Tag: Apple

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I broke a rule today.

It is one of my internal rules.

I updated the OS of my Mac on the first day of the new OS being available.  I haven’t done something like this for years… There’s always something that screws up!

But while I’m sure I’ll be annoyed in the coming weeks, I thought, “Why Not? I’m bored and If I do it now, then I don’t have to worry about it later, especially if there’s something that demands me & my computer being up to date.”

Something insane like a job… for example. At this point if I were to get a job I’d probably have a heart attack and keel over from the shock.

Thus far the OS seems to be smooth and working as expected. I’m using my big monitor right now. I gotta admit, much as I like having the small light laptop, I really do like using the big monitor, especially with the color depth this thing is capable of.

This monitor could also be used as a gaming monitor, it’s a bit small but serviceable. So the monitor goes in the box of Tech that moves with me into whatever temporary housing situation I find myself in, moving forward. That’s actually funny this is a 27” and I can remember when that was a big monitor. 

I’ve seen some computer/gaming monitors 36” and above. I’d have to have a large desk to have something that big in proportion. I guess you could hang it on the wall of your cubicle or cubby.

The last place I worked at, they gave us dual 15” monitors which was really more annoying than helpful given the amount of data and application windows we were supposed to be juggling. The Windows desktops were under powered, in terms of CPU, memory, and hard drive space, to be pushing that amount of data but as is typical of Corporate America, if the computer crashed, it was the employees fault. 

I’ll take my 27” here at home with a computer that could drive two 30” 4K monitors (I think) and not worry about crashing. Come to think of it, I don’t think this computer has crashed on me since I got it. Either I’ve lost my touch, or this machine has more than enough horsepower to do whatever I ask. 

Let’s just hope it doesn’t become sentient! That could be a real problem…

I’ll continue playing with this new OS. There are some new features, but none I’m likely to be using immediately.  But I’ll poke around to see what the new stuff is all about.

BTW this qualifies as interesting and entertaining for me.

I hope your day is as amusing.

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What? Brain rebooted….

Yesterday while I was on hold with Apple, I was scanning news articles and one from Bloomberg caught my attention. The headline was a jaw dropper.

Is it me, or are the titles of officials sounding more and more like the stupid titles of drooling inbred Barons and Dukes who were 6th cousins to the king from old Europe?

Here is the persons’ title, “White House Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Energy Security”  what the fuck? The translation of this title is, another cocksucking bobblehead yes person.

I’m gonna call him “Bobblehead” Amos Hochstein.

This person actually said publicly, “one reason why oil prices have surged and gas prices is that Bidenomics works.” Then started blaming OPEC for decreasing supply.

WHAT? 

OPEC wouldn’t have the ability to fuck with global oil prices if Biden hadn’t within days of his inauguration screwed domestic oil production and caused oil prices to jump, not due to constraint… but due to Biden’s actions destabilizing oil futures.

As I theorized before, Bidenomics may indeed be working exactly as designed. Bidenomics isn’t to help the country, it’s to help the filthy rich and punish any and all Americans who might not be marching in communist lockstep with the Democrat party. A.K.A. all those who disagree with the direction the country is moving in, and are therefore domestic terrorists.

I’m predicting it here and now. It is going to be a very cold expensive winter for the average American Family. Because Biden’s energy policies will continue to drive up fuel prices. Don’t forget it’s not just gasoline.

Diesel fuel is what runs the container ships, the 18 wheel trucks, the farm equipment, the construction equipment, and petroleum byproducts go into almost everything else throughout our product and supply chain. So when fuel gets or remains expensive… the average American Family takes it in the ass.

An Interesting side note, Biden and his bobblehead staff all say repeatedly that The President is very concerned that the American Family doesn’t have undue hardship.

When you run that statement through the Democrat/Biden translation matrix… You get “The President want to make sure the American Family is hungry and cold.”

After all if you keep people cold enough, hungry enough, poor, and hopeless, long enough, then offer them free shit and relief if they vote for you, or if they’re asked to offer up their first born to be slaves, most of ‘em will say “yes”.

