.

Editor's Note: This article was worth linking to because of its connection to the WWE and world of professional wrestling. There is no infidelity in the author's marriage. 

I Am in the Same Basement

I agree with what Trump says in this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-alt-right_us_57bf3bbce4b04193420e2a20

“People who want their laws enforced and respected, and who want their border secured, are not racists. They are patriotic Americans of all backgrounds who want their jobs protected and their country kept safe,” he said.

“People who speak out against radical Islam, and who warn about refugees, are not Islamophobes. They are decent American citizens who want to uphold our values as a tolerant society, and who want to keep the terrorists out of our country,” he added.

Dry Run for Metallica at Kinnick Stadium

I'm a white male who favors heavy metal over country. Thus, hearing about Blake Shelton playing at Kinnick Stadium on Saturday, 8/27, didn't really float my boat. The article about the transformation of Kinnick Stadium into a concert venue - here - includes this quote:

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“There’s a thousand moving parts,” said Mark Jennings, UI associate athletics director and the university’s coordinator for the eight-hour event, which kicks off at 3 p.m. and is expected to wrap up around 11 p.m. “Never having done this before, everything’s new.”

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Naturally, my assumption is that from all the work Jennings is doing, there will come a manual of procedures and processes that were followed to put on this concert that are unrelated to the actual band that is playing. That documentation would then be used for future concerts so that the any future concerts follow those procedures and processes, leading to a smooth concert setup experience for Jennings and his staff.

Stay with me.

That means in light of news about a pending Metallica tour in 2017 and my idea that Metallica should play at Kinnick Stadium, I think it's absolutely PERFECT that there is a Blake Shelton concert in Kinnick Stadium on Saturday. It's TOTALLY AWESOME because if Metallica were to be booked to play in Kinnick Stadium in 2017, there would be documentation to make it easier. That's one less hurdle any concert promoter would have to contend with, if Metallica would have been the first concert. They would have had to deal with "We've never done this before" negative attitudes.

NOW, though... it's been done at least once - the glass ceiling has been shattered!

Dokken in SD?

This was posted on the Iowa City Craigslist site...

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Media Bias

The Media Are Biased? What?

GS

I just noticed that Gemini Syndrome is playing at Gabe's Oasis on Saturday (see below) night.

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From 2013, this is their album:

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Editor's Note: This concert is on Sunday, 8/28, not Saturday, 8/27. There are no plans to attend.

The Other Reason

In exactly 1 month, 4 weeks, 1 day (or 60 days total), no one is going to prevent me from what I plan to do. It is to be watching the season 7 first episode of "The Walking Dead" and I have to say, articles like this one make me really excited, even if the article doesn't reveal who Negan killed. The new season of Fear the Walking Dead began on Sunday (8/21) and despite this review, I'm personally excited.

There is just so much going on in life that I don't really care that my CD to MP3 conversion is pretty much at a standstill. I've been trying to finish converting my 4th spindle of 100 CDs for weeks. I may never complete this project. I'm in the market for a cheap laptop so that I can use that to rip CDs when Alex is using our "family" laptop for schoolwork.

How I Am Lately

Whether it's a headline announcing Metallica plans to tour or hearing a snippet of a new song in the trailer for the new album below, I'm beside myself when I read / hear news about Metallica in 2016 and beyond. There's a snippet of a new song at the 2:08 mark in the video, according to this article.

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The new tune is awesome live.

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Even when I see a new video of an old Metallica tune.

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I really need to figure out some way to get onto the "MetOnTour" staff so that I can go around the world, with Metallica, and film their shows.

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Maybe when I retire...

New Tunes

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Stick around for the end of this one - this last part is hilarious.

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Fail

From Bernard Aschwanden, who I have seen speak at a WritersUA conference:

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Followed by their response:

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The Mystery Known By Males

Although "No, he's not. I have the same coffee table" was in the running, my favorite line is "Are you Insane"?

Editor's Note: This blind link is safe for work. It's to a video on Facebook.

Hopelessly Alone and Yet Close

Quick on the Feet

Editor's Note: Normally, the name of the person who posted something like this would be not shown but since this could go viral among the 3 followers of this blog, it is necessary to give proper credit. Also, this is post number 3400. It's a significant number even if it is not widely celebrated.

