Not Sharp, but in the Drawer

After some trial and error and a curse or two, I managed to burn (as in copy/pirate) my first DVD tonight. As far as bootlegs go, it's pretty innocuous, just a little documentary that I borrowed from the library that I want to share with someone, but it has to go back before I can do that.

The first problem I encountered was that there wasn't enough space on my C drive to hold the temporary files from the copied DVD: the files that the program later burns onto the new DVD. I have lots of space on my hard drive, but I have partitioned the drive. I keep the programs on one, smallish partition (drive C) and the files on a bigger partition (drive E). After a little perplexity, I figured out how to tell the copy program where to store its temporary files.

Mission accomplished: the DVD burned perfectly.

Mission not accomplished: I had no self-sticking CD labels on hand. For personal data CDs, I don't mind writing on the CD — it doesn't have to look good in that event, just be functional. However, people will see this, so I wanted to make a half decent looking label. And I did.

BUT ... with no proper labels on which to print, I opted to print on plain paper and to glue the paper onto the DVD. That was not the best idea that I've ever had. In fact, it was a pretty lousy idea. Actually, I have done this before and made it work, but I only had liquid glue available tonight. Got it everywhere folks, including the back side of the DVD (not the original one, thank heaven for small mercies), the side that the laser has to read through. This is what caused me to revert to strong language, and this is what caused me to trash my newly and proudly burned DVD. Sigh.

Then, do you think it would copy the DVD again? Not after three tries and one reboot. Finally, I popped the DVD out, wiggled it about, reinserted it, and it copied fine. It must have been a fraction of a millimetre off centre or whatever.

I even have a label ready to print. I said ready. I will purchase some proper labels tomorrow. This clueless shall hitherto remain glueless. After all, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I am a knife, and I am in the drawer, and I do learn &mdash eventually!

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Thanks so much for the various thoughtful and helpful suggestions regarding my sleep problems. The past two nights have gone reasonably well: no heat attacks and at least a semi-restful sleep. As I sit and type this at almost midnight, however, I am anything but cool and anything but sleepy and rather dreading what may in store for me tonight. I suppose that three decent sleeps would be too much to ask for: especially for a dull knife who becomes unglued when he pirates documentaries. Who in the world pirates documentaries anyway? On second thought, a documentary on toenails would probably beat the heck out of some of the movies that I have seen recently, so why not?

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In other news, expect this blog to be pretty quiet for the next week or longer (please stop that raucous cheering). We're heading to Ottawa to visit Butterfly and The Boy. Joining us there will be email friends from New Hampshire. Lady and I emailed regularly for a number of years before Cuppa and I drove to NH to visit with her and Mr Lady several summers past.

Our rendezvous went swimmingly well. You can meet nice people on the internet, and you can get along well with them in person. You can tell a lot about people through their words, and your instincts can be pretty darn reliable. This will be our third get-together, the second on Canadian soil, and the first in Ottawa. There's a lot to see and do in the capital, so unless the weather throws a conniption, we should have a fine time. Actually, I suppose that we will enjoy ourselves even if the weather doesn't prove overly cooperative.

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So, tomorrow is set aside for our last bicycle outing here. On Wednesday we pack and get ready to travel on Thursday. On Friday and the weekend, we do Ottawa, and then we settle in for a longish visit with Butterfly and The Boy. That pretty well explains why I might me petty scarce in Blogdumb for a while.

We'll be taking our bikes and hope to find some nice trails once Lady and Mr Lady head back stateside next Monday.

I don't know when I'll be back at the keyboard. It might be sooner than I think, even if it's just to post a few photos. It's hard to predict.

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Meanwhile, I'd like to go to bed now, and I'd like to sleep well while I'm there if you don't mind too very much. Thank you