There’s a story about Vlad Țepeș of Romania inviting the poor, homeless, and destitute, of the town to his castle for dinner. He asked them what they wanted of him, they replied, “give us money, give us food, end our suffering.” At which point he ordered the palace guard to slaughter everyone in the dining hall.

VladIII

He ended their suffering right then and there.

I don’t know if that is a story that actually happened or if it was a teaching tale.

I do know, that every time I see people with their hands out to receive “Free” stuff. I always think of Vlad Țepeș and his “Solution”.

“Free” in politics is just a word that obfuscates the actual price. If more people knew that, politicians would have a lot less power.

Vlad Țepeș actually Vlad III,  had quite a life. Wars, imprisonment, loss of a throne and regaining it.

Stories about his “Unheard of cruelty” were circulating in his lifetime. Note we’re talking in the fourteen hundreds. By todays standards just living in that time would have been considered cruel and unusual punishment. This guy was considered unusually cruel then.

… Turkish messengers came to [Vlad] to pay respects, but refused to take off their turbans, according to their ancient custom, whereupon he strengthened their custom by nailing their turbans to their heads with three spikes, so that they could not take them off.

— Antonio Bonfini: Historia Pannonica

The pope was informed of Vlad’s methods. A Poem about him was performed at the court of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor during the winter of 1463.

While the story of him slaughtering all the poor from the town near his castle might be apocryphal, given the other stories about Vlad III I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually did it.

Interestingly, stories about Vlad III were some of the first best sellers to be printed with moveable type.

Bram Stoker did a great job of romanticizing Vlad III. As the source of all the vampire myths, in my Goth phase I was curious about Vlad III so I found out a about the real person.

I think he was an Arch Villain. This is certainly true through the lens of todays standards. It’s probably true through even the lens of the fourteen hundreds. But there was a lot of political intrigue and a lot more involved in keeping his kingdom together. Perhaps his cruelty was justified, perhaps not.

For some reason, Vlad III always pops into my mind whenever I hear Biden or his bobbleheads speaking. I think Biden and his administration are cruel and they call it “kindness”. They call failure, “success”. They call crime and criminal behavior, “Righteousness”.

By the way…. 

I did not preorder the new iPhone after all. 

Apple wouldn’t allow me to preorder it and use their interest free financing without me declaring which cellphone carrier I was going to use. In other words they wanted me to buy a carrier locked phone and I won’t do that.

They didn’t make me declare my carrier when I purchased my iPad with cellular capability. Nor did they ask for me to declare a carrier when I purchased my Apple Watch. Yet I was allowed to put those items on their interest free financing.

For some reason, they wouldn’t allow me to do the same with a new iPhone. 

I’d actually filled out the Pre Preorder forms that was supposed to make the preorder easy this morning. I stopped when I realized that for me to have the phone I’d have to put it on my card at whatever the interest rate is. Since the Apple Card is among the highest interest rate cards I have, that was a big RED NO GO!

Who am I kidding? All credit cards have nightmare interest rates these days!

The Apple Card is convenient, but it’s not something you carry a balance on unless it’s interest free. To be honest, I’m questioning keeping the Apple Card moving into the future. I don’t like the way they handle some things. The question is, does my dislike outweigh the convenience? It’s about neck & neck right now.

I’ll wait on the new iPhone. Maybe, I’ll wait until the next iPhone, or the next… I can wait, the battery on my phone isn’t that weak yet.

Sure there are things I’d like to have, but do I need them?

Maybe not…

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Today is the day

Preorders for iPhones began at 5am.

I’m still deciding if I want to plunk down the cash for a new phone. Indeed I’m wondering if I want to pre-order one instead of seeing it in the store in person. 

I know I want blue. I’m pretty sure I want the smaller of the two phones although the telephoto abilities of the iPhone Pro Max are intriguing. I just don’t think I could get comfortable with the size of the Max. I still like being able to put my phone in my pocket.

Sacrificing that ability for 5x telephoto versus 3x doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff for me given how little I use telephoto in general.

