Sequences Require Hours in the Filing Cabinet

I decided to make a copy of my password notebook to put into a safe. Because my printer is rigged by the manufacturer to make copies with fully dark print, I decided to scan the pages of the address book into the computer and then print them out with draft print, thus saving a few cents' worth of inkjet cartridge. Beginning the scanning, I realized that each page would be named and saved as a separate file. I decided I would rather have all the pages in one big pdf file, so they could all be printed at once. I thought this would be a standard procedure, but when I started to do it, there was no way to do it! The free pdf readers will not do it.

I searched online under "how to scan a document" and then "how to digitize your files." I found some information, but not what I wanted. I tried various searches using the word "combine." I found a free software program called Scan2PDF. I tried it; but the error messages, which kept coming up, were in German, and the program wasn't doing what I wanted and was crashing on me.

My husband suggested checking Lifehacker. On Lifehacker, I fund several free software downloads for PDF file merging. The comments sections on the posts were, of course, helpful. I wanted to use PDFill because it allows you to rotate pages within a file, but I had problems with it. I ended up with PDFMerge. It worked great, and I ended up with my password book all in one pdf file! I got it all archived and safe.

This all took about 5 hours. Much of that time was taken by scanning and multitasking. I found that a slower scan produced a clearer image, so I used the slow scan and multitasked during the scanning.

Once the sequence for getting the password book archived had been completed and while I was performing the routine to scan and save each address book page, I decided to complete some paper document filing. When I have a paper document to file, sometimes I put it into a "to be filed" file at my desk rather than filing it right away. This "to be filed" file fills up every couple of months and I have to file the papers in it.

The sequence for filing involves not only filing the new statements etc, but also finding old files in the paper folders and purging them...and shredding them. For financial accounts, I like to save a paper copy of the full year's activity. This is usually the December statement. I have stopped paper statements on some of our accounts but not all. So, I have to purge some files when I add new ones. Sometimes it's as simple as shredding the April statement and filing the May statement. But sometimes I find a big fat wad of old statements. To purge them carefully, I have to wade through them to be sure I don't throw away anything important.

This time, I decided to add some hanging folders in one of the file drawers, because half of the files in the drawer were in hanging folders and the others were in the front of the drawer without hanging folders. Every time I have needed to access a file in this drawer, particularly among the folders that weren't hanging, I had difficulty and broken fingernails. Putting the files into the hanging folders seemed to be neater and to make it easier to manipulate the files in the drawer.

But adding all those hanging folders made the drawer tighter. I had to find something to purge, and sure enough, I found an old file of all my daughter's checking and credit card statements for the last 6 years. Bingo! I took these out, among others and cleaned out the drawer considerably.

Now I have about 6 inches of papers to shred, 8 pages at a time.

Done Digitizing Old Record Albums!

I made it! All done before the mp3 encoder access expired! And with days to spare! I now have a computer full of old music and a bunch of record albums ready to give away.

But is it simple? Huh! Not me! There are 3 problems:

1) Finding a market to get paid for some of the old albums and taking the time to get the records to that market, be it a live flea market or garage sale or a Craig's list or Ebay.

2) Many of the albums have a lot of information on them, including histories of the artists, listings of songwriters, and notations of song names and length of tracks;and a few of the albums have booklets with even more information, such as lyrics and photos from performances. These seem to be worth....keeping. Ayeee

3) Windows Media Center has a feature where you can connect the batch of songs from an album to a photo of that album cover and listings of the "tags," ie, listings of names of tracks and lengths. I guess this is so that you can form playlists of albums easily. This feature is a little stodgy, in that if you name a song wrong, it gets all confused and offers you the correct name of the song. But sometimes you have a slightly different version of the album than is listed or sometimes you want to list the song with a different title. And this gets mucky.

You can create your own version of an album or a "mix" album within these Media Center listings. I spent a lot of time working with this while my albums were recording. It was doing pretty well, until all of a sudden, a whole bunch of albums I had gotten into the system all had the picture of the Sweeney Todd album. And then I worked on that and they all changed to the Oxygene cover. I dunno what happened.

Then there were shows, where the theme was played more than once during the show, eg, the Sweeney Todd theme. When I listed it for the second time, it erased the record of the first time. Oh, it got worse. The short version is that I gave up and now have not only 4 albums with the Oxygene cover showing next to them but also about 250 songs listed on the Media Player as "newly recorded" but not grouped into albums with tags. I have them in folders in my files on the computer by artist and album, but in the Media Player they are just listed individually. And so now I am saving about 30 albums so I can figure out which song goes with which album and what order they would be in, if I ever want to straighten out my Windows Media Player. Not sure I will do this. I never used this feature in the past.

How I Got Taken and Decided to Rush

I read the reviews of the USB turntable on Amazon twice - once before choosing this turntable (Audio Technica) for my wish list and once while I was climbing the learning curve to learn the software. I noticed one of the reviews both times - someone said something about the software only being available for 30 days. I did notice that the review was about a year old, so I figured that whatever software worked for only 30 days had been changed. Surely there would be more complaints on Amazon if they were selling a machine with software that would last only 30 days without making you pay for an upgrade!

