Disc Wars

[ateolf]

I got a couple cds from Modern Harmonic in the mail yesterday: Sun Ra: Prophet and Attilio Mineo: Man in Space with Sounds. In the afternoon Mary Beth and I had a little excursion out. We went to a shop in Laurelwood for Christmas-related shopping and while we were there we stopped in Novel. Don't think I'd actually been in the store since it was Novel (which has been a pretty long time now). And a weird thing with my burning. So I had one cd that my computer just would not recognize. I tried two different drives. And it's not that it would have issues when ripping it, I'd put the cd in and it would say there's no cd in the drive. It plays fine on my stereo. It looks about pristine. To make matters even more crazy-making, it was the fifth disc of five in my African Head Charge box set, so obviously the other four discs in the set that were presumably manufactured in the same time/place were just fine. I finally got inspiration from trying to look the issue up, and remembered my old-ass built-like-a-tank cd drive from my old tower is still lying around. So I tried it with that...and it worked! What's more, the old drive rips three to four times faster than my newer drive. At first I was a little concerned by the difference, but then thinking about the fact that it's not usb powered like the new drives (I have a ribbon-to-usb converter, but the power source is for an old-school pc power supply). I realized I could also rip other things with it, but after doing another one came to the conclusion that I should only do so while I'm able to babysit it. It is very loud and whirry and after it's finished ripping, if it just sits there it keeps making its loud whirring sound until I eject the disc so it's probably not a good idea to just leave it. But I guess I can maybe slide in some faster ripping when I'm able. I'm already making way faster progress than I had ever predicted.