My W/E: ecstasy and agony

Marquis · Post by **Marquis** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:43 am

Hi folks.

I just wanted write a quick story about my weekend. Hope you don’t mind.

I had a fantastic time on the weekend.... mostly.

It began with a nice brunch down by the lake for my girlfriend’s birthday.

Then, I took part in the Rat Patrol freakbike “float” in a big Street Parade, DJing off my laptop from the top of a tandem tall bike (that’s two bikes, each built out of two bike frames – so twice as high as a normal bike - side by side with a tray between them on which we placed a generator and a PA system. Audience jaws dropped a plenty!

Then after the parade, arrived at the Fringe Festival stage, still on the tandem tallbikes, still pumping out tunes, for a dramatic entrance before playing a gig with my band!

And then, after driving to my place to drop off the band gear, we prepared to head back into town to have an impromptu party at a local park, again with me DJing from the top of the tall bikes, when disaster struck.

I asked the taxi driver to open the trunk so I could put things in. He started climbing out of the driver’s side and accidentally bumped the gearstick into reverse. He was halfway out the driver’s side, and got dragged under the door, narrowly missing the front wheel. I jumped sideways out of the way, only just avoiding the rear wheel.

The cab reversed across the (very fortunately empty street) and up the kerb on the other side, and started heading towards the garden and house of the people who lived there. The driver chased after it, and climbed back in and stopped it.

Luckily the car was relatively undamaged. The driver was, aside from a few bruises and scratches, unhurt. I was shaken, but physically ok.

The only casualty was my backpack, which went underneath the cab. It contained my laptop, my UC33e, my Trigger finger, and my FW410. All of them now crushed and unusable.

So – how was your weekend?

Mark

smutek · Post by **smutek** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:59 am

OH GOD!!!

Damn.

That sucks so bad man, I'm glad to hear noone was hurt but I'm also very sorry to hear all of your gear got wrecked.

Is all of your stuff insured? And is it possible to pull your HD from yuor notebook to recover your data?

Hope everything works out.

jerry123 · Post by **jerry123** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:33 am

Karma. That weekend sounded just too enjoyable for something nasty not to happen.
(no, no that's just wrong of me. I have named all of my gear and love it all like pets.)

My question is were you able to get anything from the cab company for damages?

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:02 am

consider yourself lucky..

we had this unfortunate tragedy in australia this weekend
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cra ... 78238.html

as far as my own weekend.. i played to a packed club of nutters .. i had to take my whole desktop as my laptop has been playing up... totally went off.

Marquis · Post by **Marquis** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:09 am

yeah - I'm an Aussie too, SJ.

The gear will (fingers crossed) be completely covered by the cab insurance. The cab owner has reassured me. So I count myself lucky. And I think the HDD will be ok too, so it's more heartbreak and inconvenience than anything.

I really feel for the families and friends of those kids in Mildura.

(Funny how many people have mentioned that tragedy in repsonse to my story - glad we've all still got our priorities straight. Pretty reassuring.)

missjade · Post by **missjade** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:37 am

damn...that sucks!!

glad you and your girl are okay though. you're lucky you're getting anything back at all-- a year ago, a cab crashed into me while i was sitting at a light and i had whiplash for 3+ months. totaled my car and i didn't see a penny of it because the cabbie was covered by 'limited liability insurance'.. meaning that unless i was paralyzed or had severe brain damage or something, i was pretty much screwed

at least it happened after your gig and not before! good luck getting your stuff back

forge · Post by **forge** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:26 am

missjade wrote:damn...that sucks!! glad you and your girl are okay though. you're lucky you're getting anything back at all-- a year ago, a cab crashed into me while i was sitting at a light and i had whiplash for 3+ months. totaled my car and i didn't see a penny of it because the cabbie was covered by 'limited liability insurance'.. meaning that unless i was paralyzed or had severe brain damage or something, i was pretty much screwed

at least it happened after your gig and not before! good luck getting your stuff back

that's doesntt sound right to me at all - it's not your problem what the cabbie has, you need to be compensated

if not through normal channels you can definitely file a lawsuit for costs and damages

dont just accept that kind of lame rubbish, you're being fobbed off - I hope you got the licence number etc!

MARQUIS, will be inconvenient but given everyones comments on the FW410 it might be a good thing, new laptop, new everything else

mmmmm everything else

hambone1 · Post by **hambone1** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 8:51 am

sweetjesus wrote:we had this unfortunate tragedy in australia this weekend
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/cra ... 78238.html

Puts things into perspective and makes a broken computer pale into insignificance. Not to mention the Philippine mudslide...

