Progressing

The music collection continues to grow, though I haven't made progress on the LP to MP3 project since receiving my new converter in the mail. I'd like to possibly resume that on Saturday, but our plans are kind of up in the air. I'd like to go to the Iowa men's swim meet with Alex on Saturday morning, but I also know Mark and Susie are coming down for an appointment - but we don't know what time yet and Susie didn't text me back. If I do not resume the LP to MP3 conversion, I'll probably get at least a couple of cassettes converted. I'm nearing completion of box number 1 that was supposed to be done in the July / August 2012 time frame. That has, obviously, slipped. I also can do some remaining CDs. I found a Rubbermaid of CDs that are not in the database of albums that I access through Windows Media Player. That means I have to rip the CD to MP3 and manually change the details from "Unknown Album" to the actual name of the album. It's kind of tedious, but these are mainly CDs that are either local artists or underground bands. The other project of using the YouTube to MP3 software continues as well. This is my current count:

I was planning to go to 11 AM Mass on Sunday - the youth group were scheduled to play - and then have band rehearsal after that at Joe's girlfriend's studio. Both of those plans have fallen through. The youth group isn't playing because some kids involved with it are out of town at a vocal contest.

From Judy, the music leader:

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We’re going to wait a week to sing at the 11am Mass this month. There’s an out-of-state show choir competition this weekend that will take a bunch of our singers away so hopefully next weekend will work better for us to sing at Mass. Thanks Everyone! See you on Sunday, February 3^rd!

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As far as the band goes, Brian Guitar is out of town this weekend. Tentatively, the band is planning to get together at the studio.

I need to spend some more time with the drumbeat to Tom Petty's "American Girl." It's turning into Tool's "46 & 2" which was a tough song for me to nail back in 2000.

Finally, in other news, the 200 Days project rolls along. Today is 195 days until our 20th wedding anniversary. That means I have 194 days to figure out what to get Karen. I'll probably need all 194 days!

Editor's Note: There were many ideas for a band name for this band, including "Hairy Eyeball" and "Scary Robots." We eventually settled on Lou's Classic Ride. 

Yeah! Crossed the threshold!

How?

I use Free YouTube to MP3 Converter to download MP3 files from youtube.

This is not new. In fact, I did a lot of that in 2012 and 2013 is going pretty good so far:

Quick Status

This is where the conversion sits today. With all that I talked about in the previous post, I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to make more progress on it, but I am trying to find time.

Happy New Year! Bring on 2013!

First of all, 2012 ended with Karen and I renting "Ted" and watching it. I thought it was funny, Karen fell asleep. I took Megan's friend Tyler home after midnight and then got up this AM and picked up Alex from his friend's house around 9. We just finished French Toast with Megan's friend Maggie and are about to go knee deep into the 'putting away Christmas decorations' project. I really have zero motivation to do so, but since we are going to the Harlem Globetrotters this weekend, I know there will be no time to do it. I'd like to start at 11, which is 23 minutes away, and be done by 2. That's an ideal world. I would be ecstatic if we were done by 1, but that will take a lot of dedication by myself and the troops (Karen, Megan, and Alex) to accomplish. So far, motivation to start the project is operating at a deficit.

Speaking of which, the news is out that there was a deal reached. One headline summarizes the deal as such:

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Fiscal Cliff Deal: $1 in Spending Cuts for Every $41 in Tax Increases‏

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The fallout of all this wheeling and dealing will be shaken down in the next few days as everyone figures out how it impacts them. I'm sure to have a more informed opinion in the future. Stay tuned!
Now, I'll move on to what was originally the first paragraph of this post. I haven't put up a status of the cassette to MP3 or the CD to MP3 conversion projects in a while because I wanted to wait and start 2013 with a fresh update. In my grand scheme of things, I would have hit 50,000 to start 2013, but I haven't been able to devote as much time to these projects, due to the LP to MP3 conversion that I was doing for my father-in-law's Christmas present. I probably have 300 CDs more to go and have many, many, MANY, boxes of cassettes to whittle through. Originally, I was going to have that project done by 2015, with a box being split out across two months. That plan is out the window and I will be lucky to be done by the time Alex gets out of the house in the fall of 2017. Well, maybe by the 2016, I've not really thought about it.

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Of course, there is still the VHS to DVD project to work on as well. I will need to purchase a second external HD, perhaps a 3 TB, to store all of those videos.That's so far in the future, I can't begin to even fathom it.