An Alternative Source for Musical Nostalgia

I freely admit to being a huge nostalgia head, which only seems to be getting worse the older I get. (I can only imagine the calibur of “In my day…” curmudgeonry that I’m going to engage in when I’m 60.) I spent much of my childhood not really listening to music at all, believe it or not, but as my tastes started to evolve, I mostly became interested in songs from my early years or from before my time entirely.

So, naturally, there’s plenty of inventory for me to like at the iOldies Music Store, which recently contacted me to ask if I’d take a look at their site. They bill themselves as offering “Boomer Music”. Which is funny, because that would be my parents’ generation, not mine. Still, ever since I was a teenager I’ve been far more likely to spin records by Genesis, The Beatles or Billy Joel — almost all of it pre-1990 — than anything my peers cared about. In 1987 I didn’t care about Def Leppard, in 1993 I didn’t care about Beck, and now I don’t care about pretty much any modern music. Whether it’s metal, prog rock, pop or whatever, give me the old stuff.

iTunes may appear to have an iron grip on the music market, but there are alternatives — and my recent rants about putting all your eggs in one basket (by getting all your online services from the same provider) should make it clear that I like alternatives. The iOldies Music Store is laid out like a juke box and is obviously going for lovers of ’50s and ’60s music with its visual style, which frankly is kinda hard on the eyes, but once you start searching it looks like they have a pretty large catalog, including eclectic material and albums from foreign bands. Interestingly, not all of it is old, either — although some of these recently-dated albums might be compilation discs of older material from bands I’m unfamiliar with.

What’s interesting about iOldies Music Store is that they try to amalgamize a variety of music formats in a single store. So you can get songs as downloadable MP3s, or order CDs, et al. Some of these options may not be available for certain songs; I think we’re all familiar with the minefield that is digital music licensing these days, so this should not be surprising. They have a “Retro DVD” section too, which includes stuff like Soupy Sales and a motley crew of other oddities.

I haven’t actually purchased anything from the iOldies Music Store, but it doesn’t look like their digital tracks are DRM’ed in any way, which is a minimum requirement for me when buying music downloads. I do have some gripes, though, in that the site is a little difficult to navigate as it does not seem to use pages in a traditional way, and the UI is often slow to respond. The iOldies store appears to be in beta for the moment, though, so some of this stuff could be a work in progress. If they can iron out the issues, they might have a future as an alternative to the big music store players.

Time Heals Wounds. Journals Reopen Them.

I love trips down memory lane, so occasionally I’ll go back through bits and pieces of my past in all their various forms. These include audio recordings, old TV shows and movies, classic video games, and of course journals (Oddball Update has been around since 1994, it just didn’t go public until 2003). Most recently, I’ve been looking at those elder Oddball Updates for a bit of a laugh at the thoughts and desires that I considered important during my early high school years.

Most of the pages are filled with talk of whatever computer-related technobabblery I was into at the moment, all of which now dates itself horribly as you might expect. In one entry, I complained that I couldn’t insert both a color and a grayscale photo into my document, because not only would that make the file size balloon to a ridiculous 800 KB (well, in the days of 400 MB hard drives, that was a lot), the photos wouldn’t display properly anyway because Windows 95′s 8-bit color depth would cause palette-swap problems when trying to view both color and grayscale images! God, the shit we had to endure. It’s no wonder we put up with such godawful page designs in the early days of the web; we were all too busy being impressed that there were any images there at all.

By far, the most conflicted period of my life’s history has to be my high school years. Despite being filled with enormous exploration and learning of new technologies (all on my own time, of course), those years were harder on me, emotionally, than any other. I’ve always hated school, mostly because I loathed its awkward social aspects and resented its trumped-up authority structure. But my hatred sank to all-new depths once I got to high school. The administration’s ultra-conservative approach to discipline, combined with their abject inability to communicate anything effectively, meant that despite my Herculean efforts to follow the rules and remain inconspicuous I routinely ran afoul of badly-written or miscommunicated rules. This landed me in all kinds of awkward and embarrassing situations, which to me are like pyschological Kryptonite. I started to feel persecuted and become paranoid that my every step, sentence or breath might be the next one to get me in hot water with someone. It was years before I was able to get past this, and I feel like a part of how I interact with people even today is defined by what I experienced in those years.

