Darkoshi

I'd like to someday finish recording my and my mom's audio cassettes to MP3 files. But all my cassette players have encountered problems. The last one I used for the task still works, but started making a rattling noise while playing which gets carried over into the MP3 recordings too. Another boombox with dual cassettes has that same rattling noise problem, as well as its speakers not working.

I watched some videos of people replacing the rubber belts in their cassette players. In one video, after the belt was replaced and the cassette deck was being tested, I heard it making the same sound as mine! So even replacing the belts might not help with that problem.

Each time I go looking online for a new cassette player to buy, however, I am scared off by reviewers who say NOT to get this one, because it eats tapes. Every single one I look at has at least one, if not several reviews like that. Or other deal-breakers are mentioned, like the player being mono rather than stereo.

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I got my 2nd Shingrix (Shingles) vaccine shot.

A bit of my rear molar chipped off. I went to the dentist and had the edges smoothed.

My thumb still does not bend.

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A section of the garage ceiling panels, which I had lately noticed was sagging, broke and fell down before I could reinforce it. Luckily there was nothing underneath that area, so no collateral damage. But the cellulose insulation on top of the panel came down with it, making a big mess. I cleaned it up.

Did I ever mention the reinforcements I added to the other garage ceiling panels which had been sagging? That was 5 years ago. I attached wood boards along the seams of the panels. I still remember it feeling like quite an accomplishment. It was tricky, bracing the boards against the ceiling on both sides, while I screwed the screws in. Those sagging panels were a problem that I'd noticed and worried about for quite a while, and I couldn't find anyone to fix it, and then I figured out how to fix it myself!

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Today it was very rainy. Happy Lunar New Year!
I succeeded in getting the new mailbox post in the ground. Perhaps tomorrow I'll get the mailbox transferred over to the new post, in between working for work.

One of the gateposts on the gate that got knocked down last summer has concrete anchoring it. If it weren't for that, I'd probably have been able to get it out and replace it myself by now. I keep going back and forth between thinking I can do it myself, and thinking I will hire someone to do it. Then other things take precedence for a while. Now I'm wavering again, because I was able to rock the post back and forth a bit. Maybe if I can just get leverage... I had a couple ideas to try... I could get it out of the ground. But I really ought to just hire someone. Yeah. I really should.

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In the past, I used a product called Tub Grip to add traction to the bottom of my tub, to make it less slippery. It works very well, but it seems to capture dirt and makes the tub harder to get clean-looking. It also wears away over time.

Before applying a new coating of it, it's best to remove the rest of the old layer.
This time I used a product called "Citristrip" to remove it. It got the residue off, but also etched up the tub surface. Oops. It's a synthetic tub, fiberglass, I think. All the comments I found indicated this Citristrip works fine on fiberglass without damaging it, but no, not in my case it didn't.

The tub being etched makes it less slippery now even without applying new Tub Grip. But in some directions it still feels slippery so I probably still should apply new Tub Grip on top.

I like the short Exercise with Smart Cat segments on PBS that are shown between some children's programs.
I can do that! It's fun, easy, *and* good for me, yay! It gets me up from my chair whenever it comes on.
I have the TV on to drown out the sound of the neighbor dog who is barking.

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I've got a headache but no fever, which isn't unusual for me.
I worked in my yard for several hours today.
The back of my neck is achy. It may be exacerbated by stooping down to pull weeds, which I did Wednesday and today. It was bad enough yesterday that I started considering getting one of those neck braces like the pharmicist lady on the Doc Martin TV series was always wearing. Maybe those things support the head, taking stress off of the neck? Or maybe they prevent you from turning your head... I'll have to read up on it.

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Heard on TV: "The moose is on the loose!" hahah

I tried something out, using dandelions as an artistic tool. Coming soon to a universe near you! Maybe.

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I'm trying to clean off my table. It is taking very long and I'm only making small inroads.
Oh that's right, I wanted to try out the new Wyze sensors that are sitting there in that box.
And I also wanted to buy a raspberry PI to see if that makes the old sensors work more reliably especially as I wasn't able to get their bridge to reconnect after it had a problem last week.

There's the folder with my tax docs. I can put that away now; I've already gotten my tax refunds by direct deposit, as well as this year's stimulus payment too.
There, that is done.

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You know how in some commercials they have the legal stuff spoken very quickly at the end?
You know how, to a native English speaker, Spanish sounds like it is spoken very quickly?

Well, I saw a commercial on a Spanish-language TV channel, and the legal stuff that was spoken at the end of it sounded even more blisteringly fast than the English-language ones.

