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

Wouldn’t more CO2 be green?

We’ve all seen it.  Al Gore has shoved it down our throats as have countless other outlets.  The general consensus is that carbon emissions are bad.  They are bad because they warm the planet.

Here is where  I get confused.  Please explain this to me and I’ll try to understand.  Here goes:

If the Earth is warmer more things (plants) will grow.  If more plants grow the Earth is greener.

Right?

Right?!

If the Earth is cold, it will look like your yard does now in Mid-January.  Brown.  Brown isn’t green.  Brown is dead.  Now I know, I know, it’s just a ‘buzz-word’.  It’s a catchy, cool, trendy, “we’ll charge a lot more more for ‘green’ products and you’ll still buy them” thing but COME ON!

So, please.  For the sake of being technical.  Don’t say you’re “green” now.  Say you’re brown or blue, you know, like the color of ice or dead things.

If you want green then you better start warming the Earth MORE!

Ugly as sin

I really don’t keep up with the Hollywood stuff, the celebrities, who is having who’s baby, etc.  I’ll tell you why.  What that tiny elite group of people does have little to no impact on my life.  Now, I love a great movie if it moves me (pun!) but I don’t care about all the ins/outs of someone’s personal life.  Let them live their life.  Now I can’t say that without defending why I’m a science buff.  Science does impact our lives every day.  Ok, that’s out of the way.

So the whole reason for even making this post was I saw a link where someone’s dress showed part of their nips or something.  Ok, I’m a guy and I like guy things and one of those things is scantily clad women.  So I clicked the link and got a peek.  Meh, totally underwhelmed by the false advertisement of the link.  In any event I got sucked into looking at pics of people on the ‘red carpet’.

At times, I wasn’t sure if it was a high end celebrity event or a Rodeo Clown Convention.  The outfits these women wear I mean they’re not even flattering.  Who designs half that crap?  It’s like, when you’re framing a house, you measure things twice, cut once, ya know?  You do your very best to make sure it all fits.  It just seems like these women had a designer look at them and then slap something together.  Then when they put it on it doesn’t fit.  Is it supposed to not fit?  You get the pizza toe shoes and flat scrunchy bewbs and this is attractive?  I mean where a damn dress that fits if you’re gonna have people foaming at the mouth over you.

So now I’ll go back into my hole of being in the absolute “un-know” on what’s going on with celebrity-dom.

IamreallymadsoIwillmakeawebsiteaboutit.org

Apparently that’s what you do when you want to get a grassroots effort together to get something done or noticed.  Yes, you make a .org site.  There are a bajillion out there it seems!  There are plenty of legit ones and good ones.  It’s when the name gets crazy that bugs me.

That’s pretty much the blog for today.  Too busy to go into a rant.

R U SIRIOUS?

What, something like 1 person is born every few seconds?  Right?  So why is —->>>>”"THIS“”<<<<—- such a honking huge deal?  Why? Really, tell me why!  I know the birth of a child is a great thing and the miracle of life.  I have two of my own.

Oh well, I suppose people wonder why I’m infatuated with rockets.  However, I can explain in great detail my reasons for that!  I can’t even think of a reason why I’d be so enthralled about the birth of child by a woman I’ve never met, never will meet or really care to meet.

Why am I so infatuated about the infataution?  I guess I can’t understand it.  I’ll give a list of reasons on why I’m into the space program:

1. Showcases mankinds ability to overcome immense obstacles
2. Encourages innovation to achieve a common goal
3. Several common technologies today were a result of research concerning space program(s) [NASA Spinoff]

There that’s a fairly broad couple of reasons.  Particularly spinoffs.  Something that is actually useful for the everyday person.

*sigh*

Everyone has their own thing but really, leave the poor woman alone.