Sharing My Ignorance

Because I've never professionally recorded music in a studio, the process of recording an album is a total and complete mystery to me. I know nothing about it. That is why this playlist of videos that shows Bayside "tracking" their AWESOME newly released album "Vacancy" is fun for me to watch.

Not a Fan

When I looked at this, my initial thought was that all of the underlined text was a hyperlink since, you know, underlined text is the standard that almost all web pages use to tell the user that the text is a hyperlink. Not true here:

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In this capture, the only text that is a hyperlink is the word "here" at the end. That just makes the person responsible for this page look stupid.

Raw Summary

Raw summary from last night...

Dudley Goodbye

On the 8/23/16 edition of Monday Night Raw, the Dudley Boyz came to the ring to say "Good-bye" to the WWE. I didn't really believe they were quitting - they never said the word "retire" or "no more matches" - so, honestly, I wasn't too surprised when they put Primo & Epico through a table. When Gallows & Anderson came out to dismantle them, that made me think, "this was all an angle in an attempt to make them faces against the heels Gallows & Anderson. This is so I care about the Dudley Boyz again.

Good job - I was hooked enough to look up some Dudley Boyz extreme moments:

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7 Links to Elsewhere

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbqKW4YISHQ&sns=em
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3403NQJTu0&sns=em
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jerry-falwell-jr-trump-is-the-churchillian-leader-we-need/2016/08/19/b1ff79e0-64b1-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html
4. https://youtu.be/qVEL7KtmDJ4
5. https://youtu.be/VjcDHVg-u-c
6. https://youtu.be/ZmOTXWzrWT4
7. https://youtu.be/zypC_EBg7KE

Metallica is Playing a New Tune Too

Bayside is Playing their New Tunes

As the Bayside tour continues across America, they are playing tunes from "Vacancy" in concert. This is what they played in Boston:

1. Sick, Sick, Sick
2. I've Been Dead All Day
3. Montauk
4. Pigsty
5. Blame It on Bad Luck
6. The Walking Wounded
7. Just Enough to Love You
8. Sinking and Swimming on Long Island
9. Two Letters <== from Vacancy
10. Choice Hops and Bottled Self Esteem
11. What and What Not
12. Masterpiece
13. Carry On
14. Killing Time
15. Duality
16. Mary <== from Vacancy
17. Mr. Brightside  (The Killers cover)
18. Landing Feet First

Encore:

1. Don't Call Me Peanut
2. Pretty Vacant <== from Vacancy
3. Devotion and Desire

I downloaded the album from their publicist on Friday and will be writing a review for Dailyvault.com soon. Spoiler alert: IT IS AWESOME!

31 Day Challenge

At the other end of this link - 31 Day Challenge - is an article about "The System I Used to Write 5 Books and Over 1,000 Blog Posts." It prescribes writing 500 words a day. I thought the article was interesting enough to post, but I don't really plan to follow it. You see, since I do the majority of my writing in a spiral notebook, it's not really about a word count - it's about pages. For example, in the 10 year project spiral notebook for this month, I'm on page 60. Because there are 92 pages in the section of this 200 page college-ruled notebook, I create a schedule with target pages. I am "scheduled" to begin writing on page 61 tomorrow and to write until the end of page 64. On Wednesday, 8/24, I am scheduled to begin writing on page 65. I have the rest of the section "scheduled" out so that I end it on Wednesday, 8/31. To count the number of words I write or to not write in the spiral notebook so that I could write in MS Word and quickly calculate a page count would throw my writing addiction off. Thus, I linked to the article above as a reminder to myself that if I ever reach a point where I don't want to write in a spiral notebook, there are alternatives.

