Shane_B.

That is one of the few benefits of not being able to hear. We've actually got in to some good ones about that. LOL. It's especially bad in stores like Lowe's and other places that have the big fans going on the ceilings for the ventilation systems. Any consistent background noise like road noise while driving, the ventilation system fans in stores, and I can't hear a thing. It all becomes and jumbled unintelligible mess. Yet I can hear 1 specific group of frequencies that is out of place while mixing and spend hours trying to set the their proper dB levels so they sit good in the mix. Funny how that works isn't it. The background noise problem is actually caused by nerve damage (in my case from chronic ear infections) and I don't think re-growing the tiny hairs would help that. But it's a start for sure and I'm certain they are working on that too.

You mean you don't now? *gAsP*

@Starship Krupa I'm leaning more toward it being the extensions and/or the .Net Framework versions I had to install and not actually the browser that is giving me grief right now. IOW I think I would be experiencing the same behavior if I had those same extension in Chrome. I've been checking out the resource monitor very closely. My system is still running lean and clean. When things won't load on web pages I'm showing 0% network activity. Unless I'm reading that wrong that means the connection isn't responding and it's not that something else is using it dragging it down. I really don't think I have anything malicious. I think it's some sort of conflict with all the different .Net Framework versions I had to install. But unfortunately a lot of these older things I'm running won't work without them.

Things have changed somewhat in that regard ... For example, insurance will pay for an experimental stem cell replacement for the deteriorating bones in my hip. They take your own cells, refine them somehow, and needle them back in directly to the bone. They caught it early enough to where I am a "viable candidate". I was shocked when it was presented to me and told insurance now covers such things. This is great news about MIT. I figured it would be some kind of neural implant but this is better. I knew it would just be a matter of time and I'm glad to see some progress in our lifetimes.

Funny how different body types are. I'm 6'3" and got down to 238 last summer and I was in a size 40. They were a little loose but looked normal. I couldn't maintain that. I basically starved myself and drank water all day. Not intentionally but I was incredibly busy outdoors last summer. I was out all day in the 100 + degree weather all summer and in to early fall. As soon as I stopped and started eating my normal lean high protein no carb diet I went back to my 'stable/normal' weight of 245 ~ 250. Over winter I put on 16lb on top of it so I'm up to 266 ... and I'm still in 40's. I don't get it. I'm trying to get back to 250 before I go home at the end of May. I've been pulling every trick I know. Diet, carb cut, carb blast, lifting at the gym, walking, I am stuck. Getting really mad about it. But the whole waste size thing is weird. Even when I was 220 in high school I was 36 ~ 38 depending on the brand. So I guess for my body type being size 40 at 266 is pretty good actually. I'm just a big guy everywhere except where it counts. The wallet and the shorts. 😂

Something changed in the last couple months in regard to 'safe' browsing, at least on my system. I've been using Brave with Duck. A lot of web sites flat out won't work now. I'm forced to go over to my totally unsecured Chrome browser now for several sites. One good example is, the dotpdn download link I was talking about in my last post in this thread won't even show up in Brave. I have to pop over to Chrome with no extensions. Facebook is another huge problem. It's how I stay in touch with family back home and it's pretty much unusable in Brave now with ad-blocker extensions. I was using an ad-blocker for Youtube that had a ton of nice features and it just disappeared and a totally new stripped down version with a watermark on the video's just randomly appeared one day. They must have updated it and started charging for the extra features or something. That's fine as long as I don't have to suffer through all the ads. And I wouldn't even mind that but there are way too many. It makes watching a lot of content unbearable. I have gotten tons of invaluable information from Youtube. They are the only streaming service I am considering paying for that I can't get on sale for pennies a month. If you use it as an encyclopedia it is well worth the money they want to remove the ads.

Those are the links that I was talking about. When you hover over the top 'dotpdn' link and do a search for the file that you are actually downloading you get hits as it being a malicious file. I downloaded it and sent it to two online virus checkers and they say it's clean. The other link is the one I was talking about that has a several hundred character link so you really can't tell what exactly you are downloading or clicking on. That's why I have never downloaded it. But if that's where you get it from and have never had any trouble then I'll check it out. It has to be better than MS Paint. LOL I used to use Paint Shop Pro by Jasc. They had a free version iirc. They must have or I wouldn't have used it. Or it was dirt cheap. I really don't remember, it's been well over a decade since I last installed it. That was a really great program but I stopped using it when Coral bought them and started charging a ton for it.

