Nothing to post about now...

You know when you have lots of things going on in your life and you are under lots of stress, well that is me at the moment. It appears that we are getting closer to finding out what is going to happen with our contracts here at Qimonda. I also found out that 3 of the employes are on different contracts than us, and if our contracts are ended, they will still be working. Yeah, Joy Joy!!

I have been very busy the last 2 weeks. I worked on Saturday night which really blew my weekend all to hell. I was off on Friday, slept that night, had to sleep all day Saturday for work, off Sunday with about 3 hours sleep that day and then my normal shift started today! - There are things that i need to get done around the house, but time is very precious at the moment. I turned the sprinklers on Sunday and tested them, no broken heads!!

I still need to get some fertiliazer and lime as well as snake and bud poision. We need to trim the hedges and once again, reseat the paver stones around the flowerbeds. I think that we are going to place a few steaks and string to keep people from walking in our yrar, mainly kids, to help the seed that was placed last year take hold and grow. These are just a few things that must get done to take care of our house as well as the inside stuff...

Well, i hope to have some interesting stuff to post about later tonight.

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Bombay Dub Orchestra...A Review...

As many of you know, I am a big music collector. The other day on the KLF List, there was a thread about a group called Bombay Dub Orchestra. They sounded interesting to me, so I checked them out. In my opinion, they fall under the Genre of Downtempo.

Now, I am not a big fan of Dub, on a whole. It is a sub-genre of reggae. Most of the dub I have heard was bass laden with slow drums and scattered vocals and sparse instrumentation.

BDO has a different approach to this genre. They have a lot of Trance elements as well as a 28 piece orchestra in the mix and Trip-Hop elements as well. The sounds capes are very lush to the point of being very atmospheric and experimental. The vocals are very tribal with a Mid-Eastern accent. You can hear very neat keyboard sequences and very lush layering of the instrumentation. Some of the songs are very familiar in sound with some ripe for film scoring with a 60s tint to the music. I can totally hear the different elements in the music and the have captured them in a style that works amazingly well in today's music scene. You can hear the dub elements in the bassline and the reverb-drenched, proto-psychedelic sounds of Jamaican dub.

They have a sound similar to Air, but with a 28 piece Indian String section. Their sound is more refined than that of Air's. Another band in this genre would be Thievery Corporation based out of Washington DC. Other significant acts include: Bonobo, Zero 7, Fila Brazillia, The Dining Rooms, Funki Porcini, Tosca, Kristallin, Pressure Drop, Urban Myth Club, Gotan Project, Sofa Surfers, Amon Tobin, Sundae Club, Glideascope, Saru, Röyksopp, dZihan & Kamien and Peace Orchestra.

If you like music to "chill" to in the late evening or listen to during the night, then I suggest Bombay Dub Orchestra as a good album to purchase and support. Lots of this music is produced and never gets to The States or is ever heard of by the general masses of the purchasing public. This is a great album by the U.K.-based duo of Garry Hughes (Björk, Sly & Robbie) and Andrew T. Mackay (VAST, Annie Leibovitz)

It is a shinning star in the sea of music that is today.

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Federal agency bans Microsoft Vista...

Well I for one knew that this was going to happen!!! No one wants to have to go to the new Vista Operating System. The American people are speaking out and are tired of being bullied by Microsoft. Most people are "happy" with their home computers and have way more power to do what they need to be able to do at home. Think about it, New MOBO, MORE RAM, NEW VIDEO CARD, NEW MONITOR...About $1200 for a baseline system.

Where as Xp with 2 gigs of ram will work wonderfully, Vista requires a minimum of 2 gigs to start with and if you go with the Vista 64 bit version, expect to need about 4 gigs of ram to start with. The only reason to upgrade to Vista is if your are a total gamer. The next version of Direct X being DX10 will only run on Vista, but if you are not a gamer and like your computer which uses Direct X 9.0c, then do not upgrade until you truly have to. I, for one, am not switching to Vista until I have to, or when they stop supporting Xp. They have plans to stop supporting Windows 2000 by 2008 and that will hurt a lot of companies. Our company uses 2000 for most of its applications...

