PROGRESS at LAST!!
I was finally able to make some significant headway in clearing the backlog in the shop on Monday. I got several machines done, including a few mowers and a pressure-washer. Getting those things out clears a good chunk of floor space, and makes the shop look a lot less cluttered. I didn't get quite as many machines done today, due largely to having a difficult time finding parts for one of them. As I mentioned last time, people bring in old machines with no manuals, and worse, with no model numbers, and expect me to work magic. I wish people would keep their manuals in a safe place, write down the model, serial-number, and date of purchase in the manual, and if they sell the machine, give the manual to the buyer. It would make my life (and the life of anyone dealing with parts!) so much easier! Still, I think I got the number I needed, but when I called the distributor for the part, the fellow I talked to had never heard of it. It was getting a little late in the afternoon by that point, so he said he'd do a more thorough check in the morning and get back to me on it. Here's hoping it works out!
Tomorrow is the 4th Anniversary of my last day at Calgary Transit. I had taken a Sony TRV350 Digital-8 cam-corder along for the ride, putting it in the front window of the train's cab to give the viewer a Driver's View of what it's like heading down the tracks of Calgary's C-Train system. I've seen quite a few other videos on YouTube, but none from the driver's POV. I finally found the tapes last week, but it seems Sony and Microsoft can't get their act together and make a driver for Win-7, which means I had to use my old Win-XP machine at the farm to stream the video off the camera. Worse, I had to use Windows Movie-Maker, which only allows you to save in WMV format, and with my ancient 1.5GHz P-4 (single core) processor with onyl 1.5G of RAM, it has taken nearly two hours to process 9 minutes of video. That's just for the Online section of the trip (meaning, taking the train out of the garage, and bringing it onto the main-line.) I really wanted to upload the entire trip, but I think for now I'll be happy if I can just get the Online part of it uploaded. I'll probably have to do that tomorrow morning, as it's already quite late, and uploading a large file from the farm is a slow and tedious process.
I should probably just invest $50 in one of those USB video-capture devices that is actually compatible with Win-7. The quality sure can't be worse than Movie-Maker's 640x480 limit. I do have Nero, but the stupid thing seems to think that I've got multiple copies of the software installed, and it won't let me use it unless I buy another license online. That's total BS - I've only ever installed the software on one machine, but they've got their databases scewed up somewhere. Even so, the software is from 2006, so it's probably time to upgrade it as well. In the meantime, I'll be happy if I can just get the first video clip uploaded.
Tomorrow is the 4th Anniversary of my last day at Calgary Transit. I had taken a Sony TRV350 Digital-8 cam-corder along for the ride, putting it in the front window of the train's cab to give the viewer a Driver's View of what it's like heading down the tracks of Calgary's C-Train system. I've seen quite a few other videos on YouTube, but none from the driver's POV. I finally found the tapes last week, but it seems Sony and Microsoft can't get their act together and make a driver for Win-7, which means I had to use my old Win-XP machine at the farm to stream the video off the camera. Worse, I had to use Windows Movie-Maker, which only allows you to save in WMV format, and with my ancient 1.5GHz P-4 (single core) processor with onyl 1.5G of RAM, it has taken nearly two hours to process 9 minutes of video. That's just for the Online section of the trip (meaning, taking the train out of the garage, and bringing it onto the main-line.) I really wanted to upload the entire trip, but I think for now I'll be happy if I can just get the Online part of it uploaded. I'll probably have to do that tomorrow morning, as it's already quite late, and uploading a large file from the farm is a slow and tedious process.
I should probably just invest $50 in one of those USB video-capture devices that is actually compatible with Win-7. The quality sure can't be worse than Movie-Maker's 640x480 limit. I do have Nero, but the stupid thing seems to think that I've got multiple copies of the software installed, and it won't let me use it unless I buy another license online. That's total BS - I've only ever installed the software on one machine, but they've got their databases scewed up somewhere. Even so, the software is from 2006, so it's probably time to upgrade it as well. In the meantime, I'll be happy if I can just get the first video clip uploaded.