Shane_B.

I was on my side in a crawlspace with a plumber under one of the buildings last year at this time. One of the main drain lines cracked right at a joint the went through the foundation into an adjoining building. I noticed it leaking while down there plumbing a handicapped shower I had to install that week. I was afraid to do it alone so I called a plumber. As we're laying there on our sides right underneath the main he goes, "Oh **c*!". I said what's wrong and he replied that someone just flushed. We both got someone's dump splattered all over us. So yes, I can verify the saying that saying is true. I do a lot of soldering and pvc. I'm currently converting as much as I can to pex. I like it but would hate to have to do thus all day long in different areas. After you do a few here you get really good because it's all cookie cutter repeat.

I took over the maintenance on an apartment complex almost 2 years ago now. Basically nobody has done anything here since it was built in the mid 80's except the bare minimum, and very poorly. 90% of what I run in to was caused by the previous guys before me. I run in to this kind of thing almost every day. I do all the plumbing (toilet replacement, faucets, showers, water heaters), all electrical from the panel to the buildings, complete remodeling from the kitchen to the bathroom when a tenant moves out, drywall start to finish too. When I think of what these companies charge, and what I actually get paid, it makes me sick. That much money to replace shutoff valves and return for a leak that he should have checked for while he was there the first time is a total screw job. I can 99% guarantee you it was leaking while he was under there. I would never use them again and make it known to the owner how much his company screwed me. Unless of course it was the owner that came out. I've had similar experiences with appliance repair companies, ironically, seeing how I used to work on appliances. I had to use a company for insurance to cover it, I couldn't fix it myself. The guy came out and refused to give me an invoice and said, "The women in the office deal with paperwork, I just fix things" and he refused to leave me a bill. They never sent a bill and would call and accuse me of not paying them. They wanted me to send a check to them with no invoice. All I simply needed was something in writing saying what they charged me, what was wrong, and how how much the parts would be to send to the insurance company. In the end I had to drive to their office and pay them and have "one of the women" hand write me an invoice marked paid, and they fought me on that. It's getting really hard to find anyone reputable in any service industry.

I was just talking about this today with someone. All the hours I've put in to creating music, all of my guitars that I cherish so much. My guitars will end up at a pawn shop and all my music I have created will simply be deleted. I keep everything private on YouTube and Soundcloud so eventually after years of inactivity that will be eliminated too. It made me feel selfish and kind of sad to think I created all this, just for myself. All the hours, months, weeks, probably totalling years of actual hours I've spent that never benefitted anyone but me. I share what I created with a handful of friends and family that listen to it once, say it's nice, then never listen again. It makes me question why I even bothered to be honest. I was with my wife 26 years. She never once actually sat down and listened or enjoyed anything I recorded nor was interested in my playing in the least. It was just a thing I wasted time and money on to her. I can't say she was wrong I guess. I've always been in to woodworking too, but now Im diving in to it like I did music. At least it will leave something behind. I still have the itch to record and create music but I don't because it consumes me and I realize I'm not good enough to creat something quickly and it just takes me too much time. I haven't touched my guitar seriously in years. My new 'family' keeps asking me to play at parties and in their living room but I'm too embarrassed. I'm way out of practice. After proofreading this I realize how dark this post is. Sorry. But it is the sad truth. Lol.

I still have our last email exchanges, with Jan and Billy (BA-MIDI), archived after all these years. The thing that bothered me most when I was banned years ago was not talking to all of you here. This always has been a special place on the internet with a really great group of people. I don't include myself in that category because I really used to let the software side of this place get to me. My behavior wasn't up to par with the rest of the group. But I'm grateful I was accepted warts and all. I've grown up a lot since then, I think/hope. It would be very painful and a great loss if anyone here, including the ones we greatly disagree with, were to pass away.

Yepper. I was there for that. The great thing about 8.5 was, you could customize almost everything. I still miss the gui in it. I really liked using BiaB. I got the version with the uncompressed realtracks on a hard drive. Now I have lightning fast internet so I wouldnt do that again, I'd just download it. Long story short, it had a bug that effected very few users, they couldn't patch it, I returned it to Sweets, and a couple months later they released a new version and fixed it. Lol. It is what it is. Someday when I get a studio set up again I will definitely jump back in. Who knows, maybe they are working on some eye candy improvements now and it will be out by then. ?

