The Vent and Rant Thread

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Sometimes it seems parents don't realize children actually grow into adults.

When I was somewhere in my 20's we had a family dinner, and my Mom told me 'to behave myself in the restaurant.' I told her that if she said something like that ever again, she could *** the dinner.

Recently, when I told her I had a girlfriend, she probably thought I'd need a refresher course after such a long time, and she embarked on 'how to behave around/handle a girl.' After listening politely for a minute or two, I just asked her to drop it.

1st, it's none of her business. 2nd, if I'd actually do what she suggested, I couldn't be further from the truth. Said girl would run, screaming, in the direction of either the North or South pole.

My mother tries stuff with me once a blue moon, I just say yes mother and do whatever I was going to do in the first place.
My brother has it worse, she won't accept his girlfriend. They have been together several years now. My brother will be 47 this year.

Now how to handle a girl, gently if that is what she is into or roughly if she is into that.
In all seriousness, I figure you and your girlfriend can work out your own relationship.
Though I will tell you that COMMUNICATION is the key.
That is my best advice.

[Rumpelteazer]

Our main internet connection is down. There were some problems on Monday, but we only had a couple of short outages.

Today's problem started just after 5am, but it wasn't reported on the ISPs website until three hours later. Probably because it's a public holiday today.

We have a second internet connection, but the wired network isn't connected to it and you can only get a good wifi signal in the livingroom.

Hopefully they'solve the problem soon.

Sent from my PLK-L01 using Tapatalk

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Now how to handle a girl, gently if that is what she is into or roughly if she is into that.
In all seriousness, I figure you and your girlfriend can work out your own relationship.
Though I will tell you that COMMUNICATION is the key.
That is my best advice.

We have lots of communication. Living without any hints makes it very easy, because it allows us to just ask "What do you think/want?" and get a no fuss, no frills answer.

With regard to bedroom behavior... I'll just keep that private, but I don't think my mom realizes that stuff like that changes as well through the decades

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

We have lots of communication. Living without any hints makes it very easy, because it allows us to just ask "What do you think/want?" and get a no fuss, no frills answer.

With regard to bedroom behavior... I'll just keep that private, but I don't think my mom realizes that stuff like that changes as well through the decades

On the first part, you and her are way ahead on the game. Oh and you have warned her about your mother so she knows what to expect.

On the second part, thank you for that.
It was the only thing that came to mind when your mother said how to handle. So I had to say it.

Here is a laugh for you on parents.
I still remember the first time, my now husband met my stepmother (or more precisely the woman married to my dad because she never was any kind of a mother to me). It was either our second or third date. We went to a restaurant after I got off work. First thing the waitress did was slam the water glasses down on the table. Then she glared while taking our order. I was so not wanting to acknowledge her. When we went to leave, she screamed across the restaurant, don't you two ever come back in here. We just looked at her like she had lost her mind. When the manager came running out, she asked why. The waitress said I was her stepdaughter and that she had every right to tell me what to do. The manager's response was you two are welcome in here anytime and you don't have to worry about getting her as a waitress again. She was fired on the spot.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

On the first part, you and her are way ahead on the game. Oh and you have warned her about your mother so she knows what to expect.

She knows I just hope communication stays as it is

With regard to my mom: She isn't a bad person or anything; I don't have much to complain about. She's just a bit... stuck. Sometimes she seems to forget I'm not 16 anymore, but maybe you're 16 as long a you live, according to your parents. I don't know

On the second part, thank you for that.
It was the only thing that came to mind when your mother said how to handle. So I had to say it.

Let's just say my mom is... way... off the mark

Here is a laugh for you on parents.
I still remember the first time, my now husband met my stepmother (or more precisely the woman married to my dad because she never was any kind of a mother to me). It was either our second or third date. We went to a restaurant after I got off work. First thing the waitress did was slam the water glasses down on the table. Then she glared while taking our order. I was so not wanting to acknowledge her. When we went to leave, she screamed across the restaurant, don't you two ever come back in here. We just looked at her like she had lost her mind. When the manager came running out, she asked why. The waitress said I was her stepdaughter and that she had every right to tell me what to do. The manager's response was you two are welcome in here anytime and you don't have to worry about getting her as a waitress again. She was fired on the spot.