In related news, I was in Lansing, IA, over the weekend. Karen, Lou, Jean & I went to a store called HorsFalls. I found 3 x 200 page hard-cover journals. The sticker on the outside said they were normally $10 but on sale for $5. Since I didn't know when I would be at that store again, I bought all of them. I'm unsure how they will fit into the current 10 year project as I already have 24 x 200 page college-ruled notebooks purchased and a month/year combination assigned to each. My initial thought was to use them for my sporadic series where I write each day about a specific pre-determined topic as a countdown to our wedding anniversary. Since our 25th wedding anniversary is in 2018, perhaps I can reserve one of these new journals for that. As for the other two, there's a possibility I will be "ahead" of my previously defined schedule and actually write in the section assigned to 12/2021 prior to 12/2021 and, thus, need to have another notebook or way to write. Right now, I am writing in the volume / section that was previously assigned to 11/2016. On 9/1/2016, I anticipate I will begin the section assigned to 12/2016, which means I am 3 months ahead of my schedule. Assuming that continues, I would be starting the 12/2021 section on 9/1/2021 and could easily see myself using one of these new journals for those months. As for the 3rd new journal, I don't have a 3rd idea for its use so I'll just keep it available.


All of this is to document that I do more writing than what I publish on this blog. I have thoughts and opinions I have judged to be private.

Classic Kurt v. Giant

I love the way this match plays out: https://twitter.com/WWENetwork/status/767423143480664064?s=09

Love from 1993

Oh man

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/08/19/university-implements-man-ban.html

All but Me

http://minutemennews.com/new-obama-reg-9200-federally-operated-facilities-must-adopt-transgender-bathroom-policy/

Mandatory

http://minutemennews.com/surprise-surprise-hillary-and-top-aides-skipped-out-on-mandatory-ethics-training/

Sarcastic Wit

http://theresurgent.com/the-hypocrite-is-a-democrat-so-its-okay/

It's HAPPENING!!!

When Metallica announced they were playing in the Twin Cities on 8/20/16, I didn't articulate the initial thought I had, which was that that gig would coincide with new music. Sure enough, yesterday, Metallica released information about their next album. It is called "Hardwired ... to Self-Destruct." Before I even get to the new song "Hardwired" which is beyond AWESOME(!!), look at how bad-ass the album cover is! (I added the red border to the image)

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And then... then the MUSIC! I'm happy - no ECSTATIC - to say there are bad words in this video - the F word and "shit" - so consider yourself warned.

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My initial 5 reactions were:

1. It sounds a lot like "My Apocalypse" on "Death Magnetic"
2. It is a better introduction to new Metallica music than "The Day That Never Comes," which follows the same structure as, say, "Fade to Black" or "One"
3. It has double bass rumblings so that means Lars is playing his drums.
4. While the tune has a guitar solo, I wonder why the guitar solo is so short. It sounds almost like it was 1/2 of a longer, perhaps calculated, composition.
5. James Hetfield has gone on record saying he doesn't curse as much anymore and yet, here on this initial tune, he says the F-word and the phrase "shit out of luck" - so I wonder if that viewpoint has changed somewhat.

It didn't take long for the anti-Metallica people in the world to rear their heads.

And if this isn't enough information, read more here.

It's The Weather Outside the Store, Not the Bathrooms Inside the Store

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/20/target-ceo-blames-climate-change-not-bathroom-policy-hurting-sales/

Unbelievable

Wait, what?

Gingrich defended HRC?!?

WOW!

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/08/newt-gingrich-defends-hillary-clinton-junk

Aggravating Part 02

From: Manminder
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 6:20 AM
To: Me
Subject: RE: Question

[snip]
Strange, I have tried the same thing and on my end and it works fine.

This could be something specific to TOC or the project, did you try creating a new TOC and see if it causes the same issue or not.

And there is no such limit to number of Doc files linked within a Adobe RoboHelp Project, I have tried fair amount of documents and it worked pretty decent. But in order to maintain and render so many documents I would recommend a machine with a good tech specs otherwise the performance might got at stake.

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From: Me
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2016 7:32 PM
To: Manminder
Subject: RE: Question

[snip]...if I drag a folder to the TOC pane, should the TOC that is created always be in alphabetical order?

I had observed that an easy way to create a TOC for all these Word docs was to drag the Word files into a folder under the Project Files section and then drag that folder to the TOC pane. That works really slick.

However, what I noticed (also) is that if I create the TOC, drag more Word files to the same folder in the Project Files section, and then drag that folder to the TOC pane, the TOC is not being created not in alphabetical order.

Here’s some screenshots to better illustrate what I am questioning.