I don't think they make one with accurate enough timing to replicate his playing. Haha. Now their position is one where using footage of him in the background or holograms or whatever it is that Abba did and Kiss is going to do would work. Isolate his playing and have them play live to it. They did an Elvis concert like that years ago long before Abba did what they did. I've never seen what Abba did so I have no clue how they went about it, but imho that's the only way they should do this. Otherwise it just feels really wrong to me for a couple reasons.

I really like BiaB. I ran in to a couple of hiccups that they did eventually fix, so some day I will definitely jump back in. That said, for the love of God, can they please update the Windows 3.11 looking gui. It's been around a long time, it could really use a face lift.

Rush is one of those rare bands where not a single member is replaceable. You lose any one of those guys and it's over imho. There is nobody who could replace Lee's voice, Lifeson's guitar work, and sure as heck Peart's drumming. Him especially. Nobody could ever come close to him on drums in my opinion, plus he wrote most of their songs according to what I've read about them. They can do what they want of course, its their baby. I'm not even that big of a fan of theirs tbh, but it feels wrong to me to keep going without him.

@craigb Does the NAD+ help with that? This summer they had a sale on it on Amzon. 50% off if you bought 4 or more so I got 4. I just started taking it regularly again for about a month. I think it actually improved, but it could just be my imagination. 100% for sure it reduces my Tinnitus. One of my neighbors got a 40 something inch Vizio 4K TV for $137 on Black Friday. I'm impressed at how good they are for the price.

Well said. And I mean it was a struggle. Hours upon hours upon hours.... but it's there... in my soul! The lead to Hotel California is my "Stairway" moment. Back when I learned it I didnt have a DAW so there was no ripping and looping a section to slow it down, learn it, and practice it. It took me years of playing it live to perfect it to sound as close to the original as I could with just me on a single guitar. There's multiole guitars in the original. Nobody even attempted that song in our area. We were the only band to do it. One thing that stands out in my mind about it is, after I got to the point where I could play it live. We were at our first band practice attempting to do it all together and the singer said, "Man I can't sing it that high. We have to drop it a step and pick up the tempo a little.". I almost had a freaking heart attack and I had to learn it all over again in a different key and then play it faster. It's one of those things that, like you guys said, it becomes part of you. I don't even know what I'm playing, it's instinct and muscle memory at this point. I could never tab it out or teach someone how to play it. I just know that when the break happens and it's my cue to go, I go no matter what anyone else is doing and they can come along for the ride. I'm very proud of the fact that I can play that lead and it sounds as close to the original as it can with a single guitar.

I've always made due with stock plugins and freeware. I did eventually get in to purchasing plugins as more advanced functionality became available to the general public at a more affordable price. To be brutally honest, some of the best recordings I've ever made were on 4 and 8 track tape with nothing but mic placement and EQ. All that said, I am by no stretch of the imagination a pro or even an advanced hobbyist. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

My first album was a Beatles album. I don't recall which one. My father gave me his record collection before I bought my own first album. But I do recall the first 45that I bought. It was an EP iirc. It was Elvis with Hound Dog and 3 other songs on it I think. 45's were 97 cents each at K-Mart at the time. For Christmas I always got Kiss and Beatles LP's.

I took advantage of 2 streaming services that were having B.F. deals. In the end I ended up paying $6/month for 12 months for 2 services. I can't complain about that.

The background Craig did looks great.

Due to my OCD, I thought it through before posting and felt it wouldn't be proper to English to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive disorder and felt that it would be better to say I get a bit obsessive compulsive. Now I have anxiety wondering if I should have abbreviated it dofferently. My spell checker said I spelled differently wrong and suggest I correct it with dofferently. Now I'm really in a bind. I need help. ?

