Atomictumor

I was going to write a post earlier this afternoon advertising Willow Brook’s Super Hoop Classic, held tonight. But then iTunes crashed, along with some other strange error messages, causing me to spend a good few hours backing things up and trying to fix the problem. Gotta keep my priorities straight.

So, we went to Super Hoops. There were hundreds of hyper kids, and way too many parents who didn’t clean up after themselves (a major pet peeve). There were marshmallows. It was a fun time, but the type of fun time that necessitates buying a 6-pack on the way home.

October & Spotz were (sometimes reluctant, but very talented) cheerleaders. Wingnut slept through a good 3/5 of the action. MastaG…well, I’m not sure, but we managed to find him at the end of the night, so that’s good. Lugnut opted out of the game and instead joined AT & Pigpen for a night of fun (thanks again, AT).

‘Night, folks.

Lugnut: (push)

Pigpen: “Noooo, Lugnut, don’t push that button, its my button.”

Lugnut: “Why?”

Pigpen: “Because I can do it.”

Lugnut: (push push)

OK, if you’re on a feedreader right now, and you didn’t get this post, that means that somethings broken.

Because I just bought two tickets to Bonnaroo…

And the me of last year said…

“And don’t get me started on Bonnaroo. Freakin hippies…”

So, I had a problem.  I have this habit of renting movies, and it seems like whenever I rent a movie, after a while it clones itself onto one of the blank DVD-Rs here in the house.  Not sure how it happens.  I think it has something to do with food after midnight, or something.  Anyway, before long, I have this stack of formerly blank DVD-Rs that now have movies that I or the kids enjoyed watching at one point, and probably won’t, but may want to watch in the future.

What to do with this big ass stack?

I have a big booklet that holds about 100 discs, which is full, and I could get another, if I want to spend 20 minutes looking for the disc that I want, because, lets face it, I’m not Martha Stewart, and organization and Atomictumor are two things that appear to be diametrically opposed.  Like bees and fiberglass.

So I called my old girlfriend technology, and she turned me on to the idea of electronic DVD storage.  I’ve had something like that happening to my CDs for a while now, and I’ve loved my jukebox, so I figured that would be a good idea.  There are pretty much two entries in the crowded and lucrative field of electronic disc organizers, the Century CD thing, and the Imation Disc Stakka.

There were pros and cons for both of them:

Century CD Pros

1. Was about half the cost
2. Was advertised to allow searches by cover art, so Pigpen could just pick out the movie he wants off the computer by the cover
3. Looks like a crockpot, for that crockpot computer style.

Cons:

1. Seriously, click that link for the Century CD up there.  See that big part about “discontinued by the manufacturer”?  Yeah, that should be a red flag.
2. Looks like a freakin crockpot.   Thats really not cool.

Imation Stakka Pros

1. With a name like stakka, its gotta be good…
2. A bit more of an aesthetic appeal

Cons:

1. Twice as much
2. No functionality to search by covers

So, after a few days of pondering, I jumped the gun and got the Century CD from this website I hadn’t bought stuff from before, computergeeks.com.  It got here the other day.  Ironically, I was talking online with a friend at the time, and she was party to exactly how much this thing sucks.

When I opened em up, I found there was no software.  There was a little slip of paper directing me to a website to download the software.  The software, DDS, is a sub Access level database generator.   Once working, you pop a disc in the century CD thing, it asks if its a new one, you say ‘yes’ and pop the name in, and then it rotates around.

And wow.  This bitch is loud.  Its like an underwater chainsaw.  It damn near literally makes me jump every time it comes on.

When it comes on.  I had the first one hooked up fine, and popped the second one on top (which is nice, to add a unit you just stack it), and the second one jammed.  I head over to the tech support site (I’d link it, but like the ether, it’s disappeared now), and the advice was “Strike the unit on a hard surface”.

REALLY?  If only all IT were that easy!

So, I had two choices.  I could RMA the beast, or take it apart and see if I can improve it.

With the ghost of BJ laughing her ass off at me, I took the sucker apart.  I managed somehow to fix the jam, but the noise is caused by the worm gear that rotates the thing, and theres nothing I can think of to do to quiet it down.  WD-40 would probably mess up the discs inside, and besides, I don’t think it works too well on plastic.  I saw somewhere that maybe silicon gel or something might work, so I might just lube the thing up and hope for the best.

We still didn’t have cover search capabilities.  I dug around, and found that the people selling this thing now have new software, Media Tracker V2, which they’ll be happy to sell me, at $20 bucks a pop.  The ability to search covers is on a ‘wish list’, and evidently the stores selling these things just magically added that to the advertisements on their own.

So hell, that means its RMA time.  Only I emailed computergeeks.com for one three days ago, and again yesterday, and still have heard nothing.  I have noticed that I’ll be paying for return shipping, as well as a 15% restock fee, which makes it almost worth it to run these pieces of crap over with my car just for the satisfaction of hearing them crunch.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I think I’m going to keep the damn things, as a constant reminder about buying stuff on the internet…