I’m posting this for a couple of reasons; someone else is bound to have this problem, and frankly I’m going to have the problem again someday, and in case I forget, I’ll be able to find this posting via Google and fix it faster than I did today.

Last night and this morning, my DVD drive was acting terribly. Burning a DVD at 8x took over an hour, and the computer was completely worthless while it was doing so…it couldn’t even play MP3 files without hanging and stuttering. But once I figured out what Windows XP had done to me, and why, and once I figured out the secret incantation required to fix it, everything seems just peachie.

The problem was caused yesterday afternoon, when I found a disc sent to me by an old friend (someone I haven’t heard from in a while and am frankly worried about…if anyone knows the status of Dr. Randy Spurlock, please drop me a note). It was an audio CD that never played properly, and when I tripped across it yesterday, I thought I’d see if I could recover anything from it. I used a few different recovery apps on it (including the wonderful ISO Buster), and allowed it to run for hours to see if anything could be salvaged. Two of the tracks were recovered (although I haven’t had the time to listen to them yet, so I don’t know what condition they are in), and I shut the apps down and forgot all about it.
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From Reuters via Yahoo: First, they need to learn to act standing up…

Ok, the pseudo-reality genre has finally lept the shark; four porn actresses battle to learn how to deliver lines facing a London West End audience. Debbie Does Shakespeare?

From News.com: Phishers try a phone hook

Ok, this is new…remember to protect your personal information, use specially-created email addresses for banking and other financial transactions, and never trust “warnings” coming in through email.

This is one impressive advertisement; one I cheerfully run here without payment.

From Ars Technica: Microsoft patents watching TV and chatting at the same time

Have I mentioned the U.S. patent system is completely screwed up?

I have some scum spamming the blog with trackback comment spam. You don’t have to worry about seeing it; I have a plug-in that eliminates most of it, and anything that slips through is placed in the moderation queue anyway where I manually delete it before it appears on the blog, but it is really annoying anyway.

Why is it exactly that this slime needs to steal the resources of others?

Speaking of bothersome, I am going to have to eventually go through the whole update procedure again on the underlying software that operates this blog. Unlike the bulletin board software used on BobEdwards.Info and the Nostalgia Pages Forums which is designed to be painfully simple to patch, even with heavily-altered boards, this software requires a complete shift-out. The way I did it the last time was to duplicate the blog and the databases, work through the alterations on that one, and then “swap out” the namespace. It should be completely transparent to you, the reader, but if in the next week or so things look odd or stop working, please use the contact button on the sidebar to let me know.

In working on the photos from the recent Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention, it’s become painfully clear I am going to need to reorganize the way I handle those as well, creating a database instead of manually building the tables to display the photos. (Resizing the photos and writing the captions is the easy part…it’s building the tables, sizing the windows, and all the presentation stuff that takes so much time I tend to find other things to do midway through.) I doubt I’ll get it done before these photos are up (which means they’ll take a while to get here), but I’ll see if I can get the routines written and tested before the Friends of Old-Time Radio Convention in the fall.

From CNN: Naked carpenter: I wanted to stay clean

You can’t make this stuff up…

From USA Today: On ‘24,’ Chloe helps Jack Bauer pass the time

How that pretty woman can screw up her face and become Chloe amazes me.

Literally standing in the middle of the room to hold the connection, I post a few more pics from the Cincinnati Convention…I’ll get more posed when I’m home and can sit down instead of standing and typing with one hand.

Fred Foy prepares to become The Lone Ranger

Fred Foy, Bob Hastings, and Steven Jansen recreate The Lone Ranger Sam Spade

Fred Foy announces the opening of Ethel and Albert, starring Bob Hastings and Rosemary Rice

The Ethel and Albert recreation

…to get a few more pics from the Cincinnati Convention up, but the hotel WiFi is sketchie at best (oh, I’ll be making a long post about this hotel and how it has gone severely downhill over the past few years later in the week), so I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them uploaded. If not, I’ll get some up tomorrow.

Yes, I know, this is pitiful, but I need to get showered and dressed for dinner, so it looks like this is it until later this evening…at least it’s a few pics from the Cincinnati Convention…

Hal Stone prepares to direct a recreation

Rosemary Rice and Bob Hastings perform

Working on it, but for various reasons I didn’t get time between rehearsal and the 1:30pm performance. Working on it now, though, so should have something up before too terribly long.