I get a bit OC about my recordings. I know what good recording sounds like and I know how well good musicians can play. And unfortunately I don't have the ability to make a good recording or play well enough to record in a timely fashion. If I had to guess, in single recordings I've done from start to finish by myself I'd say I probably average about 120 hours to get it to the point where I've faked it enough to let other people hear it. I am a much better guitar player when I play live with other people. Not saying I'm good by any stretch, but when it's a live situation and you're playing with and inspired/feeding off of other musicians energy, it's a whole other dynamic that seemed to make me play better and be more consistent. One thing I enjoy doing is taking old recordings from my 4 and 8 track machines and transferring them to my DAW. I have some that I originally recorded in the 80s and just recently edited and added new instrumentation to. So start to finish, almost 40 years? That's not an accurate response to your question but I mention it because it's mind blowing to me that we have the technology now to be able to separate multiple instrumentation and vocals from a single track and edit or delete them as individual tracks. I added a key change to one song and when you listen to it you cannot tell at all. This isn't a shameless plug but here is an example of some of the editing Im refering to. The key change was not there in the original recording. The vocal was from 1989. I originally posted this in the song forum here in 2021. https://on.soundcloud.com/g23BG

With OnStar you can remotely start and stop the vehicle, lock the doors, turn on the lights, and sound the alarm. I don't know if you can turn it off while it's in gear though. I'll try it and reply here later. I bought my truck in Kansas City. It's mandatory that it has a GPS tracking device. Between certain zip codes in KC and St. Louis, Missouri is on the top 10 list of stolen vehicles. I got a discount on my car insurance because of it having unremovable GPS. MO is odd, well not really if you think about it a little, but crime is very low except in a handful of zip codes. Same with the other safety thing that's always on the news. You take out a handful of isolated zip codes where there are a lot of laws 'protecting' people, and the US is one of the safest countries in the world. But anyhow, AI is gonna take care of all that for us. Yepper. Can't wait.

Reminds me of a South Park episode where the weather guy was drawing on a map pointing out the weather pattern. He drew a big circle around the southern states, a long corridor through the Midwest, with a smaller circle near the rockies at the tip of the corridor. Or something like that. Something about wet snow all over the Rockies, or maybe I'm remembering wrong. ?

Several of the big manufacturers here announced they are stopping production on EVs. They aren't selling. Now I wish they would fight the law the feds just passed making kill switches mandatory in every vehicle starting on 2026. If you're thinking of buying a new car here in the U.S., better do it soon. That said, there are already kill switches in them, they are just controlled by private corporations, not the federal fellas.

Reminds me of the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." The reality of the situation is, most people are too ignorant to understand they are voting themselves in to oppression, and once it finally sinks in, it's too late. That's one of the reasons why we don't live in a full democracy here in the U.S.. AI is great for a lot of things and horrifying for others.

I agree with ol' honest Abe. Lol. Especially the " ... that said ... " part of one of his famous speeches, that almost nobody has ever heard of and historians hide ... The place I read Washington's diary is at an online library. It's really a fascinating site for old writings and things like that if you're in to such things. I seem to remember a thread about this site years ago. openlibrary dot org. They actually have scans of many very old documents and books. At least they used to. I haven't been to that site in years.

I got an email from them the other day so I checked out what the deal was. I didn't realize Ozone was up to 11 now. I'm still on 9 Advanced and it does more than I could ever want or need although it is a massive resource hog on my system. I probably couldn't even run 11. I think the key is to bounce or freeze all your tracks and only use O9A at that point. That said, I can't say enough good about O9A. It helped me greatly in regard to mixing and mastering. I'm sure a professional or even a hobbyist who is far more capable than me could do what it does with various other VST's but for me it makes it all a lot simpler. The graphical part of it that shows you where frequencies between different tracks were colliding is a huge help to me. I always struggled with isolating those problem areas.

I was reading part of George Washington's diary one time. You can find it online. He had an entry about the abundance of turkeys in the wild while they were out surveying parts of the east coast and how the survived off of them while camping out in the wilderness. Anyhoo ... Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Sumptin ain't right now that the forum is back up. I can no longer use the back button on my cell to go to the previous page I was viewing. I have to scroll up and tap on the coffee house tag and go back to the full list of threads then work my way back in. Oh well. It's not the end of the world. It's just 20 to 40% more annoying than it used to be.

Yepper. It's a thing. The difference with XM is, if you buy an XM radio, almost all cars come with them here in what used to be the U.S., they operate off satellite. If you use the app, it goes through the internet. I think people like our group here would enjoy youtube far more. There is way more and you can pick and choose what you want to hear. Plus you get all the vids and movies too. Or you can put up with the ads and it all for free on youtube as well. Sorry we hijacked your thread @craigb. I know that never ever happens here and you would never do such a thing. ??