Yeah, hahaha (nervous laughter) "... to 44." Hah. 🙁😁

I picked up a huge jar of sauerkraut this weekend to have with my poached eggs at breakfast. I'm looking forward to having me some Scrapple when I go back home next month. Scrapple is all the leftover parts of a butchered hog all ground in to a gray paste and formed in to a giant Spam shaped brick only a lot bigger. You slice it and fry it in butter or lard and smother it with molasses with a plate of eggs, crispy hash browns, and fried Pork Roll ... not Taylor Ham! Pork Roll vs. Taylor Ham name thing is an old Jersey joke/argument. Those idgit's down around the Philly area call it Taylor Ham, but the rest of us up North and South of that area know it's actually called Pork Roll. The Scrapple is to die for. And from.

After experiencing what I did because of the accident I was in I could write a book on this. I was hit by a schoolbus that ran a stop sign. Cut and dry, 100% her fault, all on video, she was ticketed on the scene, and fired the next day. Almost all of my injuries where labelled pre-existing except the broken fingers and the eye I almost lost. Even the concussion I got from the airbag blowing my left hand back and breaking my fingers across my right eye was labelled as pre-existing. She actually put in writing that if the symptoms of the concussion persisted more than 2 weeks that it was from a pre-existing condition. Doctors now days are all scam artists because it's become a money laundering service between them, the insurance companies, and the lawyers. It's 100% all about money now and it's pretty rare to find one that actually cares. I find some of the nurses I've dealt with care more and are better than the actual doctors themselves. That said, like you mentioned, I have had the best care from doctors at Universities. They did an experimental treatment on my ears to stop the chronic ear infections I've keep getting ever since I was born and it worked. But even there now when I go for checkups it getting like a revolving door type of thing. They don't listen to you anymore and just rush you right in and out. The pandemic changed a lot of things. I'm not sure if it will ever go back to normal. Thanks for mentioning the exercises. I will definitely look in to them. And I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has experienced this. I'm right handed but play left handed. So the strap goes over my right shoulder and that's the one that droops. But I don't know if it's from the strap or the fact that my left arm is up over the body for strumming and my right shoulder is sort of down for fretting.

I'd show them. I'd buy a laptop and get a manageable midi controller.

$5 dollar tape deck at the pawn shop, razor and some tape? J/K Presonus also has a stripped down version of Studio One that's free. You can only use the included VST's, you can't use your own. After using Sound Forge, Audacity, Sonar, CbB, and Studio One ... I found Studio One the easiest for chopping and cropping, but I was used to doing it in other DAW's first so I was familiar with how it all worked to begin with.

That's exactly what it feels like. Yep. I just did it again with Vortex and Fallout New Vegas minimized and the forums up. I'm running 31 Down/ 22 Up which is faster than what I pay for. But whenever I try to load web pages now I have to wait for ever for the graphics to load. Downloads will start out ok, then significantly drop or stop all together. It started shortly after installing Fallout 3 a month or so ago but in order for it to even boot I had to install an older Direct X version and then for the some of the script extenders for it to work through Vortex Mod Manager I had to install some older .net versions. I did the .net stuff and the mods at the same time so I don't know what caused it. If it is something malicious it's pretty sneaky because Windows and Malwarebytes hasn't caught it. The claim to fame with The Nexus Mod site is it thoroughly scans all the mods for viruses. You can even pay for faster downloads and better mod searches so if I did get something from them I'd be pretty angry with them. If they are going to ask people for money and claim to be virus free they should be doing a better job of it. Most of those mods for the Fallout games are 10 + years old and you'd think they would have cleaned them by now. Something happened though that's for sure. 🤬

I've checked them out before and I just checked them out again. The site looks like a malware attack just waiting to happen that's why I have never downloaded it. I never ever click on those big green buttons that say 'Start' or 'Download'. When you hover over them it's a massive link that starts out with googleadservices embedded in it and hundred or more miscellaneous characters. I have never clicked on one of those links. I've read a lot about it and have read that it's great, but I refuse to download from one of those links. It even has a link embedded in the link button at the top that says 'adchoices' when you hover over it. That just scares the living daylights out of me. Is there a clean way to get a direct download to it?

Hey, it's just as nice as the back! Wait, that didn't come out right.

