The New, Improved One Year Thread: 2006 Edition

[edlib]

Thanks for the reminder... it's my dad's birthday.

I have to give him a call.

 

My mom's birthday is in 2 days, also.

 

 

But my love life hasn't been all that much more eventful than yours, Keyan. Difference is I'm now 35. Last time I had a girlfriend there was a guy named Bush in the White House, and we were at war in the middle-east. Annnd let's leave it at that...

 

So... How's that for pathetic?

[Rogue15]

i've never had a girlfriend. I never get a chance even, because when i find a girl i like, she moves or disappears off the face of earth!!!! my life is ****ing rigged that way. -_-

 

i just got Saw II and Wake of Death from blockbuster, so gonna watch those tonight after a day at walmart's photo department.

 

I'm probably going to get bitched at by personell because the badge i use to clock in and out got ****ed up and i'll need a new sticker and there's probably only 1 left.....not looking foreward to it. maybe i'll use the badge that i "lost" and swipe in that way, but then i'd have to explain to my manager why i didn't destroy that badge. (it's already mutilated but i can still punch in with it)

 

anyway.......today sucks. i'm tired as hell, went to bed at 12, set my alarm clock for 4 am and it never went off so i woke up at like 6 and went back to sleep til 9.

 

I ordered Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords from ebgames.com.....that should be here by next week because the postoffice likes to **** with the mail and not get it here sooner.

 

for lunch today i had a double cheeseburger and a medium chocolate shake. now i feel like crap and will take some metabolife...

 

happy ****ing valentines day everybody.

[Wildstar]

Well, after 2 years of use, my main hard disk appears to be dying. I may have only one good boot-up left, so I'm going to use it tonight to try to get it cloned onto a new disk. Failing that, I'll have to reinstall everything on the new disk. I'm using a machine in the lab in the other building in the meantime.

[Nitro]

Following an unexpected offer from a friend, I've managed to get my hands on a Mackie 1402 mixer, so I've got a few extra channels available now to properly mic the kit.

[edlib]

Well, I would at least go:

 

Kick

Snare

Hi-Hat

Floor Tom

Rack Tom2

Rack Tom 1

Overhead Left

Overhead Right

 

And maybe:

Room mics L&R

 

Perhaps, if you have the channels and the mics, you can do top and bottom of the snare drum for a bit extra sizzle, and inside and outside the kick drum, to get both the beater snap, and the thump.

 

If you are going that far, though, then mixing all that down to one or 2 channels on the interface seems kinda lame.

I would record the drums to the Delta 44 in this way:

 

1 - Kick

2 - Snare

3 & 4 - Stereo kit (hat, toms, and overheads)

 

You can hook the output busses and/or the aux outputs of the Mackie right into the inputs of the Delta and do all your tracking that way.

 

Have the guitar and bass play along when tracking the drums, but don't record them. Just drums.

Then mic the guitar amp and bass, and re-record that to the drum track on while listening in on headphones.

Then maybe double the guitar part with a different tone. Then overdub any solo parts or riffs.

 

Then layer in the vocals (leads, doublings, and harmonies.)

 

Then you'll have a record.

[Nitro]

Well, what I'm looking at right now (based on what I can rent locally) is:

 

Snare - Shure SM57

Kick - Sennheiser E902

Overhead - 2 Shure SM94's

 

Guitar - Shure SM57

Bass - Rapco Passive DI

 

In the interests of keeping it simple, I won't be micing the toms... At least not this time around. The guy I'm borrowing the mixer from suggested I put the overheads out in front of the kit at cymbal height so they can still pick up the toms without the cymbals drowning them out. As for tracking the drums and strings seperately, I'm honestly kinda surprised I didn't think of that myself.

 

Thanks for the help, by the way... This is my first time out of the gate with doing my own recording, but it's something I've always wanted to get into, so I'm viewing it as a learning experience.

[edlib]

The guy I'm borrowing the mixer from suggested I put the overheads out in front of the kit at cymbal height so they can still pick up the toms without the cymbals drowning them out.

That's what I typically do on jazz drummers, and any drumkit where I don't have the channels or mics to do it properly. Directly over the drummer's head from behind works pretty well, too. The mics hear what he's hearing.

 

The only problem with tracking drums and everything else separately is getting the headphone monitoring right.

The energy of the performance will be a bit different too, but that's the reality of the modern recording environment. You get used to it with time.