I assume you *didn't* know your stepmother worked there? If I'd known, I would have never gone there in the first place. (Except if you wanted to specifically irritate her.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

She knows I just hope communication stays as it is

With regard to my mom: She isn't a bad person or anything; I don't have much to complain about. She's just a bit... stuck. Sometimes she seems to forget I'm not 16 anymore, but maybe you're 16 as long a you live, according to your parents. I don't know



Let's just say my mom is... way... off the mark



I assume you *didn't* know your stepmother worked there? If I'd known, I would have never gone there in the first place. (Except if you wanted to specifically irritate her.)

You assume correctly. Her and my dad were not speaking to me at that time. They didn't even know I was dating again. As far as they knew my second husband and I were still together. The reason for not speaking was a few months before, I got fed up with the second husband "working" for my dad. He was being picked up at 8 and dropped back off at 5 every week day but the paychecks were showing half those hours. So second husband was looking for a different job. When he told them about the different job, they said if you quit, we won't speak to you. So they had no clue what was going on in our lives.

I didn't speak to my father again until he landed in the hospital. I didn't even know when he and the stepmother split up. I got a call from another relative. In the end, he was glad I was the bigger person and forgave him for his previous behavior.

Oh and that wasn't the first time, he had pulled the not speaking line. I never let it bother me. My thought was always I don't need you anyway.

I had left at 17 anyway. Twice actually. The first time, I lived with male friends for a month. The second time, I got married. (That wound up being a bad choice.)

The funny thing about the first time was once dad found out where I was, he would just call a friend of mine if he needed me to come get him because he had left his car somewhere the night before. First time I left, he just said bye and I could come back when I wanted too.
He figured I was just go to my grandparents.

He only pulled the not speaking stuff after he got together with my stepmother.

[badgoodDeb]

Re: the restaurant: sounds like stepmother was seriously unhappy having to serve you!! Didn't like being "beneath" you, or even helping you, in any way, shape, or form!

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Re: the restaurant: sounds like stepmother was seriously unhappy having to serve you!! Didn't like being "beneath" you, or even helping you, in any way, shape, or form!

Pretty sure that was at least half of it. Though I was surprised to see her as a waitress. I didn't think my father would have let her take that type of job. He tried to portray himself as a successful business owner. So either he didn't know or their gambling debts were out of control and his business was doing worse than he would have wanted anyone to know.

Note: he pretty much died penniless. He had lost his business. He also had some gambling debts. In the end, he was nothing more than a worker who spent every penny on beer and the Cowboys.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

I still remember the first time, my now husband met my stepmother (or more precisely the woman married to my dad because she never was any kind of a mother to me).

I've always referred to "my mother's husband" and "my dad's wife", rather than to call them stepmother or stepfather. As you said, they had no part in raising me. I never lived with either of them. I saw no point in attributing parentage to their relationship to me.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

I've always referred to "my mother's husband" and "my dad's wife", rather than to call them stepmother or stepfather. As you said, they had no part in raising me. I never lived with either of them. I saw no point in attributing parentage to their relationship to me.

The amusing thing is both parents met their new spouses around the same time. (About 4 months apart) Yet, my stepdad was my dad long before he married mom. They were just living together.
My father's wife was always just his wife to me.
Timeline: mom April I moved out the end of May
Dad:August (I moved out in June back in July. Out completely in September)
I got married the first week of September.

[Katsunami]

I've been reading some music forums to see if there are better/specialized databases for ripping classical music, and all the usual debates are still around.

I think I'm going to kill the next person who states that WAV 'still' sounds better than FLAC, or that APE has 'better overtones' than other (lossless) formats. How can people *still* debate stuff like that, after almost 15 years?

For the uninitiated: WAV, FLAC, APE (and others) are lossless music file formats. They don't suffer quality loss like an MP3 does. WAV is not compressed, and FLAC/APE are compressed (a bit like ZIP for audio). Even if you go WAV -> FLAC -> APE -> WAV, the WAV file in the end result should be exactly the same as the one you started out with, and thus there should be no difference in sound quality.

