Battle of the system sounds

Among other things I have done today upon returning home from Jeff's place is to put the new PC through it's paces doing some audio editing. Compared to the machines I had prior, this one is like buttah. Adobe Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro), my preferred audio editor, does not hesitate even when running an involved filter on a pretty huge file. Sweetness.

But there is another reason for this geekery.

At work were are blessed < /sarcasm> with IBM ThinkCentre running either Windows 2000 or XP. That's not necessarily awful, and the machines themselves are decent, solid, mainstream business boxes. No, the big problem for me is the default system event sounds. Specifically, those sounds being played at full volume through the built-in speaker in the computer chassis. One of my coworkers insists on cranking the volume up to max so he hears every system event and prompt. It's bad enough that the automated test software we use is quite 'musical' in that respect, but he falls into phases where he generates lots of errors and prompts. Factor in his full-tilt cellphone that he takes forever to answer and my typical day is the hum of a hundred fans punctuated with this:

BOOONK! DINNG! BOOONK BOOONK! DINNG! ... DINNG! BOOONK! DINNGDINNGDINNG! RINGRING! RINGRING! RINGRING! BOOONK! DINNGBOOONK! DINNG! ad nauseum.

I know now what living inside a pinball machine must be like. Note that this does NOT include the black guy with Tourettes who must go off his medicine on Fridays and sounds like Bobby McFerrin, The Platters, the Pips, the Stylistics, James Brown (RIP), Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison piled together in a ball in a twisted version of Katamari Damacy.

He does not turn down the sound, citing his need to hear the prompts come up, never mind the fact that the prompts themselves are big screens of graphics or angry red dialog boxes. His noises often cause me to check out my screen for problems. I could crank up Delicious Agony or WOXY.com or KNAC.com or my iPod to drown out the racket, but that is kinda frowned upon. Besides, there is still that matter of similar prompt sounds. Since some of my favorites got lost in hard drive crashes a while back, I figured I should make up some of my own. Licks and tricks from Vai, Satriani, Rush, etc. Complete 'themes' this time. Nothing like having Opeth telling me that I have mail, or Geddy Lee barking that some process has taken a dump. No one else has that going on there. Yep, Anarchy In The Test Console, I say.

Fire. Again.

Soooo. I'm minding my business here, blogging, chopping music into little snippets and I hear a siren pass the house. Not common, still, it's unusual. A moment later, another. I peek out the door down the road and see emergency vehicles convening near the end of the street. Does not look serious, no flames, smoke or anything I could see, probably an injury or illness, even for that there is usually three or more different emergency vehicles dispatched. I head back in, not wanting to walk out further in my bare feet down the driveway than I feel is necessary. No sooner than I shut the door, it becomes a parade of heavy equipment. I grab my shoes, vest and camera and walk down to see what is up. Looks like some serious shit.



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