If you get a good drum take while playing along, then you should be able to go back later and capture a good bass track and guitar track at your leisure. That way only one person at a time really has to be "on." You don't ruin a perfectly good take for 2 other people when you mess up.

 

Those mics look like good choices. I'm not familiar with the kick mic, but if it's anything like the other mics in the Sennheiser Evolution line, it will do the job well.

 

I wasn't even thinking about renting recording gear. Hmmm... shows you where my mind is at. Fortunately, I work at a place where we have a budget for purchasing such things...

 

Now, about the small matter of my consultation fee...

 

Recording can be a lot of fun once you really start to get into it.

 

I still owe Keyan a mix theory and technique primer from earlier... but now you should be able to get something out of it as well.

 

I promise I'll get to that... soon...

[Nitro]

Well, that was a buzzkill...

 

Dumped, 5 minutes after Valentine's Day.

[edlib]

Ouch.

 

Well, after 2 years of use, my main hard disk appears to be dying.

My C: drive has been threatening to quit on me for a few weeks now, but so far it's still running pretty much normal.

The only thing that happens is that it hangs at boot and wont go any further than the memory check until I hit the <Delete> button. I've read that's pretty common in Dells of my vintage where the drive is on the way out. It keeps failing all the SMART disk checks, too.

 

I've been saving everything to my other drive in the meantime, or on external disks.

I want to see how long it's gonna take for it to really die. Partly I'm curious... Mainly, I lazy and don't want to have to reinstall everything until I really have to.

[Rogue15]

@nute: ouch...

 

I watched Saw II last night, it was pretty good

the part where the girl gets thrown into the stack of needles was too much for me lol

.

 

Right now I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic. Playing on the dark side....it's much more fun, and I get more credits. XD

 

Awaiting my copy of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

[Nute Gunray]

I've recently become infatuated with women's curling, on account of three of the US girls being pretty.

[Ray Jones]

Mainly, I lazy and don't want to have to reinstall everything until I really have to.

Mainly, Mister Laze-o-man, you'll "just" have to setup a basic and dumb system on an extra partition or disk, which you'll boot afterwards. That'd enable you to copy everything including the whole system and whatnot directories from the dying disk to the oh so fresh and clean and of course bigger and faster one. Done this myself a hundred billion of times, with DOS, Windows and Linux; no reconfiguration, no missed documents and files, just your cute ol' dumpy and messed up system within the half amount of valuable time you could spend here or ransacking the fridge instead, I promise. -- What? -- You *do* have an extra harddisk and/or *do* know how to perform this with an USB stick, of course, who has and/or does not? ;~~~

 

 

 

Errm, Nute, .. women's curling??

 

I was so hoping for more than what the wiki said. :/

 

On a side note, make sure you'll do it like my dad: don't forget the binoculary equipment. ^^

[edlib]

*Shrug*

 

Eh... every time I reinstall a system, I try to make it leaner, meaner, more efficient than before.

 

So I'd much rather do it manually than just reinstalling an image. I have a lot of software and files on the disk that I never, ever use, but don't want to take the time or effort now to remove. It's great having a fresh, clean system to start from.

 

I also don't inherit any registry orphans and dust bunnies to the new system that way.

 

But that's just me...

[Ray Jones]

I got rid of orphaned or whatever registry entries by switching to Linux. ^^

 

However, in the case of Windows it's a very valid point for the advantage of and a good reason for reinstalling, though.

 

But be prepared for the death of the hdd to happen when you least expect or need it. I usually face(d) such kind of things when I *really* need that creepy bitch of a pc. ;

[Rogue15]

owwwwwwwwww woke up by a phonecall from my mom asking me to drive her to the hospital for her xray and bloodwork....i woke up with an aching head and feeling very feverish...drove my mom to the hospital then while there i almost threw up while waiting. wishing i had health insurance...so i took my mom back to her house and got some advil and centrum in me..kept saying i was going to call off cause i feel like a zombie..then i went to the post office and my copy of Knights of the Old Republic II came in the mail! I still feel like crap tho, so i'm going to take a long nap and hopefully i'll feel better so i can go to work...i don't want to call off, i work 2-9 but tomorrow it's 7am to 11 am..bleh. =\

 

note.....i dont have health insurance nor money to pay for any prescription medication

 

what should i do...

[edlib]

But be prepared for the death of the hdd to happen when you least expect or need it. I usually face(d) such kind of things when I *really* need that creepy bitch of a pc. ;

I really don't do any serious work on my home PC anymore, so down time isn't that much of an issue.