My current phone is 512GB. It’s served me well at that storage level, I do take photos regularly and with the resolution of the new iPhone being 4 times that of the current iPhone I wonder if bumping the phone storage up would be a good idea. Or is that something I can kick down the road a bit? It’s $200 extra. 

That pushes an already expensive phone into the stratosphere. Then again, at these prices? What’s another 200 bucks? It’s improbable that this will be my last iPhone, given that I tend to replace them every 3 years. My estimated remaining lifespan is 10+ years so maybe there’ll be 3 more iPhones in my future. 

My perspective on that kind of thing is changing. The other half made choices that meant he had what was just barely serviceable in the last 5-10 years of his life. I was the one that forced him into buying better things than just “serviceable”. He fought me on his Apple Watch and flat out refused to get an iPhone that used facial recognition.

Because he played harp, his thumbs and fingers were always torn up a little. As it turns out, just enough, that fingerprint scanners in iPhones and iPads more often than not, wouldn’t work.

It wasn’t anything he complained about, but I couldn’t help but notice he made his life more difficult than it had to be. It saddens me that the last few years of his life, he might have been more frustrated by devices and tools meant to make his life easier. When I bought his last iPhone, I should have gotten the one with facial recognition like mine.

Thinking like this has changed my perspective some. I’ve always gone for nice things within some kind of boundaries. Now, I’m looking at things from the perspective of does this make me smile, does it make my life easier or reduce frustration? If it does, then It’s worth it to spend a little extra cash. Especially since I’m aware, the road ahead of me is shorter than the road behind me. Why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?

The computer I’m typing on right now, is a marvel. It’s small, powerful, and has great battery life. In low power mode, the battery life is crazy long. Most of what I do these days is completely unaffected by running in low power mode. So yes, I spent a bloody fortune on this machine, but it meets all the requirement stated above, and probably will not be replaced in the next 5 years and possibly this is the last computer I’ll have.

I’m usually startled at how fast this computer really is when I plug it in. Low power mode turns off when it sees incoming power. Mostly it’s the speed of some applications loading. But when I’m using something like Final Cut, or the Affinity Suite of applications, I really notice. I’m sure I’d notice the speed using Photoshop if I could afford to use Adobe products anymore. $55 a month for access to Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the other Adobe products seems excessive. If I was a student it would be $20 a month, but if I was a business it’s $85 a month. Wow! Must be nice… 

I miss the days of being able to purchase the Adobe Creative Suite outright and deciding if I needed to upgrade year over year.

That being said, Affinity does a great job of replacing Adobe. I just noticed that most of the benchmark tests aren’t referring to Photoshop rendering speed anymore. I hadn’t thought about Adobe for at least a year, maybe two. That’s a pity, I used to use their products all the dang time. I haven’t even looked at the Adobe Font catalog for more than 5 years. I used to always be shopping for some cool unique font. 

Ahhh apparently Adobe is doing subscriptions on fonts too. Guess What? The subscription is obscenely expensive!

I guess Adobe really did cut themselves right out of the general public’s awareness when they got too pricy for individuals to maintain copies of their products. I’ll have to make sure that all of my previously purchased fonts are securely stored somewhere because I won’t be able to replace them going forward.

I’ve found some font houses are still in business. Of course, looking at the various font houses, I discovered two fonts that I really liked. At $200 bucks a piece They may be a bit too rich for my blood, but at least I could buy them without a subscription. 

Screenshot 2023 09 14 at 10 27 38 AM

From Typography.com, is a very beautiful typeface. As fonts go, it’s not inordinately priced. This is the problem I have with subscription services especially for fonts. It looks like paying one year of Adobe’s subscription price would greatly exceed the cost of purchasing both of the fonts that I’ve just found and liked.

As an individual, I might only need or want 2 fonts. So having subscription access to 1000s of fonts does me no good whatsoever. That being said, I know that I’m an outlier. Most people don’t think about the font they’re using unless it’s hard to read.