Thanks. I'll check them out. They have a free no strings attached, no credit card required 30 day free trial. I use Windows and the free Malware Bytes but have been trying to decide on a good paid one. I can find good and bad reviews for all of them when I search but if you trust ESET then I'll definitely check them out. I've been tinkering with modding Fallout since I got that new video card recently. I had to install some .net versions that weren't on my system. Ever since then my internet connection has been garbage. I don't know if it was the .net stuff or perhaps something else from one of the mods. They are all checked by the Nexusmods host site and verified virus free but still ... you never know. I know hate is a strong word these days, but I absolutely mamma pajama blanking HATE dealing with .net versions and updates. Never, not once, have I ever messed with them (Looking at you Sonar) and had a good outcome. My system was screaming fast until I messed with that. Now it's totally blanked with a capital *. But I had to install a few different versions in order for the game to even load. It's been downhill since then and I am not a happy camper about it.

Studio One is great about cleaning up all that stuff. Speaking of Studio One, if you never check, all the updates that are downloaded are saved. Check the downloads folder for Window's. I never used to but recently I've been checking it regularly. I found several GB worth of old install files there from various sources including Presonus. When I update Studio One the install files automatically get saved in my windows download folder. Don't know if that's the norm for everyone or some setting I changed on my system, but they never get deleted automatically on my system and I never manually download them. I always do the update through S1.

Business exploits and personal PC exploits are two very different things. I don't think anyone is downplaying any of it but the reality is it's extremely rare to get a virus on your PC now days between everything being analyzed by the site providers and especially Window's built in protection plus all the free and/or inexpensive antivirus software out there. IRT business, is the security really up to the people who rent the website space or the people who own the actual server they use? I thought most companies, if not all, are using Cloud services and the security is the hosts responsibility.

I can count on 1 hand the amount of times I've actually had a virus infect my system. I can honestly only remember 2 times specifically. Both came from the same source before I realized what had happened. It was a mouse driver floppy and I still remember the virus. Die Hard. It manifested slowly and eventually all you saw were 2 purple letters come streaming from the center of your screen "DH" and it would turn black. The more you rebooted the worse it became until eventually it's all that would happen. It came on the floppy for the mouse driver on a brand new system I ordered. When I contacted them they said the system the mouse manufacturer made the floppies from got infected and it had nothing to do with them but the only fix was to swap out the HDD so they overnighted me a new HDD and different mouse at no charge. I never knew you could use VLC to convert file types. I need to dig in to it more I guess. I tried to use it for streaming and could never get it to work and I used it to check files I ripped from my own blu ray's and converted. Window's gets all pissy about those file types so I just throw them on a thumb drive now and pop in my TV and they play great. No disc player needed. I used to use a free program called Format Factory to convert files but Windows started scanning it and marked it as a security threat so I stopped using it. And when you pull up their website now it says it's unsecured. So I don't know what happened with them. It was a really nice program but I've been afraid to use it since that started happening. If I want to shrink a jpg now for the forums I just use the built in MS paint program. Gimp is actually pretty difficult to use for such a quick simple thing.

I was getting shots between my vertebra for a while but it didn't help. The doctors tell me I'll eventually be in a wheelchair either from that problem or the bus that ran a stop sign and hit me. I just learn to deal with it. Drinking helps, but I hate to sit around like that all the time so I stopped having my 2 beer a night. That and the wife was getting really really mad about it and I get it. It's why I'm so cheery and happy and lighthearted and friendly all the time. 😬 That said, I'm a firm believer in you have to keep moving. Been hitting the gym hard the last two weeks. I went for an MRI 3 weeks ago and he pretty much said you can't make it worse and the more you move the longer you'll be able to keep going. That said, I don't mind lifting heavy stuff. Never really did. My love for the music and being with my friends and playing for people made it all worthwhile. I used to put those SP5's on telescoping poles. We had them up about 7 feet. I was the tallest so I always had to lift each one over my head and line up the 3" holes on the bottom with the pole. I didn't really mind it all though. But it is true my one shoulder is lower than the other. Every new doctor I go to points it out and I give him the story. Honestly, I don't know if that's what it's from or not but I've been that way a very long time. On a side note ... I'm going back home in a couple months. I have a gig and 2 band practices lined up with guys I haven't seen since the late 80's. I am SO EXCITED. I keep trying to remind myself why I'm still here . . . oh yeah that's right. N/M. Edit: I'm driving out and have to take my amp and 2 guitars with me plus the rest of my travel stuff. I'm going to be there 3 weeks then my wife is flying out and we're taking a week to drive back home through the south.

