Finally!   It certainly helped having the conversion application running on the better computer.   Now   that all the music’s in one directory, it’s easy to see how many duplicates of some tracks we had.

I whittled it down from roughly 18 thousand songs to just over 10.   Talk about a lot of doubles?

Now I just have to go through Windows Media Player and add a lot of artwork to some of the discs that didn’t have it.

Deleting 40 gigs of music off the old computer is a bit depressing, and knowing that it’s going to go into the closet, for “spare parts” probably will hurt, too.   She was a good computer, and served me well.   Farewell Pentium IV, 2.53 single core, it’s time for you to rest now.

I think the problem is that I was using the “old” PC to do the converting, and not my new workhorse machine.

I installed the conversion software on my better computer, and things are speeding up much faster.   A song on the new computer takes roughly 15 seconds to convert, versus a minute and a half on the old computer.   That’s going over my wireless network from the old PC (where the music’s stored) to the new PC where it’s being converted and saved.

At this rate, I should get done today or tomorrow.   I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this in the first place.

Sometimes the software craps out, and doesn’t convert a track right, but I’m sure I won’t even miss those songs that it doesn’t work right on.   Will update again shortly.

Packing up the rest of our stuff over the weekend kind of depressed me.   I looked at my collection of guitars, and drums, and microphones, and mixing boards and the like, and thought about it.

It’s been a good three years since I played anything, seriously.   And even longer since I’ve written anything music related.   I’m so out of the loop, it’s saddening.

What was once my dream to do full time, is now just a memory.   I gotta try to get back into writing, and playing.   Once we are done putting away all the stuff we own, in our new home, I’m going to restring my guitars, and start playing again.   It’s time to play a guitar that isn’t plastic.   I’m going to have to break up with Guitar Hero and Rock Band for a while.   Which is also sad.

I’m not a huge Aerosmith fan, but I gladly bought the new Guitar Hero – Aerosmith game.   Mainly because I dig Guitar Hero, and think it’s fun.

I promptly started the game Sunday night, when I got it (the day it came out), and named my band cleverly: HtimsoreA (Aerosmith, backwards).

I began my expert career, thinking, like the other GH games, it’d start easy, and ramp up to difficult. (See Slayer, GH 3).   I was sadly mistaken.   I blew through the entire game, with only one small failure, that I attribute to the over-sensitive star power activating itself before the solo, to get me through a tough part.   It’s my own fault, really, I hold the guitar like a real guitar, and not horizontal.   I wish Activision would give you a different way to activate star power.

Anyway, 22.5 hours later, and only two sessions, I finished the game.   I thought maybe I just got better at the game.   So I went back and played Rock Band on Expert, and GH 3 on Expert, failing the same songs that I’ve been stuck on for weeks/months (Green Grass and High Tides, and Slayer).

I’m utterly disappointed in the first band-branded version of GH being so easy.   Just getting through the game on Expert gets you almost 500 gamer points, which in today’s day and age, is weak.

Also, in looking at XBox.com, beating the game on Expert also gives you the gamer points for beating it on the easier levels, which is cool, I guess.

It looks like I’ve unlocked most everything.   The awards left are stupid ones, like buy all the stuff from the store, and earn money, play online and win, etc.

The ones I’ll go back and try to get:

* Score Hero – Score “325,000” or more on the song “Train Kept a Rollin'” (Which was one of the hardest songs in the game)
* I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing – Earn a gold star rating on a song on Medium or harder difficulty (Local only)
* Ain’t That a B***h – Earn a gold star rating on a song (I guess that means 100%?   Christine and I got a 100% on co-op on the first song we tried. I guess that wasn’t good enough)

I hope the next band-branded version of the game is someone uber-difficult; Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold, Led Zeppelin, Slayer, Disturbed, Dream Theater, etc.   Make it tough. If we’re gonna shell out another $60 for the game (or $90 with the controller), make it worth our while, Activision.   Oh, and Activision, if you’re listening, fix the stupid star power activation.   No one plays the guitar horizontally.   Gimme someone to press on the guitar, to activate it.   Or a footpedal or something.   Please?

I finally got around to implementing a photo album application that allows me to sell copies of prints.   Sure, I don’t take the best pictures, but some of them come out really great.

I started uploading a select handful of photos from India, and London yesterday.   The Photos tab above (or this link) will take you there to check out some of the pics.

Any questions about how it works, let me know.   It’s not finalized yet, I’ve still got some tweaking to do with the application, but it’s workable.

Well, starting to.   Christine and I have finally had it with our loud upstairs neighbors, the shotty management, and the construction of the road 10′ from our bedroom window, and decided to move.

We’re starting this weekend.

We’re moving, also, closer to work, for me. Which will save me time, and money in gas. It’ll be nice to get home before 7PM every night, I’m super psyched about that.

I hate moving, and I don’t really want to pack everything I own into boxes, but the new apartment’s going to be much nicer.     It’s bigger, closer to family, has a second bathroom (no more make-up all over my stuff, sorry honey!), and has a patio that I can put a grill out on.     I’m pretty psyched about the move.   Which reminds me, I gotta go grab some boxes from NetOps.

I feel compelled to post something. Mainly because I’m bored silly.

Let’s see, what’s going on…   I finished the website for Christine’s aunt (http://www.kathydiamant.com). I’ve also been fine tuning some applications that I’ve written for personal use.

I’ve got a “Task tracking” system that I put together, and have been fine tuning. As well as an invoicing system that I use to bill my clients.   Both of which I’ve done some pretty major overhauling to recently, to bring them up to speed with some of the newer stuff I’ve learned since writing them.

Did some work for a new client in Florida, helping her write some conditional statements to display different CSS styles, based on the browser.   I’m hoping she’s got more work to farm out to me in the future. The more the merrier.

In the “boring life of…” part of my life:   our lease is up in 2 months. We’re debating whether or not we can afford to buy a house yet, with Christine out of work, or if we should move to another apartment.   Our apartment’s sucked since the people who live upstairs moved in. I swear the hell they’re dinosaurs (only in weight, not in age), or they were just never taught how to walk like human beings.   Oh, and they’re opening a road 10 feet outside our window in the next few weeks.   And our rent is ridiculous, too.

I want to buy a house, but we may not be financially ready for that yet. Who knows, we’ll see.

I decided what my next project’s going to be, which will be a lot of work.   I’m going to re-record the entire audio track from The Prestige, which is one of my favorite movies.   My re-recording will be the “spoiler filled” version, and contain dialogue that will pinpoint the spoilers throughout, making it blatently obvious what the ending holds.   I have no idea if these is even possible to do, with the technology I’ve currently got, but who knows.   I’m sure someone’d file a lawsuit and tell me to knock it off, as soon as it was put online.   Who knows.   I think it’d be interesting to do.   I’ll probably never do it, because it’s a lot of work.

That’s about it, just pluggin’ away at life, on a daily basis.   Commute, work, lunch, work, commute, dinner, bed.   Rinse, and repeat.   Somedays it seems like are never gonna end.