But a lot of time has passed between today and the 1990s, and increasingly, when I look back at high school, I am of mixed feelings about it. Or at least, I start to see things from an angle I didn’t have the capacity to perceive back then. I read about some of the agonizing high school situations I was going through in the pages of my old Oddball Updates and I wish to God I had a way to communicate with my past self, because it’s clear from some of the things I wrote that I was in serious, desperate need of lightening the hell up. Even my mom seemed to recognize this; I distinctly remember her suggesting not-so-subtlely that a girlfriend would take my mind off the stress.

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Windows 7 Hanging at Logon? Try Hotfix 2578159

So tonight I fire up my desktop PC just like usual, key in my password just like usual and as a result am greeted by the “Welcome” message and animated spinner, just like usual. Except unlike usual, the “Welcome” message sits there perpetually spinning for fifteen minutes with no further response.

I hit the reset button and tried it again two or three more times, in case it was a fluke. Still couldn’t logon. I even used System Restore to go back to the previous restore point, which was yesterday evening, when I knew the machine was running normally. Nope…still couldn’t logon.

Naturally, I’d arranged to work from home tomorrow, and now it was looking like I wasn’t going to have a PC to actually work on. So I did what any reasonable man would do in the year 2012: I got on my smartphone and started looking for clues. While that was underway, I tried booting to Windows 7′s Safe Mode. Interestingly, that worked. From there, I checked the System event log and found a whole lot of messages about services timing out or not starting in a timely fashion, like this:

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Print Spooler service to connect.

This was really just symptomatic of the problem, not indicative of its cause.

Fortunately, after relatively little searching, I found Microsoft Knowledge Base article 2578159. It describes a hotfix meant to resolve issues with the logon process, in which a “race condition” between the Windows Event Log service and the Event Tracing for Windows functions causes a deadlock situation. Now, quite honestly I have no idea what that means or why it would suddenly decide to happen after a year of trouble-free OS operation. But it sure described my problem to a T, so I decided to give it a try.

Here’s where the sheer number of hoops that I needed to jump through just to install a hotfix became comical. First off, Microsoft wouldn’t let me just download the hotfix. They made me give them my email address so they could email me a link to it. OK, fine. So after I’d downloaded the hotfix (still running in Safe Mode, remember) I tried to install it, but the installer service reported that I could not do so from Safe Mode. Great, so how am I supposed to install it if I can’t login normally?

Further searching of the web revealed that I could use msconfig.exe to selectively disable all non-Microsoft startup items, which would allow me to login normally (read: not in Safe Mode). After firing up msconfig, at first I tried to be greedy and just choose the “Diagnostic startup” option. Unfortunately, that didn’t work, because that prevents the Windows Installer service from loading, thus the hotfix still could not be installed. Grudgingly, I went back to msconfig, picked “Selective startup”, and then literally unchecked all of the Services and Startup items that did not say “Microsoft Corp.” listed as their manufacturer. Finally, after doing that and rebooting, I was able to not only logon normally, but also install hotfix 2578159.

Since installing the hotfix, I have had no further issues with logging on. It does indeed seem to have solved my problem.

Just thought I would put that out there, with an added smattering of real-world experience, in case anyone else runs into this.

Introducing Singuloddity

Today I’d like to announce the launch of Singuloddity, a new companion to the Oddball Update that I’m referring to as a “microlog”. It’s a place for me to post spur-of-the-moment topics based on things that are happening right now. Whether that’s a tidbit of news I just ran across, a photo I just took, an interesting place or situation that I find myself in.

Given Oddball Update’s recently reinvented image as “Your Place For Reviews!” and the fact that Twitter is just far too textually limiting for my usual brand of blather, this seemed like a move worth making.