This first one shows that I have dragged some Word files to the “Information” folder under the Project Files section. I then created the TOC by dragging the “Information” folder to the TOC pane. Also, notice that the “Domain Name Services.docx” is not in the “Information” folder:

Here’s where things get bumpy. The following screenshot shows what I see after I have dragged the “Domain Name Services.docx” Word file to the “Information” folder and then create the TOC by dragging the “Information” folder to the TOC pane:

As you can see, the “Domain Name Services” book is created at the bottom of the TOC, after “VOALTE”.

So that’s my issue / question / trouble I’m having. Any insight you can provide is appreciated. I will have many Word docs that are linked to from this RoboHelp project so if this is the way it’s going to work, then I will need to plan accordingly. And just for my own knowledge, is there a known limit of Word docs that can be linked to within a RoboHelp project? I ask this because of what I discussed with a co-worker yesterday. She has ~800 Word docs that are distributed as PDFs and then linked to on a website. In the current website for these PDFs, there is no search functionality. I have a sample set of Word docs that I can “play” with to see if linking them through a RH project is something that would allow a user to search for specific content across those ~800 PDFs. It’d be nice to know, prior to going down this road, whether there is a number of Word docs I shouldn’t exceed.

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From: Manminder
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 10:07 PM

Thank you for watching the videos.
I’m afraid currently I don’t have the recorded video for that functionality, however I would appreciate if you could let me know what is the challenge you are facing in order to create the TOC from the linked word documents.

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From: Me
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2016 10:48 PM
To: Manminder
Subject: Question

Hi

I’m working with RoboHelp 2015 and was watching your video - https://my.adobeconnect.com/rhforbeginners/ - and had a question.

I’m having difficulty with the way RoboHelp creates a TOC for the Word documents I am linking to. I wanted to know if you have recorded a video that goes over that functionality.

Hot Water

I was assigned a project at work that is due on 8/24 (next Wednesday). The content for this project requires me to work with an extremely busy co-worker to obtain information. Already, since I started here, I've had meetings with him over the lunch hour because he has that much on his plate. Thus, yesterday, when I received an Outlook invite to a meeting with him from 4 - 4:30 today, I was ecstatic. I even wrote about how happy I was to have this meeting set up in my private journal.

Then, last night, it dawned on me and I felt myself drowning in heated liquid as I realized, and said aloud to Karen & Megan, that I had a meeting today at 4. The look on their faces was terror.

"What do you mean you have a meeting at 4? You were planning to leave work at 4 so you can get up to UNI. If you meet from 4 - 4:30, you won't get up to Cedar Falls until 6:30."

Yes, meeting with him from 4 - 4:30 will put me behind schedule by 30 minutes. It was dumb to accept the meeting and, I suppose, my only defense is that I was happy to at least get on his schedule. To remedy the situation, when I arrived at work about an hour ago (6:42 AM), I sent an email to The Busy One and the other invitee to the meeting to see if there is any other time to meet, explaining the situation:

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I totally spaced off that I was going to leave today at 4 to take my daughter back up to UNI. Is there another time today that we can meet?

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Hopefully, there is another time to meet today. Otherwise, maybe the meeting will not take an entire 30 minutes...

18" HHs

In San Francisco, CA, I saw this ad from a drummer:

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I'm a 32 year old drummer with much recording, touring and gigging experience. My style goes between heavy, groovy, tribal, funky, laid back minimal, dynamic, and bombastic. I'm not worried much about genre.. my sole goal is to make great music with like minded individuals. Last year we played Slims, Rickshaw Stop and Bottom of the Hill.

I'm looking for a serious project. The kit I use is a 1969 Ludwig 26/15/16/18 w/ 6.5x14 supraphonic, along with 18" hats, 20" crash, and 22" ride.

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Wow! Those [hi-]hats are huge! I use 14" hats. In the ad, he included links to these videos:

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R2-D2

The actor who was inside R2-D2 passed away and, in tribute, here is a playlist of videos that honor his achievement in the film. Kenny Baker was 83.

A Tale of Woe

This article - My parents’ happy marriage ruined my love life - is one I related to kind of, sort of. Actually, only these two sentences:

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"When my mom died, the second thing my dad said to me was that he’d never marry again. He called Mommy his soul mate, and he spoke of their marriage as having been perfect."

