Author Archives: Heather

About that Sony DRM thing …

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No Sony for Christmas Logo

Click the graphic for more info

Sony’s inspired attack on legitimate purchasers of their music discs has inspired me to stay away,
even tho the spyware/malware installed by the rootkit discovered on some of their discs has no effect on MAC users like me, its odeous and offensive and needs to be STRONGLY discouraged..

Send a distintive message to Sony for this holiday Season …don’t buy ANY Sony “CDs”

Just say NO to the new Kate Bush album (her first in 12 years!) on Sony …

Just say NO to the newly remastered Bruce Springsteen Born To Run 30th anniversary CD with 2 DVDs.

I was planning to buy both as Christmas gifts – but Sony won’t get my money this Christmas!

Someone swiped my car today!!

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Talk about a different way to end a day at work.
I walk out of the building at 2:45 – and find an empty parking space where I left my car!
Seems that some slimeball snatched my car! (a 2000 Honda Civic SI).

Called the police, called Emma for a ride home, called my Insurance company …
went home and made some more calls – then Emma took me to get a rental car until this settles down a bit.
Its a bit early but – Merry Christmas … ?

Archival Audio work in OS X

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small view of my desk with old Denon turntable, iMic adapter and Powermac

Last year Emma gave me an iPod for Christmas – its been great for trips and such, but I have a collection of 300+ albums that I don’t listen to much anymore. I recently saw an ad for a gadget that I hoped would make my older music more accessible. Last Tuesday it arrived. After all the turkey and family time, I took a little time for myself and cleared my desktop – and hooked up my
new Griffin
iMic. Its a small adapter about the size of a York Peppermint with a short USB cable on one end, and a 1/8 headphone jack at the other (they even provide the stereo Y cable for a turntable)

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The Bathroom fiasco continues

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The next installment of the seemingly never-ending bathroom renovation job. The owner of our contracting firm called to say they had the next bunch of hardware and would be out Friday to “finish” the bathroom. This was good and scary at the same time – the last time someone promised to finish in a single day it was a royal mess of sloppy grout work, peeling paint and a broken vanity cabinet – not to mention using white fixtures when we had repeatedly specified off-white ONLY. Needless to say, that rush job was to be redone … but we hoped for better this time.

MCC of the Blue Ridge, Roanoke

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One of the results of Emma’s ordination last year is that she is asked to come preach at various MCC churches around the area. She had been invited to preach at the MCC in Roanoke, so we drove out Route 66, got on I-81 and headed south. Its 240m miles one-way, but our 2000 Civic Si does great on the highway, so a bit over 3 hours later, we pulled into town.

MCC of the Blue Ridge (MCCBR) was holding church in a store front facility until a local Methodist church went on the market and though a bold plan and a lot of “god’s blessings”, they found themselves the owner of this glorious old church building.

Exterior View of MCC of the Blue Ridge in Roanoke VA
More pictures follow …

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The Bathroom Project

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This project has gone so wrong I’ve built a webpage just for it – see

http://www.thewebgal.com/homework/bathroom.html

A few years back, Emma was in the half bath just behind the stove in the kitchen and she noticed a dark spot on the ceiling. When she reached up to touch it, her hand went right through the surface, into wet plaster! Thats how we found out we had a problem with the tile around the tub in the upstairs bathroom.
I pulled the old tile down and found another layer of tile under that – 2 rows deep! I’m a fan of HGTV and all the renovation shows, so I knew I could save some money if I did the initial demolition. Break out the googles and have at it! I stripped the wall down to the bare studs, then packed it full of Fiberglass insulation to keep the room comfy.

We spoke to various contractors and got bids, and finally signed a contract with one firm May 18, 2005. It was our first experience with contractors – and its been like all the home remodeling gone bad movies you ever saw …

They came in and did some initial work, but its been a comedy of errors (but …it ain’t funny!).
We wanted to get the fixtures (tub, toilet and sink) in an offwhite color – so when their estimator wrote up the the contract he said “offwhite, almond/biscuit – any color but white” .

So of course, when they brought the new tub, it was white. Fortunately, we noticed while it was still outside, before it was installed, so we reminded them of the contract and had them take it back and exchange it for an almond tub.

New Alternative Radio for the DC Area

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Who are these folks, what is their background – what do THEY mean when they say “alternative” ..
They are just starting their website at
http://www.alternativebroadcasting.org/

Have you been complaining about the radio stations in the Northern VA/DC area for a while? Well, so have we and we’ve decided to do something to fix the problem. Alternative Broadcasting will be one of the few non-profit, locally-owned radio station this area has seen in. Our objective? To rescue Northern VA by providing an alternative to the highly commercialized environment of radio in the area. Not only will Alternative Broadcasting bring you everything you loved about the late 99.1WHFS, but we also plan on providing all the genres derived from rock, including punk rock, emo, screamo, prog rock, metal, indie, ska, Brit pop, classic rock, and even music from local bands! Will any other station offer you that kind of musical diversity?

Alternative Broadcasting will be launched in early November from right here on our web site! However, we’ll need your support to get our commercial-free station on the FM airwaves. Wanna help? Have some spare change? Make a donation by visiting our Donate page. Every penny counts and it all goes towards making Alternative Broadcasting a reality. Together, we can bring the DC area the kind of radio station it really deserves.