I hope.

As per usual, I’m running late. With all the catching up and fun around here, and the Katester to fill in any “downtime,” I haven’t had the time to get photos up yet. Tomorrow morning after the first rehearsal (I like to take photos at rehearsals so I can cheat and use the flash), honest.

We made it to the convention hotel, and although the convention doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow, we’ve already seen many of our friends getting ready for the festivities. Hal “Get-out-of-my-way-I-came-to-see-Katie” Stone is here, as is Fred Foy, Bob Hastings, and Rosemary Rice. Bob Burchett is getting ready for the onslaught in the morning, handling double-duty for the convention, and we’re looking forward to the dealer’s rooms and re-creations.

From CNN: No green light for driver with traffic signal gadget

That auction site strikes again…poor guy ended up with a ticket and his device confiscated.

…since this is the week for the Cincinnati Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention, so posts here will take on a decidedly OTR feel later this week (the convention is Friday and Saturday), with posts prior to it a little sporadic (not that they haven’t been anyway lately…). I’m taking way too much equipment to the convention, what with the computers, printers, video cameras, still cameras, cell phones, satellite radios, etc., etc., so if I look a little weighed-down (I mean with other than my portly frame), don’t be surprised.

I’ll get photos from the event posted as quickly as humanly possible, although we all know how that goes - ask Brian Gari or Craig Wichman how speedy I am getting photos posted. I’m also taking a USB telephone; while your chances of finding me on Skype are pretty slim, still, if you aren’t going to be at the Con and use Skype, look me up by name.

I will have a few of the 2005/02 OTR fundraiser discs with me, and some of the DVD fundraiser discs as well (serial chapter, cartoon, and the feature, “It’s a Joke, Son!” starring Kenny Delmar and featuring a young June Lockhart), neither of which I’ve gotten posted to the store yet, but no hard sell I promise. So if you’re going to be at the convention, look me up and say hello. I’ll be even easier to find this year, since a good bit of the time I’ll be next to the cutest seven-year-old redhead you’ve ever seen.

From CNN/Money: Government legislation accused of helping push up gas prices

Much as I love to read about government conspiracies, I’m pretty sure the only blame the federal government can get is for doing stupid things, a quite common occurrence.

You know, I hate Congress, and I’m not real fond of the FTC or FCC right now, either. See, they’ve decided there is an exception for “political activities,” as if it was someone else’s constitutional right to break into my home and force me to listen to whatever spiel they have. (I will fight for your right to say whatever you want, but not in my house!) What’s even worse, these morons use computers to make pre-recorded calls. And now, thanks to new rulings from the FCC, you’ll soon get legal junk faxes you can’t do anything about, too. And lord knows how long the rules on cell phone “spam” will survive.

Today alone, I received two politically-targeted messages…neither of which I particularly give a rat’s tail about. And it’s going to get worse…both political parties (who, of course, aren’t involved with any of these PAC-generated calls…of course they aren’t…*wink*) are going to be driving all of us crazy real-soon-now - while the national “Do Not Call” list managed to decimate the telemarketing industry (and not a moment too soon, if you ask me), these rulings are allowing us to be annoyed anyway, even though it’s perfectly clear people in the United States are unquestionably against any telemarketing.

Of course, there isn’t a damned thing any of us can do about it, either. I mean, what…complain to the Congressmen who benefit by annoying the hell out of us? After all, they are desperate to bother us to assure their re-election, so asking them to write into law the simple truth that our telephone is inside our homes, and as such our free-speech and privacy rights are more important than the scum who use pre-recorded messages to make us avoid our telephones instead of enjoying the quiet of the privacy of our own homes.

From Yahoo: FoxTrot for Monday, April 17th

A comic strip for fans of the Fox series, “24.”

From Ars Technica: EFF reports on the DMCA’s unintended consequences

An excellent overview of Version 4 of the EFF report, “Unintended Consequences: Seven Years under the DMCA.” If you have any interest in copyright law (if you collect OTR or nostalgic television, you really do), check out this story, and read the EFF document.