The Big 50th

Remember...
Cease to inquire what the future has in store...

Take as a gift whatever the day brings forth.

Horace, 65 - 8 BC

Tomorrow is the big "50th" birthday party and so tonight I've been trying to work out the best way to do the music. I've got 9000+ songs on my computer so I'm buggered if I'm paying for a karaoke machine when I can turn my computer into one.

I have a laptop and an 1TB external hard drive and surround sound with 6 speakers, so I thought I could hook up the external drive with my music added to the laptop and then add the 5.1 surround speakers and everything would work. Think Again. That wasn't an option because the laptop wouldn't recognise the surround sound. It only used 2 of the speakers. Lucky I decided to have a couple of beers tonight too or else I might have been particularly pissed off!

Ok another option. I'll just take the whole computer with monitor and speakers. That way I don't need the external drive and all the music is on a partition on the hard drive. The speakers are great and they can be turned up heaps, I only ever use them on about a quarter of the output capability. The kids always complain when I turn them up. Ha! That's a turnaround! I'm always complaining about Carly and her music so occasionally it's payback.

After plugging everything back into the computer, I had problems with Vista, and only 2 of the speakers were working, a problem I had when I initially started using Vista. And after fiddling for half an hour I'm buggered if I know what the problem is.

I logged off and logged into XP, which I haven't used for ages, and what do you know? All the speakers work perfectly. There's something to be said for XP over Vista. It's certainly the superior operating system as far as compatibility with hardware is concerned.