Technical Difficulties, Please Stand By!

Today's schluffing off of the show is not intentional.

It appears my Windows XP machine, Copernicus, has decided it no longer wants to run Audacity or take input from my headset.  I got all plugged in this afternoon with the text of Chapter 3 in front of me,I even recorded the entire vocal track .  I go back to the beginning to start the editing and it refuses to budge.  Will not play back.  And worse, will not save the project file. 

This may be due to several factors, most notably the facts that (A), I've been using this headset for over 2 years ever since episode 2 or 3 of the show, and (B) Copernicus desperately needs a new hard drive.  Desperately as in there are 5 gig left on a 60gig HD, and there is not enough space left to do a defrag on the drive.  This is the original HD and I have never re-installed to clean off the crud.  This is because my iTunes directory is on there and despite following every set of directions I have ever found for transferring the iTunes library to an external HD, I have never been able to make it work.  Thus I cannot reformat and reinstall without loosing something like 15 gig of music and audiobooks. A new HD, drive imaging and install will cost approximately $250.  I have the means.  But it may take a few days depending on how quickly the so-called Geek Squad at Best Buy can work. 

(I am loathe to hand any of my machines over to anyone else to care for, but I do not have the means or knowledge to do the required work.  Once, many moons ago, I could build my own computers.  No longer, alas.  Technology like time has marched on.) 

I have tried to record on my Ubuntu machine, Galileo, but the intricacies of getting a USB headset to work with Linux are legendary and also beyond my capabilities.  I love Ubuntu, but I ain't got no mad skillz in it. 

So my apologies for the silence.  I will get back to you as soon as mechanically possible. 


Carol