What are you watching?

[O Really]

OK, so I gotta ask - is your TV at least a flat screen?

[neoplacebo]

OK, so I gotta ask - is your TV at least a flat screen?

No doubt about it. I view an LG 32 inch turbo and enjoy old western serials, live criminal court fiascoes, local news, Sunday morning religious fanatics, east Tn public television, and the video feed from the girl's high school shower room. Being able to assimilate all these things into one coherent explanation of just what it's all about still eludes me. But I do remember how it took about ten seconds for the radio in the car to be audible because it had tubes in it. Tubes sound better than transistors; tubes emphasize even order harmonic distortion but transistors emphasize odd order harmonics. Our ears prefer the even order stuff, which is only fair.

[O Really]

OK, so I gotta ask - is your TV at least a flat screen?

No doubt about it. I view an LG 32 inch turbo and enjoy old western serials, live criminal court fiascoes, local news, Sunday morning religious fanatics, east Tn public television, and the video feed from the girl's high school shower room. Being able to assimilate all these things into one coherent explanation of just what it's all about still eludes me. But I do remember how it took about ten seconds for the radio in the car to be audible because it had tubes in it. Tubes sound better than transistors; tubes emphasize even order harmonic distortion but transistors emphasize odd order harmonics. Our ears prefer the even order stuff, which is only fair.

Interesting, but I was wondering about Ulysses. Given his propensity for ancient tech, I thought maybe he was watching an old Sony Trinitron or Zenith.

[GoCubsGo]

Since they weigh about 200 lbs, I bet they're still in the house being used as a TV stand for the flat screen.

[neoplacebo]

OK, so I gotta ask - is your TV at least a flat screen?

No doubt about it. I view an LG 32 inch turbo and enjoy old western serials, live criminal court fiascoes, local news, Sunday morning religious fanatics, east Tn public television, and the video feed from the girl's high school shower room. Being able to assimilate all these things into one coherent explanation of just what it's all about still eludes me. But I do remember how it took about ten seconds for the radio in the car to be audible because it had tubes in it. Tubes sound better than transistors; tubes emphasize even order harmonic distortion but transistors emphasize odd order harmonics. Our ears prefer the even order stuff, which is only fair.

Interesting, but I was wondering about Ulysses. Given his propensity for ancient tech, I thought maybe he was watching an old Sony Trinitron or Zenith.

Opps! I thought it was something about me and tubes.....another reason why I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

[Ulysses]

OK, so I gotta ask - is your TV at least a flat screen?

Not sure who you were asking, but all the TV's I watch these days are flat screen/LCD/LED.

I still have an operational Sony Trinitron 27" TV that resides in an old video cabinet, stashed away in the spare bedroom. I haven't powered it up in at least a decade. I replaced it with a Vizio flat screen about 15 years ago. The 40" Vizio gave out a year or two ago (perhaps just a bad capacitor), replaced it with a bigger Samsung (~51") which lives in the living room. Three other TV's in this residence: A Samsung in the bedroom that I rarely watch, a 17" Samsung connected to my PC that I use only as a monitor, and a POS 37" Westinghouse flat screen for daily viewing in the family room where the computer etc also reside. The main problem with the Westinghouse is the cheap remote. When it gives up I'll get a bigger/better one. Won't be a Westinghouse, though.

Is that too much info?

[O Really]

Since they weigh about 200 lbs, I bet they're still in the house being used as a TV stand for the flat screen.

We had one of those beasts. Article here from 2000 https://www.wired.com/2000/11/the-big-3 ... 0-picture/

All set up with Sony 6-speaker surround, radio, CD and DVD player. Beautiful picture, great sound. We upgraded to a 42" plasma sometime around 2007ish and lugged the huge box to the bedroom where it lived until about 2014ish. Couldn't sell it - barely could give it away, but some kid wanted it and he stuffed it into his Honda by taking out the back seat. Was still producing as good a picture as the new TV's when we got rid of it.

[GoCubsGo]

That's basically my story. When I sold the house I couldn't give it away and the dump charged me ten bucks to leave it with them.

[Ulysses]

That's basically my story. When I sold the house I couldn't give it away and the dump charged me ten bucks to leave it with them.

Well, that's kind of sad, but probably a reasonable charge. I understand old TV's can give up some useful metals, like silver and gold, but it's probably labor intensive, so they might get shipped to Asia for that process. I used to live in a neighboring county before I bought this house in '97. I remember I had two TV's there, but one sort of gave up. I *think* I took it to the local recycling center, before I moved. and I don't remember any charge for that. The center was very conveniently located - in a residential area not far from home, at the base of a hill. Don't know what I'd do with the Trinitron if got in the way... but $10 would be doable.

[Ulysses]

PS-I don't regard DVD's as "ancient tech". After all, it's all digital. What I like about DVD's is they are so portable, last a long time, and are easy to store. I'm using Verbatim "AZO" -R blank DVD's, which are supposed to have a longer shelf life than others. I guess we'll see. Perhaps some day I'll need to feed them into some sort of system that will transfer all the bits to a hard drive for supposedly long term storage. But hard drives really are not long term; they can go awry in an instant (I used to work in that industry, BTW).

