Korey Atterberry’s Idle Chatter

As I mentioned earlier, I’m working on a big project to put all my old home video tapes on DVD. I have, at last count, 162 tapes to watch and catalog. On the 145th tape, my trusty old Magnavox VCR I’ve had since high school grabbed a tape, shredded a portion of it, wouldn’t eject, and died. Ok, that’s alright. I have my parent’s nice VCR, which I intended to use for capturing the tapes since it was better anyway, sitting on my desk. Last night, when trying to insert the 157th tape, VCR #2 goes beserk, getting caught in a loop consisting of load tape, fast forward, rewind, eject halfway, repeat. Taking it apart I saw no obvious failures (broken springs, slipped belts, etc.)

I still have to capture all of these tapes (probably 75% of which are VHS). So, it’s the almost the year 2006, and I have to buy another VCR… I never thought I’d do that again. Good news is they’re way cheaper than they used to be.

Well, officially anyway… Evan has come up with a variation on an Army-crawl that can move him from place to place, though not very efficiently. Laying on his belly, he pulls himself forward in two inch increments with his left elbow and right hand, while his feet flail away as if he were swimming. I tried out his technique, thinking he may be on to something, but after one trip across the living room I was wiped out. It’s remarkable how long he’ll stick with it though, and its easy to see how much less frustrated he is now that relocation doesn’t necessarily require help from Mom or Dad. It’ll be interesting to watch as he develops his methods in the weeks to come. It’s a good thing we’ve been going to the gym, because we’re going to need to be in shape to keep up with him before too long!

I knew it would only be a matter of time before a product or company would upset me, forcing me to write about the experience here. I plan to write about things I recommend as well, so fair is fair.

Three months ago I tried to sign up online for web hosting with Rosehosting.com. A few days later, I hadn’t gotten any information from them, so I called their customer service line for some help. They told me that they had no record of me in their system, so no big deal – I’ll find someone else. A couple of days ago I happened to notice a small charge on my credit card statement, and realized I’d been getting charged for this service. I call, leave a message (apparently they prefer email), miss their return call the next day, and get someone on the phone today. I explain, and tell them I want a refund. Easy enough, I figure…

They ask why I didn’t cancel my service earlier. I told them that I never received a confirmation email, have never logged on to their system, and on my last support call was told they had no record of me. I suggested they check their records to validate my claims. The guy says they don’t log their support calls, and that they did send me an email…

I justed wanted to be done with them, so I settled for a refund of hosting fees from this quarter. Godaddy.com has been good to me, both in their actual service (I feel I’m getting my money’s worth) and their customer service. I haven’t gotten that angry with a customer service rep since my dealings with Lingo VoIP (go for Packet8 instead) or the last time I ordered a Dell PC (which I love, by the way) from a particularly hard-selling phone rep.

In a true test of human multitasking ability, I’m posting this entry while simultaneously watching two video tapes. For the last couple of winters I’ve been working on cataloging my entire library of home videos, including the two big boxes full from mom’s collection, over 160 in all. I’m down to about two dozen tapes.

It’s a nice trip down the proverbial memory lane, seeing old jazz band concerts, camping trips, band carnivals, Lift gigs, proms, graduations, stop-motion animations, weddings, parades, park district soccer games, musicals… well, you get the idea. The next steps are to organize, capture, edit and burn the results to DVD. I figure these DVD’s will be fun to watch at my retirement party. I’m sure they’ll be done just in time.

A few thoughts:

• I’ve never seen so much bad hair.
• Man, Matt can play. Always could, too, as far back as my tapes go, at least.
• I must be obsessive-compulsive. I recently finished up a similar project for all the audio I had.
• Thanks, Mom, for capturing so many good memories.

Oops, better rewind… I missed a song change. Perhaps one tape at a time is my limit.