In theory, you *could* have a FLAC that sounds worse than the original WAV, if the decoder is somehow bad or buggy, but I've never experienced that.

add:
And yes, I hereby state that FLAC is the best lossless audio format, because it hasn't changed since 2007 (and older versions are trivial to convert to newer), and because it's completely open source, has the best support on non-computer devices, and basically is the de-facto standard. The only competitor would be ALAC, if, and only if you use an Apple device. APE, with only one developer, is rummaging in the margins, and other formats are used even less.

[cromag]

I rip LPs (and the occasional casette) and have learned to nod my head when folks tell me FLAC is "better" than WAV (or vice-versa).

For the "record" I rip to WAV for my archives and MP3 for my players. I have some FLAC files that I've downloaded from small labels, and they sound fine, too, of course.

And every once in a while I run into an OGG fanatic.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by cromag

I rip LPs (and the occasional casette) and have learned to nod my head when folks tell me FLAC is "better" than WAV (or vice-versa).

For the "record" I rip to WAV for my archives and MP3 for my players. I have some FLAC files that I've downloaded from small labels, and they sound fine, too, of course.

And every once in a while I run into an OGG fanatic.

What is an OGG?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

What is an OGG?

A codec called Ogg Vorbis. See https://xiph.org/vorbis/

Technically, Vorbis is the audio codec, and Ogg is the container format used to hold Vorbis encoded audio files.

Vorbis got its start after an announcement that royalties would be charged for use of the popular MP3 format. It's not the first time something like that has occurred.

The PNG (Portable Network Graphics) compressed image file format was a response to attempts to charge for use of GIF files. GIFs were encoded using Lev-Zempel-Welch compression. Terry Welch was an employee of Sperry (now part of Unisys) when he wrote the paper describing a simplified form of the Lev-Zempel algorithm that would be easier to implement on a computer. His employment contract specified that work he did on company time was company property.

Compuserve made extensive use of GIF files in its service, Unisys belatedly woke up and realized they had IP rights to code used to make the GIFs, and started suing to collect royalties. PNG was an effort to create an open, royalty free image compression format that could be deployed without worries about getting sued for using it.

Unisys's patent rights on LZW compression have since expired, so it's no longer relevant.

More recently, we got HTML5. A major incentive to implementing it is the <video> keyword that lets you embed video without using a Shockwave Flash object and requiring a Flash player to view it. You still need a codec to decode and play the video, but the codec will be part of the web browser, and not a third party plugin.

Ah, but which codec? The default standard was H_264, which was proprietary and required a license fee. YouTube had a test site a while back where you could test HTML5 video and see how it performed (and fall back to Flash if it didn't.) Internet Explorer and Google Chrome would play the HTML5 videos using H_264 because Microsoft and Google had paid the license fee and could include the codec with their browsers. Firefox could not play the videos. The problem was that Firefox was open source, and needed to distribute source code for all components of the browser. They could not distribute source for the H_264 codec.

Things heated up when Google decided to make Chrome open source, and was actively investigating open source codecs like Theora that would provide performance and compression equivalent to H_264 as an alternative they could offer source for.

Cisco Systems finally broke the logjam by negotiating an H_264 license that would let them offer a reference implementation in source form, and that's what everyone uses now.

Intellectual property is such fun...
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I think I'm going to kill the next person who states that WAV 'still' sounds better than FLAC, or that APE has 'better overtones' than other (lossless) formats. How can people *still* debate stuff like that, after almost 15 years?

Easy. That sort of thing reminds of the times years back when I would read a publication called The Absolute Sound, a magazine aimed at the market that would pay more for their stereo system than they would for their car. They ran lots of detailed comparisons between components whose differences could only be detected with a room full of expensive test gear. There was no way you would hear the difference.

But for Absolute Sound's reader base, it was about status and "Mine is better than yours!", and they would clutch to their chest anything they could use to bolster a claim that theirs was better. Being the sort of pragmatist who is only concerned with what he can actually hear, I shook my head in wonder.

(Absolute Sound is still around, and a current article is "Best Speakers Under $20,000. )

I'm willing to bet the stalwart defenders of whatever would fail a blind hearing test, where you let them listen with whatever gear they liked, and did a blind audio test with the same source material encoded with several different methods, and challenged them to tell which was which. Accuracy of picks would probably be equivalent to tossing darts blind folded at a dart board.
______
Dennis