Go Vote!

 

I am a life long liberal Democrat, and have never voted for Republican, nor do I intend to in the future. So if you are a supporter of 45, just skip this and move on.

The Presidential Election is in a few weeks, so here are a few of my thoughts.

I have never been a fan of the orange thing, even when " The Apprentice" was on. He was a bombastic, slimy game show host, and we all know the game was rigged so whoever was his "favorite" would win. 

When Billy Bush interviewed him in 2016 right before the election, and he made a comment about "pussy grabbing," I truly thought that combined with "I could murder someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it" would cost him the election. 

Are Americans that stupid that they can "forgive" statements like that? How can any woman in her right mind vote for this person who loaded the Supreme Court with conservatives so Roe vs. Wade could be overturned? The Republicans are coming for your rights to have in-vitro fertilization, and severely limiting abortion rights. 

It should not be up to a bunch of old white guys in Congress to determine what a woman can or cannot do with their bodies. 

45 took away tax deductions for the middle class, limiting it to $10K, versus no limit. Then he gives massive tax breaks to corporations and high wealth individuals.

There is something wrong with that thinking. I truly believe that the wealthy should pay their fair share, and the middle and lower classes should get all their deductions back, and have lower tax brackets.

This "man," and I truly use that word loosely, has 34 federal guilty judgements, and owes millions of dollars to a woman that he was convicted of raping years ago. 

Is this the person we truly want to be our president for the next 4 years? I am afraid of what he will do to our Constitution, along with letting foreign dictators do to their neighbors. Do you really think he will let us defend Ukraine against Russia anymore? I doubt it. He will stop any support with weapons and money, and let Putin just roll in and take over. But of course it won't stop there.

How many lies and made up stories do we have to listen to over and over before realizing this person is nothing but a con man and grifter?

While Kamala Harris may not have a stellar record as vice president, keep in mind that most VP's over the years are merely figureheads, with no real power. Do you think that 45 gave Mike Pence any real power? Heck no, there was barely any respect for the man. JD Vance has proven himself a true idiot, and that's just another reason not to vote for the Republicans this year. Imagine him as president if something happens to 45?

My wife has a co-worker who has stated that if Ms. Harris wins, she's moving to Israel. Great, don't let the door hit you on the way out. 

We need the Democrats to take back the House, and increase their lead in the Senate as well, to roll back all the misdeeds that 45 and the Rethuglicans have done in the last few years.

Go Vote!

Converting Audio Tapes To Digital Files

 When I first started recording radio stations back in 1976, I used cassettes and reel to reel tapes, never thinking far into the future of what I would do with all those tapes. Many times I would edit the music out of them, and keep just the DJ parts. This was done to save money, so I could reuse the the tapes, not thinking I was often editing out history. I made compilations called Assorted Airchecks, and boy do I regret doing that today!

What is history in radio? It's the newscasts that will often give clues to the date it was recorded, along with new music, and of course the DJ presenting it all. As I convert these tapes today that I got from other aircheck collectors, many of these tapes don't have dates, or incomplete dates. Those may have just a month and year, or a month and day. So some detective work is needed, and that's where newscasts come into play. All I need is a major news story, sports scores or concerts. 

A quick internet search will often give results quite quickly. Concert dates may not always line up exactly, so guesswork is sometimes the only way to go.

I would say that 90% of the time, I properly labeled my tapes with call letters, frequency, DJ name, and a complete date. When I convert a tape now and save it, I include all of that information in the file name.

Last year, my friend Richie in Albany, NY gave me a plastic tub of cassettes, and many of them didn't have complete dates. UGH! When I was finally done converting them, I called him and admonished him for leaving out such critical information. I asked him "WHY?" and his response was, "I don't know." 

What exactly is converting an audio tape to digital? Cassettes are the easiest to do because they have fixed times, with the most common being 60, 90, or 120 minutes. Then there are the oddball lengths such as 10 or 30 minute tapes. 

The most troublesome tapes were the old Ampex cassettes with the brown/tan labels. Who knew at the time that 40 years later they would squeal like a greased pig? What to do? Step one was surgery, transferring the tape into a new shell, and then baking it for a couple of hours. With any luck, I could then get one good play with no squealing.

What is baking a tape? It's putting the tape into a convection toaster oven, or a food hydrator and letting the heat bond the layers of the tape back together. There's more science to it, but I'm not going to explain it here. I used to use a regular toaster oven, but that was slower and couldn't accommodate a 10" reel. So at the suggestion of a couple of friends, I bought a 5 level food hydrator. I'll set it for about 120 degrees, set a timer on my phone and walk away. 

I load them in my trusty Denon dual cassette deck, set the levels in Adobe Audition, and let them fly. I'll often do one or two sets of tapes during the day, and maybe one overnight so I'll have something to work on the next day.

I have a friend who saves them as 320 mps MP3 files, but I save then at a lower bit rate, 192 mps MP3 files. I truly believe that most of us can't tell the difference with our older ears. I have other friends that save them as .wav or .flac files which are lossless files.

Having had two hard drive losses over the years, I now have 3 hard drives at home, an automated cloud back up, and a friend in Florida that I send all my digital files to. Previously, he sent me hard drive that I filled up with everything I had digitized at the time, and now send him new files as I convert them. This way I will never, ever lose anything again.

So how exactly do I do digital transfers? All my equipment goes into a Mackie mixing board, which is plugged into my computer. I have 3 dual cassette decks, a Sony DAT machine, Akai 7" reel to reel, Otari 10" reel to reel, a Sony MD and an ITC cart deck. 

I use Adobe Audition 3.0 that captures the audio, and allows me to do any sort of editing needed, such as hiss reduction, equalization, and noise reduction. Remember how we used to use a razor blade, editing block and tape to edit reel tapes, and repair cassettes? AA 3.0 does the same thing, but faster and easier with digital editing. 

Big Apple Airchecks offers it's services to radio folks that have tapes sitting around, and have no idea what to do with them.

A Lost Vacation

( The Royal Dockyard at night)

There is NOTHING worse than getting sick before going on vacation. In my case, I got Covid-19 five days before my wife and I were going on a cruise. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and I was down for the count.

I knew the only way I was going to be able to see a doctor and get a prescription for Paxlovid was to do a virtual visit. I got lucky, and saw a doctor I had seen once before. She was very helpful, and ordered the prescription to my local CVS.

But wait, there's more! I was coughing and sneezing, and out comes my favorite thing, the dreaded green phlegm and mucous. I'm lucky my doctor gave me a prescription for Zpack just in case I got sick ON the cruise. Who would have thought I'd get sick before the cruise?

The next thing we had to do was get me off the cruise, and get my daughter on it. It took two days of back and forth, but it finally happened. The people at Direct Cruise Lines were very helpful and went out of their way to make it happen. 

It cost us an additional $50 but it was better than not going at all. 

Now I have to unpack, and then crawl back into bed since I feel pretty lousy. 

Who would have thought I would get Covid and an upper respiratory infection at the same time? I never get a simple cold. It's always a URI or bronchitis.

Here's wishing my girls a great trip!