DOT executive wary of software and labor costs, compatibility issues.
"WASHINGTON - At least two federal government agencies are refusing to upgrade their computers with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system, citing concern over costs and compatibility issues.In a Jan. 19 memo to staff, Dan Mintz, the Transportation Department's chief information officer, imposed an "indefinite moratorium" on upgrading desktop and laptop computers with the new operating system, Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7."

Vista will bring most "current" machines to a crawl due to the new graphical interface and RAM requirements. Let’s take my machine for example. I have an AMD 3000+ Processor(2.12ghz) and 1.2gigs of RAM(366fsb) GeForce 6200(128 VRAM 8xAGP) I am VISTA compatible, but I would not be able to run the "FULL" Vista Media version because my video card will not support DX10. SO, why go to the "Next Best Thing" when I would reap none of the benefits? I did however upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 which both I like. IE7 has some good new features as well as Office 2007. IE7 is a free upgrade, Office 2007 is not. It is well worth the money for the Office 2007 upgrade.

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Geology and stuff...

For many years I have been a rock collector. I have many Geodes and crystals that are very pretty. I bought a crystal from Africa one year that is brown and very large. I also bought a crystal structure while we were on vacation in Arkansas. It is over 1 foot long and about 8 inches wide with many crystal growths coming off of it. I would love to go and to be able to see these caves.

Now, while I was on the net last night, I saw a story that just blew me away!!It is called: Crystal Cave of the Giants - Discovery of the Largest Crystals on Earth They are from a mine called Penoles-Naica Mine of Chihuahua Mexico.

Here are some of the pics from that story:





This looks like something from out of a SCI/FI movie!! It remeindes me of a movie called The Core with Hilary Swank as one of the main characters. The forces that it took to creat these formations are just incredible.

Quote:

"These crystals are probably stable, as the temperature in the cave is over 150 degrees Fahrenheit with 100% humidity. In other words, these structures are enveloped in steam. A human can only function in this environment for six to ten minutes before severe loss of mental functions occurs. Found deep in a mine in southern Chihuahua Mexico, these crystals were formed in a natural cave totally enclosed in bedrock. When I first stepped into the cavern it was like walking into the Land of the Giants. I have often admired crystal geodes held in my hand, but when photographing these unique natural structures it was almost impossible to get any sense of scale. This is a geode full of spectacular crystals as tall as pine trees, and in some cases greater in circumference. They have formed beautiful crystals that are a translucent gold and silver in color, and come in many incredible forms and shapes. Some of the largest are essentially columnar in shape and stand thirty to fifty feet high and three to four feet in diameter. Many of the smaller examples are four to six feet in circumference, have many incredible geometrical shapes, and probably weigh in excess of ten tons. The columnar pillars are at first the most striking shape, but later I noticed there were thousands of "sharks teeth" up to three feet high placed row upon row and dispersed at odd angles throughout the caverns. While some of the crystals are attached to the ceiling walls and floors of the cave as might be expected, some exist in great masses of spikes and almost float in air. These crystals seem to defy gravity, as they must weigh several tons."

I also found some other pics from another site called The Cellar to demonstrate just how big this place really is.

My many thanks goes to Richard D. Fisher Photographer/Explorer of The Crystal Cave of the Giants and Brothers, Juan and Pedro Sanchez for having the foresight to not drill any farther into the caves and for bringing the amazing pictures and wonder to the rest of the world.

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Tonight...

It has been a bla night. I have a lot on my mind and not much to talk about. I am stressed about work and contracts, or the lack of them soon. We just dont know about what is going to happen here at Qimonda...

I hope to have some stuff to post about Tonight...



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Photos and Stuff

I just organized the pics to different sets on FilckR.

GO and Check them out!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmstringer/sets/


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AudioVisual Institute Of America...

The Audiovisual Institute Of America

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