On a lighter note, that's one less M-Audio interface on the planet!

missjade · Post by **missjade** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:12 pm

yeah, but most lawyers here aren't gonna waste their time protecting someone who got f'ed over, since the 'limited liability' thing means they'll only get a settlement to a certain amount. oh well, at least it motivated me to leave the job i hated & start working on music

forge wrote:
missjade wrote:damn...that sucks!! glad you and your girl are okay though. you're lucky you're getting anything back at all-- a year ago, a cab crashed into me while i was sitting at a light and i had whiplash for 3+ months. totaled my car and i didn't see a penny of it because the cabbie was covered by 'limited liability insurance'.. meaning that unless i was paralyzed or had severe brain damage or something, i was pretty much screwed

at least it happened after your gig and not before! good luck getting your stuff back
that's doesntt sound right to me at all - it's not your problem what the cabbie has, you need to be compensated

if not through normal channels you can definitely file a lawsuit for costs and damages

dont just accept that kind of lame rubbish, you're being fobbed off - I hope you got the licence number etc!

MARQUIS, will be inconvenient but given everyones comments on the FW410 it might be a good thing, new laptop, new everything else

mmmmm everything else

Marquis · Post by **Marquis** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 11:03 pm

Forge & Hambone: Yep. I won't replace the squished FW410 with another one. Just gotta work out what interface to get. The Presonus stuff was looking good, but I saw some negative commentary popping up lately, so I'm not sure.

My mac was really struggling to cope with the workload, too, and Iw as already talkign abotu upgrading, so I need to decide now if I replace it with a macbook pro (very early days, I know), or if I go the PC route.

Really, this could be a blessing in disguise.

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:37 am

Marquis wrote:Forge & Hambone: Yep. I won't replace the squished FW410 with another one. Just gotta work out what interface to get. The Presonus stuff was looking good, but I saw some negative commentary popping up lately, so I'm not sure.

My mac was really struggling to cope with the workload, too, and Iw as already talkign abotu upgrading, so I need to decide now if I replace it with a macbook pro (very early days, I know), or if I go the PC route.

Really, this could be a blessing in disguise.

I would look at the PCMCIA interfaces - I personally think that would be the most reliable - it's just more of a reliable format if nothing else because it's a great big card that goes into your machine, certainly the 4 pin FW on PCs is a total pain in the ring and some people have problems with the 6 pin ones because of the power/hot pluggability, then with USB2 there's the issue of handling data in "bursts" which makes it less reliable for streaming audio - with all of these isses there's a degree of luck of the draw on your machine etc - I've actually had few problems with the 410 itself, but the 4 pinFW is a real problem - sometimes I just touch the laptop and it loses the connection so if I actually followed the warning it gives about restarting first I'd be doing it all day

If it was me, and you didnt HAVE to have a laptop for the battery etc(which in reality for cpu hungry audio you rarely can anyway), I would seriously think about getting a 17in Intel iMac. I've as good as decided that's what my next machine will be. More powerful, cheaper, better ergonomically and still portable enough considering all these great ideas I had about making tunes in a forest or whatever in reality it stays in the one spot 99.9% of the time

and I'm discovering how much of a big deal ergonomics really is too....

my 2c

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 1:45 am

missjade wrote:yeah, but most lawyers here aren't gonna waste their time protecting someone who got f'ed over, since the 'limited liability' thing means they'll only get a settlement to a certain amount. oh well, at least it motivated me to leave the job i hated & start working on music

isnt it more like just going through the procedure for small claims like that? With a solicitor too not a barrister - My folks sued someone for whiplash and ongoing medical treatment for something like that - that was in Australia - I dont think it's a big deal - and you always see those adds for those kind of things - I'd look into it if I were you, you might be surprised

louZ · Post by **louZ** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:15 am

I thought this would be another thread about rats on E

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 2:20 am

forge wrote:all these great ideas I had about making tunes in a forest or whatever in reality it stays in the one spot 99.9% of the time

Sorry, can't stop laughing at that making tunes in a forest line... I'll be ok.

Marquis · Post by **Marquis** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 4:11 am

So tomorrow is the big test on the hard disk from the squished Powerbook.

The easiest option for me would be to add the drive as a slave to my desktop PC. Will this work? Anything I should be aware of?

Or is it a case of “don’t bother, dude, just find a mac desktop to put your lappie drive in”???

My W/E: ecstasy and agony

My W/E: ecstasy and agony

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Re: My W/E: ecstasy and agony