I hate Digidesign and I Want My Money Back

So, here we go… *deep breath*

/onsoapbox

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to invest in some low budget gear to record music.  I bought an Alesis Micron synth which is just awesome!  I also got myself a small used multi-track.  I wasn’t very sure about it as it was older.  I decided to give it a shot.

Well, turns out I wasn’t so impressed with it.  I take the item back and get a full refund.  Well, I still wanted to record but I wanted more of a PC interface.  The gentleman at Guitar Center recommended the Digidesign Mbox2 Mini.  It came with Pro Tools LE 8 and a box to interface with the computer. Perfect, right?

*another deep breath*

I get home and run the install.  Took a while but it was clean and easy.  I read the start up booklet so I could at least lay down a test track, you know, kick the tires a bit.  It went well and sounded good.  I played with the plugins a bit and thought all was well.

A couple of days later I wanted to really lay down a track and start piecing together ideas for songs.  So, I run my synth in, hit record and start playing.  Roughly 45 seconds in, I get an error. It’s a 6086 error.  I saw it many, many times more after the first time.  It’s a hardware buffer error I do believe.  That much I didn’t care about.  I wanted to fix it and fast.  I kept seeing people suggesting the use of an external hard drive.  Lucky me, I had one!  Plug it in, hit record, ERROR! *sigh*

I was fed up.  I uninstalled all the software, boxed it up and headed back to GC.  I wanted to return this damn thing before I blew a fuse.  Oh, wait, looks like I can NOT return it because the software is open.  Oh. My. God.  So, I was told I had to make my system compatible.  I was initially very irritated.  I was essentially speechless and making ‘dur hur?’ sounds.  Ok, policy is policy.  Not their fault.  I wasn’t going to make a scene.  Back home I go to try to make my system work.

So, I did one google search and was immersed into a sea of people who have this same error!  It’s a very common error in fact.  If you ask me, it is TOO common.  Well, I registered myself on their forums (digidesign) and got to work.  I posted my entire system specs and got a couple of suggestions.  I was going to have to buy a new hard drive regardless.  That was until I saw one final response to my thread.

My motherboard is Nvidia based.  The chipset is Nvidia in other words.  Those chipsets are known to be problematic.  He said I was basically out of luck.  Ok, now I’m getting angry again at this point.

So lets get this straight:  My system clearly and vastly exceeded the requirements on the side of the box.  Yet, I cannot run it because I need an additional hard drive and, oops, my chipset is problematic?  Now I have to eat the $200 I spent on this item?  I don’t think so.

I’m going to put it up on eBay.  I simply have no other choice.  What would you do?  I’m a hobbyist.  I’m not a big time recording guru.  If I were, I wouldn’t have wasted time with this in the first place.  I’m not a big fan of tossing 200+ dollars out the window.  There is someone out there than can use it.

My gripe is that Digidesign continues to sell a flawed product.  Yep, it’s flawed.  If it takes a gargantuan amount of tech support to make the thing work then it IS flawed at the core.  There needs to be a better way of determining system compatibility.  It’d hurt their sales but they’d gain respect as a company, if you ask me.

Many people swear by this product.  I’m sure it’s fan-freakin’-tastic when it works.  For myself, it does not.  It’s crap.

/offsoapbox

LRO (Lunar Recon Orbiter) Strikes Back!

Yes, I was too lazy to type reconnaissance, my bad.  And ok, it’s not “striking back” really as much as it is just doing its job.  The point is LRO has been busy! One objective is to thoroughly map the surface of the Moon.  A nifty side item is to photos of certain areas of interest.  What could be more interesting than the old Apollo sites?  Not a whole lot!  This is important to people like myself who try to combat the small, yet persistently stupid, sect of the population who believe man never went there in the first place.

A few months ago some preliminary photos were released of some of the Apollo sites.  I’ll admit, the resolution was small but it was there.  Also, the Sun has a way of either hindering or helping in bringing out certain details.  In an Apollo XII photo you can see the descent stage and the trails made by Al Bean and Pete Conrad.

See the little squiggly lines emanating out from the descent stage.  Yes, those are trails from the footprints!

Well, the photos were amazing in their own right but what was more amazing is that the spacecraft was still in it’s elliptical (commissioning) orbit.  It wasn’t until the middle of September that the final orbit of 31 miles altitude was reached.  And so with that, the resolution of the pictures beamed back have increased.

Take a look at this pic below.  It’s from Google Earth/Moon.  It’s about as clear as mud.  You can kind of make out some blobs that are craters and it’s all grey and mushy.  Very uninteresting from a detail point of view.

Now, here is roughly the same area (ok it’s not spot on but it’s close enough, I was multitasking a few things).  Now, that is some fine detail.  The blobbiness is gone.  The grey mush gives way to a textured surface.  Right there in the middle is the Apollo XVII descent stage.  The resolution on this photos is about twice that of the previous Apollo sites.

