Tech Goddess... Of Sorts

It is best to blog about some things before time removes the funny. This morning, I've already missed.

You see, a friend of mine recorded her own Christmas album at home to give as gifts this year. It's a nice solution to her limited income, so I've refrained from telling her that "homemade gifts" rank very high on the list of things people do NOT want for Christmas -- right after a donation to charity made in their name. (And you thought the phrase "Happy Holidays" took the Christ out of Christmas!) Today, I am converting her magnetic tape to digital format.

I am not engineering her project -- she's done that -- I am simply putting the album on CD rather than tape. So, after setting the appropriate levels, I hit the "record" button and walk away whistling "Go Tell it on the Mountain," her first selection. My only fear is that she's recorded her album on a 90-minute tape and my CDs will collect only 80 minutes of material (note to industry professionals: a little parity, please?), so roughly 75 minutes later, I check in on the project to make sure that no song will begin without room on the CD to end. I don my headphones and listen in...

"I-I-I-I-I'm coming up, so you better get this par-tay star-te-ed"

Er....

It is Kimberly's voice, but it most assuredly ain't a Christmas song. A wee befuddled, I let the song and the tape play through, not bothering to effect a clean cut -- the seasonal effort had obviously ended a few tracks earlier. I laughed and laughed. Kimberly, I thought, had reused an old tape. It was the old stuff playing through at the end of her Christmas album now. Cute. I made plans to buy her a bulk eraser for Christmas and planned my blog post. Then I set up for my second promised conversion: her demo tape.

As I pulled out the Christmas album, I noticed it was almost completely rewound. Odd, I didn't do th.... Oops. Heh, heh. Duh.

It wasn't Kimberly's error at all. It was mine. See, Kimberly's demo is recorded on Side Two of her Christmas Album. She needs two separate discs, one per side. But, uh, well, my cassette deck has that auto-reverse function and, er, ah, it must have flipped. See, I forgot that when one works with TAPES, 90-minutes translates to FORTY-FIVE minutes per side.

A few scant minutes sure changed the funny on that one! Now I'm grabbing my cane, hobbling over to my rocking chair, and reminiscing about the good old days when knowing exactly how much time was on a tape was second nature. "Ya shee, shunny, back in d'day we yoo-sh'd to yoo-sh di-sh tape for everything, and we tawt it was GOOD! Now, be a ni-sh boy and bring your granny her tee-sh, will ya?"

I've (ahem!) disabled the auto reverse function.

Take two....