I plan to cross-post links to new articles here on Oddball Prime over at Singuloddity, and my Twitter feed is on there as well, so you could theoretically follow only Singuloddity to keep tabs on everything I’m spouting off about.

I freely admit: it’s an experiment. One that may end ceremoniously in a matter of weeks or days. And oh yes, there’s precedent. But in case it does work out and Singuloddity sticks around for the long term, feel free to subscribe to the feed and see how long you can take it.

New For The Nineties

Ever look at the trending topics list on Twitter to see what the perfunctory social network’s users are talking about? Each new trend is like a flash mob that the Twitter biomass collectively contributes to for five, ten, maybe fifteen minutes before it slowly dissipates and then winks out of existence. Many of them are completely insane, vacuous, even racially offensive, and as such, I almost never contribute to them. But for a few minutes this afternoon, #thingsisaidinthe90s was at the top of the trend list. This, as they say, is relevant to my interests.

Just this morning I was doing some serious nostalgic stargazing back at the ’90s. Understand, when I actually was in the ’90s, I never thought I would do this. I can’t think of any time in my life, before or since, when I have been so angry at life, felt so marginalized by society, and was generally disgusted with everything around me save a small subset of people and things. But the ’90s were also when I started to keep records — journals, audio recordings, actual creative things that I had produced — and when I look (or listen) back at those things now, the rose-colored glasses go into full effect and I wonder if it was really all so bad after all.

It was, of course. At least, to my teenage self’s mind, there was absolutely no greater hell on Earth than high school. Of the admittedly cushy life I’ve led, my high school years remain my least favorite. And yet incongruously, those years were also when I met some of my best friends, played some of the most memorable video games and explored my most diverse spectrum of hobbies. I dove into game programming and level design, I got heavily into anime (went to conventions and everything!), met people in chat rooms, engaged in video game tournaments and wrote stories like they were going out of style. With the exception of writing — and even that has been scaled back greatly — I don’t do any of those things anymore.

Granted, I’ve got new things to focus on now. The obligations of life that naturally come with adulthood — work, paying the bills, keeping up the homestead, fixing the car, that sort of stuff — naturally represent a significant portion of my time. With a newborn son at home, there’s also a whole new universe of shared hobbies and experiences that I’m eagerly awaiting the chance to introduce to him. Beyond that, I’m mostly too engaged in playing today’s incredibly huge selection of video games to worry about modifying them. And since I turned to console gaming a few years back, modifying today’s games is mostly impossible anyhow.

But it’s fun to look back at what I was doing in the ’90s, both as a source of amusement and a motivator for myself today. I was into so many things back then, what would be the harm in rediscovering some of that old hallowed ground now? Or even exploring new territory altogether? Even as recently as 2004, creating levels for the 1992 PC game Wolfenstein 3-D was as much therapeutic as it was anything else. It might be fun to get back to that from time to time. Or do some more serious story writing. Or blogging; at least then I’d be writing something. I’ve also recently toyed with the idea of going back to Tumblr and trying to find some sustainable use for it, because I still crave the concept of a microblogging platform with a complexity somewhere between Twitter and Oddball Update.

This morning I was listening to some audio recordings I made exactly 17 years ago, during this week of April in 1995. It was one of those heady times from my high school years when I had a week off for Easter, my parents had gone on vacation out of state, and I was spending nights at my grandmother’s house and days at home alone, whooping it up with computer games and Star Trek marathons and whatever the hell else. My parents’ acquaintances were always shocked to learn that they would frequently go off on trips and leave me at home by myself for hours, even days at a time. “Isn’t he going to tear up the house? Wreck the car? Do something illegal?” they all asked. In truth, about the most trouble I’d get into when I had the homestead to myself was eating too many Awrey’s cake doughnuts. I was too busy with my 486 DX2/66 to get into mischief of the traditional teenage variety.

