Scott Cramer wrote this.

Did you ever wonder, “How long would it take somebody to find me if…”

I returned upstairs at work after a small break and, as I rubbed sore spot on my head, asked my coworkers how long before I returned would anyone come looking for me?

Why do I think of such things? Well, I had to visit “the little boy’s room” which is downstairs at the far side of the warehouse. Women don’t have to worry about this next part, but men will know what I mean. Sometimes you lift the seat up by hooking it on the tip of your shoe and pushing it up and backwards - this way you don’t have to actually touch it. As I was doing this I was unbuckling my belt at the same time and - probably because I have the coordination of a garden gnome - I tripped a little sideways on my one grounded foot and the seat slipped off the tip of my other foot. With one foot up towards the toilet reservoir where the seat should have been, belt undone and working on the jeans button, I tried to get both feet back on the ground and catch the toilet seat. Throwing my hands forward from my now mostly open fly threw me even more off-balance and my airborne leg kicked the seat as it was already falling, sending it down at warp speed into the porcelain bowl with a resounding BOOM. My brain, more concerned about coming up with an explanation as to what the heck I was doing to create all this commotion when I walked out of the bathroom, didn’t seem to notice that at this point perhaps catching myself on the wall to stop from falling should have been priority. I did catch myself - with my head - hitting the wall with, not so much a resounding BOOM, but a loud THUD. I was surprised when I emerged that there was nobody in the warehouse to razz me about what exactly was going on with the BOOM and the THUD all alone in the commode.

I should have just quietly taken a couple of Advil and cheered for my intact dignity. Instead, morbidly wondering what would have happened had I knocked myself out and fallen headfirst into the tidy-bowl-blue, I asked the question at the beginning of this story.

To which, of course, my coworkers then asked, “Why exactly do you ask…?”

Luckily my job does not require a lot of dignity.

I’ve burned a few audio compilations to CD and have had trouble with the playback within a few months. I went looking for what might be wrong.

Here is what I’ve found:

(1)
I use cheap/bulk CD-R’s. Generally, they’ve always worked fine for burning a program to disc or backing up some data to disc. HOWEVER, these are the same ones that are having problems with playback when burned as audio CDs. The cheap/bulk CD-R’s leave the “foil” on the label side exposed. What does this mean? Well, if you scratch or damage it, it can become unusable. From my experience, audio CDs are even more susceptible. My guess is that you fit less data on an audio CD the way it writes it so a smaller “damaged” area affects more of the physical media. Also, I think that many of the audio players are less able to handle a damaged disk - especially older players.

(2)
WAIT-A-MINUTE! I put a really nice fancy label on my cheap CD and covered all the exposed “foil”. How did it get damaged? Well, it turns out that some of the adhesives in the labels MAY react with the foil and/or dye in the CD and cause problems. Also, a label not applied just right may affect the spin of the CD which can affect the ability to read the data on it. Another problem - especially with those of us who are anal about applying labels - is if you smooth out a bubble under the label, you could be compressing the media and causing damage in that area where you are applying pressure. I have personally had adhesive labeled CDs stop working. Was it because of this stuff? I don’t know, but why take chances - especially if you are giving a CD to someone else and they can’t just reburn it if/when it fails.

(3)
What about just using a marker? I’m not even going to mention ball-point pens. If you are labeling a CD with a ball-point (pressure) pen, then just turn off the internet and never come back again. You should use a felt-tip permanent marker. I guess you could use a non-permanent marker, but umm, what exactly would be the point? However, some solvents and types of inks can actually migrate through the disc surface and - you guessed it - damage the disc.

Geez. Perhaps the RIAA should just point out the futility of it all, eh? One should never even try making a mix CD (of their own music - I’m not looking to have my blog shut down by “the man”).

So, here is what I’m planning to do:

(1)
Continue using the cheap/bulk CDs for non-essential backups, transferring things from place to place, burning an install CD, and sending files to other people (where it then becomes THEIR responsibility to put it somewhere safe).

(2)
For audio CDs I’m going to use the ones that are precoated on the label side - like the ones that already have designs printed on them to look “cool”. Then I’m going to buy a CD safe marker and label them that way. I like the neat look of adhesive labels when I make a compilation and design the jewel case insert and label BUT I don’t want the expense of the labels if they are just going to increase the chance of the CD failing. Then I’ll just go ahead and design the jewel case which is probably going to get tossed aside anyway.

Some of the links I read:

Andy McFadden’s CD-Recordable FAQ (section 7 deals with media)
http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq.html

Understanding CD-R & CD-RW from the Optical Storage Technology Association (they sound impressive, eh?)
http://www.osta.org/technology/cdqa.htm

I’m sure there is a LOT more out there, but this has already taken up too much time this morning! Err… Afternoon now.

If you find this via Google or something - and actually read down this far - and know more than I do on the subject (a likely possibility) please leave me a comment with any additional info. Thanks!

I called work from home today and got “R” (NAME WITHHELD TO PROTECT THE MICROWAVE CHALLENGED - see last post). We chatted for a minute and she asked me, “Can you tell the difference between bottled water and sink water?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Me too! “A” (NAME WITHHELD BECAUSE SHE’S R’S FRIEND) said that it was just because I was sick.”

Since we’ve still been kidding “R” about the microwave incident, I added, “No, you can tell the difference. Especially if you put it in the microwave.” Ha ha, I thought. However, I got no immediate sarcastic reply or “You jerk” out of her like every other time I’ve joked about the microwave. So, I started chuckling.

“HEY! I took you serious again. I thought it would start bubbling or something in the microwave.”

Waiting for it…

“You jerk.”

I drove by the scene of a shooting this morning. I cut through the neighborhood across from mine to get to the main roads. On the edge of the neighborhood, in a small diner’s parking lot there was a figure rolling back and forth slowly on the ground with several people clustered about. A short heavyset black woman must have come out of the diner and it looked like she had blood on her apron. A firetruck barreled into the parking lot from an entrance to the right of my car after deciding at the last minute not to turn on the street where I was sitting and squish me. No less than three of the people at the scene immediately pointed to a black mass on the ground that I had already noticed nobody would go anywhere near. I don’t see a lot of guns littered about on the highway when I’m driving but I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. A pickup pulled up behind me at that moment and I had to move along. A couple blocks down the road and I was sitting at a McDonald’s drive-through ordering a McGriddle.

Now I’m sitting in the office at my laptop. There’s a shooting victim somewhere in a hospital emergency room or morgue. Somewhere else someone who pulled a trigger feels guilty, scared, callous, arrogant, maybe a combination, maybe nothing. The black woman from the diner is probably relating the story to the morning breakfast crowd while her apron soaks in a washroom sink. There’s a gun in a plastic evidence bag sitting in a squad car on it’s way to the crime lab or headquarters or whatever they call in real life what I only know from television cop dramas. I’m washing down the last bits of my McGriddle with water from a plastic tiki-head cup and there’s a blood stain in a parking lot waiting to fry in the mid day sun.