chrisinvermont

I have been listening to Pandora for several months. I use it on the Sonos for home and my Iphone/Ipad for work and the car. Here are some of my favorite channels, sometimes I use just the band name and sometimes a song: Smoke Two Joints - based upon a Sublime song, great mix and I discovered the band Pepper that I didn't know about. MGMT - This is the wife's favorite channel Lawyers, Guns and Money - Great mix of "classic" rock Runnin' with the Devil - for when I need a shot of 80's metal, it includes lots of Motley Crue. Get Up Stand Up - gives a good mix of Reggae. Why Can't I touch it? - nice 70's english punk. Discovered Wreckless Eric from this station. The stange thing about Pandora and my stations is that if I listen to them long enough anyone of them will eventually play a Rolling Stones song!

Having a wife that is a teacher this issue hits home. I would guess the first question should be about the educational value of this gathering. The issue of kids/parents not being able to pay for field trips is huge and very frustrating. Bake sales are another good example, my wife won't even take her kids to one in the school because half the kids don't have any money (plus kids don't need all that junk anyways). Over a bunch of years my wife has worked on several solutions. One is she always asks the people hosting the trip or event if there are scholarships available for students that can't pay. Most of the time this will cover one or two students. The second thing is that she now trys to collect $15-$20 a family at the begining of the school year to cover all of the field trips. Often parents will pay double or triple knowing that other students won't have the money. The PTO in her school will also provide funding if it is available. And finally it often comes out of our pockets. That is no big deal, we can afford it, but it is really frustrating to see parents that can't afford $2 but show up reeking of cigarettes or pot. It is amazing the priorities that some parents have.

Most everyone as hit my favorites. Like others, anything on Alligator records is great. A couple of bands/artists that I haven't seen mentioned I think are great. Back Door Slam/Davey Knowles - from the Isle of Mann but they have been playing here in Burlington quite a bit. Indigenous/Mato?? - I have a couple of disks and caught them on Austin City limits and they are pretty good. Fernando Noronha & Black Soul - I think they are from Brazil, don't know how I found them but they rock out nicely.

No HBO so no true blood but both the wife and I are comletely hooked on SOA. I was suprised that she loves the show given the violence and subject matter but she does. Great writing, characters and actors. I have always been a big fan of Henry Rollins, both black flag days and his spoken word, and it is nice to see him on the show even though his character is quite the creep. I was traveling for work last night, so I can't wait to get back home tonite and fire up the DVR.

Well I can't help too much with the lease issue but it did remind me of a classic thread on a BMW Board: http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=294812&highlight=winston+salem It is regarding Flow BMW in Winston Salem. The post went viral and at around page 35 Don Flow the owner begin posting. He did seem interested in clearing up any problems and offered to meet with people personally regarding problems with his dealership. If the lease is through Flow and it was their employees that pulled this on your mom and dad perhaps a direct call or email to Mr. Flow would help. Anyways given the low milage of the car that should offset the cost of the dealer fix one small dent. IThe car can still be a CPO vehicle and the dealer should be able to sell it. I do know that BMW is sitting on a lot of 2006 CPOs that they are trying to get rid of by low financing. If your parents want to keep the car I have heard of people contacting BMW directly and cutting much better deals than the local dealer would give them. Good luck!

Well I hope that some of the great minds here can give me some direction. I am getting a new computer this weekend. After 6 years it is time to upgrade, my new update for my CAD program won't even run on the old beast. The old machine is a Dell with a Dell monitor. This moniter was unique at the time in that it is a 19" with a tv tuner built in. I have the cable box plugged into and while using the computer I have the PIP in the corner and can watch TV. When the computer is off the monitor can be used as a SD tv which is nice since it is the guest bedroom. Anyways I am trying to replicate the set up with a 22"-24" TV/Monitor and not having much luck. I can get a computer with a TV tuner which will work fine for when I am on the computer and want to watch. The problem is that this is the 2nd TV in the house and sometimes someone wants to watch something different in there and it would be nice to do so without turning the computer on. I have looked at just getting an LCD TV but it seems that at some point recently they only include PIP in 40" and over TV's. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Have you checked out the Audessy user guide that someone created and posted on AVSForum? The first time I did the Audessy set up it was just OK. After checking out the guide and following the recommendations it was much better. The main this is run the test pattern as many times as the receiver will let you, even if you are moving the mike a few inches around the main listening spot. The first time I think I ran it once for the main position and once for the secondary spot. The next time I ran it for all 8 spots using a grid in the central listening area. That and the tips for getting the sub right made a huge difference in sound! Good Luck!