Feast upon the fine detail below:

This is more important than trying to rub Hoax Believers (or HBs as they’re known) face in it.  It shows that the camera works, and works well.  I do have to admit though that it’s nice to see this stuff and take to a HB and ask them to explain it.  The typical response is that it was doctored.  I digress, for some, there is no changing their minds.

The more important thing is to keep the people that really believe it was faked from poisoning the minds of others who are genuinely just looking for answers to questions.

Ultimately, it shows that as a human race we can continue to do truly inspiring things when we put our minds to it.  There is a lot more to LRO/LCROSS than fancy photos.  To learn more about the mission, you can read up on it here: http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov

The final (hopefully) shoulder update

Well it’s been nearly 6 months to the day since I injured my shoulder.  It has taken that long for it to heal.  Let it be known that the shoulder takes LONGER than any other body area to heal!  That and the back, which I threw out last week.  That’s an entirely separate post.  Eh I’ll write it here.  Bottom line: shoulder is almost entirely healed.  I still favor it out of habit when doing certain things.  That was a hard hard lesson learned in how to correctly assume push-up position.  Still though, it was just the perfect, freak, circumstances that led to it.  Even the doctor said it was random and kind of freakish.  Well, it is true, I am a freak.

So my back.  Yes, I did something to my back last week and it hurt pretty solidly up until Saturday night.  I went to a gathering of friends that evening and proceeded to drink and get a little “wooo”.  That was fun but I noticed that no amount of inebriation helped my back.  I knew it was going to be a long night once I got home.

So we got home and took care of home things… At that point I tried to lay down.  My back was throbbing at this point.  Nothing helped.  I was on the verge of passing out at one point.  I finally got up and started walking around which seemed to help a tad.  I grabbed 4 advil and 2 benadryl and popped them all at the same time.  One for pain and the other to just plain knock my ass out.  I knew one or the other would have to happen.  It worked.  Finally, around 4am I drifted into sleep.  I’d already made me mind up (yes, me mind, yar! I’m a pirate!) that I was headed to the family medical center over near Belks.

I walked in at 1pm sharp.  Filled all the paperwork out and then waited.  After about 20 minutes got called back.  Waited about 10 more minutes and the doc came in.  We went over the routine.  He poked around, pushed around, tested reflexes, etc.  He concluded that nothing seemed serious.  It’s just that a back will protest very highly if thrown out of whack.  So he ordered some shots.  Big, fat, steroid shots.  The needles were 3″ long.  I couldn’t look.  Needles don’t bother me but geez!  Anyhow, it was actually painless minus some burning.  I got some pills for the road and for help with sleep … mmm zzzz.

I’d say within the hour the back was noticeably feeling better.  Today it’s still a little stiff but it’s vastly better than it was a couple of days ago.  I am certainly not getting any younger!   I told the doctor that I’m reminded on a weekly basis that time doesn’t run backwards.

Understanding

Have you ever tried to explain something to someone that was very difficult?  We can gather clues to what someone is talking about through context and cognitive thinking.  I think that’s the way to put it.  Blue is the color of the sky, right?  What if I’d never seen the sky?  What is blue?  It’s the color of water.  My glass of water isn’t colored.  It’s the color of a certain flower.  Does that flower grow here and is it in bloom?

What’s my point?  It’s that if you don’t have a reference to something then you may not know how to understand someones explanation.  This can apply to anything really and in my case it’s GAD (General Anxiety Disorder).

Have you ever gotten a cold?  Who hasn’t?  Did it work when you told it to go away?  Point.  We can’t tell some things to go away or to stop.  All we can do is learn to handle things as best we can.

There are certain average triggers for me, one being the dentist.  Another would be flying and perhaps getting on a large boat.  Then there are triggers that I can’t see.  When I think back now I’ve really had this my whole life.  It’s much more pronounced now though.

I rode a ride at Six Flags when I was seven years old and 30 minutes later I passed out.  Can you imagine being a child and everything is fine, then your suddenly falling and the world goes black?  The last image I saw is burned into my mind: the train was coming around as I stood in line for a ride and I saw someone walking down a grassy bank.  The last sound I heard was my mom’s voice.  It sounded like I was in a tunnel.

When I came to I was being dragged into the exiting line for Thunder River.   When I tell people it was the Dehlonaga Mine Train ride that it happened on, they laugh.  If you ever blackout will you be laughing?

I didn’t ask for that to happen to me.  I didn’t expect it to happen.  I wish it never had.  It did and there’s nothing I can do about it.  All I can do now is learn to live with it.  It’s something that no one around me, save, my wife and mother, can remotely understand.  When I see someone panic, I do understand.  It could be about anything and I understand because once your mind is set into motion it’s so hard to stop.  It’s like driving a fully loaded Mack truck down an incline and thinking the brakes will work once you realize you’re headed for a sharp turn.  It’s too late and you’re now committed to the plunge.