If you have an older version of VLC installed you can check for updates and download the latest version and it should get it from a secure server. It even has a checksum function to make sure you got a clean one. People do a quick search and get it from any source but you should always get the free opensource stuff from the developer working on it if you can. You should with anything you download but it's particularly easy for hackers to infect the opensource stuff. The only other site I trust is Sourceforge.net and I don't even trust them if I can help it. If I find something there I want I always try to search for the developers direct site and download it there or go to where they say it's safe to download. Sometimes they send you back to Sourceforge and sometimes they don't ... The only free stuff I use is Gimp, Blender, Open Office, and VLC and they all have their own sites. I didn't even realize they were still updating VLC. I thought it died many years ago along with Winamp. Speaking of, they are bringing Winamp back sometime soon. I liked how you could customize it like Reaper. I had a skin for it that was all analog meters but eventually had to stop using it as Window's advanced and Winamp died. You can still get the last official version that came out years ago but on new high res monitors it's almost impossible for me to see. I used to make my own skins for it but I deleted all that stuff a long time ago when it died off. Now I'm tempted to try out the latest version of VLC. I keep reading that it does a lot of things I've been wanting to do but the version I have is very old. This is VLC's official site. I haven't been able to find one that you didn't have to pay a lot of money for. The old version of Windows Media Player is still on your system, assuming you are running Windows 11. You just have to dig for it. I like it better than the new media player, but I dislike them both. I always used Winamp and VLC. But like I said above, I thought VLC died out a long time ago with Winamp but I'm wrong. You can also upload the VLC install file to several free virus checking sites and they'll scan it too. I use this site and this site.

Pfft. Crybabies. I hauled all this plus stood for 4 hours with an 83 Gibson Les Paul Custom Deluxe or a Japanese (very heavy/well made) Strat hung on my neck. My one shoulder still droops a good inch or two lower than the other from having a guitar hanging on me every Fri./Sat. night for 16 years straight. PLUS I was the keyboard player on some songs for a while too. The drummer got off easy IMHO. These are similar but not the exact ones. (All other pics are the exact models I used to haul. Two of these .... This was so heavy it had wheels ... It's a 2x12 combo with enormous transformers. It was a good 80lbs or more. Plus 2 guitars, plus my rack unit, and mic stand, and all the other smalls that go with all that like cables, mic, strings, picks, etc. etc.. Never had a problem with rear wheel drive in my 81 Monte' Carlo driving in the winter hauling all that crap. It was actually worse in my front wheel drive van.

The first time I heard the word detritus I had to look it up. Weird Paul used it in his song Maybe You'll Find Some In The Garbage. @Bapu Great song. I don't hear a thing I would change. I didn't realize until just now that Citizen Regen was you. Glad you posted it in the CH. It's pretty rare I get to these parts anymore. I see it's been really active here lately though and that's good to see!!

@Tim Smith My first was an EMU-0404. It was a great card. It really hurt to let that one go but I recycled it along with a dead Sony DAT, Sony PS3 Fatboy, and a dead ART rack effects unit. It was the first one they made. The Mach II iirc? I tried to send it to them to get it repaired but they said they didn't do board level repairs and they didn't have any more boards laying around for it. I still have the box for the EMU somewhere I think.

I still have my Fast Track Ultra. That was a great audio interface. Shockingly low latency. The rubbery knobs on it have turned to a tacky goo now but otherwise it's like new. I still have it in the original box with all the original paperwork. I think there's a big blue M-Audio sticker in the box too that came with it. The only reason I stopped using it was they refused to write a 64bit driver when XP reached the end of it's life and we had to upgrade Windows. I lost faith in them when they refused to release a driver for it and I stopped using their gear then. The vast majority of my music was done through this. I didn't switch over to new hardware until, well, my Amazon order history tells me March 8, 2016. That's when I got my Presonus Firewire Studio. But I've only done a handful of recordings since then. I'm kind of winding down on the whole recording thing. I never thought in my life I would ever say that. But, I replaced the Firewire with the Studio 1810c in January because I thought the Firewire died but it turned out it wasn't the problem. By the time I figured out it was still ok it was too late to return the Studio 1810c. But, that 1810c is an incredible unit. I absolutely love it. It has some quirks to setting it up but once I got it figured out it works flawlessly, when I do use it.