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Even then, though, not really. Mom died on December 29th, 2014. In the 1 year, 7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, or 597 days since her death, I've never heard Dad say he would never marry again and I've never heard him use the word "Mommy" when referring to Mom. Beyond that, though, Dad has often spoke of their marriage as having been perfect. I can't really say whether it was or wasn't because I wasn't in that relationship. As a son, I can observe that it didn't look perfect, but that doesn't really mean anything in the Big Picture of judging or labeling whether their marriage was or wasn't perfect.

All that said, I hope the author finds the love of her life.

But Its Just Punctuation and Speling

I was reading Article A - http://theweek.com/articles/642914/how-republicans-rebuild-after-civil-war - in which the author quotes himself from Article B - http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Social+adjustment%3A+Washington's+young+conservatives+ponder+life+in...-a0155288624 - which he wrote 10 years ago.

Here's the crazy part. In the process of quoting himself, he added a usage error. This is the part of Article B that is being quoted, which is correctly stating:

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If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It's failing because it's like you.

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Image from Article B:

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That reads fine. No issue. In fact, if there was a usage error in an article that was composed a decade ago, I would likely dismiss the error as a legacy document that can't or shouldn't be changed. But oh no, that's not the case. It's in Article A - which was composed August 16, 2016 (yesterday!) that has the usage error! Here it is:

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"If the GOP we're more like me, the party would be doing better. It's failing, because it is like you."

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Image from Article A:

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The author meant to write "If the GOP we are more like me, the party would be doing better. It's failing, because it is like you." Really? Are you sure? Perhaps it's the high standards of writing which are failing because its like you.

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Editor's Note: Yes, there are two deliberate mistakes in the title of this post. Also, yes, the articles referenced within this post are worth reading for reasons in addition to the usage error.

Fascinating

http://www.savagechickens.com/2016/08/too-boring.html

Editor's Note: Credit to Matthew for sending me this link.

Woah - That's Finn Bálor!

SummerSlam 2016 features Finn Balor facing Seth Rollins for the new title on Monday Night Raw, which is called the Universal Title. Balor got into this match because he won a qualifying match. I looked on youtube.com and found the "Top 25 Moves Of Finn Balor (NXT)" and yeah, I'm impressed with what he can do in the squared circle. http://teamstre.am/2baXQtF That said, I don't really like the way he says "Seth" after the majority of each sentence in the promo he did from last week - Finn Bálor reveals the history of The Demon King: Raw, Aug. 8, 2016 - so I'm hopeful that "someone" tells him to knock that off. Last night on Monday Night Raw, Balor "revealed" his "Demon King" character and it seems to owe a lot of its appearance to two other icons in pro wrestling - The Undertaker and Sting (when he was "The Crow" character in WCW). I hope Balor is able to achieve the success those two did. I liked both of those characters because they went beyond being human beings in a match in a ring. They were mystical and I used to hang on every word that came out of their mouths. I would certainly love to see either a UT v. Sting v. Balor 3-way dance for "Mystical Character of The Universe" or possibly a stable of the 3. However, given that UT & Sting are not routinely on TV, I don't think that's likely.

One side note about last night's episode of Monday Night Raw. Heath Slater came out to the ring and challenged Brock Lesnar to a match so that he could earn a WWE contract. I have been indifferent to Slater as a wrestler for some time but hearing him and seeing the look of determination in his eyes when he said that he had kids and that he needed to provide for them was a very convincing moment for me. I believed him and didn't let my realistic knowledge that Slater really wouldn't be allowed backstage or in the ring area if he didn't already have a contract with WWE -"not having a contract" is a character trait. Lesnar appeared to be sympathetic to Slater and, for a brief moment, I wondered if Lesnar would "use" Slater to make him more approachable. It was a neat moment. Honestly, I like Paul Heyman's promos - they are always entertaining. That said, hearing Lesnar's voice on the mic was refreshing. Of course, that moment was ruined when Lesnar pummeled Slater.

