This and that

Somehow I managed to get lucky enough to not do my regular Cycle 11 route again, which makes two months in a row. That one thing made the whole week a lot easier.

As shown in the previous post, my 9-year-old son (who recently became a Bear) went to a Cub Scout day camp this week, had loads of fun and got a lot of things accomplished. They did not only a lot of BB gun shooting, but also archery (and now of course he wants a bow...will be checking into kid's bows for a Christmas present). He kept his targets, which will go into a box of other mementos I'm keeping for him.

The nagging cold I had last week settled itself in my throat and has given me slight laryngitis, but when I can speak it has changed my voice from a tenor to a mellow bass. It's always fun for me to exploit an illness like this just so I can hit the low notes for a change.

I changed my tactics in LP ripping lately. Instead of focusing solely on one album at a time until it's completely finished, I have about a dozen in progress so I don't get listening fatigue just listening to one artist. I even finally started editing the War of the Worlds today, but I don't think I'm going to break the sides into separate tracks. They all segue into each other with no breaks in the music and a lot of it doesn't really work as stand-alone tracks anyway. I will probably try to separate out "Forever Autumn" and possibly "Farewell Thunderchild" for my favorites list but otherwise leave it intact. It looks like I'm going to have to manually fix all the pops in the narrated parts; I have discovered that Richard Burton's voice distorts easily when run through Goldwave's pop filter.

Cracked has recently posted a couple of humorous and generally correct articles about Hollywood and guns. You can see them here: 5 Ridiculous Gun Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies) and Hollywood Guide to Gunshot Wounds for Main Characters.

In my ongoing quest to find the best ice chest for work, I have purchased one of those 12-quart "Ice Cube" chests from Igloo which Dollar General has for $15. Significantly larger than my old chest, but still small enough to fit where I need to put it. I'll be able to carry quite a lot of cold water and Gatorade, and on certain days when it's not so hot I can substitute a couple of cans of soft drink for Gatorade, or maybe a V-8 which I like to have with my lunch sandwich. I tried it out already and I plan on packing it with two 32-ounce bottles of cold water, two 20-ounce bottles of ice to keep it cold and drink the melt if I run low on other water, four 12-ounce bottles of Gatorade and two sandwiches plus even a banana or something like that. Plus, during the hot weather like this I carry a 2-liter hydration backpack (not an actual CamelPak but one of those that Wal-Mart sells). The new chest also has a small lid compartment where I can stash a couple of energy bars or something like that that doesn't require refrigeration.

I wrote about ripping Tony Carey's album Some Tough City a while back. Here's his video for "A Fine, Fine Day" which is from what I think of as the golden age of music videos. I never had any time for any of those "concert footage" videos; I think they're just boring. A video should tell a story, although not necessarily the same story as the song. This is one that follows the song.