When I first started using the Cakewalk Audio Creator LE software, it told me to I would have register it within 30 days or it would stop working. It told me that all I had to do was key in my email address and they would send me a key for registering. I decided to wait a few days and test the machine and be sure it was going to work for me. I had entertained the idea of digitizing all my albums within 30 days after Christmas and returning the whole turntable to Amazon for a refund; but then I decided that was really not appropriate. At best, the stylus wouldn't be in new condition. But I was prepared to send the machine back if it were somehow incompatible with my system or otherwise faulty.

After a few days, I was beginning to digitize my albums in earnest and I was getting tired of the popup window reminding me that I had 29, 28, 27 days left to register my software. I figured they just wanted to force me to receive advertising email or maybe they wanted a database of names or even a statistic about the number of buyers of the machine. So, I cratered and registered the software. The next day, a new popup came up. It said that the mp3 encoder module of the software would be available to me for only 30 days, after which I would have to upgrade or not transfer files into mp3, which was, of course, what I was doing.

So, I got took! Had I waited for 30 days to register the software originally, I would have had 60 days total with the mp3 encoder. 60 days would have been more roomy for this project. Trying to get it done within 30 days has me humming all the time but rarely having time to hum the same song twice!

Digitizing Old Record Albums

Today the distraction time all went to the new USB phonograph. It's like a futuristic machine out of the past! Steampunk! It handles so like an old turntable, with it's delicate stylus and trying to gauge the exact place between two tracks. But it's a USB tool, and it digitizes!

How many hours did I spend trying to get the thing to play through my computer speakers while recording? More than I spent figuring out the Cakewalk software for recording! There was a setting deep within my control panel, where the "line in" was turned off. Thanks to the person who posted an answer to someone's question about "USB turntables" and "no sound," and mentioned that the input on a sound card is usually blue. I had openings with blue, black, and yellow; and none worked, because of the setting that was wrong. But it was nice to focus on the blue, so that when I did find the setting and change it, Toto sang out of my speakers immediately.

The first moment I heard the record played directly on the turntable and through the headphones (because I couldn't get the sound to come through the speakers [see above])brought me back to the days of quality hifi. I could hear that advantage that turntables have over CDs. There was a little richness, a little "it's 1975 again." But I am going to digitize and downsize my record collection. It's not large any more.

Digitizing LPs is a realtime process, playing each entire album. Saving the songs means staying by the computer, too; and the sheer magnitude of the job makes it prudent to not do too many other computer things at once. At one point in the afternoon, perhaps the apex of the burden on my computer, the recording software crashed and I lost half the side I had recorded. The wave pattern on the screen looks like something fell on the record player and scratched the record! But it just stopped recording at some point. Or it recorded but couldn't save half the recording. Or something. It happened later in the day, too, when I was recording after having watched La Dolce Vita mostly in fast forward mode. The second time, I rebooted and used the audio software with no other programs running, and it performed immaculately. So, my plan is to get a lot of reading done while recording at the computer, so that I can be there to click as each track needs to be OK'd and so that I don't use too many computer resources and slow up my process by losing tracks I have recorded.

Christmas Is a Time for Adding Stuff

With a husband and children on vacation, I am by default on vacation, too! It is all I can do to get the boxes and those semiprecious puffy packing materials (that will be useful for mailing out things I sell) put away in the garage and attic. Boxes have been added to our collection this year. Not by me, of course. By others who bought things, mostly mail order. I wrapped my gifts in used (recycled) boxes from our collections in the garage and attic, and I will put those boxes back to be used again. Maybe I will throw away a few of the more common, less potentially* useful boxes.

*Potentially - a word that is loaded with implications for saving things. Boxes from mail order gifts this year have potential to be useful for wrapping things in next year. It is much easier to wrap something and keep it around under the tree for a week or two if it's in a box than if it has no box. Things of odd shapes, such as items with a cardboard backing and a plastic bubble are hard to wrap neatly; and wrapping paper is fragile and likely to rip on these oddly shaped packages when they are shaken or moved to let a newly wrapped package onto the table under the tree. Clothing wrapped without a box is easily identified through wrapping paper, thus ruining the surprise.

So, I will have to find room for a few more boxes.

I received a USB phonograph. I plan to use it to convert my old record albums to MP3 files. Then I can get rid of the old records! Yay! I will not set up a permanent table next to my computer for the phonograph...

Resolved: (1) I will set it up on a space I will clear on or near my desk; a temporary setup.
(2) I will get the records converted within a limited time frame. Oh dear - I don't think I'm ready to commit to a specific time frame yet. But I will scope the project and set it up and get it done without starting too many? any? other projects, so it will get done quickly.
3) I will dispose of the phonograph and the records, hopefully selling them for a price that both the buyer and I feel good about.