inevitability and bugs

[ceagle]

I've come to realize, I am a bit of a conservationist.... not just with the planet, but with 'stuff'. :> .. I like to see things last.. it's cheaper, ya don't have to get new stuff alla time, stuff lasts longer, you're not caught without spares, ya get comfortable with the way things run, etc..
Like for example when Microsoft Office moved all the stuff around in its User Interface, the biggest complaint I'd hear is "where is stuff??" That added inconvenience and a learning curve, lower productivity, etc..
Anyways... what I'm getting at is... I like stuff to last forever... as long as its taken care of :> ... Or at least a very very reasonable length of time... like, oh... 50 years maybe more... like uh, forever :D
Well, not *everything* of course... but I try to take care of stuff, like cameras, appliances, electrical and electronic components, cars, books, collectibles... perhaps my inclination comes from the collectible mentality that if you take care of stuff, it may actually increase in value, or at least maintain it.. and of course there's even more added value in gaining more years of usefulness.

Thusly, I have lots things that I can keep usin' because they keep right on truckin'... LP turntables, camera gear, computers, cars, etc... The deal with my car for instance is 'I care for them, they care for me and get me where I wanna go'.. *tailwags*

Which is why it's been something I've been dreading to admit, but, Cassette machines just don't have that same perpetuation that most other components can have... :/
Seems like it's just a matter of time, and cassette machines all wear out... eeeeeeeven if you don't touch them for many months!... *sigh*
Which also makes it sad because lots of people have precious stuff in cassette format, and so the powers that be will have to keep making some cassette players, or a lot of history and goodness will be lost...
Which is why .. I guess.. I gotta digitize my cassette stuff before my next cassette player failure.. or I'll have to buy another (if they are available at that future date), or get one fixed (if anyone really knows how)...
*sighs again*

I put together a lot of nice tapes over the years, and they were carefully segued and themed, and I'd rather not have to do that again from scratch. I dug out an ole tape last night for the first time in months, and alas, my last system component cassette machine wasn't up to the task... Had to play it in a new portable I had gotten for mom.. (luckily that worked ok... but it really sent the concept home.. cassette players don't last..) ... This isn't a problem for reel-to-reel players as far as I've seen, thank goodness... and LPs just keep on going and going with the endurance of the energizer bunny...

---

In other chat, over the Thanksgiving dinner the topic was, what else?... scorpions. heh!... People were talking about their sting and someone mentioned this other bug that is 'like a scorpion but without the stinger'... called a Vinegar Rune??... wild name!... So everyone is suddenly passing there smartphones around the table googling vinegar runes and camel spiders and various insundry other arachnidial visages...

Ah... the modern Thanksgiving... :P

Here's hoping (for those celebrating) that you are having a wonderful one, too! ^v^

Comments

[makovette.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, but some stuff is born to be obsolete as technology improvements march on. A toaster from 1960 toasts pretty much the same as one made today, but certainly we can't say the time for other stuff like computers, cars or airplanes.

I have a Nakimichi 680ZX cassette deck from ~1983 that I had repaired once so far. The rubber parts on a cassette deck, like tires and belts on a car, are all that really need to be replaced assuming the electronics hold up.

Please to hear everyone had a nommishly good TG time :)

Mako

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Mwaha! You haff revealed ze zecret!... Mussssst... remoooooove... all... ze.... rubbah.......*hooks up electrodes and hides behind the sofa....*

[henriekeg.livejournal.com]

Hmmm! My cassette players still works fine, never had any issues with them. I'd be more concerned about the tapes than the players. Digitizing them is not a bad idea!

And I hear ya on wanting things to last. I think that's also why we still have our TV from the 1970s standing on the shelf, haha. The monitor I'm using every day is over 10 years old, too. And my bed/mattress... as old as me. Not sure if that's a good thing though :P

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

One of the advantages of the smartphone-enabled Thanksgiving is that it can end arguments where three seconds in google will get an answer. :)

I've gotten rid of most of my cassettes.. only have a few 'collectible' or intensely personal ones left, and I haven't had a way to play those in five or more years. :)

[aldi.livejournal.com]

We think alike! My parents bought their first microwave in 1987 and we're still using it! My TV is a 20 inch RCA XL-100 I bought in 1988. I still buy used CDs for $1 or less in yard sales, and I play them on single CD players from the early 90s.

I love cheating the system and avoiding buying cheap made-in-China garbage. When my first Philips (Norelco in the USA) shaver stopped working after decades of use, I managed to find an identical one on eBay almost never used! I started shaving around 1982 and I'm only up to my 2nd electric shaver! And I can tell it still has many years of use left in it!

Don't give up on cassette decks. You just had bad luck. I have no trouble with my Tascam 112, although it cost me a pretty penny. But nowadays, cassette decks are soooo common and cheap in yard sales, thrift stores and charity bazaars! No one wants them. I once got a JVC double deck for $5. I even bought an old vintage horizontal deck from the mid 70s, a Pioneer T-3500 and after a srpinkle of contact cleaner, it worked like a charm! They don't make 'em like that anymore, but they're still around!

One thing you could do to back up your cassettes is copy them onto reel-to-reel tape!

[orv.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat mattress-wise...starting to think a new one would be better for my back, and make me toss and turn less at night. They're so expensive, though.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

I find myself both hoarding and preferring minimalism. It's an awkward mix. ^_^; I still have my previous PowerBooks, despite the fact they're no longer really useful. Bunny, for example, a 1998 Wallstreet 266MHz, only needs a replacement PMU board - probably quite cheap, but.. what then? It can't run anything higher than Tiger, and at a pace a little below the dual core 2.8GHz MBP (8GB, 1TB HD, 256GB SSD) I now use, able to play multiple 1080p streams and a Windows 7 VM with aplomb. =:/

I sort of wish I still had my VHS tapes available, with a view to digitising a few of them prior to dumping - there were some interesting bits and pieces there which'll never see any kind of release, probably not even uploaded to YouTube. Ah well. Sadly, all that was lost in a storage unit in San Diego several years back.

