Today’s Activities
- Shower. DONE.
- Cat duty. DONE.
Log
10:00 AM: We’re all up. Today, now that I’ve got all the new music I have in my music library, I’m syncing all hard drives and performing final computer tests to make sure that the DJ Gig: 2010-12-31 gig tonight goes without any glitches.
01:00 PM: I went over to Sheetz and bought us all foot-long steak subs and hot chocolate for lunch. We thought we’d fill up on some relatively decent food before going to the party tonight, so that we’re less apt to eat a lot of junk there.
03:30 PM: All music hard drives have now been populated with the new music except for one. This drive, upon connection, started this rhythmic clicking noise, and my computer would not read it. I think this Seagate unit is still under warranty. But I’ll check on that next week. Hopefully, they’ll send me a new one for free.
05:30 PM: We’re leaving now with nephew Grant for the New Years party. Back later.
07:00 PM: The DJ Gig: 2010-12-31 gig is under way. I experienced some Winamp Media Library configuration issues that scared me a little. When double-clicking on single songs in the library, instead of just one song being copied to the play list editor, all the songs in the library view were copied. This made it difficult to manage the play list and to find the song I wanted to play next, as I had to scroll through lots of “noise” songs in the play list first. But fortunately, close examination of Winamp’s Media Library settings revealed some values that had changed when I installed the latest version of Winamp a couple days ago. I changed these back to my preferred settings and the above problem disappeared. *Phew!*
09:00 PM: The dance floor began to fill with mostly younger folk, but curiously, they did not request as much music this year as last. Still though, there was plenty of dancing by all. The adults hung out in the kitchen for the most part, and it seemed that everyone had a camera. All my sisters stopped by the “DJ Booth” to make sure that [Emmy] and [Mentat} had plenty to eat and drink, and to chat a little. Very nice.
10:00 PM: Noticed that music searches take noticeably longer at this gig than at previous ones; probably due to all the extra audio files I have in my collection these days. I now have just over 92040 files, and the Winamp Media Library search engine appears to be bogging down. Searches now take several to ten seconds to complete. I'm used to them taking less than a second on this computer. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to bite the bullet in the new year and switch from Media Library over to Windows Search. That seems much faster. However doing this will involve writing an updated search filter DLL file that follows Windows Search communication protocols. Unfortunately, the filter I wrote several years back for the Windows Indexing Service is not compatible with Windows Search. The bigger my media collection becomes, the more necessary will be this effort to complete. In the meantime however, I'll narrow the selection of watch folders I include in my Media Library index so as to exclude my old time radio shows or audio books. I never play these at gigs anyhow, and this should shrink the number of indexed files considerably and therefore, reduce search times commensurately. This will be especially helpful on my older and thus, slower laptop computers that I use at the gigs.
11:50 PM: I ended the formal part of the gig with a couple slow dances and finished up with Hanson's Silent Night Medley piece. This drew many onto the dance floor that had not been there before, although I can't take all the credit for this as people had started to gather in the dance area to watch the ball fall in Times Square.
12:00 AM: 2011 is here!
12:20 AM: I began an informal music session, where I took requests from mostly the adults in the room. These mostly consisted of classic and modern rock tunes. No more dancing though.
01:35 AM: Mom called from the hospital to wish us all a happy new year. She sounds better than yesterday but we still don't know much about how long they'll keep her, or if she's even going to be able to come right home after discharge. She may have to return to the nursing facility to build back up her upper body strength.
01:45 AM: We're all running out of steam. So I ended all music and packed up my equipment and headed to the kitchen to socialize a little and to get one last bite of holiday food.
02:15 AM: Well, the New Year celebration is over and we're back home. Sister Christine and her husband drove the three of us ([Mentat], [Emmy], and myself) back home. I am very tired.
02:45 AM: We talked fondly of the celebration that just ended. But sleepiness is getting the best of us. So we’re off to bed. Happy New Year to all, and check back often, as I hope to write much more into these blogs in 2011. Good night.
Tom Hesley
Received Mail and Shipments
None today.
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