Fake It till I Can No Longer Believe

Fan Rushes the Ring During Seth Rollins' Promo on 'WWE Raw

Cubs Fallout

Cubs fire stadium DJ who made staggeringly horrible song choice

Belushi

America's Greatest Olympian Is John Belushi Eating Donuts and Smoking a Cigarette

Hate for B v S

This is as long and drawn out as he says that the movie is... Worth watching in my opinion if you have seen the movie. Otherwise, it may spoil the film for you.

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Awesome Sauce

I missed the announcement that this was a TV series coming this fall. Looks good. While it looks like a lot of the story from the movies is intertwined - such as that Riggs' wife is dead - I will be curious whether it follows the story from the second movie when it is learned who killed her. I also am curious whether the sequencing of the movies will be followed in any way or if it's all going to be picking this detail from the 3rd movie, that detail from the 2nd, etc. I will probably watch at least the series premiere and the second episode. I will use the second episode as the benchmark for whether I return to watch additional episodes.

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Smacky Tacky

Cubs Fire DJ After Inappropriate Song Plays at Wrigley Field

Where Does It End?

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/if-all-love-is-equal-this-incestuous-mother-and-son-couple-should-be-celebrated/

Only US Date

I admit that when I saw the original Dokken lineup (George Lynch, Jeff Pilson, Don Dokken, and Mick Brown) announced a single US Date, I looked on Mapquest.com for how far of a drive it would be to go see it. More details here.

No!! Tell Me It isn't So!

From this page, I randomly selected this link where I saw a member of my Top 10 Most Hated Technical Writing Strategies. It is the technique of putting "This page is intentionally blank" on a page in a user manual. How is a page that has text on it "blank" - it's not blank!

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This is a widespread strategy and I know I shall never overcome its evilness. Instead of that sentence, I would implore any technical writer considering using it to replace that sentence with "Notes" which accomplishes the purpose of including the page for page layout purposes. At my very first technical writing job, which I started 21 years, 6 months, 5 days, ago on 2/10/1995, Karen Barth (my mentor) used "Notes" as a replacement for the evil idiotic sentence. We worked with printed user manuals and needed that page so that a new "topic" would always begin on the "right" page when looking at a user manual. That practice has been in my mind ever since. I left that job 18 years, 6 months, 5 days, on 2/10/1998 but it still resonates.

I Would Go Insane

I was immensely impressed by this part of the article about the latest single from Lamb of God:

".... my wife and I found ourselves in a small corner of a neonatal intensive care unit, holding and caressing our first born infant daughter. The ambient hum of medical machinery droned in the background and a panoramic window framing the Shenandoah Mountains sprawled out in front of my new family and I. We gazed lovingly over every detail of our daughter's face, every freckle on her skin, cataloging every sound and smell the way all new parents do. The difference was that our child had developed an infection during delivery. She was very, very sick and her prognosis hadn't yet been determined. Later that day, our daughter Madalyn Grace Morton died in my arms. We were walking through Hell. Life was imitating art.

Few would argue the fact that losing a child is one of the worst things anybody can go through. The effects an individual experiences from a trauma of that magnitude are felt physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. People grieve in very different ways, and when the cards and flowers stop coming and the condolences trickle off, a couple is left to sit with their grief, despair and emptiness while the rest of the world 'gets back to normal.' Six weeks after I handed my dead daughter over to a nurse, I found myself walking on to the stage at Madison Square Garden to 'entertain' people. I was by no means ready to re-enter that world, but the music industry is vicious and unforgiving… and somehow, there I was. For me, 'grieving' took the form of a rapid and immediate free fall into an abyss of drug addiction. While I don't defend my response as appropriate (and I certainly wouldn't recommend it), I do very clearly understand how it happened. And I do forgive myself."

I sincerely pray I never know what it is like to go through what he went through with Alex and/or Megan. Read more here.

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While Awaiting M, There is New GD

I'm hoping to hear something - pretty much ANYTHING - about a new Metallica album before the end of 2016. In the meantime, Green Day is preparing a comeback with a new album called "Revolution Radio" - out 10/7/16 - and have released "Bang Bang" as their first single. I wish I had the skills to create a video like the one below. The creativity is far beyond what I think I am capable of creating.