As is, though, the MBP functions as my primary development system for work, plus holding a few weeks' worth of music, a couple TV seasons, a film or two (mostly, that kind of media sits offboard, on one of the home LAN drives), as well as being home to recent and better grade shots from the past, for my photography. And all in a slender slab I can keep in a bag on my shoulder, often along with the iPad, D90, 300mm f/4, 10-20mm f/4-5.6, and 28-80mm. True, that does become a bit heavy in all, but to think of what I can do with that bundle of portable technology is quite wondrous.

Whilst I miss my old VCR (my first, too!), there's no escaping it was fairly long in the tooth even then, requiring a nudge to release the tape, then manual tweaking to get the tape tensioning right, all for a machine that was plain VHS resolution, mono audio, SP only, top-loading. Still, it survived a transatlantic trip as hand baggage, and was perfectly happy being run off a transformer in reverse, to keep its preference for 220V happy. ^_^

Longetivity of one's devices is, nonetheless, worthwhile. Indeed, said MBP's a mid-2009 model, but with the addition of more RAM, and especially the SSD recently, it's still a solid workhorse, even looking as elegant as when it was new. (And really, if you're going to be using a device for much of one's waking hours, it ought to be restful on the eyes, as well as efficiently functional)

Analogue audio, though, nah. I'm a digital bunny through and through. Give me a 256k AAC file, and I can squirrel that away along with tens of thousands of others, all available instantly, and able to be replicated for backup trivially, making damage or loss a thing of the past. Same with comics, another victim of all the moves. *sigh* (eg a complete run of the original Valkyrie Press editions of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, still one of Bryan Talbot's best works, though I'm certainly very fond of his current Grandville yarns)

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

*snickers* ... Good to hear about your cassette player!... I usually get 10 to 15 years out of 'em.. And that's so AWESOME about your TV and bed! :D
I still have the TV our parents had when we were growing up, but I haven't turned it on in years... heh... and yep, I have a fairly old bed(s) too, but they were made locally by a custom bed store and they are sturdy and comfortable, so yeah... why change? They have super springs! *hops*
When I got a new car years back, the seats were too un-comfy, so I put the nice springy ones in it from my ole high school car :D ... I've had 'em reupholstered a few times, but the internal parts are great!

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

hehheh...good point!!
It's been years since I played mine regularly too... last one I made was around year 2000 ... I usually listen to a CD or a digital player just like the rest of us... :> ... but I just had a hankerin' to hear one of my older shows the other night... a lot of that music hasn't been put on custom CD or mp3..

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

hehe!! *HUGS*... You are quite right!... Mom kept her micro and fixed it once when it broke.. and we still use it too!!
The first large TV I bought (a 26" Teknika) konked out after about tend years though... but my old 19inch (with no remote control) is still kickin' ! *tailwags*
I love these stories and you know I'm rooting for you too! :D

My dad gave me a Remington shaver that I kept running for decades too!... Just kept getting the built-in batteries changed.. hehe... I must say I've tried a few shavers, but I still like Remingtons the best.. Norelco bits me... Wahl bites me.. and Braun isn't brawny enough... hehheh!

I haven't tried Tascam yet... will keep an eye out! .. Loved my Sherwood and I've had a few Sonys....

*lols re: putting the recordings on Reel!* ... *wingfuzzles ya*

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

....but it's an understandable mix :D *tailwags*

The hoarding-ness is just a desire to have worthwhile working stuff on hand, and the minimalist-ness is just intent to keep that from getting too out of hand... just finding balance between the two is a challenge, based on what we have to work with :}

ooo.. love hearing about your older machines!! ^v^ *wingfuzzles ya* ... I have at least one from most computer generations now too... Win95, MacOs6, you name it.. heh!.. I used mainframe stuff at school, but the first one I owned was a MacPlus... then when Mac's manufacturing integrity stopped keeping up with its design, I went more toward Win around 2005...

Sad about your comics and VHS losses though.... *hugs* .... Luckily machines are still around if you wanna try to revive it.

Cool travel stuff!.. I have a pretty complete set of Nikon F1 gear :D

I agree about a high-quality digital file being fine too... even though I do like liner notes and cover art when possible :} ...*tailwags*

Thanks for the detailed fun recollections!

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Yikes... sorry to hear about the questionable mattress... maybe getting a pillowtop add-on could tide you over until ya can get a full mattress?

[tastyeagle.livejournal.com]

I recently digitized about 50-60 tapes worth of stuff I recorded way back when. It took a while, and a bunch of what I had recorded back then is pretty worthless, but at least now I have it in digital format, and can distill it down to the parts I want, and throw away the cassettes altogether, lightening my load somewhat.

Though I still have to do the distillation. I hope the hard drive keeps surviving until it's all made into MP3s onto a DVD-rom or something like that. There's just so many other things on my plate.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

ooo WOW!
Well, I've digitized a few over the years on the spur of the moment, but haven't started a methodical plan to Get 'Er Done ... Congratulations on all that!
It gives me confidence to get it goin'!
My old XP system was apparently too slow to do it right, as sometimes there would be random stutters in the digital result... so maybe the newer stuff that I've gotten since then can handle it.. I hope....
*wing hugs!*