Passacaglia

Purchased the latest Enigma CD, A Posteriori, found a Rachel Portman release of Oliver Twist I didn't know anything about, and saw a CD with an interesting cover by a group I was unfamiliar with, Dreamcypher by the Cruxshadows. Looking into that last one now. I wanted to make a backup copy of Loreena McKennitt's latest album for my wife's car (I picked that CD up in Wichita) and a copy of the Enigma for myself. I snapped my BSG Season 1 disc in my car - I had the mp3's, but those of you who know me know I despise those - thankfully astro had burned me a CDDA copy to replace it. And here most recently I've scratched beyond playability Disc One of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma and the only person I can think of to ask to burn me a copy (not from mp3) is prog_guy69 who has just left on a whirlwind tour of the United States...Perhaps I'll meet up with him in Texas?

At any rate, I couldn't get Toast Titanium to launch in order to make copies for the vehicles. Odd. Reboot/reinstall it and it worked just fine. Even more perplexing, I couldn't get iTunes to launch. At all. A quick check of the /var/log/system.log revealed the following:

Apr 15 15:13:11 BorgQueen kernel[0]: USBF: 1756.821 AppleUSBEHCI[0x1e5c800]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
Apr 15 15:13:42 BorgQueen kernel[0]: USBF: 1787.821 AppleUSBEHCI[0x1e5c800]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 91, timing out!
Apr 15 15:13:57 BorgQueen kernel[0]: USBF: 1802.143 AppleUSBEHCI[0x1e5c800]::DoControlTransfer sync request on workloop thread. Use async!

Hrm, what has changed, what has changed...Aha! I now have an iPod. Wonder if this is the first time I've rebooted with the iPod connected? Indeed, after swapping USB ports and starting iTunes with the Shuffle disconnected, all is well in the world once again.

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I'm getting the Cav fitted with a towing harness, as strange as that sounds. I've been stressing over how I'm going to move everything I brought with me to STL and still have room for baby girl & two cats which will be traveling with me approximately 30-days prior to the arrival of my son & wife. Yesterday, I solved that problem with this:



All my problems solved in one fell swoop! And before you ask, no, I do not plan on putting my daughter and the two cats in the trailer.

Drank half a bottle of Glenfiddich 15 this past week, and its taken me that long to understand it. I need to update my Scotch entry spreadsheet and respond to bsdcat, the one who originally mentioned it to me. In my quest for purity, and truth, I've been doing a lot of research on scotch generally, and Glenfiddich in particular. I've been active on their blog, and have become a 'Fiddich Fellow in the hopes of someday following in drax0r's footsteps of Ambassadorship. Glenfiddich circles the globe with tastings, often bringing their entire line for sampling. Likely the only time I'll get to try their 21-year and 30-year offerings. More on this later.

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Why blog? Right now, I'm trying to get some things out, only I don't know what those things are. It helps when I write them down. I wanted to listen to some music. I'm sitting in my basement office for the first time in months, actually enjoying a private screening of my iTunes library. Music which moves me, but which I don't often get an opportunity to sit and enjoy. I can listen at any volume in my office without disturbing anyone else, and writing is a good pastime to accompany instrumental scores.

When I'm faced with a particularly challenging problem, I sometimes walk away. It helps to clear the head. In the past, I've slept on it, with the solution often coming to me in my dreams. While I've had some particularly interesting, yet unmemorable dreams of late, last night I dreamt of the solution. Troublesome, as I awoke with no question as to the problem. All day I've been going in reverse, trying to discover the issue to which I now have the answer. I've been restless all day because of it. Its 1900, and I have no idea where the day went. I've pretty much decided at this point to not let the question bother me, for I know that when it comes, rather than be surprised by it, I'll already have the answer.