what made you happy today?

[crazydrummerdude]

And so concludes a memorable motorcycle weekend.

This was probably one of the most expensive ones thus far, though. Oh well, yolo.

[crazydrummerdude]

I called the corporate line of a certain store to complain about the service I received recently.

It's not like me to do this, but those twatwaffles needed to hear about their twatwaffles.

Unfortunately, the location I visited was an independent operator and corporate has no authority over them, or so I'm told. Ok. Whatever.

So, I just typed up a one-page letter and it'll be in the mail tomorrow. The fun part of the letter is; you can't tell if I'm about to praise their service or condemn it until the last 3 lines.. where I used the f word probably 10 times and other fun things. Really, if you didn't know the ending, you could easily be getting warm and fuzzy as my story progresses.

I wish I could be there to see the managers face when they read it.

[mindwaave]

[SubLunar]

I was getting pulled over for going 75-80 in a 60.

I was the only one in the fastlane. I was pissed off and cruising while trying to get directions for some computer related stuff that also pissed me off separately but that's a long story. I wasn't intending to speed at all actually, since i was on the clock anyway. I was just planning on driving to where I needed to be.

I look up and there's 3 cops on the side of the road. I look at my speed and know that I'm fucked. I'm the only one going fast. Game over. I look up and see the cop immediately pull out. I just as immediately merge to the right. His lights come on but there's traffic all around and we don't have a clear line of sight to each other. There were a few cars behind me in the fast lane. I can see that they're getting over and the cop keeps going. I'm blending into traffic and keeping my eyes on him as well as I could. I get over to the slow lane as soon as possible without being too obvious and luckily manage to get a big work truck in between me and the cop. It's coming down to the wire. Any second now, I'm going to be visible to the cop. But the exit lane is just a little further ahead. I'm sweating. Finally the exit comes up and just as I'm able to get off the highway, the cop is too far ahead of me in the fast lane to do anything. I then proceed as quickly and calmly as possible to grandma's house where she's inside at the kitchen table. I hadn't seen her in a while so we talked for about 20 minutes instead of me sitting on the side of the road for 20 minutes getting a multi hundred dollar ticket. Fuck yeah. That was probably the best evading I've ever done in the most obviously-getting-busted-for-speeding situation yet.

[Nicotti]

...so you got paid to visit your grandma?

[SubLunar]

Yes.

[redox]

wow that story got my heart pounding. I hate getting pulled over. I seriously do not trust cops won't fuck me over.

[SubLunar]

I got some shit for free. I sold it on ebay. I then bought a bunch of stuff I've been wanting for YEARS.

YEARS...

TLDR; I got new stuff to make music with for very little money.

So I bought my main computer in 2007. I installed Windows XP SP2. It has a dual core processor and I've upgraded the RAM to 4GB since original purchase of 2GB. I've used it on an almost daily basis since then.

I thought I would be upgrading some things on it with the above referenced funds. I started the process of research/planning this upgrade back in May but then I went on a huge vacation and have only within the past few days been able to really dig back into it. Many hours later, I've determined there is an unresolvable issue. The motherboard chipset (specifically the Realtek Audio ALC883 portion) does not play well with Windows 7 64bit. I hoped that a new audio interface (Mackie Blackbird) would solve the problem. It didn't. This machine will forever remain on Windows XP SP2.

The centerpiece of the upgrade, aside from the audio interface which I can't even use now, is Propellerhead's Reason software of which I bought a used copy. I was planning to use the same version on my Win7x64 laptop as my music computer which I was going to upgrade to Win7x64. Using the same version on both machines would mean that I could, for the first time, truly use my laptop as a music production device away from home. I could edit existing songs and transfer the projects back and forth. ...Except that the audio chipset on my home computer doesn't work with Win 7..

So basically I hit a brick wall and the upgrade appeared to be dead. As it happened, the copy of Reason that I purchased had the USB key still licensed for the XP version of the software. And, luckily, I cloned my XP drive before doing anything else and could simply pop my XP drive back in and be up and running in my old environment with no additional effort. So on Friday I decided to test out my last ditch effort, the only way this could work. That is, to take the XP version of Reason and install it on my Win7 x64 laptop. And it worked. Not only did it install without giving me some bullshit about an unsupported operating system, but the audio actually plays back at quality.

[SubLunar]

Oh and I think I've discovered that Adobe CS2 era products are now free to download direct from Adobe's own download center, you just need an adobe ID.

I downloaded Audition 3 from Adobe recently and it came with a serial number and it works. The serial number bypasses the activation server check, so if you wanted Photoshop, Illustrator, etc, get it while you can. Check this out:

Due to Adobe's closing of the CS2 activation servers on December 15, 2012, Adobe offered existing CS2 users the opportunity to download a version of CS2 that no longer required Adobe server authorization[16] in January 2013. This release was intended to allow existing users of CS2 to reinstall their licensed copies without needing authorization from the now-closed servers.[17] Adobe published serial numbers on the January 8, 2013,[18] but it was not until the January 24, 2013, that Adobe announced that download was intended only for people who had "legitimately purchased CS2".[19] Many users ignored this announcement, or were not aware of it, and continued treating CS2 as either freeware or abandonware.[20]

[mindwaave]

And it worked. Not only did it install without giving me some bullshit about an unsupported operating system, but the audio actually plays back at quality.

Nice! I upgraded to Windows 10 over the weekend and it went smoothly... except for the custom drivers I've got. Ugh.

[redox]

guess I don't need to tell you guys that there is a butt-load of telemetry to block now that you have failed to resist the dark side.

[mindwaave]

guess I don't need to tell you guys that there is a butt-load of telemetry to block now that you have failed to resist the dark side.

I don't mind Win10, but yeah, I've blocked or disabled all of the data collection. I do have a laptop that has fewer features restricted in order for Cortana to work, but that's not as useful on stationary device, so I have it locked-down on my desktop. I hope all the telemetry and extra background services will be defeatable with Group Policy in the Enterprise editions...

[SubLunar]

I've had win 10 on a few computers at home since it was released and it's ok. The newer the OS, the more bloated both the GUI itself is and all of the applications that run on them. It's kind of dumb.

We've only got like one win 10 machine at work right now because it's probably going to break everything, we have so many applications that don't even support it yet. We'll probably make the switch at the last minute like we did with Win XP.

If Linux was stable enough to do all the things I want it to, then I'd switch in a heart beat. But alas it is not and likely will never be any time soon. When you start needing specific things to work on it, it is a painful, horrible process and 50% of the time it results in failure.

[Nicotti]

...I recently updated to 7...

[SubLunar]

...I recently updated to 7...

My music computer will remain Windows XP as long as the hardware continues to function. So will a couple of my other computers which have specific purposes.

XP is so lightweight and the applications that run on them being designed for it, that it really doesn't take much to run it. It's reliable as fuck and as long as it doesn't touch the internet, there's literally nothing to worry about, unless you manage to transfer a virus via flash drive or something. "Upgrading" to Win7 or 10 could actually be a performance downgrade if you're dealing with older hardware, which in my case I was. Newer software and OSes actually need more power to achieve the same things as the older stuff, so newer doesn't always mean better.

My music computer can record multiple channels of 24 bit/96khz audio all day long and can render HD video as well. I've pushed it hard and it just goes, it's never given me a problem or bogged down. Boots up in 30 seconds. Hell, I could even put a Quad Core processor and 16GB RAM in the thing, the motherboard supports them with a 64 bit OS, so if I ever need more power I can get it out of this machine. I actually just ordered a quad-core CPU for this thing for 20 bucks, just in case I decide to use one someday. For now, I'm good. XP 4 LIFE, SON