Kain, that is the same thing that I see when I check from work. I believe it is because you don't have the updated flash player. On the work system I am restricted in updating the flash player. It is becoming more of an issue lately as web developers gravitate to the newer versions that don't seem to be backwards compatible. Oh well, I guess I will have to stay in the forums as they still work. I should probably work instead of dreaming about what speakers to buy next!

Frzin, Good to see you around. You will have to swing by and check out the house. It is all still in a constant state of renovation but the KG .5's are up and mounted. Once I get moved into the new office and upgrade the computers we can talk about CD's. I will probably need to upgrade my media server. I share your concerns about hard drives. My media server is RAID I so I have redundancy there. Also my MP3 player can hold 30 gigs and the wife's is 60 gigs. We are at about 35 gigs worth of music so far so I figure the media server has redundancy and each MP3 player hold most or all of the songs and that is another level of redundancy. Chris

I am just finishing up a new office space for myself. Once I build the cabinets and desk I will get a new computer and then work to get everything re-ripped. I would consider sending out the discs to be ripped but I don't think I could part with my precious!!!! I will contact you when the time comes and at least get some tips for redoing everything. Chris

Coytee, What you tried to do at the emergency room is what one of my doc's told me to do. I travel for work alot and I also have allergic reactions from time to time. I asked him what to do if I was on the road and had an allergic reaction. He said to take the drugs that I travel with and then grab a book and go sit in the local emergency room but not check in. If after an hour my symptoms improve then head back to the hotel, if however the symptoms get worse then just walk up to the desk, tell them I am having an allergic reaction and they will get me back quickly. Good advice for anyone with allergy problems! Chris

I have asthma as part of a freaky rare disease. It does suck, although I have had mine under control pretty well for the past couple of years. I take advair, singulair and prilosec specifically for the asthma. Also on prednisone and other immune suppressants which probably help control it. I haven't had to use the inhaler in a couple of years. As for my freaky disease I will make a shameless plug that this week is Vasculitis Awareness week to try and let people know about this set of rare diseases. I went from being perfectly healthy at 38 to living with chronic condition, all in the space of a year. Here is information from the Vasculitis Foundation for the specific form that I have. http://www.vasculitisfoundation.org/churgstrausssyndrome Good Luck BigStew, I hope you find the proper set of meds to keep your asthma under control. Chris

Ok I will try and answer! I ripped all of my CD's a few years ago, initially to use on an MP3 Player. The collection including my wife's and my CD's is about 600 CD's. We also subscribe to Napster and have downloaded a bunch of albums from them. For streaming all music is located on an HP Media Vault and is streamed via a Sonos system. Since I ripped everything several years ago it was in the MP3 format. I am planning on getting a new computer and now that there are a number of lossless formats I will probably re-rip everything. At the time storage space was an issue, both on the computer and on the MP3 player. Those concerns have lessened now. For metadata I really only care about being able to find the songs, artist or album. I don't know what if anything is required for the sonos. Everything was ripped on a Dell XPS with just windows media player. I didn't verify the accuracy of the audio extraction. At the time I was only focused on the MP3 player where quality isn't as big of an issue. This is another reason I was thinking of re-ripping now that I have the sonos. I let Windows Media Player tag the files except for a couple of rare CD's that were not in the database. I didn't do anything to ensure the accuracy and I have lived with the errors. For instance I now that the Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim have most of the tracks mis-labled but I am too lazy to fix! I would look forward to any help you can provide in re-ripping everything! It took a few weeks the first time and going lossless will take even longer. Luckily after selling all of my old heavy metal albums in college I no longer sell any of my music! I know several people that ripped their CD's at a relatively low quality and then sold them all. Chris

Well I got them off! My mistake was I started with the old CA-SW-8T where the grill is attached to the plastic surround and it just popped off nicely. I was thinking that the AW-525 and the AW-800-SW were the same construction and the metal grill is attached to the plastic surround. It is not, the metal grill is set into the plastic surround and Michael's trick works well. It was still hard, my smallest allen wrench was still too big and even a heavy duty paper clip was too big. I found the large paper clip I could fit into the holes and used that. I tried close to a corner and it took some force and some swearing but all 3 grills are out! Now on to the painting. Thanks Again Michael, Chris

Thanks Michael! I will try the allen wrench tonight. Also good tip on the air. I want to get some paint on these tonight along with the subs that you sent. Hopefully I can get everything installed this weekend. The back yard is a barren waste land from the construction over the winter so it will be nice to have some tunes to crank while rebuilding the yard and gardens. Chris