The worst thing about smoking, is that you cannot forbid others to smoke. Especially if they smoke in their own garden... while the smoke, even with the windows closed, enters MY room.

My voice gets ruined.
My appetite gets ruined.
My mood gets ruined.

It's disgusting, smells like hell and honestly... I wished it could be banned forever!!... or at least that my neighbours smoke INSIDE their own house. But nooooo, they smoke outside 'so that their house doesn't smell like smoke'!

So it's probably okay to poison me, right?

Wow, now this is a first. Instead of always missing the news... I somehow became part of it for the first time in my life! And right now... actually, when it was happening, I was all jumpy and all and now... I'm like, oh yeah...

Anyway, during work, one of the teamleaders suddenly said: 'drop everything you are doing, we have to leave the building.' Since he always jokes, we thought it was an unsceduled fire drill or so. 'No, really, there's a gasleak and we have to evacuate!' Luckily he was calm, otherwise there might have been panic (so kudos to him!)

So, we left the building and the police (the station is right behind my building XP) told us we have to evacuate a lot more; aka: LEAVE THE SURROUNDING AREA!

So, the entire company left to the nearby mall... seriously, they have had wonderful business today, as everyone calmly decided to lunch. After an hour and 15 minutes, leak had been closed and we were all allowed back. Work started again and well...

That was it actually. Amazing how calm people can be when there's dangerous gas steaming away, about to explode with the slightest spark...... and did you ever realise how many people SMOKE when there's a drama going on??! About 200 meters away from the gas leak, people laughed nervously... and light up a sigarette!! Seriously....

Another reason why I hate smoking XD

I WAS going to rant about a dreadful hour of getting new equipment to work, but I'll forgive that same dreadful equipment for not working... because I probably, by accident, now have a way to hook up my keyboard (the music kind of one) with my pc. Since I've been wanting that ever since I got a microphone to hook up with the pc, I'll forgive it. I have a pretty good feeling I have the right plug to hook things up.

The case?

At Queen's Day, we managed to get a cassette tape from a fairytale series we gathered in my youth (Lekturama; red books - if you're Dutch and of my age, you should know it). That tape was the only one that got damaged in an old, old past *sniffs* (The Ugly Duckling). At Queen's Day; for 50 cents, we got a new one.
We are happy.

ANYWAY, we knew of the existance of a machine to put cassette into MP3 and we looked for it. From going to one side of the store to the other (litterary; we almost ended up where we started - darn big companies that don't know what they own), we eventually got an alternative. A line-in audio cable with the advise of good software (Picked Magix Music Maker 12 - 20 euro's is not much and I had an old version as a demo in the way, way past). Total cost: 26 euro's (we saw the machine that does the same for 90 euros somewhere else)

So, I decided to hook things up. Software CD-rom made enough noise to raise the dead (and other cd's work just fine...) but it finally got installed. Also figured out how to record when using the microphone of the laptop (real microphone was like, 1 floor up and I was busy enough so this was just a test.)

And then... hooking it up with the radio as instructed by the guy at the store. Result: doesn't want to work through Line-In, but does want to work through Microphone. End Result: metallic sound.
Gah part 1.

17 tries to get the Line-In working but noooooooooooo, it doesn't want to work.
Gah part 2.

21 tries to get rid of the metallic sound, but nooooooo, no result either.
Gah part 3 and ready to kill anyone who gets near.

Out of utter frustration and to prove the software is better than the freeware Vista offers, I go to the Vista Recorder. Each recording gets stopped after 1 second.
Gah part 4 and tears of frustration near.

When I FINALLY get it to record as long as I want, the background noise is enough to break me down. Mom even happily says she doesn't hear the noise. When she finally does hear it, she wants to hear the metallic software version again.

Option selected: Line-In

..........What the heck?! Since when is THAT option available??!!!? I changed NOTHING (but the timing of the freeware recorder and I thought it was in microphone instead of line in)

Result:

No noise
No metallic sound

And I have no clue what I did to change things.

Now that I talk about it again, it's enough to feel frustration again... but then I think about my keyboard being hooked in... and I am happy again :)

Now to learn how to compose a song and I'll be even happier.