I love this saying, because it makes absolutely no logical sense. For those unfamiliar, this saying is usually directed at someone driving a car who needs to do so in a more rapid manner than they currently are doing, ie they’re late for something, or trying to get away from someone or something.
This also implies that car thieves automatically drive fast. This isn’t always true, because that would cause undue attention directed at them. therefore they’d stick out like a sore thumb!! If you’d just stolen a car, would you actually drive around very fast, thus creating a spectacle? I didn’t think so. Granted, if being pursued by the police, a car thief might drive fast, but how often do those high-speed chases end up where the thief evades the police successfully and winds up with a free car?
I’ve seen enough cop shows on TV to know that catching car thieves is something cops are fairly good at, namely when involved in a chase. “Parked car theft” is a whole other story, equally as shitty, and even worse since there’s practically nothing to go on when the cops show up.
I don’t know what prompted me to write this all down, I just think it’s funny when someone says “OK man, drive it like you stole it” – if I heard that I’d drive normally, not because I wouldn’t drive fast if I’d actually stolen the thing, I’d just want to piss that person off. 
So I can’t say today was completely nonproductive. Before I go any further, if any of my Unique Photo friends read this, I apologize for what I’m about to say…you guy’s didn’t have what I bought at B&H. Anyways, I tried out ordering from B&H Photo in NYC, I wanted a wrist strap for my camera. No problems with the order, so that was certainly good. I decided I wanted a wrist strap for the side of my camera instead of the typical “I’m a tourist” neck strap. After trying to figure out for at least a good half hour how to put the damn thing on, (didn’t come with instructions, but I think it’s one of the indications that Canon has a sense of humor… that, and why they don’t include lens hoods unless you pay for an L series lens…I digress.) I finally got it and it’s pretty nice. Definitely an improvement. I’ll still keep the other one around though, just in case I decide to revert back.
A little “Studio Rebuild” update… I’ve got a 2TB G-Tech G-Raid drive on the way. All of my audio projects and software will get backed up onto that via Time Machine. I’m looking forward to setting that up. It’ll be nice to have that piece of mind knowing that nothing else will get lost should I have any other “surprises” creep up… I find it ironic that when I had the problem at the concert it had to happen during Thriller… Anyway, moving on.
I’ve really got to give my friend Drew mad props. (Drew = My gear guy at Sweetwater, also my “brother from another mother”). The story is a bit convoluted, so I’ll try to sum it up. There’s a software company out there who makes audio plug-ins that are quite widely used throughout the industry. They let their widespread success get to their heads, so they developed this “upgrade” program that would require users to pay exorbitant fees after a year or so from the purchase date, to be protected from the possibility of them releasing new software. So, for example, if someone paid over $3500 in software titles, paying another $600-800 just for the idea of “maybe” getting a new version in another year’s time was not exactly money well spent. Luckily there were many others who agreed with me and voiced complaints. I’d even boycotted them for some time, using other software to get my stuff done. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
Anyways, back to Drew getting props:
This software company just recently changed their “upgrade” policies (FINALLY!), to a flat-rate system. As it was explained to me, whatever you had, you now pay a much more reasonable flat-rate to have your software updated to the latest version. I’m not going to go into specifics just in case the “flat rate” is different for other people. I’d suggest talking to your pro-audio equipment provider if you have questions (Which should be Drew to begin with, and if it isn’t you need to contact me so I can get you his info!). Being that I’d just upgraded my computer to Snow Leopard, and the latest version of Pro Tools etc, I had practically nothing when it came to audio plug-in software. Thanks to Drew, I’ve got just about all of my plug-ins back and once everything’s installed, I’ll be fully operational once again. Haven’t been there in a while, so a huge thanks to Drew.
Wow, my MacBook’s backup is 445GB. I’m goin’ to bed, I wonder if it’ll be done tomorrow morning. We shall see!
So, as you can see the studio is living and breathing once again! The horsepower has been upgraded to an iMac, 3.06 Ghz Core 2 Duo currently with 3 GB of RAM, but after a visit to crucial.com that will change once I get the upgrade kit to 4GB. I don’t think this one goes to 8gb, I’m going to check though. If it does and the kit isn’t too much I’m going to jump to 8.
The glyph drives are back, did something slightly different than last time. Audio drive is connected via FW800, then the sample/loop/backup audio drive is connected via FW400 to that. The audio interface (currently Digi002r but that may change in the not-too-distant future) is directly connected to the iMac’s FW400 port. I should get no complaints from the software now about FireWire bandwidth issues. If it has a problem, it can suck it. Seriously. I gave it a whole new machine. 
I also moved my Yamaha MG16/4 onto the desk, to make room for the iMac on the side. Unfortunately the iMac won’t fit under the hutch where my monitors are, so I picked up a Samsung 23″ HDTV/monitor from costco, is doing the trick nicely. It’s nice to have a 2 monitor setup… It’s not as elegant as I’d like, but it’s cool just the same.
I’ve still got a lot of work to do still: rewiring heaphone mix stuff, run the snake, wipe the old Macbook Pro and put it on eBay, and continue with the ongoing process of straightening this room up. Once everything is working and all is done, I’d like to start advertising locally and maybe even do some more side work to bring a little extra cash on the side. That’s a long-term goal of course.
Had a nice productive day nonetheless. More updates and pictures to come.
The 320 -> 640 clone appeared to go smoothly. My Macbook is running with the 640GB HD installed, and everything is looking good. I’m currently copying my user folder from the iMac over to this machine, it’s about 250GB of data so it’s probably going to go all night and some time into the morning I’d imagine. Just as a test, I opened up Aperture and all my photos were there, no issues that I could tell, so that’s certainly a plus as well. Keep your fingers crossed, hopefully the tech gods will continue to smile upon my efforts.
Cloning my Macbook’s 320GB hard drive onto the 640GB. Once that’s done, I’m going to grab the user folder off of my iMac and put it on here. Once that’s all set, I’ll wipe the iMac and put Snow Leopard on it, and put it in the studio. Yay waiting.