[O Really]

Well sure, hard drives can go away in an instant - as can most anything else under unfortunate circumstances. Fire and flood has detroyed a lot of peoples pictures, books, and DVD's. But the crashed hard drive wouldn't be catastrophic for you because surely you would have it backed up somewhere. Anyway, the real threat to loss of data isn't the media it's on, it's the loss of ability to read. If you had anything stored on a big floppy disc, or a small floppy disc, there are very few machines left that can access that. New CD players are getting scarce, most new laptops don't have a DVD drive. I'm not sure you can buy anything now that will show those old 35mm slides from vacays long ago, nor can you play the 8-tracks that provided a playlist long ago.

[GoCubsGo]

In this day and age multiple backups are essential and easy.

[O Really]

For "beach reading" I listen to audio books. For about 10 years or so, I've maintained a library on my computer, with books downloaded to my phone (or formerly i-pod) to listen. I check out the audio books on CD from the library, and rip to my computer. Windows Media Player does an excellent job indexing. When I'm finished with a book, I usually delete it from the computer, and keep about 40-50 books in the library at a time. A couple of weeks ago I opened the Media Player and to my surprise it appeared all my books were gone. Look for "Authors" - zip; look for "Music" - zip. Shut down and re-opened Media Player, and all was where it was supposed to be. But if it hadn't been? No problem - my library is safely backed up along with thousands of pics, important and frivolous documents, yada.

On the other hand, Lady O kept her recipes (links to recipes) in Bookmarks on Chrome. After some update a few months ago, they were gone. If it had been local storage, that might have been one thing, but the bookmarks should have come back if she re-signed into Google. They were gone from Google, and it's apparently happened to quite a few people and there seems nothing to do about it. Sometimes tech do bite.

[neoplacebo]

Well sure, hard drives can go away in an instant - as can most anything else under unfortunate circumstances. Fire and flood has detroyed a lot of peoples pictures, books, and DVD's. But the crashed hard drive wouldn't be catastrophic for you because surely you would have it backed up somewhere. Anyway, the real threat to loss of data isn't the media it's on, it's the loss of ability to read. If you had anything stored on a big floppy disc, or a small floppy disc, there are very few machines left that can access that. New CD players are getting scarce, most new laptops don't have a DVD drive. I'm not sure you can buy anything now that will show those old 35mm slides from vacays long ago, nor can you play the 8-tracks that provided a playlist long ago.

I still have my old slide projector and lots of slides. I've even got an unopened roll of Kodachrome 64. Also still have my old Nikon F2 film camera.

[O Really]

Well sure, hard drives can go away in an instant - as can most anything else under unfortunate circumstances. Fire and flood has detroyed a lot of peoples pictures, books, and DVD's. But the crashed hard drive wouldn't be catastrophic for you because surely you would have it backed up somewhere. Anyway, the real threat to loss of data isn't the media it's on, it's the loss of ability to read. If you had anything stored on a big floppy disc, or a small floppy disc, there are very few machines left that can access that. New CD players are getting scarce, most new laptops don't have a DVD drive. I'm not sure you can buy anything now that will show those old 35mm slides from vacays long ago, nor can you play the 8-tracks that provided a playlist long ago.

I still have my old slide projector and lots of slides. I've even got an unopened roll of Kodachrome 64. Also still have my old Nikon F2 film camera.

You're a veritable museum.

[GoCubsGo]

You're a veritable museum.

You should see the mummified kitty collection and the antique litter boxes.

[neoplacebo]

You're a veritable museum.

You should see the mummified kitty collection and the antique litter boxes.

Those are things that deserve merit. But I also have a rental unit where I take road kill raccoons. I've always wanted one of those raccoon coats that were popular back in the 40's and 50's so I keep a sharp eye out for road kill and take advantage if possible of every tragic incident. So far I have nearly thirty but need at least fifty for a respectable coat. I rented the storage locker under the name Dow Jones. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But lately I'm getting complaints about how bad Dow Jones' unit stinks. They don't realize it's a temporary condition. Nothing to get excited about.

[Vrede too]

You're a veritable museum.

You should see the mummified kitty collection and the antique litter boxes.

Peaceful Partier, 1FATCAN, various email and online targets, and others are shrunken heads that neoplacebo keeps as trophies after they've surrendered. When he turns the light out and puts on vinyl Witchy Woman the glow from the stereo tubes casts an eerie light upon them.

[Ulysses]

I used to develop my own 35 mm B&W film and make prints. Also tried color slides (forget the name now). Had a Nikon FE with a great telephoto. It got stolen. Still have the standard lens. Replaced it with an F4, but wasn't the same. Now nearly everything is digital and life goes on.

I don't get off on torturing animals, though.

[Ulysses]

Well sure, hard drives can go away in an instant - as can most anything else under unfortunate circumstances. Fire and flood has detroyed a lot of peoples pictures, books, and DVD's. But the crashed hard drive wouldn't be catastrophic for you because surely you would have it backed up somewhere. Anyway, the real threat to loss of data isn't the media it's on, it's the loss of ability to read. If you had anything stored on a big floppy disc, or a small floppy disc, there are very few machines left that can access that. New CD players are getting scarce, most new laptops don't have a DVD drive. I'm not sure you can buy anything now that will show those old 35mm slides from vacays long ago, nor can you play the 8-tracks that provided a playlist long ago.

Well, I never got into 8-tracks. Was never that impressed with them. I do have a lot of cassette tapes, mostly stuff I recorded. You know, mix tapes for driving and partying. Still have functional tape decks for those. CDs? Got a shitload of those, too. As well as store-bought DVD's.

I used to build, run, and administer local area networks and servers. Paid very well. Tape backup was very important. However, now that you remind me, I haven't bothered to back up my desktop HD here for a while. Probably should do that. After I get my last will and testament done.