So if someone ever tries to explain it, then imagine something like you’ve never experienced.  I suppose the best analogy is to think of something that scares you to death.  Now, take that feeling and live it at any given random point in time.  You never know when and you never know where.  It’s like something jumps out of time and grabs you.

While my case is actually fairly mild, to some it’s crippling.  It’s sad that an otherwise perfectly healthy human being can suffer at the mercy of his or her own mind.  The world goes on as we all do, down the path we’ve yet to completely choose.

If there is a ray of hope I can inject, it’s that these dips into psycholimbo do subside and clear up.  Much like a summertime thunderstorm does once the sun sets.  That helps me to get by.  While I’m surrounded by people I love, these are battles only I can fight.

I see that same spirit in my oldest son’s eyes.  That spirit that is fiery and unstable that leads to an unyeilding imagination.  It’s both a blessing and a burden.  I only hope he has a better handle on it than I do.  But if he doesn’t and I say “I understand” then I can honestly say I really do.

Shoulder update: Week 10

I can say now that my shoulder feels about 85% up to par.  Which is funny since I can’t wait to play golf again.  I’m really not that great at it but it’s hella fun to just get out there on a hot day and hit a tiny object with a metal stick towards a tiny hole (and do it 9-18 times).  I might walk next time out so I get a good exercise in.

I do daily exercises to strengthen the cuff area.  These workouts look very pansy like.  They look so simple but I tell you what, do them long another and the interior of you shoulder feels like its on fire.  These are bulking up exercises that work delts, these work deep in the shoulder.

I did wake up on it this morning hurting like hell.  Morning is when it’s stiff and the bursitis really gets me.  But it goes away after a few minutes of moving around.  Another solid couple of weeks and I should be mostly back to normal and hitting the links

Shoulder: Week 7

Honestly I have good days and bad days.  So far, today is a good day.  Slow healing makes for extreme frustration.  Doing the exercises really seems to help.  I’m quite sore after I do them but I take that as meaning those muscles aren’t very worked.  It’s not the shoulder muscle that you see on the outside (deltoid) that I’m working.  It’s the small group of rotator cuff muscles I’m focusing on.

After reading up, It seems like it’s one of the most neglected group of muscles in the body.  Only when you hurt it *cough* do you realize how important it is to keep it strengthened.  The exercises are small, trivial almost.  But you do enough of them and you get a little sore in that area and can feel those little muscles going.  I’ll never take that area for granted again.

I can’t wait to play golf again though it might be several more weeks before I feel comfortable doing it.

Raining and pouring

So last week I had two crown preps plus the full mouth debridement.  It’s quite lovely I tell you.  Well it’s been my experience that if I have teeth that are borderline “flare ups” and any work is done around them.  They will flare up.  That means they get aggravated to the point of needing to be worked on.  It’s like a chain reaction.  So here I sit, about to call the dentist again.  Likely to have an emergency visit for a root canal.  As ideal as that would be for pain, it involves going and sitting through the process.  Meh.

Shoulder update

6 weeks to the day now.  My shoulder still hurts but it’s made good progress.  A lot of movements I couldn’t make without pain early on, I can now make.  There are still some movements that give me trouble.  My range of motion is excellent but when I try to lift something in a certain way, I get some sharp pain.

According to the ortho these things can linger for a couple of months even after it’s mostly healed.  6 weeks in though, I’m feeling better about it but it’s still annoying.  I’m not missing workouts because of it.  I will say that post-workout it’s sore and aches.  The pain isn’t sharp or shooting but it’s just deep and achey.  Hope that’s normal… but what is normal?

Daily Update

Sorry I’m not doing these… well… daily!

I’m learning quickly that rotator cuff injuries are the devil devil devil.  These things take a long time to heal.  I’ve been working it a bit too hard the past couple of days and I’m going to give the elliptical trainer a break I think.  It just feels sore and worked.  It doesn’t feel anything like it did when I injured it.

Sadly, golf is out of the question for a while.  I really thought I’d be back into it soon but it can be particularly hard on the RC.  I’d rather take time off to get things fixed than risk prolonging this annoying condition.

So my plan for now is to run on a treadmill or *gasp* run on a real road.  I got some new trainers so they should help.  I’ll try to find out whether or not the elliptical is helping, hurting or whatnot.

It’s 3 weeks into this and I know it can take a solid month and a half or more to heal.  This is worse than when I broke my big toe in TWO places.

Daily update

Weekend was decent.  Made it to the gym.  Didn’t eat super but didn’t eat bad either.  Shoulder got sore yesterday but seems better today.  Will try to gym this evening.