I sound like an total dork on those recordings from 1995, a kid who thought he was way cooler than he actually was. But there’s an unchecked enthusiasm there that’s so genuine, unmarred by the outward reservation I usually apply toward anything I enjoy today, lest someone think me foolish. In retrospect, I envy it. And I think Steve Jobs was right when he encouraged those Stanford graduates to “stay hungry, stay foolish.” If you don’t, you risk tamping yourself down so far that you can no longer recognize a great idea — and you certainly can’t create greatness if you’re afraid to admit what you think it is.

So maybe it isn’t a bad thing to look back at the past for ideas about how to enrich life in the present. Perhaps a good start would be to rediscover some of the creative pursuits I used to undertake more often in those days. Game design? Creative writing? Journaling? Whatever; it’s got to be more fulfilling than sitting around consuming the fruits of someone else’s labor.

Just let me get through Mass Effect 3 first.

And as for that Twitter trending topic? Here are some actual #thingsisaidinthe90s:

• I really need a modem with a 16550 UART.
• Why won’t the Wolfenstein 3-D source code compile? Friggin’ Turbo C isn’t cutting it!
• This $15 I’ve got left in my wallet should be just enough to fill my car up with gas. I’ll get some after school on my way to pick up lunch at Bullet Bell. 12:50 schedule days rock!
• Rise of the Triad shareware is 5 MEGS? I’d better start downloading it this morning before I go to school if I have any hope of playing it tonight!
• I’m on the Internet, fragsters! Email me at blaze at oeonline com! (I thought that eventually people would stop pronouncing the “dot” in “.com” when giving out their email addresses and URLs, as if it would be assumed. It was a stupid thought.)
• Have you played Doom yet? I’ll bring it in on a floppy disk if you want to try it.
• Hmm, I’d like to play The Legacy tonight. Better find that boot disk so I can free up 628K conventional.
• Hey Damon, what’s up. Is my Trans Am in yet?
• I’d like to go on the Internet now, but I can’t because Mom’s on the phone…
• There’s no way I’ll ever fill up this 1 GB hard drive!
• Is The Next Generation a rerun this week?
• I will move heaven and earth to be with this girl I just met. She says she’s from Thailand…

Ran Into Influenza; Got Kicked in Mouth

Although I have no excuse for two weeks ago, I can at least explain why I posted nothing here in the last seven days: I ran afoul of this year’s strain of the flu. This seems to happen to me around every three or four years. It’s never at all fun, and you’d think that by now I’d be smart enough to get a flu shot so that I could extend that three or four year interval to the theoretically infinite. And now that we have a baby in the family, I think maybe it’s time that I smartened up. There’ll be an annual flu shot in my future, starting next year.

Speaking of the baby — and the wife — it’s a miracle that neither of them got sick. I know how easily it can spread; hell, my own case of the flu came courtesy of a coworker who was only in my vicinity for four hours after he himself had recovered from it. That’s all it took for me to pick it up. Granted, a four month old baby with the flu is about the closest thing to an existential nightmare that I can imagine, so I instituted some pretty serious quarantine procedures here to make sure he didn’t catch it: I slept in a room at the opposite end of the house, wore a surgical mask any time I had to get near him, washed my hands constantly and tried to keep my distance whenever possible. It was hard, but so far it’s paid off. Hopefully we’re in the clear now.

It’s been a hard week, even if I only went into the office one day. (My boss was on vacation with his family all week, so at least there was nothing new going on and not much for me to miss.) The first night of this flu thing, I had such a fever that I woke up panting for breath about once an hour, the whole way through the night. The fever took nearly a full week to finally subside, and although it was never dangerously high, it was enough to give me that maddening oscillation between “chills” and “flaming inferno” throughout the day.

My second night was the weirdest. I had finally gotten to the point where I was getting some sleep when I was startled awake at 4 a.m. by a loud series of high-pitched beeps, coming from somewhere in the house. To my dismay, the beeps kept coming, about one every 30-45 seconds, and I knew there wasn’t gonna be any further sleep until I got up and investigated.

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My (Xbox) Kingdom for a Power Supply

(Credit goes to Pooch for the title of this post.)