Being in the printer and printing industry for as long as I was, I look at fonts very differently. For example, Requiem (above) is elegant, and beautiful. There are features in the font that are very old school having to do with ligatures. I suppose I look at fonts as functional art. Moreover a beautiful font is art that I get to look at and use everyday on my computer.

I digress, I do wonder though if I still have any of the Adobe Type Manager 3.5” disks around that contained my font library. I’ll have to keep an eye out for those as I’m cleaning up.

This is how I lose entire days… One connection leads to another in my head, and then another and another until I realize I’ve learned a lot but haven’t gotten anything done.

I’ve decided that I’m preordering the phone… 

Hmm, apparently not! Something is very odd with the Apple site. Apparently, they’ve got another hit on their hands…

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Ughhh! It figures! Crappy Nights sleep and I really need to be on the ball…

I’ve got an appointment with the accountant today to hopefully finish up the tax crap dealing with the other half and my filing.

I took advantage of the automatic extension afforded us by the disaster declaration caused by the blizzard this year. It’s a darn good thing, because the other half’s filing system and document storage leaves a lot to be desired!

But I spent the night tossing and turning and feel like absolute crap. My brain isn’t working worth a darn but this is one of those things that must get done.

IRS Logo

I had a lot of weird abstract dreams all night. But my computer is fully charged and hopefully the parts of my brain that aren’t working will be augmented by the device. Thankfully the machine fits nicely in my briefcase.

Later this week I’m going to have to pick up the snow blower, it’s in for repair and a tune up after 15 winters of hard use and being put up wet. The repair guy said it had the wrong size belt on it. I told him that was the factory original belt and he was surprised. He said that explained it, the belt was so worn and stretched that’s why the machine was smoking when you tried to use it. 

I didn’t explain any further, the snow blower was the domain of the other half and as has been established the other half was not particularly kind to machines. I’m pleased that the repair didn’t cost too much.

Apple event 1

Today is the annual Apple reveal of new iPhones and other hot desirable items to populate the Christmas wish lists of millions. I usually watch just out of habit these days.

I’ll be watching the event today because I want to see what my options are for a new iPhone. My current phone is getting long in the tooth, It’s to the point of replacing the battery or replacing the phone. My phone is 3 generations old. I’d like an improved camera, and I’d like to have USB-C connections across all my devices. I’d like the satellite SOS ability and crash detection.

All the above features are available on last years model (except the USB-C). I’m curious to see what this year’s model brings. Tim Cook will once again be Captain Obvious with his proclamation, “This is the best most advanced iPhone we’ve ever produced,” uh yeah Tim, that’s the nature of technology… Moving on!

The USB-C connection is a pretty sure bet. Other hardware & software features may be announced that have not been leaked. All of this will influence my decision, “New Phone vs. New Battery”.

I’m also hoping that Craig Federighi does most of the presentation this year. I really don’t enjoy all the “Diversity” players because they’re just not exciting.

Federighi is electric and his playfulness and enthusiasm come through, even if he’s presenting dry specs and figures. He’s a fun presenter and somehow he always makes you hold your breath when he starts a live demo.

I guess I see it because I’ve done my fair share of live demos where it was entirely possible for the thing you’re demonstrating to fail right then and there. He apparently has done his fair share of demos where everything went wrong. He telegraphs that tension and makes it fun, it’s a “We’re gonna have an adventure…” feeling.

I’ve always gotten the impression that if a live demo went to absolute shit… Craig Federighi would somehow find a way to laugh, reset, and try again without missing too many beats. Federighi could almost convince me to upgrade my phone every year. 

That being said, there have been some comments associating his rise to SVP of Apple Engineering to the decade long slip in software quality across IOS, & MacOS. I don’t know if there’s a cause / effect connection or that the level of complexity in the software has caused the problem.

Personally, I believe that the issues have been, if not injected, then exacerbated by the rise of too much automated testing and not enough human eyes on the software until after it’s released. In the back of my mind, there’s a thread that questions if some of the problems aren’t based in diversity quotas.

When you hire someone based on anything other than their ability to build a product, you’re inherently degrading the final product. That’s not racist or sexist… That is simply a mater of fact.

