it took a lot of wasted time waiting for things to copy around all over the place, but i've managed to get my medium old laptop back up (not the really old one that can barely hit google; this is about ten years old, and fully useable for just about anything). the hard drive has been causing me problems since last summer, but it turns out the black screen was actually the result of not activating windows (i forgot i had installed it)...

the drive isn't really to be trusted anymore, though, so i need to be working off a usb key. i wanted to work off an external drive, but windows 7 just flat wouldn't read it. works fine in xp. vista too, even. not 7. there's all kinds of dumb info online about the drive being "incompatible with windows 7", like it broke plug and play compatibility through usb or something. it's a glorified fucking thumb drive. it should read on everything.

but i suspect it's the same basic problem i spoke of earlier, with changes to the way the os reads drivers. i'm not privy to background info on 7 like i am on vista, but talk about arrogance. they get all kinds of complaints on this, and rather than fix it they make it worse.

unless, of course, somebody figured out you could sell more drives by forcing people to upgrade their hardware with their os...

i repeat: perfectly functioning drive on xp, vista. brick on 7. official reason: "incompatible". most likely technical reason: the 7 kernel considers it a "security threat". actual driver: hardware sales.

anyways, i wanted to back up to that drive, so i put vista back on and copied the shit over, and then put 7 back on. it will read fine in xp when my bios comes back. but in order to get it from my new laptop (also running 7) to the old one, i had to use my mp3 drive...

so, it now exists in five places. that's more than sufficiently safe.

anyways, the thumb key is more than enough space for one song at a time for a few weeks until things resolve themselves back to stability.

the thing is that i bought this laptop refurbished to use for school in the short run and turn into an effects rack long term. the hope was also to turn it into somewhat of a live out. i mean, it's hard to lull a tank of a pc out and about. the signal was supposed to dual out of the laptop and the pod into a stereo receiver and play through a set of celestions, which i had interpreted as a sort of modern, technology-friendly update to the classic marshall sound. i mean, trying to run this stuff through amps creates garbage. it has to be through clean signals...but getting as close to the original path as possible struck me as worthwhile.....

it's not quite to that point. well, i never finished the symphony i wanted to perform, anyways. but, it is going to end up with cubase, guitar rig and pod software - along with other guitar effects, which will turn it into a backup guitar studio.

i cannot hook it up to a firewire interface and consequently cannot connect it to the mixer or any of the things into the mixer. nor does it have a midi in/out. so, my options are limited...this is temporary....

....but it will get me back to work while i'm waiting.

there are cheap usb soundcards nowadays. it's not really necessary. but if that bios doesn't flash...

actually, something else i won't be able to do (i don't think) is drive the signal. i'll have to check. the question is if the usb sound card out on the pod takes a dry or wet signal in.

if it does, i have no real complaints regarding guitar tone. i'll just have to wait until the mixer comes back up to tweak it.

if not, i'll have to see how it sounds, but i'm not compromising my tone, either....

unfortunately, it makes sense to me to think that the usb out is just a signal from the unit - meaning it won't matter what i put in front of the thing, it won't pick it up.

hopefully, it surprises me, but it doesn't really make sense to me to think it can do that.

i use it largely for amp sims. i use guitar rig for post-processing. well, it's what each is made for. the problem with the amp sims is they need some fire to reverse that dead, digital sound. i guess if i was doing that corporate emo hair metal thing it would be fine, but i'm not; i find i need to drive it with a tube pre-amp to be useable, and i need to drive *that* with some boxes to get the most of it.

i didn't think that through.

i'll find out in a few hours.

i'm actually able to recreate fuzz-->tube-->amp fairly well with that setup, and without getting evicted.

so, it looks like colbert's personality just died in his promotion to late show.

...and chances for a republican president in the next cycle just doubled.

yeah. these fucking democratic party operatives speak out of both sides of their ass.

the reality is that clamping down on immigrants is POPULAR in the united states. this is a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority, where a populist policy is used to clamp down on a minority and increase the government's power.

i don't feel that the people opposing these policies fully grasp this. the average american has absolutely no interest in the plight of the american immigrant, except to complain about how they "stole their job" and *should* be thrown out of the country.

to make it worse, the reality is that ice isn't even restricting itself to immigrants - illegal or not - at this point. american citizens that happen to be hispanics are getting deported. it's not because they're illegal immigrants (they're not immigrants at all), but because they're not considered to be white. when you extrapolate this, you get to the core of it. it's a "white america" policy.

...and it has OVERWHELMING SUPPORT in some areas. for the president to stand up against this would mean damaging his political prospects, or the political prospects of his party.

so, the guy shows up and blames it on the republicans to it's much smaller left-leaning constituency, all the while knowing it's a populist strategy that they're pushing in order to get votes. the white house no doubt has other spokespeople that they send around to other constituencies to take credit for their softer, gentler and very ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing.

they'll talk about the dems getting 70% of the hispanic vote or whatever, but they've got a hobson's choice. they know that as bad as the democrats are, the republicans will be worse. and the democrats are just tightening the screws....

what is left remains merely the hope that the fascist with the d beside his name might be a little less brutal.

deathtokoalas
they would be far more useful as compost.

deathtokoalas
it's the second-best idea of what to do with dead people, though.

DAVA65
You're not suppose to use meat in compost.

deathtokoalas
amateurs shouldn't, due to risk of bacteria. experts know how to deal with that.

i mean, the idea here is that they're being burnt anyways, so why not get the energy? but the organic material is far more valuable, and burning it away is really downright dumb.

Bravo NovemberHotel
Something to consider in our nuclear times is that man is on the top of the food chain and we use to live relatively a long time. That means we accumulate radioactive atoms and it is not a very good idea to use our bodies as organic material (to grow food at least). For the same reason it is not a good idea to burn it either. The old concrete grave is probably the best option. Sad, a little exaggerated maybe, but who knows?

deathtokoalas
um, no, you're about as wrong as could possibly be. humans are not particularly radioactive to begin with, but if we were then what makes you think we would be less radioactive than apples or cows? it's the same environment. so, your concern is fantastical to begin with, but if it wasn't then your analysis would be incoherent and your suggestion would be irrational.

i'm not interested in supernatural hokey-pokey. the whole religious aspect of this is too stupid to justify further comment.

graves were useful at one time because they sequestered disease. we're kind of past that, though. worse, our increasing population (due in large part to hygienic practices) has rendered that organic material more valuable.

buried bodies eventually become compost for the grass in the cemeteries, but it takes a very long time for that process to happen. nor is that grass feeding anybody. you'd have to wait for it to go all the way through the food chain, round and round in circles. it's both wasteful and inefficient.

in fact, it's so wasteful and inefficient that it acts as a sink. we have an upcoming food crisis. i don't want to exaggerate by suggesting that burial and cremation are a cause of this crisis, or that we'll starve if we don't reverse the sink, but this is a known solution that we're not likely to find ourselves with the luxury to ignore.

so, get used to it.