I'm unemployed, & working on going to bed before 3am and getting up before noon.
12:25pm? Good morning! Having my first cup of coffee for the day.
I've been working a lot on my front yard, digging out all the dead turf & planting another lawn from scratch.
Prior to Jun-2002, I had trees & grass, although the weeds had really taken over 80% of the lawn.
After Jun-2002, we got all our trees removed from the property, which was needed because most of them were diseased. One tree was too close to the house, and had been grinding away the corner of my roof. The tree removal job wiped out the sprinkler system, so from this time on, the feeble weed infested lawn died, outright.
Come spring -2003, the rains had come, and although the lawn never came back, the weeds came back in force.
By July-2003, due to negligence, the weeds had reached about 4'-5' tall, and the yard was a real disaster and eyesore, much worse than before.
Since July-2003, I've been working a lot on the yard, digging out all the old turf, dead grass and weeds. I was making fairly good progress, considering, when by Oct-6th-2003, someone on the street had called the city and got me in trouble with the city "code enforcement" for the undone state of my yard.
In Palmdale, we have a city ordinance that dictates you must have a normal lawn or landscaping. Dirt & weeds are not gonna cut it, in Palmdale, and the city let me know that. The code enforcement gentleman told me I must have a normal lawn, or landscaped as such, by Nov-3rd-2003, which by the time I got the notice, left me only about 2 weeks to finish up the whole front yard,... after I had already been working on it for months.
Anyway, if you've followed this sob story, you'd be right in assuming that I've spent the last week or so working almost full time on the front yard. I successfully dug out everything except the flower box area, which will get done later, and I've successfully turned bare sand into a rich loamy topsoil, with seed and everything, at the expense of about $275 for mulch, topsoil, seed and fertilizer. After much labor, all is good, and almost there!
My latest bitch, is that I'm almost done, stuff is raked nice and flat & even, and THEN the east half of the sprinklers don't want to turn on all the way on auto, so this morning a dribbling of water just created much runoff and messup of the even topsoil job I just finished. Gotta touch that up now.
I can't determine why the east half of the sprinklers are not firing off 100%, but that's my job to find out today.
Also, to just finalize, I have a bit more top cover, a rake, some extra seed for touch-up and some fertilizer I need to apply, before ROLLING it all flat, and returning the roller before 5pm today.
That's the latest bitch, sob story, or whatever. That's what I've been doing most of the last two weeks, and before.
HOW'S RECORDING? Well, I did a few scratch recordings of my guitar plinking around [practice], from the 488mkII to 4-tracks on cassette. It was a scratch run, trial recording, and it sounded as such. I still haven't listened back to it yet.
Which brings me back to a statement I made about two weeks ago, that I,... and we all,... need to practice our craft, from musicianship to proper recording technique, otherwise it's all just tea time chat, and doesn't add up to much.
I've been thinking that my random guitar musings, that I practice on, sound pretty smooth, and almost worthy of putting to tape, just as an experiment. Well, however true that is or not, when I finally set up a recorder and pressed "record", then I choked and all the smoothness went out of my playing immediately.
That's funny, but I just use this little anectdote to remind myself and others, that we need to practice our musicianship and also our recording, engineering and producing skills. Even I do, and I consider myself a 'long time user' of this equipment, but there's no magic that comes right out of the box with the recorder or guitar,... as many a Newbie has discovered himself.
All the rules and laws of physics apply to everyone, even the experienced home recordist, so even those of us who are more experienced need practice.
Well, back to the final stages of lawn rework. Gotta rake the stuff that washed away, smooth it all out again, finally apply some chemical fertilizer, and then ROLL. I gotta return the roller, hopefully before 5pm, otherwise incur another day's charge on the rental, $12. Also, I gotta determine why half my sprinklers are not firing off correctly, but I think it might be the automatic solenoid in the valve. TBD.
Be back later, Dave. [BBL]
PS: I finally got the "wayward" M520- mixer delivered, yesterday! That's the good news, and that it also came with PS-520 power supply unit.
The bad news, is that it shipped without the 20-pin power cable that goes between the supply and the board. SO, I don't feel ripped off, outright, but it's been a very difficult and disappointing M520 deal, and I have it out of the box, and it won't work without the cable!
I emailed the seller to see if he can recover the cable, otherwise I'll try Tascam parts, and as a last resort, will have to fabricate a cable myself, but I REALLY don't want to go there!
Also, the M520 is missing ALL of the ACCESS-SND>RCV jumper plugs, plus one missing off one Pgm Buss! DAMN, that's 21 jumpers missing,... NOT a minor concern, when Tascam charges $5 for each jumper!! DAMN- EBAY SELLERS!! Damn them!
I'd like the seller to find the 20p power cable and send it to me, but the jumpers I'll get from Tascam myself, if still available.
The M520 mixer listed as normal, and although it did not say explicitly that this mixer was tested & in working order, it also did not say specifically that anything important was missing,... except wood side panels are missing, and that was in the listing,... but I'm pretty much dead in the water on the M520, without that special 20 pin power cable,... until further notice!
Seeing that this M520 auction closed Sep-02-03, I am happy to have the bulk of the mixer delivered here by Oct-24-03, but I'll need that power cable, before I get any real usage out of it.
Previously, I had all but given up, and assumed I had been scammed out of the entire purchase,... but the bulk of the mixer finally shipped,... less cable!
BTW, that M520 is HUGE, and weighs a TON,... about 125lbs board by itself, boxed, and the PS unit is relatively light, but damn, that's a helluva large mixer to ship! It came special freight on "Bestways Freightline" shipping,... not USPS, UPS or Fedex,... was too big!!!
What I can say that's positive, is that the main M520 board was boxed very well, with cardboard cut to form, and the outer box material was layed TRIPLE-THICKNESS, so I can't fault the guy on the mixer packing job, and it made it through shipping without incurring a scratch.
Something else, that most of you guys can only imagine, but M520 mixer is a VERY IMPRESSIVE ALL-PRO mixing BOARD. I can't wait to recover the power cable and get it up and running!
The M520 saga continues....
) One channel right now needs to be calibrated and one or two others disappear on me now and then.
). I picked one up last year, the day after christmas for $10.