Another of the dirty little secrets the diversity crowd would like to keep hidden and that no body is supposed to think about.

I’m not super thrilled with the expense of a new phone, but if there are sufficient improvements from my model to this one I could be moved to spend the money. Having USB-C is almost enough for me to plunk down the cash, on its own merit.

I’d like having only ONE cable and one charger for all my devices. So long as all my devices are smart enough to limit the charge current so that they don’t damage themselves. There aren’t many things I agree with the Europeans about, but de-cluttering my wall outlets, power strips, and the knot of cabling in my briefcase is one thing I heartily agree with.

Anyway, we’ll see how all this goes. I may be ordering a new phone soon. 

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Hmmm… That’s interesting and perhaps problematic.

Years ago, after our house burned and losing our substantial DVD/BluRay & CD / Vinyl collection we decided that we didn’t want to suffer that kind of loss again. There are still CDs and DVDs that we hadn’t replaced because they’ve been out of print (so to speak) for years.

As an alternative, you could perhaps back up a DVD by making a copy and storing the original someplace else. BUT YOU COULDN’T… The anti piracy encoding made that an imperfect solution.

Oh sure, you could buy programs that would “Crack the encryption” those programs would even mostly work but the image quality they produced was hit or miss. Mostly miss!

Why settle for a crappy dvd copy that was barely 480 with a mono sound track, when you had a 1080p or 4k Television and slamming surround sound?

In other words, the solution didn’t work well enough to be called a solution. Oh and that “Cracker” program you purchased… Money right in the pocket of some shitty hacker who’d then happily sell your name and credit card number to the highest bidder.

You could perhaps move a “bit for bit” disk image to network attached storage, some of the storage devices even had applications specifically for the purpose. That solution was slow and often disrupted by the anti piracy shit built into the DVD. You’d get the whole movie, but if you played it back from the network storage you’d find the chapters were all scrambled.

So our choice was to get high speed internet and we’d stream movies or TV shows from a service like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or Hulu. You could “Buy” movies on Apple, Amazon, or UltraViolet. Supposedly, the movies you purchased would be in your personal library forever (OR until the terms and conditions changed…)

UltraViolet was a really terrible service that worked on every device except the 65″ TV in the living room. To use that nice panel, I needed to connect a computer to it, or some other device. Okay, fine for me. The other half had a bit of a problem with complex technology and keeping track of HDMI inputs, and then routing the audio through the sound system or the TV speakers etc, etc, etc.

He could play Flight of the Bumblebee, Mozart’s Requiem Mass, or Wagner’s Ring Cycle, flawlessly on several different instruments, but the remote control for watching a movie or TV show? There were too many buttons to remember.

Go Figure!

I’d come home from work after the house rebuild and find him reading a book in front of a large screen displaying “No Signal”. Sometimes there would be FM static whispering through the surround sound system, because he’d switched to the radio but couldn’t find a station in range.

I felt responsible, terrible, and guilty. I knew that all he wanted to do was watch some opera performance, or listen to a piece of music that I probably wouldn’t like while I wasn’t home. (I hate Opera only slightly less than I hate Rap.) Oh and Shostakovich… Right the hell out of here! If I happened to be a spy captured by Russians during the Cold War… 3 Hours of Shostakovich and I’d have told the Russians our launch codes and given them the President’s Mistress address and phone number!

He knew that. He liked Shostakovich pieces. So he’d enjoy those pieces when I wasn’t around. Much the same as me enjoying Nine Inch Nails, Linkin Park, and Korn. He enjoyed those groups just as much as I enjoyed Shostakovich. So I listened to those groups on the way to work in the car, or at home when he was off playing church services or a gig.

Honestly… I think the problem was complexity added by the the sound system. When you added the TV, and a connection device to the internal network. Then having to choose which service you wanted to stream from, the Network Storage, or the internet, and which TV you wanted to watch the video on, did you want stereo, or surround sound? On and On, just to play a show or movie.