After deliberating and collecting funds for some weeks, I finally ordered a new Xbox 360 on my birthday. I’d like to state upfront that this wouldn’t have been possible without the generous gift(card)s I received from my family and friends, so huge thanks and shout-outs go out to all of you! After deliberating at some length about exactly which Xbox to buy, I settled on the Gears of War Limited Edition bundle — and thanks to Amazon Prime, I had it in my hands less than 18 hours later.

I documented the process of setting it up, intending to write a follow-up (or a sequel?) to the entry I posted in 2010 when I bought my last Xbox. The point was to compare the old “Fat” Xbox to the new “Slim” one, and highlight the software differences that make playing games on more than one Xbox console a lot easier than it used to be. However, before I can get to that point, I have to deal with a small…problem.

You’ve probably heard Microsoft tout the redesigned Xbox 360 Slim as being “whisper quiet”. If not, you’ve almost certainly heard everyone under the sun blasting the older Xboxes for being loud as hell. So I was a little surprised when I powered up my new Slim console and discovered that it sounds not unlike my Jasper-based Final Fantasy XIII Super Elite. If anything, the fan noise on the new Xbox is more annoying! Although it’s a little bit quieter, the frequency of the motor whine is far more annoying to my ears. It was honestly kind of a let-down, but I figured I just had sensitive ears. Everything else seemed to be working OK, so I registered the console’s warranty and transferred my content licenses to it. (This process has changed too, and definitely for the better. I’ll have news on that in my upcoming review.)

A few days later, I was in the game room at around 2:00 in the morning trying to figure out why our Internet connection had been sucking lately. This had me back behind the console table where my new Xbox sits, dorking around with the router that I keep there to see if it was the source of our connectivity woes. (Hint: it was.) I accidentally started up the Xbox while I was doing this, thanks to its new touch-capacitive power button, and much to my surprise I realized that the fan noise I’d been getting used to wasn’t coming from the Xbox console. What the shit? So what is that noise, then? I started hunting around and received quite a shock when I discovered the source of the noise was the Xbox’s power supply brick!

Now I’ve owned a fair few Xbox 360s, several of which have had their problems. None of them has ever had a screwy power supply brick. In fact, I still have every Xbox power supply brick I’ve ever owned because they all did their jobs: they effectively and SILENTLY supplied power to each and every console until that console’s dying day. Why is this brand new Xbox 360, bastion of whisper quiet, equipped with a power supply that’s whining and droning like an old 286? Even more baffling is the fact that the new Slim consoles come with an equally slim-ified power supply, which uses less power than any of the models that came before it. Why does this thing have an audible fan when the huge honking 203W power supply that came with my 2005 Xbox never made a peep?

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My Kingdom for a Visor

Oh, faithful GTO. For what do your initials stand? Ay; for thou would have me believe your name is “Gran Turismo Omologato”, I suspect truly that thy moniker be “Gets Troubled Often.” Or perhaps it is I to whom that nomenclature refers?

Ah…hmmh. As you might now have guessed, something went wrong with my car again. A very minor something, fortunately, in the grand scheme of things, but no less exasperating for it.

I had just backed out of my driveway this morning en route to work when entropy’s shriveled hand reached down once more to slap my vehicle where it stood. I keep my garage door opener clipped to my sun visor, but for one reason or another the remote’s signal won’t reach the door when the visor is stowed. So every day I have to flip it open, hit the remote button, then flip it shut. Not such a big deal to me, but apparently a bigger deal to my visor, which this morning finally decided that it had had enough.

As I flipped the visor down, it made a snapping noise. In truth, it’s been doing that for a few days now, but not usually in the mornings — only in the evenings when I come home. Aggravated and disturbed by this new pattern of behavior, I decided to unclip the visor from its bracket momentarily and swivel it to the side to see if I could determine why it kept making that snapping noise. Well, I sure got my answer. As I did this, the plastic swivel arm actually cracked and crumbled right before my eyes, leaving the visor to flop down and dangle in front of me like a wet flap of cardboard.

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