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A note I wrote on a paper on the table:

"My hands look old.
My skin is dry and textured."

They don't look quite as old to me today as they did then.

Starting in December I went 4 months without any significant menstruation, only minor spotting. It was great. Last month I got a period again. Maybe the note was from the dry period, an unwelcome side effect.

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On Thursday, I had saved a short audio recording... it was after my laptop microphone hadn't been working, but then it worked again. In it, I said:

"Testing One Two Three... NOW why is it working!!??.. But fine, it's working, right?"

I was idly playing around with that recording. I selected short clips of it and played them back several times in a row. Then I reversed one of those selections ("NOW why...") to see what it sounded like backwards. I did NOT expect it to same the same backwards as it did forwards, but it DID, which blew my mind.

forwards
backwards

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I saw this beginning clip of the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy" on TV the other night, and it made me laugh so good! I happened to be laying on the floor while watching it to begin with, so it was really a ROTFLOL moment.



I didn't end up watching the whole episode, as I had to finish up my work, but I need to watch the full thing (again? not sure if I've seen it before) one of these days.

The mailbox had many items in it today, surprising me. I didn't check the Informed Delivery page first. One item that was supposed to arrive Monday is still missing; it was again nothing important, a charity appeal. I wonder where these missing items end up. In someone else's mailbox?

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The big lantana bush is so pretty, full of orange, red, and in-between colored flowers. It's as tall as I am. To think that it started out from a few small plantings. There was a monarch butterfly flitting between flowers. A smaller orange butterfly, not a monarch, chased it away... and was still chasing it when they'd flown beyond the fence.

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My mom made an audio cassette recording of her, my sister and nephew when he was one year old in 1993. I recorded it to the computer into an MP3 file. It's cute listening to them from so long ago; I plan to give them a copy. There is absolutely no noise in the recording, no tape hiss or static or anything, and I didn't even have to do a noise reduction on it which is amazing compared to all the other cassettes I've transferred to MP3s.

But after that one, the tape player started making a loud rattling noise when pressing Play, even without a cassette in it. The rattling noise comes through on the recordings too. So I need to open up the player to see if it is something I can fix or not.

The cassette from 1972 still plays fine! I remember now that my mom played me some of it at her house, which is when I asked to borrow it in order to record to my computer. I was able to record & save the audio from both cassettes today by means of a better-working cassette player and Qiao's desktop computer. Now I want to ask my mom if she has any more old family cassettes like that.

48 years ago before I was even born, my relatives' voices still sounded the same as I remember from my childhood. Only one of them, I didn't recognize; her voice was slightly different than I remembered. All the relatives who spoke on that cassette have passed away over the years, except one aunt who is my mom's age

100 years ago, one of my grandmothers hadn't even been born yet. That seems sort of amazing; somehow 100 years doesn't sound so long ago right now. That might be because I was reading about the flu pandemic of 1918. My grandma was born in Boston in 1920. The family tree records I'd downloaded a few years ago show that one of her uncles died in October 1918, of "influenza pneumonia", after being sick for 9 days. Of the other 12 death entries on that page, 8 others were also from influenza and/or pneumonia.

My mom sent me a cassette in 1986, back when I was living in the U.S. with my dad, and she was in Germany. She spoke on it, and let several of my German relatives speak on it too during a family gathering over there, and then let it record in the background while relatives were chatting with each other. She and my aunt sent me a few such tapes during those years, and I likewise recorded and sent a few to them. When we ran out of things to speak about, we recorded music on the remainder of the tape.

I must not have listened to this tape in a long time. Six minutes into recording the first side onto my computer, the tape got stuck in the player. I managed to pull the tape back out without breaking it. I twisted the tape back into the shell. The reels weren't turning smoothly or easily, which is why it got stuck. The part of the tape which had been stuck was crinkled up, and I worried that it might get stuck again.

This page: FRUSTRATED by old cassette tapes binding my decks
suggests:

Try slapping the sides of the cassettes firmly against the palm of your hand (do it on both sides.)
This does help in many cases in freeing the layers of tape, and in my case I am talking tapes that go back to 1972.
If the rollers in the cassette are sticking, this could also help loosen them
Then after that, wind them through.

So I tried that. After slapping the cassette, the reels *did* seem to turn more easily. I then fast-forwarded and rewound the whole tape, and started the recording over again. This time it is playing fine.

There are voices on this tape from aunts and uncles who are no longer alive. I didn't even remember that they had spoken on the tape, and that I had any recording of them. What a precious treasure to find.

Update. Ok, while recording the 2nd side, towards the end, the tone started shifting between low and high. So I had to slap the cassette some more, but that fixed it.