Writing it just now, and I knew it then, it was a lot of work. It’s a hell of a lot easier to plunk a DVD in a tray or slot and press “play”.

Although as I wrote that, I couldn’t help but think of trying to find a specific item on the internet these days. You’ll get a page or two of loosely related items but not the item, then when you click on the item that most closely approximates what you were looking for, you’ll get annoying cookie notification shit, (Weren’t cookies going away????) Then at least one full screen pop up asking for your email address in exchange for some “Special” discount, then another pop up asking if you need help from a chatbot and all the while, you still haven’t been able to see if the item is what you wanted, or read its description or price.

It’s like the damn gas pumps! No, I don’t want a car wash. No, I don’t want to join your club. Yes, I want a receipt. No, I don’t want a discount on beef jerky inside. Please! I just want fucking GAS!

The ONE question aside from wanting a receipt I’m going to answer “Yes” to, is “Do you want me to turn off the screaming advertising screen?”

Unfortunately, that question is never asked. I suppose that’s why my blood pressure is so dang low when I”m driving across country. I take a lot of back roads, and in those little country towns… A Gas Pump is just a Gas Pump…

Apparently my other half wasn’t the only person who had trouble. Most modern surround systems, and TVs are smart enough that with the right cables, all you have to turn on is the actual device you want to use. The system if properly configured, will see an HDMI input and make certain assumptions about it. Video Game – Connect TV and surround system turn on TV. CD player – Sound system only.

The cool thing is that you don’t have to fiddle with 5 different remote controls (All of which work differently. Some of which have volume controls that do nothing). All you have to do is turn on one device.

I’d been planning to update our equipment to the new standards. I was going to make it a Christmas present to us both this year. I don’t think I’ll be doing that now. He’s gone and I can reconfigure what I have to work until I decide what’s next in my life. But there is a temptation to update everything anyway… It all can be put in moving boxes, right?

In an effort to make things as simple as possible, over the years, I’d made a couple of decisions. Those decisions may come back to haunt me now.

We settled on a single streaming device. We went with the Apple TV in part because this is an Apple household. No, not in the religious sense.

For decades Apple devices, while expensive, worked as advertised, and had long term support. Non Apple devices… Not so much. “Blackberry? Paging Blackberry… Blackberry?” ZUME? PalmPilot? Compaq iPaq? Compaq Computers? The list goes on and is quite long!

This is not to say that Apple didn’t lay some eggs in their time, but Apple supported these devices for a time after they stopped selling them. My Newton Messagepad was a nifty device, ahead of its time, and woefully misunderstood by the blockheads in the media who sealed its demise with horrific articles damning something they didn’t understand, in favor of the Palm Pilot.

Apple though, is getting long in the tooth. They’re beginning to take on the lassie faire attitude that defined Non Apple corporations for years.

That attitude is, “The customer will buy it even if “it” doesn’t quite work.” We’re seeing this in Apple Software, and to some extent, in their hardware. The butterfly keyboard issue is only the latest example of Apple failing to pay attention to quality indicators.

With the Apple TV, the other half could turn on one device, and then have a menu that allowed him to pick what he wanted to see or hear. When we added the HomePod speakers things got a lot simpler One button, one remote. Then it was just a matter of making sure that all the music was available in the cloud. The same was true of Television shows and Movies.

Soon our collection of movies and music was all in iTunes. If the other half had a problem with the system, I could often walk him through corrective steps or just log on to the iCloud account to figure out what was wrong. Simplicity reigned, and I no longer came home to a screen displaying “No Signal”

In hindsight, our collection being completely in iTunes may not have been the best idea. We have a lot of movies. We also tended to buy TV series that we liked. The number of movies would be a problem if they had to be physically stored. They might even be a problem if I were to download each one to the network storage. I could always increase the network storage size, or add bookshelves.

The Apple Movies all have encryption. They can be played from network storage with a computer as long as the computer can verify with the internet that you have the rights to play the video. The Apple TV flat out refuses to see the movies exist on local network storage. Since the purpose was to have the movies on the big screen I haven’t kept up with downloading them since the AppleTV wouldn’t play them from downloads anyway.