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NEW FAVORITE BAND

Stumbled across this and WOW! "Crucifixion" is the debut single from Giraffe Tongue Orchestra’s forthcoming album “Broken Lines”, out 9/23/2016. I am impressed and hope the rest of the album is the same type of interesting music. I really like the breakdown at 1:52.

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And more!

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Editor's Note: More information here.

The PC Police are Out to Save My Inability

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/san-jose-mercury-news-rio-olympics-story_us_57ad7acbe4b007c36e4e2184?section=

Aggravating

I'm really perplexed with my RoboHelp project. I have a Word document for each of the systems that are going to be in my Disaster Recovery manual. I have them all in the "System_Information" folder so that I can drag that entire folder to the TOC designer and have the books be automatically created and sequenced in alphabetical order. However, the "Telephone System (NEC)" book is being created at the end of the TOC. I would expect it to be between OnBase and VOALTE, as it is displayed on the left under the Project Files > System_Information folder.

I tried deleting the Word doc and all associated HTML files from the RoboHelp project, renaming the document to TTTelephone System (NEC).docx and re-linking the document. When I recreated the TOC, it still put that book at the end of the TOC:

Of course, this is more of an annoyance than anything else - probably spent more time on it than necessary. Still, it seems worthy of a question in the RoboHelp forums.

In the meantime, I tried renaming the Word doc so that it starts with "A" and it still is being created at the bottom of the TOC:

Giddy with Joy

The New Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer Is Gritty As Hell http://flip.it/wGqF5

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And, already, there's reactions to it:

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And - SPOILER ALERT - I missed this article in June that possibly reveals the link between "Rogue One" and "A New Hope." If it's true, my mind is really blown. Once again - SPOILER ALERT so don't click if you don't want to know but I did so I read the article and am putting in this blog post for future reference - here's the link to the article.

Calculating the Space

I haven't wrote much about it, but I've been working on eliminating duplicates from my "master" external hard drive. I seriously have copies of copies of copies of JPGs, PDFs, DOCs, and a bunch of other file types. This work has been on-going for several months with some minimal progress. It seems never-ending. Here's what I can share so far.

This is from the home laptop. What I've been trying to do is determine whether a 5 TB external hard drive, like the one on sale at Best Buy for ~$140, has a large enough capacity to copy all of my files to it. The screen capture below shows files on the T:\ drive but those files have been moved to another drive so T:\ is out of the picture as far as needing to consolidate files from it to another drive.

Here's a table I created:

Drive	Used	In GB	Free	Total Size
G - P	1.27 TB	1250	1.41 TB	4 TB
U	1.80 TB	1853	11.7 GB	2 TB
V	681 GB	681	249 GB	1 TB
Y	1.45 TB	1484	2.17 TB	4 TB
Z	341 GB	341	1.48 TB	2 TB

 Based upon the chart above, here's some crude math:

   G through P drives   1250 GB

+  U                    1853 GB 

                        3103 GB  = 3.030 TB

+ V                      681 GB

                         781 GB  = 3.781 TB

+ Y                      484 GB 

                        5268 GB  = 5.268 TB

+ Z                      341 GB

                        5609 GB  = 5.609 TB

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Obviously, 5.609 TB exceeds 5 TB by 609 GB. Then I noticed that the V drive has 681 GB. I calculated the above without including the V:\ drive:

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   G through P drives   1250 GB

+  U                    1853 GB 

                        3103 GB  = 3.030 TB

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+ Y                     1484 GB 

                        4587 GB  = 4.587 TB

+ Z                      341 GB

                        4928 GB  = 4.928 TB

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5 TB > 4.928 TB! Bingo! Except that leaves me with 928 GB on the brand new external hard drive, which isn't a lot.

Thus, before I purchase a new 5 TB external hard drive from Best Buy, I want to eliminate 72 GB. I also have to consider if it'd be possible to eliminate 681 GB (the equivalent of the V drive) from the 4.928 TB so as to allow me to copy the V drive to a new 5 EHD.  I don't have a timeline for when all of this will be complete. Usually I would dedicate Saturday & Sunday mornings on a task like this. However, looking at my calendar, I don't really have any weekends I can dedicate to this project. Thus, I will try to work on it whenever I can.