Something Random

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,926
Location
USA
Thanks everyone. I wouldn't say I'm a glorious leader, but it is my birthday today. That part is accurate. :)
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,926
Location
USA
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I spent the day with family and friends at my house. It was low-key, but we hung out for the day. I got some new card games and board games. We learned them and played them throughout the evening. We played a card game called No Thanks!, Saboteur, and Saboteur 2. I also got the Battlestar Galactica board game which is a lot of fun, but we didn't play that last night.
 

time

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 18, 2002
Messages
4,932
Location
Brisbane, Oz
I don't normally participate in this sort of jollity, but congratulations to Doug on making it half way. Don't worry, it's all downhill from here.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
The last three weeks have just sucked for all the technology I control. I don't know what it is, sunspots? Stars aligning? Systems are dropping left and right; unrelated systems, some that have years of uptime, some built very recently with top-end equipment. But it is all failing right now.
 

BingBangBop

Storage is cool
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
667
For Earl -- Karma, ain't it a bitch! So what have you done wrong recently?

or for the secular humanists - statistics evening out.

Sorry, but it is the nature of technology for it to simultaneously crash at the least opportune time. When I was in college, a long time ago when there were no PC's, the mainframe would regularly have some form of HW failure right before most CS assignments were due, or for that matter right before the administration ran the program to schedule all the classes for the university. IBM would come right out and fix it, but never in time.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Yeah, just got it all sorted out, but only after the state inspector gave up and left. And just before the multi-million dollar bid went out. And because there is no-one else, I am clearly to blame.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Just a bad couple weeks in the office. Normal day-to-day stuff (we bid multi-million dollar jobs at least once a week, and state inspectors show up at our plants any time we are working a state job which is about every other day). Normally it's fine, and even if one thing goes wrong at a time it isn't a big deal. But two failures 50 miles apart each deemed critical leads to a bad day.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
The last day someone will be available to sign for stuff at the office is Thursday, so everything needs to go out overnight tomorrow or it will wait until the new year.
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
So as it turns out AAC is a vastly superior codec to MP3. Using the Quicktime encoder in TVBR mode via qtaacenc with command line options of --tvbr 60 --highest generates files with an average bitrate of ~128kbit/sec that are completely transparent to my ears (so far?) vs the original FLAC files even using my best gear. The downside of course is that you have to soil your PC with QuickTime.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,926
Location
USA
Yeah, I'm salary without overtime.

Judging by some of the nice toys, computer equipment, house, cars, etc you've discussed and also that you keep your money under your mattress, I'm making an assumption they compensate you well even without overtime. ;-) I know that still doesn't make it any easier that you have to pull all-nighters. Sorry to hear about your crammed schedule recently.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I can't really complain about the compensation; I certainly feel appreciated. It's just that I know I'll have to move further into management in the next 5 years or so; these all nighters are getting harder and harder. My wife wants me to pursue an MBA.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,728
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Next time you are watching a video on YouTube, click the snowflake button on the control bar. Then un-click it. It is interesting, but only for about 30 seconds. Like the rest of YouTube.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,275
Location
I am omnipresent
Because you can fit a lot more music onto a portable player in ~128kbit/sec AAC vs. FLAC. :p

I'll have to give that a listen. For the most part I divide audio into "things I'm going to enjoy critically and needs to be .flac" and "things that I just need to be able to hear and can be 64kpbs .mp3 for all I care."

One of my personal annoyances is that my phone will play .flac just fine if I copy files via a normal SMB file transfer, but if I sync playlists with WinAmp, WMP or Songbird I can only copy .mp3, .wma or .aac and only if the files don't have special characters in the filenames. I'm not sure what the issue is there or if the problem is a Windows API thing or something in Android.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
Nice to see you around, Gary. :cheers:

For some reason that page crashes the browser. :frowner:
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,926
Location
USA
After having both a dog and a cat that my cat is a cleaner animal than the dog. It's also more self-sufficient and can be left unattended for a few days at a time if needed. Dogs are a larger responsibility and require more work IMHO. However, with that said, my cat is very needy and an attention whore. I love her for it though.
 

Striker

Learning Storage Performance
Joined
Sep 17, 2007
Messages
269
I want to like cats, I really do but I'm extremely allergic to them. I feel like I have the flu whenever I enter a room they've been in.
It also irritates me to no end all the cat owners who like to let theirs wander around the neighborhood climbing on cars and pissing on the tires and so on.
 
Top