One concern I have is that movies are being changed to accommodate the Woke overly sensitive crowd. There’s a bigger problem with some of the TV series I’ve purchased over the years. A current example is the series Archer.

This morning I happened to be looking at purchasing the season pass for season 14 of the show. I noticed with some surprise that seasons 1-8 were available for purchase, as was season 14. What happened to seasons 9 through 13?

I immediately checked my library and found that seasons 9-13 were still available because I’d already purchased them. This begs the question, why is there a gap at all? Seasons 3-5 of The Boys from Amazon are not available on iTunes. I purchased Seasons 1 & 2, on iTunes thinking that I’d be able to complete the series in time.

That seems questionable now. The Expanse is a series that I own except the last two seasons. I suppose I should purchase those before they’re unavailable. I also just checked on “Strike Back” and found that ONLY the two seasons I own are available, the remaining 5 or 6 seasons are completely missing. Just a few months ago all the seasons were available, they were expensive, but available. I suspect I could get a boxed set at Best Buy come Christmas time.

This makes me wonder if digital collections are worth it. If I can’t have a guarantee that I’ll be able to purchase all of a series or have the option to purchase a digital un-woke version of Gone with the Wind, or Looney Tunes then perhaps I need to go back to physical copies.

I still can’t purchase Young Frankenstein on iTunes. But I was able to get a copy of Blazing Saddles.

Then there’s the issue of some of the albums that I’ve had in my collection disappearing and not being available for re-download. Thankfully I have a friend that has a massive collection of music and If I really need to have one of those albums, I have no issues asking him for a high quality copy.

My attitude about this is simple. If I paid for the damn album in digital format and lost the copy of that album due to a drive failure I should be able to redownload it. If you’re not going to let me do that, then my other option is to “Pirate” a copy for my own use.

I have no desire to start selling pirated copies of my music or videos, I just want to the able to play them hassle free.

Unfortunately, I think that ability is going to require buying physical copies of everything again. I don’t look forward to repurchasing DVDs or CDs to recreate my library again. To my way of thinking I shouldn’t have to. Then again, I don’t think like everyone else.

If I were to commit to going all physical copies of everything again… It would be a great excuse to do a complete sound system/entertainment system refresh. That would give a friend and I a great shopping day in the audiophile stores he haunts. I might even go so far as to buy a turntable and get back to vinyl.

I’m not sure I want to go with tubes in an amp. I know my friend will strongly suggest that I do. I think I’d rather put the bulk of cash in really fine speakers.

We’ll see…

In the mean time, I’m going to experiment with some DRM removal software to see if I can download and save my collection to my Network Storage and avoid replacement altogether.

It’s interesting, I think we’re all going to be looking at doing things the “Old Way” because the “New Way” has become so corrupted. I can think of a couple of recordings of live shows from comedians I owned. Those shows / recordings would never pass the censorship the “Woke” crowd seeks to impose.

The Newest Call of Duty game is going to be live censoring any trash talking between players. That’s half the fun! When I played COD with my coworkers, we called each other names all the time over the communication channels. Where else do you get to call your boss a “dumb ass” to his face and have everyone laugh? But along comes the WOKE, they’re going to use an AI to censor “Hate or hurtful speech” in online gaming, and the AI will flush your sorry ass from the game if it doesn’t like what you say.

I’m not sure I’m willing to pony up $70 to have an AI tell me I can’t trash talk my friends during a game. I really enjoyed the creative swearing and trash talk directed at me when I screwed up. Then again, I was playing with retired guys from the Navy, Army, and Marines.

I wonder how the gaming community will respond? If no-one buys the new game, and only plays the old non-AI enhanced versions do you think they’ll get the message?

That’s fantasy! The young kids will keep the games alive and they’ll accept censorship in all its forms because they don’t know any better. Stalin said something about educating the children… I can’t remember offhand the exact saying.

I’m heading to Best Buy later today, maybe I’ll check out the selection of physical copies of music and games.

Have a great one!