| Directory | December 20, 2000 | Archives |
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Let's talk about really bad Monday mornings. You wake up without coffee in the dark because the power is off, head down the stairs to the basement with a flashlight to turn the computer off. As you get midway down the stairs, you see the catbox float by. That is such a bad moment. We had some heavy rain with a lot of wind Sunday night. Power was out about 24 hours. The generator we bought last year saved the day. The house is wired so that we can plug the generator into the main power panel, flip some switches and run some essential circuits: the furnace, fridge, and a few lights. Living here, you have to have a wood stove or a generator for back up. When the lights were out at the lake last night, you could see amazing numbers of stars, ranks behind ranks of worlds. To look up like that is the most basic of reality checks. It looks like Christmas will be white here. We're expecting 6 to 10 inches tonight. I love the fluffy white stuff. | Merry Merry Merry Merry Merry Merry  Merry Merry Merry Merry Merry Merry | I've been busy with my new CD burner, mainly copying cuts from CDs and making my own mixes. A CD holds 650 mb; cuts in regular CD format (CDA) take up 30-40 mg each. I can convert a regular CD cut into a compressed MP3 format and then it takes up 1.5 to 3 mg. That means if I save cuts in MP3 format I can put about 200 cuts onto a CD. MP3s, being so much smaller, are easy to download or share across the internet. To play an MP3 you need a player. WinAmp is a good one. Just download and install it. There are several external MP3 players you can buy, but the good ones still cost too much. Maybe next year. I'll put up an MP3 for download with each issue. Here's your first one. The filesize is 1.6 mg. Let me know if you were able to download it and play it. I had stopped buying CDs until recently because I really thought we would have arrived at a different distribution model for music by now, but it hasn't happened legally yet. Not that I'm against the illegality of it. Especially just before Christmas, I think it's important to do illegal stuff. Establish some attitude. |