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Real time communication

I am taking this inspiration from another forum - a space just to 'chat' whenever we are online without it being focussed on any topic in particular. Obviously time differences will make an impact, but lets see.....

Today it has been raining hard here, which is nice in some ways but I was helping my wife who had organised a summer fete for the nursing home she works at. I think we did reasonably considering but there were a lot less people than last year.

Glenys is the homes 'activity organiser' so she wrks hard at making sure that all the people living there do something or have some sort of interaction (some can't move or talk) that gives them a bit more quality in their lives.

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Permalink Reply by Tamar Shoshana on July 11, 2009 at 7:29pm: Wow! Your wife has quite the job :) I bet she enjoys it in some sense, but its also sad working at a place like that...you can get attached to the people who live there, and obviously at some point they pass away. My mom moved her aunt from Louisiana to where we live (Upstate NY) and got her into this nursing home where my uncle is involved. She lived there for quite a while, but passed away months later. Its very sad, she didnt really have any family visiting her, except for my mom, who would go for hours every day, and even eat meals with her! She didnt want to be buried in a cemetery, so she donated her body to science...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 12, 2009 at 4:04pm: Yes Glenys likes the work and the people, but finds it hard that there are not enough resources for them to be treated with respect at this time in their lives. I have similar experience as I work in a hospital as a social worker and often meet people who are dealing with sudden changes to their lives and futures - often moving on to nursing homes due to the level of their care needs. It is a great place to meet the human spirit, but again resources are a constant problem - I've been working with a gentleman who was a spitfire pilot in the battle of Britain, luckily he is going to be able to return home with the support of carers, but his memory is starting to go and likely to keep going. It was hard to have to keep reminding him of this when he is so proud and previously independent.

sorry for the delay in answering...seems the time lines make quite a difference!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Koch-Northrup on July 12, 2009 at 4:05pm: Today Heidi made a wonderful whole chicken on our Big Green Egg (an great grill/oven thing - best grill ever...) - it was wonderful. We've been watching an America's Next Top Model marathon on Oxygen all day - well it's been on in the background - neither of us have really sat down much today. It's season 3 with Eva the Diva...

I've been cleaning up in my studio - getting ready to rearrange, tear down, move things around, remove two computer desks, put in a stainless steal prep table that used to be in our kitchen - this will be my new computer desk/studio. Thinking about what to put in storage and what to keep out and available.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 12, 2009 at 4:16pm: rearranging studios can be frustrating - hope it all goes well John, I spent most of last weekend putting a new computer in mine and tried using my old hard drive as a slave to access my programmes without having to install them on the new one - but with windows still on it I could not - luckily I had copied all my folders and files onto an external hard disk so transferred across and then, slowly, installed everything back.

I've been working on Glenys's last essay for her course for 9 hours today - hopefully all done now, so heading for a bath now...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Koch-Northrup on July 13, 2009 at 6:20am: thanks! I didn't get as far as I would have liked yesterday (I ran out of steam!) - got one computer pulled out (old, mostly dead - but I can't part with it just yet as it's the only computer that will open most of my old archived recordings...). Got a lot of things picked up and organized - getting ready for the 'big' jobs of tearing down the 2 computer desks! :-)

Heidi's trying to create a sound barrier for our new water softener - it's directly underneath our bedroom and wakes us up in the middle of the night when it kicks on... I think we're going to change the time to run earlier in the evening.

Wow - 9 hours on the essay - you two must be tired!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 13, 2009 at 6:47am: Yep, we were knackered - and made some mistakes because of that - so hopefully final touches tonight and tomorrow evening...has to be in on Weds.....

How you going to get the old archives out of that machine? Does it mean opening up each one individually and storing them somewhere else?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 13, 2009 at 6:55am: Just noticed on apne sinns page that the music player is centre and high on the page - Can I do that too? and how?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Koch-Northrup on July 13, 2009 at 9:31am: You can rearrange your profile page... if you hover your mouse over the title bar of the music player... you'll see the pointer change to cross of arrows. Just hold your mouse down and drag around ... you'll see big sections of dotted lines. Have fun!

My old archive recordings... I have tons of cdr's of backed up Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Vegas 2.0 files. I didn't actually mix these all down to wav - and I can't find a way to bring Vegas 2.0 files up on anything I have currently (supposedly Reaper would do it - but I'm guessing it's really later versions of Vegas).

So I'm keeping my Win98 almost dead pc around for a while and I'll see if I can open any of these up and export them track by track. This was actually 'easy' to do in Vegas - but whether the Win98 machine actually stays up and running is the gamble. It will randomly go into blue screen of death - Windows got corrupted after a power supply failure. It'll run fine for 30 minutes and then crash. It's worth it for me to keep it around to "try" if there's something I really want to try and get.

Then again - maybe I'll never try and get those back and call it a day! :-)

I have about 200 cassettes I need to rip someday as well - always "going" to do it... but never quite get there. The 4-tracks are probably lost forever (I have a 4-track, but different brand than originally recorded on and it doesn't quite work right...). but all the mixed down cassettes should be fine. Someday I hope to post some of my 1984 hilarious recordings just for the joke of it all... ;-); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 13, 2009 at 10:33am: Good luck with keeping the Win98 computer alive, those blue screens are a bugger - mind you they can be quite common on vista if the page kernal input space is not big enough to deal with everything coming in....Could you install a more modern version of windows onto it to enable it to not blue out.

Have you tried contacting Sony or going onto any forums to see if they can help - I had a Rio carbon that would start up but not get going and managed to download some software to get it to get up and running (till it died completely a little while back) off a forum.

Ripping the cassettes would be a long process.....................................................................................................; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by åpne sinn on July 13, 2009 at 10:50pm: Went out for bike ride on Saturday last. First one of the season, and a really good idea long overdue, considering I'm leaving for an 8 day bicycle trip through the Sonoma Valley Wine Country in 2.5 weeks. The first 20 minutes were easily the worst of 2009, and I exercise 30 minutes a day on an elliptical machine. Bicycle seats are simply designed to draw pain from their patrons, and mine is an over-achiever.

After that first 20 minutes though the ride was spectacular. Just under 20 miles in and around Hull, Massachusetts (find me here - http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?encType=1&where1=Hull%2c+...), a beautiful beach community just south of Boston. Its nice to know that at nearly 42 I can still climb the serious hills, better than I could 10 or even 20 years ago.

It was a great ride, until I misjudged a curb on a lane crossing and slammed too hard on my front brake. The good news is my bike stopped short of the curb. The bad news is I didn't. Nothing broken, but Oh My...does it ever FEEL like something's broken.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Seren on July 14, 2009 at 2:50am: Long time since I cycled anywhere - too many hills in the local environment, but I remember the achievement of serious hills...I used to work in North Wales and cycling to work was downhill, but going back was over 700 feet up in less than 2 miles - always needed a bath afterwards!!

Hops your bruises get well soon; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Koch-Northrup on July 14, 2009 at 8:28am: Geoff - if you're riding that far - I'm sure you already have padded bike shorts... if not... by all means spring for a good pair (I think we paid $80 for ours) and do it now! I'm glad nothing was broken.; ▶ Reply to This