 

Besides, I already have 2 more PCs in the house on my broadband connection, so I can get mail and surf the net in the meantime. And one of them is a Linux (Mandrake) machine.

Worse comes to worse, I can always raid one of them for a HDD.

[Rogue15]

i ate 2 bowls of spaghetti....i'm starting to feel a little better so work is a go. (tho i have 7am-11am shift tomorrow..leaving little time for relaxation when i get home.

[Wildstar]

Back on duty...turned out had to reinstall from scratch. Good thing the old drive had the SMART utility on it so it gave me a warning to back up the important stuff. I got the old (Maxtor 30GB) disk when it was close to having the warranty expire, so it was probably due to fail sooner or later, and I was lucky to get two good years of service out of it. My new disk is a brand new Seagate 80GB disk w/ a 5 year warranty.

[Nitro]

Someone posted this on the local music scene messageboard...

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1491516901670441597&q=canon+in+D

[Ray Jones]

I really don't do any serious work on my home PC anymore, so down time isn't that much of an issue.

Oh edlib, don't worry 'bout that, you gonna have to, only this one time, for whatever reason.

 

And when you turn that sucker on, the sound of the head crashing into the surface will be like the most uncomfortable thing you've ever heard. This will also cause a small current peak in the PSU, which again will destroy parts of the CPU and/or some RAM and maybe a fan will fly off and dig into your right leg.

Directly related to this will be the 360KV three-phase current blast coming out of the networkadapter and that, of course, blows away your lovely little broadband connection, but not before simply melting your ISP down to nothing but subparticles.

 

(Hossa, I swear, if I were god.. XD)

 

However, chances are that one of the other PCs is surviving this, but not with more that one eye left.

 

:D

[edlib]

Hmmmmph...

 

Maybe still... but I think I'll just take my chances, anyways,.. thanks.

 

After all,.. it's about the closest I come to "Life on the edge!" Sitting at the computer, AND the possibility of serious injury.

Think of it as my version of extreme sporting. 'Extreme computing!!!! When will he crash and burn?!??'

The girls will be all over me!

 

I need a new computer anyway. This one is 6 years old, but I've been too cheap (and lazy) to go and procure a new one while this one still works.

[Ray Jones]

Even better and more graphic: you will be all over teh girls! ^^ *cough*

[Rogue15]

i am sicker than sick. think i got the flu....woke up at 5:45 and was like 'nooooooooooo' and kinda got stumbling and so i fell asleep til 6:30, then took a nice shower, went back to sleep for 15 minutes, then headed off to work...while there i was grouchy and pissed off the customers cause i was ignoring them while doing more important work. i almost threw up/passed out so my supervisor let me go home for the day (only had 40 mins of shift remaining)....hit the futon when i got home and slept uncomfortably til the phone rang and scared me really bad i thought i was going to have a heartattack, it was my mom and i was like 'i feel like crap' so she said they'd be over with medicine and orange juice, and **** i'm still waiting after 2 hours. dunno how much longer i'll hold out....i'll prolly end up seeing a ****ing doctor before the day is over. ugh.

[Commander 598]

Doctors aren't all bad.

 

I have strep throat and by going to the doctor, I got medication(Some anti-biotoic and Hydrocodone). Oddly enough, it seems Medicaid means that my prescriptions now cost $0. Seriously. It said $0 on the receipt.

 

This also gives me a four day weekend since we're off from school Monday.

[edlib]

Felt kind of blah today too,... although I don't think I'm actually ill in any way. Just tired.

 

I always get strange feelings of nostalgia when I feel like this. Today my mind kept going back to some pretty weird things... like the stores in the mall I used to hang out when I was in my very early teens.

I find it truly odd that I'm missing places like Spenser Gifts, Orange Julius, Hobbytown, that smelly place that always sold all the cheese and sausages (can't remember the name... Hickory Farms?) But there you go... the mind works in unusual ways.

 

I'm watching a Cyndi Lauper concert on TV as I type this. Again, I was never particularly fond of her, or her music... but yet somehow it's strangely comforting.

She looks a lot better now than she did when I was younger.

 

I had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. That's also all part of the same thing I think. I don't think I've had one in a very long time... but for some reason I had an insane craving for them today... very odd.

 

I also have Monday off, as well. I hope I can get some things accomplished this weekend.