Shawn Sorichetti

Earlier I mentioned the state of CDs in our household. Today while attempting to re-rip Shania Twain - Greatest Hits (one of Linda’s CDs) the SuperDrive in my PowerBook stopped loading media. I would put a CD or DVD into the drive, and after a couple of seconds of whurring the disk would eject. It didn’t matter what type of disk was inserted (audio CD, brand new blank, freshly unwrapped DVD), it was quickly ejected.

A quick search on the Apple Discussion Forums led me to this knowledge base article describing trouble shooting procedures for slot loading drives. After following it’s directions (resetting the PMU), I am happy to say that the drive is now funtioning.

I used to be one of those people who thought backups of CDs/DVDs were not required. I take really good care of my media. Always putting it back in a case, and if a case isn’t handy placing it gently in a spot that’s free of debris. There was no need for me to make a backup copy of any media.

Enter my wife and kids.

The realization that backups of CDs/DVDs started when I was asked to switch out the Toy Story DVD and put in another movie for the kids. I glanced at the bottom of the DVD and could see nothing but finger prints and dirt.

A couple weeks back I was handed a stack of CDs. Not in cases, backsides facing each other, again covered in smudges.

On our recent vacation my wife was switching DVDs out of the van media player. Thumb firmly placed on the underside, index finger across the top. BIG thumb print on the bottom.

Today, I’ve been re-ripping a number of CDs in our collection. I’ve adjusted iTunes settings to give me a higher quality AAC (when did iTunes start including VBR as an option with AAC?). Grab Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway, stick it in the PowerBook, immediately it’s ejected. Check the bottom, just covered with scratches and finger prints. This being one of my daughter’s favourite CDs.

So making backups piracy? Hell no. It’s required to protect your investment.

Today was to be the first mowing of the year for our lawn. Normally this would occur well before now, however vacation and lots of rain kept this from happening.

Today’s excuse for not mowing: lack of footwear. I have 2 pairs of shoes that I will mow the lawn in, both have gone missing over the winter.

Growing tired of our old installing of Movable Type (before they screwed with their license). I took it upon myself to get WordPress installed. We’re now running WordPress MU.

I’d like to say that the installation went smoothly, but it didn’t. The main problem was with a stable version with features that work. There’s a lot of development going on, but it makes it hard on the installation.

I’ve also been trying to get a good theme installed, but I keep getting PHP function redeclared error messages. I’m going to keep at it, but at least I changed the banner colour.

Now with my first post using MarsEdit isn’t recognizing that I’m using a WordPress blog with the Markdown plugin installed.

What a waste of money. The iTrip has proven to be completely useless in my car. No matter what station I set the radio to, no matter if the iTrip is set to LX or DX, the signal is weak and I can’t hear a thing unless the radio is turned all the way up.

When I left for work this morning a took a couple minutes to set up the iPod to play over the car radio via the iTrip. After several minutes of trying multiple new stations as well as the ones that worked with my first generation iTrip, I had to give up, or I’d spend the morning stuck in traffic.

Before leaving work, Trush and I tested the iPod and iTrip with his car stereo as the iTrip had worked quite well with the van, maybe there’s something wrong with my car stereo. We managed to find one station where the stereo didn’t need to be cranked in order to hear.

As it was getting late, I went to my car, tuned in the station we’d found, and couldn’t hear a thing. Increasing the volume over 80%, I could hear some sound but I wouldn’t want to leave the volume that high. As a test I moved the iPod closer to the antenna, which is in the rear of my car, and the music was clearer, but still not as clear as it was in the van. The difference: the antenna in the van is in the windshield, Trush’s antenna is in the rear but is a shorter car, and mine is right in the back.

The transmitter in the iTrip is not strong enough to make it to my car antenna with any power. Checking around, there have been a number of complaints of the same issue. With this, I will never buy another Griffin product again.